The constitution would be preserved and the press would not be censored. Civil liberties would be protected. The government began by increasing employment and wages as well as implementing agrarian reforms.
and immediately after
Allende’s biggest challenge (and the challenge of all socialist revolutions generally) was to turn private business into public entities.
Difficult to take it seriously after such cognitive dissonance.
In any case, socialism was never a technological problem. I truly doubt the USSR didn't have the technological prowess to make it work. It's a fundamental economic one. You can't remove prices from the loop, as indicators of the human desire. It doesn't matter how many machines you throw at it. You can't replace human preferences.
Maybe not a technological problem, but they certainly had a data problem. Most of the statistics the Gosplan (USSR economic planners) were basing production quotas on were fraudulent. It made price/cost discovery even more impossible.
Socialism didn’t work in _any_ country ever tried.
Even in East Germany, the country’s economists admitted in 1989 that the free market works far better and the centralized economy results in wrong allocations of resources and money.
Funny you say that, as the east/west Germany unification has been a disaster for the east side, and it still is today the poorer part of Germany. Before the unification, the east had a working economy, perhaps with problems, but every economy has problems.
> Socialism didn’t work in _any_ country ever tried.
Leninism didn't, but there's a reason why non-Leninist Marxists have been calling Leninism state capitalism since well before it's failure was obvious.
Socialism, specifically a form of what Marx referred to as “bourgeois socialism”—though not so much by conscious design but as a compromise between Marxist and other proletarian socialists who were instrumental in labor, abolition, suffrage, and other social justice movements and more moderate forces within and outside of those movements—was completely successful in the environment (advanced democratic capitalist states) for which Marx prescribed his form of socialism, being so successful as to entirely displace the late-19th Century system for which Marx coined the term “capitalism” with a system in which the rent seeking power of capital was significantly more constrained in favor of broad (varying from country to country) guarantees for the basic necessities of the general population, which has been referred to by a variety of names (the “modern mixed economy”), though it's so completely displaced the original system called “capitalism” in the same states where that systemmwas once dominant that it is now most frequently just called “capitalism” despite being very different from it.
Why is human preference essential? Everyone has certain needs in common:
- food
- housing
- clothing
And all those needs can be satisfied in a cookiecutter way for everyone. It's unclear to me why such a system cannot be centrally planned without reference to subjective human preference.
IMHO, the 'human preference' counterargument to communism is a red herring to throw things into subjective, logic free land.
Yeah, sure, everyone needs food. We know that. But how many olives should they produce?
Or are you going to just feed everyone the food that you've decided that they should eat? If they want olives, they're just going to have to make do with cucumbers instead?
Do you see why actual human beings might have a problem with that?
That seems orthogonal to the primary concern of communism, which is to make sure no one goes without something they need, i.e. from everyone according to ability, to everyone according to need.
Lack of accounting for wants can make for an annoying, boring economic system, but that's a much lesser charge than the system is intrinsically genocidal. And if it's the difference between a boring system and a system where the rich oppress the poor, and many are forced to live miserable lives according to their less subjective needs like food, clothing, and shelter, then the former would be morally superior. Nor is it obvious why not accounting for wants would make an economic system less successful. I.e. if you have the best of the best bringing to bear the best technology and thought to improving the lives of everyone all at once, that seems superior to everyone trying to figure it out themselves. So, the 'subjective preference' objection does not seem very strong.
I mean historically communism is intrinsically genocidal.
This is a much more serious charge than saying communism results in a bunch of products that people don't like very much.
As to why it is genocidal, and whether this is intrinsic or just a factor of having the wrong people in charge, I think the computational complexity of the problem gets at why genocide is an intrinsic property of communism. Namely, it is just way too innefficient to supply the actual needs of a nation, and so millions starve, or must be killed to make the system work.
- You can have free press without private businesses just like we can have a Judicial branch that's paid for by the government but is independent of it. It comes with challenges, but it's not like privately run news are perfect either.
- Civil liberties can be protected in any form of government and economy, even a dictator can decide to do that
- increasing employment is a no-brainer, it's a prominent feature of socialist countries.
