Fen,
You seem to be talking past me rather than to me. Altruism has nothing to do with the distinction between socialism and capitalism. Fundamentally the conflict between the two is a simple property dispute. In socialism, the state ultimately owns all property, and it suffers private use only to the extent it advances the state's goals. In capitalism, private ownership of property is the rule (while not pure capitalism, every modern capitalistic society recognizes the right of a state to take and use private property, generally after fair compensation to the private owner, and to impose usage restrictions at the least designed to limit externalities from a use of the property (which fairly recharaterized as prevent encroachment on others)).
Altruism or social good is something else. Altruistic socialists see the government and the people as one and make look to protect the poor, non-altruistic socialists see the people as subject to the government and seek to control them and maximize government power. Altruistic capitalists (which was the dominant ethos of the US) see an obligation to use part of their property to benefit the less fortunate, they do so directly, through organizations (charities and churches) or even through supporting government programs by giving them cash to spend on those efforts (ie taxes) and they seek to fairly account for externalities. Non-altruistic capitalists seek to exploit and extract all gains, without regard to externalities.
There is nothing about "Socialism" that is inherently connected to a belief in social welfare.
I think this is closer to the core of the issue than you may realize. Part of the M.O. of the conservative position on the public good is the presumption that any good that needs doing can, and likely will, come about as a result of individual choices and good will, and that paternalistic government is not the answer.
That's not really accurate. You seem to be talking about charity - vaguely. Most of the public good that "needs doing" is not about charity, building roads is not charity, supporting schools is not charity. Taking care of the impoverished is. I think small communities do in fact take care of the disadvantaged (though they often have social costs), bigger ones do not as they easily treat it as "someone else's problem."
If you think the socialism inclined will actually take care of these people ask yourself why homeless problems are largest in blue big cities. You can look at the heat maps and see it.
Part of the M.O. of the liberal position is that this simply will not function in practice and that if government doesn't act as arbiter of the public good then the public good will in practice not be served enough.
I note that "liberal" is not the same as socialist, nor is Democrat the same as either term. I do agree that the left endorses more government control (but I deny the assertion that this is all good natured caring for others).
But acting as "arbiter" of public good can take on many forms only some of which are socialist. Market regulations, enforcement of contracts, enforcing liability for foreseeable (and even unforeseeable) externalities, are all parts of capitalism. Many of the "socialist" positions - like rent control, minimum wages - have known harmful impacts on the poor. Rent control benefits those in the apartments that are controlled and raises the prices on all other apartments, which disadvantages the poor who didn't win the rent control lottery, makes a whole other class of previously middle class poor and harms everyone who has to pay the higher rents. It also has the unintended side effect of reducing the amount that landlords are willing or able to expend to maintain those units, which leads them to become increasingly run down and unsafe over time. Was it really "altruistic" to favor "doing some" and "leading with your heart" over the long term creation of a slum and making everyone else poorer? I don't care which effects you believe are true, if you acknowledge that the other side can reasonably believe its position then "altruism" is clearly not linked to one side or the other.
"Government" just properly means collective action through a central proxy (at least when it's not acting for corrupt, self-serving purposes).
That's agreed. However, I read your position to effectively be equating "socialism" with "government" or even worse with "good intentioned goverment," and neither is accurate.
The "ideal" is that wealth has been unfairly distributed and that it should be redistributed by the government "fairly." That's it. Even if you could demonstrate - as a fact - that continuing an unfair distribution results in greater wealth and even those at the bottom are better off than they would be without that unfair distribution, socialism still rebels at the "unfairness." Ergo, it's not primarily about caring about society or what's best for society, it's about redistributive justice as a primary value.
On this point I generally think you're too specific in what you think socialist policy does. It's true that redistribution of weather is a tool that socialist policy can employ.
It's not a "tool" of the philosophy. The philosophy believes that the collective/government is the true owner of property, and believes that correcting individual uses that stray from the collective/government's goals is required.
I don't get why you're soft selling what socialism is.
But as I mentioned earlier there is plenty of redistrubition of wealth going on that is clearly not socialist in the slightest.
Out of curiosity where do you see something like this?
This is part of what I meant about this definition creating contradictions. The tool of redistribution is by no means exclusive to socialist intentions.
Redistribution /= to taxing and spending on the common good. Redistribution is taking from one private actor to benefit another private actor. There are other systems that also believe in the tool, authoritarians, monarchies, anarchies and oligarchies come to mind. Theologies, if corrupt, also fit the bag.
