Why socialism?

[Karl Marx's Camel]

A friend of mine asked why we should have a socialist society. Why do you think we should have a socialist society?

[Clarksist]

The obvious reason: because its better than a capitalist one. :P

Socialism eliminates the man over man philosophy further, and sets us up for ultimate societal freedom under communism.

[bulrog]

Basically it makes the most sense!

[Vanguard1917]

Because socialist society puts the working class into power. It puts the working class - the only remaining revolutionary class of history- in charge and in control of the destiny of history. The working class is potentially a mighty revolutionary subject of history; the capitalist class, on the other hand, is finished - there're not going to last. They're in decay on all fronts.

The problem for us revolutionaries in advanced capitalist countries is to alert the working class of their historic role. This means defeating all the attempts of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes to influence working class consciousness. We need to challenge reactionary ideas on all levels and on all fronts, whether they be bourgeois ideas in defence of environmentalism and "sustainable development" or multiculturalism and chauvanism.

We need the awakening of the working class today more than ever. It is impossible to overestimate the decay of the capitalist class - economically, politically annd culturally.

[Fidelbrand]

NWOG,

This answers all. (I always quote this passage when i was studying at university.....)

<<<Albert Einstein&#39;s "Why Socialism?">>> (http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm)

[Led Zeppelin]

The question should be "why Communism".

[Fidelbrand]

While we all try to curb sectarianism, respecting the wide-ranging "Left" Spectrum is very much practcised here.

Personally, I think from capitalism to genuine communism won&#39;t take place unless the sun rises from the north. People have perceptions and psychological/cultural/material connections to the evil capitalist system.

An incremental yet progressive approach, I guess, is more down to earth.

[Batman]

Reasons to be Socialists (part one)


-The richest 1% of the world received as much income as the poorest 57%. The richest 10% of the US population (around 25 million people) have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 43% of the world population (around 2 billion people)(2001, 19)

-The world&#39;s 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998, to more than &#036;1 trillion. The assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people. (1999, 3)

- The world&#39;s 225 richest people have a combined wealth of over &#036;1 trillion, equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the world (2.5 billion). It is estimated that the cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to education for all, health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly &#036;40 billion a year (0.1% of world income). This is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. (1998, 30)

- Between 1989 and 1996, the number of billionaires increased from 157 to 447. Today the net wealth of the ten richest billionaires is &#036;133 billion, more than 1.5 times the total national income of all the least developed countries. (1997, 38)

-Inequality WITHIN countries. A study of 77 countries with 82% of the world&#39;s population who’s that between the 1950s and the 1990s, inequality rose in 45 of those countries and fell in 16 countries. (2001, 17)

- Income gap between the richest fifth and the poorest was 1: 30 in 1960, 1:60 in 1990 and 1:74 in 1997. In the 19th century, the income gap between the top and bottom countries increased from 1:3 in 1820 to 1:7 in 1870 and 1:11 in 1913(1999, 3) In 1950 it was 35:1, 44:1 in 1973 and 72:1 in 1992. (1999, 38)

- The share of the poorest 20% of the world&#39;s people in global income stands at 1.1% down from 1.4% in 1991 and 2.3% in 1960. The ratio of the top 20 to the bottom 20 rose from 30: 1 in 1960 to 61:1 in 1991 and to 78:1 in 1994. (1997, 9)

- The fruits of economic growth mostly benefit the rich. During 1970-1985 global GNP increased by 17%. While 200 million people saw their per capita incomes fall during 1969-1985, more than one billion people did in 1980-1993. (1996, 2)

- 2.4 billion people with no access to basic sanitation, 968 million people with no access to improved water sources, 854 million illiterate adults, 543 of them women, 325 million children out of school at primary and secondary levels, 183 of them girls, 11 million children die each year from preventable causes. (2001, 9)


-Some 2 billion people do not have access to low cost essential medicines (2001, 3) 1.3 billion no clean water, one in seven children of primary school age no school, 840 million no food (1999, 28)

- Annual expenditure. Basic education for all &#036;6 billion (cosmetics in USA &#036;8 billion), water and sanitation for all 9 billion (ice cream in Europe 11 billion) reproductive health for all women 12 billion (perfumes in Europe and USA 12 billion) basic health and nutrition 13 billion (pet foods in Europe and USA 17 billion). Military spending in the world: &#036;780 billion. (1998, 37)

