On the inevitability of socialist failure

[Torrocca]

The best way for Socialism to achieve success is to remove - or, at the very least, mitigate as much as possible - the power structures and hierarchies that allow for these types of tendencies to take control of societies. The obvious solution to that is democracy - not just voting representatives into office, or whatever, but full-fledged, participatory democracy (preferably decentralized in nature) at basically every level of society, from the community up to the state itself, if there is such a state.

Making it difficult to conduct foreign policy. Read "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" which explains in detail the need for the soviet rebels to shift to a non-ideological foreign policy even before Stalin making structure necessary. It'll destroy the idea of workable Anarchism. I'm asking you this Torocca as I'm fascinated by your changed beliefs after it if any after getting educated from that book, even if your core views stay mostly the same. To me though it discredited Anarchism.

Difficult, but not impossible. We're well beyond the days where the quickest means of communication was the radio and telephones that required operators to set the line. We have communications and information technology so vastly advanced compared to the early and mid 20th century that foreign policy would be far easier, even for an Anarchist society, to handle that it was in that era.

[Torrocca]

On a technical level, psychopathy and other such psychological disorders are natural, but at least some of them, like psychopathy, are also abnormal to human nature, seeing as how they are disorders. That's not at all to say anything bad about the people who experience these things, just that some of these are abnormal experiences for humanity.

Though, it is rather interesting to see how 1 in 5 people in power are psychopaths. If nothing else, it puts to question the whole idea of power.

Insinuating that the tendencies that created civilization are inherently psychopathic is well, very unscientific.

I'm not by any means saying or even suggesting that civilization was created by psychopathy. I'm saying that the creation of civilization fostered the means by which abnormal, power-hungry tendencies, such as psychopathy, could go on to create the power structures that arose following the rise of civilization.

Also no, what you said does not put to question the idea of power though I don't dispute it's worrying that so many are and that they are well-suited to pursuing power.

I mean, to some degree, it does put it to question when psychopathy is overrepresented in positions of power compared to among the general population.

[Orostan]

True. And it circles back to the viewpoint that socialism (or any other economic/political system) will succeed or fail if humans as a collective want it to, give or take competition and sometimes dumb luck.

The best way for Socialism to achieve success is to remove - or, at the very least, mitigate as much as possible - the power structures and hierarchies that allow for these types of tendencies to take control of societies. The obvious solution to that is democracy - not just voting representatives into office, or whatever, but full-fledged, participatory democracy (preferably decentralized in nature) at basically every level of society, from the community up to the state itself, if there is such a state.

The vast majority of Stalin’s ‘victims’ were Nazi soldiers. I’d say killing Nazis who want to commit genocide against your people is justified and good.

TIL'd Kulaks, dissidents, Ukrainians, various deported ethnic groups like the Tatars, Volga Germans, etc. were all Nazis.

I already showed how the “Holodomor” and the absurd purge death counts were bullshit. Do you just want to condemn any socialist country that did anything at all?

[Torrocca]

The best way for Socialism to achieve success is to remove - or, at the very least, mitigate as much as possible - the power structures and hierarchies that allow for these types of tendencies to take control of societies. The obvious solution to that is democracy - not just voting representatives into office, or whatever, but full-fledged, participatory democracy (preferably decentralized in nature) at basically every level of society, from the community up to the state itself, if there is such a state.



TIL'd Kulaks, dissidents, Ukrainians, various deported ethnic groups like the Tatars, Volga Germans, etc. were all Nazis.

I already showed how the “Holodomor” and the absurd purge death counts were bullshit.

I don't give a fuck about the numbers, I give a fuck about the fact of the matter that Stalin ruthlessly had numerous people - innocent or otherwise - massacred, purged, deported, enslaved, or worse, and you're acting like they fucking deserved it.

Do you just want to condemn any socialist country that did anything at all?

Nope, which is why I'm not condemning any Socialist countries. I'm condemning your favorite authoritarian regime that masqueraded itself as Socialist.

