'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" - Karl Marx Critique of the Gotha Program.
And one last time, start using your own words rather than quoting your Messiah. This is borderline cult-behaviour.
What Marx is suggesting is simply redistribution. He says this in that very quote that you take from people who are capable of performing better in order to give it to thsoe who need it.
Aisde from the obvious fact that our current social democracies do that (progressive taxes, welfare, etc.) to a certain extent - it also needs to be seen in context of what Marx is suggesting. The context is that all means of productions are owned by the public. What does that mean? It means the abolishment of all individual ownership for the greater good. So who owns it? The public and as a result soemone needs to administrate it - that's what we call a government nowadays. Aka you give the power of defining that to a government. Ironically that will result in the part of the proletariat that becomes the government to cease being the proletariat as they are aquiring more power and thus are of a higher class.
Now this in itself isn't an issue, the issues occur along the lines and why there will never be a socialistic utopia happening, because along the way of creating it, it already falls apart.
1. Marx mentions how technology and the improvement of it will naturally decrease the need for physical labour of production. As we now know empirically, that didn't happen. instead the increase of technology resulted in an increase of productivity - and thus an increase of higher living standards than during the lifetime of Marx. Technology wasn't traded for more free time, but for more wealth.
This means that a) Marx was utterly wrong in his assessment and b) in order to satisfy his assessment, you need to decrease peoples average living standards.
2. Further Marx assumes - without any evidence to it - that people will still freely work and be creative with it, if they had to do less forced labour in order to make their living. So far all experiments and social observations we have on the matter hint to the opposite. Though we would need further experiments on the matter to know for certain.
3. Additionally Marx assumes in such a case of having all basic needs (not luxury, but basic needs such as health, shelter, food) met, all - and he made it very clear that he means ALL - people would be motivated to work for the good of society. Once again his assessment was a failure. And everyone with at least half a brain knows how this is beyond naive at best. I could now give you a rundown from my experience of having lived in a socialist "utopia", but I really can't be bothered to make such an extensive list.
4. If there are not enough people who will end up freely working the essential jobs (such as cleaning the trash, producing food, etc.) - according to ones abilities will mean force involved by the state. Especially when the nations infrastructure keeps falling apart, because everyone just does what he wants to do without taking any responsibilities. Because this is what it essentially comes down to - freedom of any responsibilities.
There are other issues with this such as Marx limiting everything to plain class when multiple aspects create a complex interplay. He completely ignores status and power since in it's simplified argumentation he assumes that both of those are irrelevant as they - in his argumentation - only derive from someones economical position and thus are pretty much synonymous with class - which they do not.
Anyhow, those are the main points. There are also issues with Marx and Engels character that show how they both were preaching water while drinking wine. But let's leave this out of the discussion as well. Their assessments and predictions are already more than flawed enough to make a point.
'''The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.'' - Karl Marx Grundrisse.
As I said above. This will result in a lot of what we would nowadays consider poverty, because the advancement of technology and productivity has resulted in an increase of wealth and not a decrease of labour. Meanwhile capitalism has created this wealth. Bummer, I know. Tough pill to swallow.
''Now you can disagree with all of that and think it's a complete load of bollocks but that still doesn't mean socialism = sharing. Its quite clear here that Marx(And thus Socialism/Communism) has feck all to do with sharing.
An argument purely based on semantics. You can now argue that redistribution doesn't necessarily mean sharing. There are points to be made about this, but it's pretty irrelevant to the discussion.
I assume this is a rebuttal to me saying "everyone wanting to be and actually being a decent person and willing to share". Considering the (decreased) labour of people needs to be redistributed and Marx himself stated that he thinks in his utopia everyone is willing to use their abilities for the good of society, it eventually means that their labour will result in having to go to others without a materialistic payback. You can now say this is not sharing - but [insertthewordyouconsidermoreaccurate] - but that doesn't make a difference to my point.
Funnily enough in one of the quotes you used from Marx, he himself is using the word "sharing". See: "These social relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production."
