4 ms·

Socialsit have been using this excuse forever. Its never "real" socialism. Nationalising everything is socialism. It has been a major aspect of socialist though

by nickik 10y ago

Socialsit have been using this excuse forever. Its never "real" socialism. Nationalising everything is socialism. It has been a major aspect of socialist thought for a very long time. True, there are other strands of socialsit thought but usually all countries that become socialist try to do command and control and not anarcho syndicalism or something like that. So maybe go back and inform yourself about the history of socialist tought. Also stop trying to sell Sweden as Socialist. Those countries are normal capitalist wellfare states, just like France, Germany or any other western state.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
Wait...what is your list of socialist countries? You don't include the Nordic model countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark? Or governments with socialist aspects (Japan, Australia, etc...too many count). Thankfully, Wikipedia maintains a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states Venezuela doesn't even make the list since they aren't "officially" socialist (only four countries are, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, China). So what is your criteria then? What is a socialist state? Is it just anything that nickik declares as socialist? Zimbabwe had price controls and they practiced land redistribution as well as nationalization. Would you try to spin them as socialist? Or just really corrupt?
- ktRolster 10y ago
  It's better to just not use the word 'socialism' because it's too poorly defined.
- nickik 10y ago
  First of all, anybody can edit wikipedia and on issues like what definitions of words to use its extremely difficult to coordinate. So using wikipedia as a source of authority is actually no very useful. Their are to many definitions and often people with a particular opinion edit, then other people who disagree edit it again. One of the main issues is that their is the divide between countries that call them selfs socialist, and countries who are attempting a socialist model. Just as we understand that the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" of North Korea is not actually a democratic or a Republic. I define purely by economics system. So that means that North Korea actually has a socialist system but they no longer claim to be communist. China in turn calls itself socialist but their economic system has moved pretty far in the last 20 years (China is somewhat special because their are huge internal divides between special economic zones and some of other parts). So I think that truly socialist in terms of economic policy, you basically only have North Korea and Cuba (Cuba could be different now, Im not very up to date). Venezuela never really went to the end but they certainly when pretty far. I don't know enough about Lao or Vietnam to make an educated comment about their economic policy. For me a socialist government is one that is actively trying to get full control over the means of production. The more a government tries to attempted this, the more socialist they are. Lenin and co in 1917-1921 probably had the 'best' run. Within a very short time they nationalist banks, all major industry, all export, transportation and many others. The only thing they really failed to nationalise is the farmland because it was to difficult. It took Stalin to do that in 1928. The definition of socialism as 'worker owned means of production' has been interpreted as 'means of production owned by a worker lead party' from a very early time. The follower of this definition have been by far the most successful socialist. The other interpretations had far less success. As for Zimbabwe, yes the ZANU is a socialist party and the began to nationalise under the banner of socialism.
jbmorgado 10y ago
> "Socialsit have been using this excuse forever. Its never "real" socialism." > "Also stop trying to sell Sweden as Socialist. Those countries are normal capitalist wellfare states" Capitalists have been using this excuse forever.
- nickik 10y ago
  Actually the word 'capitalism' has always been much less defined. It was defined by socialist to define them self against something but it hard to say exactly. The terms usually referred to systems where labor did not own most of the capital. That is definitely true in all western systems right now, and thus they are all capitalist systems. You can never really say its a real capitalist system. Thats why people use other words such as 'free-market capitalism' or 'welfare capitalism'.

by nickik 10y ago

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

Wait...what is your list of socialist countries? You don't include the Nordic model countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark? Or governments with socialist aspects (Japan, Australia, etc...too many count). Thankfully, Wikipedia maintains a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states Venezuela doesn't even make the list since they aren't "officially" socialist (only four countries are, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, China). So what is your criteria then? What is a socialist state? Is it just anything that nickik declares as socialist? Zimbabwe had price controls and they practiced land redistribution as well as nationalization. Would you try to spin them as socialist? Or just really corrupt?

ktRolster 10y ago
It's better to just not use the word 'socialism' because it's too poorly defined.
nickik 10y ago
First of all, anybody can edit wikipedia and on issues like what definitions of words to use its extremely difficult to coordinate. So using wikipedia as a source of authority is actually no very useful. Their are to many definitions and often people with a particular opinion edit, then other people who disagree edit it again. One of the main issues is that their is the divide between countries that call them selfs socialist, and countries who are attempting a socialist model. Just as we understand that the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" of North Korea is not actually a democratic or a Republic. I define purely by economics system. So that means that North Korea actually has a socialist system but they no longer claim to be communist. China in turn calls itself socialist but their economic system has moved pretty far in the last 20 years (China is somewhat special because their are huge internal divides between special economic zones and some of other parts). So I think that truly socialist in terms of economic policy, you basically only have North Korea and Cuba (Cuba could be different now, Im not very up to date). Venezuela never really went to the end but they certainly when pretty far. I don't know enough about Lao or Vietnam to make an educated comment about their economic policy. For me a socialist government is one that is actively trying to get full control over the means of production. The more a government tries to attempted this, the more socialist they are. Lenin and co in 1917-1921 probably had the 'best' run. Within a very short time they nationalist banks, all major industry, all export, transportation and many others. The only thing they really failed to nationalise is the farmland because it was to difficult. It took Stalin to do that in 1928. The definition of socialism as 'worker owned means of production' has been interpreted as 'means of production owned by a worker lead party' from a very early time. The follower of this definition have been by far the most successful socialist. The other interpretations had far less success. As for Zimbabwe, yes the ZANU is a socialist party and the began to nationalise under the banner of socialism.

jbmorgado 10y ago

> "Socialsit have been using this excuse forever. Its never "real" socialism." > "Also stop trying to sell Sweden as Socialist. Those countries are normal capitalist wellfare states" Capitalists have been using this excuse forever.

nickik 10y ago
Actually the word 'capitalism' has always been much less defined. It was defined by socialist to define them self against something but it hard to say exactly. The terms usually referred to systems where labor did not own most of the capital. That is definitely true in all western systems right now, and thus they are all capitalist systems. You can never really say its a real capitalist system. Thats why people use other words such as 'free-market capitalism' or 'welfare capitalism'.