Exactly the best of both worlds. Even the US is more socialised than people realised. The placards about keeping government hands off medicare shows how uneducated the nation is.

The main problem with the Soviet Union was that it was a totalitarian state, another was that it spent billions competing with the USA.

To compare it with social democracy or social liberalism is a fallacy.

The direction both Britain and the US are heading in is leading to the erosion of parliamentary democracy and personal freedom at the hands of big business. Large corporations are not concerned with the public good, morals or ethics, but rather the interest of shareholders - a select few. Corporate "social responsibility" is a joke. Government is more concerned with large corporations and "wealth creators" than the population as a whole - the argument being that what's good for Mr. rich man and Tesco et al is, ultimately, good for all of us. I reject that premise.

Publicly-owned and run services and utilities are run for the good of the community and are democratically accountable. Any proceeds are re-invested for the benefit of the whole, not a select few. Money that would escape the company as profits can instead be re-invested or returned to the Treasury.

Under the current system more and more wealth is being accumulated by a select few, socialism would see that wealth re-distributed for the benefit of everyone, not some fat cat.

You seem to be confusing Communism of Eastern Europe with "Stalinist Totalitarianism of Russia!

That's not really possible.

The only thing that was communist about the Soviet Union was the name.

Ok, i don't want to waste any more time on this so just tell in which countries has socialism worked.
If you can name at least one we can continue with this discussion...

Europe is full of socialism, you've heard of the NHS right? We want more please.

And that was a competition they could not win, their centrally directed investment model simply wasn't up to the task and they could not improve their efficiency - where they did so at all - at the same rate as capitalist economies.


The Soviets did, they claimed that these capitalist systems weren't socialism at all.


Reject away. Have you got an argument to support this rejection?

It needs to be an incredibly good one because history is not on your side. Corporations have been making money hand over fist under liberal capitalism in this country for centuries. So all I have to do to refute your rejection is to demonstrate that it isn't as bad to be poor or working class in modern day Britain as it was in, ooh, shall we say 1931? or perhaps 1875?
Do you think I'm going to fail in that task?


That's a lot of stuff that can happen. But tends not to. India for instance used to have a public telephone monopoly, it was not run on anything like that basis, it used to collect massive subsidies and when you ordered a new line you had to wait months for it to arrive. Capitalist market reforms such as opening up state monopolies to competition in 1991 has helped them go from the brink of financial meltdown to excellent growth and hugely reduced the number of poor people.


How will this redistribution occur? Do you propose that all financial institutions should be nationalised. Or that government should legislate what wages everyone gets for a certain job (i.e. CEO can earn no more than 10 times what the guy who cleans his office gets). Are you in favour of reinforcing employment contracts so that permanent staff can't be laid off? Do you propose that heavy industry should be nationalised and used a means of creating jobs irrespective of economic performance?

You guys seem happy to point at things and say that's not the socialism you support, but when it comes to explaining what you favour (and then the problematic subject of how that will be funded) it's time to just mutter epithets about fat cats, corporate overlords, and all the other pantomime bad guys whose vilification is so frequently used in place of argument by the confused left.

I can give you plenty of examples where privatisation has cocked up - is the railway system better now? How about the price of water? How about those public-private partnerships? PFI? How about those private-sector government IT contracts? In fact, how about outsourcing as a whole? How about those gas & electricity companies and their obscene profits?

I would also remind you that the main, if not only, reason poor people in this country are better off now than in the past is because of socialist measures, such as the National Health Service & free education and social justice measures such as the NMW.

As for your point about rich people & large corporations "making money hand over first" - thank you for demonstrating my point, they accumulate wealth at a rate unknown to the common man.

Funnily enough it didn't take months to get a phone when we had British Telecom, I don't remember any problems with our gas supply under British Gas, I don't remember having problems with electricity under SWEB, British Rail wasn't the absolute rip-off the new system is (both to taxpayers and passengers) and many, many people are getting upset with the prospect of a privatised Royal Mail.

NHS is not a country, it is a publicly owned organisation in a mixed economy. The irony is that out of all publicly owned companies in the UK you have chosen the one in the worst state.
Fully blown socialism has never ever worked anywhere and that surely means something (to most people anyway).

Bottom line:
1. Capitalism SOMETIMES doesn't work
2. Socialism SOMETIMES works when the capitalists provide enough money to support a limited application of some aspects of socialism to carefully selected companies.

That's why the highest standard of living is achieved in the mixed economies with only a small portion of publicly owned companies.

Actually I'd modify that. Capitalism works for some of the time. Evidence suggests Capitalism predicates a 'boom and bust' cycle, so half the time you're going to have everyone doing very nicely thank you, the rest of the time the majority of people are going to be miserable as hell but some people are going to be very rich either way. So Capitalism is going to be very nice for the few, but about neutral for the many.


We don't actually have a lot of evidence about whether Socialism in the strict definition works, in a macro-economoic sense. A couple of countries in Europe were running quite well on fairly socialist lines until the fall of the iron curtain blew the 'experiment' out of the water. We've pretty much only tried socialism for one cycle in a couple of countries and that's not enough to praise or condemn it in broad terms. In contrast capitalism has been tried in most of the civilised world for most of a century, which is maybe three or four economic cycles depending on who you ask and, overall, for the majority of the population it's performance is moderately successful, although you have to consider the fact we don't really have a 'control group' for it.


It's a hypothesis I personally agree with. You use a capitalist system which causes the amount of 'overall wealth' in a economy to grow with socialist aspects to try to limit the damage the 'bust' part of the capitalist cycle does. The problem we have is that governments inevitably seem unable to maintain that balance correctly. It may in fact be impossible to do for long, as doing so is an unstable state.

