Talk:Criticism of socialism/Archive 1

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Philosophical issues

I worry about an article that just presents pros and cons. It never postulates the philosophical issues, much less answer them.

Let me give you an example : Suppose you had an article on pedofilia, and you presented pros and cons like : "pros, the adult enjoys himself; cons, health issues for the minor". Right away you can see that by presenting pros and cons, the underlying issue of weather pedofilia is right or wrong is completely sidesteped. In fact, it gives the impression that the validity of pedofilia is to be decided uppon weighing the pros against the cons.

Another example : say I advocated strapping people to boards, and forcefeeding them a balanced diet.

Pros

The people are eating a nutritious, well balanced meal and have a healthy body fat index, and live longer.

Cons

They can't move much.

The pros and cons never answer the question : is it OK to strap people to boards? In fact, it seems to imply that if we can eliminate the cons (say, by letting the people move a little), that there would be no argument against doing so!

A Politico-Economic system is based first and foremost on philosophical principles, and not on the pros and cons. On something like Capitalism vs. Socialism, the greater question to be answered is a philosophical one: Do Humans have an unalienable right to private property or not?!

Dullfig 18:58, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, let me try one more time, see if anyone bites: The first section in the article should be "do people have a right to private property or not"? That is the BIGEST argument against socialism. Wether this or that or another society achieves more or less equality by abolishing to varying degrees our personal freedom, is besides the point. Take "progressive" taxation, for example: no one who is intelectually honest denies the fact that it is unequal confiscation of personal property (your money) based solely on the fact that you have earned more of it. I don't care one bit if it provides more or less "incentive", or if the economy grows more or less by doing so. IS IT RIGHT TO DO SO?! That should be the main thrust of this article. -- Dullfig 01:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Do people have an inalienable right to private property? First of all, why do we have "rights" and why do we need to protect them? I'd put it to you that we have those rights to protect us from deprivation of our basic needs, our ability to live how we wish. So under capitalism, we need a right to private property in order to protect us from other people taking our wealth. That is because we are dependent on that wealth to meet our material needs. So yeah, we have this right in a capitalist society.

However, in a socialist society, things are quite different. Bear with me:

--> First of all, socialism is amoral - or rather, it's "morals" are based on pragmatism. So rights are a matter of practicality and whether it satisfies the ends of socialism.

--> Socialism is a voluntary movement. Unlike tax, where it is taken from you whether you like it or not in order for you to avoid prosecution, people establish socialism themselves and one gives what they can towards the community's needs. If workers voluntarily give up private property because they see the benefit for themselves as a whole in a socialist economy, then the right to private property becomes redundant. Socialism, as opposed to communism, requires all participants to fully understand how it works and what the implications are of giving up such things. No one would have property "taken" from them, as a willing participant, they would give what the community needs. Just as a firefighter risks his life to go into a burning building, knowing the possible detriment to himself, because he identifies a need of the community and having the means to fulfil that need, does it.

--> Marx explains quite well that for something to have value, it must have utility. Take the example of a personal document, like a love letter. This fills no material need for the community. You can have your letter and read it too :). If it was a letter about how to build a water-fueled car, or the cure for aids, then there would be value to the community, and it would be public property. Does someone have the right to information that could benefit them? Or do you have the right to withhold that information because it was originally in your possesion? Even if it wasn't considered "private property", there would be no reason for you to give the letter over to your community because they can't use it, and you need it for your own personal information. However, if you are voluntarily participating in socialism, you will voluntarily provide useful information like the cure for aids to the community. You have no reason to withhold it - unlike in capitalism, where could profit from selling the information or using it against people that compete for wealth with you.

--> So, by not having private property in socialism, are we deprived? No, our material needs are met by communal property. Will items of value only to ourselves be confiscated and destroyed? No, we are free to keep whatever the community has no need for, and only should give property up voluntarily and if said property is not needed by ourselves. One would not be participating in socialism if one were not participating in voluntary contributions of this kind for mutual benefit.

If you want to criticise socialism in regards to private property, you'll need to show that private property is necessary over communal property, and that under socialism, you would be deprived of something of value to you.

-- spider, 23:53 29 September 2006

NPOV

According to its supporters, a profit system is a monitoring mechanism which continually evaluates the economic performance of every business enterprise. In theory, under capitalism the firms that are the most efficient and most successful at meeting consumer demand are rewarded with profits. Firms that operate inefficiently and fail to serve the perceived public interest are penalized with losses.

