I’ve been pondering this for several months now and despite coming to a conclusion on several occasions I cannot stick with it. At present I believe it’s a combination of misguided altruism and statist forces perpetuating the ideals through misinformtion. I don’t believe most statist forces do so out of pure evil as I believe they are just as misguided as many of the general populace. Can anybody shed more light on this for me?
One way to think of socialism is: the redrawing of property lines in the absence of tort. Socialism is the redistribution of property by a territorial monopolist of law where there is no tort injury. Obviously, such redrawing can only increase the level of violence and conflict in a society so why do people want it?
The simple reason is that each individual stands to gain tremendously if he comes out ahead in the property redistribution game. After all, there is a great deal of wealth out there which is not mine but could be mine. This is true of each individual. But since socialism is not rational (there is no way to calculate my profit or loss from participating in a socialist order versus not participating in it), I think most people overestimate the degree to which they can benefit. Of course, the vast majority of people are huge losers from socialism because the real power lies with those who are redrawing the property boundaries. Those with the power to redraw the boundaries are the greatest beneficiaries of socialism because they can redraw every boundary to benefit themselves a little bit (private gains from tax revenues).
Clayton -
I’m not sure that most people who identify as socialist think like this. Do they really see that they have lots of potential financial gain within a socialist system? I would’ve thought if anything it would be the opposite and they’d openly admit this. I think the part with reference to “those who are redrawing the property boundaries” AKA the politicians and those with serious political lobbying power, is accurate, I wonder just to what extent those people are, as I point out in my original post, just misguided, or methodically evil.
Why do kids take other kids’ toys?
Cause they want something and don’t want to have to work to get it.
I can testify to the fact that I was that kid. There’s one important fact though, I wasn’t taking with any intent of stealing, I merely saw that nobody else was using it and decided I wanted to use it. I would put it back where I’d found it afterwards, or possibly just leave it wherever I was when I got tired. I think this, in a sense, shows the idealistic nature of a child. You simply don’t understand such heady concepts at that age. This does remind me of many socialists I’ve had the displeasure of debating however.
Socialist ideology doesn’t persist. It just takes humanity a little time to become to resistant to it. In relative terms, we’ve really only JUST developed information technology (starting with book printing). And so quickly exploitation is losing it’s grip. Religion is basically out the door already. Nobody really believes in religion anymore like people would in the middle ages, and the ones who do are real outliers. In the more backwards places on earth, religion is still of the fire and brimstone kind, but in the West it has had to evolve.
The same thing for economic exploitation. It has had to evolve enormously to keep up. It has done this very succesfully, but even still it’s next up for the dead ideologies. Nothing survives reason and evidence. Of course economics is a little trickier because you need theoretical understanding, but it’s still not so hard to understand that you need to save before you can invest, and that if two people choose to trade they obviously have a reason for it (they profit). You have to remember that we’re fighting a massive propaganda machine that was created over the decades and centuries. But the ‘wall’ is coming down, and there are cracks everywhere.
Someone here has a signature which says: no army can fight for an idea which time has come.
I think this answer goes a long way to explaining it.
How do you debate with people who insist that this coming of age for IT will favour their communist ideologies? There are almost certainly far more left-anarchists, socialists, syndicalists and the like than there are libertarians, and the majority of reading materials on these kind of subjects come from their camp too. The fact that communism is a proven failure doesn’t seem to deter people from this.
“Someone here has a signature which says: no army can fight for an idea which time has come.”
It’s a paraphrase of Victor Hugo:
On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées.
You’re wrong. Most do not have an understanding of their own ideology as sophisticated as Clayton has presented, but he is right about them. Socialism is about wanting what others have and creating justifications on why you deserve it.
Fri. 10/05/21 19:27 EDT
.post #103
[url=Why Does Socialist Ideology Persist? - #8 by abskebabs]
The original poster is correct when he says that modern socialists freely acknowledge that free markets are a far greater engine for wealth than socialism. This point was conceded long ago. They now say that although their system would be less materially successful, it would be “fairer” and more “moral” from their points of view… A lot of socialists now actually decry materialism completely. They hate the cheap goods, vast assortment of foods, and the other “gluttonies” that have been created by accumulation of capital. They have diverted from Marx, and now say that the industrialization should be reversed… To create a more green, spiritual socialism. It is an interesting trend, they now see liberalism as a corruptor of minds and bodies, not so very different from the claims of Catholic Church and other Christian sects who were (and are?) adverse to industrialization. The amount of romanticism for agrarian society makes me nautious.
Also, although traditional socialists still exist in all their forms, the majority have no intention of full on state control. They much prefer the interventionist model, which of course grows ever more stringent as it attempts to correct the problems it itself causes over a period of time.
This genius is bitching and moaning because there are just too many varieties of salad dressing at his local supermarket. What an a-hole.
The modern socialists are only just now figuring out what the Church has understood for more than a millenium: you cannot impose economic controls on others without credibly disavowing all material wealth. You can’t tell other people to “reduce their carbon footprint” when you live in spacious mansions and fly around in private jets. The secularists still have a lot of lessons to learn about power. 
Clayton -
Socialism persists because it is what many people want to exist.
Some of the posters here have merely revealed how much they do not understand it in the slightest, making smug little references to theft or laziness. They fail to realize how the actual socialist could hurl their words back at them with a far greater degree of accuracy; capitalism is the enforcement of class by material measure. What could be lazier than inheriting money? The poor do not have this luxury. What else is the accumulation of material wealth but the quartering of riches according to subjective values? This is theft also. What is the wage system but a means of utilizing the need of others to survive in order to accept your terms of employment? Coercion much?