- agrarian reforms are similarly commonly observed, it's probably one of the defining things of the USSR (and China, where it famously didn't go as smoothly)
There's also no real reason why you can't have prices in socialism (and as far as I'm aware most socialist systems have prices). The loop looks a bit different since the supply side is typically centrally managed, but even that is technically an implementation detail and not a required feature of socialism.
> There's also no real reason why you can't have prices in socialism
There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new.
Imagine the new macbook air with Apple Silicon.
What should the price be, in a socialist system?
Set it too low and there will be shortage because you will not be able to produce enough as you wont get profits that would allow you to build extra factories and by extra components.
Set it too high and there will be surpluses rotting in factories because nobody will want it.
You need to guess right in advance. In a capitalist system, companies hold the responsibility: if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt.
In a socialist system, the responsibility is diluted, resulting in a cumulative overall inefficiency, with both shortage (ex: food in the USSR) and surpluses (ex: cotton in the USSR again).
I used "new things" to simplify the reasoning, but the same logic apply to existing things: do you want more or less say phones compared to last year?
You can't say "just as much", because the optimal amount will be impacted by a lot of things that change every year.
Unless they're banks, or auto manufacturers, or any other huge corporation that would get bailed out by the government. Wonder why that bailing out is a problem for socialist governments, but not capitalist ones.
> There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new.
Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. Contrasting the two is actually a bit absurd, given that socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital.
e.g., market socialists exist. So do central planning-pushing communists. So do communalists...
> Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism.
False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species.
> socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital.
the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
> False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species.
Capitalism doesn't do that either. This entire comparison is a category error.
In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid.
> the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital.
That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about.
> all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market
No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property.
> but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc.
Rojava is doing an experiment in communalism as we speak. Turkey is bombing it once the US got what they wanted from Rojava (fighting ISIS). Chile elected Allende, who was coup'd within two years by CIA-backed Pinochet. EZLN survives through the weakness of the central Mexican government and their relative irrelevance to capitalists.
Most political systems do not actually allow for the election of such parties to power. They have powerful propaganda campaigns baked into their education and mass media systems, with bourgeois infighting characterized as the extent of acceptable debate. Many force a two-party duopoly where only bourgeois parties have any chance of winning. Many outlaw socialist/communist parties or kill and harass their leaders. Many aren't democracies at all and would require an ideological military process to establish it - and have their opposition strategically funded by Western powers.
There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.
> In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid.
Perhaps but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. Socialism (absent central planning) doesn't have a means of allocating capital, so no one has ever tried it for long. When they do, everything falls to the tragedy of the commons. Even authoritarian socialists agree to this. Socialist anarchists have various opinions but agree that socialist organization is an unsolved problem. No one is prevented from setting up a socialist organization in capitalist countries, its merely the case that when they do, they aren't able to externalize their costs and they don't achieve very much.
> That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about.
Then all forms of what you consider to be socialism will fail because of plunder.
> No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property.
yeah, its not cool to mess with other people's stuff. that's the problem here.
> Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc.
Maybe if "getting a footing" wasn't synonymous with expropriating the capitalists this wouldn't happen.
> There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.
This is true. its also the case that rulers over a mixed economy have vastly more wealth at their disposal than rulers over a command economy and a collective that has norms prohibiting the collection of rents. This is because the market generates more wealth and rulers are able to extract more wealth because there is more wealth.
> Perhaps but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.
It does. Many socialists want to (and do) use markets as part of their desired transition. Capitalism is not actually pro-market by default, it just uses markets to accumulate capital. Left to its own devices, anticompetitive (i.e., anti-market) behaviors always arise.
Capitalism vs. socialism is not markets vs. a planned economy. It's about who owns the means of production.
> Socialism (absent central planning) doesn't have a means of allocating capital, so no one has ever tried it for long.
China's doing it right now via state capitalism, erring on a side where they allow capitalists to exist in an extremely controlled fashion and they regularly jail or put to death those who violate their rules - or they seize segments of industry. Socialists often create transitional plans where they maintain much of the same system but with significant curtailing of private property.
Other socialist countries / groups have operated largely by collectives, where initial capital is raised jointly with the government but once a venture is going it self-sustains as a collective bringing in new capital and divying it up by and to workers. Vietnam runs a mixed system where this is the dominant mode of production (the other is a China-style "controlled" capitalism).
