socialism

Only that there aren't many industries replacing the old ones that have been left to die here in Italy. We can't go on making shoes forever, you know?
Or just living off finance.

As if money earning were about being clever anyway. Clever at trampling over others to get to the top maybe. There are plenty of clever people who don't earn alot. Social mobility is static in the UK. If you're born poor, you'll stay poor unless you win X factor or become a footballer. And that's true now more than ever..we're regressing all the time.

ilovemydog - I would call it an absolute travesty and a gross deriliction.

It was not capitalism. Schumpeter descibed the process of 'creative destruction' where firms are allowed to fail and new ones replace them as an absolutely crucial component of capitalism.

Keynsian socialists never understood that and just propped up defunct firms for years in the 1970s and defunct banks in the 2000s.

"Sounds to me as if, by socialism, you mean that you would like more of the money earned by clever money-earning people to be taxed and given to people who aren't so good at earning money."

That is the crux of 'redistributive' socialism. You really need the wealth creating types to consent to sharing their wealth. And not just the very wealthy. The tax base needs to be very wide.

HHLimbo - I have turned into a UKIP supporter since the Coalition turned all socialist.

"Except in that case 'socialising the loses and privatising the profits' is not capitalism."

What would you call it?

Agree though that bailing out the banks isn't allowing market forces to do their job and what we have now is a mess.

Plenty of capitalists run out of other peoples' money when they go bust. The enterprise culture allows them a certain amount of protection from their creditors through insolvency rules so as to enable them to have another stab at it. So, capitalism is not that punitive of those who run out of others' money, so long as they were attempting to make money for themselves while they were doing it.

I agree that things weren't looking up for the majority of the population in Russia before the October Revolution.
Think as an example at the large number of pogroms inflicted on the Jewish minorities on top of the sheer poverty suffered by many.

As for contemporary Russia, I really don't have a clear picture. I remember seeing some powerful and scary documentaries on the BBC some 4 yrs ago. Does anyone remember?

How anyone can assert the Blair gov was socialist BeenBeta and keep a straight face is beyond me.

Bonsoir - that's what everybody wants apart from those who oppose any form of welfare, charity or tax system. The only dissagreements are about implementation.

Ah well, if Thatcher said it........a very detatched, impartial view to be sure.

English socialism gave us the NHS, the welfare state, "from the cradle to the grave" protection. What did Thatcher give us? Yuppies (the fledgling bankers of today) and a broken society. Thatcher destroyed alot of the welfare state, Blair put the final kibosh on any pretence at socialism in the labour party and now Cameron is bent on destroying any remnants of the good the Atlee government bequeathed to our country.

There's no problem with socialism. The problem lies with those select few who'd haveto forego a portion of their obscene wealth for the greater good. And those few tend to shout louder having media empires at their disposal to brainwash the masses. Seeing as there's never been a truly socialist state why don't we give it a go? It couldn't do any more harm than the disaster that is capitalism.

Ha! Thats a bit rich, coming from a conservative!

Take a look at the facts beta.

We were in deficit though most of the tory years.

If you are refering to bailing out bankers then I agree. Except in that case 'socialising the loses and privatising the profits' is not capitalism.

No surprise a socialist Govt allowed them to get away with it - rather than let markets do their work.

You could say capitalists are quite good at doing the same.

Margaret Thatcher said:

"They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."

Theyre doing quite alright actually TheCoal - RBS had operating profits of £1.91bn in 2010, compared with a shortfall of £6.09bn in the previous year.

We shall see what our gov does with it - theyve already given corporations a tax cut on their profits, yet increased VAT for the rest of us non company owning types.

claig - Stalin was not Communist Russia. He was Stalin, just as Hitler was Hitler - a nasty despot, not a fair representative of anything but how to be a despot. And Russian Tzars may well have killed that many people - not through active deliberation but through starvation and not caring less. And there were a few mad Tzars, too, who did quite unspeakable things. Russia may well be able to do better than having Tzars, Communism or whatever you want to describe as its current situation, but it certainly hasn't found any system I would want to live in, yet, and I'm really not sure I think Communism was he worst of the bunch of options (if you exclude Stalin).