Jon

As I've posted elsewhere in this thread, we were getting along fine with the likes of British Gas, BOAC, the Electricity boards, British Telecom, British rail etc.

As for the NHS, having used it quite a lot I certainly have no cause for complaints. No doubt after Dave and his chums privatise or outsource half of it, it'll get worse.

May I also remind you that your precious private sector, especially the banks, needed saving by HMG.

Hitler's Germany was more left wing than Stalinist Russia (that can be shown fairly easily, but as I am on my iPod..)

Everything (as seems to be agreed here) is a balance of left and right wing, why people assume left or right is better I dont know. Neither can work without the aid of the other.

Ie for socialism
You can't have equal wages for all jobs as then there would be no reason for people to do more difficult jobs.
You can't have unequal jobs.. As that means there must be a discriminant which goes against socialism.

Where was the bit where I said privatisation is necessarily a good thing? I spoke of market based reforms and ending monopolies, which is completely not the same thing.
Still listing things you don't like rather than stating what you are actually in favour of.


Those aren't socialist. Pensions, accident insurance health provision and education were pioneered either by liberals or Germans (pre WW1). Their ideas were then copied by Lloyd George - not a socialist.

Capitalist markets benefit from nationalised healthcare, which brings down overall costs and makes the nation more efficient (the Economist argues that Obamacare is too little too late, and that America's healthcare system is a drain on that country's economy)

Germany introduced pensions and accident insurance for its workers at the end of the 19th century when it wasn't any kind of socialist state nor really even a democracy. They must have considered it a good idea to avoid alienating the working man and suffering a revolution, but the main reason they did it was to make the labour force more efficient.

All these socialist dream projects are of course best funded by a capitalist economy, such as the one that has made Britain as a whole exponentially richer today than was ever the case during its supposed industrial imperial heyday. Socialism didn't end consumption and work houses, capitalism did.


Well that's just not true, you haven't put any thought into this at all. I live in an area of London where the average family would have eaten nothing but bread and margarine 3 or 4 days a week in 1890. Fish and chips was a treat, as was jam. It would take generations for their offspring to afford a luxury like a vacuum cleaner, which even then would probably require hire-purchase and might take 2 years to pay off. Are you not exponentially richer than those people? I certainly am. Have I become a fat-cat industrialist while I wasn't looking?


There's perfectly sound capitalist arguments against privatising assets such as water and gas distribution which offer limited if any compettive benefit to the consumer. Likewise there is little to recommend selling off electricity distribution. Electricity generation is a mixed bag as the companies that invest the billions in new plant have revenue needs that conflict with those of the market they supply, and thus excessive regulation is required which acts as a disincentive for investment causing energy supply problems.

My point is that you don't have to be a socialist to disagree with privatisation, and simply disagreeing with that doesn't make you one. You can be a perfectly good little capitalist and still hold as many do that it is better for the nation's economy if certain assets remain in public hands. It just makes financing some of their investments more complicated.

You claim to be a socialist, but are yet to demonstrate any actual socialism except for a certain degree of spartist bluster.

Who founded the NHS doesn't change the fact it's socialised medicine.

What makes me a socialist? Quite simply, I believe in the equality of all people legally, morally and materially, I think all jobs should benefit society (i.e. no speculators, currency traders etc), I believe that everyone should be entitled to state-provided housing, healthcare, education etc, there shouldn't be money and people shouldn't accumulate wealth, rather people should work for the benefit of the whole.

On the whole I would say that the evidence weighs much more heavily in favour of capitalism than that.

Agreed, global and local output are both cyclical, but the truly large setbacks are rare either rare or localised. I'm talking about the depressions of the 1870s and 1930s, stagflation in the 70s, and last decade's financial meltdown. But look at those events in terms of their death tolls. In the 1870s, nobody took count and the statistics are vague over weather it was even a depression or not, but there was massive hardship for many, lots of people basically dies because they were poor, and the streets of Britain were not safe from that. By the 1930s the situation was hugely improved, but still consumption killed a lot of people and that was a direct effect of economic hardship.

The more recent events simply haven't killed people. There has been hardship, people have lost savings, houses cars, jobs and so on. But this only shows how immense the progress has been, we can face a giant shock to our financial system and only loose 5% of GDP and a few jobs, this used to kill people in large numbers.

Spread the analysis worldwide and you see though that just living in a capitalist society isn't enough. Capitalism provides a simple mechanism by which a society can expand its productivity and generate resources, but it relies on government services. There has to be law to protect all sorts of things (capitalism likes the contract enforcement and property protection, but it's generally a good thing if people don't spend all day killing each other too).

If the government can take care of health and education it absolutely should, because otherwise every family has to save up for both, which is less efficient for the nation and prevents the poor from full participation (a major problem for China today which has no health service to speak of and frankly not a great education system - these absences will become a major burden on their economy over the next couple of decades unless swiftly dealt with).

You could argue that the only true capitalist society in the world today is Somalia - they have after all effectively privatised their army, and the government collects no taxes at all beyond import duty at one port in Mogadishu. This model of capitalism probably doesn't look like a great plan to anyone, I hear that those who experience it first hand are largely against continuing this experiment in small government.

A good capitalist recognises these needs, and the concomitant need for taxes and government spending. Human nature being what it is (shifty and self indulgent), some go too far in trying not to pay their share, this greed is not good capitalism, nor should it be confused with some essence of capitalism. Greed and self advancement at the expense of the system that sustains us are common to all forms of economic and political structure, as they are an unfortunate side effect of allowing humans to get involved.