The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 3:27 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 2:10 pm Yes, or longer. We mustn't exclude the legacy of Socialism, which started to do most of its darkest work even earlier than that. We should include the gulags, the Long March and the Killing Fields, the Holomodor and the fall of the USSR, and the developments in Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba...

This is certainly true, but my own supposition (it is a relatively common idea) is that the impetus of the ideology, to continue to have influence, transformed itself from classical militancy to something of modified insidiousness. We do not now have a Marxist-Communist militancy, though there were sone of that in the 1960s, but we do have many different currents of undermining influence.

The roots are easy to trace, though. The failure of militant Communism in the '60s gave way to the "Long March" tactics of people like Rudy Dutschke, and the subversive "education" program of Paolo Freire et al.

What is additionally interesting (if of course this analysis is accepted and I am uncertain if others here also see this)(?) — is the struggle to claw one’s way back to a ground of normality. Presently, there is a sort of mood in the culture to turn harshly against this ‘sprit’ of rebellious deviancy (the revolution against “woke”) but there is uncertainty about what genuine recovery is and should be.

Yes. People have seemed to awaken from the slumber of the self-styled "Woke," and seen through some of its worst manifestations. And I think that things like the absurdity of identity politics, culminating in an inability even to locate a "man" or "woman," or the weariness of having heard everything being blamed on the "systemic" and "racist," has had its effect on the public generally, and they're sick of the nonsense. They know they need a change; and it's not yet quite evident what the next phase of things will be. But I think "Woke" is dead...at least in the minds of the residual sane.

It does seem pretty evident that we can examine semi-socialist and quasi-socialist government in the US (for example). California seems to fit the bill.

Cali still holds elections and has two parties. And they haven't abolished private property, though they're trying to tax it into oblivion. There are "means of production" they haven't "seized" so far. So they're actually not Socialist yet. But they've gone a long way down the Woke-insanity trail, and showed -- as NY is now showing -- just what a dumpster fire lies down that path. In no way could anybody say that Cali is "better" now than before the Woke got hold of it. Even many of the affluent elites there, chief supporters of Socialism though they may often be, cannot deny that.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 4:31 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 2:08 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 1:35 pm
Nobody has agreed to the definition that you are using.

Well, nobody but Oxford, AI, Cambridge, Webster's, and a whole host of websites you can also look up. They seem to be struggling with the same delusions I am.

Good thing you've got a better definition. What is it?

You throw in a bunch of extra features/requirements/characteristics and then pretend that you have the same definition as "Oxford, AI, Cambridge, Webster's, and a whole host of websites".

Actually, I cut-and-pasted...which you would have known, if you even bothered to check.

Sorry. You're just wrong. Those definitions are straight from the cited sources.

But I don't see yours....????

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 7:19 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 4:31 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 2:08 pm
Well, nobody but Oxford, AI, Cambridge, Webster's, and a whole host of websites you can also look up. They seem to be struggling with the same delusions I am.

Good thing you've got a better definition. What is it?

You throw in a bunch of extra features/requirements/characteristics and then pretend that you have the same definition as "Oxford, AI, Cambridge, Webster's, and a whole host of websites".

Actually, I cut-and-pasted...which you would have known, if you even bothered to check.

Sorry. You're just wrong. Those definitions are straight from the cited sources.

But I don't see yours....????

These quotes are not how you are defining socialism :

You don't think Socialism has its own definition? It seems the internet begs to differ. So you might have to take it up with AI:

"Socialism is an economic and political system based on public or collective ownership of the means of production, aiming for a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources."

And Oxford:

"a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

I know what you have been writing about socialism in this thread and other threads.

I didn't come here yesterday, oblivious to what's been going on.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 7:25 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 7:19 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 4:31 pm
You throw in a bunch of extra features/requirements/characteristics and then pretend that you have the same definition as "Oxford, AI, Cambridge, Webster's, and a whole host of websites".

Actually, I cut-and-pasted...which you would have known, if you even bothered to check.

Sorry. You're just wrong. Those definitions are straight from the cited sources.

But I don't see yours....????

These quotes are not how you are defining socialism

Yeah, they are.

Now, where is YOUR definition...if you have one. And if you don't, then you're in no position to know what Socialism is or isn't, of course; and it will be obvious.

So fire away: what do you think "Socialism" is?

These quotes are not how you are defining socialism

Yeah, they are.

Mike already covered this with you.

For example :

But note that neither of those definitions deals with/limits the system of governance used. Could be non-democratic OR democratic.

