Oh, yeah? Well, your mama’s a socialist!

One reason it’s good to have canons of journalism is to refute the hysteria and propaganda that are stoked from above but experienced from below. When those canons no longer exist, anything can be asserted as true. It’s why McCain has gotten away with his bad history lessons: in the absence of actual journalism, the void is filled with personality politics and demonology.
McCain is going to lose anyway but the right wing still might prevail with canards and some alternative theories of reality. Faith-based politics is less about objective reality than the sincerity of the believer. If Sarah Palin believes dinosaurs and humans cohabited this planet a few thousand years ago, who are we to dispute her? Do so and risk being condemned as an elitist.
Reality is daunting in its complexity. None of us can fully understand it. But you can honor it by admitting as much. This is why the American right is so dangerous. If you think sincerity makes up for knowledge, you’ll believe virtually anything if it confirms an underlying notion about good us vs bad them. This election, like others before it, is really a battle for the idea that reality actually exists outside our beliefs about it.

Someone once told me that knowledge is power, information is how you get it. Thank you for keeping the information flowing Rouge Columnist.

I am feeling conflicted, both sad and refreshed at the same time. It is disheartening to know that we have escaped America’s founding ideals so much that a columnist such as yourself would deem his/ her work “too dangerous for the mainstream”. Especially being that freedom of speech and the press are guaranteed i the first amendment of our constitution. But, we all know how important that document is in this current political climate.
The latter emotion is the manifested by my sheer joy ( and relief) that there are more people like myself out there. WHo understand. The modern GOP’s (the Democrats too) ignorance, and what’s worse readiness to spout McCarthy style fallacies any time it’s convenient dilutes the whole political process to a game of name calling and misinformation. I have seen small children behave more agreeably on the playground.
The worse thing is probably the misinformation. The “ruling class” has been in power for so long that they have totally detached themselves from the needs of the electorate. They have allowed educational standards in the US to drop so low that they are able to throw around terms like “socialist” and 75% of the population will have no real idea of what that means. Only that it’s BAD. I am here as a representative of the Socialist Party of Kansas, and I can honestly say the we are not detached, we are not trying to create a totalitarian state and we are her for the best interest of the people.
So thank you, you are the first columnist I have read who willingly refutes the GOP’s claims of Socialism.

Regarding taxes:
From 1951 to 1963 — a period spanning the Truman, Eisenhower,and Kennedy administrations, which presided over what many regard as a kind of Golden Age for the American economy in general and the American middle-class in particular — the top marginal tax rate on personal income was 91%. Today it’s 35%.
In the 1950s corporate taxes accounted on average for 1/4 of all federal tax revenue. Today they account for less than 10%.
Furthermore, the government today depends much more heavily on regressive payroll taxes which hit the middle class harder than the wealthy, since such taxes, in addition to being flat, have caps limiting the amount of income subject to the tax: for Social Security this is currently set at $97,500 which means that anyone whose income is higher than this — even if that income is tens of millions of dollars a year or more — only pays payroll tax on the first $97,500. Furthermore, the fact that it is a PAYROLL tax and not a tax on general personal income, means that even in the absence of a cap, much of the income of wealthy persons would not be taxable as payroll : the wealthy get much of their income from items other than salary — many of them don’t even draw a salary — such as rent collections, investment income, direct profit taking via ownership, and so forth.
It’s a lot easier for the government to avoid debt (thereby helping keep the dollar strong), fund public works and infrastructure investment (instead of letting everything go to pot), grow the economy,and raise the general standard of living, when it provides for adequate revenue and targets appropriate revenue sources, instead of letting the rich (whether individuals or corporations) escape their social obligations while saddling the middle class with an increased burden.
Regarding “socialism”:
I continue to be astounded by the letters which the Arizona Republic sees fit to publish, in which writers rant about “socialism” in the context of Obama’s milquetoast tax reform plans. Often these letters are given prominence (e.g., top of column, or their own special side-box).
One recent writer in this vein asked readers rhetorically to “name any country in the world where socialism has worked”.
