What does the socialist utopia look like?

The issue though is that the US is a very bad place to be poor, and because of the way society is organised, especially around healthcare, it is very easy to end up poor, and very difficult to stop being poor. If you don’t have company subsidised healthcare, a perk that is becoming rarer, and lower inquality, you are one accident/family illness away from poverty.

I live in a socialist country that’s also a liberal democracy, and like it quite a lot thanks

Wealthy Russians and Chinese don’t send their kids there for no reason

“Wealthy” is the key word there.  As I said, wealthy people can have a good life in the USA, if you’re not sensitive to certain things; but I don’t rate the USA as a good place to be poor or even on lower middle income for all sorts of reasons.  I do have a bit of insight here since I’m married to an American.  Even the ones that do ok have to work a lot harder to stay there than we do here.

If you don’t have company subsidised healthcare, a perk that is becoming rarer, and lower inquality, you are one accident/family illness away from poverty.

You can still be that even if you have insurance.  Your insurance cover will be limited, and it won’t cover lots of things. If you get accidentally pregnant you will be on the hook for ten or fifteen grand, you will only get 2 weeks’ maternity leave (unpaid). Then you have to work out how to fund childcare or give up your job whilst having incurred these costs. The system is very rotten.

I live in a socialist country that’s also a liberal democracy, and like it quite a lot thanks

If it has a capitalist economy, it’s not a socialist country, it’s a liberal capitalist country. Just like where I live, which I like and I think is a nicer place to live than the US. But millions upon millions of migrants think the US offers something better than their home country. That’s not because they are stupid, it’s because the US is actually a pretty decent place to live for most people who live there.

it’s because the US is actually a pretty decent place to live for most people who live there.

I’m not sure about most. But in any case, we know it’s dreadful for a pretty large chunk of the poorest. And in my mind that makes it a badly governed country.

If it has a capitalist economy, it’s not a socialist country, it’s a liberal capitalist country

Nearly every country is a blend of socialist and capitalist policies.  There’s no point in trying to categories countries like this and attempting to use it to denigrate socialist policies.

Nearly every country is a blend of socialist and capitalist policies.

No, they aren’t. Socialist policies are that the means of production should be publicly owned. Most countries have abandoned nationalization of industry. Regulating capitalism isn’t socialism, that’s why socialist despise liberals. Liberals believe that capitalism can be tamed and used to benefit society, socialists see capitalism as the root of all evil. If you endorse any form of capitalism, you aren’t a socialist.

The US is a terrible place to live for the majority. My sister in law had a kid by accident at 25 while working at a fast food restaurant and her partner was studying. That’s a one way ticket to absolute poverty that you’re extremely unlikely to get out of in the US. She got 2 weeks of maternity leave and now has to fund nursery on that income. They get by because her parents are well off but for the vast majority of Americans, incomes are incredibly low, state support is almost non-existent, worker rights don’t exist so you can’t do things like having a kid if you’re not well off without crippling your finances. Food and just about everything except gas is more expensive than it is here to make things worse.

The poverty at the bottom end is absolute. It sells a good dream, and looks good because it’s not what you see as an outsider, but most people struggle to live any kind of comfortable life there.

EDIT – and, because it’s a pace that doesn’t have many policies that most people would associate with socialism, it’s not even that good to be middle income there. You don’t get anywhere near as many of the worker’s rights you get here that make life bearable. Holiday is minimal (I’d be on two weeks a year). Your protections are minimal. You have to get health insurance, which is more costly per head than a nationalised system. It’s not a good place to live unless you live there already and are completely blinkered to any other way of life, or are very rich.

No, they aren’t. Socialist policies are that the means of production should be publicly owned.

There are still state owned industries in countries that have free markets as well.

If you endorse any form of capitalism, you aren’t a socialist.

I honestly think that narrow of a definition is not especially helpful to the debate.

I also don’t think that ‘liberal democracy’ means a mix of state and privately owned businesses.  Liberal democracy refers to the rights of the individual, and that can still be applied even if many of the industries are state owned

I think that liberalism is the opposite of authoritarianism and is a political philosophy; socialism is the opposite of capitalism and is an economic philosophy, and the two things are on orthogonal axes.  So you can be socialist and authoritarian (Soviet Russia), quite socialist and liberal (Sweden), quite capitalist and liberal (USA) etc.  As I said, every country is a blend of ideas and exist somewhere in the space defined by these axes.

