Why aren't you a socialist?

[h="1"]“When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist, when asked if he is a “Newtonian” or of a biologist when asked if he is a “Pasteurian.”
There are truths so evident, so much a part of the peoples’ knowledge, that it is now useless to debate them. One should be a “Marxist” with the same naturalness with which one is a “Newtonian” in physics or a “Pasteurian.” If new facts bring about new concepts, the latter will never take away that portion of truth possessed by those that have come before.[/h]CHE

And I'm guessing Einstein (who was a socialist) didn't?

Whether inequality is an issue or not is contingent on your values. Unlike you, I don't consider wealth inequality to be an issue. If you live in a first world country, where you have so many opportunities to better your lot, the only reason you'd ever harp about economic inequality is if you're simply jealous of those, who are better off than you.

What you describe is not a flaw, it's a rudimentary feature of human nature - that people will always be pursuing their own interests. Ambition and striving for a better life is a basic human desire that is completely irreconcilable with the socialist model, where every person is equal and on the same footing. As long as there are people, who are willing to work for a better life and people, who are lazy and would rather squander their life on cheap entertainment - there will always be inequality.

Socialism puts equality before freedom and thus necessarily reduces the latter. With less freedom, people have less options to make their lives better - this is why socialist systems fail. They fail, because socialists do not understand human nature on a fundamental level. They also do not understand that human nature is immutable and cannot be socially engineered. Every attempt at homo sovecticus has been a failure.

How can free markets exist without private property, with which people could trade with?

When you say 'success' you're using veiled terms to mean that someone has managed to set up a very efficient process of exploitation. They've managed to extract the maximum value from the labours of others while paying as little as possible. The rich are successful because they have exploited others to do so. Look at any major corporation in the world today: Nike, Coca Cola, Apple, Microsoft. Wealth sustained by the exploitation of poor workers.

But you don't think it's fair?

Let me explain to you what is unfair.

I hypothetically work in a factory producing chairs from raw resources. I work 8 hours a day and am paid £8 an hour. Obviously using basic maths you can work out that I'm being paid £64 a day.

The problem here is that I've produced far more than £64 of value. I've actually created nearer on £100 of value. But I'm not actually receiving the full fruit of my labours. I'm not receiving it because the person I'm working for (who's not actually working) needs to keep some profit for himself after he's sold off my work and paid me some fraction of their actual worth for it. The only possible justification is this vague idea that of 'risk' involved with starting this business, but it relies on the assumption that without capitalism the business wouldn't have been started at al, which is nonsense on the face of it.

Capitalism is inherently 'unfair.' And it leads to the most disgusting excesses. Poverty.org.uk points out that



Or you could look at this BBC article that also explains how grossly unequal American society is.



And in an OECD report, they wrote



Oxfam point out "85 wealthiest individuals in the world have a combined wealth equal to that of the bottom 50% of the world's population, or about 3.5 billion people," and "According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of the report, the wealthiest 1% owns 46% of the world's wealth; the 85 richest people, a small part of the wealthiest 1%, own about 0.7% of the human population's wealth, which is the same as the bottom half of the population.^[18]"

But of course the existence of such horrific inequality is a non-problem if you don't see inequality as a problematic feature in the first place. Personally I find it morally offensive and unacceptable that some men enjoy such extravagant wealth and grotesquely excessive luxury while so many starve in the street, going unfed and unclothed, lacking shelter and safety.

But aside from being offensive on an ethical and philosophical level, inequality has measurable negative impacts on society and the economy. It's not about 'envy.'

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation wrote a report on the health and social problems caused by income inequality. These are some of the key points to take from its summary of the paper:



The New York Times likewise invesigated some of the impacts of income inequality on society. Not only does it have negative effects on society's health and social cohesion, it has a corrosive effect on democracy as well.



Of course, these are all things that socialists have been arguing for over two hundred years now, but these are good all the same.