The answer, of course, is that with respect to what such writers call socialism — using public funds to support public services — nearly every advanced country in the world, including the United States.
Many of the things that they take for granted — universal literacy (public schools), guaranteed retirement income (Social Security), potable water, unadulterated food supplies, highways, fire and police services (including their beloved Uncle Joe Arpaio), and countless else they use and value every day, whether they realize it or not — are all paid for using public funds.
God only knows what would happen if they learned about places like Norway, where the government owns about 1/3 of publically listed companies and controls key sectors such as energy, telecommunications, banking, transportation and mineral production, not to mention implementing a Scandinavian welfare model regarding social security, health care, and education. Possibly their heads would explode.
(Some other facts about Norway: it was ranked highest of all countries in human development over each of the last seven years (except one, when it came in second); it has the second highest GDP per capita in the world; an unemployment rate below 2 percent; hourly wages AND hourly productivity which are among the highest in the world; the difference there between the wages of the lowest paid worker and the salary of the CEOs of most companies is among the lowest in the world; it has the highest capital reserve per capita of any country in the world; it is currently rated second in the world in environmental performance; it was rated the most peaceful country in the world in 2007 by the Global Peace Index; Reporters Without Borders, in their worldwide press freedom index, rated it 1st out of 168 countries for five years straight in the current decade; and so on and so forth — you get the idea.)
Of course, Norway is a mixed economy: but from the viewpoint of what Mr. Talton so rightly refers to as the “duhs and ignos” it is for all intents and purposes a socialist state — and one which works, not only because of bountiful natural resources and a comparatively small population, but because the state manages these resources so well and because the fruit is more equitably shared with its people than in many industrialized countries.
I have a little more to say on the general subject of “socialism”, but I’ll defer that to a later comment, time permitting. In the meantime, since I’m given to understand that the only self-described socialist in Congress is Bernie Sanders of Vermont (god bless him), the following piece by Ambrose Bierce (from Fantastic Fables) should amuse rather than offend our visiting friend from Kansas:
The Member and the Soap
A MEMBER of the Kansas Legislature meeting a Cake of Soap was passing it by without recognition, but the Cake of Soap insisted on stopping and shaking hands. Thinking it might possibly be in the enjoyment of the elective franchise, he gave it a cordial and earnest grasp. On letting it go he observed that a portion of it adhered to his fingers, and running to a brook in great alarm he proceeded to wash it off. In doing so he necessarily got some on the other hand, and when he had finished washing, both were so white that he went to bed and sent for a physician.

Hang on a moment, a centrally planned medical system paid for by the taxpayer is socialist, and almost everyone accepts that. You can argue about whether it is fixed, broken, good, bad or what have you, but it certainly is not a free-market capitalist system.
And income redistribution by government force is also socialism. Just because the Republican party do their share of the same thing doesn’t make it any less socialism, it just reveals the soft-fascist nature of the current US Republican party.
Yes, that’s right, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party really was socialist, what a shock. Note that in this particular case the government did not actually own the means of production but it mattered not, because such production was owned by sufficiently large corporate interests that were directly under the control of central government. The fine distinction is irrelevant for all practical purposes.
Norway is pretty close to a central planned economy, for that matter so is France. The welfare ghettos of France have achieved three generations of continuous unemployment for their residents, good work socialism. Norway is being pumped by a healthy oil production and high energy prices, the same formula works for Hugo Chavez and it works for Putin too. Sell the oil for a high price, redistribute the money into public works and welfare, you can’t go wrong. But the oil will eventually run out.
No one is doubting that a central planned economy can achieve spectacularly effective results. Hitler’s war-machine came very close to taking control of all of Western Europe. The only reason he lost is that the USA got involved in the war and Hitler was stupid enough to go head to head against Stalin (another central planned economy). If Hitler and Stalin had actually cooperated (recognising that they had more in common than they had differences) then freedom in Europe would be dead today. During warfare, most nations switch to a wartime economy which greatly reduces individual freedom, there are many historic examples of this.