[The United Provinces of North America]

The best way for Socialism to achieve success is to remove - or, at the very least, mitigate as much as possible - the power structures and hierarchies that allow for these types of tendencies to take control of societies. The obvious solution to that is democracy - not just voting representatives into office, or whatever, but full-fledged, participatory democracy (preferably decentralized in nature) at basically every level of society, from the community up to the state itself, if there is such a state.



TIL'd Kulaks, dissidents, Ukrainians, various deported ethnic groups like the Tatars, Volga Germans, etc. were all Nazis.

I already showed how the “Holodomor” and the absurd purge death counts were bullshit. Do you just want to condemn any socialist country that did anything at all?

Can I ask you something? Would you want your family murdered because of religion, race, sex (gender), heritage? You need to seek help at a mental institution.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

So low-wage work isn’t dehumanizing? A worker giving the full fruits of his labour
over to his employer and the rich capitalist class? That is not dehumanizing?

People starving on the street while the rich banking class eats in privilege while
the poor eat the scraps off their table all they earned from a hard days work.
That’s life out of balance right there.

Human beings are naturally competitive, yes,but humans are also compassionate and caring.In Kindergarden we learn that it’s important to share what we have in a collective way with others.The natural competitiveness you speak of can be bred out of the human race,and must over time,or it will mean the doom of humanity.We can grow and evolve past our instinctive natures over time.Unless you wish to fall behind due to a lack of evolution or change,but I leave the mistake up to you.I don’t know how a fascist would think about these topics,and prefer not to.

How old are you? If I may ask. You brought up kindergarten, the world doesn't work like what you just wrote. Survival of the fittest, did you learn about evolution?

Darwin himself rejected the abuse of his writings for the ideology of Social Darwinism (Essentially the ideology of "The strong shall thrive, while the weak shall perish"), and "selfishness" is not "the human nature" :
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0389-1
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/bl ... man-nature
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... e-selfish/

[Rojava Free State]

I lol'd when I read the title

[Confederate Norway]

There is no more reasoning needed to say Socialism doesn't work than pointing out that it hasn't worked anywhere. With that being said, I do think there is one way for Socialism to possibly work; Have the state government be in charge of the means of production and not the central government.

[Necroghastia]

>what is mutual aid

I suppose the ants of an ant colony ought to just start killing each other, huh?

You do realize I am not referring to the scientific example of "Survival of the Fittest", right?

How old are you? If I may ask. You brought up kindergarten, the world doesn't work like what you just wrote. Survival of the fittest, did you learn about evolution?

God damn, at least try to be consistent.

[Plzen]

An economic system is, at its core, a process for determining what, how, and for whom production takes place. Its purpose is to organise the efficient production of valuable goods and services from limited resources. Note: valuable goods and services.

I won't comment on all the theoretical approaches to socialism that exist, but in terms of the actual socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact that failed, they failed because central command cannot collect and act on the information needed to do this.

In modern liberal society we accept that the determinant of value is want. Goods and services are valuable to the extent that people want those things. In order to produce valuable goods and services, the economic system has to know how valuable things are, which means knowing how much people want certain things as opposed to certain other things. In capitalist society, this information is propagated through price. People are willing to pay more for things they want more, so the most desired goods have the highest price. While, due to income inequality, this is far from perfect (a billionaire doesn't really want his $200,000 sports car as much as a factory worker wants a $200,000 education for his children), it's far better than the methods by which a socialist command economy collects this information. To make matters worse, historically socialist economies tended to be authoritarian, which meant the governments making these centralised production plans didn't even have the feedback system of open elections.

Remember that old joke about a factory delivering a warehouse full of cast-iron chandeliers that were too heavy to stay on the ceiling when the commissar decided to rate factory output by weight.

