don@allegra.UUCP (09/14/83)
I am not anxious to flame about socialism, but Bill Pfeifer's comments are simply too ignorant to let pass. Whether you are left wing or right wing, if you consider yourself any kind of intellectual you should know the basic principles of socialism and capitalism. No socialist, including Marx, ever advocated taking away the hard earned property of individuals. Anything you produce belongs to you. The basis of socialism; however, is that commodities produced by groups of people belong to that group! Thus socialism does not allow a factory owner to profit from other people's labor. That is the fundamental principle of socialism. If you would like to read a fairly clear explanation in more detail, I recommend "Socialism: Scientific and Utopian" by Frederick Engels. Mr. Pfeifer's condemnation of socialized medicine is also totally without factual basis. In fact, the Unitied States lags behind in some basic health statistics (e.g. infant mortality rate) compared to many western European countries. It's a reasonable issue to debate, but let's gather some facts together instead of saying socialist doctors are "drunken quacks". (There is a considerable problem of drug abuse among doctors here after all.)
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (09/15/83)
A friend of mine is trying to get his phd in the study of Socialism in Poland. He says that he has evidence that Polish doctors experiment on the citizens routinely, and without their knowledge that any sort of experimentation is going on. often then, the 'cure' is worse than the disease. this is the same country where nuclear wastes wer made into building materials, so that some of the larger housing units are dangerously radioactive. the UN knows about this one. So far, I do not think that they have done anything about it, but you can fly a helecopter over the complex with a geiger counter and listen to the radioactivity at more than 500 feet. If we are going to discuss socialism then we had better make sure that we disucuss either socialism as it is implemented in the world today, or the ideal of socialism, but not both in the same article unless you are very clear. laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
mjk@tty3b.UUCP (09/17/83)
Laura, let's be clear on the difference between democratic socialism and an authoritarian one-party communism. Unless you want me to demolish your ideals on capitalism based on examples like Chile and South Africa. No one I know considers Poland "socialist". The socialist countries we're talking about really exist only in transition in Western Europe: countries such as Sweden and France are making the transition from social democracy to democratic socialism. What's the difference? Primarily in control. Social democratic countries conceed that privately-owned corporations should make the important economic decisions and occupy themselves with distributing benefits of economic growth more equally. Socialist countries do not accept that any body not subject to public control should have any significant role to play. The difference is more than just that, of course, but that's the gist. Please let's get this "I know people who say how terrible the USSR is and why anyone would want to live there..." BS and concentrate on a substantial discussion. Mike Kelly
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (09/18/83)
Mike Kelly writes:
Laura, let's be clear on the difference between democratic
socialism and an authoritarian one-party communism. Unless you
want me to demolish your ideals on capitalism based on examples
like Chile and South Africa.
I doubt that you will demolish my ideas on capitalism. I think that you
have been doing the 'capitalism or socialism' debates too long. I dont
like capitalism. I just like it a lot better than socialism.
No one I know considers Poland "socialist". The socialist
countries we're talking about really exist only in transition
in Western Europe: countries such as Sweden and France are
making the transition from social democracy to democratic
socialism. What's the difference? Primarily in control.
Lot's of people I know consider Poland socialist. Remember, a few days
ago I posted "let us be clear whether we are talking about ideal
socialism or the ones in practice". Poland is a pretty good example of
what happens when there are severe problems in defining "the common
good". Solidarity cannot define it in a way acceptible to itself. The
government cannot define it. The Pope cannot define it. What happens
to socialism when one cannot define "the common good"? In practice,
somebody defines it, and the ones opposed to this definition either
decide that their other ideas are wrong, or have a revolt. If you have
a very messy revolt, like they had in Poland, then people begin to say
'well, real socialism would never produce this, so Poland is not
socialist'.
However, those of us that feel that "the common good" is a lot of BS,
and that there IS NO SUCH THING and that defining a government in terms
of this non-entity is a VERY BAD IDEA which is bound to result in a
situation akin to Poland's (though perhaps not as messy) unless the
entire nation is brainwashed to believe the government CAN define the
common good. But in that case, I presume you would call that 'not
socialism' as well.
