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Good post, except one point - you're not a socialist. You're someone who believes in people acting individualistically and through voluntary cooperation. Hell,

Good post, except one point - you're not a socialist. You're someone who believes in people acting individualistically and through voluntary cooperation. Hell, you sound like you've got similar politics as me. I think people should empower themselves and I'm for voluntary worker's collectives, absolutely. I think being salaried when you could go off and do a project with a team you pick is a bad choice. I'm all for people controlling their own destiny. But that's not socialism. Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx as an intermediate stage on the way to Communism after the proles have seized the means of production by violence. Marx postulated that after heavy social control and violence against the exploiters, all class and social barriers would melt away into paradise. Turns out, he's wrong. People are different. You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. If you want to redefine socialism and say you're this redefined thing, okay, sure. But it sounds to me like you're more into free action than socialism. That's a healthy place to be. Marxist-brand socialism is not a healthy place to be, or at least, everything that's remotely tried to be it has gone very wrong.

steveklabnik 16y ago
> You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism. Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Reginald wrote, "I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism" - that's good and healthy. Socialism, unfortunately, now has strong connotations of control involved. If he's for people being able to choose their own life and destiny, I think he'd be best off picking a word or phrase that says that. "Free action" is the closest I know. Why lock 90%+ of people out of the discussion because they don't know the terminology?
  - notahacker 16y ago
    One thing that "capitalism" and "socialism" share is the connotations of control associated with them _by their opponents_
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Why would he invent a new term when libertarian socialism has such a history already, and is used by prominent thinkers such as Chomsky?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - raganwald 16y ago
    Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Upmodded. Wouldn't it be nice if a by-product of our discussion was for one or more people to say to themselves, "Hey, Socialism isn't a single monolithic thing, there are shades of grey involved. The next time someone says that re-organizing health care is Socialist, I will ask them what kind of socialism is involved?"
    - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
      Unfortunately, the people who are saying things like "re-organizing health care is Socialist" are also the type of people would wouldn't care that there is a distinction that might be relevant. They have conflated socialism and communism, and there can be no reasonable types of communism.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      It's a media thing: socialism -> bad capitalism -> good So any kind of social behaviour is labeled socialism, whether it is a health care plan (how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?) or pensions are leftwing and socialist, therefore bad. You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as though they were somehow new. I think it is as much a remnant of the cold war as it is a lack of information and education.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Let's not forget "democratic socialism", which actually works fine as a modern, free society in about a dozen countries which are still very much anti-communist. And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism, which is mostly an ad hom accusation.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism Glenn Beck is an entertainer, and should not be confused in any way with someone with knowledge of social and economic systems. If you take his commentary seriously, you're almost certain to be barking up the wrong tree.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      All you say is true, but at least 1/4 of the country does take everything he says extremely seriously. If you want a citation, check the numbers on people who think Obama's a muslim or not a US citizen. I think we can all agree that the guy's a clown but he's definitely influential and relevant.
- Gormo 16y ago
  I don't really see any substantive distinction between this concept of "libertarian socialism" and ordinary libertarianism. If people are free to pursue their economic goals by voluntary cooperation, it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights. In the absence of external control, many would exercise their rights by monetizing their participation in the economy in order to earn a profit. Many others would adopt a broad "open source" ethos. Most would probably engage in a mix of both, in varying circumstances, and at all levels of formalization. Freedom and openness lead to healthy variation. It's the philosophies that pursue the universal adoption of a single doctrine that are unnatural and destructive, no matter whether they go by the name of "socialism", "capitalism", or otherwise.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    > it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights There's your difference. Libertarian Socialists don't believe in private property.
    - lzw 16y ago
      If there is no private property, then you don't own your body, as to own your body would mean you owned some private property. If you don't own your body then you are a slave and there is no practical difference between that philosophy and any tyrannical system of government.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        Sorry, I forgot to add the caveat: private property means something different in the anarchist context. They make a distinction between 'private property' and 'possession,' your body would be a possession.
        lzw 16y ago
        All physical property is the same, you exchange labor for it. This distinction, and the claim that government is hat creates the property seems to come from not thinking e notion of personal property thru. Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it. You need a gang, a mafia, or a government to do that, especially when it's 10,0000 acres somewhere that a collective, or corporation, has put together. The only difference between a collective owning property and a corporation is that a corporation is allowed to make agreements amongst the members for how the corporation is run. The existence of a government is not necessary for the existence of corporations. These are not made up properties created by government, but collections of property made up of possibly thousands of individual explicit agreements between people. To end that have to stick your nose in as third party and break those agreements that people voluntarily entered into before came around.
