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Are We Now a Socialist Country?

Are We Now a Socialist Country?

  • Yes, we are a socialist country

    Votes: 5 9.8%

  • No, we are a capitalist country

    Votes: 12 23.5%

  • We have been partly socialist and capitalist for decades

    Votes: 32 62.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 2 3.9%
  • Total voters
    51
Agnapostate said:
I understand the intent behind the "combination" theory, but it's still inaccurate, and is presumably based upon some application of the textbook economic spectrum, which ranges from the "pure" laissez-faire economy to the "pure" command economy.
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I'll give you that.

However, legitimate socialism requires collective ownership of the means of production.
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Well, we can define that with a capital S, like how people define Marxist communism with a capital C.

Welfare programs, for example, promote macroeconomic stabilization and maintain the physical efficiency of the working class, thus sustaining capitalism.
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I'm not sure I'd include welfare, but things like socialized highway systems have been a massive economic boom to capitalism. Our socialized military is one of the largest government outflows of cash into the private market. Several firms almost entirely live on contracts (as a percentage of EBIT) to provide services and goods to the military.
 
obvious Child said:
Well, we can define that with a capital S, like how people define Marxist communism with a capital C.
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We would define it as the term actually is, inaccurate misinterpretations of actual definitions so prevalent among rightists notwithstanding. It becomes especially ridiculous to mendaciously apply terms to facets of some economic system that constitutes something purely oppositional to the ideology that those terms accurately describe. :shrug:

obvious Child said:
I'm not sure I'd include welfare, but things like socialized highway systems have been a massive economic boom to capitalism. Our socialized military is one of the largest government outflows of cash into the private market. Several firms almost entirely live on contracts (as a percentage of EBIT) to provide services and goods to the military.
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Extensive spending on armed forces related affairs is an example of the Military Keynesianism that rightists so often embrace, but welfare ought to be included because of its role in reducing unemployment/underemployment in the capitalist economy, for one thing, which constitutes a reduction of static inefficiency. But yeah, the central and most essential point is that such policy programs cannot be legitimately or accurately be referred to as "socialist" if their purpose is to maintain an opposing economic order as the dominant fixture.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Not yet. But we will be if things keep going the way they are.
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That's right, the Fortune 500 are just going to turn over total control of their companies.

The ONLY slippery slope we're on... if this keeps up, we'll become a Nation of Sycophants.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
Regardless of what some rightwing, scare tactic, partisan hacks think, no, not in the least. Anyone who thinks so, I challenge to post the definition of a socialist society and identify how the US is identical to that.
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You sure you want to stick with that?
 
American said:
What challenge, read what he says later.
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From the post that you quoted
CaptainCourtesy said:
Regardless of what some rightwing, scare tactic, partisan hacks think, no, not in the least. Anyone who thinks so, I challenge to post the definition of a socialist society and identify how the US is identical to that.
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afaict he has not posted anything since then. So I am not sure what 'later' you are referring to.
 
American accept the challenge? Never going to happen. People like to throw out the term Socialist without any understanding of it. Certain people like to say that we are turning Socialist while ignoring how many of the things they enjoy today and contribute to capitalist propserity are socialistic in nature. The highway system is one of the largest socialistic projects in US history. Do we see the anti-Socialists calling for its removal? No.

Like it or not, functioning societies require some aspects of Socialism to function and as this thread has pointed out, things that exist to bolster the capitalistic framework aren't actually socialist.
 
Then they're not "some aspects of socialism" either. They're depicted as such because of the fallacious conception of the mixed economy as a corruption of "pure" capitalism.
 
No. We incorporate elements of socialism (or whatever you wish to call it), but we are adverse to it enough to make us not only uncomfortable with it, but additionally opposed to it once whatever elements we introduce show many negative consequences and reverse many of the attempts to increase socialism.
 
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Fiddytree said:
No. We incorporate elements of socialism (or whatever you wish to call it), but we are adverse to it enough to make us not only uncomfortable with it, but additionally opposed to it once whatever elements we introduce show many negative consequences and reverse many of the attempts to increase socialism.
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And that popular sentiment is merely based on corruption of the textbook economic spectrum, which ranges from the "pure" laissez-faire economy to the "pure" command economy. In reality, however, identifying all increases in state influence on economic structure as shifts toward "socialism" ignores the fact that many state programs are designed and intended to sustain capitalism.
 
Agnapostate said:
That's a necessary facet of capitalism and will always remain such.
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Socialism breeds nothing but dependence, mediocrity, sloth and laziness. Look at the "War On Poverty", What happened is that fathers were no longer needed as providers!!!! Therefore, the innercity families were destroyed as a result!!! There's a real good Liberal feelgood program for ya!
 
Agnapostate said:
And that popular sentiment is merely based on corruption of the textbook economic spectrum, which ranges from the "pure" laissez-faire economy to the "pure" command economy. In reality, however, identifying all increases in state influence on economic structure as shifts toward "socialism" ignores the fact that many state programs are designed and intended to sustain capitalism.
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And truly perhaps you are correct, I see the logic of that, however, you and I at the very least agree on the end point.
 
obvious Child said:
Like it or not, functioning societies require some aspects of Socialism to function
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Since when?

Oh, since you decided that the military and quasi-military services necessary and proper to a stable government, the army and the police, are suddenly "socialist" services by some totally weird definition of "socialism".

No, stable viable societies don't need socialism, the services I just mentioned are the tangible expression of the monopoly on violence a society gives it's government to perform it's function, the protection of the people's liberty and lives and property from rude people intending to commit harm.

Socialism is the theft of freedom, property, and thought from the innocent.
 
I find it amusing that people still believe that laisse-fare economics is a possibility. Such societies are dead and do not work. Regulation is a neccessity to protect the market from itself and corruption, and there have always been many forms of collective institutions in this country. The problem is that people only want to see in black and white. "We have to remain capitalist," or "We need to transform into a scoialist nation," yet society has never been that simple. Everything cannot be privatized and based on an economic model, and if it were to be so, it would fail.
 
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