Then, of course, even where information existed, socialist command economies tended to fail to act on them. There is strong evolutionary pressure on companies in capitalist economies. Under the market price mechanism, if your company uses more resources to produce something than a competitor company, your company must either adopt the more efficient method used by your rival, or disappear. Under a socialist economy, especially under an authoritarian government that is to some extent immune to public feedback, what is the mechanism to ensure that the government produce things efficiently? Even in fairly democratic regimes like the United States, where wasting taxpayer money can and often do blow up into media scandals and where the government needs popular approval in order to continue to exist, you see massive wastage and inefficiency in government spending, especially in matters of defence and the like where there's reasonable justification for hiding information from public review.

If a socialist economy is to be successful, it needs to address these things.

[Rojava Free State]

There is no more reasoning needed to say Socialism doesn't work than pointing out that it hasn't worked anywhere. With that being said, I do think there is one way for Socialism to possibly work. Have the state government be in charge of the means of production and not the central government.

What do we call a system where corporations disappear and business goes back to being five guys and a bar, cause I want that system

[UniversalCommons]

When half of the jobs disappear because they have been taken by robots and the politicians have become corrupt to the point of being unrepresentative will people care about socialism or capitalism. The latest revolutions have not been about capitalism and socialism, they have been about authoritarianism, representation, and corruption. When you tell someone workers of the world unite and they are designing t-shirts for computers to make they will say huh, why is my basic income so low, how come I can't have more aluminum for the manufacturing machine in my neighborhood so I can make myself an electric bike and how come they won't let me get credit on the new solar and nuclear microgrid in my neighborhood. I need to keep my microwave running so I can eat my reconstituted ramen.

Half of the people ten to twenty years from now won't know what a regular job looks like. They will be contending with elected officials who made their money as executives from Facebook or Alphabet or the reborn Exxon Nuclear power company. They will be reading manifestos written by people like Jeremy Rifkin or other such nonsense. Capitalism will have half a dozen different flavors, and the Nordics will have taken over the opened country from climate change under a resurgent high tech form of social democracy. It will be the middle way versus green capitalism with a high tech bent.

[Pensalum]

Socialism doesn't fail, it is killed by capitalist nations who must do everything in their power to make the opposing economic ideology appear oppressive and unstable. Socialist parties and individuals who come to gain popular leadership in their countries, whether it be through revolutionary means or otherwise, are instantly decried as despots and tyrants. Capitalists then wage economic warfare against them until they are forced to take authoritative measures that lend credence to their authoritarian labels. Since the capitalist nations have been around for so much longer, and have developed complicated globalized systems to sustain and defend their power and capital, socialist movements never stand a chance. Even then, there have been some truly inspiring socialist movements in history that have flourished until they were eventually squandered by capitalists or fascists (Paris Commune, Spanish Popular Front).

To the argument that the selfish nature that is supposedly inherent to human behavior causes the collapse of socialism and socialist movements, I would recommend you look into the views of the rational egoists. They suggest that this so-called selfishness is actually socialism's biggest strength: that if people's self interests are well informed then those people will inadvertently act in the self interest of everyone else (because what is good for oneself should reasonably be good for another). If people are educated about socialism, and the exploitative nature of capitalism, then they will naturally see that liberation through socialism is in their logical best interest, and it is inadvertently in the best interest of everyone else. I'm not a rational egoist so this isn't necessarily the ideology I endorse, but it is worth considering.

[Vivolkha]

I must similarly question this notion that productivity would dwindle. Whence cometh the sloth?

This is true, by the 1980s the countries in communist Europe were affected by a near universal decline in productivity. Not only "socialist discipline" was routinely disregarded (alcoholism, high divorce rates and other common problems in the capitalist world) but there is the simple plain fact that state ownership of the economy is extremely ineffective, especially when switching to an "intensive" economic phase.
The problem is also seen in Venezuela and can be again attributed to policies that completely disregard economic efficiency. PDVSA doubled its employees under Chavismo but production did not increase - the new employees were redundant and appointed because of populist and political motives.

[Duvniask]

Whence cometh low participation?


And before the end of feudalism, not all people were capitalists (in the sense of supporting capitalism).

Most people accept the current paradigm of capitalism and try to exist within it. This wasn't always the case, but it became so after our societies cast off the shackles of feudal norms. Why should this principle not hold under a post-capitalist system?