A lot of people rightly ask whether that is the way they want to live on a regular basis.
My quick definition is to ask this simple question: if we meet a situation where we have to choose between either abandoning a state objective or reducing individual freedom, who loses? If the freedom of the individual is sacrificed, then that is socialism. If the state objective is abandoned then that is liberty. Some people like to redefine freedom to mean living a comfortable life. Freedom means being able to make choices, and being allowed to reap the rewards of those choices.
Needless to say, the Bush government has introduced extensive restrictions on individual freedom — the freedom to protest, to travel unmolested, right to privacy, and many other things that the US constitution was intended to protect. Bush also spent vast amounts of taxpayer’s money on war and other state objectives that were not supported by popular opinion and have turned out to be a complete and miserable waste. These are all socialist policies. Bush’s excuse is that we are at war so he can do whatever he likes… the excuse is wearing thin by now and everyone knows it.
Essentially, the US public has to choose between a war mongering socialist, and an infrastructure building socialist — looks like they will choose the infrastructure builder because they are tired of war. Either way, the US of the founding fathers and the US constitution is unlikely to ever come back.

Forgive me if I’m unimpressed with the “freedom of the individual” to be sick and die in the only advanced nation without a national health care system. Those other nations maintain their systems whether social democratic or conservatives are in office. This “individual freedom” argument is too often used to justify what Jon calls the “devil take the hindmost” society, where the powerful rule and the powerless are left behind.

Tel wrote:
“Hang on a moment, a centrally planned medical system paid for by the taxpayer is socialist, and almost everyone accepts that.”
Unfortunately, we don’t have one in the United States and nobody is proposing one. One would imagine that in a supposedly democratic land with a supposedly free press, we would have a wide range of candidates offering a wide range of policies, and that these would each receive fair media coverage.
“And income redistribution by government force is also socialism.”
According to that viewpoint, any use of government power to raise revenue, from any individual, by any means other than voluntary subscription, including any form of taxation, is “socialism”. (But note that invariably, under a system of voluntary subscription, the powers of the government are determined by the class interests of those with the money to fund it; and in a society which begins from a position of economic inequity, that is tantamount to oligarchy.)
If we were to accept your definition of “socialism”, it would logically follow that every form of government which has the power to tax (or raise revenue in any similar fashion), whether a monarchy, a republic, or a fascistic oligarchy, is “socialist”. The definition is obviously far too broad and causes the word to lose all meaning. Can you name a single non-socialist country in the world, either today or in the past, using this definition of yours in a logically consistent fashion?
“Just because the Republican party do their share of the same thing doesn’t make it any less socialism, it just reveals the soft-fascist nature of the current US Republican party. Yes, that’s right, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party really was socialist, what a shock.”
Soft-fascist may or may not be a useful label in describing the current Republican party in America — despite elements of truth it smacks of hyperbole — but the rest of your statement is historically inaccurate. The NSDAP was originally conceived as a nationalist alternative to both social-democracy and Marxism and was intended to co-opt the broadly popular social welfare aspects of those movements, so as to be able to challenge international Communism, while continuing the militant nationalism of pre-WW I regimes. This is reflected in the evolution of its name: Drexler, one of its founders, originally proposed it to be called the German-Socialist Workers Party, but another founder, Harrer, objected to inclusion of the word “socialist” and his view won out among the founding members; they agreed to call it the German Workers Party (DAP).
Thus, it can be seen that even from the start, “socialism” was ill-regarded by the Nazis. Hitler, who lacked any fondness for either socialists or the proletariate, later joined the party as a police spy. He was attracted by its anti-semitism and its militant nationalism, however. His view of the party (which, as we know, came to predominate exclusively) was that it was to function as a revolutionary organization which would overthrow the Weimar republic, enforce his own set of rigid social (not socialist) dogma, and, leading the government, embark on a series of military conquests. He wanted to rename it the Social Revolutionary Party; it was Rudolph Jung who convinced him to include “National Socialist” in the name (NSDAP). After gaining control of the party and expanding his personal powers, Hitler eventually purged it of most of its remaining socialist elements.