Socialism is also a pretty wide brush. Rojava is communalist and local councils are the primary vehicle for regulating and controlling production. EZLN is anarchist-ish and nearly everything is a collective or co-op, with workers pooling capital to start a venture but also working within it and sharing alike. There are many ways to do socialism.
> When they do, everything falls to the tragedy of the commons.
I'm not sure what this is referring to.
> Even authoritarian socialists agree to this.
No such thing as "authoritarian socialists". That's not a self-identity or an ideology, but a pejorative produced by liberals and the folks that take that libertarian-made political compass too seriously.
> Socialist anarchists have various opinions but agree that socialist organization is an unsolved problem.
Anarchists tend to think that it isn't even a problem. Once they win, they depend on self-organization.
> No one is prevented from setting up a socialist organization in capitalist countries, its merely the case that when they do, they aren't able to externalize their costs and they don't achieve very much.
I mean, socialists can organize a party or something within a capitalist country, but you can't do socialism within a capitalist country. The entire system's function is dictated by capitalism - a co-op, for example, is still competing with all the other capitalist companies and has to follow the rules set up for them or perish.
Not sure what you mean by externalizing costs. If you're thinking of co-ops, they absolutely can and do externalize costs.
> Then all forms of what you consider to be socialism will fail because of plunder.
I don't see why.
> yeah, its not cool to mess with other people's stuff. that's the problem here.
Depends on what that stuff is. Private property is distinguished from personal property in a socialist view.
> Maybe if "getting a footing" wasn't synonymous with expropriating the capitalists this wouldn't happen.
If socialists weren't socialist this wouldn't happen? This doesn't make any sense and it doesn't address the point.
> This is true. its also the case that rulers over a mixed economy have vastly more wealth at their disposal than rulers over a command economy and a collective that has norms prohibiting the collection of rents. This is because the market generates more wealth and rulers are able to extract more wealth because there is more wealth.
So the story goes. The expropriation of value from the Global South has something to say about that, though.
Unfortunately, there is a very selectively-enforced limit on political content that has resulted in me being rate-limited, so I'm unable to respond to you in a timely manner anymore. I'd point you at some resources but I feel like that's condescending. Best of luck to you, friend.
> Capitalism vs. socialism is not markets vs. a planned economy. It's about who owns the means of production.
Yes, and dictating the rules of ownership that others must follow is a feature of central planning.
> but you can't do socialism within a capitalist country. The entire system's function is dictated by capitalism - a co-op, for example, is still competing with all the other capitalist companies and has to follow the rules set up for them or perish.
Yes, they can't compete on a purely material basis. Thats why you don't see them.
> Depends on what that stuff is. Private property is distinguished from personal property in a socialist view.
yes that's it. Your willingness to disregard my opinions about what constitutes my property on a dogmatic basis is the source of conflict here.
> If socialists weren't socialist this wouldn't happen? This doesn't make any sense and it doesn't address the point.
The point being that insofar as expropriation is synonymous with socialism, socialism is a crime.
> So the story goes. The expropriation of value from the Global South has something to say about that, though.
colonialism and neocolonialism are special cases of a command economy.
The government is paying the people for labor, the people pay the government for the goods they buy. That can totally include the feedback loop that well-selling goods get allocated more resources because they made a bigger "profit". Of course often it wasn't implemented that way, but it sounds like the Chilean system would have done that.
Thats what a company does in a market. The problem with asking the government to do the same thing is that they need to stop coercing people to comply with threats of violence. If they don't do that, then they are merely another corporation. We don't see this as a problem but getting the people with guns to stop using them to extort behavior they want is a devilishly hard problem.
and immediately after
Allende’s biggest challenge (and the challenge of all socialist revolutions generally) was to turn private business into public entities.
Difficult to take it seriously after such cognitive dissonance.
In any case, socialism was never a technological problem. I truly doubt the USSR didn't have the technological prowess to make it work. It's a fundamental economic one. You can't remove prices from the loop, as indicators of the human desire. It doesn't matter how many machines you throw at it. You can't replace human preferences.