
Hello, my name is Reginald and I am a Socialist - raganwald
http://raganwald.posterous.com/hello-my-name-is-reginald-and-i-am-a-socialis
======
lionhearted
Good post, except one point - you're not a socialist. You're someone who
believes in people acting individualistically and through voluntary
cooperation. Hell, you sound like you've got similar politics as me. I think
people should empower themselves and I'm for voluntary worker's collectives,
absolutely. I think being salaried when you could go off and do a project with
a team you pick is a bad choice. I'm all for people controlling their own
destiny.

But that's not socialism. Socialism has a definition - it was coined and
defined by Marx as an intermediate stage on the way to Communism after the
proles have seized the means of production by violence. Marx postulated that
after heavy social control and violence against the exploiters, all class and
social barriers would melt away into paradise.

Turns out, he's wrong. People are different.

You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. If you want to redefine socialism
and say you're this redefined thing, okay, sure. But it sounds to me like
you're more into free action than socialism. That's a healthy place to be.
Marxist-brand socialism is not a healthy place to be, or at least, everything
that's remotely tried to be it has gone very wrong.

~~~
steveklabnik
> You're not a socialist as Marx defined it.

Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and
'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated
Socialism.

~~~
lionhearted
> Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and
> 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated
> Socialism.

Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Reginald wrote,
"I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism" - that's good
and healthy. Socialism, unfortunately, now has strong connotations of control
involved. If he's for people being able to choose their own life and destiny,
I think he'd be best off picking a word or phrase that says that. "Free
action" is the closest I know.

Why lock 90%+ of people out of the discussion because they don't know the
terminology?

~~~
raganwald

        Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference.
    

Upmodded. Wouldn't it be nice if a by-product of our discussion was for one or
more people to say to themselves, "Hey, Socialism isn't a single monolithic
thing, there are shades of grey involved. The next time someone says that re-
organizing health care is Socialist, I will ask them _what kind of socialism
is involved_?"

~~~
jacquesm
It's a media thing:

socialism -> bad

capitalism -> good

So any kind of social behaviour is labeled socialism, whether it is a health
care plan (how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?)
or pensions are leftwing and socialist, therefore bad.

You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN
where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are
mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as
though they were somehow new.

I think it is as much a remnant of the cold war as it is a lack of information
and education.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_It's a media thing_

I beg to differ. I'm not going to make claims of a vast media conspiracy, but
it is most certainly _not_ the case that the media casts socialism as bad and
capitalism as good.

For example, I submit that one of the most hackneyed themes of movies is the
greedy capitalist exploiting others or preventing needed initiatives.

As far as I can see, the media consistently mis-frames the economic issues
such that today's _corporatism_ (corporate welfare, rent seeking, regulatory
capture, etc.) are cast as problems of _capitalism_ , when in fact they are
antithetical to that system.

And on the other hand, major facets of our society (e.g., public education,
labor unions) that clearly are socialist, are never referenced as such.

In short, I think that the media is just messed up, and anybody on either side
of the philosophical divide that accepts media input unfiltered, is going to
be horribly confused.

EDIT: I reversed the sense of good/bad in 1st paragraph. It doesn't really
matter, since my thesis is that they're completely confused.

~~~
kscaldef
_And on the other hand, major facets of our society (e.g., public education,
labor unions) that clearly are socialist, are never referenced as such._

Don't forget the military. Universal health care, pensions, subsidized
housing, job security, etc are all socialist; except somehow when applied to
the military.

------
jerf
That's actually a significant reason I am a capitalist. A capitalist, free-
market system is one in which you are free to set up whatever little
organizations you want, and they live and die on their own merits. There is no
contradiction in running a highly socialist or even actively communist co-op
in a capitalistic society, because it is not part of the capitalism idea that
you must run that way from top to bottom.

This is not a conventional definition of socialism or capitalism. I don't have
a problem with that per se, since the terms have long since become so fuzzy as
to be useless without definition within an essay, but it is a little odd to
see you proudly labeling what would more conventionally be called
libertarianism or capitalism as "socialism". _In this context_ , I'm not sure
this makes any sense.