- Global GDP increased nine folds from &#036;3 trillion to &#036;30 trillion over the past 50 years. (1999, 25)
- Between 1960 and 1993, global income increased from &#036;4 trillion to &#036;23 trillion, and per capita income more than tripled. (1996, 12) If trends continue, it should grow form 23 trillion in 1993 to 56 trillion in 2030. (1996, 36)
- Global output increased more than eleven-fold between 1850 and 1960, from &#036;611 billion to &#036;6936 billion in 1993 dollars. The world&#39;s population more than doubled, rising from 1.2 billion in 1850 to 3 billion in 1960. The net outcome: nearly a fivefold increase in per capital income. The goods and services produced in the industrial countries expanded nearly thirty-fold, from &#036;212 billion to &#036;6103 billion (1996, 12)

- world consumption. Private and public consumption expenditure reaches &#036;24 trillion in 1998, twice the level of 1975 and six times that of 1950. In 1900, real consumption expenditure was barely &#036;1.5 trillion. (1998, 1)
- The 20% of the world&#39;s people in high-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditure. The poorest 20% a mere 1.3%The richest fifth consume 45% of all meat and fish, poorest fifth 5%, 58% of total energy (poorest: less than 4%), 65% electricity, jave 74% of phone lines (poorest 1.5%), consume84% of all paper (poorest 1.1%), own 87% of the world&#39;s vehicle fleet (poorest less than 1%) (1998, 2)


- OECD countries with 19% of global population have 71% of global trade in goods and services, 58% of all FDI and 91% of all internet users. (1999, 3)
- top 20% have 86% of global GDP, 82% of world export markets, 68% of FDI, 74% of telephone lines (1999, 3)
- Of the &#036;23 trillion of global GDP in 1993, &#036;18 trillion are in industrial countries, only &#036;5 trillion in the rest, even if they have 80% world&#39;s population. (1996, 13)

- Sulphur dioxide emissions have grown from 30 millions tons in 1950 to 71 millions tons in 1994(1998; 55). Carbon dioxide has quadrupled from 5740 million tons in 1950 to 22 660 in 1995 (1998, 56) The problem is that corporations resist regulations and do not take into account damage to the environment.

- Annual carbon dioxide emissions quadrupled over the past 50 years. In industrial countries, per capita waste generation has increased threefold in the past 20 years. Water&#39;s global availability has dropped from 17000 cubic meters per capita in 1950 to 7000 today. A sixth of the world&#39;s land area (2 billion hectares) is degraded because of poor farming since 1945. Forests are shrinking, since 1970 the wooded area per 1000 people has fallen from 11.4 square kilometre to 7.3. Fish stocks are declining with about a quarter in danger of depletion and another 44% being fished at their biological limits. Wild species are becoming extinct 50 to 100 times faster than they would naturally. (1998, 4)
-
In past 50 years: burning of fossil fuels has almost quintupled since 1950, consumption of fresh water has doubled since 1960, marine catch has increased fourfold, wood consumption is now 40% higher than 25 years ago. (1998, 2)
- water scarcity, deforestation, desertification, pollution and natural disaster. In 1996, in developing countries, water supply per capita is only a third of what it was in 1970.

Some eight million to ten million acres of forest land are lost each year. Air pollution is a serious problem for 700 million people, primarily women and children. In addition, during 1967-1993 natural disasters affected three billion people in developing countries with more than seven million deaths and two million injuries. At current rate of loss, 15% of the earth&#39;s species could disappear over the next 25 years. (1996, 26).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Reasons to be Socialist (Part Two)

Human Development Disaster


In its latest Human Development Report, the UN warned that the world is heading for a &#39;heavily signposted human development disaster&#39; of needless child deaths, needless hunger, illiteracy and abject poverty. (http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/ <http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/> ) Everyone should take at least ten minutes of his or her time to glance through this important report. "In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 10.7 million children every year do not live to see their fifth birthday, and more than one billion people survive in abject poverty on less than &#036;1 a day", the report says. This means that every hour of everyday, 12000 children die of preventable causes... "One fifth of humanity lives in countries where many people think nothing of spending &#036;2 a day on cappuccino. Another fifth of humanity survives on less than &#036;1 a day and live in countries where children die for want of a simple anti-mosquito bed net." A Zambian today has less chance of reaching thirty years of age than someone born in England in 1840. Inequality is on the increase in countries, which account for 80% of the world&#39;s population. The poorest 40% of the world&#39;s population account for 5% of global income, the richest 10% account for 54%. The report says that the world&#39;s richest 500 individuals have got a combined income that is greater than the poorest 416 million individuals; and 2.5 billion people, or 40% of the world&#39;s population are living on less than &#036;2 a day. 18 countries, with a combined population of 460 million registered lower scores on the human development index than in 1990; an unprecedented reversal. Those include Russia and most countries that reversed to capitalism. Redistributing 1.6% of the income of the richest 10 percent of the global population would provide the &#036;300 billion needed to lift the one billion people living on less than a dollar a day out of extreme poverty. However, for every &#036;1 that rich countries spend on aid, they allocate &#036;10 to military spending. Europeans spend more on perfume each year than the &#036;7 billion needed to provide 2.6 billion people with access to clean water.

