Communism is very different from socialism but socialism goes off back into the far far past and the start of the switch from hunter gather to agrarian societies. You have to bear in mind here that for many societies the concept of ownership of land is actually quite a recent one. In the West it started with the Enlightenment around 400 years ago - That led to the nobility kicking everyone off the land and people going overseas and stealing everyone elses land.
Land ownership for most people (ie not the nobility) didn't actually start until the late 19th early 20th century. Prior to that people were usually tenants.
Anyhow that is an aside -
Socialism starts from the idea that a farming community would all farm the land. Everyone would do their little bit with some people helping others out when specialization was needed. Everone would then put their food stuffs (mostly grain but some others) in a central barn (called a tithe barn in the Middle East and Europe) and then shared it out as it was needed with everyone getting a share (although it was not always equal) This was because different bits of land were of different quality and so some couldn't produce as much, sometimes a natural disaster such as a flood would wreck part of a harvest, the old needed to be supported and finally it was easier to pay taxes to nobles that way. If one person couldn't pay tax everyone in the village/community would get fucked anyhow so you might as well pay for the people that were less able to produce.
As you can see socialism wasn't originally thought of a political philosophy but a means of survival. That all changed with the industrial revolution when similar principles were used by the working poor to "survive" industrialisation.
A lot of the crap we hear today about socialism completely ignores the past. I am a capitalist that believes that capitalism will not work unless your customers have money to spend. A little bit of socialism keeps the the wheels of capitalism turning. That's how Henry Ford caused a massive boom in the car industry. he wasn't giving his workers much bigger salaries because he was a nice guy but because he was a smart guy.
Well, I disagree with some of those points, but otherwise thank you for the thoughtful comment.
1: He wasn't just paying his workers higher salaries. He was giving their kids grants for studies so that they could work in his factories, paying pensions, providing housing, etc. There are things that Robert Owen, the father of modern socialism, advocated. Robert Owen was a mill owner and a capitalist btw
I know that's how markets work when people use their brains but many people DON'T use their brains which is why today we have this current mess.
What many people misunderstand is that Capitalism is and economic theory while Socialism is political with economic elements. The political part of Socialism is based on survival of a species.
Capitalism isn't a political philosophy.
2: Capitalism can be used to obtain individual profit however that is not its goal. it's goal is maintain market liquidity and the free movement of capital. Thngs it does guard against is the accumulation of too much wealth as it functions to reduce liquidity and the role of real property which can suck out capital from the markets.
Socailism is already in operation on the natinal scale. What do you think the military is? It is a socialised form of defense. What do you think infrastructure projects are?
Not everything needs to be done or is practical on the nation state level either. Besides again the nation state is a modern construct dating from the time of Hobbes.
3: You need to distinguish between personal property and real property as they are very different concepts. Also fiat money (and that includes crypto) is NOT property.
1: Well, you could include benefits in the same fundamental category as pay, correct? In other words, offering benefits is equivalent to offering more money that could be used to purchase those benefits. It's fundamentally the same thing.
That is a very interesting point, though. About Capitalism not being a political philosophy, that is. I would say Capitalism applied to politics would be something like Ayn Rand objectivism. But I don't really agree that Socialism is based on survival of a species; it simply has not produced consistent results when implemented on large scales that comes close to being comparable to capitalist systems. I guess, perhaps, it's a survival strategy, and simply is not a good one. Going into debt is one strategy people who struggle financially use, but that also doesn't produce great long term results.
2: I generally agree, which is why I am not anarcho capitalist, and have even written a blog in the past highlighting this exact example you have mentioned. However, saying that socialism is already implemented on a national scale and is working as well as it could be is not completely true. I think that a national military is a good thing to have, but I don't think it really needs to be funded through our current system. There are plenty of volunteers and private contractors that I think could keep it going at higher efficiency and lower cost. Furthermore, a free country generally operates much better when citizens are capable of protecting themselves and their neighbors, with the military being formed from these citizens in times of escalating conflict with other nations. All of this, however, is a much larger subject that was not the goal of this blog specifically... so I didn't really address it. That was intentional.
3: I don't really see a need to differentiate between real and personal property. I didn't even know there was a distinction like this, and a quick google search told me that the distinction is real property is land or attached to the land, thus being immovable, while personal property is movable.