~~~
bstills
"it is not part of the capitalism idea that you must run that way from top to
bottom"

Well then it wouldn't be capitalism all the way down? It would only be
capitalism on the outside, socialism on the inside.

Capitalism is a system in which individuals are rewarded according to what the
market will give them. If you don't do that you simply don't have capitalism.

~~~
cynicalkane
I don't think there really is a popular definition for capitalism. People who
use the word always use it to mean what they want it to mean, usually in the
context of praising or criticizing capitalist society.

The best definition (in my ever humble opinion) is that capitalism is a
society where the means of production live in a free market, which is
completely consistent with what the GP said.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I believe that the common definition in most folks' minds is that capitalism
refers to the system we have today in the USA, where the government rewards
business interests with handouts, protective regulations, and the like.

This is not capitalism, though. What people are experiencing and objecting to
is _corporatism_ [1].

I believe that if people would give _real_ capitalism a chance, the result
would be positive. But as it stands now, the economics are too intertwined
with the politics. In order to successfully implement real capitalism, the
power that the state wields to erect regulations that can be subverted would
have to be stripped: we'd have to neuter the government. Clearly the
government would never allow that to happen.

[1] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Corporatism>

~~~
varjag
It can be argued that as soon as capital begins to concentrate, the
benefactors begin to affect policy making to their advantage. Thus you end up
with the current system.

Just as attempts at establishing communism end up with coercion and purges of
dissent, theoretical capitalism ends up with powerful interest groups in
practice.

------
bstills
"Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the
amount of labour one contributes to society"

How do you measure merit and the amount of labour one contributes to society?
The only fair way I know of is capitalism where people get to vote with their
money on whether or not you are providing value or not.

I would posit that merit is the amount of value you give to another. Minus
marketing and any government interference, capitalism rewards individuals for
the value they contribute to society.

It is also necessary to separate capitalism from corporatism. The latter is
what most people are against when they say that capitalism is evil. There is
no such thing as a corporation in terms of capitalism.

There is one flaw in capitalism that I am aware of but I still think it is the
best system. That flaw is that it tends to reward those with capital. To have
capital is to have an advantage over someone of equal ability. Over time power
tends to consolidate into a few select organizations / individuals.

~~~
_delirium
> Minus marketing and any government interference, capitalism rewards
> individuals for the value they contribute to society.

I suppose I don't buy this as an _a priori_ equality. One problem is that when
there are very large flows of capital, one can often make more money by
skimming _very_ small amounts off the top, than by creating new things. That's
one reason finance is a better route to wealth than tech startups, even though
tech startups create a lot more value for society: because when hundreds of
billions of dollars are moving around, you only need to find a way to pocket a
very small amount of it to get fabulously wealthy. More generally, rent-
seeking, i.e. maneuvering yourself into a position where you can be sort of a
private-sector version of the taxman, is a viable way to make money.

Plus, "minus marketing" is a pretty big caveat. It's quite possible to be
successful in a "black-hat capitalist" sort of way, by not creating products
that contribute to society, but instead by swindling society out of its money
by getting people to buy your crap (even in tech, there's a whole affiliate-
marketing underworld of tricking people into buying shitty ebooks). And, to
pick a third problem, the economy is a rather complex dynamical system, and
like many dynamical systems, is not driven purely by fundamentals (real
supply/demand), but also by feedback loops and attractors within the system.
So sometimes you get some really weird ways of making money that have nothing
to do with anyone providing value to anyone else, but have more to do with
asset bubbles and debt spirals and other such market patterns.

Not that markets don't _often_ work, and might work even better without the
government propping up the corporate form. But I certainly don't think we can
_a priori_ say that money transfers are a direct measure of value. I mean,
we'd live in a pretty coincidentally amazing universe if it just happened that
the economy, this very complex dynamical system that does not care about human
concerns like "value" or "society" or "ethics", happened to end up 100%
aligning with them. I think instead it's an open question when they align and
when they don't, and if there's anything we can do to make markets align with
value-to-society better.

------
jakevoytko
When you work out the consequences, "Libertarian socialism" is a terrible name
for the concept described by Reginald. It feels more like a Capitalist
hypothesis:

    
    
        Hypothesis:
        A group of workers jointly shouldering the risk and rewards of a venture 
        is more efficient than a "traditional" company.
    

This is true at small-scale: startups seem to be structured like collectives,
and they regularly outperform large companies within a niche. However, large
companies never take this structure. That suggests either there's a point
where this becomes impractical, or nobody's been crazy enough to try before.

