Fabianism

[Gary Childress]

mansions and Maseratis for everyone...

-Imp

Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe not everyone wants a Maserati or a mansion. Both are environmentally unsustainable if everyone were to have them. Affordable and environmentally sustainable housing and transportation for all would make more sense. Don't you think? If anyone wants more than that, they can sell all their other possessions to get what they want.

[Immanuel Can]

Socialism is for public or collective ownership and administration of the means of production, rather than private ownership.

So your definition is half of mine. But you don't think about the abolishing of private property.

However, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx himself wrote, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

I believe Marx distinguished between "private property" and "personal possessions".

This is a distinction without a difference. You can call anything a "personal possession," or a "means of production." The classification is arbitrary...or at least, mostly so. We can safely say that a toothbrush is "personal possession," because nobody else wants ours. But what about a car? What about the land on which your house sits? What about your employment? What about your children?

Just try it.

Take anything, and decide whether it's "personal" or "private property"? If it's the former, he gets to keep it; if it's the latter, the government steals it. I'll bet you can think of ways most "personal possessions" can be redescribed as illegitimate "private property" or as a "means of production." And if you trust the government to be honest with drawing the difference...well, every nation that has adopted Socialism has found out, to their sorrow, that there are no such lines.

You seem to intuit this, for you add...

However, where to draw the line between "personal possessions" and "private property" can be difficult in some cases, like most boundaries between legal distinctions often are.

In Socialist thought, all things are "socially-constructed," meaning that they are whatever the 'society' (as claimed by the Socialist Party) says they are, and nothing more. So anything can simply be "reconstructed" as legal property of the State.

A particularly egregious case of this is the "production" of man himself. Socialism aims at the creation of the "New Socialist Man," the human being who is entirely immersed in belief in the Socialist project and accepts his "identity" from "society" with absolute surrender. Previous generations having been tainted by "capitalism," says the theory, the only hope for the creation of New Socialist Man is the next generation -- your children. The State must own them...must have entire power over their "construction," their nurture, their education, their environment...and you, the parent, can only be allowed influence as a tool of that society, never as an individual parent or as the maker of the conditions of your own familly.

They want your kids.* And they think they already have a right to take them. And they are certain you have no right to keep them. "It takes a village to raise a child," they will idiotically parrot -- conveniently forgetting that the "village" (i.e. "Society") neither wanted nor conceived the child, understands her not at all, shares no genetic material with her, and has no stake in her but as a pawn in their social-construction project. In fact, their "village" doesn't even care whether it's one child or another they capture...they have zero care for her as an individual, because they don't believe she even IS an individual...she's a social construct. She's property of the State, as are you.

Don't ever trust Socialists not to steal things. It's what they do. They call it "redistribution," but in actuality, it simply means "stealing." They need you to assume that all they ever will take are naturally "common property" or "ill-gotten gains." And your belief allows them to steal freely anything anybody imagines he or she possesses.


*No, I'm not forgetting you're not a parent. I'm just speaking generally.

[Immanuel Can]

mansions and Maseratis for everyone...

-Imp

Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe not everyone wants a Maserati or a mansion.

How many people got Maseratis and mansions in the USSR, or China, or North Korea?

Some, to be sure: but all high Party officials, for sure. The average bloke gets robbery, starvation, terror, poverty and death.

[Gary Childress]

So your definition is half of mine. But you don't think about the abolishing of private property.

However, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx himself wrote, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

I believe Marx distinguished between "private property" and "personal possessions".

This is a distinction without a difference. You can call anything a "personal possession," or a "means of production." The classification is arbitrary...or at least, mostly so. We can safely say that a toothbrush is "personal possession," because nobody else wants ours. But what about a car? What about the land on which your house sits? What about your employment? What about your children?

Just try it.

So unless we are wanting to relinquish our children, we must allow people to own banks and factories? Interesting dilemma there.

[Immanuel Can]

I believe Marx distinguished between "private property" and "personal possessions".

This is a distinction without a difference. You can call anything a "personal possession," or a "means of production." The classification is arbitrary...or at least, mostly so. We can safely say that a toothbrush is "personal possession," because nobody else wants ours. But what about a car? What about the land on which your house sits? What about your employment? What about your children?

Just try it.

So unless we are wanting to relinquish our children, we must allow people to own banks and factories? Interesting dilemma there.

Why not own banks and factories? What's wrong with you doing so?

If you run an honest bank, what's the problem with you helping people to finance their aspirations, their businesses, their home purchase, their children's education, or anything else? Now, if you gouge them, or if you inflate interest rates, we have a problem; but if you're honest, why shouldn't you start a bank, Gary?

