> There's also no real reason why you can't have prices in socialism
There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new.
Imagine the new macbook air with Apple Silicon.
What should the price be, in a socialist system?
Set it too low and there will be shortage because you will not be able to produce enough as you wont get profits that would allow you to build extra factories and by extra components.
Set it too high and there will be surpluses rotting in factories because nobody will want it.
You need to guess right in advance. In a capitalist system, companies hold the responsibility: if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt.
In a socialist system, the responsibility is diluted, resulting in a cumulative overall inefficiency, with both shortage (ex: food in the USSR) and surpluses (ex: cotton in the USSR again).
I used "new things" to simplify the reasoning, but the same logic apply to existing things: do you want more or less say phones compared to last year?
You can't say "just as much", because the optimal amount will be impacted by a lot of things that change every year.
Unless they're banks, or auto manufacturers, or any other huge corporation that would get bailed out by the government. Wonder why that bailing out is a problem for socialist governments, but not capitalist ones.
> There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new.
Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism. Contrasting the two is actually a bit absurd, given that socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital.
e.g., market socialists exist. So do central planning-pushing communists. So do communalists...
> Socialism cannot estimate this any better or worse than capitalism.
False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species.
> socialism has a wide range of forms and does not prescribe the form in which workers own productive capital.
the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital. all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
> False, capitalism successfully prices products every day. The failures are eliminated in a process akin to natural selection of species.
Capitalism doesn't do that either. This entire comparison is a category error.
In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid.
> the only form of socialism that capitalists oppose is the one where socialists restrict the form in which people own productive capital.
That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about.
> all those alternative forms of socialism you advocate are free to exist in a free market
No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property.
> but they are as rare as hen's teeth (not to say nonexistent). why is that?
Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc.
Rojava is doing an experiment in communalism as we speak. Turkey is bombing it once the US got what they wanted from Rojava (fighting ISIS). Chile elected Allende, who was coup'd within two years by CIA-backed Pinochet. EZLN survives through the weakness of the central Mexican government and their relative irrelevance to capitalists.
Most political systems do not actually allow for the election of such parties to power. They have powerful propaganda campaigns baked into their education and mass media systems, with bourgeois infighting characterized as the extent of acceptable debate. Many force a two-party duopoly where only bourgeois parties have any chance of winning. Many outlaw socialist/communist parties or kill and harass their leaders. Many aren't democracies at all and would require an ideological military process to establish it - and have their opposition strategically funded by Western powers.
There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.
> In this discussion, capitalism is being conflated with markets and socialism with planned economies. Neither of those conflations are valid.
Perhaps but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. Socialism (absent central planning) doesn't have a means of allocating capital, so no one has ever tried it for long. When they do, everything falls to the tragedy of the commons. Even authoritarian socialists agree to this. Socialist anarchists have various opinions but agree that socialist organization is an unsolved problem. No one is prevented from setting up a socialist organization in capitalist countries, its merely the case that when they do, they aren't able to externalize their costs and they don't achieve very much.
> That is all forms of socialism. It's the only thing socialism is consistently about.
Then all forms of what you consider to be socialism will fail because of plunder.
> No they aren't. They're fundamentally incompatible with the theory of a free market. They are all focused on the abolition of private property.
yeah, its not cool to mess with other people's stuff. that's the problem here.
> Because when they get a footing they're actively attacked by capitalists. Economically attached with sanctions, invaded, coup'd, bombed, etc.
Maybe if "getting a footing" wasn't synonymous with expropriating the capitalists this wouldn't happen.
> There are many reasons that ruling powers maintain that power.
This is true. its also the case that rulers over a mixed economy have vastly more wealth at their disposal than rulers over a command economy and a collective that has norms prohibiting the collection of rents. This is because the market generates more wealth and rulers are able to extract more wealth because there is more wealth.
> Perhaps but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.
It does. Many socialists want to (and do) use markets as part of their desired transition. Capitalism is not actually pro-market by default, it just uses markets to accumulate capital. Left to its own devices, anticompetitive (i.e., anti-market) behaviors always arise.
Capitalism vs. socialism is not markets vs. a planned economy. It's about who owns the means of production.
> Socialism (absent central planning) doesn't have a means of allocating capital, so no one has ever tried it for long.
China's doing it right now via state capitalism, erring on a side where they allow capitalists to exist in an extremely controlled fashion and they regularly jail or put to death those who violate their rules - or they seize segments of industry. Socialists often create transitional plans where they maintain much of the same system but with significant curtailing of private property.
