What does the socialist utopia look like?

There seems to be a good few people on here who would describe themselves as socialist, I’m interested to hear what that looks like in practice. When I hear people talk about socialism and redistribution of wealth etc my blood runs cold. My mind automatically goes to soviet russia, china, mass starvation and authoritarian regimes. I wonder if this is an unfair characterisation and if I’m perhaps conflating socialism with communism.

There’s plenty of problems with capitalism but I’m unconvinced that the answer is socialism. People often seem to point to the Scandinavian countries as good examples but to me they appear to be predominately capitalist countries just with a higher emphasis on social welfare.

There was a link on here a while ago to the politics joe podcast where a lady who’s name I forget was talking about this kind of stuff. She said a lot of nice sounding words but the only real world examples of her ideas in practice were an ex mining town in Wales and an aerospace company. To me her ideas sounded more libertarian than socialist but perhaps I misunderstood.

So to the socialists out there, what does the utopia look like?

When capitalism is organised for the benefit of society, whereas the Tories organise society of the benefit of capitalism.

We have a mix of capitalism and socialism. That mix should be changed so that no one goes without medical treatment, food, housing, just so that others can be richer than anyone really need be.

For me it’s simply that the country’s assets and infrastructure are used to benefit its citizens, also looking after those who are inevitably left behind, which currently is quite a large proportion of the population due to some poor policy making over the last fourteen years.

When I hear people talk about socialism and redistribution of wealth etc my blood runs cold. My mind automatically goes to soviet russia, china

They are/were more dictatorships than anything else. Basically all forms of society are part of the same circle and whatever flavour you choose can end with a crazy man (usually with a moustache and/or dodgy hair) taking control and refusing to leave office.

Kelvin and catfood sum it up quite nicely. For me it would be having things like medical care, infrastructure, public transportation etc not run for profit but for the benefit of all. A universal basic income so that nobody lives in poverty. An end to the ‘living wage’ because it really isn’t and replacement with a proper liveable wage. No more zero hours contracts and more rights for workers. Stop looking at economic growth as a measure of success because it’s not sustainable in the long run.  No such thing as a billionaire because it’s obscene.

“Money implies poverty.”

So if we can just move to a post-scarcity interstellar civilisation like The Culture then that would do me 👍

Free quinoa and buckwheat for everyone !!

Things like free education and healthcare for everyone, regardless of their bank balance are socialism.  I’m guessing they don’t make your blood run cold?  For me its looking out for the most vulnerable in society and generally organising things for the benefit of citizens not shareholders.  No such thing as a utopia, a mix of ethical capitalism and social justice is what I’d like to see, but with a few more checks and balances on the capitalism bit.

Edit to add, I’d like to see our success as a nation measured by our health, well-being and general ‘happiness’ (or ‘contentedness’ if that’s too hard to define). Not solely by GDP and economic growth.

We are capable of housing, feeding and clothing ourselves, that we don’t do these things is because one fella wants to have more money than the other fella.  when society understands that capitalism isn’t morally neutral and actually makes positive steps to re-draw the balance is when we get to have a socialist utopia.

I wonder if this is an unfair characterisation and if I’m perhaps conflating socialism with communism.

No, you’re conflating it with authoritarianism.

Free sausage rolls and pies for everyone !!

Ftfy

That everyone is safe and secure which includes food security and a large enough affordable home with security of tenure. That there is good access to education and health facilities including libraries and leisure centres free at the point of delivery.

This is the thing I was trying to get at, nothing mentioned above is what I would consider ‘true’ socialism to mean.

If were were to consider it as a sliding scale with something like soviet russia at one end and the USA at the other it seems most ‘socialists’ are arguing we should move a little bit more to the soviet side for the benefit of all. This seems a perfectly reasonable argument to me, perhaps socialism has a PR problem.

It doesn’t have to be called a socialist utopia, it would be a normal utopia, all equal, everyone sharing and working together for the greater good, etc, etc, but as i’ve said many times, it’s brilliant on paper, it just falls apart because people are the issue that means it’ll never come true, that’s why we have what we have, and it kind of works.

I forgot to put in a fair days work for a fair days pay which is embarassing. Also I would say Ì’m à social democrat.
Soviet Russia was not socialist.