Consider this: we in the UK could be considered a liberal democracy since we have laws protecting individual rights.  But what if we nationalised all our utilities?  Would that be a socialist policy? It would certainly be an anti-capitalist one since it would remove the ability for people to make money in a chunk of the economy.  So what would you call it?

Nearly every country is a blend of socialist and capitalist policies. There’s no point in trying to categories countries like this and attempting to use it to denigrate socialist policies.

I would give up. They have gone full root of evil and I suspect a no true Scotsman is waiting round the corner.

Yes, but when you are dealing with billions of people, you can look at patterns of migration and see where people prefer to live. East Germans risked their lives to get to West Germany, but West Germans didn’t rush to move to the East. Russian and Chinese elites send their kids to school in Western Europe and the U.S., but Western elites don’t send their kids to school in Russia or China. The general pattern is that liberal capitalist democracies attract a lot of migrants so it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that they are the most attractive places to live.

And all criminals played Grand Theft Auto.

The trouble with that is it’s likely that so did most CEO’s, Drs, Engineers and Heads of State.

The “Liberal Democracy” Vs “Communist Dictatorship” comparison is far more down to the Democracy Vs Dictatorship as shown by your own example, Russia isn’t communist anymore, I’ve no idea how socialist it is but given the inequality shown on the news I’m going top suggest it’s somewhat less Socialist than our Conservative government.

For me I think the OP goes wrong in assuming that Communism is an extreme form of Socialism. To me any nationalized industry is a weak dose of “Communism”, it’s the state ownership of the means of production.  Whereas Socialism is a financial instrument, it’s private industry being free to do what it likes and then it’s profits taxed to pay for government spending.  And within those models there’s benefits and weaknesses and questions to be asked. If you have an industry in state ownership should it be either run for maximum profit in order to fund other services, or should it be run to break even and deliver the best value service? How do you drive for that value if there is no profit motive?

As for the redistribution of wealth.  Whilst the right will portray it as the government coming along and taxing you out of house and home to give them to someone on benefits. The reality is it means taxing you out of Caviar and S-Works Turbo Kenevo’s to fund universal education and health care.  Everyone has the same needs, that probably cost about £70k*/household annually, and that includes health, education, transport infrastructure, etc. For a lot of people (i.e. half the country) their wage isn’t enough to fund that on their own.  That’s redistribution of wealth. It’s someone earning £40k and having ~£5k to spend on luxuries paying slightly more tax so that someone on £30k is a net beneficiary of health/roads/schools/police/etc.  At the extreme end it does include ‘handouts’ to subsidize low incomes and prevent poverty.  Towards the center of the bell curve it’s less about those direct benefits and simply that peoples tax paid wouldn’t actually correspond to the services they use/have access to.

Don’t even get me started on inheritance tax though, I’ve got some very unpopular opinions on that.

*i.e. 2x GDP/capita

My sister in law had a kid by accident at 25 while working at a fast food restaurant and her partner was studying.

That’s quite a remarkable way to get pregnant. I’m trying to figure out the gymnastics involved. Would probably make a great Peepshow episode.

I get really upset when people try to push their ideas on me in a book, it makes me cringe, so I’m worried that’s what this will be about.

Most books I read are written with the sole intention of pushing ideas 🙂 I’m not sure this is one of them though. Yes there is discussion of politics but only from the angle that there are different ways of organising society compared to today. In fact a lot of this book talks about pre-historic or indigenous societies which are/were plutocratic or autocratic. The main idea in this book is that the established narrative as presented by books like Sapiens is too simplistic and not supported by archeological evidence. Yes we live in a statist world, where one form of government dominates all others, but limiting ourselves to considering different flavours of that statist model rather than real alternatives seems a bit odd to me.

No, they aren’t.

