Jim Choate wrote:
Yep, http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.98.10.12-98.10.18/msg00019.html has a rant about Rosa Luxemburg and various people redefining the word "socialism" so that it included only ideas they didn't like & excluded ones they did. It was a sort of reply to a thread started by Jim Choate:
Since I was mentioned in passing, socialism (at least the way I use it) is the central management of resources and people without private ownership. Facism is the central management of resources and people with private ownership (of course if you don't manage it the way they want they do take it away - so it does have a 're-definition' of ownership).
The trouble with that use of the words (though it is the most common one on this list I guess) is that it defines just about every nation-state that ever existed as "fascist"
Yes, it rather does doesn't it.
including the so-called capitalist countries: "if you don't manage it the way they want they do take it away" is more or less the situation in western Europe and North America right now. (Can anyone say "consent order"?)
So we end up with words that don't really distinguish between the very different situations of say, the USA, & the old USSR, & Spain under Franco.
There are other words. The difference between the USA and the USSR was the difference between "socialism" and "fascism". The difference between Spain under Franco and the US is "Democracy" v.s. "Autocracy" (or Democratic Republic v.s. Autocratic Dictatorship).
Also of course most people who call themselves "socialists" (at least in Western Europe) say they don't want centralised state control of everything. You might say that socialism inevitably leads to an
No, just the most *important* things. Most people believe that the government should control <x>. You get enough people together you wind up with a whole lot of <x>s.
It seems much easier to me
Taking the easy way isn't always the most productive, the most interesting or the most accurate.
to define socialism in opposition to capitalism. So capitalism is just an economic condition in which the suppliers of capital (banks, shareholders, landlords, governments, whatever) control productive enterprises.
Capitalism is an economic system where the owners of the capital choose where and how to use their capital, and reap the results of those choices.
And socialism is the condition in which some other part of society controls enterprises - whether state governments or local governments or direct democracy or some non-state community or whatever.
Socialism is where the state--in whatever form that state is--owns and controls the capital in that society.
And the word "fascism" is best used to describe the sort of nationalist authoritarian politics that went on in Italy and Spain in the 20th century. It could be compatible with either capitalism or (state) socialism.
Fascism is where the state *controls* the capital, but allows the "owners" to reap the results of the states decisions of where and how to use that capitol. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural