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I don't know why so many people think Socialism is about welfare. Socialism is about who owns and controls the means of production. Read about it here: https:/

by cname 11y ago

I don't know why so many people think Socialism is about welfare. Socialism is about who owns and controls the means of production. Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

marcoperaza 11y ago
Socialism in the traditional sense of the word refers to what people today would more likely call communism. Socialism these days refers to social-democratic movements that want redistribution within an at least somewhat capitalist system. She was taking a swipe at the British Labour Party and their counterparts on the continent, all of whom used the label 'socialist' but were really social democrats. Words mean whatever people think they mean. There's a similar phenomenon with the word liberal. Liberal once referred to, and in some contexts still does, politics that advocates for human freedom from all kinds of government coercion. At least in the US, it has taken on a different meaning over the last hundred years. Now it refers to social-democracy.
- coliveira 11y ago
  The reason these ideas changed names is because of the political coercion inflicted on socialists. People advocating socialism had to look for other labels that were not tainted with diret connection to oppressive communist regimes.
jfaucett 11y ago
"I don't know why so many people think Socialism is about welfare." Its one of the meanings that the word socialism has come to denote through quotidian usage in media and within Amercian society. Democratic Socialism would likely be a more precise term for these common usage scenarios. see Usage Discussion of socialism at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
- dalke 11y ago
  Here's a recent essay in The Atlantic, by Anu Partanen, concerning the difference between the two - http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernie-sanders-nordic-countries/473385/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernie-s... : > Americans are not wrong to abhor the specters of socialism and big government. In fact, as a proud Finn, I often like to remind my American friends that my countrymen in Finland fought two brutal wars against the Soviet Union to preserve Finland’s freedom and independence against socialism. No one wants to live in a society that doesn’t support individual liberty, entrepreneurship, and open markets. But the truth is that free-market capitalism and universal social policies go well together—this isn’t about big government, it’s about smart government.
- jwdunne 11y ago
  And yet incorrect. Democratic socialism is the idea that socialism can be achieved through reform rather than revolution. In some respects, it has been less successful than revolutionary socialism: the UK Labour Party, until recently, reformed itself away from democratic socialism. In the UK, welfare as we know it here originated from the Liberal Party, in fairness. Nationalisation (attempted socialism by reform) was the hallmark of the Labour Party, not heavy welfare spending. Since Thatcher, the Tories have a knack for presenting themselves as the thrifty party - in effect, living within our means. Except household budgets are not so analogous to government budgets. It just so happens that this line resonates with the everyday voter in times of economic woe and it's all too easy to paint the social democrat as a boundless spender. An example: in 2007 the Tory Party's shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said he would match Labour's spending plans. Recession hits, tax revenues drop and they harped a very different tune. It's honestly just politics.
dave_sullivan 11y ago
Aren't the means of production pretty much people's minds at this point? I'd like to own and control mine.
- CPLX 11y ago
  I wouldn't trade for most minds if I had a producing oil well.
- theoh 11y ago
  Apart from the fact that material production is still the real source of material goods, that sounds like an individualist fantasy. The idea of controlling one's own mind is a tautology, and as for the body, who can say where it starts or ends? We are interdependent. Combine those two assertions and I don't think you can draw any lines around individual persons any more. There is some particularly crazy thinking in philosophy on self-ownership, which may interest you: Cécile Fabre, Whose body is it anyway? Justice and the integrity of the person http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/journal/v9/n3/full/cpt200923a.html http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/journal/v9/n3/full/cpt2...
- jdietrich 11y ago
  A semiconductor fab costs several billion dollars. Rollout of a national communications network still costs even more. The world is still full of big lumps of capital that aren't going away any time soon.
  - dave_sullivan 11y ago
    Agreed, and I'd be in favor of those being financed at least partly by the government and offered "at cost" because it lowers barriers to entry for new participants. I'd also include drug research, roads, housing in areas without a housing shortage (IE, not SF or Manhattan), and more. I even think the idea of a living wage makes sense and in fact will be necessary, I just haven't figured out how to pay for it (and frankly, the naive implementation of "just give everyone $X" would be so hugely expensive that it strikes me as infeasible. A working implementation is going to need to be significantly more... creative.) And yet, the big stories of the last decade or two have noted a trend: more value being generated by fewer people with fewer capital expenditures (prime example being MSFT > Google > Facebook > Instagram/Whatsapp/Minecraft). The majority of "capital" in those cases (VC money, if applicable) is spent on engineering salaries. Meanwhile, oil companies are dying, communication networks are barely profitable (cisco?), and "hard industry" is an industry no one optimizing for profitability wants to get into unless it's to break it up and sell it off. Of course you can point to the recently ended energy bonanza during which Exxon became the most valuable company in the world; explaining the drivers of that is beyond the scope of this comment but it's not about energy being a fundamentally awesome business to be in (but briefly, BRIC growth + monopolistic practices to really juice income). So the interplay between brain capital, industrial equipment, and various other types of capital is more complex than "the public should own the means of production". Some of it yes, most of it no. And I'd argue the brain capital trend is going to continue while heavy industry jobs are going to keep disappearing, forcing us to resolve the "interplay between capital" question in a way that doesn't collapse our entire economy, doesn't cause a civil war (and/or avoids one), and doesn't end up with the public (or a small group calling themselves "the public") being able to shake down any success story simply because they figured out how to make more money than the next guy.
Spooky23 11y ago
Usually the first two socialist priorities are healthcare and housing. Together those things probably account for 35% of GDP. Consider a trivial example -- the affect that the post ww2 public housing boom did to the US construction industry. Government procurement rules transformed and forced consolidation of the brick industry. On the east coast it went from hundreds of geographically diverse companies to 4-6, all in the south.
merpnderp 11y ago
Socialism is commonly used today to mean a large welfare state. See Bernie Sanders describing the kind of socialists he is, and you'll realize he isn't actually a socialist in the strict sense of the word.
tigershark 11y ago
The world is full of people that think that they can do better than everyone else and they are temporarily disgraced because all the other people are just simpletons that cannot understand their mighty genius. Mental institutions are full of people that think in a freakingly similar way.

by cname 11y ago

marcoperaza 11y ago

Socialism in the traditional sense of the word refers to what people today would more likely call communism. Socialism these days refers to social-democratic movements that want redistribution within an at least somewhat capitalist system. She was taking a swipe at the British Labour Party and their counterparts on the continent, all of whom used the label 'socialist' but were really social democrats. Words mean whatever people think they mean. There's a similar phenomenon with the word liberal. Liberal once referred to, and in some contexts still does, politics that advocates for human freedom from all kinds of government coercion. At least in the US, it has taken on a different meaning over the last hundred years. Now it refers to social-democracy.

coliveira 11y ago
The reason these ideas changed names is because of the political coercion inflicted on socialists. People advocating socialism had to look for other labels that were not tainted with diret connection to oppressive communist regimes.

jfaucett 11y ago

"I don't know why so many people think Socialism is about welfare." Its one of the meanings that the word socialism has come to denote through quotidian usage in media and within Amercian society. Democratic Socialism would likely be a more precise term for these common usage scenarios. see Usage Discussion of socialism at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

dalke 11y ago
Here's a recent essay in The Atlantic, by Anu Partanen, concerning the difference between the two - http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernie-sanders-nordic-countries/473385/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/bernie-s... : > Americans are not wrong to abhor the specters of socialism and big government. In fact, as a proud Finn, I often like to remind my American friends that my countrymen in Finland fought two brutal wars against the Soviet Union to preserve Finland’s freedom and independence against socialism. No one wants to live in a society that doesn’t support individual liberty, entrepreneurship, and open markets. But the truth is that free-market capitalism and universal social policies go well together—this isn’t about big government, it’s about smart government.
jwdunne 11y ago
And yet incorrect. Democratic socialism is the idea that socialism can be achieved through reform rather than revolution. In some respects, it has been less successful than revolutionary socialism: the UK Labour Party, until recently, reformed itself away from democratic socialism. In the UK, welfare as we know it here originated from the Liberal Party, in fairness. Nationalisation (attempted socialism by reform) was the hallmark of the Labour Party, not heavy welfare spending. Since Thatcher, the Tories have a knack for presenting themselves as the thrifty party - in effect, living within our means. Except household budgets are not so analogous to government budgets. It just so happens that this line resonates with the everyday voter in times of economic woe and it's all too easy to paint the social democrat as a boundless spender. An example: in 2007 the Tory Party's shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said he would match Labour's spending plans. Recession hits, tax revenues drop and they harped a very different tune. It's honestly just politics.

