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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (151115)	9/9/2002 12:37:34 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1586540

Ted the USSR was socialist both according to the common definition and according to Marx's theories. To pretend otherwise ignores reality. Yes it was a dictatorship but nothing about any normal definition of socialism excludes dictatorship. If fact Marx calls for a dictatorship ("Dictatorship of the prolitariat") even if it is one that will eventually fade away. Did the USSR perfectly fit Marx's vision for any stage of the development towards communism? No, but we are talking about real countries not idealised theories. The US isn't and never has been perfectly capitalist or even a perfect representive democracy, but we would call the US a capitalist democratic republic. In any case we are not limited to Marx's ideas when we are talking about socalism or comunism. The USSR without a doubt fit several commonly used dictionary definitions of both words. dictionary.com so·cial·ism Pronunciation Key (ssh-lzm) n. 1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. 2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. socialism n 1: a political theory advocating state ownership of industry 2: an economic system based on state ownership of capital [syn: socialist economy] [ant: capitalism] Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University dictionary.com com·mu·nism Pronunciation Key (kmy-nzm) n. 1. A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members. 2. Communism 1. A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people. 2. The Marxist-Leninist version of Communist doctrine that advocates the overthrow of capitalism by the revolution of the proletariat. [French communisme, from commun, common, from Old French, from Latin commnis. See commune2.] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Why not a communistic dictatorship? Because even in the opinion of the progpagandists for the old USSR they didn't yet meet Marx's definition of communism. Its time has to come........the capitalist system can only be an intermediary phase in human development. Capitalism is too exploitive of people, natural resources, the environment. Marx's theories were better but I don't think it will be the end result either......something else..maybe something in between....maybe socialism or something else. Again I am left without much to say except you could turn around almost every sentance of phrase and get my opinion. Capitalism is the only way to efficently create wealth and cause production to meet demand for a complex economy. That wont change unless human nature changes. Its not just a matter of people needing to be more noble of spirit, or motivated easier, or more concerned for their fellow man. They would also have to have simplier wants and needs that didn't change as often or quickly. If the economy was static then you could take the time, decades if that was what it took, to plan the perfect economy, but the economy is not static because life is not static. Capitalism is not explotive of anything. (althoug capitalists, like people in any system, can be) It is a free market system. Like any other freedom it can be abused. When you have more freedom you have more power to abuse others, but in reality the abuse most often comes when the free market is not allowed. Either the government is abusive, or it supports the private sector in being abusive. Most monopolies exist because of the government not in spite of it. Sometimes the government would have to step in to actually keep a free makret going. It has to keep the peace and provide a court system and prevent fraud and perhaps abusive monopolies. But it's action should be maintain the system rather then to interfere with the system to help those it favors (which happens all too often) Demand wasn't relevant under the Russian system. Production was diverted from consumer products to WMD. The consumer demand was there; the Russian leaders simply ignored it. Consumer demand became irrelevant and the people dared not object. Demand was relevant even though it was ignored. It was relevant in the sense that the fact that it was ignored meant people suffered and the economy fell apart eventually. If it totally irrelevant it would not matter if it was ignored. "Prices are important to communicate the relative level of supply and demand." In a capitalist and socialistic system.......not in a communistic system. Something has to communicate information that is required to determine what goods and services to produce, how much of them, and where to send them. Shifting prices in a free market are the only efficent mechanism to do this that anyone has ever come up with. If you are going to remove prices and other mechanisms something will have to replace them. Even in a system of real Marxist communism this information would still be needed because decisions about what to produce and consume would still have to be made by someone. No, they [prices] don't.......the free system is very inefficient. You don't have to look any further than the recent tech boom and bust. Trust me, we have yet to find the holy grail.........a better system is out there If you can come up with any system, (even an fantastic or imaginary one that for some reason was impposible) that would work better then prices floating in a free market to communicate this information I would be amazed. The only one I could think of is to have all humans share a communal super mind, and I'm not sure I would like that system (though my reasons would not be because it was economically inefficent but rather desire not to lose my individuality). A kibbutz is very different than a company......its made up of individuals who each have a proprietary interest in the kibbutz and must agree on what the common good is before they can move forward. Your analogy would be apt if the company was owned by the workers as Marx proposed Fine if it makes you happy make it a worker owned company, but its irrelevant to the point. Worker owned or not the company and the Kibbutz are similar in the way I said they are. They are not internally capitalist but what they produce for the outside worlddd is determined by market incentives. The decision making in the Kibbutz is different then the decision making in most comapnies but if the Kibbutz ignores what the market demands when it is trying to produce things for sale then it won't sell to much or make any profit (and before they can all share the profit they have to make a profit). We don't know now.......our recessions reflect the imprecise nature of our system. Its during recessions inventory overstocking is corrected. Why do you think companies have instituted the just in time inventory system? Overstocking has been the bane of our system........at best we can only guess at what the consumer wants. True but at least its an educated guess. We have information to base the guess on and if the guess is wrong the market provides feedback to tell you that you made a mistake. Without the price signals its like guessing whether a coin will be heads or tails. No actullly its much worse then that because instead of two possibilities there are many. "Socialism works" is not a theory; its fact Your mistaking my comment that it is not a fact to mean that it isn't true. Of course I think it isn't true, but even if it was it still would not be a fact. A fact is a particular detail. A theory is the framework that you fit the facts in to. Evolution as the main reason for the diversity of species on earth is a theory. Relativity is a theory. If Newton's ideas came out now we would call them Newton's theories, not Newton's laws. Saying something is a theory doesn't mean it is false or even uncertain. Of course I think its almost indisputable that the idea "socialism works" is at least uncertain, and also I think it is actually wrong but even if it is right it is still a theory. Many times people have said that MN and the Pacific NW are going to blow it because of high taxes, strong gov't and having their priorities in the wrong places. So far the naysayers have been proven wrong. Both places are still predominatly capitalist, and they have other advantages. I personally have never said they are doomed and I don't think that they are. Tim