Poor human development indicators are not a fate of nature, but a result of the way societies are organised. A recent article in the Irish Times (Only now is healthcare becoming a reality for the poor of Venezuela, 17 September 2005) shows how things can change if society is organised differently. The article reports than in Venezuela, where an oil economy has over the decades produced an elite of super-rich people, a quarter of under 15s go hungry and 60 percent of people over 59 have no income at all. Less than a fifth of the population benefits from social security. The UN&#39;s World Health Organisation suggests that there should be 40 hospital beds for every 10 000 members of the world&#39;s population. In Venezuela, there are fewer than 18 beds per 10 000 people on average and the system is short of 18 700 nurses. The Bolivarian Revolution seeks to change this. "Only now under President Chavez, has medicine started to become something of a reality for the poverty-stricken majority in the rich but deeply divided society....The country&#39;s health is struggling ahead, helped by a scheme to get cheap staple food out to state-run shops in poor areas. As a result, in the years from 1998 to 2002, infant mortality has fallen slightly to 17.2 per 1000 and life expectancy has increased a little 73.7 years. Meanwhile Castro and Chavez are launching a scheme aimed at saving the sight of six million people on the continent of America, from Alaska to Cape Horn, at no cost for the patients, at the rate of 600 000 a year. A quarter of places on this scheme which will require treatment in Cuba and later Venezuela, are reserved for US citizens."

LOR

[Connolly]

A friend of mine asked why we should have a socialist society. Why do you think we should have a socialist society?

You ask the question as if there is some choice involved.

EXAMPLE: "Will we, or will we not go to the shops tomorrow"


I think we will have a socialist society because its the logical next step for humanity.

If there was a logical next step for humanity towards utter chaos and mass murder I couldnt choose it............ only predict it.

TRB ;)

[Pinky]

I think we will have a socialist society because its the logical next step for humanity.

Please explain.

[Enragé]

because a system based on greed and which brings out the worst aspects of man is doomed.
What we need is a system which brings out the best in man(kind).
And i think thats socialism/communism

[Kaga]

Because it&#39;s the only way to save the planet from capitalism and globalisation.

[novemba]

i think its a pure vanguardist invention. in a genuine popular revolution the people will have power from day one and there is absolutely no point in socialism. plus it fails...

Socialisms Glorious Track Record

Former USSR: failed.
Korea: failed.
China: failed.
Vietnam: failed.
Laos: failed.
Greece: failed.
Italy: failed.
Nicaragua: failed.
El Salvador: failed.
Cuba: pending.
Nepal: pending.

socialism = reform.

[MKS]

Former USSR: failed.
Korea: failed.
China: failed.
Vietnam: failed.
Laos: failed.
Greece: failed.
Italy: failed.
Nicaragua: failed.
El Salvador: failed.
Cuba: pending.
Nepal: pending.

All of the nations named never practiced true Socialism. They all had varying forms of State Capitalism, and at times Dictatorships (Laos and N.Korea).


i think its a pure vanguardist invention. in a genuine popular revolution the people will have power from day one and there is absolutely no point in socialism. plus it fails...

False. Socialism can be achieved without a vanguard. In fact Vanguardism is a perversion of Socialism (some Communists/Leninists would disagree). Socialism, unlike Communism (big "c") is an achievable goal, and when done correctly can create an equal, just and prosperous society. Socialism is simply the existance of a society where man does not exploit man.


socialism = reform.

Socialism=Progress

[novemba]

All of the nations named never practiced true Socialism

true this, true that....are we rappin?

the fact is there is nothing true about revolution that isn&#39;t initiated, fought, and won by the MASSES for the MASSES.


Socialism is simply the existance of a society where man does not exploit man.

sounds like...hmmm...communism?&#33;?&#33;?&#33; ::gasp:: we don&#39;t need socialism if we can go straight to communism.


