Chomsky on Socialism 

A push to the communist utopia always ends in tears, Hayek's saw and predicted this in his classic: 'The Road to Serfdom'. Human beings cannot live in a communist/ socialist society and thrive.

@@JoeWhittakerNutritionist According to Hayek, literally everyone with universal healthcare should be a fascist police state by now. Didn't happen, did it. Hayek may have been right about where Bolshevism was going, but was completely wrong about where the post-war Keynesian consensus would end up. He's useless for understanding the late 20th century, and certainly the 21st.

@sam Ait Well, the NHS in the UK celebrated its 70th birthday last year, so if the fascist police state is coming, it's sure is taking its time.

@@ChrisMcSweeney Boris Jonhson.

@@ChrisMcSweeney can you tell me where did Hayek said that?

no, there is a clear difference. In free market, libertarians say: "INDIVIDUALS have to be in control of their lives" they assume that each person looking for his own benefit will somehow (thru the invisible hand) benefit the society. In the socialist point of view it's "COMMUNITIES have to be in control of their lives", socialist (not all of them, some of them might disagree on this) think that thru a planned economy (or administrative command economy) the resources will be invest in a more productive way, and the wealth, that comes from it, will be distributed equally. SO basically they think that individuals gather around to get to an agreement on what need to be done, so they take the desitions as a COMMUNITY, free market, on the other hand, think there's no need to get to an agreement, that it will come naturally to a general equilibrium thru Smith`s invisible hand

A community is subverted by the larger state organs, by businesses and by wealthy individuals.

tonevil1305 ok. but realistically how does this work ? obviously people differ in their levels of intelligence (granted people would generally be more educated in a more egalitarian society), but how can all members of society actually come together if they may not necessarily now how to structure a society properly? or is that where government accounts for these people ?

chookiessss I have asked myself that very same question again and again, I've read too many books, I have asked many people, I reflected on that question quite a while and all I can say is that I have not the slightest idea how could that be done ( I don't think that's even possible) You ask me how could it be that achievable in reality, I do not know. But if we look back in history, as long as life has existed on the planet and the time it has existed humans on earth. As a society we have made progress, not many generations ago people thought the best way to control the weather was sacrificing the firstborn. Not anymore. That is, as a society we've move to a better society. We live in troubled times but compared to previous generations we live in times of relative peace. We do not know how to structure a "perfect " or "ideal" society but certainly we live better and we have learned a lot than people who lived 200 years ago, (like the people who lived 200 years ago compared with those of 400 years ago) . Our generation is able to reach better agreements between different social layers compared to other times. I ain't no prophet and I don't have any answer revealed to me in any way. Let's let history do their job. What I mean, we now come together to better terms than past civilizations.and generations yet to come might do better and get to better agreements

Privitization of the mode of production compels workers to enter into inherently exploitative pecuniary relationships with the owners of production, who by virtue of ownership may appropriate surplus value generated by workers by instigating wage labour lower than exchange value produced.

*sniffs*

PURE

IDEOLOGY

3 words* : "and so on"

@Dim It's called tics, and it's not his problem. Nobody told you that you have to listen to him. But even if he didn't have tics, your teaspoon-sized brain wouldn't understand a single word.

Because in modern cultural capitalist society a strong jaw is more important than a large intellect.

Harry Strong Actually, a strong jaw is important for TV and viewer counts.

g0d00101 The evidence would indeed support such a hypothesis.

Harry Strong TV shows live and die by their viewer numbers (concurrently and the employee's salaries). This is common knowledge, baby marx

g0d00101 This isn't a TV show however. This is RU-vid.

BeTheFirst Like most systems, "socialism" is not just ONE thing. Chomsky points out in another piece that originally socialism had a split, two branches. One resulted in totalitarianism (State-run), and the other in anarcho-syndicalism ("libertarian socialism"). In order to discredit the latter, "socialism" has (through propaganda) always been associated with the former. You didn't miss anything. Anarcho-syndicalism is democratic, not totalitarian. Happy Trails

Scott Haley Thank you!

Scott Haley The only problem with "another socialism" is that it's nothing more than fantasy fairy tale in no way related to reality.

***** No more so than free market capitalism, which we've never had in this country. Any time a man such as J.P. Morgan (in the late 1800s) loans the Fed Gov't massive sums of money in exchange for favored treatment, that's not free market capitalism. Or, any time a central bank (such as the Fed) sets interest rates, that's not free market capitalism, either. We've always had a Mixed Economy here, or at best, State Capitalism.

Scott Haley No, it's not the same. Free market capitalism means only that every individual has the right to produce any LEGAL product or service and sell it to anybody willing to buy it. It is only YOUR fantasy of market 100% free from government that is fairy tale. Free market capitalism CAN NOT EXIST without state enforcing contract law, product safety, persecuting crooks, cheaters, scum artists, etc.....

thats because of what exactly he talks about. when you criticise obvious flaws you dont need to go into detail too much. when you debunk certain accusations like here on socialism you need to be more detailed.

BuGGyBoBerl All things should be handled equally or else it’s called bias. Clearly you have one.

@@bobbycalifornia7077 im explaining the difference between criticising something and defending something. at least try to get some content instead of personal attacks or random statements. giving a more or less tautology and then calling someone out being biased. is that how you wanna argue? regarding all things should be handled equally. what does that even mean? are you saying murder should be handled like theft of a bubblegum? ofc objective approach is desirable. but thats obvious. do i need to go into super detail when i blame someone because he murders someone else? no. when im accused of something however the reality often is at the detail. especially in complex issues. you act like the complex level of a general defending position is the same as point out single downsides on a topic

BuGGyBoBerl You’re trying to justify his dishonesty. He has a bad habit of doing this.

