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It's unfortunate that "socialism" came to mean "central planning" in the 20th century. It didn't mean that before the Bolsheviks and Marxist-Leninism out-compet

• asdff 3y ago
  There is socialism in the U.S. too. If you work for the government in some capacity you are participating in the socialist side of our nation in practice. IMO the US military especially is a model of what a fully socialist US would look like, if it were allowed to scale to all sectors. WWII with the socialist centrally planned economy was an interesting case study for the U.S.; it showed how this manner of socialism can reorient an otherwise depressed labor economy into the dominant world power in a few short years.
  • wrycoder 3y ago
    It works well, when all the other world economies have been devastated by war. The US government/military control in WWII was essentially totalitarian, with rationing and price controls.
    • asdff 3y ago
      We went from 25% unemployment in the great depression to less than 2% unemployment during WWII. I'd say that was a remarkable economic recovery by any measure, and it amounted to offering government jobs to people. It would be interesting to imagine an alternate history where that historically massive labor effort went to infrastructure building rather than infrastructure destruction, however.
  • xmcqdpt2 3y ago
    This is also true in the private sector. While large firms compete with each other, the internal organization of corporations is a lot closer to a centrally planned economy. You request what you need from the central authority and you get allocated resources on the basis of calculations and needs. You don't usually (in most firms that are halfway decent places to work) compete with other departments but work towards a common goal (improved earnings). This is/was a subject of debate amongst economists actually, at least the very pro free-market ones: If market economies are better than centrally planned ones, why aren't firms with internal markets crushing the other, internally "socialist" ones? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm The orthodox answer is that market systems have higher transaction costs so for things you have to do very often (paying a salary) it's burdensome to use a market and easier to have long, somewhat undefined contracts.
    • asdff 3y ago
      Maybe we should be using a market system for our monthly salaries and a contract system for our weekly groceries to undue some of the burden the status quo saddles upon us?
  • bart_spoon 3y ago
    How is that any different than “central planning”?
  • Manuel_D 3y ago
    The military relies on goods and services supplied by private companies, selected through competitions based on performance and cost. This is a lot more capitalist than socialist. Even during WWII, wartime production still went through private companies, not central planning. Just because the government is the exclusive customer of a product (e.g. tanks, bombers) doesn't make an economy socialist when these products are still being built by private enterprises.
    • asdff 3y ago
      I wonder when the contract system really emerged. WWII struck me more as the government coming into these centers of production, which at the time might be auto factories, and mandating that there would be no more fords during the war years and instead p51 mustangs, versus ford retooling as a business decision to serve this newfound customer. The government also rationed remaining cars to people depending on things like their occupation and its value having a car would be to the social system, and the state of their existing car. That's a little different than how it works today, and I often think that today its a bit inefficient too. For example, Lockheed and Raytheon could be competing for the exact same contract. I'd expect they aren't privy to share technological secrets between eachother's engineering teams, just for the sake of beating the other to the contract. In the end you have engineers working competitively instead of collaboratively, information gets siloed, and novel findings that might have been happen with more sharing of information never see the light of day. Maybe it's different though, and the government enforces a degree of collaboration, I hope.
      • Manuel_D 3y ago
        Contract systems emerged well before WWII, before industrialized society, even. When some knight needed a new spear he hired a local blacksmith. Centrally operated foundries specifically producing arms were quite rare, usually a feature only in large empires with professional militaries. Rationing necessarily implies that there is a market economy to regulate: the whole reason why the government had to limit the production of civilian vehicles is because the wartime economy was still a market economy. Ford, GMC, etc. were still private companies at the end of the day, participating in a market economy. Rationing made it more attractive to cater to military acquisitions. Different companies working competitively has consistently proven to put outcompete and surpass centrally planned economies. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon continue to export way more arms than most other companies, competition may mean information gets siloed but evidently it gets results.
• bart_spoon 3y ago
  The problem with socialism is that it is seemingly impossible to define. I have yet to hear a cogent definition of what socialism actually is. Like major world religions, there are hundreds if not thousands of sects, all with their own, often conflicting dogma, and in cases where the warts of socialism pop up, there is inevitably a chorus of “well that wasn’t actually socialism!” Even religions like Christianity can largely be boiled down to basic tenets such as “a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ”, which seems far more concrete and consistent than any explanation of socialism I’ve heard. - I’ve heard people say that socialism is simply representation to and protection of workers from the company they work for. But that exists in many industries and nations, including the US which socialists consider highly capitalistic. - Others seem to describe socialism as redistribution of wealth, and often point to countries like those in Scandinavia, which sounds great to me except those countries are very much capitalist, and their economies seem more like “capitalism with sensible guard rails” (aka Social Democracy) than “socialism” as defined by many socialists themselves. - Perhaps the closest thing to a concrete definition of socialism is “social ownership of the means of production”, but even that is far too vague to be helpful. What does “social” mean in this context? What does “means of production” mean here? If it’s “workers have ownership of a businesses capital”, then FAANG companies like Amazon paying huge amounts employee compensation in the form of equity are among the most socialist companies in the world. Obviously I don’t think anyone would agree with that. - I’ve heard socialism (although this perhaps dips more into communism, as if the distinctions there are any less indecipherable) differing from capitalism in how they answer the question, “Can someone sell use of their possessions (ie capital, such money, equipment, or land) to someone else?” In capitalism the answer is yes (therefore giving birth to landlords, shareholders, boards, etc) and in socialism the answer is no. That actually seems to me like a pretty solid definition to go off of. But in that case, we have to ask how companies can actually get the capital they need to get going. In ventures like smaller cooperative communities, and in industries like agriculture, it seems more feasible. But think about how much capital is required for something like a pharmaceutical company, or a tech startup. Millions and millions of dollars in cash are required, and it is not feasible for workers to simply pool resources and bootstrap. It would seem like the only solution would be to have some entity, like the government, redistribute societies capital to those entities they see as most deserving. But now you are back at the central planning model many bemoan as being the flawed, “no-true-Socialism” incarnations of the 20th century. I’m not an expert, and so I recognize my understanding could be flawed. And I am in no way at in love with capitalism. But it seems to me like the best we can hope for is Social Democracy style capitalism with guardrails as opposed to pie-in-the-sky socialism which seems to mean everything and nothing at all depending on the situation and who you are asking.
• testrun 3y ago
  I think this is the core of the problem with the socialism vs capitalism debate. Everybody has a different idea what socialism is.
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Thank you! The way out of this mess is worker controlled non-stock cooperatives