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There is no reason at all why socialism couldn't be on a scale. Those scholars are just dumb then, it is like saying that there is no scale to democracy. We say

There is no reason at all why socialism couldn't be on a scale. Those scholars are just dumb then, it is like saying that there is no scale to democracy. We say that the ancient Greeks had a democracy even though the vote was limited, we said that USA was a democracy even though they had slaves and most people couldn't vote etc. Obviously USA is more democratic today than it were 200 years ago. Similarly most countries have adopted a lot of socialist policies over the past 100 years. Taxes used to be just for the king and armies, never going back to the people. Today most taxes are to build common infrastructure, clearly we moved towards socialism, hence we are more socialist today than 100 years ago.

claudiawerner 7y ago
To say that socialism is a scale is to presuppose that (1) socialism is compatible with capitalism, (2) government programmes you call socialist act on behalf of the people, rather than capital. Both of these suppositions are called into question. When socialism is defined as ![capitalism & class society] (which, by the majority of experts, it is), it makes no sense to say that a capitalist country (capitalism defined as predominance of wage labour and most agents seeking to maximize the rate of accumulation of capital) is "somewhat socialist". Even if socialism were a scale, it would be a scale between a socialist society that has not yet removed all the fetters of capitalism (i.e. what Marx called the "lower phase") and "full communism". There's no reason to suppose that the scale has any capitalist elements. The most naive and uninformed idea of socialism, which is not in line with what any socialist considers it to be, is merely "the government providing things". That's not what is meant when we say "socialism", and redefining words contrary to expert opinion and tradition is no substitute.

claudiawerner 7y ago

To say that socialism is a scale is to presuppose that (1) socialism is compatible with capitalism, (2) government programmes you call socialist act on behalf of the people, rather than capital. Both of these suppositions are called into question. When socialism is defined as ![capitalism & class society] (which, by the majority of experts, it is), it makes no sense to say that a capitalist country (capitalism defined as predominance of wage labour and most agents seeking to maximize the rate of accumulation of capital) is "somewhat socialist". Even if socialism were a scale, it would be a scale between a socialist society that has not yet removed all the fetters of capitalism (i.e. what Marx called the "lower phase") and "full communism". There's no reason to suppose that the scale has any capitalist elements. The most naive and uninformed idea of socialism, which is not in line with what any socialist considers it to be, is merely "the government providing things". That's not what is meant when we say "socialism", and redefining words contrary to expert opinion and tradition is no substitute.