Capitalism does not agree that taking from one to give to another is anything but theft.
The toolkit of what steps can be taken to pursue 'socialist goals' can include anything the imagination can conjure up. If you release a PSA pushing the idea of thinking of the well-being of others before greed, that's politically socialist.
It's not. That's just altruistic. There's nothing about thinking of others, or even using your wealth to benefit them that remotely speaks to use of governmental intervention to achieve the goal.
If you designate certain land as wildlife reserve, that's socialist on the grounds of it being for the public good rather than for the betterment of any particular group.
That's a greyer example. But it exists in all forms of government. If you believe that the persons who owned the land have to be fairly compensated it's actually a socially conscious capitalistic action, if you believe you can just take the land without compensation for the "public good" THEN its a socialist action.
Take a look at how Venezuela nationalized the oil industry. They simply decreed that the industry would revert to the country without compensation for any of the equipment or development. That's a socialistic action. Compare that to how a US government seizes property to build a building and the valuations and compensation that they have to provide.
There are many, many courses of action that can be taken that are aimed at using the central force of government to guarantee certain conditions for all that I would consider to be socialist. Legislation guanteeing labor conditions would be another example of this, where the free market negotiation between employer and employee is deemed to not be equitable enough to leave it as a purely private matter.
I think interference in employment certainly trends more socialist. But it was a capitalist society that pioneered worker's rights and still provides higher and better worker rights than the purely socialist ones. Why do you think that is? It's because socialism (state ownership of property) is barely removed from state ownership of people. When the people's rights are a gift of the government, rather than a right of the people, there's little real incentive for the government to negotiate against itself and grant more rights.
Much of how labor rights have developed in the US markets centers around removing unfair advantages. We real debt slaves, we had company towns and stores, we had corporate armies, none of which was consistent with a free negotiation of labor. All the corrections on that front
improved the negotiations between the parties by making them more equitable.
When you go beyond that in search of "social" goods you actually make the negotiations worse and the results worse. Mandating a $15 minimum wage, for example, has the direct (and known) consequence of impairing the ability of the young and the poorly skilled to get a legitimate job. Employers over emphasize experience and refuse opportunities. They rigidly cap overtime (the opposite happens when you mandate excessive benefits, they ruthlessly exploit overtime), they shut down or don't expand. Your social policy denied many people an opportunity to work at wages they'd have been happy to have (and not abused by receiving) because of a one size fits all conclusion.
Capitalism is just an ideal, you can agree or disagree with it, but agreeing does not oblige anyone to make a statement that they believe it requires free markets?
Socialism is about government control of industries. It's an economic philosophy not a moral one.
I have to say I think this is backwards. That is, unless I have mistaken your meaning with the part I bolded. If I understand you correctly, you're trying to reverse what I said about socialism being an ideal, and are saying that actually capitalism is an ideal, whereas socialism is just a tool to leverage redistribution.
Fen, it was attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of your original passage. You can not divorce socialism from what it is to define it in other terms. Socialism is a specific philosophy, as is capitalism, they both involve ideals as well, but "socialism" is not defined by altruism, it's defined by state control of property.
It may, *or may not*, be the case that allowing free negotiation of labor and resources in a free enviroment will lead to wealth for the most and the greatest conditions for the most. There has literally never been an example of this occurring in history, and 100% of cases demonstrate that this doesn't happen, notwithstanding the fact that a 'true capitalist' enviroment has never been allowed to be tested.
I tend to think "pure capitalism" pursued by non-altruistic people, is not a real philosophy. That construct would for instance support a slave trade if it were profitable and interested persons were able to impose it. In fact, even pure capitalism as a philosophy requires certain prohibitions and restrictions to protect the right of free negotiation.
That said, it's really indisputable that capitalism generates wealth. The entire design of capitalism is about allocating resources to pursue wealth maximization.
Socialism, on the other hand, doesn't (to whit) make definite statements about exactly which conditions will lead to what result as a long-term projection.
Agreed in part, socialism is not a sensible projective philosophy. It's a philosophy about punishing mistakes by redistributing assets from "non-conforming" uses to conforming uses. The fact of how the communists have operating is clearly demonstrative that such a system can be used for non-altruistic goals. I tend to believe that this result is always inevitable as power seekers in such a system will inherently move to government roles and there are no mechanisms that control their abuses.
Rather, it seems to be reactive to actual injustices or problems, with the view that it is the right and probably the obligation of government to 'interfere' in the public state of affairs in order to make corrections to things that don't work.