chrismealy 16y ago
"Socialism" was definitely not coined by Marx. Google "Robert Owen" if you're interested in pre-Marx socialism.
- j_baker 16y ago
  Indeed. If I recall correctly, Marx spends the first part of the "Communist Manifesto" speaking of forms of socialism that had existed beforehand (even if they weren't called as such).
astine 16y ago
Marx didn't coin 'Socialism,' though he did coin the word for a stateless society in which people work for the love of working and share things implicitly. It's 'Communism.' :)
Asa-Nisse 16y ago
Came here to point this out aswell. Google would not have been possible to grow out of a socialistic country.
jfager 16y ago
"But I don't want to have that coffee-house argument where we spend all our time arguing definitions."
- gphil 16y ago
  Haha, is there any other kind of argument (in politics at least)?
cynicalkane 16y ago
It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history. Maybe then I'd be able to talk about economic systems outside of small groups of smart friends, without some guy butting in about how Obama is a communist or how the bank bailouts demonstrate capitalism is broken or how Marx said [insert one of many popular misinterpretations of Marx here]. Maybe we could have intelligent discourse in the media on this subject without the risk of some Tea party douchebag accusing everyone of communism, and people believing it..
- rue 16y ago
  > It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history. The irony of this, of course, is that there is no communist history. The USSR etc. were socialist states[1] (in name if not in practice.) [1] Socialism as defined by Marx is the transition period after the revolution, before communism is achieved.
sethg 16y ago
I once saw a slogan on a T-shirt that said “Labor creates all wealth”. I would suggest that if your first reaction to that slogan is anywhere in the range from “that’s an exaggeration, but yeah, it’s mostly true” to “HELL YEAH!”, then you are (should be?) a socialist. The various flavors of socialism, from anarcho-syndicalism to Marxism to Scandinavian-style social democracy, represent different answers to the question of “OK, granted that labor creates the wealth, but in a country with one iron mine, five steel plants, and twenty steel-consuming factories, who decides how resources get distributed from the mines to the steel plants to the factories?”
- zeteo 16y ago
  The labor theory of value has an old and distinguished pedigree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#The_birth_of_the_LTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#The_birth... There's no socialism involved in accepting some version of this theory. Yes, most if not all socialists believe in it, but the converse is not true.
  - lzw 16y ago
    But it has no economic significance. People thought the earth was flat a long time ago, and that theory has the same amount of scientific basis. Seriously, economics is a science and it is easy to demonstrate that a unit of labor time, like and hour worked, does not create the same amount of value. Specifically, ignoring the power of capital, the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots. The reality is, the capital to build the factory changes the value of the labor, thus disproving the labor theory of value.
    - jfager 16y ago
      the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots No, it wouldn't, at all, not even kind of. Depending on the version you took, it would either say that the "real" price of the car coming off the factory floor would be set by the value of all the labor put into producing it (including the cost of the labor of building the factory itself, all the way on back), or that the price would simply be the value of the labor it would save the purchaser.
kungfooguru 16y ago
Wrong. Oh so wrong. Please read Marx. Violence is only necessary due to the violence from the rulers. There is no reason to take up arms against them if they do not take up arms against us, and they already do. If when the workers take the wealth that is rightfully theirs they are not attacked then there is no reason for violence. And thanks for letting the oppressed and exploited know what is morally right for them to do. You claim he is not a Marxist, yet if you read Capital you get this: "Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power andwealth within a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system ofexploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential." I am a Marxist. And I am not a pacifist.
- davidw 16y ago
  The very idea of a startup is that you create something that you can sell to people - because they value it - for more than simply the value of the labor you put in. Are you against that? For an American, I'm somewhat to the left, but I think that Marxism in the 20th century has been an abject failure and have to wonder a bit about how anyone, in the face of such evidence, could still espouse such a system. Want to talk about Sweden vs Singapore vs Canada vs Hong Kong? Fine, but Cuba? USSR? No thanks.
  - kungfooguru 16y ago
    I live in a capitalist society. I make do by working in startups. I did not say that startups adhere to socialist ideals. All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. USSR I give you from 1917 to 1920s it was but it was also under constant seige. Cuba made its own form of "socialism" after their revolution. Che grew fed up with the bureaucracy there and left.
    - davidw 16y ago
      > All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. That's right - they're prosperous and relatively free places (with Singapore a bit of an exception) that also manage to spend more or less money taking care of their citizens. They all have various problems and imperfections of different kinds, but generally fall along the continuum of "what works", whereas the USSR and Cuba, which are the closest to your ideals, are failures. I can see how someone would be attracted to the Nordic system, or a more free-market type of individual would find things to like about, say, Hong Kong. Those countries, with their mixed systems, work in the real world. Marxism didn't and doesn't.
kungfooguru 16y ago
Marx's socialism is a society where democracy instead of profit guide production and resources.
Confusion 16y ago
Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx The definition of socialism has evolved since then. Raganwald is a socialist, in the same sense in which the ruling parties in many Western European countries call their form of government a 'social democracy'. It's only in the US that 'socialism' is a scary word that nobody wants to be associated with. To US standards, 75% of Western Europe votes for socialist parties.