~~~
steveklabnik
Are you aware of the history of the term 'libertarian?' It was originally used
to describe anarchism, which is socialist. Statist and stateless socialism are
very different beasts, and the term 'libertarian socialism' has a pretty long
history of use: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism>

~~~
jakevoytko
But despite some of his terms, he's not advocating his views on the level of
an entire society. Just at the scale of a single collective or company. He
seems fine with the idea of this collective competing and winning within a
Capitalist framework, which seems antithetical to much of the article you
linked.

~~~
steveklabnik
It's true. I don't claim to speak for raganwald. And I myself am much closer
to he than to the article. Not everyone's beliefs are black and white... there
are plenty of people that support, for example, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act yet
still call themselves 'capitalists.'

------
grrrrr
I don't buy the analogy. Even if you work for a company that fosters what he
refers to as a socialist work ethic that company is still operating in a
capitalist system, subject to the usual market forces. What he is describing
sounds more like a collegiate environment. The nature of software development,
and other similar knowledge economy industries, naturally demand a more
collaborative & collegiate approach to getting things done, but they are all
fundamentally driven by market forces & constraints such as funding & sales.

~~~
kscaldef
> The nature of software development, and other similar knowledge economy
> industries, naturally demand a more collaborative & collegiate approach to
> getting things done, but they are all fundamentally driven by market forces
> & constraints such as funding & sales.

You have heard of this open source thing, right? I don't think that you can
argue that the open source ethos has anything to do with capitalism. In fact,
I would say that Stallman's views on software are pretty overtly communist, as
they contest the very concept of private ownership of a piece of software.

~~~
lzw
And yet, without the freedom to won the software you create, you cannot give
it away. Open source s capitalst because it is based on the presumption that
the creator owns the sotftware and can determine the license to it.

If stall man really believes nobody can own software, then stallman believes
that all programmers should be slaves, unable to profit from their own labor.

~~~
kscaldef
Copyleft was conceived as a hack of the copyright system, a necessary evil
because placing a work in the public domain allows other people to profit from
the work. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft>:

 _As Stallman deemed it impractical in the short term to eliminate current
copyright law and the wrongs he perceived it perpetuated, he decided to work
within the framework of existing law; he created his own copyright license,
the Emacs General Public License,[8] the first copyleft license._

There is nothing that keeps an open source developer from profiting from their
labor. Some are employed by a company explicitly to work on OSS, or contract
with a company to implement a desired feature. In fact, an open source
developer can _only_ profit from their labor, and not at all from their
"capital".

------
jakehow
"self-organized collectives" are abundant in western capitalism, we usually
refer to them as corporations. The terms and agreements between parties in
these organizations vary but many fit your ideal.

The philosophical difference between socialism and capitalism, is the
willingness to accept violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a
specific vision.

~~~
ahi
"The philosophical difference between socialism and capitalism, is the
willingness to accept violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a
specific vision."

I am fairly certain violence and coercion is orthogonal to socialism v
capitalism.

~~~
jakehow
It is very simple. A purely capitalistic society can contain, tolerate, and
even encourage totally egalitarian organizations in any form the participants
deem prudent. A purely socialist society on the other hand cannot tolerate
capitalistic organizations in its midst.

Violence is embedded in the assumption that society can be organized in a
socialist manner.