For what purpose is this distinction required, except for maybe pragmatic things like relocation, taxation, and inventory management? If you own a car that does not have any gas in it, is that suddenly real property because you can't move it? Or is it personal, because you could fill it up with gas or have it towed? Why does this distinction matter at all when discussing the more overarching concepts of property? Are you suggesting you can own a bag of seeds, but once you plant them you no longer have ownership over them? I find that kind off thinking almost deliberately obtuse if that is what you are suggesting. Please enlighten me if you have a bigger point about this, cause I just don't see it.
Fiat money, as well as crypto, are ABSOLUTELY property. At least, in the context of this discussion focused on ownership, where I use property colloquially as something a person holds ownership over. It was the core premise of why the person I initially responded said property was theft; it was because, in his mind, property is the inverse of taxation. So, in his mind, if taxation is theft, property is theft. That was his thought process to arrive at that conclusion, not mine, and he is a self described socialist.
1: You can break anything into monetary terms if you wish however it only counts as pay if a direct excahnge has been made. Thus if you are given something for which no work has done it is not pay.
It has never been a political philosophy. Adam Smith made a point of driving all politics out of his works. You'd have to be really streching it to tie it with Ayn Rand whose politics are flaky at best and could be tacked to pretty much anything at worst.
It beats me why you are still trying to conflagrate socialism and capitalism to be somehow political rivals. Capitalism has NEVER ever been a political pholosophy. If anything the two are complimentary. It is like comparing oil in a car to the car. The car is the political philosophy and capitalism is the oil that enables it to function. In this case it is capital that is the oil.
Again it is not necessary to always think along the lines of "large scale". What is this facination? State socialism isn't the only form out there. It is just one of a multitude.
Can you tell me why tithe barns are a bad survival strategy. I'd really love to know. As far as I can see it has been one of the most significant cultural affections. Without it we would not be human civilisation.
2: Whenever a country does not operate a national military a civil war starts as local areas always define themselves as mini-states and try break free. If you care to show a single entity in history where this has not happened I will personally wipe your ass the next time you go to the toilet.
3: Real and personal property are legal and scientific terms. You can't get around this I'm afraid. Real property is immovable such as land and infrasructure. Personal property is movable and that includes cars without gas. Bags of seeds grow into crops which are moveable I'm afraid.
If there is a shortage of land in Kansas you cannot go to Idaho pick some up at a cheap price and cary it back to Kansas (the soil/dirt does not count as land btw) Pretty fundamental and obvious.
Why is the distinction required? Capitalism for one. Capitalism is economic system based on the MOVEMENT of capital. Any form of capital that cannot move means that no competition can exist for that form of capital. This was pretty well laid out by Adam Smith, the Neoclassicist and the Neoliberal forms of capitalism. The other forms pretty much all capitulated except the anarcho-capitalists for whom property rights trumped everything ...including common sense.
It is a problem because the goal of capitalism is to maintain liquidity. If a property owner demands rent then that liquidity is pulled from the workings of capitalism and into a dead pool. This was first pointed out by Adam Smith and marks a major difference between capitalism and feudalism (and Marxism actually as Marx himself was an aristocrat and this upstart capitalism was trying to relegate the value of land to zero). This has been aptly demonstrated by the 2008/9 crash where landlords discovered they could still put up prices even in a recession. The result of this being liquidity was sucked out of a barely functioning market and still hasn't recovered. Pop the property bubbles round the world and I guarantee the economy would pick up.
4: Fiat money is a concept, an exchange of value. You can't own a concept. This is backed up by law. Wait til someone in your family leaves a will with a substantial cash element. You are going to have the shock of your life.
Property is theft is a libertarian concept and has nothing to to do with money or socialism. it was coined by the first person to be called a libertarian Proudhon. Taxation and money are different again as the state provides a service by allowing and guaranteeing a standard medium of exchange. All parts of that medium are defacto owned by the state.
Oh yes and I'm a self-described capitalist btw.
Good to hear. Even if my responses might sound a bit blunt at times, I actually enjoy these kinds of conversations. I think it's important to defend my own positions or change them, just as I believe it is important for other people to do the same.
But, as I somewhat stated in my other reply, that is why some of your arguments I fundamentally ignore. They implicitly suggest I am attacking a strawman by redefining terms or focusing on certain things, while I am actually arguing against a very real position someone held that I was originally responding to. The definitions I used are, as far as I know, accurate definitions in reference to his positions.
The main example of this is socialism. If you define socialism as simply a group of people voluntarily pooling resources without keeping score, then I'm all for those systems. But that's not how socialists typically define it in their suggested policies.