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To be fair, even Marx related that true communism could not come about without revolution. So the statement -- "A communist is a socialist with a gun" although an over simplification; it isn't totally unfounded.
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that....
And more wrong than that, lol.
What grades have got to do with it?
Grades is something what you receive according to the effort invested in study plus level of intelligence.
To say that same principle is applied in real life, that all people are receiving what they deserve according to their effort and abilities is plain wrong.
Sure one can understand that the hard labor of a slave will never be paid off in the same manner as the hard labor of his master, no?)))
Why is the word Socialism used on communist nations? China, Cuba and North Korea are communist whereas Sweden and in some ways even Japan or England are socialist. And yet, people say "socialist" for all of them.
Hitler called his own party a socialist party - and he hated Marxism. Which would again suggest that communism is not socialism.
I have a feeling that conservative Americans are the ones who constantly blur the two. Whenever you say socialism to a conservative he will say "They tried it in Russia for 80 years and look what happened."
Most countries have a mixture of socialism and capitalism. Hence it's academic to say a country is socialist or capitalist.
Because since "communism" implies that according to "political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs, it actually makes it an utopia, that has never been achieved. ( I mean how are you going to pay everyone according to their NEEDS? What do you define as "needs" at the first place?)
So this stage has never been achieved, but public ownership of means of production was in place and that fits the bill for Socialism, which is defined as
"a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
So theoretically speaking no matter what you call Sweden or Gr. Britain - as long as they don't fulfill this condition of the "state ownership of means of production" - they are really not Socialist countries.
Now their policies are socially-oriented, no doubt about it, but it still doesn't make them "Socialist countries."
Pretty close to the truth; socialism requires coercion, but both thwe workings of a reasonably-free economy and the free press that must go with it tends, under normal circumstances, to keep infringement on individual rights from getting out of hand.
The problwem, as this writer sees it, is that the more concentrated and away from local control (where the habitual abusers/parasites can be identified) the program becomes. Case in oint is our edicational system which is subjected to increasingly intense state regulation and Federal "mandates/guidlines".
If globalization continues to allow other nations (and the disciplines to whichthey are subject) to catch up to us, the fantasiesof the professional bureaucrats are going to become unsustainable.
I've always thought of socialism as being "in between" capitalism and communism.
That's why I was annoyed at people saying socialism and communism are the same things.
The spectrum is like:
anarchy (no govt) > libertarianism (small govt) > capitalism (like US today) > socialism (big govt) > Marxism/communism (total govt)
Because since "communism" implies that according to "political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs, it actually makes it an utopia, that has never been achieved. ( I mean how are you going to pay everyone according to their NEEDS? What do you define as "needs" at the first place?)
So this stage has never been achieved, but public ownership of means of production was in place and that fits the bill for Socialism, which is defined as
"a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
In true communism there isn't even supposed to be currency, so workers aren't supposed to get paid anything. In true communism, workers don't work for money or personal needs (per se). In Marx's ideal communist society people would work not because they had to in order to survive but because of their own sense of responsibility to the utopian society. For the communist ideology to work as it was designed, production of commodities and goods had to be so high that these items could be easily redistributed amongst the population based on need (which was to be determined by the authoritative body since true communism is also supposed to be stateless).
I'm not sure how this philosophy was supposed to realistically sustain itself in the long run considering that there would inevitably be a group of people who would need to shoulder the responsibility of producing for the society; knowing that no matter how hard they worked would not receive any more than the able bodied individuals who chose not to work. It's my guess that this is why there have been such varying degrees of communism practiced throughout history, even though revolutionaries want to point to the Marxist ideology when drumming up support for the cause.
All systems require coercion. "Free-market" capitalism? Somebody needs to enforce contracts and the rule of law. Not everybody will honor his pledge to repay in exchange for services rendered, and thus the need for coercion (law courts, police, so forth). Do you like personal property? Great, but some people will wish to grab it anyway. They require coercion to be kept at bay. What happens if employers collude to keep wages low and prices high? Well, somebody has to coerce them to cease their predatory practices. What if workers realize that they are in the majority and vote lavish benefits for themselves? Again, somebody has to coerce them to vote otherwise.
Maybe free-market capitalism has too much of a coercive police force, enforcing this or that? OK, let's try anarchy. I take care of my stuff, you take care of yours. But wait - I'm stronger than you, and want to grab your stuff. You've just been coerced. Don't like that? Band with your neighbor to keep me at bay? Now I'm the one being coerced.
Ultimately every system is maintained at the barrel of a gun. The only difference is whose gun, and how many guns, and how nakedly they are displayed.
All systems require coercion. "Free-market" capitalism? Somebody needs to enforce contracts and the rule of law. Not everybody will honor his pledge to repay in exchange for services rendered, and thus the need for coercion (law courts, police, so forth). Do you like personal property? Great, but some people will wish to grab it anyway. They require coercion to be kept at bay. What happens if employers collude to keep wages low and prices high? Well, somebody has to coerce them to cease their predatory practices. What if workers realize that they are in the majority and vote lavish benefits for themselves? Again, somebody has to coerce them to vote otherwise.
Maybe free-market capitalism has too much of a coercive police force, enforcing this or that? OK, let's try anarchy. I take care of my stuff, you take care of yours. But wait - I'm stronger than you, and want to grab your stuff. You've just been coerced. Don't like that? Band with your neighbor to keep me at bay? Now I'm the one being coerced.
Ultimately every system is maintained at the barrel of a gun. The only difference is whose gun, and how many guns, and how nakedly they are displayed.
Note that you have described two different forms of coercion. We might call them 'aggressive' and 'non-aggressive.'
In the cased of the person being coerced to live up to a contract, unless he was forced to sign the contract at gunpoint, that is non-aggressive. Say you buy a car and agree to make monthly payments, but don't. Then the car dealer can repo the car, but since you signed the deal voluntarily, it is non-aggressive. Actually there is a case to be made that it is not, in the overall scheme, 'coercion,' even though he might take the car back by force.
In the case of anarchy, when the bigger stronger guy comes to grab your stuff, that is aggressive coercion. When you band together with your neighbor to stop him, that is non-aggressive.
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