'Millions of people throughout history have been organised by a common denominator - Their class. The argument have you ''ever tried to find that for just a group of 10-15 people? Yeah, try doing that for millions'' is horribly wrong historical and a tad bit silly. Also even if we play into you're bizarre reading of socialism and pretend countries like the Soviet Union and 'current day China were/are socialist countries then you're line about equal poverty is just untrue. The Soviet Union took millions out of poverty and became the the 2nd biggest world power in short time span(Life expectancy after the fall of the soviet union has gone down about 10 years btw)and CCP in China is really the only successful story of the 21st century.
Using the same limited argumentation as Marx. There are more common denominators than just class. But I will leave it at that for now.
More important is that you are saying my comparision is a tad bit silly. No, it isn't. We do have common denominators. Those are based on nations and their written and unwritten rules. Social agreements that have developed and people have agreed upon over centuries to come to the point where we are today.
Also are you counting the massive amounts of deaths that the soviets caused just by collapsing due to creating as system that was built to fail as it is not sustainable. Similar issue that China has currently by increasing their living standards and eventually being unable to profit from their cheaper labour.
Not to mention that both cases are built upon authoritarianism. Now if you are fine with that, that's on you. I am not. I like having a certain amount of freedom.
'Sadly you've confused you're failure to understand the basics of socialism and to organise a group of people as the fault of socialism and not one of you're own making. I've got a shit left foot and a bad back that doesn't mean football is a terrible sport.
Why do you think in football we have divisions that are equivalent to a merit-based hierarchy? Because this is a normal competitive drive and why capitalism generally works - because it rewards competition. Socialism punishes it through massive amounts of redistribution. My entire point from the get-go.
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That's a strange question. Everything that has ever happened in human history is obviously compatible with human nature (whatever that may be). Otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for humans to do it.
In that sense, I also don't understand why an authoritarian regime should be considered an "outside force" - outside of what? That's a bit puzzling, especially since you seem so fond of hierarchies as the basis for human interaction.
As for your request, my understanding is that there were many social changes that disproved popular predecessors of the ideology you offer - the claim that certain freedoms and basic equality for specific sets of people (or humans as such) are impossible, because a supposed "human nature" does not allow for it. That concerns social betterment of women, slaves, workers, peasants, children, colonized people, specific minorities such as Jews, and many others. The go-to argument of power has always been to declare their marginalized status as natural and inevitable, and their emancipation as being "against human nature" (or "God's will", or whatever). On the long run, this has usually been proven to be essentialist (and interest-driven) nonsense.
You bring up very valid points here and that's an interesting discussion to have all on it's own. But it would go past what this topic is about, so if you feel like continuing that I wouldn't mind going into further detail via PM about this.
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What the hell is "full communism/socialism"? Communism is authoritarian socialism. Socialism isn't a subsystem of communism as the poster stated. Socialism is a broad concept that can have varied implementations. Democratic socialism cannot be lumped into communism, unless he wants to false argue Norway is similar to the USSR.
I stand firmly by what I said. His post is complete nonsense and lacks a basic understanding of the things he talks about.
The thread-title is about socialism, not democratic socialism. And while there are small overlaps, those two are not exactly comparable.
And since I can also use quotes rather than arguments such as the other poster.
Lenin: "The goal of socialism is communism."
What a bunch of complete and utter garbage
Every political and economic system (except maybe libertarianism) requires some deal of authoritarianism because in a cooperative society rules must be enforced (ie. contracts)
Libertarianism also requires at least some deal of authoritarianism by your definition of authoritarianism meaning rules. The only system that doesn't is anarchy - which will bring us back into the stoneages and cause a right of the strongest situation. But thats a different topic altogether.
That being said - the general usage of authoritarianism means a form of government that limits freedoms drastically through a centralised and overburdening power. And my point was within the realm of this definition.
Socialism isn't about making everyone equal. It's about providing a safety net for the most vulnerable because everyone isn't born with the same opportunities. The most straight forward way to accomplish this is to tax (not steal or take) from those with an overabundance of resources.