@@bobbycalifornia7077 try an actual argument. otherwise its just trolling or useless.

***** Those goods would be free, since robots, unlike humans, don't want anything in return.

***** No, they wouldn't. It would be an anarcho communist society.

***** No, I'm talking about a completely hypothetical utopian society where robots create everything and also reproduce/repair each other so there would be no need of a government or any form of human labor.

Wild but at the same time plausibile.

That depends on our methods of distribution

LOL - yeah takes some time, but becomes easy once you know his basic argument!

He does have a calming voice you’re right

@@paulgrant7064 and he's boring

Giovanni Foulmouth Totally senseless gibber!

***** kthnxbye

***** Do you want to know what is senseless? Writing a comment just to call something "senseless" when you yourself have no intent to prove anything or even attempt to type out a *well-researched*, well thought out, and highly considerate rebuttal of the other persons statements at all. At best, it makes you look like an ignorant and irrational troll looking for attention. at worst, it makes you look like a total idiot that literally wants to stick within their confined bubble of knowledge, refusing to learn beyond their own perspective and calling other peoples statements bad for no good reason what so ever or to prove anything for that matter. and I really hope the latter is not the case, because that is basically impossible to recover from. At least ignorance can be eliminated through attentive learning and willingness to learn. irrationality can also be reduced by making an effort to think things through thoroughly and by not making claims on things you don't know the answer to. EDIT: Nice piano playing. by the way. your videos confirm you aren't an idiot, which is good. There are some articles I should recommend you read so you can become somewhat more knowledgeable than you are now::Those articles wont make you an expert , but certainly give you a much better idea of things. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anarchism

***** Suuuurrrreee thing pal, do you have any highly informed, thoroughly thought out, and very well reasoned out supporting arguments for that (that doesn't grasp at straws or anything like that)? Or are you just working off of a very limited knowledge base and close minded mind set and don't really have good reasons to support your opinion? Because my estimate from my own anecdotes tells me there is about a 99.7% for the latter, at best.

Sokami Mashibe Kiddo! I "researched" socialism for 30 years and capitalism for 38 years by LIVING under both. And have no interest in fantasy fairy tales/ oxymorons like "libertarian socialism" or "social anarchism".

It literally is a utopia. Ethically speaking, if you guarantee food, education, health care, etc to the people, you are giving them the right to someone else's labor (sounds like slave/coerced labor to me). Economically speaking, its not even close to being feasible. You couldn't even pay for health care for more than a couple years if you taxed the top 1% of the country 100% of their income.

Complete Nincompoop Venus project

Yes, that is a utopia. Unless there is NO LABOR from humans involved in the production, maintenance and transportation of food, transportation, utilities, education, health care, etc.... then you are simply asking to get someone else's labor FOR FREE. Which is theft. End of story. Unless you have a Star Trek replicator on hand, and enough to go around; that idea is complete horseshit. Are you knowledgeable, skilled, and ambitious enough to provide all of these utilities for yourself? Your family? Even ONE other person? I bet not. So your asking that other people that have worked hard to develop these areas and the congruent skills to go to work for FREE, FOR YOU, so that you can live in your utopia. I don't know how old you are, but whoever taught you this needs a smack in the head. For those of you proclaiming that MOST of what we have is produced by automated machinery; and that 'produced really easily, from my perspective' is just as good as 'free entirely' neither understand the physical realities under which we operate, nor the incentive structures of human beings. Farmers still have to take on massive debt for equipment and go to work everyday, forget what they produce. Doctors still have to take on massive debt for schooling and go to work everyday, forget what they make. Educators STILL have to take on massive debt for schooling and go to work everyday. Even if your schooling was free, and debt didn't exist, YOU STILL HAVE TO GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED EVERYDAY TO GO AND PROVIDE THESE SERVICES. Will YOU do that for free? Do you want to take a job that requires an extreme amount of education, work, stress, danger, etc. and get paid the same as someone who doesn't need to do any of that, just so they can have what you produce for little or nothing? My job is programming and mechanical automation. For all of you who think most of the world is working on a happy, low input, automated system is completely fucking wrong. And even if it was, do you think the people who educate themselves on said systems; and the repair, maintain and upgrades performed on them only deserve as much as the idiot on the receiving end with their mouth open is a goddamned moron, and a parasite.

As long as there is scarcity, there will be a monetary cost. You're describing something like a communist society, but the problem is somebody has to work to produce those things. It's nice to imagine the world like you describe but the only system in human history that has brought us the vastly improved quality of life we have is capitalism.