And a factory. If you know how to build something or you invent something that solves a problem for people, and they're freely willing to buy it, why shouldn't you establish a factory to make it? Sure, if you use slaves or steal from your employees, you should be arrested and charged, or run out of business. But if you give your workers a fair wage for their labour, and they work for you of their free will, why shouldn't you do that? Don't you think people need and deserve jobs?

Is there something evil about any of that? Because it's not obvious there is.

[Gary Childress]

This is a distinction without a difference. You can call anything a "personal possession," or a "means of production." The classification is arbitrary...or at least, mostly so. We can safely say that a toothbrush is "personal possession," because nobody else wants ours. But what about a car? What about the land on which your house sits? What about your employment? What about your children?

Just try it.

So unless we are wanting to relinquish our children, we must allow people to own banks and factories? Interesting dilemma there.

Why not own banks and factories? What's wrong with you doing so?

If you run an honest bank, what's the problem with you helping people to finance their aspirations, their businesses, their home purchase, their children's education, or anything else? Now, if you gouge them, or if you inflate interest rates, we have a problem; but if you're honest, why shouldn't you start a bank, Gary?

And a factory. If you know how to build something or you invent something that solves a problem for people, and they're freely willing to buy it, why shouldn't you establish a factory to make it? Sure, if you use slaves or steal from your employees, you should be arrested and charged, or run out of business. But if you give your workers a fair wage for their labour, and they work for you of their free will, why shouldn't you do that? Don't you think people need and deserve jobs?

Is there something evil about any of that? Because it's not obvious there is.

Why should individuals be allowed to own banks or factories? Is it going to make things better for everyone else if someone owns a factory or bank? What if it ends up making everyone else miserable? That can happen too, and does. The reason Marx wanted to abolish ownership of the means of production is that owners were often driven to create slave labor conditions in order to be more profitable. I mean, if Elon Musk is making a trillion dollars a year, then that is money that is not be spread among the workers working for him. It's being siphoned off to someone's private bank account, and for what? For making a decision that could be made as easily by someone else?

[Immanuel Can]

So unless we are wanting to relinquish our children, we must allow people to own banks and factories? Interesting dilemma there.

Why not own banks and factories? What's wrong with you doing so?

If you run an honest bank, what's the problem with you helping people to finance their aspirations, their businesses, their home purchase, their children's education, or anything else? Now, if you gouge them, or if you inflate interest rates, we have a problem; but if you're honest, why shouldn't you start a bank, Gary?

And a factory. If you know how to build something or you invent something that solves a problem for people, and they're freely willing to buy it, why shouldn't you establish a factory to make it? Sure, if you use slaves or steal from your employees, you should be arrested and charged, or run out of business. But if you give your workers a fair wage for their labour, and they work for you of their free will, why shouldn't you do that? Don't you think people need and deserve jobs?

Is there something evil about any of that? Because it's not obvious there is.

Why should individuals be allowed to own banks or factories? Is it going to make things better for everyone else if someone owns a factory or bank?

Absolutely, it will. Unlike government, banks and factories are highly constrained by reality, by market forces and by the choices of consumers. Unless they want to go out of business, they'd better not fool around with quality and competitiveness. By contrast, government-owned businesses do not use their own money, do not face market forces, cannot be punished for bad behaviour by the consumer, and just keep going even when they're inefficient, wasteful, bloated and bad.

What if it ends up making everyone else miserable?

Why would it? If you run an honest bank, how are you going to make people miserable? If you run an honest factory, how are you not going to make your employees wealthier and better off than if they had no jobs?

Now, government-run things...there are some things that can make people miserable.

The reason Marx wanted to abolish ownership of the means of production is that owners were often driven to create slave labor conditions in order to be more profitable.

Marx got so many things wrong. And this is just one of them.

What was actually going to happen was that industrialization, for all its early awfulness, was soon going to start creating wealth for the whole country. People were going to be moving from the lower class to the middle, and some even into the category of the vastly wealthy. Consumer goods that previous generations could never dream of were going to begin to appear...and the technological revolution, which was the offspring of the industrial one, was going to give you AI, cyberspace, instant access to universal education, and the very computer you're typing on.

Marx saw none of that.

I mean, if Elon Musk is making a trillion dollars a year, then that is money that is not be spread among the workers working for him.

Why? What have they done to earn it? Did they invent something? Did they finance something? Did they take some risks, and assume costs themselves? What did they do to earn more money than they agreed to work for?

I'm open to the argument, if it can be made.