This does not include the people getting free methods of doing things (such as free home made medicines, TOTALLY free methods of fast transport (fast does not include walking or running, bikes cost money so can't be included, etc etc etc...). Nor does it include companies with enough money to buy their market (Microsoft being an obvous example after the amount they are spending on advertising). A real bad point of socalism is the people are for the state and not for the people, which brings along Nazism, Stalinism and the likes, which goes totally aganist my beliefs and my point of view. What the world needs is something for the people by the people, (note: first for the people, then by the people so nothing like nazism happens, and you would have freedom...) 220.233.48.200 13:59, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

That's incorrect. Socialism is not people for the state - that's Stalinism. People get confused between the two a lot when criticising it. I hate to sound high and mighty, but as a socialist, I wish people would perhaps educate themselves before criticising something. It wastes so much time to keep repeating the same thing. There are far more challenging arguments to deal with.

Anyway, long story short: by abolishing classes, you can not have a state separate to its people. Nazism is NOT socialism - yes it was called Nationalist Socialism, but it was far right-wing, not left, and Hitler greatly despised communists and socialists. Stalinism is not what we call socialism today - There's a significant difference between communism and socialism that is too complex to go into here. Please note that North Vietnam was called the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam during the Vietnamese war, but is not what many libertarians would call democratic or having an established democracy. In the same way, calling something Socialist doesn't make it so either. In some places, Socialist pertains to nothing more than just a non-revolutionary labour/workers rights political party within a capitalist democracy. Socialism considers the emancipation of the working class to be the path to freedom, and democracy to be the path to socialism. It's not about forcing people or oppressing people - but rather, is the opposite. -- spider 04:22 29 September (UTC)

Economic calculation problem

Any thoughts on where the economic calculation problem fits in here? It is both an issue of prices and of central planning or information-gathering.

It figures importantly the Austrian-school critique of socialism -- by which von Mises predicted the shortages suffered in the Eastern Bloc. I believe it is also used indirectly by some (left-)anarchist critics of centralized socialism. --FOo 18:11, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, probably an issue of both. Chaos theory was not known when Mises formulated his theories. Ultramarine 18:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've just aded an external link regarding the calculation debate. One might work from that to develop material for within the article as well. --Christofurio 18:31, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

References

This article needs a References and Further Reading section, which certainly should include Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and von Mises' Socialism.

 --Serge 18:34, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

False claims about anarchist beliefs

"Even anarchists usually advocate some form of coordination, so that different groups of workers function smoothly together, no matter if in a local community or on the scale of the world. Furthermore, it is not possible to vote about everything, if for no other reason than that information gathering, discussion, and voting takes time. Meaning that much power must be given to leaders, at least temporarily."

No anarchist would argue that "power must be given to leaders, at least temporarily". Anybody who gives power to leaders is not an anarchist. True, anarchist socialism would not be achievable overnight, but as long as leaders are in power the society is not functioning under anarchist socialism, and any central planning that occurred would be the result of those hierarchical structures from capitalism which have not yet disappeared. Anarchists do not believe in the "central planning" of society, which is the blunt of most criticisms of socialism. We advocate rather the most decentralized planning possible, a society where power flows entirely from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Anything less, to the anarchist, is not true socialism.

The absurdity continues...

"But central planning or anarchist coordination requires very good knowledge of the future in order to make good decisions. But in the real world it is often impossible to make long term predictions as discussed in chaos theory. In capitalism this is solved by simultaneously trying many possible solutions and letting the real world and competition find the best. But anarchist coordination or central planning means that often one or only a few solution will be chosen. And in many cases these solutions will be the wrong ones due to the faulty forecasting."

By substituting competition for cooperation, anarchist organizations do not come to "one or only a few solution (sic)" to problems. Anarchists do not demand uniformity of opinion. In an anarchist society, each community is free to pursue whatever solutions it desires to the various problems presented to it, and thus, the anarchist argues, a much wider diversity of economic systems and general problem-solving options would be possible than under capitalism. Through trial and error those systems which work well would be discovered and adopted elsewhere. Those which work badly would obviously fail and be rejected. Every individual, every commune, every federation would be free to enact their own solutions to their own problems, rather than having these decisions made by people at the top of hierarchical organizations, as in the capitalist corporation or the modern bureaucracy. How in the world would this cause a diminution of the number of available solutions for problems? — Ливай | Ⓣ 02:58, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Edits/Arguments

I edited out a sentence that was pure nonsense: the claim that capitalism directly encourages and promotes fraud and deception. Many of the socialist criticisms seem to be 'arts student' level criticisms, blaming free markets for any perceived ill - I would tend to doubt that any formal exposition would include such fundamental misconceptions. Should the criticisms therefore remain in the article?