“Note that in this particular case the government did not actually own the means of production but it mattered not, because such production was owned by sufficiently large corporate interests that were directly under the control of central government. The fine distinction is irrelevant for all practical purposes.”
I suggest that the distinction is, on the contrary, critically important. On the one hand, Nazism was a fascist totalitarian dictatorship, in which all power resided in a single Fuhrer according to the “leadership principle”, and lacked even the limited (internal) democracy of the Communist parties; it was backed by an industrial oligarchy whose class interests coincided with many Nazi goals. On the other hand, socialism means democratic control of the means of production and of the fruits of their distribution. The two are as different as night and day.
“Norway is being pumped by a healthy oil production and high energy prices…”
Oil exports account for only 20 percent of Norway’s GDP. And there are plenty of countries with bountiful natural resources (including oil) which fail to manage them efficiently and/or fail to use the proceeds to enrich the lives of their people. Nigeria comes to mind. Norway does both by means of good government. That the government of Norway is strongly social-democratic in its principles and has been since the end of WW II, is an argument for, rather than against, socialism.
“…if we meet a situation where we have to choose between either abandoning a state objective or reducing individual freedom, who loses? If the freedom of the individual is sacrificed, then that is socialism. If the state objective is abandoned then that is liberty.”
This, of course, is a ridiculous straw-man argument, just as comparisons to Hitler’s Germany (or Stalin’s Russia, for that matter) are smear tactics meant to scare people out of seriously examining the question of economic democracy.
If the terms of my life are determined in large part by a small group of ultra-rich owners who, because they are allowed private control of what should be public resources, are thereby enabled to reduce my existence to that of a miserable wage-slave barely scraping by from check to check, such a condition enhances neither my freedom nor my comfort.
“Some people like to redefine freedom to mean living a comfortable life. Freedom means being able to make choices, and being allowed to reap the rewards of those choices.”
I agree. And socialism is not only consistent with this, it in fact incorporates these as central tenets. It does so by extending constitutional democracy to the economic sphere. This, at least, is my vision of it.
“Needless to say, the Bush government has introduced extensive restrictions on individual freedom — the freedom to protest, to travel unmolested, right to privacy, and many other things that the US constitution was intended to protect. Bush also spent vast amounts of taxpayer’s money on war and other state objectives that were not supported by popular opinion and have turned out to be a complete and miserable waste. These are all socialist policies.”
I agree with everything except for the last sentence, which is false and non-sequitur. Such policies were also implemented by another George — King George III of England at the time of the American Revolution. Are you seriously suggesting that King George was a socialist or that his policies were socialist?
The idea of socialism, which is really much broader than many would suppose, has unfortunately been tainted by poisonous historical precedents that, in my opinion, grossly abuse the term. Socialism, in this respect, is similar to the concept of democracy — itself a fairly recent historical development (in the modern sense of the term). Prior to its first successful, sustained implementation, democracy had also been opposed by elites on the grounds that it would lead to chaos and havoc; they too cited historical precedents against it, arguing that it could never work because it never had.
I’ll have more to say on this subject as time permits.

“The definition is obviously far too broad and causes the word to lose all meaning. Can you name a single non-socialist country in the world, either today or in the past, using this definition of yours in a logically consistent fashion?”
One might equally ask whether it was possible to name a society that existed without violence, and then conclude that since all of human history has involved violence in one form or another, so the term violence has no meaning.
Yet, just as some examples of the human condition have displayed greater violence than others, so some countries impose a higher tax burden than others and some restrict individual movement, freedom of association, freedom of speech and other aspects of individuality. These concepts are not a yes/no tick in the box. As with anything in the real world, things change by degree, and the measure of that degree does matter.
We could find historic examples of small family groups living in semi-tribal societies who paid no tribute to a central authority. If one family had difficulty living with another, they simply moved to the next bit of land and setup camp there. Australian aboriginals and various jungle tribes lived this way for tens of thousands of years until relatively recently (with zero technological progress, presumably because those people felt no need for superior weaponry).