It's being siphoned off to someone's private bank account,

Whose? Whose money is Elon Musk stealing? If you know, call the police. Theft is illegal.

But I think you'll find that he's probably earned his money. I have yet to meet a Tesla owner who has been forced to buy one...although our governments are trying to make that happen, I note. It seems to me the people who buy Musk's stuff do so because they want it. (Personally, I don't want a Tesla, or solar panels, or Neuralink, or Twitter, or most of what Musk makes...but so what?) His riches may be excessive, but people enthusiastically pay for the products he's created, and he's employed vast numbers of otherwise-jobless workers, while advancing the lives of consumers generally, has he not? Why should we be licensed to rob him, if he's gained any amount of wealth in any honest way? He didn't steal it from anybody, did he?

What's your problem, Gary? Nobody's doing anything to you, except the government, which is stealing your money by way of taxation. Other than that, I have no idea why you'd have reason to complain, or why you'd hate people just for being businessmen, inventors, factory owners or even bankers. It doesn't make sense.

[Gary Childress]

What if it ends up making everyone else miserable?

Why would it? If you run an honest bank, how are you going to make people miserable? If you run an honest factory, how are you not going to make your employees wealthier and better off than if they had no jobs?

Now, government-run things...there are some things that can make people miserable.

Apparently wage slavery and sweatshops are all a socialist myth. And it was the industry owners who made reforms to working conditions in their shops, not unions and worker movements. Everyone except the masters just sits back and reaps the mana that the masters create for them. Elon Musk is far too generous paying his workers. He should cut their wages more. Afterall, workers have it comfy cosey. It's the Elon Musks of the world who take the "risks" and do the "hard" work.

Yes. We get it. You hate socialism and everything about it. God created the wealthy business elites to bless us all. But God hates politicians, especially if they are atheist.

[phyllo]

Carl Sagan may or may not be a socialist
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zqWS3yaZdr4

[Immanuel Can]

What if it ends up making everyone else miserable?

Why would it? If you run an honest bank, how are you going to make people miserable? If you run an honest factory, how are you not going to make your employees wealthier and better off than if they had no jobs?

Now, government-run things...there are some things that can make people miserable.

Apparently wage slavery and sweatshops are all a socialist myth.

Well, Gary...so far as I know, wages in America are paid by agreement of both employer and employee. And so far as I know, it's actually very easy for a person who doesn't like their job, or who doesn't think their wages fit it, to quit. I know of no "slaves" in America, unless we count the sort of things that go on in sex trafficking. So no, there are no "wage slaves" in America...unless you can point some out, in which case, I'll consider them.

As for "sweatshops," I don't know of any of those in America, either. There are certainly some in the developing world, but how Socialism in America would help any of them is unclear to me. So far as I am aware, they largely exist in despotic places and dictatorships, and places like China, many of which are...Socialist.

And it was the industry owners who made reforms to working conditions in their shops, not unions and worker movements.

Both, I think. The factories made consumer goods cheaper and cheaper, and more accessible than at any time before, and the workers demanded better wages. And as the middle class expanded, the whole economy shifted, along with the politics. None of these deveopments were foreseen by Marx, of course.

Elon Musk is far too generous paying his workers. He should cut their wages more.

Could you give me evidence for this? I am unaware of any.

Afterall, workers have it comfy cosey. It's the Elon Musks of the world who take the "risks" and do the "hard" work.

Actually, yes...it's the entrepreneurs who put their resources at risk. The employees are guaranteed their wage and their benefits and their severance packages.

I don't get why you hate success, Gary. If a man makes money by adding value to the world, or by creating products people freely wish to buy, why shouldn't he? And why should anybody be owed more money for taking no risks, inventing nothing and not doing anything in particular beyond his wage?

That's a very bizarre set of values, I have to say. And any progress in society is not going to happen if we incentivize doing nothing.

[Gary Childress]

Afterall, workers have it comfy cosey. It's the Elon Musks of the world who take the "risks" and do the "hard" work.

Actually, yes...it's the entrepreneurs who put their resources at risk. The employees are guaranteed their wage and their benefits and their severance packages.

I don't get why you hate success, Gary. If a man makes money by adding value to the world, or by creating products people freely wish to buy, why shouldn't he? And why should anybody be owed more money for taking no risks, inventing nothing and not doing anything in particular beyond his wage?

That's a very bizarre set of values, I have to say. And any progress in society is not going to happen if we incentivize doing nothing.

So workers have it easy and entrepreneurs are the ones who undergo hardship. And workers would just sit around and do nothing if they weren't instructed by their betters what to do, just like Christians wouldn't know right from wrong if it weren't for God telling them what was what. You have all the elite propaganda down pat. You'd make a great butler.