I must similarly question this notion that productivity would dwindle. Whence cometh the sloth?

Opposition to socialism. In a socialist system, I cannot engage in any other preferred socio-economic system. I am, by default, required to engage in socialism. If I desire not to engage in socialism, then I don't participate in the economy whatsoever.

And under capitalism you cannot engage in any other preferred socio-economic system either, as much as certain utopians want to pretend otherwise. In a vacuum I have no desire to engage in the capitalist system, but I do so because I wish to earn a living. Under socialism, at least in it's early stage, you'd be remunerated according to your contribution, or to quote the old man himself: "The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another." So I'm not sure why you would not have the desire to engage. In contrast to capitalism people would, on average, have greater control over the production process that they themselves engage in, they would have greater control over their own work. That alone is one reason why I think participation could easily heighten.

The inevitability of socialist failure is due to the nagging economic calculation problem of the socialist planners.

Collecting the information necessary to rationally plan and allocate resources in our complex modern economies is infinitely easier with computer technology. To this end I can recommend Paul Cockshott's and Allin Cottrell's Towards a New Socialism. It's dated (from 1993), but it rings even more true now than it did when it was written.

Are they inevitable? Or has it only been an accident of history that they've failed in the past? And are those conditions still prevalent or have they perhaps changed?

I'd argue those are questions that you should think about OP before writing.

I think you should re-read the OP if you've even read it at all.

The soviet union's failures were those of centralization, not inherent issues of a command economy.

It's not even really that tbh. You could make a very good argument that Gorby's reforms are what really killed the USSR.

It might have put the nail in the coffin, but the system had been disintegrating for a long time before that.

[Nakena]

There is no more reasoning needed to say Socialism doesn't work than pointing out that it hasn't worked anywhere. With that being said, I do think there is one way for Socialism to possibly work. Have the state government be in charge of the means of production and not the central government.

What do we call a system where corporations disappear and business goes back to being five guys and a bar, cause I want that system

This might be interesting perhaps Distributism

[Duvniask]

I must similarly question this notion that productivity would dwindle. Whence cometh the sloth?

This is true, by the 1980s the countries in communist Europe were affected by a near universal decline in productivity. Not only "socialist discipline" was routinely disregarded (alcoholism, high divorce rates and other common problems in the capitalist world) but there is the simple plain fact that state ownership of the economy is extremely ineffective, especially when switching to an "intensive" economic phase.
The problem is also seen in Venezuela and can be again attributed to policies that completely disregard economic efficiency. PDVSA doubled its employees under Chavismo but production did not increase - the new employees were redundant and appointed because of populist and political motives.

The so-called "communist" countries were state capitalist economies, where the state, regardless of its pretenses, assumed the role of universal capitalist, much like a single, nation-wide corporation dictating all economic activity. They all followed the logic of capital accumulation, seeking to expand the national capital as a whole, engaging in commodity production and had commodified wage-labor. The peculiarities of these systems are what rendered them defective (especially in their later years), not because they were fundamentally different from capitalism. Quite the contrary, in fact, they were in many instances capitalism at its worst. Others, including our very own Trots, have explained it far better than I.

The failure of past attempts at "socialism" is two-fold:
Most of the countries resulting from socialist revolutions have disappeared. And for their relatively brief existence, these countries failed in abolishing the conditions upon which the capital-ism rests.

[Page]

The capitalist countries were already focused on destroying socialism before Hitler even blew his brains out. As soon as it was evident that the Axis was doomed, the highest priority of the West was the utter ruin of the USSR and socialism worldwide, because capitalists see socialism as an existential threat. They cannot tolerate capitalism in their own land with socialism existing somewhere else, because even the shadow of revolution is a threat. Of course the USSR and later the PRC and their spheres of influence were hostile toward the capitalist world too, but this goes all the way back to before the end of the First World War, the Western allies along with Japan tried to stop the revolution before the Bolsheviks even consolidated power.