~~~
raganwald
The trouble with arguing about "Purely X" for any value of X is that there are
no practical examples of X for us to examine. I don't have an option of living
in a purely capitalistic society. Canada is somewhat democratically socialist,
but not purely socialist. There are small scale startups, bu t I am not aware
of any gazillion person corporations where everyone is paid for what they
really contribute. Even when bonus is a major component of someone's monetary
compensation, the highest rewards go to those who game the system.

In the end, arguing Capitalism vs. Socialism tends to devolve into the No True
Scotsman fallacy: "Socialism sucks because you die of old age before getting
an MRI." "Oh, I got one for my knee." "Well, Ontario isn't a TRUE Socialist
society."

And: "Capitalism sucks because if a corporation succeeds in exploiting people,
it makes money. But if it fails, they go to congress and rob the people
through taxes of their money, e.g. the Wall Street bail-out." "That was not
TRUE capitalism at work, that doesn't count!"

~~~
jakehow
Agreed, which is why I tried to couch it in 'philosophical' argument.
Discussing the various factions of socialism, anarchism, libertarianism, etc
is always fun, but rarely leads to anything productive.

I am just glad that we currently can organize rather freely (even if we are
forced to give over nearly half of our labor to war, health and retirement
ponzi schemes, subsidizing heterosexual marriage, or whatever it is that you
disagree with personally), and think that everyone should spend energy on
making that more possible, and more neutral within our current framework(s)
rather than trying to decide how people should organize themselves in the end.

------
dood
Capitalism, Socialism, Libertarianism, Anarchism, Conservatism, etc... these
labels are now so confused and bereft of concrete meaning that their use is
largely counterproductive.

If you want to say something political, say it, don't stick a label on your
forehead.

~~~
lzw
These labels are one bereft of meaning because socialists arevcosntantly
attempting to coopt them. They havev even cooped the republican party.

Libertarian means you do not believe in the initiation of force. This is
incompatible with socialism which, it's core, requires the use of force to
make people live a certain way.

The term libertarian has clear meaning, and all of the others will, so long as
we do not tolerate their misuse and call it out when they are misused.

~~~
raganwald
_This is incompatible with socialism which, it's core, requires the use of
force to make people live a certain way._

You can't really slip that in like everyone agrees it's a fact. Where does it
say that Socialism requires force? The last few anarchists I spoke to describe
capitalism as requiring force, because you need to enforce the notion of the
ownership of things.

For example, what force is required to copy a movie? The force is all on the
side of lawyers and policemen arresting people to compel them to treat a very,
very long number as property.

~~~
lzw
Capitalism is a system whereby people are allowed to accumulate capital, and
then with the voluntary consent of other people, form collectives, called
corporations, where that capital and the labor of all the people is deployed
to produce products and services with the hopes of generating profits to be
distributed to the members of the collective based on the prior agreement for
distribution.

Socialists generally seem to feel that this is unfair because the people who
put up capital are rewarded. But at any rate, if you do Not have an external
force dictating, at the point of gun, how people are to be organized, they can
organize as I described above, and historically have.

Since this organization is a capitalist one, socialists must use violence to
stop it.

There are two ways violence can be imposed. In one, you are denuding yourself
or your partner or property. In the other you are attempting to steal the life
or property of another.

I draw a moral distinction between shooting the guy who is raping my wife, and
you coming along and redistributing the profits of my company, which you
didn't help create, along the lines of your ideals.

You want to form a company that under different ideals, then that's fine by
me... So long as everyone involved consents.

There is nothing in a capitalist society to stop you from having such a
collective.