Jr M, you have obviously not read about any of the previous attempts at communism, nor do you understand human motivation or incentive. You don't like that a very small few hold the wealth? Well, what do you do to get your share? Yes of course there is corruption in capitalism, just as there is in communism, just as oligarchies, just as feudalism, just as whatever other Utopian dream like the venus project espouses. Do you think that people who do less and take more will just 'go away' when your intended utopia arrives? Do you think that when you put in this equity system no one will ever take more than they deserve or try and lord over others? That is _how it has always gone_. Do you want to achieve agency and independence in the current hierarchy? Go buy some cheap land, learn how to produce your own food, and learn how to live simply. Do you know why so many people DO NOT do that? It's because they are lazy and incompetent. These are the same people who bitch about capitalism but want a new phone every year without knowing how it is produced or where it goes when they are done with it. Just because the voracious few have clawed over debt and dead bodies to get to the top of the pyramid, doesn't mean that the vast majority of useless people will somehow allocate said resources any better - in fact if history has given us any indication they will do far a worse job. You know, for about 5 years after college I thought that I could help anyone, teach anyone, be free in giving of my labor to others. You know what I realized after 10 more years of doing that? Barely FUCKING ANYONE is willing to return the favor, and I had wasted all my goddamned spare money and time on people who didn't fucking deserve it. It has taken me a lifetime to get people around me who are like minded and are actually willing to give their share, and they aren't going to waste their labors on some lazy fuckwits. Their stories are much the same as mine. Most people are shit, and they need a system that forces them to _not_ be shit. And while capitalism is deeply flawed, it's the only system that even remotely resembles a meritocracy and forces people to better themselves. Leading by example does _not fucking work_. I tried through group charity, individual charity, tutoring, mass gifting, every goddamned altruistic endeavor you could ever think of. Most people will take what they will for free and not be ashamed about never returning it. While I might have been happy with the few motivated individuals who took a hand up and did something with it - on the grand sum it was hardly worth it. Most people will take charity and burn it in a goddamned fire - that's why there are more charitable organizations than ever before and IT. WILL. NEVER. BE. ENOUGH. So yeah; you want to have a version of utopia? Well you've got a lot of fucking hard work ahead of you. Do you know about sizing solar installations? Inverters? Charge controllers? Natural building? Permaculture? Repairing your own equipment? Animal husbandry? Forest husbandry? No till farming? Do you know what grow zone you live in? Do you know how to make textiles? How about water management systems? Sewage systems? Yes, it is THAT FUCKING HARD. I know because I've done it and it has taken me a goddamned while. And there is NO FUCKING WAY I'm going to let some 'let me have my "share"' hammer and sickle fuckhead come along and waste away the systems that have taken me and my peers a life time to build. There is ample opportunity for hundreds of millions of people to live like me and to build the land rather than deplete it, but they don't, because it's far easier to mortgage up and live an easy, comfortable life. That's the hard truth of fucking life right there - with capitalism or without. Oh but hey, let's just assume that everyone is similarly motivated, intelligent, moral and driven... let's hand those who would take control all the means of production. I'm sure they won't find a way to corrupt themselves and those around themselves just like they have in every example through history. Get your own fucking house in order. Learn what you need to in order to get what you want. Ply your knowledge through hard graft. Let me know what you think about your ideology then.

I would gladly say that to Denmark considering that Denmark is a perfect example of what I said. The Danes have a mixed market economy. Socialism is by definition an economic system in which all capital is collectively owned rather than privately owned. The majority of capital in Denmark is privately owned. They have many welfare programs which were created by the socialist party which remain intact, but their electorate never chose to march all the way to socialism. Like I said, there is no example in history of a free electorate who has chosen to completely transform themselves into a socialist nation. One last thing, the fact that you spelled "Danmark" incorrectly certainly does not lend credence to your argument.

***** You do know that the definition you just gave does not differ from mine at all right? The only difference was that it took you 16 lines to say what I said in 3 lines. Neither Denmark, Norway, or Sweden are socialist states. They are all mixed market economies. In all three of those states more capital is owned and held privately than collectively. Socialism is not vast and vague, and neither is capitalism. They are both very specific ends of a broad spectrum. What is vast and vague is the all the forms of mixed economies between the two extremes. To what extent the economy is regulated, what segments of it are nationalized and what segments aren't, how free are certain areas of the economy vs. other areas, etc. In truth there are virtually no examples of a true capitalist or a true socialist nation. True capitalism can only exist in the complete absence of government. I'm not sure that complete socialism can even exist at all since black markets will always continue to exist no matter how hard a nation tries to eliminate market influences. My point is that every nation who has chosen to leave the democratic system in place has also chosen to to leave market forces in place as the primary organizing mechanism of the economy. The people have always voted to pull back away from moving towards socialism and decided to stay in a middle ground between the two alternatives. The fundamental societal revolution that the socialist parties fully expected has never happened. The only countries which have moved into the area of the spectrum where the majority of capital was collectively owned have done so by removing the democratic process. Even Venezuela, which recently did move into an area where the majority of capital was collectively owned did so by restricting the freedom of their electorate. Even so they were unable to completely eliminate the democratic process and now the people of Venezuela are rejecting that path and moving back towards capitalism in the spectrum.

you could say the same thing about any political system.

Chile, 1970. They democratically elected a socialist government... but in 1973, the CIA helped financing a right wing military dictatorship that lasted 17 years and commited thousands of massive killings, installed capitalism and imported economists from Chicago, turning Chile from a socialist country into the most neoliberal (and one of the most socially unequal) country in the world.

Eduardo Pavez HI! Economic inequality is a non issue to the point of being a non-sequitur. Absolute purchasing power is what actually matters. If everybody was as wealthy as the present-day American upper-middle class, but a tiny minority were multi-billionaires, the society would be highly unequal, but so what? What's more, Chile is one of the safest, least corrupt, and most exciting places in Latin America... hardly a basket case. The fact that Pinochet was horrid does not magically absolve Allende of his own crimes, such as the mass expropriations, incarcerations, and murders that took place in the name of a socialist revolution.

Ok honestly I do not have much knowledge on socialism but I genuinely want to learn about it. How would a business operate? How does an employee-owned business decide who gets paid what, who does what, and who is hired? Are there no leaders/owners in such businesses?