Thols you seem rather desperate to deny that anything in our society might represent socialist or collectivist values. I presume you don’t use any public services and pay for everything privately? I’m guessing if your house catches fire you won’t be calling the fire brigade on a point of principal? You need to get over it, it’s really no big deal.

thols, I think it might be best if you decided the discussion is about social democracy, rather than the economic definition of socialism.

As an aside, have you ever visited a post-communist country? I’ve been to quite a few and while being part of the USSR clearly wasn’t good for them on a macro-scale, a lot of the individuals who lived through it miss it. They miss the fact that their job was secure. They miss that their pensions were guaranteed. They miss the general security of society. While the way the USSR was run was obviously horrific, these individuals were better off under it. Once the USSR fell, they were almost immediately much worse off as their rights were eroded, their job security was gone as market forces came into play, the cost of their food (even though it was now much more readily available) and other living costs shot up and things were generally harder.

I think that liberalism is the opposite of authoritarianism and is a political philosophy; socialism is the opposite of capitalism and is an economic philosophy, and the two things are on orthogonal axes

All ideologies are on orthogonal axes. They are all unidimensional and try to describe political and economic organization by a single dimension. For socialists, it’s the ownership of capital. For liberals, it’s freedom. For conservatives, it’s the role of tradition. For feminists, it’s sex/gender. Those are all orthogonal and they intersect in strange ways – for example, one strand of feminism points to myths about matriarchal societies to basically argue for feminism from a conservative viewpoint (i.e. it’s a traditional way of organizing societies.)

thols, I think it might be best if you decided the discussion is about social democracy,

Then call it that. If it’s a thread on a socialist utopia but nobody actually likes socialism, then just agree that socialism sucks and liberalism is a much better way of doing things. I’m all for social democracy, I just think the lessons of history are pretty vivid that socialism was a terrible mistake.

quite capitalist and liberal (USA) etc.

Capitalist democracies (especially the US) are not liberal. What happens if you don’t want to work? What if you want to live as a nomad and not own property? What if you want to go and live in another country where you weren’t born? What if you want to be self-sustaining and completely separate from the state? Capitalist democracies are no different to authoritarian socialist states. They still force you to work, limit your free time and what you do with it, and force you to accept a way of living which you might not want. The only difference is in the mechanisms they adopt to curtail your freedom.

then just agree that socialism sucks and liberalism is a much better way of doing things

Aside from it isnt as all the victims of lassiez-faire liberalism found out.

A mixed economy is the right approach but getting the balance is crucial. Announcing that anything other than the purist version of one is actually the other undermines this.

Nearly every country is a blend of socialist and capitalist policies.

No, they aren’t. Socialist policies are that the means of production should be publicly owned. Most countries have abandoned nationalization of industry.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-bush-becomes-a-soc_b_127006

They still force you to work

Nobody is forcing anyone to work, its just if you choose not to work you have to pay the consequences of your choice.

What if you want to be self-sustaining and completely separate from the state

Because your actions will have an effect on everyone else around you. it’s called society & its the inevitable consequence of living on a plqnet with 7 billion other people. You have to learn to share. If you don’t like it, other planets are available.

For anyone interested in this stuff in a British context, there are some good shows on BBC Sounds about the history of socialism and liberalism (and conservatism, but that’s not relevant here).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b09t896q?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b06t44pc?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

The liberalism the UK experienced doesn’t have much at all to do with socialism.

Which places? Specifics on what? How are we supposed to use Google to work out what you were talking about when it’s not even clear you know….?

Yes

Socialism, fascism and other similar terms are archaic 19/20th century terms that are used now by people to bash their political opponents who believe society should be organised differently. We should move past them.

The real argument is how we manage capitalism. There isn’t anything else, anywhere. There have been experiments in the past but they have withered away or been overthrown. Now there are just degrees of capitalism from progressive social democracy to crazed dictatorship.

I’m all for reigning in untrammelled capitalism that concentrates wealth in the greedy paws of the very few and brutalises society to the extent that teenagers are stabbing each other in bus stops and the old fear winter, which is the direction we’ve been taken down by the neo-liberal experiment since the 80s. There are alternatives and we should be brave and smart enough to defy the powerful to demand that we change course. That doesn’t mean people can’t start businesses, create things, make money and enjoy the trappings of ‘success’, it just means they need to contribute enough back to create a happy and healthy society for everyone, including them, to live in.