However, socialism is based on the idea that capital has no value and only
labor does, and thus you must use guns to prevent anyone from accumulating too
much.

~~~
raganwald
_socialism is based on the idea that capital has no value and only labor does,
and thus you must use guns to prevent anyone from accumulating too much._

Nowhere in my essay did I say anything about the use of guns. I am not an
expert on socialism, but I don't recall anyone I have met who identifies as a
socialist telling me to grab a gun and use violence.

Therefore, I am going to leave you to argue with yourself since you are
spending all of your words telling ME what socialism means and then explaining
why YOUR definition of socialism is bad.

Have fun.

------
raganwald
Since people like to argue definitions, here's something to chalk on the board
at the coffee house:

GIVEN: _Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, and
sometimes left libertarianism) is a group of political philosophies which
promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without
private property in the means of production._

RESOLVED: _Belief in the abolition of software patents and the use of FOSS
software to create start-ups is a Libertarian Socialist view._

~~~
lzw
How can you have a society without private property if you don't have a state
to take the property away from people and to enslave them?

Your system would end the Knute two people decided to organize a venture for
profit, or to keep a stick they found on the beach.

You need an all seeing state to take that stick from them and keep them
destitute.

~~~
raganwald
You are talking about atoms. But software is made of bits. Could it be that
the ideas that work well for atoms fall down in a Universe of bits?

------
steveklabnik
I was considering writing a similar post after that thread the other day. I
fear for this thread, though. This becomes a touchy subject quickly.

I personally identify with something very close to libertarian socialism
myself, so you're not the only one.

~~~
adw
I think you'd find quite a bit of support from us Europeans, actually – even
the ones, like me, who are probably a bit to the right of you politically. I'm
not a card-carrying member of any political party, but the American rhetoric
on socialism is just absurd.

(Full disclosure: my sympathies are on the market wing of mainstream European
liberalism.)

Socialism as used in Europe means social democracy, means free enterprise with
regulation and a robust welfare system, and includes the cooperative movement
– and you'd be hard pressed to call the third largest private company in the
UK (the John Lewis Partnership:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership>) some kind of entryist
plot.

Obama a socialist? Don't make us laugh: he's barely a liberal. In Britain he'd
be a Tory...

~~~
nhebb
Broadly speaking, in American politics today the term is used to imply the
increased scope, reach, and size of government, inevitably followed by an
increase in taxes, It's not a textbook definition of socialism, but it boils
down an aversion to the state controlling an increasing percentage of our
personal wealth.

~~~
barrkel
Whereas the alternative, conservatism promulgated by Republicans, implies the
increased scope, reach and size of government (armies + war), inevitably
followed by an increase in deficits (which "don't matter", but the redirected
resources, even if only measured in terms of people employed, do make a
difference in productive, rather than destructive, output).

~~~
lzw
The republicans are socialists as well.

This is a truth that, unfortunately, seems to elude people.

------
motters
My own 2p worth is that these notions of socialism or capitalism or liberalism
are 19th/20th century inventions, and that the sorts of issues which are going
to be arising in future are not going to fit well into any of these existing
boxes. Probably it's not a good idea to become too fixated upon these
ideologies from the past. As evidence I'd cite the declining public interest
in party politics and the rise of single issue pressure groups.

Also, Americans often confuse socialism for communism, and don't realize that
more moderate non-tyrannical centre left forms of socialism are possible, with
plenty of examples existing in Europe.

~~~
lzw
It is easy to assume that your opponents are ignorant, but i can speak pretty
clearly to this point-- even the least aware and educated Americans recognize
that european socialism, while it didn't become as tyrannical as communist
states, still results in more government control, and lower economic growth,
than the comparatively less socialist USA.

------
astine
"That isn't socialism, but boy does it feel like workers being more efficient
when they seize the means of production—the compiler—rather than being coerced
or exploited."

If you're interested in the notion of putting the means of production in the
hands of the workers, you might be interested in some of the works of G. K.
Chesterton and Hilair Belloc when they discuss what they called
'Distributism.' They're not full of much practical advice but they do provide
an ideological alternative to the all or nothing ideologies of Socialism and
Free-Market Capitalism.

------
rick888
"That isn't socialism, but boy does it feel like workers being more efficient
when they seize the means of production—the compiler—rather than being coerced
or exploited."

How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for
someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't
getting paid enough, leave.

