socialism

[southeastastra]

what exactty is the problem with it

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.

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.

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

"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.

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).

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.

Margaret Thatcher said:

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

"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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi, BeenBeta,

If the banks had been allowed to fail, would this country's position be worse than it is now, or better?

rabbits - I think that bank shareholders and bondholders should have lost all their investments and the senior managers lost their job and bonuses. The depositors should have bene protected and the remaining retail and commerical bank operation should have been teporarily taken under the control of the Bank of England until new management could be put in. The investment banking operations shut down and no tapayers money put at risk. Cash machines would have remained open and ordinary bank customers unaffected.

The failure of the bailout was that senior managers kept their jobs and bondholders were bailed out by taxpayers. It ABSOLUTELY enrages me what happened.

Interestingly, Iceland and Ireland are now considering (belatedly) forcing banking losses on bondholders. This should have happened from the start in the UK too and we would have been far better off now.

Hi, BeenBeta,

I was just wondering who the major shareholders and bondholders were in the banks?

Partly our pension funds of course but lots of international investors too.