In most cases, diffuse tribal groups eventually fell under the banner of some despotic warlord or another. The purpose of the central power was simply to serve itself, and war has forever been the tool of the powerful to further their own ends. War has also been the greatest driver of technological progress, from the siege engines of Rome to the cannons that destroyed Constantinople, to the code breaking computers and the splitting of the atom. I would like the comfort of thinking that there was a way we could make progress while living in peace but history to date has been written in blood (a fact that many people find conveniently easy to forget).
“The NSDAP was originally conceived as a nationalist alternative to both social-democracy and Marxism and was intended to co-opt the broadly popular social welfare aspects of those movements, so as to be able to challenge international Communism, while continuing the militant nationalism of pre-WW I regimes.”
Be that as it may, the fundamental declaration was that citizens exist to serve the state. The objectives of the state were supreme and never to be questioned. Furthermore, the spirit of Nazism lives on (and probably will forever). The modern American National Socialist Workers Party don’t feel sooky about using the S word. Also, the Ba’ath Party of Iraq were self described socialists who were happy to subjugate their citizens to the will of the state.
This is a nice essay that provides clear distinction between pro-freedom and anti-freedom social structures.
https://www.afr.org/Hultberg/080105.html
“If the terms of my life are determined in large part by a small group of ultra-rich owners who, because they are allowed private control of what should be public resources, are thereby enabled to reduce my existence to that of a miserable wage-slave barely scraping by from check to check, such a condition enhances neither my freedom nor my comfort.”
What you are describing is Corporatism.
Large corporations are governed in a manner that is closely equivalent to a centrally planned economy. Free market capitalism requires competition in the marketplace, a large firm can become dominant by various means, most commonly by using their market leverage to secretly influence government regulators and build a protected environment for themselves. Sometimes they just get handed a government decree of monopoly. Sometimes they manage to buy control over some key bottleneck in the production or distribution cycle. I think that you will find most true free market supporters also support some manner of anti-monopoly provisions, and yes there are lots of conflicting opinions on how is best to prevent a free market economy from sliding into Corporatism.
Indeed, the first clue that the Bush Republicans were not really a free market party should have been obvious when they let Microsoft get away with a warning after blatent anti-competitive behaviour and further let AT&T almost fully rebuild the Bell monopoly. There are supposed to be regulators keeping an eye on this sort of thing but the system is rotten to the core, that’s another story for another page.
“On the other hand, socialism means democratic control of the means of production and of the fruits of their distribution.”
In a historical context, very few socialist nations have been democratic, and those that started democratic didn’t end up that way. For that matter those that started egalitarian didn’t end up that way either. If you look at Chavez, he has excellent popular support and yet he still feels it is necessary to centralize his power, boost his own authority and silence his critics. Why would that be? If Chavez truly believed in democracy then he should be honoured to serve his country so long as his people want him, and equally honoured to step down with grace when a respectable opponent wins the heart of the majority. I believe that Chavez is starting to believe in the grand vision of Chavez and no longer trusts his fellow citizens to make the “right” decisions, and so it starts.
If there is a God, may He/She/It save me from the do gooders who are sure they know what is best for me, better than I even know myself, and may I never turn into someone who forces someone else to live their life by my design.
If you want to believe in your Utopian democratic socialism then maybe come up with a way of figuring out who will lead your nation without corruption, without betraying the revolution, and without falling back to force and violence to control the citizens. Are you going to build a machine to be your king? Because a human will start as your friend and comrade, and later decide that some comrades are more equal than others.

Tel wrote:
“One might equally ask whether it was possible to name a society that existed without violence, and then conclude that since all of human history has involved violence in one form or another, so the term violence has no meaning.”
How does one respond to such a spectacularly inane false analogy? Pick it apart point by point? Is it really worth the trouble? I think not.
“Yet, just as some examples of the human condition have displayed greater violence than others, so some countries impose a higher tax burden than others and some restrict individual movement, freedom of association, freedom of speech and other aspects of individuality.”
