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”/../socialism has proved a catastrophic failure in its remaining strongholds in Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.”. Holy Smokes that seems a bit rough on socia

”/../socialism has proved a catastrophic failure in its remaining strongholds in Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.”. Holy Smokes that seems a bit rough on socialism. Just because some countries are extremes does not mean the whole of socialism is bad. Take a look on successfull countries as France, Sweden, Germany, Danmark, Norway, Finland, etc, that all have some sort of socialistic goverance. The pitfight between capitalism and socialism is a bad way to win any argument. It is not all black and white and saying otherwise is not helping further the discussion.

alkonaut 9y ago
Exactly. If you define socialism as totalitarian anticapitalism which effectively can't succeed and only can sustain itself by force and corruption, then one has answered the question already. Since socialism is defined by these bad things, it's bad. If you have a broader definition of socialism which includes all democratic branches of Marxism such as social democracy and others, it's obvious in the other direction - socialism is not evil by definition (quite the opposite - people seem very happy in those countries). So regardless of which definition you use, there is no debate. It's either definitely evil or definitely not evil. There is a third layer to this, and that is the more philosophical questions of the first case: "is socialism in some way inherently 'evil'", or "could there be a successful soviet style socialist society" etc. While those arguments are perhaps interesting, they are usually not worth having. It suffices to say that corruption and totalitarianism is bad/evil. Those who practice it tend to do it under whatever flag is easiest.
peoplewindow 9y ago
Germany has socialistic governance? How so? Germany is famous for holding down wages for years in order to maintain highly competitive export industries. They very much compete on price in the world market and their history is one in which West Germany (capitalism) won out over East Germany (socialism). How do you figure that the statement in the article is contradicted by Germany? It's quite clear what they mean by socialism - a society explicitly guided by Marxist thought. Germany is the opposite. It's explicitly guided away from Marxist thought.

alkonaut 9y ago

Exactly. If you define socialism as totalitarian anticapitalism which effectively can't succeed and only can sustain itself by force and corruption, then one has answered the question already. Since socialism is defined by these bad things, it's bad. If you have a broader definition of socialism which includes all democratic branches of Marxism such as social democracy and others, it's obvious in the other direction - socialism is not evil by definition (quite the opposite - people seem very happy in those countries). So regardless of which definition you use, there is no debate. It's either definitely evil or definitely not evil. There is a third layer to this, and that is the more philosophical questions of the first case: "is socialism in some way inherently 'evil'", or "could there be a successful soviet style socialist society" etc. While those arguments are perhaps interesting, they are usually not worth having. It suffices to say that corruption and totalitarianism is bad/evil. Those who practice it tend to do it under whatever flag is easiest.

peoplewindow 9y ago

Germany has socialistic governance? How so? Germany is famous for holding down wages for years in order to maintain highly competitive export industries. They very much compete on price in the world market and their history is one in which West Germany (capitalism) won out over East Germany (socialism). How do you figure that the statement in the article is contradicted by Germany? It's quite clear what they mean by socialism - a society explicitly guided by Marxist thought. Germany is the opposite. It's explicitly guided away from Marxist thought.