[Immanuel Can]

Afterall, workers have it comfy cosey. It's the Elon Musks of the world who take the "risks" and do the "hard" work.

Actually, yes...it's the entrepreneurs who put their resources at risk. The employees are guaranteed their wage and their benefits and their severance packages.

I don't get why you hate success, Gary. If a man makes money by adding value to the world, or by creating products people freely wish to buy, why shouldn't he? And why should anybody be owed more money for taking no risks, inventing nothing and not doing anything in particular beyond his wage?

That's a very bizarre set of values, I have to say. And any progress in society is not going to happen if we incentivize doing nothing.

So workers have it easy

Nobody said any life is "easy," Gary...but working for a wage is working for an income. It's voluntary. And one works at whatever level one chooses, and whatever level is suitable to one's talents, for whatever compensation one negotiates. If anything in unsatisfactory, any worker is always free to go and find a situation more to his liking. I can't see an unfair thing in that, can you?

...and entrepreneurs are the ones who undergo hardship.

Well, they're the ones who assume all the risk, obviously. It's they who have to conceive the opportunity, venture the money, risk failure, organize the workforce, pay the bills, assume the liability, locate and negotiate with the potential workforce, make the right management decisions to keep the business afloat, deal with suppliers, collect the profits, sign the paycheques...and the workers show up at 9, go home at 5, and get a contracted wage they have agreed to, guaranteed.

The entrepreneurs get more money. Often much more. But they also are much more the whole reason the business exists, and can offer a wage to the worker. All the worker has to do is decide if he regards the compensation offered as adequate to his own education, skills and interests...and if it is, he signs on. If he doesn't, he signs something else, with somebody else, and gets more of what he wants.

That arrangement is perfectly fair. And so long as the worker puts in an actual day's work, and doesn't steal either time or resources from his employer, and as long as the employer pays what he promised, on the terms for which both freely contracted, there's no harm, no foul.

So where is the "injustice" here, Gary? What's "oppressive" or "unfair"? Are you aware of something you're not mentioning? It looks quite equitable.

[Impenitent]

...As for "sweatshops," I don't know of any of those in America, either.

Mr. Kotter had one in Brooklyn - full of Sweathogs and everything...

-Imp

[MikeNovack]

But they also are much more the whole reason the business exists, and can offer a wage to the worker. All the worker has to do is decide if he regards the compensation offered as adequate to his own education, skills and interests...and if it is, he signs on. If he doesn't, he signs something else, with somebody else, and gets more of what he wants.

That arrangement is perfectly fair. And so long as the worker puts in an actual day's work, and doesn't steal either time or resources from his employer, and as long as the employer pays what he promised, on the terms for which both freely contracted, there's no harm, no foul.

IC, when you use this sort of language (for the other side's position) you are really undercutting your "leftism begins with MARX" argument << it is precisely the language used to consider unions "illegal combinations >>

You are UK, right? How about familiarizing yourself with the 50 years prior to Marx. The battle to have unions was underway before they were made legal in 1824. The last bug battle before that was 1820 in Scotland << but the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transpored in 1834 even though unions WERE legal (later pardoned)* >> Not unconnected to the Chartist movement to get political rights (back then, only me of property had the vote). Do you know who/when Robert Owen was? (yes, there was already utopian socialists and other people using the "socialist label)

* mind, most of the early unions were "craft unions", skilled workers. These were just farm laborers, so maybe felt didn't count. Their conviction based on the technicality that joining involved an oath

[Immanuel Can]

But they also are much more the whole reason the business exists, and can offer a wage to the worker. All the worker has to do is decide if he regards the compensation offered as adequate to his own education, skills and interests...and if it is, he signs on. If he doesn't, he signs something else, with somebody else, and gets more of what he wants.

That arrangement is perfectly fair. And so long as the worker puts in an actual day's work, and doesn't steal either time or resources from his employer, and as long as the employer pays what he promised, on the terms for which both freely contracted, there's no harm, no foul.

IC, when you use this sort of language (for the other side's position) you are really undercutting your "leftism begins with MARX" argument << it is precisely the language used to consider unions "illegal combinations >>

Oh bosh. It's nothing of the kind. It's just a simple and obvious question.

What do you see as unfair in that arrangement?

How about familiarizing yourself with the 50 years prior to Marx.

How about you give your definition of "Socialism"?

Only one of us really should be answering. I wonder why you can't...Are you ashamed of your definition, or just devoid of one?