All of the nations...never practice...Socialism

youre funny like tickle-me elmo.

[Entrails Konfetti]

Capitalism thrives on competition, exploitation, a working-class and a homeless (surplus) population, without any of those capitalism cannot exist.

Socialism thrives on co-operation, what must be remembered is that nationalizing an industry doesn&#39;t mean anything unless its governed by the soviets (who must have officials with economic knowledge).

Exploitation has many flaws and violates the idea of civil society; if someone you know doesn&#39;t like being taking advantage of and you do, they will retaliate because you violated their desire for civil society. We all desire a civil-society.
Revolution doesn&#39;t violate the desire of civil-society because the workers are the ones who have been violated and its up to them restore civil-society.

I&#39;m sure youre aware of how the capitalist pockets the money coming from the product of which the labourer created. You could argue thjat is was the capitalist who bought the raw materials. To an extent, maybe a small percentage of his money is what started the business, rarely is this money saved up from working as a labourer, usually its comes from stock-holders, or bank-loans. in short a capitalist is really a person who act as a medium for exchange but pockets a percentage of their workers.

Competition creates a survival of the fittest mentality, in school you either have the correct learning style or you don&#39;t and your fucked. Competition doesn&#39;t ensure students with the need of education, all that matters is that you pass the tests and get a degree. In the work houses the demon competetion keep the lower paid compete against eachother for bonuses and creates animosity and unessecary drama. Business compete with eachother for territories and markets, when one reigns victoriously over the desired area, though the business may expand its capital, it wont far enough to ecompass all the workers who are set free, there by creating a surplus population. A population who is dispossed of everytime their contract is up, or a population who remains homeless. The workers of the victorious firm could expirience pay-cuts within a few years when their wages are considered to other firms, here their own livlihood is threatened: either they work for daily susistance or they become homeless.

How does socialism remedy these flaws?

* Everyone will be ensured to the rights of housing, healthcare, a job, schooling and food.

* Business are under workers control through soviets, there aren&#39;t any bourgoesie running the businesses. competition is dead, and co-operation is instated.

*Schooling is based on knowledge and not entirely on grades.

*Housing is provided for everyone so that no one is homeless

* Soviets and peoples councils have places in the government.

* All repressentatives are repealable at all time. Repressenatives are just to act as mouth-pieces for the soviet or peoples councils.

I can go on and on, but your request is a tall order.

[Leif]

It has been said before more or less, but the socialist economy model simply makes sense, it is efficient and fair. It allows for equality of power (money & democratic labor) and thus the progress our species.

[workersunity]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 09:54 PM

All of the nations named never practiced true Socialism

true this, true that....are we rappin?

the fact is there is nothing true about revolution that isn&#39;t initiated, fought, and won by the MASSES for the MASSES.


Socialism is simply the existance of a society where man does not exploit man.

sounds like...hmmm...communism?&#33;?&#33;?&#33; ::gasp:: we don&#39;t need socialism if we can go straight to communism.


All of the nations...never practice...Socialism

youre funny like tickle-me elmo.
but it is the thoughts of an idealist who think that we can go from this capitalism straight into a classess, free society

[Connolly]

Please explain.

Because Marxism outlines an unfolding of events based on our natural progression through the methods of production, not a physical evolution of sort, but a technological one (a topic which seems to be ignored by most).

It is not a choice. It would only be a choice if man could choose his own destiny (ie. hold back technological advancement) for which it would be ridiculus to assume or argue in favour. If it were the case then the worker would be exploited and under the control of the capitalist for eternity. This has been proven wrong through historical analysis, most notably feudalisms transition towards capitalism.

Why do I say socialism is the next step for humanity? Well, I wouldnt be a Marxist if I didnt. Are you an anarchist to be asking such a question?

A socialist transition is needed for a number of reasons. One of them is to take the technology that has been partially held back by the capitalist class and apply this towards the rest of production that had been restricted advancment. You couldnt have a mature communist society, or indeed a communist society at all unless the means/methods of production have been allowed to mature. Another, more common reason, is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed to suppress and eliminate the capitalist class and its connections to control of society and production. When I say dictatorship of the proletariat, I dont mean a lenninist style dictatorship, but whatever natural form it may take.

Socialism is the next step, as far as the next step for production is automation. All other arrangments of society, class, division of labour, consumption, state etc. all stem from logical outcomes based on this method of production, in our case Automation.

RB

[*Hippie*]

Why Socialism?

Because it is humane and just. And Capitalism is destroying the world.