From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 12:39:11 MDT
On Friday 25 October 2002 18:41, Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Friday, October 25, 2002 7:27 PM Samantha samantha@objectent.com
>
> wrote:
> >> Then you added, "Interestingly, many of these "socialist"
> >> groups also had strong beliefs about private property. In some
> >> areas they were quite competitive, and perhaps more properly
> >> described by the term "capitalist", but again, without a good
> >> definition, it's hard to know."
> >
> > I read him as asking for your working definition. You keep not
> > giving one. How about it?
>
> I can offer two working definitions for socialist society.
>
> One, the government controls the means of production. Under this sort
> of situation, individuals might still have private property and make
> some economic decisions for themselves, such as what to buy, but they
> cannot start or run private businesses.
>
In that case we live in an essentially socialist society. The govenment has
the right to levy arbitrary taxes on any kind of business it wants, and
effectively has the power to enforce it on a sub-group of those businesses.
Thus the government and at it's will control any business.
The fallacy here is presuming that both "the government" and "the business"
are unitary entities. There are continual inter-group contests over just
what should be done. Over the long term this is always won by the
bureaucrats, through the effective use of "power at the point", but in any
single encounter, the outcome is uncertain.
> Two, a society where private property has been forbidden. (I use
> "forbidden" here because in a socialist society it can't just be by
> default, else private property might arise -- or re-arise -- and that
> must be prevented for it to be this kind of socialism.) Under this
> condition, all economic decisions are made by the government.
If you mean all private property, even Sparta wasn't that thoroughgoing, and
they were a lot more complete than any modern group. So there isn't, and
hasn't been any such group.
>
> I offer up these up as working definitions. If there are any people
> proclaiming themselves to be socialists on this list, it might be better
> to ask them what they mean by the term -- i.e., for them to define it.
> (I haven't been closely following the discussion, so I don't know if any
> have.)
Hey, it's some kind of definition, which is better than I've gotten before.
At least it's a place to start from, even if the conclusions aren't exactly
what we want the definition to provide.
>
> My two cents worth!
>
> Dan
> See more of my writings at:
> http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
>
> "You wanna get high?" -- Towelie from "South Park"
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