"They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal
opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."

If I have more money than you, it instantly makes our opportunities "unequal".
This is the problem with socialism. It creates "equality" by limiting
everyone's success. This works well for people that aren't interested in
succeeding. I think of it like those group projects in school where 2 people
of 5 would get stuck doing all the work, while the rest took the same amount
of credit.

"I have no idea if the folks laid off from auto-makers want to do that, but I
do know that I and many of the programmers I know seem happy with the idea of
working in small teams in a collaborative and egalitarian manner"

I see people talking about this every couple of years. If you really want to
start something like this, don't talk about it, do it. Many people in history
have tried exactly what you are proposing and this crazy thing called human
nature gets in the way every time.

The idea of a group owned collaborative sounds great on paper, until you
actually attempt to do it. Who decides how much each person gets paid? If it's
based on performance, what kind of performance? How many widgets or made?

You mentioned a "co-operative workers' councils". How is this any different
than a president/ceo of the company? These "councils" will have more power
over the regular workers, so it doesn't really make everyone "equal".

I've worked at a few companies that were run by committee. Even small
decisions were very painful to make.

~~~
raganwald
Are you presenting this as an argument with my article? I am confused, as you
seem to be arguing most of the time with other people's words and not my own.

I will respond to one thing you wrote, That does not mean I agree with or even
understand anything else in your comment.

 _How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working
for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't
getting paid enough, leave._

Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that
exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices.

That isn't my understanding of what the word "exploitation" means. If I'm
wrong, please suggest the word that describes what I am thinking, and I'll
update the essay.

~~~
rick888
"Are you presenting this as an argument with my article? I am confused, as you
seem to be arguing most of the time with other people's words and not my own."

You seem to like to add other people's words in your article as to convey a
certain message. When I argue against that message, you tell me that you are
confused.

If you don't want anything to do with the thoughts you quoted, why put them
there at all? You should stand by your opinions.

"Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that
exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices."

No. Some people are truly exploited. You laid it out there as a blanked
statement. As if everyone is exploited in the current system.

~~~
raganwald
I think you have certain ideas. I'm fine with your opinions just as they are,
I honour you for that. However, in an essay where I start by saying that I'm
erroneous in describing myself as a Socialist and end by saying that I'm a
socialist for sufficiently libertarian values of socialism, what are we to
make of my quoting a generic definition of Big S Socialism in the middle? I
stated what I believe quite clearly. What I suggest you do is carry on arguing
against Big S Socialism. Nothing wrong with disputing it. And if you like, you
can say things like "Reginald quotes Wikipedia as saying that Socialism is
____. This is clearly a bad idea because _____."

Now as to "standing by my opinions," ask your friends in the neighborhood
about me. They will tell you I have no problem standing by my opinions, even
when they are unpopular. But I should make something perfectly clear: This
essay describes what I like. At no time do I claim that you or anybody else
will be better off if things go this way or that way, just that I will like
it.

So really, there is very little value to your trying to persuade me that the
world will be worse off if Health Care is nationalized or what-not. I am not
writing an essay about how to make the world a better place, just about how to
make my world a better place.

I believe the best you can do to oppose my views is to convince me that I
personally wouldn't like working on small, self-organizing software teams.
Have at it.

------
rue
He really should have made it about definitions since more than half of the
commenters here seem to have no idea what communism is and, thereby,
misunderstand socialism (as defined by Reginald) and Socialism (as defined by
Marx).

Communism <> capitalism. Democracy <> oligarchy. Freedom <> oppression.

------
datapimp
You sound more like a traditional Anarchist. Industrial Worker of the World
type than a Socialist.

------
warmfuzzykitten
Can't believe no one else responded: "Hello, Reginald!!"

------
tallpapab
Thanks for posting. Now I don't feel so lonely.

------
RyanMcGreal
Sounds a bit like this: <http://www.thetake.org/>

------
kungfooguru
Great to read this. I too am a socialist and frequent Hacker News and work in
startups. I'm a member of the International Socialist Organization,
<http://socialistworker.org/>, if you happen to be in the US and interested in
a group and not yet part of one.

I see you ended up getting people to argue definitions when they don't
understand them anyway :).

Like lionhearted, "means of production by violence". Violence is only
necessary when those with the real rights to the means of production (the
wealth they created) are attacked... So no, that is not part of Marx's theory.

Marxist brand socialism is the healthiest place to be if you are for freedom
and the end of oppression!

It is sad how little people care to learn of Marxism, instead happily believe
the lies they are told.