Social democratic countries conceed that privately-owned
corporations should make the important economic decisions and
occupy themselves with distributing benefits of economic growth
more equally.
Not always. Some times the assumption is that the privately owned
corporations should make the economic decisions and that any
'distribution of the benefits' will not be part of their duties -- it
will just fall naturally out of the system. Of course, this is not the
position of the person who supports a government as a 'distributer or
the wealth' via social programs and welfare and subsidised what-nots,
but these beliefs are not hold by all 'social democrats' around here.
Perhaps the should be. They word is getting awfully over-used.
Socialist countries do not accept that any body not subject to
public control should have any significant role to play. The
difference is more than just that, of course, but that's the
gist.
This is not the gist. the gist is a philosophical difference in the
nature of responsibility, value and measurability which is reflected in
the attitudes towards bodies 'not subject to public control'. Since I
find the basic philosophy of Marxism, and all derivatives inherantly
flawed, it is not surprising that i find that all supposedly socialist
countries that I have ever visited to reflect these flaws.
Please let's get this "I know people who say how terrible the
USSR is and why anyone would want to live there..." BS and
concentrate on a substantial discussion.
I hadn't mentioned the USSR at all, except in a discussion of the KAL
007, where I didn't mention the quality of life in the USSR at all.
laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laurasizma@watarts.UUCP (09/24/83)
As far as I've been following this debate (submissions up to Sun 18 Sep) I've not seen a very clear definition of capitalism. This is probably largely due to the fact that when one is immersed in a system, it is hard to see it as something distinct -- its details only become clear when they are contrasted to the details of another system. That's why people usually have to get out of a country before they really understand the limitations of what's going on in it. Capitalism -- something that all of us have grown up in and which for a large part of our life has been synonomous with "reality" -- can only be defined in terms of "capital" or money. It is a system whose continuation depends on the exchange of goods for private profit. The notion of private property is crucial to capitalism. It means that people who produce do not control their products unless they "own" their labour by legal means or by physical force. What difference does it make if the owners of other people's labour are private corporations or government bureaucracies? In both cases surplus value (capital, profit, cash, call it what you will) is gained by one person or a small group of people at the expense of the energies and freedom of a much larger group. This is admittedly a cursory definition, but I think its a start towards applying the generally accepted and classical characteristics of capitalism to our everyday experience instead of arguing about "them vs. us" or "what they claim to be vs. what we claim to be". Such a description obviously applies to virtually every society on earth today, and some people might say it makes any discussion of socialism vs. capitalism a very idealist pastime. On the other hand, it goes a long way to explain many of the similarities between East and West: -- labour strife takes very similar forms all over the world -- most societies seem to be heading in the same direction in respect to consumption of commodities, technology, and, unfortunately, militarism; -- corporations from the west usually have little difficulty in making deals with governments of the East. The main similarity of course, is that the language of money is now universal. Yet things were not always this way, of course. Money, as a universal phenomenon, or, more accurately, as the phenomenon on which a society's relations are based, is relatively new. I don't expect that many people on the net have an unprejudiced view of pre-capitalist societies, even the native Indian society of North America, but these now-demolished societies provide an important contrast to capitalism as we know it. So-called "primitive" societies usually held property in common, worked only as long as was necessary to provide their common needs, rarely had institutions of authority, and had remarkably egalitarian relations (including between male and female). There is a considerable amount of research and literature backing up these points, but, needless to say, controversy still rages. The point of this is that while pre-capitalist society is gone forever, observing capitalism in this light helps throw into sharp relief many of its problems which we assume to be inevitable "inadequacies" of life. If private property is just another arbitrary quirk of history, why do we work for others? Why do we have so little influence on the major decisions of our lives? What's so great about institutionalized authority if for hundreds of thousands of years (and probably longer) people were able to constitute themselves into autonomous communities with collective decision-making and virtually no large-scale aggression? (Ask any anthropologist -- organized warfare is at most 10,000 years old.) The difference between capitalism and socialism thus begs the question of just how large a system capitalism really is. As far as I'm concerned, it includes everything people have so far referred to as socialism.