Other socialist countries / groups have operated largely by collectives, where initial capital is raised jointly with the government but once a venture is going it self-sustains as a collective bringing in new capital and divying it up by and to workers. Vietnam runs a mixed system where this is the dominant mode of production (the other is a China-style "controlled" capitalism).
Socialism is also a pretty wide brush. Rojava is communalist and local councils are the primary vehicle for regulating and controlling production. EZLN is anarchist-ish and nearly everything is a collective or co-op, with workers pooling capital to start a venture but also working within it and sharing alike. There are many ways to do socialism.
> When they do, everything falls to the tragedy of the commons.
I'm not sure what this is referring to.
> Even authoritarian socialists agree to this.
No such thing as "authoritarian socialists". That's not a self-identity or an ideology, but a pejorative produced by liberals and the folks that take that libertarian-made political compass too seriously.
> Socialist anarchists have various opinions but agree that socialist organization is an unsolved problem.
Anarchists tend to think that it isn't even a problem. Once they win, they depend on self-organization.
> No one is prevented from setting up a socialist organization in capitalist countries, its merely the case that when they do, they aren't able to externalize their costs and they don't achieve very much.
I mean, socialists can organize a party or something within a capitalist country, but you can't do socialism within a capitalist country. The entire system's function is dictated by capitalism - a co-op, for example, is still competing with all the other capitalist companies and has to follow the rules set up for them or perish.
Not sure what you mean by externalizing costs. If you're thinking of co-ops, they absolutely can and do externalize costs.
> Then all forms of what you consider to be socialism will fail because of plunder.
I don't see why.
> yeah, its not cool to mess with other people's stuff. that's the problem here.
Depends on what that stuff is. Private property is distinguished from personal property in a socialist view.
> Maybe if "getting a footing" wasn't synonymous with expropriating the capitalists this wouldn't happen.
If socialists weren't socialist this wouldn't happen? This doesn't make any sense and it doesn't address the point.
> This is true. its also the case that rulers over a mixed economy have vastly more wealth at their disposal than rulers over a command economy and a collective that has norms prohibiting the collection of rents. This is because the market generates more wealth and rulers are able to extract more wealth because there is more wealth.
So the story goes. The expropriation of value from the Global South has something to say about that, though.
Unfortunately, there is a very selectively-enforced limit on political content that has resulted in me being rate-limited, so I'm unable to respond to you in a timely manner anymore. I'd point you at some resources but I feel like that's condescending. Best of luck to you, friend.
> Capitalism vs. socialism is not markets vs. a planned economy. It's about who owns the means of production.
Yes, and dictating the rules of ownership that others must follow is a feature of central planning.
> but you can't do socialism within a capitalist country. The entire system's function is dictated by capitalism - a co-op, for example, is still competing with all the other capitalist companies and has to follow the rules set up for them or perish.
Yes, they can't compete on a purely material basis. Thats why you don't see them.
> Depends on what that stuff is. Private property is distinguished from personal property in a socialist view.
yes that's it. Your willingness to disregard my opinions about what constitutes my property on a dogmatic basis is the source of conflict here.
> If socialists weren't socialist this wouldn't happen? This doesn't make any sense and it doesn't address the point.
The point being that insofar as expropriation is synonymous with socialism, socialism is a crime.
> So the story goes. The expropriation of value from the Global South has something to say about that, though.
colonialism and neocolonialism are special cases of a command economy.
The government is paying the people for labor, the people pay the government for the goods they buy. That can totally include the feedback loop that well-selling goods get allocated more resources because they made a bigger "profit". Of course often it wasn't implemented that way, but it sounds like the Chilean system would have done that.
Thats what a company does in a market. The problem with asking the government to do the same thing is that they need to stop coercing people to comply with threats of violence. If they don't do that, then they are merely another corporation. We don't see this as a problem but getting the people with guns to stop using them to extort behavior they want is a devilishly hard problem.
There is: you can't estimate how much people will want something new.
Imagine the new macbook air with Apple Silicon.
What should the price be, in a socialist system?
Set it too low and there will be shortage because you will not be able to produce enough as you wont get profits that would allow you to build extra factories and by extra components.
Set it too high and there will be surpluses rotting in factories because nobody will want it.
You need to guess right in advance. In a capitalist system, companies hold the responsibility: if they are wrong too often, they go bankrupt.
In a socialist system, the responsibility is diluted, resulting in a cumulative overall inefficiency, with both shortage (ex: food in the USSR) and surpluses (ex: cotton in the USSR again).
I used "new things" to simplify the reasoning, but the same logic apply to existing things: do you want more or less say phones compared to last year?
You can't say "just as much", because the optimal amount will be impacted by a lot of things that change every year.