OK SO The operation of the business would work on a Democratic basis. You start a company with a couple of friends, or by yourself, and anyone you let in had ownership within the company. You make decisions such as wages, what you produce, and where you send your product through a democratic process. People are generally paid the same because you all have equal ownership in the company. However, pertaining to managers/leaders, they don’t have to exist, but on a wider scale, I can see the necessity for them. In this case, the workers vote for the person who wants to occupy the managerial position and they can choose to cycle that person out every so often. If that manager is bad? They can vote them out and vote someone else in. Market Socialism is a good way to ensure equality within a business while still maintaining the free market to do business as usual. I suggest you look more in to worker cooperatives. There aren’t many here in the US, but they’re highly successful and efficient.

Disagree. The beauty of Chomsky is his ability to distill complex ideas and concepts into simple English.

David Vazquez Plato is just blabbering nonsense all over the place. Didn't read much of Socrates, but most dialogues seem to just be rethorik battles. Aristotle has considerable common sense in his thinking, of the three I hold him in the highest regard. But of the philosophers I've read so far, Dewey did just cut through all the metaphysical bullshit you find.

David Vazquez I'm not a philosopher, just speaking from the heart. In my opinion philosophy just spun around chasing it's own tail for a couple of thousand years, before it blossomed into science with, guys like Wittgenstein, Dewey and Popper.

@David Vazquez Metaphysics is irrelevant, by definition in fact. It’s the study of abstract concepts. You know what you call metaphysics that means something? Science.

@David Vazquez I studied both computer science and philosophy in school, and I can tell you you don’t need to study metaphysics. It’s neat trivia. You can have morals without metaphysics, just look around and find someone who hasn’t studied philosophy. Unless you’ve stumbled upon a sociopath, you’ve found a moral person. Science describes how things happen, it makes no attempt to describe what actually happens. Ever since Newton killed the Mechanical Philosophy, science is agnostic. When an apple falls, a metaphysicist asks “what is the apple?” But a scientist responds with 9.81m/s^2. It’s irrelevant what the apple“is”

Cold Wave You can still run co-ops in a capitalist society tho. Yeah if they were all co-ops then it would be Market Socialism but I wouldn’t say co-ops are all that radical.

You are describing a private enterprise, which is capitalist.

@@olegigoverich7684 Yeah they should have said public services as they are the best example of social structures.

That’s one of the biggest lies we’ve been told: socialism is evil. It’s funny because what is truly evil, calls things that are not evil, evil. Take Trump with “Fake News”. Perfect example of the biggest liar I’ve ever witnessed lying about honesty. Fox News is the same “the no spin zone” spins everything right wing.

Never trust a academic one PhD Lifetime Marxist. CHUMPsky still cranks out MARXISM disguised as a GrandPa By a warm fire . All in MONOTONED sociopath glibness.

kyle2796 explain

You assume that their goal was communism. You assume that the act of investing the wealth of the people in the people themselves is some incentive to cause people to become drones in some fantasy ideology. You also assume that every activity in every democracy is just some free public choice without any force working against it. Just keep talking about free markets. I would like to hear you define one then associate your definition with a market that exists on this planet today or in the last 100 years.

name some cases

Charles_CPA Please name a case where given the option of true socialism vs. whatever pseudo-free market capitalism is around today, people chose the latter. Im very interested.

? It was just a long winded no true Scotsman fallacy.

Juan Morell lmao. Hes a fruitloop anti american communist nut job

@@jeffbarksdale5835 Go back to InfoWars nut job and leave politics to the adults.

Actually, there're a few videos of Noam Chomsky debunking Trotskyism and Leninism. He's actually a Libertarian Socialist.

INGSOC8 He's an Anarcho-Syndicalist. Although Liberal Socialist is along the right lines.

YOU GOTTA BE FRUITYLOOPIN ME!!!!!! But I think I agree with you - I'm not very up with my Trotsky. Also, Catalonia already tried anarcho-syndicalism, and it didn't work out so well; mises.org/library/chomskys-economics

Matthew Hayden Actually, it was working pretty well before the arrival of the fascist regime.

Erm... the life described in the article at the end of that link, and in the book mentioned in the article, resembles an urbanised version of feudalism ( since to keep people acting in an anarcho-sydicalist way they had to be prevented from trying any alternatives ). I also submit an article from 1971 by Murray Rothbard on the topic; mises.org/library/syndical-syndrome

Lenin was a scumbag also

Lenin had severe authoritarian ideas from the get go, one of the major reasons why is Kropotkin was disappointed in Revolution in general and in Bolsheviks in particular

@@quite1enough what did Kroptkin say about it? Do you know if he wrote any articles on it

+Robert Polanco In the Western "First World" countries, the people with industrial power and the people with political power overlap, some, but aren't the same people. (The robber barons *hated* Pres Roosevelt [either one]). In the USSR, the people with industrial power were--by definition--the same people as had political power. You'd have to be the most naive person ever to believe that giving this power to career bureaucrats (who claim to represent the workers) is in any way equivalent to giving this power to the workers themselves.

+bcubed72 What are you talking about?

+Robert Polanco Pretty self-explanatory.

+bcubed72 I guess you didn't answer my question. You answer just didn't really help.