No, not democratic. It can't be. If "the People" are to own all the "means of production," and if, for the sake of the Socialist project, no alternate party with some other political belief or orientation is allowed to exist, whatever is left cannot possibly be "democratic." It can only be totalitarian.

And that's just one example of your variance from those off-the-shelf definitions.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 8:26 pm

I must have missed the bit where you give your definition of "Socialism." It seems to have been cut off here, somehow...

And you still haven't provided your definition.

That's very interesting to me.

Like Mike, you want to criticize everybody else's definition, but you don't want to put forward any better definition. And you don't want to explain what you believe they missed in their definition. You just want to criticize, but not to reform Oxford, or AI, or anybody else, or to contribute to completing what you see as missing from the definition. You want to stay hidden. You want not to have to commit, take a position, and put your cards on the table. You'd rather just keep ignoring the request than to step up and answer the challenge.

Maybe it's because you don't actually know what Socialism is. Or maybe you're afraid to have to defend your own definition. I can't say. But it's interesting to me that you are afraid to speak plainly, to put forward a definition and defend it -- whereas I am not.

Hmmm....

That's not part of the definition. It's one of the necessary implications. You need to know the difference.

A "definition" means the basic explanation of what it is. An "implication" is something that follows logically or necessarily from some aspect of the concept, or some feature of the definition.

Socialist theory requires Socialism to be the total economic system of a country -- or, as the definition says, to "own all the means of production" and "eliminate private property." Socialism cannot do either if there is any other political party in play. So a necessary implication of Socialism is that it must eliminate democracy.

And that's correct.

It should be noted that when a society fails to display one of your "implications", you immediately say that it's not a socialist society.

Which is why I would say that your "implications" are actually part of your "definition".

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2026 10:59 pm

That's not part of the definition. It's one of the necessary implications. You need to know the difference.

A "definition" means the basic explanation of what it is. An "implication" is something that follows logically or necessarily from some aspect of the concept, or some feature of the definition.

Socialist theory requires Socialism to be the total economic system of a country -- or, as the definition says, to "own all the means of production" and "eliminate private property." Socialism cannot do either if there is any other political party in play. So a necessary implication of Socialism is that it must eliminate democracy.

And that's correct.

It should be noted that when a society fails to display one of your "implications", you immediately say that it's not a socialist society.

That's because it is failing to understand what Socialism requires of it. It thinks that it can have Socialism-without-Socialism, which is obvious nonsense.

But no, an implication is not the same as a definition, and I trust you can detect the difference between the two. However, any attempt to create the concept (by definition) while not understanding the logical entailments and requirements of the concept (the implications) results in nonsense.

"Democratic Socialism" is a phrase as silly, as nonsensical, as oxymoronic as "married bachelor" or "square circle." Nothing makes it add up, because it self-contradicts. And you'll find that, in the actual world, there are no places that are Socialist that have ever remained democratic at the same time.

Hmmm...it's gone quiet. Yet the advocates of Socialism are active on other threads.

Interesting.

Why is it that none will dare offer their own definition of "Socialism"? They all seem to run from the task.

Again, here's mine:

The elimination of private property, and the 'public' ownership of the means of production. If we take Marx seriously, we'd have to add a few things, especially, the elimination of what he called "religion," by which he evidently meant Judaism/Christianity. And, of course, it's got to entail a singular, monolythic, unremovable government...But the big two will do. Let's stick with them.

Watch out for the way the Socialists use the word "democracy," too. As James Lindsay has so aptly put the problem, "They have your vocabulary, but they don't use your dictionary." In other words, Socialist propagandists use a lot of words you recognize and use: "justice," "fairness," "equality," "the working class," "oppression," "racism," and "democracy." But by their use of these words, they do not mean what everybody else means. They assign each of these words their own, hidden, esoteric meaning. And they trust that when they chant one of these words, you'll snap to attention and jump to their side of the debate, supposing them to be advocating something you really believe in; after which, they will get to substitute their hidden, esoteric meaning of the word for yours, and you will find yourself being told you have to advocate what THEY want you to advocate -- that in fact, you already are on their side -- before you even have a chance to examine what they mean.

That's how they win. By "paltering with us in a double sense" as Shakespeare so aptly said of Macbeth's demons. They play around with words, until we don't know where we really are, or what we've ended up supporting. They're sneaks, liars and deceivers, not plain-speakers.

