Why is socialism becoming increasingly popular in the United States?

EVERY economist says we have capitalism. You speculation is not based on anything but your opinions.

 

No, what I wrote is objectively correct. Watch and learn:

That is false. Location subsidy repayment is as voluntary as paying for a loaf of bread at the bakery. You are merely accustomed to taking the bread home without paying the baker for it; so when I propose that you should pay the baker the market price for the bread you take home instead of getting it for free, you claim the payment would not be voluntary. But your claim is just false. Being required to either pay for something that you take or do without it is entirely voluntary. That is what a free market -- a real free market, not our current slave market -- is based on.

Because landowners didn't want -- and consequently weren't asked -- to repay the subsidy they were getting.

That is false. The landowner, just as one example, is paid for the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location. You may have noted the absence from that list of anything the landowner provides. He does and contributes exactly nothing, and pockets the land rent just as well if he is comatose.

<sigh> Inevitably, you contrived to miss the point entirely....

The proverb is not just about fish.

GET IT???

Of course the market rent is whatever the market will bear. But why should the landowner be paid anything at all for the physical qualities nature provided? If someone had a title of ownership to the earth's atmosphere, how much rent would you "willingly" pay him for air to breathe, hhhmmmmm? You need to take a couple of months off work to think about the implications of that question.

 

Farm co-ops have been around for a long time. They're collective production, but the owners don't work in the co-op. I'm just trying to find out what socialists who favor collective production think about farm cooperatives.

 

We clearly disagree, and both of us believe we are correct.
Socialism is not an ‘economic system’, it is related to the things chosen in order to try to make a coherent society.
For example folk upstream agree to not pollute the water for the folk downstream.
I notice that the President said the Federal Government will pay for the rebuilding of the bridge destroyed in that terrible accident.
Not that it will be left to the capitalists to sort out. Now I know many will correctly say that the federal government only has the money because of capitalism, but the decision about spending it (on the bridge for example) is based on socialist principles.
Maybe if people have to pay a toll to cross the bridge in the future it will be fixed directly by capitalism.

 

I am not speculating.
We are all being opinionated, including yourself.

 

Because you can hang silly names on stuff does not mean the terms reflect any sort of reality. Why is it leftists are always seem so miserable? Why do they always feel so put upon? And most of all why do they want the rest of us to be every bit as miserable as they are? These sir are the great question of out time.

 

I’m hard on Rousseau and his “general will” for good reason - unlike the American Founders who believed that rights were unalienable and inviolable, Rousseau believed that rights were alienable and subordinate to the “general will”. Anyone who believed otherwise, would be “forced to be free”. As Benjamin Constant so capably pointed out in The Liberty of the Ancients Compared With That of the Moderns (1819), this “furnished deadly pretexts for more than one kind of tyranny” that “caused infinite evils”, like the Reign of Terror, the genocide in the Vendée and the ensuing Terrors committed by Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the rest of the collectivist monsters who followed in the footsteps of Rousseau’s disciples. Here are a few money quotes from Constant’s address:

"The liberty of the ancients…consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community. You find among them almost none of the enjoyments we have just seen form part of the liberty of the moderns. All private actions were submitted to a severe surveillance. No importance was given to individual independence, neither in relation to opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion…

Thus among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen he decided on peace and war; as a private individual he was constrained, watched and repressed in all his movements; as a member of the collective body he interrogated, dismissed, condemned, impoverished, exiled or sentenced to death his magistrates and superiors; as a subject of the collective body he could himself be deprived of his status, stripped of his privileges, banished, put to death, by the discretionary will of the whole of which he belonged…"

Socrates being a famous example….

"I said at the beginning that, through their failure to perceive these differences, otherwise well-intentioned men caused infinite evils during our long and stormy revolution…But those men had derived several of their theories from the works of two philosophers who had themselves failed to recognize the changes brought by two thousand years in the dispositions of mankind. I shall perhaps at some point examine the system of the most illustrious of these philosophers, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and I shall show that, by transposing into our modern age an extent of social power, of collective sovereignty, which belonged to other centuries, this sublime genius, animated by the purest love of liberty, has nevertheless furnished deadly pretexts for more than one kind of tyranny…