~~~
lzw
Me and my friends make a startup, we make lots of money. You want to tax it?
Do you want to force us to hire employes on terms that you dictate?

These are sincere questions-- what effect would your socialist system have on
our little voluntary startup? If the answer is none, how is it different from
capitalism? What if we got big?

If you want to force us to hire certain people, pay them a certain amount, or
prevent us from getting big-- all policies advocated by various socialist
organizations-- how is this not an end of freedom and oppression?

Meanwhile I don't care if you form a collective, and you have whatever
socialist policies in your collective, so long as all the participants are
voluntary.

I've yet to meet a socialist or a socialist organization that would extend the
same courtesy.

Because letting people be free from oppression means letting them pool
capital, which is generally a problem for socialists, isn't it?

~~~
kungfooguru
First let me argue not as a socialist but pretending I'm a liberal. Are you
saying that when you make a startup and sell a product you gain nothing from
public services during this time? There is no reason for you to be taxed to
provide those services?

There will be no 'startups' in the sense you think of, meaning dealing with
capital. Decisions of production will be done democratically in communities.

If you want to think of yourself as an artisan that could be argued that you
could still have your "startup". But you will not be collecting capital from
investors and enslaving workers to a wage.

It is a very different way of thinking and living and can be hard to grasp.
But so was capitalism and capitalism was a very progressive movement in its
beginning. But it runs its course as it destroys the planet and human
interaction and continues to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and
fewer hands.

~~~
lzw
I see, so you justify the use of violence, eg, taxation backed by laws and
menvwith guns, based on the erroneous assumption that the victims of your
violence want the so called services you claim to provide.

Well at least your no longer pretending to advocate for freedom from
oppression.

Fwiw, every capitalist would happily pay for the services they used, they do
it all the time by going to other companiesvand hiring them or buying
products.

The whole taxation racket is awoke, tax first then justify it because the
services-- which would be provided cheaper and more efficiently by a free
market, of course-- are used because were forced to use them.

Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.

Reality is, this is all rationalizations. You wantbot use vioelence to comp
ell others to live according to your dictates, and this is why all socialist
system save turned into tyrannies.

------
grandalf
removed :)

~~~
steveklabnik
No worries, it's an easy distinction to forget, and rarely do people use 'the
s word' in America without a ridiculous amount of rhetoric.

------
gaius
_Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the
amount of labour one contributes to society_

The thing is, this makes no sense at all, especially not here on HN, where one
of our core assumptions is that people should be compensated on how productive
they are, not the hours they put in. Why should anyone care about the amount
of labour, as opposed to the value of the end product?

~~~
najirama
"...here on HN, where one of _our_ core assumptions is..."

Who comprises this 'our' that you so easily reference, and what matter is
their assumptions to the actual truth of the OP's thesis?