The word "democracy" is particularly instructive. The only way you'll know what Socialists mean by it is by knowing the deep theory of the Socialists. Mao, for example, defined "democracy" as "new democracy," or "the People's democratic dictatorship." (The word "dictatorship" is, of course, troubling enough. But let us disregard it for the moment.) What did Mao mean by, "the People's democratic" dictatorship? Who were these "People," and how did a "People's democracy" differ from just "democracy"?

Well, for Mao, "the People" only ever means the Socialists. And he gets this from Marx, actually, who borrowed it from Hegel. A similar idea is also expressed by the Marxist J.P. Sartre, when he declared of human beings that "existence precedes essence." In other words, human beings exist long before they become actually human. Human beings are "thrown into" the world at birth, and arrive "alienated from their humanity." They're not fully human. They're only potentially human, and only IF they become Socialists. Human identity, in their words, is "constructed," not inherent. And it's only found when one establishes one's true identity in relation to "the community" of Socialists. When one abandons one's sense of individuality, and embraces the redefined meaning of one's life in terms of "the community," becoming a Socialist, one has "actualized" oneself, and become actually human for the first time.

Only by entering into Socialist consciousness does one become unalienated, and fully human. Only then is one of "the People," because "the People" always refers to the Socialist faithful. And "democracy" means not "rule by everybody," but rather, only "rule by the People," i.e. by the Socialists. Democracy, as conceived by Socialism, never promises to serve the sub-human (i.e. most people, and the way all are born). It's only to serve the Socialists who have been awakened to their "true humanity" through Socialist consciousness.

This is what makes "democratic Socialism" an absurdity. If we take it literally, it's a self-contradiction; if we take it as Socialists mean it, it's merely a redundancy. For them, "democratic" means "serving Socialism." So the word "democratic" adds no meaning you would ever recognize. It simply adds the demand that you not recognize the "dictatorship," and keep believing that what Socialists do to you is "democratic," and thus is what you wanted,and what "the People" who make you you wanted, all along.

But this allows Socialists to claim they are "democratic." And people who hear it think that it means "democratic" Socialists are bound to allow them to continue to enjoy freedoms, or to vote as they wish, among multiple parties and platforms, and to keep the good they already possess, and to criticize the government freely, and to have a free press, and to raise their children as they'd like...whereas in reality, Socialists have never allowed any such thing, whenever they obtained sufficient power to squash it. The Socialists continue to claim to be "democratic" and "servants of the People," even while being nothing close to what most people think that means.

So no wonder these Socialists don't like definitions. Their whole strategy depends on being able to slide around the meanings of words and the purported claims of Socialism, without every nailing their feet to the ground. The last thing they want is for people to a) understand who Socialist really are, and what they're aiming to do, b) be able to critically analyze their program and intentions, or c) muster sufficient understanding to resist Socialist programming.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 4:37 pm The elimination of private property, and the 'public' ownership of the means of production. If we take Marx seriously, we'd have to add a few things, especially, the elimination of what he called "religion," by which he evidently meant Judaism/Christianity. And, of course, it's got to entail a singular, monolythic, unremovable government...But the big two will do. Let's stick with them.

I defined it in another thread and partially agreed with your definition. Public ownership of the means of production. The elimination of private property is not Marx. He specifically distinguished between production capital, property used to exploit labor and property you use. Homes, cars (perhaps horses then,, clothes, furniture etc. you get to have. He was really quite clear about that. He did not call for the removal of religion, though he thought it was a problem. He thought it was a symptom and it would wither away, just like he thought the state would wither away after a transition period. His sense of the coming withering of these two was naive in the extreme. The states did not wither away and those states were brutal, winning competitions in violence and oppression against the monarchies (for example) a couple of them replaced. He didn't want that outcome, but he was a dangerous fool to think it would just naturally happen.

But IC is conflating Socialism with Marxism. There was socialism before Marx (he referred to them as Utopian socialists) and socialisms after that had different roots. Contemporary to or after Marx and with different roots we have as a few examples Christian socialism, Anarchist socialism, and the Diggers. There are others.

I think discussions like this make it very easy for team A hate team B and vice versa. Focus on total systems.

How about discussing whether banks should be allowed to create money?
How about the new ways of making money without producing anything and without supporting the production of anything?
Should corporate charters be revoked and why aren't they when corporations engage in criminal acts that kill people?
How about anti-trust legislation? Are you on the Jefferson or the Hamilton side of that issue?
What restrictions if any on corporate and finance influence/control of politics, legislation, etc.?
Government oversight of industry? The founders were pre-scientific in a sense and didn't have to deal with things like Big Pharma and factory foods. Still they all agreed on some government oversight of industry. Where do you fall on the spectrum?
How do you feel about surveillance capitalism?
Should media be controlled by just a few large conglomerates?
How do you feel about the shift from the 50s Stakeholder capitalism in corporations to the current Stockholder capitalism? Which do you think is more moral?