You began with argument by false analogy and have proceeded to argument by false association. Quite aside from the fact that in discussing “tax burden” one must ask FOR WHOM, higher taxes do not imply restricted freedom of movement, association, or speech; nor do lower taxes imply increased freedoms in those areas. Consider the tax history of the United States. Nor does social-democracy imply decreased freedoms of that sort. In fact, a high degree of social democracy is often correlated with a high degree of such freedoms. I have already given Norway as an examplar.
“If you want to believe in your Utopian democratic socialism then maybe come up with a way of figuring out who will lead your nation without corruption, without betraying the revolution, and without falling back to force and violence to control the citizens.”
Who said it was utopian? Socialism is just an economic system, or a component of one. As for the rest, the same arguments were made against democracy.
“Are you going to build a machine to be your king?”
This doesn’t even make sense. First you argue that humans are fallible: then you argue that something built and programmed by them is not? When, in addition to the fallibility of the builders, you add the fallibility of something mindless, which possesses no genuine comprehension or judgment, operating on auto-pilot? Perhaps under changing and unpredicted or unpredictable conditions? Talk about a recipe for disaster.

“Quite aside from the fact that in discussing “tax burden” one must ask FOR WHOM, higher taxes do not imply restricted freedom of movement, association, or speech; nor do lower taxes imply increased freedoms in those areas.”
In order to compel someone to pay tax, you must impose the credible threat of violence in some form or other. You can conveniently ignore the connection if you wish, but it won’t go away. My association is based on the common theme of using force or coercion to restrict individual freedom. Just because the state removes some freedoms from its people does not in any way imply that it must automatically remove all freedom, please get beyond simple binary thinking here.
If you want some help getting your head around it, have a look here:
https://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_eco_fre-economy-economic-freedom
This is a ranking of economic freedom around the world. The number is not in any particular units, it is just the estimate of one particular group ‘The Heritage Foundation’ and there is a link to their methodology at the bottom. Notice that some countries offer more freedom than others. Also, your beloved Norway is still reasonably high on the scale, meaning that strong elements of the free market economy are operational in Norway. The Nationmaster overview of the Norwegian economy includes this:
“The country is richly endowed with natural resources – petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals – and is highly dependent on its oil production and international oil prices, with oil and gas accounting for one-third of exports. Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway.”
There’s a breakdown of Norway’s exports here:
https://indexmundi.com/trade/exports/?country=no
If you look outside of the petroleum industry, you still see strong dependence on primary industry such as fishing, products made from trees and various outputs of the mining industry. I’m not trying to write off their high-tech sector nor their strong steel production and shipbuilding industry, I’m just pointing out that it is easy for a government to be generous with welfare when it is floating on massive primary industry revenue.

Tel, please don’t be annoying. I told you that Norway was a mixed economy the first time I mentioned it, yet you replied that it was “pretty close to a central planned economy.” I also told you that oil exports account for only 20 percent of its GDP, and that the quality of life it has built for its people is not the result of overnight oil riches but rather the patient and persistent work of a strongly social-democratic government which has been in office since the end of WW II.
As for civil liberties, if more government (and more socialistic government in particular) leads to less civil liberties, why does The Economist rate Norway 4th out of 167 countries in its Democracy index? Why does Reporters Without Borders rate it 1st out of 168 countries in its Worldwide Press Freedom index? Why does Transparency International rate it 8th out of 145 on its Corruption Perceptions index?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Please don’t tell me, on the one hand, how bad “socialism” is and how it leads to serfdom, and then tell me that Norway’s economy is “pretty close to central planned”, yet insist that its freedoms stem from “the free market”.
Your habitual confusion of capitalism with democracy and “free markets” with civil liberties is characteristic of conservative dogma.
BTW, France may have a long way to go to earn the name “socialist” but its state-owned EDF generates the cheapest electricity in Europe, so plentifully that it exports the excess to other EU countries. So much for the beloved neo-con myth of government inefficiency.
Tel wrote:
“In order to compel someone to pay tax, you must impose the credible threat of violence in some form or other.”