The socialist countries of the world were always at a disadvantage, as the capitalist world had much more useful land, more oil, far better food production, and geographic advantages. Take a look at Russia on a map and you'll see that almost all of their coast is frozen for at least part of the year, and that they're nearly surrounded by NATO, blocking access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Geopolitics is everything. Britain's position is perfect for wielding naval power and being safe from invasion, and that allowed it to build a worldwide empire. The United States of America likewise has a bounty of geopolitical advantages. The West used these advantages to isolate the socialist world so of course the Cold War ended with a capitalist victory, the socialist world was under siege for decades. I would bet that in a parallel universe where all the capitalist countries were socialist and all the socialist countries capitalist, the socialists would have won that Cold War due to their huge geopolitical advantage.

The socialist world is still under siege and now that the USSR is gone (and with the PRC now focused on its own imperialist agenda of the state capitalist kind), it's not even close to a fair fight. One looks at Venezuela and thinks they're seeing the failure of socialism (by the way, Venezuela is not even all that socialist, the majority of their economy is privately owned, Venezuela is more like a third world welfare state). Some of Venezuela's problems can be attributed to corruption, those in power siphoning off the peoples' wealth. The situation can also be attributed to incompetence, as Venezuela failed to diversify its economy and therefore crashed when oil prices went down. But a huge reason for Venezuela's predicament is they have been suffering from US sanctions. Without these sanctions, Venezuela would not be in such a bad position. Cuba does remarkably well for such an isolated country, imagine how much better off they'd be if they weren't under embargo. And you only need to look at 1970's Chile to see that their stable, democratic socialism did not ''fail'', it was crushed by the CIA.

So it's really not fair to say that socialism always fails when you consider that socialism is always under siege.

[SD_Film Artists]

I think it's fair to say capitalism will fail because of human nature, it enables our greed far too much.

It's fair to say Capitalism is the way. With all it's flaws, it's still the best form of government.

Besides it being an economic system rather than a government type I'd say that a balanced system with a market economy and national healthcare and other 'safety nets' is the best way and most developed countries have adopted it; otherwise you get the situation in America where they're fearful of 'big pharma' yet also loving to support it, like somekind of Stockholm syndrome.

[Cosmicium]

There is no more reasoning needed to say Socialism doesn't work than pointing out that it hasn't worked anywhere. With that being said, I do think there is one way for Socialism to possibly work. Have the state government be in charge of the means of production and not the central government.

What do we call a system where corporations disappear and business goes back to being five guys and a bar, cause I want that system

In its purest form, a fantasy that requires the exact same "human nature" that anti-socialists claim socialism or communism requires, unless the government constantly splits larger companies into small businesses.

[Ethel mermania]

This is kind of what I mean. It's easy to make these sweeping generalizations. Appealing to our "human nature" is rather vague and non-specific. It's just as easy to claim capitalism will fail because of human nature.

It lacks substance as an argument, to say the least.

I think it's fair to say capitalism will fail because of human nature, it enables our greed far too much.

So far capitalism has been a rousing success.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

Someone has never learnt of Social Darwinism.

Yeah, it’s misunderstanding Darwin.

It's also a stupid thing to believe in the 21st century. Meritocracy is a good thing, but letting the poor starve to death is another.

[DACOROMANIA]

Socialism is a political ideology but often quoted by far-leftists as a reason.
How did this start? because of 2 different men. One of them based it on some christian values. The another was Marx with the support of his friend Engels. All this thing had started in the 19th century. But the book of Marx influenced socialism to a large scale and became "the parent of socialism" as the bolsheviks claimed him to be. The guy who won on this ideology influence was Marx with his book. However, this ideology adopted "the revolution" as a violent reactionary attitude and part of it.
To understand this better we have to look at the life conditions of the 19th century where there were 2 classes: the bourgeois aristocrats and the rural workers. The rich and the poor. At the beginning of the 20th century many people had founded socialist parties in the European nations. But the political party that had changed all was the Communist Party from Russia, the far side of the left that made the Party itself to be "the people". This political party had two simple rules inspired from Lenin: "What the party decides to be moral it is moral" and "An enemy of the party is an enemy of the people". Later another famous motto was likely a communist rule: "Evolving through work". So all had to work. They had killed the aristocrats in the way that French Revolution did but more than that everyone that was much wealthier than a "normal worker" became "an enemy".
In this kind of Socialism if you became richer or much smarter than a Party boss then you had to be killed either by an execution squadron either in Gulag working till to death.