+Robert Polanco I think what he said is that Socialism is not what really happened when the Soviet Union came to power. There is the "idea" then there is the "reality". He basically claims the Soviet Union corrupted the term Socialism. Soviet Union's collapse gives Socialism's meaning and intent a chance to resurface and once again, get redefined. Here is my take on why the corruption of Socialism happened. Say you have an "x" amount of supplies and goods. You give each individual the same amount of these supplies and goods. Same. Watch what will happen over time. It will end up in the most ambitious hands of the the most ambitious people. Some will give everything away and end poor, on the streets. You will end up with rich and poor. To me it is impossible to create equality among humans who are not created equal but it is possible to create equal opportunity. A small version of socialism does exist in this country for we have taxes for everything we enjoy; education, infrastructure like roads, bridges, etc, welfare, disability, social security, ..... need I go on? Yet we also can vote. We can sit in a jury to make a judgement for or against our peer. Not perfect but some countries do not have this right. We can blab on the internet or even out on the street anything we want and we are not going to jail if we do it peacefully. If something happens to that right, holy s*** will rain down as people will protest.

Did you actually listen to what he said? If by Red you mean Russian, clearly you did not listen. Both the US and Russia misuse the term. Please listen again with an open mind.

You're thinking of Sovjet. The USSR was an autoritarian and totalitarian state that was closer to capitalism than to socialism. Why so? Because a few people at the top controlled the economy, which is just the case with capitalism. Socialism is about equality, and solidarity and caring for each other. Sweden was the country which came closest to democratic socialism, and it was one of the most successful countries that ever saw the light of day. The Social Democratic party actually remained in power for 44 years (1932-1976) which is the world record in a democratic country. So the social reforms that the socialists in government implemented was quite popular.

Fernando Morén Is Soviet capitalism? no private ownership of property and businesses, government control all means of production, no individual freedom, that sounds more socialist than capitalist to me. I am all for the ideas that socialists claim to represent, but the fact is that they fail--for the most part, to live up to its promise. The reason why is bureaucracy is very inefficient because they are trying to do good with someone elses' money. The end result is that they waste and squander valuable resources without achieving the optimal result. Please research about how the welfare programs trap the poor in cycle of poverty, the low quality of public school and housing, worst of all, the amount of bureaucrats the government has to keep on payroll to do good. Swedish socialism is only possible after the so-called "capitalist boom" in the 60s and early 70s. "Sweden has always been a solid market economy", states on Swedish official website. A viable welfare state wouldn't be possible without high GDP, a high GDP wouldn't be possible without free market, a free market wouldn't be efficient under socialism. Many think it is just to tax the rich and the businesses because they are richer, but penalizing enterpreneurship--the backbone of a booming economy, is detrimental to the growth of the economy. Don't get me wrong, I am not pro-business, I am pro-freedom and pro-free enterprise. As Milton Friedman put it: "a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither."

Ray C What's important is WHO OWNS THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION? In a capitalist society it's a few extremely rich CEOs and other Elites in the top of the economic ladder, which means that you can't call a capitalist society anything near democratic, the same is true with the totalitarian sovjet empire. A few people at the top Owned all the means of production. What's the difference? One call itself the state and one call itself a corporation. It's only a play with words. Both say that they do what they do for the "good of everyone". "We're creating jobs and strengthening the community" says the capitalist whilst he poisons the water and give his employees slave-wages. "We're building a strong communist state which will bring equality and happiness for everyone" says the Totalitarian Dictator whilst he enslaves his people and builds a strictly hierarchical society. What we need is an economy controlled democratically by the people, working in the interests of the people. The closest model to that that I have found is Democratic socialism. Something that have perplexed me is; citizens in democratic countries hold their right to vote and their right to govern themselves high, but when they enter their place of employment they bluntly leave all their democratic ideas by the threshold. The place you spend maybe a fourth of your life is run like a dictatorship, why do people passively accept that?? Your boss tell you what to do, when to do it, what to wear, what to say. He takes the lionshare of what you produce and put it in his own pocket. That's fucked up, man. Milton Friedman was an idiot. Liberty and equality is each others neccesity. Without equality, no freedom, without freedom, no equality. Freedom from violence and freedom from oppression is extremely important. But what's the difference between being held in a cell without food and being so poor you can't afford to eat? Freedom means nothing without the opportunity to use that freedom. An unequal society don't offer this opportunity to all it's citizens. Btw, the Swedish economy had it's biggest boom during the years which the public sector grew with the highest rate.

Ray C You fundamentally fail to understand the nature of the Soviet Union, and to understand the nature of capitalism. You just repeat a bunch of buzz works, penalizing entrepreneurship, all this nonsense about markets. You don't actually have any understanding of how they work, you just assume what is told to you is correct, the same way you assume that the Soviet Union is a socialist nation. There is no free market in the United States or anywhere else in the first world, they're all heavily protected by the government. This is fundamental to the success of all economies over the last several centuries. You can see this in tracking the money. The US government subsidizes all kinds of ventures to ensure American businesses succeed. I mean can you explain to me why governments subsidize oil exploration? It would seem that this should be an automatic risk to be taking, but apparently we can't incentivize corporations to dig for oil without paying the costs of the risk. Point me to one alleged free market that isn't inherently reliant on the government in some way to keep the large corporations from failing. You can't simply say that the free market is responsible for all economic prosperity everywhere. Half the time the wealth you say doesn't exist does and it continues to exist, and its in the hands of the government and it more than has the potential to pay for a large welfare state, it just gets diverted to the rich who then proceed to not pour it back into society as freely as it was given to them by the state. Here's another question, what is the cornerstone of socialism? If you can't answer that then you aren't in a position to dictate when a society has failed as a socialist one.

by "under socialism" you mean what?