steveklabnik 16y ago

> You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism.

lionhearted 16y ago
> Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism. Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Reginald wrote, "I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism" - that's good and healthy. Socialism, unfortunately, now has strong connotations of control involved. If he's for people being able to choose their own life and destiny, I think he'd be best off picking a word or phrase that says that. "Free action" is the closest I know. Why lock 90%+ of people out of the discussion because they don't know the terminology?
- notahacker 16y ago
  One thing that "capitalism" and "socialism" share is the connotations of control associated with them _by their opponents_
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Why would he invent a new term when libertarian socialism has such a history already, and is used by prominent thinkers such as Chomsky?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- raganwald 16y ago
  Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Upmodded. Wouldn't it be nice if a by-product of our discussion was for one or more people to say to themselves, "Hey, Socialism isn't a single monolithic thing, there are shades of grey involved. The next time someone says that re-organizing health care is Socialist, I will ask them what kind of socialism is involved?"
  - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
    Unfortunately, the people who are saying things like "re-organizing health care is Socialist" are also the type of people would wouldn't care that there is a distinction that might be relevant. They have conflated socialism and communism, and there can be no reasonable types of communism.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    It's a media thing: socialism -> bad capitalism -> good So any kind of social behaviour is labeled socialism, whether it is a health care plan (how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?) or pensions are leftwing and socialist, therefore bad. You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as though they were somehow new. I think it is as much a remnant of the cold war as it is a lack of information and education.
jbooth 16y ago
Let's not forget "democratic socialism", which actually works fine as a modern, free society in about a dozen countries which are still very much anti-communist. And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism, which is mostly an ad hom accusation.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism Glenn Beck is an entertainer, and should not be confused in any way with someone with knowledge of social and economic systems. If you take his commentary seriously, you're almost certain to be barking up the wrong tree.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    All you say is true, but at least 1/4 of the country does take everything he says extremely seriously. If you want a citation, check the numbers on people who think Obama's a muslim or not a US citizen. I think we can all agree that the guy's a clown but he's definitely influential and relevant.
Gormo 16y ago
I don't really see any substantive distinction between this concept of "libertarian socialism" and ordinary libertarianism. If people are free to pursue their economic goals by voluntary cooperation, it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights. In the absence of external control, many would exercise their rights by monetizing their participation in the economy in order to earn a profit. Many others would adopt a broad "open source" ethos. Most would probably engage in a mix of both, in varying circumstances, and at all levels of formalization. Freedom and openness lead to healthy variation. It's the philosophies that pursue the universal adoption of a single doctrine that are unnatural and destructive, no matter whether they go by the name of "socialism", "capitalism", or otherwise.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights There's your difference. Libertarian Socialists don't believe in private property.
  - lzw 16y ago
    If there is no private property, then you don't own your body, as to own your body would mean you owned some private property. If you don't own your body then you are a slave and there is no practical difference between that philosophy and any tyrannical system of government.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Sorry, I forgot to add the caveat: private property means something different in the anarchist context. They make a distinction between 'private property' and 'possession,' your body would be a possession.
      - lzw 16y ago
        All physical property is the same, you exchange labor for it. This distinction, and the claim that government is hat creates the property seems to come from not thinking e notion of personal property thru. Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it. You need a gang, a mafia, or a government to do that, especially when it's 10,0000 acres somewhere that a collective, or corporation, has put together. The only difference between a collective owning property and a corporation is that a corporation is allowed to make agreements amongst the members for how the corporation is run. The existence of a government is not necessary for the existence of corporations. These are not made up properties created by government, but collections of property made up of possibly thousands of individual explicit agreements between people. To end that have to stick your nose in as third party and break those agreements that people voluntarily entered into before came around.

chrismealy 16y ago

"Socialism" was definitely not coined by Marx. Google "Robert Owen" if you're interested in pre-Marx socialism.

j_baker 16y ago
Indeed. If I recall correctly, Marx spends the first part of the "Communist Manifesto" speaking of forms of socialism that had existed beforehand (even if they weren't called as such).

astine 16y ago

Marx didn't coin 'Socialism,' though he did coin the word for a stateless society in which people work for the love of working and share things implicitly. It's 'Communism.' :)

Asa-Nisse 16y ago

Came here to point this out aswell. Google would not have been possible to grow out of a socialistic country.

jfager 16y ago

"But I don't want to have that coffee-house argument where we spend all our time arguing definitions."

gphil 16y ago
Haha, is there any other kind of argument (in politics at least)?

cynicalkane 16y ago

It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history. Maybe then I'd be able to talk about economic systems outside of small groups of smart friends, without some guy butting in about how Obama is a communist or how the bank bailouts demonstrate capitalism is broken or how Marx said [insert one of many popular misinterpretations of Marx here]. Maybe we could have intelligent discourse in the media on this subject without the risk of some Tea party douchebag accusing everyone of communism, and people believing it..

rue 16y ago
> It's for reasons you said that I'm glad the word "socialism" is being reappropriated from Marx. The world needs to be able to talk about socialist forms of society without this talk being tainted by Marxist theory and the shadow of communist history. The irony of this, of course, is that there is no communist history. The USSR etc. were socialist states[1] (in name if not in practice.) [1] Socialism as defined by Marx is the transition period after the revolution, before communism is achieved.

sethg 16y ago

I once saw a slogan on a T-shirt that said “Labor creates all wealth”. I would suggest that if your first reaction to that slogan is anywhere in the range from “that’s an exaggeration, but yeah, it’s mostly true” to “HELL YEAH!”, then you are (should be?) a socialist. The various flavors of socialism, from anarcho-syndicalism to Marxism to Scandinavian-style social democracy, represent different answers to the question of “OK, granted that labor creates the wealth, but in a country with one iron mine, five steel plants, and twenty steel-consuming factories, who decides how resources get distributed from the mines to the steel plants to the factories?”

zeteo 16y ago
The labor theory of value has an old and distinguished pedigree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#The_birth_of_the_LTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#The_birth... There's no socialism involved in accepting some version of this theory. Yes, most if not all socialists believe in it, but the converse is not true.
- lzw 16y ago
  But it has no economic significance. People thought the earth was flat a long time ago, and that theory has the same amount of scientific basis. Seriously, economics is a science and it is easy to demonstrate that a unit of labor time, like and hour worked, does not create the same amount of value. Specifically, ignoring the power of capital, the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots. The reality is, the capital to build the factory changes the value of the labor, thus disproving the labor theory of value.
  - jfager 16y ago
    the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots No, it wouldn't, at all, not even kind of. Depending on the version you took, it would either say that the "real" price of the car coming off the factory floor would be set by the value of all the labor put into producing it (including the cost of the labor of building the factory itself, all the way on back), or that the price would simply be the value of the labor it would save the purchaser.

kungfooguru 16y ago

Wrong. Oh so wrong. Please read Marx. Violence is only necessary due to the violence from the rulers. There is no reason to take up arms against them if they do not take up arms against us, and they already do. If when the workers take the wealth that is rightfully theirs they are not attacked then there is no reason for violence. And thanks for letting the oppressed and exploited know what is morally right for them to do. You claim he is not a Marxist, yet if you read Capital you get this: "Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power andwealth within a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system ofexploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential." I am a Marxist. And I am not a pacifist.

davidw 16y ago
The very idea of a startup is that you create something that you can sell to people - because they value it - for more than simply the value of the labor you put in. Are you against that? For an American, I'm somewhat to the left, but I think that Marxism in the 20th century has been an abject failure and have to wonder a bit about how anyone, in the face of such evidence, could still espouse such a system. Want to talk about Sweden vs Singapore vs Canada vs Hong Kong? Fine, but Cuba? USSR? No thanks.
- kungfooguru 16y ago
  I live in a capitalist society. I make do by working in startups. I did not say that startups adhere to socialist ideals. All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. USSR I give you from 1917 to 1920s it was but it was also under constant seige. Cuba made its own form of "socialism" after their revolution. Che grew fed up with the bureaucracy there and left.
  - davidw 16y ago
    > All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. That's right - they're prosperous and relatively free places (with Singapore a bit of an exception) that also manage to spend more or less money taking care of their citizens. They all have various problems and imperfections of different kinds, but generally fall along the continuum of "what works", whereas the USSR and Cuba, which are the closest to your ideals, are failures. I can see how someone would be attracted to the Nordic system, or a more free-market type of individual would find things to like about, say, Hong Kong. Those countries, with their mixed systems, work in the real world. Marxism didn't and doesn't.

kungfooguru 16y ago

Marx's socialism is a society where democracy instead of profit guide production and resources.

Confusion 16y ago

Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx The definition of socialism has evolved since then. Raganwald is a socialist, in the same sense in which the ruling parties in many Western European countries call their form of government a 'social democracy'. It's only in the US that 'socialism' is a scary word that nobody wants to be associated with. To US standards, 75% of Western Europe votes for socialist parties.