That's not nonsense, but I agree that it's extremely inaccurate and has no place in a balanced source of facts and discussion. However, the motivation behind choosing socialism over capitalism is that it would solve many problems that aren't solved by capitalism and may even be exacerbated by them. I'll have a good look at them and see if I can suggest some edits --- spider 04:25 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. You can tell, just by reading over that mess of an article, that both sides of the socialist debate are simply editing out each-others contributions throughout that whole thing. -- ktaylor

Yeah, that's sad. As a socialist, I prefer a full debate, not censorship. - spider 04:25 29 September 2006 (UTC)

As someone with a degree in economics and masters in finance, I would assert that there is no debate whatsoever. Nonetheless, if there is to be an article on socialism, the article should accurately reflect core socialist theory, rather than the absurd populist rantings of those who yet claim to be socialists. The two are distinct. The latter should perhaps have their own article, entitled 'ignorant morons'. However, I am loath to delete broad swathes of the article because I cannot replace them myself. I will flag it for improvement instead. - lambsy

Is it NPOV to add a section refuting each criticism?

Yes. You can't provide a criticism and then leave it up in the air whether there is a rebuttal to it. Plus, it is very likely that criticism of communism will sneak into this document. Read this discussion page and look how few people bothering to comment have checked out what they're talking about. A full and educated debate is what this criticism page needs to provide any thought-provoking or worthwhile discussion. -- spider 04:28 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Paragraph POV

The following paragraph has an obvious POV, and should be re-written to conform with higher standardss. Wikipedia is not a place to take positions, and this paragraph obviously takes a deferential tone:

In response, most socialists claim that the incentives in a socialist planned economy should come from the democratic nature of the system. Economic planners are supposed to have an interest in doing a good job and delivering what the people need because that ensures the people will keep voting for them in elections, while if the planners are doing a bad job and the economy is stagnating, the people would vote them out of office and elect a new government with a new economic plan. It is easy to see (in real world as in theory) that it cannot and doesn't work : actually, voters are confronted with real achievements of actual planners and virtual possibilities of other plans and other would-be planners, they are asked to compare reality with dreams, which is an impossible task. On one hand, actual planners have the means to influence the voters directly (by proper allocations) and indirectly (they control propaganda and police forces) ; on the other hand, it is quite easy to point at evident errors or bad results and to claim that we would have done better. Last but not least, the very supposition that planners have a personnal interrest in being elected contradicts the basis of socialism, which is supposed to work regardless of personnal interrest. The socialist claim that "democracy ensures a constant re-optimization of resources and moves the socialist economy toward greater levels of efficiency" is nothing but an act of faith with no real basis.

Title

I wonder if "Criticisms of economic socialism" wouldn't be a better title for this article. The economy is only a half of most modern socialist theory. Thoughts? -- Yossarian 04:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Too many. Thoughts, that is.--Christofurio 03:16, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, good idea. -- spider

Opinions

Did anyone evr stop to think that this page is OPINION not FACT based.Obviously the people that had criticisms of Socialism are Capitalists!This page was created by opinion.Not by fact.It's exactly like saying that Rap music is bad music.That's because it's only that person's taste!It's not a fact!

Though one wouldn't expect the bald statement "rap music is bad" in an encyclopedia, there would be nothing objectionable about an article entitled "Criticisms of Rap Music." It would be built on the objective fact that such criticisms are made. As a practical matter, whether such an article comes about tends to depend on whether the rap music article becomes the scene of very contentious edit wars, some of which might valuably be mitigated by the creation of the "criticisms" spin-off. In either case, the article would be based on fact -- the fact of the existence of certain opinions. Its all part of the NPOV policy. --Christofurio 16:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - socialism is a worldview that makes suppositions and assertions about issues that are open to subjectivity. You can't put those views up there and not then balance it with rebuttals to show the merit or validity of those ideas. That's where the criticism page comes in. Otherwise people will say "no that's wrong, I don't think the working class are in direct opposition to the ruling class, I don't even think those things exist" and its place in the encyclopaedia will be questioned. -- spider

Human Rights

The main feature of Socialism is the denial of the existance of Personal Property. Most people would agree that humans have an unalienable right to life. But few realise that the logical consequence is private property. Let's take a related right to clafify this point: the right to free speech. If the right to free speech meant only that you have the right to shout your opinion from a street corner, it would be pretty meaningless. So the right to free speech means you have the right to any and all activities required to make your oppinion known.