dave_sullivan 11y ago

Aren't the means of production pretty much people's minds at this point? I'd like to own and control mine.

CPLX 11y ago
I wouldn't trade for most minds if I had a producing oil well.
theoh 11y ago
Apart from the fact that material production is still the real source of material goods, that sounds like an individualist fantasy. The idea of controlling one's own mind is a tautology, and as for the body, who can say where it starts or ends? We are interdependent. Combine those two assertions and I don't think you can draw any lines around individual persons any more. There is some particularly crazy thinking in philosophy on self-ownership, which may interest you: Cécile Fabre, Whose body is it anyway? Justice and the integrity of the person http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/journal/v9/n3/full/cpt200923a.html http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/journal/v9/n3/full/cpt2...
jdietrich 11y ago
A semiconductor fab costs several billion dollars. Rollout of a national communications network still costs even more. The world is still full of big lumps of capital that aren't going away any time soon.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  Agreed, and I'd be in favor of those being financed at least partly by the government and offered "at cost" because it lowers barriers to entry for new participants. I'd also include drug research, roads, housing in areas without a housing shortage (IE, not SF or Manhattan), and more. I even think the idea of a living wage makes sense and in fact will be necessary, I just haven't figured out how to pay for it (and frankly, the naive implementation of "just give everyone $X" would be so hugely expensive that it strikes me as infeasible. A working implementation is going to need to be significantly more... creative.) And yet, the big stories of the last decade or two have noted a trend: more value being generated by fewer people with fewer capital expenditures (prime example being MSFT > Google > Facebook > Instagram/Whatsapp/Minecraft). The majority of "capital" in those cases (VC money, if applicable) is spent on engineering salaries. Meanwhile, oil companies are dying, communication networks are barely profitable (cisco?), and "hard industry" is an industry no one optimizing for profitability wants to get into unless it's to break it up and sell it off. Of course you can point to the recently ended energy bonanza during which Exxon became the most valuable company in the world; explaining the drivers of that is beyond the scope of this comment but it's not about energy being a fundamentally awesome business to be in (but briefly, BRIC growth + monopolistic practices to really juice income). So the interplay between brain capital, industrial equipment, and various other types of capital is more complex than "the public should own the means of production". Some of it yes, most of it no. And I'd argue the brain capital trend is going to continue while heavy industry jobs are going to keep disappearing, forcing us to resolve the "interplay between capital" question in a way that doesn't collapse our entire economy, doesn't cause a civil war (and/or avoids one), and doesn't end up with the public (or a small group calling themselves "the public") being able to shake down any success story simply because they figured out how to make more money than the next guy.

Spooky23 11y ago

Usually the first two socialist priorities are healthcare and housing. Together those things probably account for 35% of GDP. Consider a trivial example -- the affect that the post ww2 public housing boom did to the US construction industry. Government procurement rules transformed and forced consolidation of the brick industry. On the east coast it went from hundreds of geographically diverse companies to 4-6, all in the south.

merpnderp 11y ago

Socialism is commonly used today to mean a large welfare state. See Bernie Sanders describing the kind of socialists he is, and you'll realize he isn't actually a socialist in the strict sense of the word.

tigershark 11y ago

The world is full of people that think that they can do better than everyone else and they are temporarily disgraced because all the other people are just simpletons that cannot understand their mighty genius. Mental institutions are full of people that think in a freakingly similar way.