You clearly didn’t understand Chomsky and his explanation of what true socialism is. You also probably dont understand how imperialism works, and its effect on the international division of labor

@Oplitis Λ... does it? How about socialism in Scandinavia? The one which Taxes goes to "free“ education, "free“, social care, protection for unemployment, protection thru desease and parenthood? And their economy is sustainably growing. Do you realise that is also socialism?

Dim is a great name for you, because you got a lot wrong there.

@DimScandinavia politics system is based on a socialist society which trade on a global capitalist market.

Rapid and unsustainable acquisition of resources, exploitation of the working class, strategic concessions to the working class, monopolization of major media apparatus, intelligent and intensive propoganda. Overloaded yet, or do you have questions?

@@Dreamerwild That's corporatism not socialism.

How can an ideology, a product of the man's intellect, be natural? There are no natural ideologies, they are all human conventions. And isn't there coercion in capitalism? Of course there is. A person that has no capital is forced to serve for a living.

I don't know, I suppose because people are self-interested, and socialism seems to work against that aspect of human nature. I suppose there is the coersion that nature forces upon us, but that just seems to me to emphasise that capitalism is somewhat more natural.

Guy Potts And can you survive without a society? No. And isn't it surviving easier in a healthier society? Is it natural to find more difficult ways of surviving ot is natural to find easier ways of surviving? So it is in your best interest to live in a healthy society. A healthier society would be a society with lesser internal competition because the more internal strives you have the weaker you become as a group to your external enemies. Being the group mankind and our external enemies extinction I can only conclude that capitalism isn't in our interest. Ergo capitalism works agains the human nature to survive.

Well, I didn't say you couldn't. Nor did I say that capitalism requires people to be alone. Society occurs naturally among people too, with family bonds, friendships, trading partnerships etc. and I can't see how it has anything to do with capitalism. So competition is bad? Surely competition increases progress? Having socialism doesn't mean that everyone will be friends, I can only see it giving people less responsibility and less of an incentive to work. Also, as people are naturally self-interested, I imagine people naturally leaning towards it, which was actually my original point. And I'd like to point out that I never said before that capitalism was better, you just jumped to that conclusion and attacked it

Guy Potts You failed to see my point. What I intended to do with my preivous comment was to show you that with the right words any ideology can be naturalized or unnaturalized. An you are wrong about competition increasing progress. Cooperation does it. The best competitive advantage you can have as a human is belonging to a group that doesn't have any internal competition and that has only internal cooperation. Tell me how can a country win a war against another country if it is divided in civil war? Tell me how can a country win a war against another country if it's citizens prefer to cooperate with the enemy instead of cooperating with those of their natitionality? Tell me how can a company survive capitalism if there is an eternal struggle for power within it? When you compete you create enemies and your enemies will not cooperate with you. And how exactly will technology and innovation spread if every human competes against each other and never cooperate? Last time I checked the major breakthroughs in science were made by teams. Well how successful can teams be if their members compete against each other instead of cooperating? Imagine in football or basketball or any other collective sport if every player played for himself instead of playing for the team. If you befriend competition you are actualy befriending your main foe. Competition however is natural. It has existed before men existed and will exist long after men is extinct. It occurs naturally without human intervention. But natural disasters are also natural and we fight them. And in the same fashion that men don't invite natural disasters to their home men shouldn't also invite competition to their home. Competition exists, we should not ignore it, nor neglect it, because if we want to survive we will have to compete against all of those that would benefit from our extinction, but if mankind is to survive it shouldn't compete internally because it actually reduces it's chances of survival, so it would do well to understand once and for all that what made us big was cooperation and not competition. Every animal is subdued to competition. Every living being is subject to competition. But only one developed new sophisticated ways for having a huge competitive edge and it was to take cooperation to a whole new level. Tell me how would civilization even be possible without cooperation? How would civilization work if no one cooperated? If everyone competed against each other? There would be no such thing as civilization. We would still be picking up berries and fighting for the right to mate. Civilization is itself the most sophisticated way of cooperating known to mankind. Organization another one, specially if you take in consideration that the first would not exist without the second. How complex are our societies compared to those of other animals? And take a look into nature. Aren't those animals that cooperate more the most successful species? Take a look at ants, bees, fish, birds, wolves, mammals in general. Mammals in general wouldn't even exist if they didn't cooperate. If our mothers didn't nurture us while we were cubs we wouldn't be having this talk right now. You were arguing for capitalism being natural I was counter-arguing for capitalism not being natural. I was not attacking it. I was "attacking" your opinion of it. And in a polite and orderly fashion. Socialism isn't about taking away responsibility from people. It is actually about giving it to them. Have you never heard that with power comes responsibility? Well I happen to find it true. Don't you? We can discuss about that if you want but I will assume you agree with me on that point and continue. If you take a look at social hierarchy you will see that most of people are way below in the structure of power. Meaning that most people don't have any real power unless they associate with each other. Most individuals don't have the power to impact society in their favor. To lobby for themselves. They are just carried by the current and they try to stay afloat. Others on the other hand are individuals that have more individual power than groups of millions of people. In the end you have groups of hundreds or thousands of people having more power than groups of millions and hundreds of millions of people. Now, this isn't only true in a capitalist society but it is also true in a capitalist society. We can observe it. Those that perceive that don't have power to do almost anything will ask themselves. "could I have prevented that?" And they will come up with the answer "now I couldn't, it's not my fault". And there you have a social phenomena that is called diffusion of responsibility. People that have little or no power can clearly see that they are not responsible for their current misery. That they were born to a world where most of those who are born to powerful parents stay powerful and those who are born to weak parents stay weak, that it hasn't changed while they were living and that it probably won't change long after they've gone. So why bother? Why bother with a problem that is not in our power to solve? There you go diffusion of responsibility. Now if you have the power to do something about it and you don't do it then it's just because you're lazy isn't it? Then you'd have no excuse. The more evenly distributed power is the more evenly distributed responsibility tends to be. Nature doesn't evenly distributes power so it has to be done artificially. Even romans put a cap on land an individual could own after a huge crisis hit them and caused widespread rioting among displaced farmers that lost most of their land to moneylenders because of continuous disastrous crops, and that was effectively a cap on wealth and income because land back then was the main source of wealth and income. Money or capital is nowadays the equivalent to land in roman times. Capital is power. And you can't have infinite capital because there is inflation. In this way there is always a fixed ammount of wealth at a given time meaning that it can't exist at two places at the same time. It is either there in someone's pocket, or here in my pocket. So if you have a social group that controls most of the capital it means others won't and would be subject to these through the social mechanisms of power. Keep this in mind: Mankind wouldn't thrive if men only competed and mankind wouldn't thrive if men wouldn't cooperate. There's no such thing as responsibility without power. If a man has no property he has no chance of survival if he doesn't serve for a living or rely on charity for survival.