And how do you suppose society compels someone, via the law, to obey the speed limit, or to stay off the grass for that matter? You still haven’t explained why the use of sovereign powers to raise revenue is intrinsically “socialist” when in fact it is common to every country in both modern and historical times, regardless of the system of government in operation.
If we ever manage to stop quibbling about the obvious, and I manage to regain the mood and have the time, I might actually contribute some interesting comments on this subject.

“And how do you suppose society compels someone, via the law, to obey the speed limit, or to stay off the grass for that matter? You still haven’t explained why the use of sovereign powers to raise revenue is intrinsically “socialist” when in fact it is common to every country in both modern and historical times, regardless of the system of government in operation.”
It seems that we have at least achieved agreement on one thing: which is that violence and the threat of violence represents the underpinnings of every large-scale social system.
“You still haven’t explained why the use of sovereign powers to raise revenue is intrinsically “socialist” when in fact it is common to every country in both modern and historical times, regardless of the system of government in operation.”
The principle of state coercion is common to every country, but the degree to which it is exercised and the severity of methods is important. Living in Iraq under Saddam put citizens under a higher level of threat than living in the USA under the current Bush government. When Saddam used poison gas on the Kurds, of course he acted “via the law” because he made the law. The state will always be in a position to define its actions as legal.
I am talking about a quantitative difference rather than qualitative. Individuals will always lose some of their freedom when they become part of a collective, but the key question is how much, and in what ways ?
Socialism is a form of collectivism, that is to say that the ultimate objective of socialism is to promote the betterment of the collective. The primary mechanism is to create a planned economy with some sort of central authority making decisions.
So let us presume that this central authority has decided that some particular objective is useful to the collective. For argument sake, consider that the central authority has decided that it wants 100% immunization amongst the population. It does not really matter what the objective is, there will always be something.
So the central authority can call for voluntary immunization, and let’s guess that they achieve 70% of their objective this way (minimal coercion).
To improve the percentage, they might offer a monetary reward which requires them to increase taxes (mild coercion) and by this method achieve maybe 90% of their objective.
Now they face the problem that 10% of the people don’t want the immunization, regardless of the reward. The central authority has to make a decision to either accept a 90% outcome, or switch to hard coercion and punishment (overt violence) in an attempt to reach target of 100%.
So the real question is, how important is the collective when weighed against the rights of the individual? How much of life should be regulated by central authority and how much should be left to personal discretion? The question will keep popping up each time the central authority comes up with another objective that it determines is useful to the collective. If the central authority is a perfect democratic instrument and puts every decision to the vote then at least half of the individuals will not require coercion, but that still leaves the other half (and democracy can never be perfectly implemented).
The very definition of socialism is that the objectives of the collective must come first. This can exist in degrees, from very mild socialism to more extreme forms, depending on how far the state is willing to go to enforce its views.
If people are going to discuss political and social philosophy in any form, they might as well use consistent terminology. In many ways, the word “socialist” has been used by too many people to mean too many things. The word “collectivism” is more useful because it is more precise. Still, many people think that the only possible option is to be collectivist or not collectivist (binary thinking), where in reality shades of grey do exist.
Regarding the example of Norway, I’m certainly no expert on the exact details of how that country works, I can read the statistics as they are available to the public, and at least see the big picture. The Norwegian economy has various sectors and the primary industry sector is the biggest. Most of this involves non-renewable resources (the oil will run out, the gas will run out, the fish most likely will run out, the trees might run out, the minerals will certainly run out). This is the sector with the most socialist attributes (high levels of government ownership, central planning, limited free market competition). Non-renewable resources add up to far more than 20% of the GDP.
In other sectors (such as electronics), government involvement is much lower. The high tech sector is relatively small in Norway, as compared with primary industries. The free market is more active in these sectors, depending on human skill rather than resources.
The example of Norway is one particular country with an exceptional supply of natural resources. It would be completely impossible to use this as a template for the US economy, or (even worse) for a country like Japan that is desperately short of natural resources.