Socialism means that the production and exchange of the society is owned and distributed by the society as opposed to by private ownership.

Star Trek is a socialist society for instance

Socialism is in theory a great system. However it falls down in practice for a number of reasons, one of which is that people simply aren’t equal.

For me, One Nation Conservatism, properly implemented, seems a more pragmatic way of achieving a society where all are looked after. Ironically at the moment the Labour Party are far closer to this viewpoint than the Tories.

That’s the thing with socialism. It’s a fantastic theory or good thought exercise. Totally falls apart when it meets reality though. Every attempt, that I’m aware of, has ended up with an authoritarian regime. That’s not at all what it is supposed to be aboutZ Capitalism is screwed too. It’s basically a massive pyramid scheme. No idea what the answer is tbh.

Star Trek is a socialist society for instance

I find it very interesting that you should make that point Nick. It has always been obvious to me that we tend to have this deep inherent belief that any advanced society, be it in the distant future or from a distant planet, is likely to be socialist/communist.

You are the first person who I am aware of that has made this connection with an orderly advanced society of the future as portrayed in popular science fiction.

Edit: BTW there is nothing in Star Trek, as far as I am aware, which provides evidence that is “a socialist society”, as you claim. That presumably just an assumption on your part.

A lot of sci-fi is more dystopian from what I’ve read. Star Trek and The Culture from Ian  M Banks novels are the only socialist-like ones that spring to mind. Could just be my taste in sci-fi.

As has been pointed out, the limit to the utopia is human nature and its instincts.

A system, whether left or right leaning, needs to build safeguards against them without totally destroying individual initiative and “progress”. As that in itself is affecting the satisfaction of basic needs  trying to be satisfied.

There are many of those instrincts to channel. Greed, fear, envy, anger etc…

It’s quite complex and I fear that moderate centrist(ish) solutions are losing against rising populisms, either from the right or the left as we think less and less critically as a species.

“Every attempt, that I’m aware of, has ended up with an authoritarian regime.”

France had a Socialist-Communist government in the early 1980s. It failed to realise socialism in France but didn’t end up with an authoritarian regimes. There are plenty of places that attempted socialism and it didn’t end up with those regimes turning authoritarian. Although there were a couple of examples of Socialist governments being replaced by authoritarian regimes (Chile, Burkina Faso…).

We’d all have better looking teeth than at the present.

Free quinoa and buckwheat for everyone !!

<Crocodile Dundee> “Well you could eat that shit” </ Crocodile Dundee>

Using the power of the state to fix the mess that Neolibralism has caused for a start.

It’s pretty clear marketising utilities is total a catastrophe by way of example.

I think it’s possible to have really good state investment, infrastructure and services and have a thriving private sector. In fact the private sector needs it.

But first you’d have to teach Richard Tice all this because he believes the Tories and Labour are both socialist parties. Lmfao.

The UK tends to drawdown on socialism in a time of crisis – it’s just a simple point of logic that we don’t have to wait for a crisis to do things better.

Socialism would be great if they paid for it from sources where there are obscene amounts of wealth sloshing about.

The people in charge either don’t want to, or are unable to get their hands on this though (don’t think Labour will be any different), so they just hammer the people in the middle, the easy targets who have a ‘bit more’ to take.

I’d go so far as to say I’m a communist. But I’m a pragmatic communist – it’s clearly the best way to run a society but people are awful so it won’t work. It hasn’t worked in the past because the people in charge were authoritarian dictators, not because communism is bad.

We’re going to have to get more socialist. As AI and robots improve there aren’t going to be enough jobs to go around. We’ll have to start paying people to exist, and providing what everyone needs for free (healthcare, education, a way to get around, maybe even a roof and food). That kind of automated, caring society is my utopia. Fully automated luxury communism even.

It won’t happen, because people are awful and some will want more than their fair share.

France had a Socialist-Communist government in the early 1980s

Apologies but it’s not because a party calls itself “Parti Socialiste” that it’s a socialist party in the Marxist sense of the term.

Mitterand was certainly not a collectivist.

Yes he had 3 Ministers from the PC but that only lasted a year or so as expected. It was just a predictable trick to get elected and wind Marchais up for comedy value 😂.