What if you can't afford to do anything other than shout your opinion from a street corner? The existence of private property negates the right to free speech in many ways, because, in a capitalist society, most of the channels used for making one's opinion known (e.g. newspapers, television stations) are owned and controlled by a small number of wealthy and powerful individuals. -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 08:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This criticism of the abolition of private property seems ill-informed - not ALL private property would be abolished - just only private property that has commercial value to it. A letter, photos, things of purely personal value would "belong" to someone because it only has value to them. Anything that has value (as Marx defined - has utility) to other people would in deed be public property owing to the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". This doesn't mean that one would have sentimental items stolen from them, never to be returned - why would we need them? They would not be needed, wealth for wealth's sake would not exist and they would have access to whatever they needed when they needed it. Therefore it would be given freely to the community, just as they would receive freely. - spider 9:51pm 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The same happens with the right to life: it would be meaningless if you where not allowed to own property, means of production and trade. Without that, how are you supposed to exercise your right to life?

Public bread tastes exactly the same as private bread. In a society without private property, you exercise your right to life by using your share of the common wealth to satisfy your needs (just like in a capitalist society you use your private wealth - if you have enough of it - to satisfy those same needs). And by the way, in capitalism most people don't own means of production anyway. -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 08:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, socialism hands ownership of the means of production over to those who are producing, thus erasing any class system whereby only some, not all, own said means. Therefore this criticism is self-contradicting. --spider 21:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Second, since all humans are born equal, no human can impose his needs on another human (my rights end where yours begin). Any political system that requires one group of humans to sacrifice for the benefit of another set of humans, violates equal rights, and the inalienable right to life of the individual.

Yes, we all have the same needs and the same rights. However, saying that rights are equal does not specify anything about the extent of those rights. If we both have no rights at all, our rights are equal. If we both have a million rights, our rights are still equal. -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 08:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

The word "sacrifice" implies giving up something that one would actually need, rather than something that is superfluous. Someone here needs to stop thinking about lines of people fighting over fish in Soviet Russia. Are we talking about socialism here or Stalinist communism? Socialism takes away labour for the sake of wealth and replaces it with labour for the sake of fulfilling the material needs of society. For something to be of value in that system, it must have utility. All that will be "sacrificed" or taken away is that which has no value to the individual, and yet is required by the community. "Each from his own according to his ability, each to his own according to his need". Furthermore, socialism is distinct from Bolshevik communism etc because it is a voluntary action of the people to better its situation - not a forced system from above that is against their interests. This is inherent to the very existence of socialism. Any critism of "forced" sacrifice should be directed to Stalinists. --spider 20:02, 29 September 2006, (UTC)

If the winners of the latest election have more rights than the losers, then our rights are not equal. --Christofurio 13:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In a capitalistic system, there is always an imposition of needs/wants upon another person. The employer's "need" to make a profit always supercedes the employee's human rights, because he/she is made to be subserviant to his/her employer. Everyday, common laborers make sacrifices that further their employer's ambitions. The real question is not whether any imposition of needs of one group in society upon another is just, but rather how such imposition should be done in an equitable manner. Hence why society taxes rich people more than poor people: they have more ability to contribute and they have often used people lower in the social strata to attain or maintain their position. Sarcastic Avenger 21:05, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that a new section entitled "rights" be created, which will address critiques like those at the top of this section of the discussion page. Any objections? ~~

Potential Competition

Mihnea deleted somebody's sensible observation about the effect of potential competition on mitigating the pricing effects of a monopoly. The existence of a monopoly logical implies that actual competition is absent, but nothing more. I restored the point, making it more explicit. This has brought to my attention the fact that wikipedia has no entry for potential competition, which is odd since its an important and basic concept in economics, covered in all introductory texts.