Moreover, as we shall see, it is not to Rousseau that we must chiefly attribute the error against which I am going to argue; this is to be imputed much more to one of his successors, less eloquent but no less austere and a hundred times more exaggerated. The latter, the Abbé de Mably, can be regarded as the representative of the system that, according to the maxims of ancient liberty, demands that the citizens should be entirely subjected in order for the nation to be sovereign, and that the individual should be enslaved for the people to be free…

The Abbé de Mably, like Rousseau and many others, had mistaken, just as the ancients did, the authority of the social body for liberty; and to him any means seemed good if it extended his area of authority over that recalcitrant part of human existence whose independence he deplored. The regret he expresses everywhere in his works is that the law can only cover actions. He would have liked it to cover the most fleeting thoughts and impressions; to pursue man relentlessly, leaving him no refuge in which he might escape from its power. No sooner did he learn, among no matter what people, of some oppressive measure, than he thought he had made a discovery and proposed it as a model. He detested individual liberty like a personal enemy…

The men who were brought by events to the head of our revolution were, by a necessary consequence of the education they had received, steeped in ancient views that are no longer valid, which the philosophers whom I mentioned above had made fashionable…They believed that everything should give way before the collective will, and that all restrictions on individual rights would be amply compensated by participation in social power…"

Democracy is all well and good, but we are Moderns, not Ancients - the “general will” isn’t good enough because it doesn’t secure our lives and liberty. When I see all these fascist meatheads in the Biden Admin and Democratic Party violating people's constitutional rights and attacking our democratic institutions and norms in the name of "saving democracy" I think of Constant's address and the Leftists he was talking about in revolutionary France - Robespierre, Saint-Just, Carrier & Co. - who maintained the "general will" gave them license to destroy the nascent democracy in France, suspend the constitution, and throw Vendéan peasant women into bread ovens.

Modern day Jacobins, indeed....

 

I am referring to capitalism and socialism as economic systems. However, by definition, socialism, like communism and fascism, is inherently intertwined with government.

SCOTUS did not say corporations are people. It said corporations have some of the same constitutional rights as people, like they cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process, they cannot be searched without a warrant, they cannot be deprived of free speech, free press, or redress of government, etc.

There i always a difference between the design of an economy (or most anything else) and its implementation or enforcement. In capitalism you have corporatists dressed up like capitalists but who try to profit by going into cahoots with government, and you have government personnel who smell gains by going into cahoots with capitalists. None of which are in Adam Smith's design. But at least there are some checks and balances here. As opposed to socialism (and communism and probably fascism) where the government and the economy are one and the same, so the government is in cahoots with itself with no checks and balances. Do you think the gap between the top 5% and the bottom half is greater with capitalism or socialism? I assert without question the answer is socialism. As Hayek aptly explained you cannot have socialism without a totalitarian absolutist government (even if the originators of socialism truly abhor it) which puts a small minority of elitists on the very top of the heap and everyone else way down at the bottom.

 

I think it would be more accurate to say that the government dictated the direction of corporate life, and as you may recall, the government reserved the power to assume direct control over the operations/management of any corporation that refused/failed to comply.

As for your questions concerning workers, Mussolini considered himself their representative acting on their behalf. Whether one chooses to believe that or not is up to them, but this speech illustrates his thinking and "corporatist" (fascist) program:

The stakeholder fascism developed by the German National Socialists (and enacted into law in 1937) operated in essentially the same way - de facto control, versus direct control via outright government ownership, i.e., socialization/nationalization/collectivization.

Of course, this contrasts with liberal capitalism and laissez faire capitalism. which Mussolini called an "economy aiming at individual profit" not "collective interests", and he would be correct. Consistent with this, "corporatist" and stakeholder fascism are also antithetical to the so-called Friedman Doctrine that guides the shareholder capitalism that Joe Biden and his pals in the WEF, the ESG crowd and on the Left despise because they want corporations/businesses to serve and execute their "environmental" and "social/woke" political agendas, which are really all about the self-aggrandizement of power, wealth and control.

"Consider the interests". Right. But we don't know the details of how those "considerations" and related law caused all that to play out. I think we know that the Mussolini government held ultimate control and even managed details of industrial production.

Biden has not always stood by unions and workers, in fact, like his party, they are abandoning unions and workers the same way they've abandoned farmers in order to cater to the agendas of the well-heeled special interests who are filling their campaign coffers with cash. About the only workers and unions the DP consistently support are public sector workers and unions (SEIU, etc.), not private sector workers and unions.

