Socialism - Everyone contributes money to social programs that benefit everyone. Taxes are higher, but the money is used for the benefit of all. The government exists to oversee the programs that support the people. This HAS worked in many countries around the world. It is not about everyone being economically equal in society, it’s about accessibility of care and benefit for everyone regardless of their starting point.
Communism - Everyone is to be on equal footing and wealth is to be evenly distributed among everyone. Everything is, in theory, shared and belongs to everyone. The government exists to oversee the transition of society, then is meant to step aside rather than remain above the rest of the people. This has NOT worked as no one has ever successfully established this and then stepped aside. It leaves the door wide open for abuse of power.It’s important to consider the fact that an economy does not have to be entirely Capitalist, Socialist, or Communist.
Most countries already have Socialist and Capitalist components at this point.
What I’d personally like to see is Land be a communist system. Necessities be Socialist. Luxuries be Capitalist.
Every citizen of a country should own and share in the land of the country equally. It should not be possible to privately own land. If land is leased or rented from this pool for individual or corporate use, that money should be given to everyone equally. Likely that would be handled by a government in reality, but it should be fairly hands off other than facilitating the transfer of value.
Necessities like Basic Housing, Basic Food, Public Transportation, Medical Care, Parks, Rec Centers, Schools, Police, Courts, etc. should be all handled with socialism. Where the government collects taxes from the land value and capitalist markets, and operates these systems itself for the benefit of everyone who needs them.
If you want more than necessities, capitalism should stick around to handle those desires. Want a bigger fancier house, some fancy oranges from another country, a suit made of silk, go ahead and buy it on a capitalist market either with the money you receive from your portion of land ownership value, or through participating in the capitalist market yourself.
This is completely wrong. Social welfare and shared infrastructure have nothing to do with Socialism. Socialism is an economic model where the means of production are owned by the workers, nothing more, nothing less.
You clearly don’t understand how many countries operate. Or you’re somehow misunderstanding what “means of production” or “workers” means.
My local electricity provider, and all of it’s power production equipment, transmission lines, meters, etc. are owned by the government. So is every hospital in the country. Almost every road is public.
Means of production is any sort of capital used to build value, so things like infrastructure, buildings, factories, machinery, tools, etc.
Workers does not mean the people that work in a particular building or factory, it means the class of people as a whole.
It’s pretty obvious that if the government owns something, under a democracy that thing is is owned by the citizens of the region. Even Marx mentions that socialism would use the state for collective ownership.
Yes, they may be state-owned, but you still live in a bourgeois state with capitalist ownership structure, so the state doesn’t act in the workers interest, but to uphold the capitalist order.
By the way, would you mind telling me what country that is? Most EU countries with strong state-owned infrastructure that I’m aware of have been forced to liberalize, so for example in my country lots of former state enterprises are now private profit-bound businesses that are just 100% owned by the state.
Canada
You’re stretching the realities here with your assertions. The vast majority of what the government does is in the interest of workers. It could be better, absolutely, but it’s a far cry from some dystopian corpo-state. The government could move towards more positive worker benefits, but a lot of those workers won’t actually vote for them if they did because people aren’t entirely rational. So we’re essentially getting what we deserve right now.
Profit-bound but still owned by the state would still be socialist. There’s no requirement that the means of production not generate profit to qualify as being owned by the workers.
So you’re a Social Democrat, got it. Those are pretty out of fashion over here and gave up pretending wanting to achieve Socialism long ago. Sorry, but I don’t really think that what you’re talking about is Socialism, it’s liberal reformism.
I want Communism for Land, Socialism for Necessities, and Capitalism for Luxuries.
I don’t think that puts me into any of the existing labels to be quite honest.
Businesses (capital), labor (society), and the government are the three main components of a functioning state.
“Capitalism”, “socialism”, and “communism” are terms used to describe who is given the most control over the means of production in the economic system of a state.
“Capitalism” describes an economic system that places most of the control in the hands of capital (businesses). “Socialism” describes an economic system that places most of the control with workers (society), and communism describes an economic system that places most of the control with the government.
It should be noted that, even though these terms are VERY often conflated and even used interchangeably with terms that describe political systems, such as “authoritarian” or “democratic”, the fact is that these terms have nothing to do with each other and no combination of terms from either set are mutually exclusive.
To say it more simply, any capitalist, socialist, or communist society can also be democratic or authoritarian. The idea that socialism is the same thing as authoritarianism is propaganda created by capitalists who are scared to death of livong in a society that places the needs of the common working man above the needs of the biggest businesses in the country.
communism describes an economic system that places most of the control with the government.
I know you’re simplifying things for brevity but this is misleading at best. You can’t gloss over the goal of a classless, stateless society when defining communism, and it is explicitly a left-wing philosophy. Contrast with fascism, a right-wing political philosophy that places most of the control with the government by reinforcing control over capital and creating a clear national identity.
You can gloss over that goal if you don’t consider Marxism the only form of communism.
There are other types of communism possible, some that even already exist in smaller groupings of humans than at the state level.
The different types of Socialists disagree on how to achieve the classless society called Communism (including Anarchists, by the way), but the end goal of a classless society is the same. There is no seperate “Marxist” definition of communism, he just took an idea that was considered utopian before him and turned it into a science.
You’re wrong.
Communism can be entirely defined as an economic system with no private ownership.
The classes concept is a symptom, not the cause. It’s true that without private ownership there wouldn’t be a working class vs upper class, but we would hardly be classless at that point. There would still be people working, and people not working under communism. Some people can’t work, they simply aren’t capable, and some will choose not to work because there will already be enough to go around from the people who choose to work just for something to do. If you don’t think that classes will form because of those difference, you don’t know human nature very well.
Marx gave a single definition of communism, there are plenty of others.
I don’t think you understand what an economic class is. A new class does not emerge because one person is more productive for society than another. It’s a question of what your relation to the means of production is, and in a communist, classless society there would be no inequality there.
Could you provide a few alternate definitions of Communism? Sounds interesting.
I mean, the current 3-tier standard for social classes directly disagrees with you. Middle class people do get a new tier just by being more productive(perceived or actual) than another.
The 3-tier system is archaic at best, and more likely intentional propaganda.
Either there should only be 2 classes of people(those who work to live, and those who profit off other people enough to not need to work) or there should be a dozen classes to encompass things like the homeless, welfare supported persons, retired people, people who make part of their income from profit and part of their income from employment, etc.
The definition of communism I’ve already mentioned is one of those theories, but you’re arguing it isn’t real. An economic system where there is no private ownership of the means of production. That’s it, no discussion about social classes or anything.
Other alternatives span a range from no private ownership of anything (normally it’s just the means of production) to group ownership rather than being some sort of universal system.
Look: you can either own means of production and be part of the ruling class, or you can not own any and be forced to sell your labor for the rest of your life. A social welfare state is something that purposely built by the ruling class to further their interests, with some concessions to past union efforts.
That’s not what socialism is, trust me, I live in a country with one of the oldest and strongest Social Democratic impact in the world, and while the effects of that are still nice today they do not change anything about the fact that a huge majority works to enrich a tiny minority, and Social Democrats like you have never seriously put an effort into changing that, historically.