In other words, focus on specific issues might lead to overlaps, or at the very least an understand of opposition concerns. It would highlight that not only are there many socialisms but there are many capitalisms, or free market economies if someone prefers that.

One team can run around screaming Socialism is Bad and the other team can scream Capitalism is bad and have a field day both with the excesses.
Or people could look at what is really going on. A lot of problematic stuff right now is not necessary for free markets and capitalism. You could go in many directions on all the above issues and still, regardless of position, have capitalism.

Many things that a socialist might want to change are actually in a traditional direction.

But if you stay at the abstract whole system view, you gloss over possible common ground. Gloss over complexity. No one has to take responsibilty for anything.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 5:58 pm There are others.

Let's see if your "others" are actually Socialists. You must have a specific set of criteria in mind, if you recognize cases. If you had none, you simply couldn't.

So what's your definition of "Socialism"?

I've given mine, so...?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 6:03 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 5:58 pm There are others.

Let's see if your "others" are actually Socialists. You must have a specific set of criteria in mind, if you recognize cases. If you had none, you simply couldn't.

So what's your definition of "Socialism"?

I've given mine, so...?

Socialism is for public or collective ownership and administration of the means of production, rather than private ownership. You know what I said in that post and earlier in another discussion, where your idea of socialism had nothing to do with the economy. I was pleased to see you mention that first part here. It's like you learned something.

Let's see if your "others" are actually Socialists.

Oh, snore. What you need more examples, but can't even bother to respond to what I wrote.

Avoid the challenge of most of that post.

I referred to you in the third person because your responses are lazy ass sniper.

I'll keep mainly ignoring you.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 6:17 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 6:03 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 5:58 pm There are others.

Let's see if your "others" are actually Socialists. You must have a specific set of criteria in mind, if you recognize cases. If you had none, you simply couldn't.

So what's your definition of "Socialism"?

I've given mine, so...?

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."

Now, recognizing that Socialism is the broad category, and Marxism the subcategory, we might say that all Marxists have to be Socialists, but not all Socialists have to be Marxists. Fair enough.

But how do we justify allowing private property, when some of that property is a "means of production"? Can Socialism allow genuine diversity of political choice? And can a Socialist state be created, but only last for, say, four years, after which the citizens remain free to replace it with a "capitalist" or feudal, or monarchist scheme, or any other scheme they wish? Can a Socialist state be truly Socialist if it is not permitted to involve itself in "the production of Socialist Man," meaning the human reengineering project Socialism claims to be its core feature? Can a Socialist state continue to exist where, say, half of its population decides they don't want to become "Socialist Man"? Can a Socialist state exist if it is not allowed to meddle with public education, or to control the development of future generations in the name of Socialism? Can a Socialist state exist if it allows itself to be criticized by a free press, so that all its shortcomings are exposed to a free people? Can a Socialist state exist, but not be permitted to control the economy completely? Can a Socialist state exist alongside the competition of free enterprise? Can Socialism exist where rival nations operating under capitalism continue to compete with it, and it continues to lose ground to them? And can it exist among alternatives without resorting to an aggressive military and secret police force?

If you think about it, you'll see that all these things undermine the chances of success of ANY Socialist state. So while Socialism may choose not to put any of these "in the shop window," so to speak, you're going to find that it requires ALL of these things mentioned above. And you'll find that in every single case of a Socialist state, it has seized control of all these things...100% of the time.

So once again, are the Socialists being honest and forthcoming about what they want? They never have, and probably never will be honest, because people would be alarmed (and rightly so) by the prospect of any regime that instantly demanded all of these freedoms and privileges to be removed from the general populace.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 7:08 pm

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 6:17 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 6:03 pm
Let's see if your "others" are actually Socialists. You must have a specific set of criteria in mind, if you recognize cases. If you had none, you simply couldn't.

So what's your definition of "Socialism"?

I've given mine, so...?

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". A person could still own the basic things he or she needed in order to live, like a house, a car, tools, clothing and food to eat. She or he wouldn't be allowed to own things beyond that. Everything else such as institutions like factories or banks would be communal (what Marx termed "private property" under capitalism). 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.

mansions and Maseratis for everyone...

-Imp