Jacob Jochem What Chomsky doesn't address here is why attempts at socialism have always tended towards totalitarianism and why we have not yet seen anything resembling a successful socialist society (don't say Cuba) despite numerous attempts. Simply saying "that wasn't socialism" when an example is put forward is a cop out.

Jacob Jochem there's nothing wrong with forcing things on a population... we do it all the time. don't kill. don't steal. Authority is a necessity when people compete with each other over resources.

markafc83 Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, and the list goes on. Socialism is the balance between capitalism and communism. Where capitalism is essentially those who are rich or who have resources enslaving society. And communism is those in power controlling production and resources, enslaving society. Socialism is the balance between these two extremes. Where people can still individually benefit from their production, but are required to meet standards of health, safety, and fair treatment - these standards are set by the people or government in order to protect themselves from enslavement. Just as the democratic process is there to protect us from being enslaved by government. Taking anything to the extreme is damaging - capitalism and communism just happen to be the extremes of the economic continuum. Socialism is the balance that protects us all.

+Justin Beagley No. That's social democracy not socialism. All of those countries are capitalist countries with a large welfare provision.

markafc83 I'm okay with that - i just know that many people in america call sweden, norway, finland, and politicians like bernie socialists. If they want to call him and these places 'socialist' they need to either understand that they're 'social demoacrats/democracies' Or we need to change the definition of socialism to match what social democracy means. I really don't care which way we correct the thought - but that's all i'm trying to do is CORRECT the thought.

+Paul Harris That " anti-statist form of socialism" is nothing more than fantasy fairy tale of delusional fiction writers like Chumpsy who never in his life ran a business, had to meet payroll, tax roll, lease payment, etc.... Or deal with employees, suppliers, contractors, distributors...... And has NO CLUE what he's blabbing about! It has absolutely NOTHING to do with reality. And the rest of his exercise in empty phraseology still doesn't answer the question: Who exactly in US preventing him from starting his OWN co-op and running it "democratically" or any other way he wants? Are there any laws against "democracy in the work place" in US?

I understand your point but think about what you're saying for a moment... Basically what you're saying is socialist elements won't work in capitalism... It's not about that, the changes Chomsky talks about would be implemented in a revolutionary situation in which the current system would be overthrown and replaced with pure socialism. And I think a few changes should happen within the current system like worker owned enterprises, don't see anything wrong with that.

+ssmusic214 mate, oppression doesn't begin and end with the state (laws etc), that's like saying there is no racism in the US because there are no racist laws... It's fucking stupid, of course racism exists regardless of state influence. And one of the reasons democracy in the workplace isn't a big thing in the western world is because it's capitalist (closest to anyway) system and capitalism is built on hierarchy, authority and domination NOT democratic horizontal systems.

BobaNineFive 'been there, done that..... Capitalist system has been violently overthrown many times in many countries. Results always the same: bunch of murderous gangsters in charge, millions of nameless corpses in mass graves, economic disasters..... And than.... back to capitalism....

Well yeah, but I don't see how this is an augment against socialism... If that's what you're trying to do.

To imitate a part of a system doesn't equate it as such. Socialism exist like Democracies do, in several different kinds of interpretations depending on how a certain state is implementing the features. In regards to the collectivisation within the traditional socialist system, it didn't work in quite the same way as it was employed by the communist regime. Traditional Socialist views considers that economy and most or all property should be collectively owned by society. Whilst the communists always held to the idea that the concept of ownership should be rejected by society, and replaced with the concept of usage. Furthermore the cause of the Ukrainian starvation is still not even concluded by scholars or historians, no serious sources are pointing to socialism or collectivism as a cause. In fact the reasons why some people have been quick to make that assumption is for the exact reason that Chomsky pointed out "they wanted to defame socialism by associating it with this miserable tyranny" Several things rather than one led to the Ukrainian catastrophe in my own opinion, because the Soviets had problems organizing a functioning system of rationing out food effectively in the wake of their own collectivist implementation. The collectivization policy that they outlined were not anything close to a socialist form but more akin to straight out theft and it wasn't even thought through how it would work in practice. But in the old Communist sense of doing things, they just did things on paper and expected that it should work. The Soviets failed miserably at two things in their collectivist plans. One was an extremely incompetent administration. And secondly a management that was non existent. This hampered the work for the farmers with the result that HUGE amounts of grain remained unharvested. And literally tons of it were lost because of a piss poor bureaucracy around how the processing and transportation and storage were to be maintained in accordance to their communist policy. The bureaucracy was intended to outline how processing, transportation and storage would be effective in working in conjunction with their great collectivist policy - but as the management and administration were not just incompetent as a result of not having the education needed to perform their task effectively. They were simply overwhelmed with a problem given to them by the communist regime. I would maintain that they were the opposite of socialism as well, because their policies had little to nothing to do with the aim of securing some kind of well being for the people. Five minutes of reading tells you quite clearly that their policies were being authored to match their ideological utopian dreams. Essentially nothing is planned out to function in any way that is effective or practical for people. It is pretty much reflective of the episode when Stalin got rid of his military command effectively losing all the experienced people, and replacing them with puppets. The Soviet managerial system were always hampered by this kind of purges, and working in accordance with what the bureaucracy produced in terms of guidelines.