As for what do workers and unions get out of stakeholderism, probably not much. The Biden Admin and its allies aren't promoting a growth agenda that benefits workers. It's going to be interesting to see how they vote this year after Biden betrayed them.

I'm familiar with what it is and Milton Friedman articulated it in the doctrine that bears his name

Friedman doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

What Biden advocates are businesses promoting his and his party's ideological and political agendas, which is what Mussolini, Hitler and their fellow fascists advocated.

I already did - the documentation is in Biden's quote: “It’s way past time to put the end to the era of shareholder capitalism."

That's as explicit as one can get.

I call it stakeholder fascism because it's a fascist program developed by fascists. What is misleading is calling it "stakeholder capitalism" (particularly in how it contradicts the Friedman Doctrine of shareholder capitalism).

Requiring it is fascism. Not better.

Corporations already have to follow the law and many of them voluntarily contribute to charities, etc., and that's all well and good. What I don't and won't support is government coercion and control.

Call it what you want, but to paraphrase George Orwell, sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking, and I refuse to engage in that on any level for anyone.

As to your opinion about shareholder capitalism, I'm inclined to disagree with you...

 

And I've had over 50 years of interest and inquiry into socialism.

Investopedia: "Socialism is a populist economic and political system based on collective, common, or public ownership of the means of production."

Wikipedia "Socialism is an economic system based on social ownership of the means of production

Cambridge Dictionary: "Any economic or political system based on government ownership and control of important businesses and methods of production"

"Socialist principles" don't make socialism out of capitalism. In this case the taxpayers are paying for infrastructure in a capitalist economy under the direction of a solidly capitalist President.

 

I just posted three definitions. You posted no evidence for your view.

 

Huh?? Please consult a good dictionary.

No. Like capitalism and geoism, socialism is defined by ownership of the means of production: natural resources (which classical economics called, "land") and producer goods ("capital").

OK. The natural resource not being privately owned indicates either a socialist or geoist economic environment, at least wrt the waterway.

So that infrastructure is also not privately owned.

Yes, in the sense that the bridge constitutes producer goods that are not privately owned. The economic system is not an absolute, and is defined by how the majority (by value) of the means of production are owned. If the majority of both land and capital are collectively owned, that is socialism. If the majority of both are privately owned, that's capitalism. If the majority of producer goods are privately owned and the majority of natural resources are collectively owned, that is geoism. If vice versa, I don't know that there is a term for it. It would be bizarre.

Depends who owns it. If it is tolled because it is privately owned, that is a capitalist solution.

 

c

LOL!!! Do you know what A.L.E.C. is? Do you have an explanation for lobbyists that is consistent with your claim here?

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886): the decision in this case is often cited as establishing the doctrine of corporate personhood. The Court had stated that "corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause."

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (197: In this case, which preceded Citizens United, the Court referred to corporations as "persons" in the context of discussing their First Amendment rights.

Many argue there's not enough, however. Consequently the corruption you mention exists, but this has little to do with the discussion.

Omit "communism" since communism is stateless society by definition. And if government IS the economy in any system, that system isn't socialism as many cases proved by failing because socialism cannot exist that way.

There is no example of socialism to compare.

That's because you insist on adhering staunchly to the capitalist distortion of the facts and definition of "socialism". You have refused to learn.

That is so wrong. Since socialism, from the BEGINNING, has been described not as private ownership of business for private profit, but as workers' liberation from capitalism, you cannot have socialism (liberation of the working class from capitalist relations of production) under a "totalitarian absolutist government". THAT is the only logical proof you need to know Hayek is incorrect.

 

Then there you have it. Case closed. That does not describe working class control of business. So it wasn't socialism in spite of what capitalists ideologues want us to believe.

 

Speaking of silly names, which of the ordinary English words I have used are you calling "silly names"? I have identified the relevant facts of objective physical reality in clear, simple, grammatical English. You merely refuse to know those facts because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

I am not a leftist except to a rightist. Socialists sometimes call me an apologist for capitalism -- even a fascist -- just as capitalists call me a socialist. Karl Marx himself called geoism "capitalism's last ditch" (i.e., its final line of defense against socialism).

I can't speak for others, but being aware of the fact that the 99% are victims of massive, systematic, institutionalized, and wholly gratuitous injustice for the unearned profit of the 1% is probably the main reason.

No, they're just some silly $#!+ you made up because you have no facts or logic to offer.