Cringe-inducing groupthink, _in excelsis_. Careful you don't lose yourself in
pursuit of community.

~~~
calibraxis
Yes, personally while reading the comments, I sometimes just think "This
person is using conventional pro-capitalist arguments" and move on. Similar
thoughts might occur if I were reading technical communications as a
mathematician in Soviet Russia, a developer of early computers for the US
government, or engineer of weapons systems under feudalism.

That doesn't necessarily mean I reject those arguments; but it doesn't mean I
accept them either. Given the state of the world, it makes sense that the
ideology here reflects the capitalist, masculine perspectives in the
Californian software industry.

------
kungfooguru
Sad to see Hacker News people are just as ignorant on socialism and capitalism
as say... Diggers for example, or watchers of CNN/MSNBC/FOX.

------
forgottenpaswrd
"I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism"

Haha, so you are not socialist at all!!

Socialist is forcing others to accept socialist, in fact is forcing
(other)individuals to give money to their "social causes", that could be
different from those individuals have.

Is not asking politely: would you mind giving part of your money to this poor
people so they can study?

No, it is taking by force his money if he doesn't want to, and consider it "a
right". As my grandpa who lived in soviet rusia said when I asked what is
socialism, he said: It is being generous with other people's money.

If you accept individual freedoms to choose, you are not socialist, not more
that anybody else here.

~~~
steveklabnik
You're operating under a very narrow, incorrect definition of socialism.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
Narrow? No, is broad. It applies to every socialism in existence, planning and
managing others resources, not your own.

A private socialism is not a socialism at all, because you need a society to
comply.

Maybe you could give me a better definition.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common
> ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and
> allocation of resources.

Nowhere does this say "take my money and give it to other people." For
example, anarchism is a socialist political philosophy, but abhors the state,
and all forms of hierarchical control.

~~~
philwelch
For anarchism to actually eliminate violence, it has to have some mechanism to
protect society from Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper.

Statistically, Genghis Khan will eventually be born somewhere outside your
society and eventually show up at your doorstep with hordes of horseback
archers, and you can either surrender, join his empire, and pay taxes (ending
your experiment in anarchism) or have your entire society destroyed almost to
the last man, leaving a few survivors to warn other societies of the tale
(ending your experiment in anarchism).

If you had the only anarchist society in a world of states, you could probably
freeload on those states to stop any full-scale Genghis Khan from getting too
powerful. Let's hope your experiment in anarchism is landlocked between
several states who will leave you alone. You _could_ allow for voluntary
defense, and theoretically handwave away defensive violence against people
outside your society as "doesn't count". But on some level you have to realize
your society depends upon some violence to survive.

Jack the Ripper will show up inside your society and fuck up your voluntary
social contract all on his own, when he goes around killing disreputable women
(luckily, many forms of anarcho-socialism lack money and thus would have no
prostitution per se). In that case you would need some sort of violence
(possibly voluntary on the part of the violent people) to either kill Jack the
Ripper, or lock him up in a cage, or kick him out of your society. If you do
that, you have violence within your society--if you don't, you have violence
within your society in the form of Jack the Ripper.

It turns out all of human history has been an extended experiment in solving
these very problems, and the only steady state, as discovered in parallel by
nearly every culture on earth, is in fact the State[1]. At best you can have
voluntarism within the State, but you cannot sustain anarchism without the
State.

[1] Existing primitivists, such as the bushmen of Africa, have largely been
forced out of their traditional lifestyle by the State. If there are
primitivists who do, in fact, maintain their traditional lifestyle, they only
do so under the explicit protection _of_ the State, as discussed in the
freeloading example above. In other words, it's still an anarchism that
requires the State to function, which is a contradiction in terms.

Hunter-gatherers are not necessarily anarchists. Many of the greatest empires
in world history were built by hunter-gatherers, who on account of their
hunting and gathering made much better soldiers than people living in
civilizations. They ate a more balanced diet, got more exercise, knew how to
kill things, and knew how to kill things as a team. Horseback archery isn't a
skill you get to hone much as a farmer. If you have that basic skillset,
civilizations make pretty good targets once you run low on animals.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Statistically, Genghis Khan will eventually be born somewhere outside your
> society and eventually show up at your doorstep

It's true. We need to look no further than the Spanish Revolution to find a
great example in history of this.

Then again, the Most Powerful Military In The World is still playing in the
sand, almost a decade later. A ragtag band of individuals is still fending
them off.

As far as Jack the Ripper goes, I also agree with you. This is why I'm only
sympathetic to anarchism, and not a full-blown anarchist. I have my own
questions about how these kinds of situations would be resolved.

