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The debates about what counts as socialism and what counts as capitalism are really unproductive, because people are engaging in redefinition wars, just as we'v

The debates about what counts as socialism and what counts as capitalism are really unproductive, because people are engaging in redefinition wars, just as we've seen with modern activist redefinitions of other terms. I think it is more useful to talk about specific elements of capitalist or socialist governance and then map those to the countries that feature those elements. This way we can speak more precisely about things like tax policies, free market competition, safety nets, etc. in isolation rather than wage a broad war of labels and fearmongering. With that in mind, I think in the US what a lot of politicians on the left are advocating for when they preach socialism is not so much socialism, but transferism: https://fee.org/articles/transferism-not-socialism-is-the-drug-americans-are-hooked-on/ https://fee.org/articles/transferism-not-socialism-is-the-dr... > Transferism is a system in which one group of people forces a second group to pay for things that the people believe they, or some third group, should have. Transferism isn’t about controlling the means of production. It is about the forced redistribution of what’s produced.

mnd999 6y ago
Completely agree, Socialism is a very broad church, some interpretations are more hardline than others.
necovek 6y ago
I've never heard of the term "transferism", it's quite a peculiar thing. I can't not see all of the progressive taxes, heck, even percentage taxes, as manifestations of the same thing: basically, higher earners provide more money into the shared pool for everybody to use (I am ignoring all the tax loopholes used by richer folks for the sake of discussion). Sure, I don't think compensation between jobs should differ that much, but we are basically going the roundabout way in trying to equalize them. As such, it seems that everything (like percentage taxes vs "fixed fee") is "transferism" according to the quote you give, thus the value of the terminology is somewhat diminished.
filleduchaos 6y ago
A decade ago in secondary school I learned of capitalism as an economic system where [the vast majority of] the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit through the purchase of labour, and of socialism as a broad umbrella term for economic systems where the means of production are socially owned (and that there are various kinds of social ownership) and self-managed by labour itself. As far as I am aware these are the definitions that have been in play for the century and a half or so that the theories have even existed. In my experience they only get weird redefinitions (such as socialism apparently being "whenever the government does something") in particularly polarised countries (cough the US cough). Sure, people arguing from ignorance or disingenuity are technically having a debate, but why on earth is everyone listening to them? Beyond that, speaking more precisely about tax policies (statism), free market competition (market economics, laissez-faire) and safety nets (social welfare) is an endeavour all societies should partake in, sure. But it's also orthogonal to the axis of capitalism vs socialism. Having a higher marginal tax rate, regulating markets, and/or implementing a welfare state doesn't magically remove the private ownership from a capitalist system. Similarly, charging no taxes (or even not having a state at all), operating a free market and/or not having a social security system wouldn't make a system that runs on social ownership any less socialist. It's like attempting to resolve a debate between functional programming and OOP by saying we should focus on specific elements of the two so that we can speak more precisely about things like static/dynamic typing instead. That does not answer the original question at all.
sharemywin 6y ago
> It is about the forced redistribution of what’s produced. That makes it sound like all taxes should be voluntary. Even most libertarian's believe in some kind of "FORCED" tax for an army. I would argue most -isms are academic and the world is much less binary and they're thrown out to create some kind of dividing line. Some extreme version of the -ism on one side and the completely rational justified version of sanity on my (groups) side. so vote for my group or send my group money to fight the other group.

mnd999 6y ago

Completely agree, Socialism is a very broad church, some interpretations are more hardline than others.

necovek 6y ago

I've never heard of the term "transferism", it's quite a peculiar thing. I can't not see all of the progressive taxes, heck, even percentage taxes, as manifestations of the same thing: basically, higher earners provide more money into the shared pool for everybody to use (I am ignoring all the tax loopholes used by richer folks for the sake of discussion). Sure, I don't think compensation between jobs should differ that much, but we are basically going the roundabout way in trying to equalize them. As such, it seems that everything (like percentage taxes vs "fixed fee") is "transferism" according to the quote you give, thus the value of the terminology is somewhat diminished.

filleduchaos 6y ago

A decade ago in secondary school I learned of capitalism as an economic system where [the vast majority of] the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit through the purchase of labour, and of socialism as a broad umbrella term for economic systems where the means of production are socially owned (and that there are various kinds of social ownership) and self-managed by labour itself. As far as I am aware these are the definitions that have been in play for the century and a half or so that the theories have even existed. In my experience they only get weird redefinitions (such as socialism apparently being "whenever the government does something") in particularly polarised countries (cough the US cough). Sure, people arguing from ignorance or disingenuity are technically having a debate, but why on earth is everyone listening to them? Beyond that, speaking more precisely about tax policies (statism), free market competition (market economics, laissez-faire) and safety nets (social welfare) is an endeavour all societies should partake in, sure. But it's also orthogonal to the axis of capitalism vs socialism. Having a higher marginal tax rate, regulating markets, and/or implementing a welfare state doesn't magically remove the private ownership from a capitalist system. Similarly, charging no taxes (or even not having a state at all), operating a free market and/or not having a social security system wouldn't make a system that runs on social ownership any less socialist. It's like attempting to resolve a debate between functional programming and OOP by saying we should focus on specific elements of the two so that we can speak more precisely about things like static/dynamic typing instead. That does not answer the original question at all.

sharemywin 6y ago

> It is about the forced redistribution of what’s produced. That makes it sound like all taxes should be voluntary. Even most libertarian's believe in some kind of "FORCED" tax for an army. I would argue most -isms are academic and the world is much less binary and they're thrown out to create some kind of dividing line. Some extreme version of the -ism on one side and the completely rational justified version of sanity on my (groups) side. so vote for my group or send my group money to fight the other group.