 

My working assumption is that Socialism is both an economic and a Political system.
If a community agrees 'politically' if you like, that they need to build a bridge, then in some way resources are combined and used by the community to build the bridge.
I don't see that as a capitalist enterprise, but accept that some or all the resources are sourced from the profits of capitalism, but i do see the community getting together and sorting out a bridge as a socialist enterprise.

 

Time to read about a better system: geoism. Try "Progress and Poverty" by Henry George, "The Theory of Human Progression" by Patrick Edward Dove, or "Agrarian Justice" by Thomas Paine for starters.

50 years ago I was a teenager reading Ayn Rand, and was quite a randroid for many years. Before that, though, I was a bit of a socialist, as most teens are, and I certainly read Marx and other socialist sources in university. It was pretty easy for me to understand what was wrong with socialism, but it took me a long time to realize what was wrong with capitalism, and I can't claim to have figured it out all on my own.

 

How is it a political system? What political institutions does it imply?

But that doesn't say anything about the political institutions. Such a decision could be made democratically at a town meeting, or by elected representatives in a republic, by a dictator, by priests in a theocracy, etc.

 

The list you have written are political structures.

 

That's a reversal from your post 804.

It's not a capitalist enterprise but it's not "socialism" either. It's a feature shared by both capitalism and socialism like so many others. Yet capitalism is the economic system.

 

Employees buying shares are special situation. Lots of times employees get nonvoting shares and end up getting stiffed if the company goes Chapter 11. Marx wouldn't think this was a form of "collective production." Should we? Do self-proclaimed "socialists" on this forum think so. It's not a minor point because co-ops are probably the most prevalent examples of businesses that might be considered "collective production."

I'm a trained economist and they typically see co-ops as I described them a "collective production" and therefore "socialist."

 

Well, it's fascism.....which is different than other forms of socialism and collectivism...

 

Because it is a "mixed economy", and of course you're hardly the only person who has described it as such.

 

Socialism is an economic ideology, not a political one. It can used in reference to the entire economic system of a society, smaller facets of an economy within a society (e.g. a socialist government program), or the political preferences of an individual or group (e.g. Senator John Doe is a socialist).

E.g. in the US our transportation system is socialist (especially at its founding). It is one of a very small number of economic functions the Founding Fathers believed met the necessary criteria for delegating authority to the Federal government. The USSR and Nazi Germany implemented socialism in large part. Herein lies much of the confusion. At a certain point the level of socialist activity in a government\society can become so significant it is often just called "a socialist country" even though some aspects of the economy may not be fully socialized. Hearing this, many have come to interpret this as a reference to the political system when it is not. This misinterpretation is so common, that in many circles the term has been entered into the common lexicon as such. As a term in any language is used repeatedly and interpreted repeatedly (even if improperly) to convey thought, at some point the interpretation becomes an accepted definition of the term. If you've ever read a dictionary you had to have noticed many words have multiple definitions. This is why?

To clarify which interpretation one is intending to convey it is proper to refer to the political system or the economic system using terms intended specifically for this purpose. For example, if you are referring to the political system of the former USSR it is proper to use the term communism. The economic aspect of Communism is a system with a heavy dose of socialism. So it is correct to say a communist country is socialist, but a socialist country isn't necessarily communist. Fascists are socialist in large part, but socialists aren't necessarily Fascist. Kind of like if you are a Zebra you are equine. But not all equines are Zebras.

So to be proper and clear use socialism, capitalism, sinoism when you want to refer to the economic system. Use Marxism, communism, democracy, republican, fascism, monarchism, oligarchy to refer to the political system. But keep in mind, even though you may be distinguishing the terms properly, the one you are speaking with may not be.

Jefferson and Madison et al wrote much on the criteria the FF adhered to in order to determine what powers should be delegated. At the time the term socialism hadn't been coined. However, reading Jefferson and Madison it is clear there were very limited areas of the economy suitable for socialism.

 

Ah, yes...who could possibly forget?

Dachas for the Revolutionary Party Leadership and Nomenklatura....



Kruschyovka for the Glorious Proletariat...



...and all this in a rights-repressive collectivist shithole where there wasn't supposed to be any inequality.

Speaking of rights-repressive collectivist shitholes, I almost forgot the special housing accommodations that were made for the reactionary counterrevolutionary scum who dared to make cracks about Stalin's mustache....



UTOPIA!!