If you replace "actual injustices or problems" with "perceived injustices" you'd be closer. Like the injustice of someone owning a building, or running a successful shop. Or someone not having bread while their hardworking neighbor does.
It says not that redistribution is mandatory, but rather that it's a legitimate tool that can be employed is the current state of distribution is fubar.
It says redistribution is right and proper and does not limit its use to "fubar" situations. Private use is tolerated to varying degrees, but fundamentally is not a right and the state may take it away to serve
any purpose no matter how petty or trivial.
As a philosophical position all socialism says is that "it is legitimate and right for government, on behalf of the people, to make corrections to malfunction in the system."
Again, that's not "socialism" that's just a part of "government." There is no governmental system operating today that doesn't believe its legitimate and right for government to make corrections to malfunctions in the system. You seem to be defining "capitalism" narrowly and claiming the field is "socialism," it's not.
An opposite philosophy to this wouldn't be 'capitalism', but rather maybe something like 'individualism', which might read as something like "the government has no sovereign right to tell me what to do, even in the case where my choices harm others and the government's actions would improve the public good."
Actually, you've just circled back to "anarchy," which is the rejection of a social contract that we refer to as "government." Socialism is a philosophy of how to form and operate a government, not a term that is synomous with government.
The question of rights here is orthogonal to the question of results. Socialism says that government can and should be interfering, and the opposite belief would be that it shouldn't be interfering regardless of the quality of the situation.
This is why I'm having such problems with your definitional conclusions. You've misdefined socialism which leads to this mush. Socialism is about property rights, I tend to believe that those who believe the state owns all property will trend to believing that all rights are granted by the state, but it's not required, its just a concordant philosophy.
Socialism says all property is the government's only rightly used when it benefits the government, and interference is warranted when this is not occurring. This is why capitalism is the opposite philosophy.
It doesn't say government should be interfering, only that it has the absolute right to do so. Socialism is not the opposite of anarchy (the belief that there should not be a government or that a government can never intervene).
The matter of importance is not the consciousness that some action is needed, but specifically the license givern to government to take this actions. It makes it the government's direct job to practically effect what on an individual level is what you're calling social consciousness philosophy. It basically centralizes that conciousness and acts based on that collective feeling using its central power.
Again it doesn't. Communistic countries are direct evidence that altruism is not inherent to the philosophy. If you want to argue that the means and the thought are required, then I'm left with pointing out the absolute nonsense of resting all power in a government and expecting it to remain altruistic long term, when by definition there can be no contrary power centers with the ability or right to resist the government's decisions or even abuses.
If what you mean by "socialism" is tantamount to choosing government by "philosopher kings" its pretty much useless.
Practically speaking, the biggest problem with socialism is that there is no actual limit on government authority and abuse.
I didn't argue that good will is irrelevant, only that socialism is not properly defined as good social will.
Well, not if you're already defining it as "the evil practive of stealing from people." Historically speaking it is indeed muddy to try to extract the 'true meaning' of a loaded word like this one, which is why I'm trying to to sort mine out the stated intentions of socialism historically as opposed to the doublespeak uses of its terminology in the employment of despotism.
It just feels like you're trying to sanitize a word that doesn't need it. The word has a specific meaning. If you want to argue for state ownership of property and/or absolute right to redistribute is not all "socialism" is then then you need to lay out controls that separate that from what those policies mean. Socialism is not good will.
In my claim, at least, I am also not defining socialism as good social will. I am defining it as the concept that good social will should properly be integrated into the mandate of government as an obligatory policy intent.
Definitionally all government is, is the embodiment of a social contract. Government is literally the integration of the polity's agreement of what "good social will" actually is into an enforceable practice. The US for example cedes authority to use force proactively to the government, feudalism retained that to the local lordship. That's a different choice about good social will.
I think what you mean is that social welfare should be added to the governmental mandate. There's nothing stopping a capitalistic society from doing so, nor is there any thing that mandates a socialist one will do so (unless you think say re-education camps are for the social good).
And as I write this I know you feel that this often (or usually?) leads to misery, and that paternalistic government is bad at knowing how to create good conditions for anyone. My answer to this last point is only that I'm not advocating in favor of socialist government, and especially not on the grounds that I'm claiming it's good at achieving those goals; I'm only trying to state what I think it is, and it would be another discussion to assess whether it's a good idea to have a government with a socialist agenda.
Again, by confusing "socialism" with "social good will" you are in fact confusing the point and making it much harder to be persuasive.