I seem to have ruffled your fashionably leftist feathers. First of all, let me thank you for bringing his sixty five year old opinions on the matter to my attention - it strikes as appropriate that you're supporting an out of date and niche standpoint with an out of date and niche reference. I find it interesting that, for a man of numbers, his writing on the matter seems to lack figures in any capacity.

Therein lies the real discord for me - I feel drawn to cold, hard figures but socialism seems only to offer abstract pipe dreams. It seems to offer a 'what' (capitalist economies and so forth); it seems to offer a very noble 'why' (equality for all and so forth); it seems to fall short on offering a 'how' (changes and adaptations need to work in the real world; not just on paper and in coffee shops).

If you asked a physicist if they were 'a Newtonian' they'd probably laugh at you and tell you 'it's a good approximation to the truth but it's still wrong'.

Well, actually, you can't prove either of them. All you can do is disprove a scientific theory. But since Newtonian physics hasn't been disproved for something like 300 years now, we can probably assume it never will be.

MODS - CAN WE GET A GIANT ****ING POPUP ON THIS THREAD THAT JUST SAYS

- NOT ALL SOCIALISTS ARE STATISTS -

- NOT ALL SOCIALISTS SUPPORT THE EXISTENCE OF AN AUTHORITARIAN STATE -

- LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM ARE THINGS -

It would clear up so much confusion

And if you then asked him whether he was an Aristotelian, he'd laugh you out of the room entirely.

There are progressive degrees of wrong.

Come on dude, everyone knows Socialism = Stalin.

I subscribe to /r/LibertarianSocialism on reddit and it's a real shame that it's not as popular as it should be.

Also your second sentence seems to imply that I'm supporting my socialism entirely with Einstein's which simply isn't the case, you made the point that anyone who has a basic idea of maths isn't a socialist and I was merely coming back to that point.

Pun intended?

Parallel to this, I find socialists who truly act according to their principles to be rare. Capitalist ideals are to be scorned, but yes please to the car, computer and house which are the products of such a system. An interesting dichotomy of motives.

Evidently not as I don't know what you're referring to.

'progressive degrees of wrong' as socialism is supposed to be progressive

Gotcha.
Nope, just meant that it's a little wrong to say a tomato's a vegetable. It's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.

A small piece of housekeeping to start: if I could steer you towards the thread title; I was referring to myself and not to 'anyone.' That said, I understand why you extrapolated to that from my original post.

Fair enough

On the matter of socialism vs capitalism, I agree that there is naivety associated with both schools of thought. To me, however, there seems to be a greater degree of self-awareness within the capitalist system; I believe that the majority of people who were complicit, for want of a better term, in the aforementioned banking crisis are very well aware of the role they played. There seems to be a recognition that the system is imperfect (show me a perfect system and I'll show you a liar) but it is probably the best mechanism we have available just now - hence the propping up of banks with additional funding. There is an unquestionable risk of 'lions being led by donkeys' but, perhaps unfortunately, we have to operate within the confines of the real world. To my eye, this recognition confers a lesser degree of naivety to the capitalist system; the socialist seems to promote worker ownership of means production as a holy grail and that's that.

I wouldn't say every Socialist simply sees worker ownership of the means of production as the holy grail - I think many do give genuine thought to how a Socialist system would work. I do accept that Socialism is a bit of pipe dream and might well (in fact probably will) never come about but I definitely think there needs to be some big changes to how capitalism works.

Parallel to this, I find socialists who truly act according to their principles to be rare. Capitalist ideals are to be scorned, but yes please to the car, computer and house which are the products of such a system. An interesting dichotomy of motives.

Fair enough point. I still think that these things could still exist within a socialist system but there would be less oppression involved. I own a mobile phone despite the fact I know that there is a civil war in the Congo over the minerals contained in it. Pretty much everything created in a capitalist system is "blood-stained" and, at risk of sounding a bit pathetic, it doesn't have to be this way