On the scholarly level, here's one recent discussion of the effects of potential competition in one industry. (yale seminar) --Christofurio 19:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I just created a quite rudimentary article on the concept of potential competition. Please, economists, fill it out. --Christofurio 00:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

There seems to be a dispute between Ultramarine and myself that has emerged largely as a result of misunderstanding (as far as I can see). Ultramarine, your edit summary suggested that I reverted your edits, when in fact that was not the case. I merely edited your text, while keeping all your points. The only thing I removed was a criticism of primitive societies in the Historical Examples section. I did this because primitive societies are only admired by a subset of anarchists, who are in turn only a subset of socialists. Further, the anarchists that admire primitive societies - namely anarcho-primitivists - oppose socialism (indeed, they oppose all of the "Left" and traditional politics in general) and do not describe themselves as socialists. Perhaps you should add your criticism to the anarcho-primitivism article (if it isn't already there). Not all non-capitalism is socialism. -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 21:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that most of our misunderstanding has been resolved, Ultramarine. All we have left to do is discuss the Incentives for individuals section. I believe it is a straw man, or at least not appropriate for criticisms of socialism as a whole. Why? Because it seems to rest on the assumption that there is no wage differential in a socialist economy: "All people earn the same, so there is no incentive to work". This is not true for most theoretical socialisms, and certainly not true for any of the real-world societies that have been called "socialist". Granted, socialism does aim to reduce wage differentials, but not necessarily eliminate them altogether. One may argue that a more egalitarian distribution of wealth would reduce incentives to work, but this is empirically false: Many of the richest nations in the world have a low Gini index. -- Nikodemos 20:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Add the above. However, not all socialists agree with you and then this is an argument against those socialists. Also, socialists may have different views on the reward for different genetic ability and inheritance.Ultramarine 10:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote the Incentives for individuals section, adding the information above and eliminating the rather tangential reference to Parecon. I have also merged the two incentives sections, for no other reason than because I find their old titles to be misleading (the "Incentives for organizations" section discussed many individual incentives too). Please review my edits and tell me your opinion. -- Nikodemos 05:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Please quit making blanket reversions

Please quit making complete reversions to early edits. The reversions are changing a number of edits made by different people. If you want to have an edit war, at least isolate the changes you are warring about to reduce the collateral damage. – Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 22:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Unclear and unbalanced

This article is so unclear and unbalanced that it doesn't even hold my interest. It seems more like a "defense" of socialism than an explanation of why opponents object to it.

Tactics like changing the subject in the middle of the paragraph are more suited to propaganda: "Many people don't even consider this to be socialism." (A subtle and effective way of saying that this criticism doesn't apply.)

Also inadequately addressed is the tension between (a) the profit motive as something which may benefit all of society or enrich a powerful few and (b) centralized planning by elected administrators, which may benefit all of society or enrich a powerful few.

A more balanced critique would classify various socialist experiments into types and then list criticisms by type:

• Dictatorships as in Soviet-style Communism (including Eastern Europe, China, North Korea & Cuba)
• Elected governments (er, would that include Chile?) such as Sweden, Venezuela (nationalized oil)
• Mixed systems, i.e., essentially free market but with anti-monopoly controls; welfare state entitlements; protectionism; government-owned transportation, mail delivery, trash pick-up; etc.

I have no particular bone to pick with any of these economies (but I'll admit to some pre-judgment against any dictatorship which treats a professed desire for emigration as de facto treason).

I'm more interested in as objective an analysis as possible of the major variants of socialism which have been tried. --192.195.66.45 20:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

There are no "socialist experiments", either today or at any point in history, which have been universally considered socialist by all socialists. Saying that any particular historical example constitutes "socialism" would be an endorsement of a certain point of view. Analysis of the "major variants of socialism which have been tried" belongs in separate articles, and should not be collected here. Criticism of Soviet-style Communism is covered extensively in the article on criticisms of communism. If you want to read about Sweden, Venezuela, or whatever other country, please see Sweden, Venezuela or the specific article on the country you are looking for. -- Nikodemos 22:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Precision!

This article is opaque. At the moment, it gives few straight answers, probably since the article, like most, has evolved rather than been written structurally. As 192.195.66.45 pointed out, criticisms are effectively left in the air: they don't attach to those types of socialism to which they belong, and they hang over where they oughtn't. Therefore, each criticism should name the types of socialism to which it is and isn't pertinent, if it can be applied to any one generally. If it is a result of the specific policy of one or more countries, then it should either go in the articles for those countries or, if a policy which is likely to be common to socialist theory, should be included here noting that it is variable based on what policies are enacted. Certain general claims, e.g. anti-planned economy claims (unless covered elsewhere) should be given initially (and exclusions made where socialist theory permits work arounds, e.g. "Except in Left-Anarcho-Polyhedral Socialism and other camps which adopt a policy of zero tolerance on pidgeons").

I'll leave this suggestion for a little while, and if there are no objections I'll try and begin. Help would also be appreciated, especially from people who know the taxonomy.--Nema Fakei 00:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)