"Splitting everything up equally is a lot easier when there is actually enough to go round."

Sounds to me as if, by socialism, you mean that you would like more of the money earned by clever money-earning people to be taxed and given to people who aren't so good at earning money.

HHLimbo - What profits? The nationlised banks don't have a great record on that front at the moment.

jackstarb - Yes Socialism/Communism were intended evolve in RICH societies where there really are significant surpluses. Imposing it on feudal peasant societies like Russia and China was always going to be a problem, which is one reason why they developed into totalitarian states.

Splitting everything up equally is a lot easier when there is actually enough to go round.

Ont he other hand, it's one reason why Russia in the '50s and China now were able to grow their economies very fast - modernisation could bring big results as resources were being so poorly utilised.

Nationalise the banks? Oh but now the Tories have come in they're just going to steal all the profits for their rich pals, while we get cut.
Damn those tories.

There aren't any countries that have applied Socialism in any kind of 'pure' form - they have all had significant other elements. It doesn't help that Socialism means about a million different things either.

That a totalitarian regime describes itself as Socialist doesn't make it so.

rabbit - I think it is agreed that Russia was the wrong place to try out socialism / communism. Didn't Marx think socialism should evolve from capitalism? Russia was poor and very rural. Not a good starting point.

The problem is socialism is not an economic system - it's really just a political philosophy. Das Kapital is a description of a utopian vision and not really a practical manual. The idea is appealing - but how do you get there?

Estimates are that about 15-17 million people were killed under Stalin alone. I don't think the Russian tsars killed that amount of people.

"Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.[107] In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Conquest states that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, the various terror campaigns launched by the Soviet government claimed no fewer than 15 million lives.[108] Others maintain that their earlier higher victim total estimates are correct"

I find it best not to view it as a choice between socialism and no socialism, it's more of a spectrum. Some elements of socialism are beneficial. The NHS ,in principle, is good in my opinion compared to private healthcare because there are dangers associated with companies profiting from illness and it actually makes a country more efficient if the workforce is healthy, as Seebohm Rowntree exhibited in a study of the poor which showed that over 25% of the population were not earning enough money to adequately support themselves, even in terms of providing the basic necessities. A situation like this does not resolve itself and absolutely requires government intervention A.K.A Socialist reform. Too much government intervention is obviously also a negative as we can see from the examples of Soviet Russia, China etc.
People in the States in particular, but also many people in Britain tend to recoil in horror at the word socialism as it conjures up images of Communist tyranny and oppression. I find it's good to be open-minded enough not to write off a concept entirely without examining it but subscribing to "isms" i.e. saying "I'm a socialist" or "I'm a liberal" boxes you in too.
Having said that I believe the country could benefit by subscribing to a few more of the principles of socialism, as we have a large and growing gap between the rich and the poor, which is a cause of deep social problems. It won't redress itself, especially not with a government who penalises the poor disproportionately by cracking down on benefit frauds when tax evasion costs the government 15 times more. And who claimed they would crack down on tax havens then wimped out. But then again they get all their funding from big businesses so you wouldn't expect them to go against their own.
Much easier to turn everyone's heads from the direction of fat champagne swilling bankers and towards the lower classes with their tracksuits on their council estates. Everyone knows and sees these types of people, they're easy to look down on aren't they? and everyone is already against benefit fraud so forget that there's less jobs than people in the country, blame a chav! "my taxes are paying for you to drink that special brew you council estate scum, get a job". Ahem, rather than blaming the guy at the bottom look no further than those smug toff expletives whose job it is to sort out these problems but squabble like children for show on tv then go to one of their large homes that they earned with the money they got from their high-end job which they were destined to get the moment they set foot in Eton, based not on their merit but their birth.
So yeah, socialism not intrinsically wonderful but we could probably use a bit more of it in my opinion.