Oh, and I’ve never before heard a single socialist say that they’d like to tone down industry. Indeed, the argument for the starry-eyed dreamer of anarcho-communism, industry would be enrichened by the freedom to pursue and contribute yet greater innovation to civilization, without the slight distraction of having to make enough money to eat and pay rent.
And before I get endless amounts of fecal matter thrown my way; I too am a capitalist. It is a necessary evil, and the fairest way of governing human affairs, given that humans are not angelic beings with perfect altruistic moral values. Humankind, as evidenced on this thread alone, has developed the propensity for egotism, and callousness. We’ve learned to be dicks to one another, and to look down on one another, and to scorn another’s values if they do not match our own. We’ve learned the jungle’s version of morality – survival of the fittest, and screw the rest. This being true, that the anarcho-capitalist thinks that a society without legitimate intervening authority will survive more than two generations is quite naive.
But the dream of socialism (which, by the way, requires and desires no State – if you think Stalin was a communist you need education) lingers on, because people wish we could be angels. We wish we were better people, and could work together in mutal interest. We see it in little ways every day; people rediscovering that wellspring of kindness and generosity which is so often trumped by the need to look after number one just to survive. Until we can find a way to change the human condition of attachment to personal property, and install the desire for pure altruism, which need recognize no property at all, then it won’t work. Certainly no State could ever make it work, and we’ll only see collapses the likes of which we’ve witnessed already. Pure communism desires no State at all, and Marx was a fool to think the proletariat dictatorship would be transitory in any way.
But the idea lingers on, all the same. You can call those chasing the dream misguided, their efforts futile, and you may well be right. But if you are, then you’re only making a self-fulfilling prophecy, and shouldn’t pat yourselves on the back too heavily.
In short, you’re part of the reason we’ll never get there.
Lodatzor,
Saving is not theft.
Trading is not coercion.
Inheriting is not lazyness.
And private property rights is not a class-system, it is freedom. Freedom from theft and coercion.
All these things you are so jealous about and want are precisely the things that make society poor. People who personally save (create more than they consume) are extremely beneficial to everyone else (saving allows investment which creates higher productivity, jobs, cheaper products, etc). People who trade are by definition beneficial to others. People who try to create a better future for their children (including inheritences) are very beneficial to everyone else.
None of these things make anyone else worse off, instead it makes everyone else better off.
Your suggestion that these things are bad and a sign of people being evil is thus also very wrong.
What is evil is to try to make your life better at the expense of someone else. This is what libertarians reject.
If this doesn’t convince you, then I suggest you start a new thread so this one can stay on-topic.
I do believe my post stayed quite on-topic. The question was posed: why does socialist ideology persist?
I have answered the question, and provided context which happens to run contrary to the majority of the posts thus far, which surely is the point of discussing the question. If you do not agree with that context, then you are perfectly within your rights to say so, but to attempt to say ‘shut up’ is really rather crass, as is your knee-jerk reaction of insinuating that I am ‘jealous’. Dichtomies such as these are no better than: “You’re either with us or against us”.
Perhaps you missed the part where I pointed out that I too am a capitalist, and believe in the system, due to mankind not being the wonderful people we would like us to be. This does not, however, blind me to truths about our system, which you appear to hadwave without any attempt at elaboration. You are merely making blanket statements, not an argument or a rebuttal.
It comes down to, really, whether you want an actual discussion or merely an echo-chamber. Many of the things which were being said were quite incorrect (as are many points in your latest reply), and so I expanded the discussion to address them. Just because it isn’t what you wanted to hear does not make it ‘off-topic’.
Socialists see capitalism as inherently flawed, for the reasons I gave in my original post. If you disagree with them, then explain why, or merely let them go. That is entirely your choice. However, given the evidence thus far, I believe I am in a better position to answer the question than you are. Prove me wrong, if you wish.
The topic is why socialist ideology persists, despite being wrong. That’s the assumption this thread is working on. You don’t have to convince us that there are people who believe socialist ideology is correct, we are clearly well aware of that.
If you want to discuss if socialist ideology is right or wrong, then the proper place is another thread.
Intellectual laziness. Don’t try and predict what people will do if left their freedom when you can forecast the behavior of slaves much more easily.
Then, why, exactly, has this thread not actually answered the question yet?
It has merely been a sounding board for those who believe that socialism IS wrong, and they’ve said why. This does not answer the question, and yet you displayed no offense when this was the case. Indeed, your objection arose when a different opinion, providing a different perspective, and which actually addresses the question of why Socialism persists, even if wrong was given.
Posts saying that socialism persists because people are lazy, want things to which they are not entitled and because they have not yet evolved to what you percieve to be a higher ideal, are rather less relevant than anything found in my post. That is merely an echo-chamber, and I decided to give a rebuttal to those echoes, in the interests of honest and intelligent discussion.
Hehe, sorry man. Just because it wasn’t the answer you wanted to hear does not disqualify it as a legitimate answer. If the question is not geared at discussing socialism itself, then the answer revolves around people, and their reasons for being enamored of it. You say they are just lazy. I say otherwise.
How is this not discussing the answer to the question?
You won’t find a socialist who understands fully the role of money, the importance of profits, the problem of calculation in a socialist commonwealth, and being able to see the “seen and the unseen”.
Failing to understand the role of money, people will see that some own more than others. Seeing as it’s unequal, it’s unfair.
Failing to see the necessity of profits or social advancement, they view it as pure greed.
Failing to understand the socialist calculation problem, they consider non-socialist economies incredibly inefficient.
Failing to see all effects of their new rule, they promote havoc and the restriction of liberties.
You’re saying we should really be discussing if socialism is wrong or not, but that’s not what the person who made the thread is asking about.
If you want to discuss if socialism is wrong, then you should start a new thread.
You’re a troll if you either don’t want to accept this or can’t understand this. Your avatar is also a hint I’m guessing.