Under the ‘mainstream’ definition of socialism (if that exists).
Totalitarianism.
True Socialism is not Totalitarian, that’s why it can’t exist.
Socialism? Yes.
“Democratic” Socialism? No. <------ But this one seems to be the mainstream now.
What’s true socialism?
True socialism is paradise. Nothing ever goes wrong and everyone has everything they want…lol
The Marxist definition of Socialism (which I take to be mainstream) literally says: “Workers shall control the means of production”. Sadly this never came about in any Socialist country: workers themselves never controlled anything. let alone the means of production.
Mises amended this definition (I am quoting Socialism by memory, it’s not an exact quote): “The complete ownership by the State of the means of production”. Very few, if any, ever argued with this amendment so I take it can be considered as “mainstream” as Marx’s original statement.
So, yes, North Korea is a good example of Socialism since every single mean of production is controlled by the State. The Soviet Union, after the early Lenin years, was less Socialist: for example farmers were allowed limited forms of control over their means of production (small vegetable patches, small scale farmers’ markets etc)
Mises said public ownership of the means of production.
No evil country can be socialist, because socialism is fluffy and nice.
Socialists will always argue against any dictatorship to be called “socialist”, even if they support it… so I call it an Anti-Capitalist Dictatorship and they cant argue with that.
I think he means communism, which is the utopian end state that would be achieved eventually upon the successful establishment of world socialism(with collective ownership of the means of production via the “workers’ state”). However, World Socialism too is impossible too due to the calculation problem.
North Korea is an example of statism.
This whole idea of world socialism is stupid even without a calculation problem. I mean if you think e.g. that the known world would consist only of Europe, Asia and . Now suppose they would accomplish “world” socialism on this places successfully, so that they reach communism. Then suddenly a guy named would discover , which would be capitalistic. Wouldn’t have communism to break down instantly according to this theory?
And if not, then there is no need for arguing for world socialism in the first place. There is no logical stopping point. Then you can start small, and grow bigger by showing positive results. Of course they are not able to do this, so they need this “world-socialism as precondition” argument as a safeguard.
i really should read the “how to quote correctly” thread…
Someone has to force you to be a socialist, someone has take your property and money in order to redistribute wealth. You also have to be forced to share the means of production with the workers. In other words, you have the right to use property until you start producing with it, then the shooting begins. All this because of some “exploitation theory” crap.
Then there’s voluntary socialism, I suppose that can work. Even though those communes experience problems and sometimes people die or leave. My socialist moron(oxymoron) friends keep bringing up Freetown Christiana, I suppose if you goal is to be addicted on meth and live in a dump, then HEY!!WHY NOT!!!.
Even if socialism happens naturally, what will they do with people like me? I’ll let the readers guess that one.
Socialism is the control of the means of production by the workers, so what democracy really is; in fact, a good way to look at it is the view that socialism is democracy taken to its extreme.
There have been attempts - take the Bosheviks and the Soviet Union - to use the label ‘socialism’ in order to win the masses over. However, it seems a contradiction to say that the means of production is in the hands of the workers, which is in the hands of the state. If that is the case, then the means of production aren’t in the hands of the workers, but instead the state; and so by definition, this so called ‘state socialism’ is not socialism.
Using this it’s clear that North Korea is not socialist in anyway - nor was the Soviet Union for that matter.
Socialism can only exist as a form of ‘libertarian socialism’.
Democracy requires the existence of a state - an entity that has a monopoly over the resources we’re voting about. You can vote what to do with these resources, but you can never vote to get rid of the entity that has a monopoly over the resources. So these miniature states would really own the factories, not the workers. Real socialism is an oxymoron.
North Korea is a monarchy.
Democracy requires the existence of a state - an entity that has a monopoly over the resources we’re voting about. You can vote what to do with these resources, but you can never vote to get rid of the entity that has a monopoly over the resources. So these miniature states would really own the factories, not the workers. Real socialism is an oxymoron.
Democracy requires 1 person 1 vote. A democratic workplace is where major (and maybe even minor) decisions require a near/unanimous vote of the workers to be undertaken. It’s not about some local governing board, that’s not worker control. It’s about control of resource being in the hands of those closest to it and the consumer, not some far off body.
When you think of democracy, it seems you think of democratic republics. But there is a reason they have that “ic” on the end of democracy. I would say you are somewhat right to think there can never be a democracy, because democracy is a process, not a thing.
I’m familiar with the idea of a democratic workplace and I’ve always thought it to be silly. Why would workers make good decisions? It is not their speciality. Doesn’t it seem likely that decision-making would be delegated to a few workers that acted as “consensus formers,” gaining themselves hierarchial positions as a result of workers’ apathy?
Democracy is, by definition, the rule of the majority. It is a system by which 51% of the population dictates what 100% of the population can do. The market economy operates in an entirely different way. Each individual is free to express his own subjective values through voluntary exchange. If I wish to buy a yellow tie, for example, then I’m free to do so; I don’t need permission from the majority, and I don’t need to wait for an election or whatever. Likewise, if I believe that there’s a demand for a particular commodity and wish to produce such a commodity, then I’m entirely free to do so. Again, I don’t need permission from the majority; I don’t need to hold conferences, public debates, or whatever. I merely need to bid away factors of production from other employments and compete. The market will tell me, through the profit/loss constraint, whether I’m doing a good job or not.
What a nightmare that would be. Entrepreneurship would be entirely replaced by corporate politics. Corporate special interest groups would emerge. Such a system would be characterized by perceptual deadlock. And this ignores more technical problems, such as the fact that entrepreneurship is inherently risky, and that laborers tend to be, as a rule, risk averse.
But getting back to the OP. I would say that North Korea almost perfectly exemplifies real communism. Karl Marx was not a syndicalist; he did not aim at supplying the workers with capital and land, and he most certainly did not favor decentralized production (amongst coops or whatever). He wished to replace the “chaos of the market” with “rational central planning,” and to replace the bourgeois class with a “proletariat dictatorship” (the protagonist in his theory of history).