I’m available for Prime Minister from Tuesday.

One thing – Capitalism can’t really exist without a source of money – that is in countries like ours issued by the Goverment using tax liablities to give the currency demand. The whole commercial banking sector is backed by the BoE.

It’s a total red herring that capitalism is somehow self-generating – and wealth creating. It merely moves money from one area to another – usually to fewer and fewer people.

Once we get our head around that and the usual lack of money arguments – you can see the state can be funded to whatever is available for the government to purchase. Politics decides what that is, and a dynamic private sector can flow forwards from that.

You don’t really need to talk in terms of Socialism or Capitalism – just follow the distribution of how money is created and where it needs to be spent. Then don’t talk of the private sector funding the public.

We have the worst of all worlds – two political parties that lie about what needs to be done and what could be done with Government funding, and too much money going to the few.

I think we’re stuck currently – an economic cul-de-sac. No one wants to really make the changes needed it appears.

Nobody is forcing anyone to work, its just if you choose not to work you have to pay the consequences of your choice.

Absolutely. That’s not very liberal though is it? In order to live a decent life most of us have to give up 5 days out of 7 and we have little choice in the matter. Pretty sure if you went and suggested that to some prehistoric or indegenous people who work a couple of hours a day they’d think you were an idiot.

The real argument is how we manage capitalism. There isn’t anything else, anywhere.

Sigh, yes there is. Capitalism in its current form has only existed for a couple of hundred years or so out of the 300,000 human beings have existed. It has also done more damage to the planet in those two hundred years than in the rest of history combined, and threatens our extinction if we continue with it. So ask yourself again, is there anything else? Because if not that’s quite an extreme position to take.

prehistoric or indegenous people who work a couple of hours a day

I’m sure if you decided to work for a couple of hours a day you would be easily able to  replicate their lifestyle. Assuming that is that the odd 60 million people on this island didn’t do the same thing & the hunter/gatherer lifestyle proved to be a bit problematic.

Assuming that is that the odd 60 million people on this island didn’t do the same thing & the hunter/gatherer lifestyle proved to be a bit problematic.

So we’re all working twice as much as we need so we can populate the planet more so we can use up it’s resources faster, all so a tiny few rich people can live the life of kings. Is that liberal? Or sensible or logical?

the hunter/gatherer lifestyle proved to be a bit problematic.

Possibly. Its one of the big questions (with probably a lot of answers) about why the switch happened. Especially when you look at the comparative health of the two groups. It took a long time for farming to clearly outperform hunter gathering so what were the drivers for selecting it.

The real argument is how we manage capitalism. There isn’t anything else, anywhere.
Sigh, yes there is. Capitalism in its current form has only existed for a couple of hundred years or so out of the 300,000 human beings have existed. It has also done more damage to the planet in those two hundred years than in the rest of history combined, and threatens our extinction if we continue with it. So ask yourself again, is there anything else? Because if not that’s quite an extreme position to take.

If capitalism is the exchange of money for goods and services, then I’d argue that it has existed since the Romans in one form or another, probably longer.

Your argument is about the most recent version of it and how it works. I don’t disagree with your fears about this crappy system, but if you can describe a system that isn’t capitalism in some form or other I’d be pleasantly surprised. There’s never been a truly collective system because there’s always a boss class. Welcome to the animal kingdom, you’re one of them.

If capitalism is the exchange of money for goods and services

It isn’t, it is a term coined by Karl Marx to describe the existing social order at the time that he made the comment. Although he tended to refer to it as the capitalist mode of production.

Edit: Okay this is STW so I am likely to get pulled up by the fact that Marx wasn’t the first to use the term, although I believe he was the first to talk about the “capitalist mode of production”.

But the term capitalism is being used here on this thread in the context of Marx’s definition, not ancient Rome.

So we’re all working twice as much as we need so we can populate the planet more so we can use up it’s resources faster, all so a tiny few rich people can live the life of kings. Is that liberal? Or sensible or logical?

umm. We are where we are. We have 60 million people on this island. What do you propose to do. Euthanse 99% of them so that the remainder can live a blissful low tech pastoral lifestyle? Doesn’t sound very socialist to me, although it might be quite utopian for the remaining few.