He did nationalise a few trinkets yes but that was posturing. France was and remained a market driven economy even from May 1981.

He even ended up with Tapie in his government 😂

You’ll also struggle to find more of a centrist than Jacques Delors (Finance Minister in May 81), who just past away.

Star Trek is a socialist society for instance

Not wholly. Star Trek (and Banks) portrays a post-scarcity society. With unlimited free energy, any member of the society can have almost anything they want. Therefore money loses all value as everyone has their needs met. There is no need for the socialist redistribution of wealth because everyone already has the things that wealth is needed for.

There is no socialism or capitalism.

ernielynchFull Member
Star Trek is a socialist society for instance
I find it very interesting that you should make that point Nick. It has always been obvious to me that we tend to have this deep inherent belief that any advanced society, be it in the distant future or from a distant planet, is likely to be socialist/communist.

You are the first person who I am aware of that has made this connection with an orderly advanced society of the future as portrayed in popular science fiction.

Edit: BTW there is nothing in Star Trek, as far as I am aware, which provides evidence that is “a socialist society”, as you claim. That presumably just an assumption on your part.

Dune seems to be a feudal society roughly akin to medieval Europe.
starwars, the Wild West or at least the fictional pop culture vision of it

if I summed up a lot of future/space sci-fi it would be utopian on the surface but with a large fringe or underclass either being left behind or directly exploited in order to create that utopia. Where our main character either is from, or explores these areas.

never really got in to Star Trek (seen a few of the films and a handful of episodes) but my understanding is it is a “post scarcity” world. People living in the federation have plentiful food and housing provided for them. Some of them join the space-navy for reasons unclear. Then visit other planets outside of the federation and see how oddly they live; get murdered by space baddies; and other assorted dangerous hijinks. When they could just sit at home and watch space-Netflix for their entire lives.

“Every attempt, that I’m aware of, has ended up with an authoritarian regime.”

In the case of Chile, that was because the CIA backed the Pinochet coup to overthrow the democratically elected Marxist government.

A quick glance at any local facebook group or the daily mail comments page will show all but the most idealistic that socialism can now only commence through a benign dictatorship.

The Star Trek and Culture models seem like a natural socialist end game. If the fictional worlds had a more capitalist bent space MuskBezos would’ve stolen all the replicators and turned them in to a subscription model. Ensuring they break if you try to load third party software.

We pretty much already live in a post-scarcity world. It’s just that a select few (including us lot on here) hoover up all the resources.

“It has always seemed strange to me… The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

This quote from Steinbeck epitomises to me the sad reality that socialism is a glorious idea condemned to failure.

Depends on your definition of success. If you’re an utter bastard of a human being then you’ve automatically failed in my eyes. We need a shift in how we view success and our general attitudes to ownership and consumption. We’re **** if it doesn’t happen and it will take people with those ‘failure’ characteristics to get us there.

This shit is depressing. I’m going back to my dog thread 😂

It would look much like Tuletubby world, but without some Nazi making you go to bed when you don’t want to:

“Apologies but it’s not because a party calls itself “Parti Socialiste” that it’s a socialist party in the Marxist sense of the term.”

This is one of those “no true Scotsman” arguments: it wasn’t really Socialist and they didn’t really attempt to achieve socialism. But the history shows differently, there was an attempt, it was a failure, and it didn’t degenerate into an authoritarian regime.

https://jacobin.com/2021/02/french-socialism-francois-mitterrand

“Apologies but it’s not because a party calls itself “Parti Socialiste” that it’s a socialist party in the Marxist sense of the term.”

This is one of those “no true Scotsman” arguments: it wasn’t really Socialist and they didn’t really attempt to achieve socialism. But the history shows differently, there was an attempt, it was a failure, and it didn’t degenerate into an authoritarian regime.

https://jacobin.com/2021/02/french-socialism-francois-mitterrand

That article confirms what I was saying. The word “socialist” in Parti Socialiste has nothing to do with Marxist socialism/collectism. The French Parti Socialist has always been the alter ego of the Labour Party, despite Mitterand’s half baked experiment.

It’s not an argument, but a mere semantic clarification.

 Totally falls apart when it meets reality though.

On the other hand, if capitalism is so good, how come it needs socialism to bail it out every decade or so?