@Dim You confuse things with state socialism where the state actually owns the production. Something that has been the case with China and the Soviet Union. There of course state run companies in all societies including capitalist ones. But they are not run for profit, but rather because those companies produce what is in the interest of the state/country. Often military or energy production. The means of production is certainly not owned by the state in any real democracy, if such a country even exist. We find that most countries have elements of all kinds of -isms. The more wisely run states discard the bad and implement the "good" which was/is attempted by social-democracies. Any country where the state actually owns the production is fairly easily noticed. In the Nationalsocialist Germany the privately held companies were in the majority, only a small number were controlled by the state as we see in any modern society today. All the arms manufacturers in Germany competed for contracts to the state, which is why their military became so diversified and advanced. In the communist Soviet Union by contrast, the state owned the production and had control over the designs and output. In a funny way the different socialist take on production was represented by the German competition-driven production that churned out quality and followed the criterias from a customer (the state). And on the other hand you had the Soviet mass production of marginal competition, it wouldn't be quite fair to say that there were no competition in the Soviet system. There were, but it was also very controlled by Political commissars. It isn't as black and white as the way you put it in reality. On paper it is. If we simply go by how these different societies are described in the literature. But no state avoids to implement elements of different -isms. For instance a capitalist state WILL borrow socialist characteristics. And vice versa. To different degrees of course! Some conclusions that have been made in the different state government philosophies have come to the same ends. For example how to organize a taxation system in a country, which is necessary to enable a functioning infra-structure and provide services to the public. Police, Health care, Fire departments etc. These are pretty similar in "western countries". Exchange of knowledge and trial-error. The wise implement what works. We find it pretty hard to distinguish between socialism and capitalism in our countries these days as we have both of them running simultaneously. And Democratic values all at once. Democracy i put on the side here, because it shouldn't be confused with neither Capitalism or Socialism. Democracy is something else. Just as Liberalism and Progressivism. Those are political ideologies/philosophies. They could influence economies of course, but they have no inherent economical models. It has more to do with individual rights. The difference starts when we speak of Democratic Capitalism. If we combine the different philosophies it gains a different value. How states implement the various philosophies are to be honest, very complex and differs from country to country. The least wise will run purely on one set. Usually these are corrupt states where the upper stratum is only interested in consolidating the power and economy to themselves. In more wisely run states, there are an ongoing competition with several departments keeping things in check and balance.

@Dim No reason to get ugly and personal simply for not liking the way someone uses the English language. I am Swedish myself, so it is my secondary language. I do pardon if my English is poor and hard to understand. Don't know what you mean about Sweden trying out socialism and going back to capitalism. We have never been entirely anything. Our government model have been a hybrid all along. I tried to explain this, but if i attempt to do so again. I will probably be attacked again for being too smart. Whatever you say is probably right. I'm just a dumb Swede who manages 6 languages very poorly. Miscommunications happen so apologize. Actually. I don't apologize. I didn't even bother reading through your entire response, i stopped before i reached halfway through. You see when i debate with people and i get a civilized answer. When i know i can talk to a person like an adult, who have no issues with their ego. Then i debate. When someone acts like an asshole for no reason other than not liking what i say. I quit talking to them. So it was nice exchanging a few lines of text with you. Hopefully you mature enough for someone to pay attention to what you have to say. As i am used to insecure people needing to have the last word. Go ahead and tell me what kind of bastard i am and get it out of your system. Be sure to know i shall not read your reply.

'Capitalism = unequal amounts of money (with the possibility to gain more)' if you are lucky enough to be able to access a meens of production which most won't 'Socialism = equal amounts of poverty (without the possibility to get more)' sure there is except for the slave 'socialism' he describes .

Tru, freedom is slavery now won't you get in this cage and do all my work, I'll give you Healthcare 😉

"While they collectivized the means of production and central planning provisionally improved the life standards of a vast majority of the population, which so far had lived like XIV century serfs" everyone live like that before industrial revolution. take a broader picture.

That improvement on the life standards was only achievable at those times when most of the production was based on a limited number of commodities and Russia was a feudalist system way behind its times (they haven't even reached the industrial period until the XX century during the heyday of the Soviet Union. Once the economy developed and technologies improved the economy couldn't be planned because two main things: First: the state is not God, they can't know everything and be omnipotent and omnipresent (Market is, because market are us, our needs and wants). Second; They needed to obtain permission to produce from men who produce nothing, so of course corruption would rule. Sorry for my bad english.