Yes, that's exactly what socialism is about. Marx said it himself. It is creating a system where everyone is of the same class by reducing ownership to a minimum, creating a system where all basic needs (health, shelter, food) are met and taking away the ability to aquire more wealth than others since said ownership would become public ownership.
Furthermore we already take away from those with an overabundance of resources in our social democracy. It's called progressive taxes which result in the top 1% paying 1/3 and the top % paying 1/2 of the populations taxes. Plus or minus a little depending on which social democratic country you are talking about. Meaning they are already disproportionally benefitting the countries financially.
The key here is to find a middle ground between progressive taxing and giving room to invest, progress and grow.
And before you are arguing wealth is being transfered from the bottom to the top: This is an universal problem we simply do not have a solution to. It happens in monarchies, aristocracies, capitalist system, socialist systems. Hence, most socialist regimes of the 20th century had a trackrecord of being rather wealthy while the population was poor ("we are all equal, some are just more equal"). Fun Fact: The eastern german SED was - right before the fall of the DDR - the second wealthiest political party in the world and their wealth has never been (officially) found.
So yes, this is a problem. An important one for sure. But it is not a problem that socialism will fix.
Are you pretending like private enterprises don't engage in corruption? Do lobbyists not exist? If you give too much power to anything corruption is amplified. This isn't a socialism specific problem.
You are strawmanning my argument. I never said other systems aren't corrupt. I am a libertarian, just so you know. My issue is that the more power you put into a government, the worse the effects of corruption will be. Not to mention that governments generally are ill-run and the opposite of King Midas (everything they touch turns to shit - which is universal to all governments on the map of political views).
Hence, I even said "And last but not least there is no government form that has no corruption" in the exact post you quoted me. It's like you didn't even read what I said and just went off, because I criticised your ideology.
Socialism does not eradicate competitiveness. Many of the current social democracies have highly skilled workforces that can compete in the global economy.
Social democracy =/= Socialism. As I said above, it's a balancing act between measurements such as progressive taxes while still giving room to progress and growth. Socialism does NOT provide the possibility for such a balancing act.
Given the scarcity of things such as natural resources and land (which is the number one indicator of wealth throughout history), it is never in the public good to allow small groups of people to acquire resources indefinitely. That's why we have things such as anti-trust laws
So instead of individuals such as in a capitalistic system, you want to give it to the individuals in a socialistic system aka the government (=no private ownership)? That's essentially switching from Cancer to Tuberculosis.
Other than that - see above. The transfer from wealth from the bottom to the top is an universal human problem and not specific to one or the other system.
Darwinism applies to biology. What you are describing is social Darwinism and there is absolutely no scientific support for that nutjob theory.
Social darwinism applies to purely biological differences - such as superior race theories. That wasn't the point I was making, though.
My exact quote was "In fact, it is opposite of our instincts and on a darwinistic view where you want to get the best possible survival and procreation chances for yourself - not for others"
With that I meant that we are biologically programmed to try to get the best for us (and usually for the people very close to use). There are ways to live this biological drive out productively and destructively. The productive variant would be a healthy amount of competitiveness which makes people strive to improve and be better than others NOT by putting others down, but by simply being better. Since we are in a football forum, C. Ronaldo is the prime example of that. He isn't putting other players down by being an unfair player, etc. - but he is just working his ass off to be better than them. And as a result of being better, he aquires more wealth. In the end we are still animals and have a certain amount of animalistic drives that need to be incooperated in our societies.
So my point is that removing this aspect of mankind - which pure (= so you don't mistake it with social democracies again) socialism does - will lead to a decline of said society. And due to the lack of private ownership you remove the ability of being rewarded for simply being better than others within a merit-based hierarchy.
In biology, cooperation is has been a staple of many species (including humans) and many times increased the chances for survival.
And competitiveness between tribes to improve ones own tribe have also been staples. Just taking one aspects ouf of biology while ignoring the other essential is just intellectually dishonest.
Your post lacks an understanding of Darwinism, economics, and basic history.
If you multiple times fail to understand what I am saying and purposefully or subconsciously strawman several points I made, then yes, it probably lacks all these things. Which is why I explained you my points in more detail now.
Peace, guys. I'm out.