The socialist utopia is always just over the rainbow. To get there just use Orwell as an operating manual while ingesting a modernised version of Marx, updating oppressor/oppressed to whatever groups seems most likely to win you support. Be sure to politicise The Current Thing be that mutilating/drugging confused children or making energy unaffordable, spout hypocrisy, make everything about identity, and when you’re in just raise taxes and spend. Be sure to build a wall to stop people escaping and don’t forget to pass Draconian thought crime legislation and rewrite history along the lines of the Chinese revolution. Voilà, everyone’s happy.

“I haven’t got a local one.. **** Tories.”

You live in Wales, I don’t believe the Tories have been in power there for some time.

umm. We are where we are. We have 60 million people on this island. What do you propose to do. Euthanse 99% of them so that the remainder can live a blissful low tech pastoral lifestyle?

How many of those 60 million actually do something truly necessary? How many jobs are just a bullshit way of propping up lifestyles that serve no real purpose and add to the demise of our planet? Our whole system is terribly **** and the vast majority of us spend our very short lives doing dumb shit that doesn’t make us happy or add any quality to our lives or those of wider society. Yet that is just the way things are and we have to accept it.

Yes I’m in a shit mood 😂

Capitalist democracies are no different to authoritarian socialist states

You could maybe construct a logical argument to that effect but it would be worthless as in reality capitalist democracies are very very different to authoritarian socialist states and it it’s a bit of an insult to those who lived through some pretty terrible times to suggest otherwise.

You may be forced to work, in some degree or other, but on some level this is no different to how it has been forever. Humans have always had to go out and find food and shelter which is still work. You might be bored and frustrated with your 9-5 grind writing TPS reports or whatever you do, but you might find going out to look for berries or squirrels every single day of your life and living in the same village in the same valley just as tedious.  As hunter gatherers, few people have the time to dedicate their lives to bigger issues like inventing machines to do things, discussing the meaning of life or working out how to solve the world’s problems.

 lifestyles that serve no real purpose

What purpose do any of us have?

You live in Wales, I don’t believe the Tories have been in power there for some time.

Wales is in the UK, the UK is run by Tories.  The WG can only do so much with the budget it’s given.

To enjoy life and be content. Neither of which I’m going to do when I spend most of my life working!

As hunter gatherers, few people have the time to dedicate their lives to bigger issues like inventing machines to do things, discussing the meaning of life or working out how to solve the world’s problems.

People making machines and thinking is what got us to the state we’re in now. It’s resulted in more people thinking of ways to right the wrongs made by the last lot of people thinking.

I’ve seen documentaries following small tribes of Hunter gatherers. They spend a great deal of time napping and work when they need to. Not by an arbitrary set of rules to earn money to buy things that aren’t needed in the vain hope that continuing to do so will bring fulfilment. As I said, bad mood 😂 if you spend more than five minutes thinking about most of the jobs that exist it results in a WTF are we actually doing moment. At least for me it does 😊

I blame the people who invented agriculture. You thought Boomers were bad.

“The US is a terrible place to live for the majority.”

I would clearly organise a lot of things differently in the US if I were a benevolent dictator, and not many Swiss or Singaporeans are jumping the border into the US. But compared to where people are going to the US from – El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico etc – working class life in the US evidently seems pretty attractive. What is going on in Central America at the moment is quite horrific, for example.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/02/the-guardian-view-on-el-salvadors-crackdown-a-short-term-high-cost-fix

“I blame the people who invented agriculture”
I went to a gathering of hunters many thousands of years ago.

Mexico etc

a fair proportion of why their lives are so bad is down to the place they are fleeing to.

Well luckily for me I live in a liberal democracy where major utilities are either publicly owned. or publicly regulated and society and taxation are designed to provide adequate services for all strata of society and to prevent crushing levels of inequality.

That is not the same as a communist society where everything is owned by the state rather than the public.

The fact that things are horrific in Central America doesn’t remove the fact that 40million people in the US live in what is defined as poverty, and that definition is pretty harsh.