Today in the world there is no difference of classes such as the aristocrats that owned the industry and the subject workers. Socialism always opposed Capitalism as a way of the rich.
After WW2 the United Nations had developed the Human Rights doctrine. The Western nation made the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) while the Eastern Bloc made the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Soviet Union always opposed on the Civil and Political Rights.
After the Cold War these both covenants on Human Rights were adopted by the majority of states. I don't know if USA refused to sign on these. However, these were made in Europe.

Is Socialism on the inevitability of failure? As long as it is embracing the far-left side with all those oppressive dictatorship behaviors... it's obviously on failure.

At the beginning the Socialism ideal was for liberation and better conditions at work and at home. Then it was changed to the oppression of the workers. Isn't that an irony? All had to work. Those unable to work were sent in Gulag by Stalin. What difference is between Stalin and Hitler? Both were socialists, so...

Yet there somewhere still exists a state where no free day in weekend might exist but only work all day long. You know that state for sure.

Yeah, it’s misunderstanding Darwin.

It's also a stupid thing to believe in the 21st century. Meritocracy is a good thing, but letting the poor starve to death is another.

Meritocracy in the sense that Confucius had proposed for the state governing positions as based on exams was a good thing. But this in the sense of a new postmodern ideology is going forward to another Soviet Union example. Read more on that ideology and you'll understand.

[United Muscovite Nations]

1) No evidence!

Literally every historian accepts that Stalin was responsible for a vast amount of death. 20,000,000 is the most commonly accepted number, which would make him deadlier than Hitler. I for sure agree the USSR was socialist but it was also hilariously authoritarian under Stalin.

It's closer to 9-15 million depending on whether you count the Holodomor, which is a contentious topic. Also, Hitler killed way more than just the people in the Holocaust, so Hitler's death toll is probably closer to 30 million.

The 20 million number comes from Robert Conquest's estimates prior to the opening of the Soviet archives. Once they were open, Conquest revised his estimate to 15 million.

[United Muscovite Nations]

That number is utter nonsense and not taken seriously by historians that have studied the USSR such as J. Getty.

Getty is pretty much the Soviet equivalent of the Institute for Historical Review lol

That's not true at all and the general consensus of historians has moved closer to Getty as much of his research has been vindicated by the opening of the Archives. He was criticized as an apologist during the Cold War, but since then he's been considered a pretty mainstream historian whose work on totalitarianism is foundational to the understanding of bureaucratic models. Getty wasn't doing apologia for Stalin, he was criticizing the concept of totalitarianism itself. Getty's work doesn't focus on death tolls so much as it does on institutions of government and their autonomy.

He's extremely critical of Stalin, regarding him as both incompetent and evil, he's no apologist, people just mistake what he's even writing about. He's trying to tear down the idea that single leaders maintain dictatorial controls over a bureaucratic state, so his work is incredibly important in the development of both Soviet studies and genocide studies.

He explains it quite well on his personal bio on UCLA's website (forgive the second person, speech, you have to do that when writing bios for faculty pages, even though it's self-written):

His research seeks to understand how the greatest experiment of the 20th century, led by a movement that grew out of rational, enlightened, egalitarian, and democratic traditions resulted in dictatorship and the deaths of millions of its own people. His approach is social, political, and structural and he insists that Soviet history can be studied with the same methodologies we use on other times, places, and systems. It is a sad sign of the politicized Cold War origins and primitive development of Soviet studies that such concentration on factors other than Stalin's personality has been considered radical.