Because the Norwegian collective has decided that its objectives are welfare and social spending, and because the primary industries provide an easy supply of finds to achieve these objectives, the country has not yet been in a serious conflict between individual goals and state goals. We will see what happens when it comes.

On Norway:
Tel wrote:
“Regarding the example of Norway, I’m certainly no expert on the exact details of how that country works, I can read the statistics as they are available to the public, and at least see the big picture. The Norwegian economy has various sectors and the primary industry sector is the biggest. Most of this involves non-renewable resources (the oil will run out, the gas will run out, the fish most likely will run out, the trees might run out, the minerals will certainly run out). This is the sector with the most socialist attributes (high levels of government ownership, central planning, limited free market competition). Non-renewable resources add up to far more than 20% of the GDP.”
This is highly disingenuous. Trees and fish will run out? Minerals will run out? If and when they do, it will not just happen in Norway. By the time the Earth’s natural mineral concentrations are exhausted, alternative sources or methods will have been discovered, or else the world will have bigger problems than maintaining the level of Norwegian social services.
As for oil, eventually it will run out, and again, not just in Norway. The question is, what kind of society is best poised to provide for the long-term welfare of its people and rationally transition to replace failing economic resources? Norway has the largest capital reserves per capita of any country in the world, because it has been saving oil revenue in a national pension fund which, as of April 2007, was the second largest state-owned sovereign wealth fund in the world after the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. It functions partly as a national pension fund for an aging population, and partly to reduce the boom and bust cycle associated with raw material production and the marginalization of non-oil industry. The Norwegians haven’t wasted their oil revenues on corrupt political largesse to maintain support, as the PRI has done in Mexico, or lavish living by its oligarchs, as has been the case in Nigeria.
If any state can plan its way to a better tomorrow using public resources administered on behalf of the public, it is the strongly social-democratic government of Norway. It has no incentive to squeeze every last penny from the suckers and then retire to some McMansion to ride out the storm. It’s a much more genuinely representative form of democracy than here in the United States. And its experience with a guided economy will help as much as its saved resources in planning for the long-term needs of the national economy.

On Socialism:
Tel wrote:
“It seems that we have at least achieved agreement on one thing: which is that violence and the threat of violence represents the underpinnings of every large-scale social system.”
In this world. However, if you look closely at the reasons behind this, the phrase “large scale social system” is superfluous. If there are only two individuals, violence and the threat of violence is potentially there: robbery, rape, assault, murder, etc.
“Individuals will always lose some of their freedom when they become part of a collective, but the key question is how much, and in what ways?”
Not always. A collective may simply be a voluntary arrangement in which individuals agree to share resources and/or responsibilities. Doing so may increase the freedom of each individual of the collective, as perceived by each, by providing security, insuring orderly, equitable, and peaceful access to resources, fair sharing of responsibilities, and increased material standard of living: organized production of more food crops, for example, may be a collective goal: but if the fruits of production are shared equitably the individual finds that as a member his own standard of living increases.
Similarly, nobody will object to automation since, as the member of such a collective, they are in danger of losing neither income nor job: labor-saving devices benefit all by leaving less work to be divided up, while allowing production to be maintained or increased; and if the same or more income exists with less manual labor to be performed, who would object, provided income continues to be equitably shared?
There is no need for trade secrecy under an arrangement in which the information benefits all: no need for competitors to reinvent the wheel or for resources to be wastefully divided and duplicated. And because information is free, research is broader and faster, and science, technology, management skills and systems, medicine and pharmacology advance faster and in ways that better serve broad public goals.
As for motivation, the collective may agree to give special material incentives to those whose work benefits the collective in significant ways — e.g., a trip to Europe, a nice house on prime real estate, a million dollars — as opposed to the current corporate system where engineers and other researchers commonly sign contracts making their discoveries property of the company without guaranteed compensation beyond their regular salary.
If everything is done on a non-profit basis, then “overhead” is limited to the cost of an equitably compensated labor force: medicine, for example, can be as cheap as it costs to make it.
“Socialism is a form of collectivism, that is to say that the ultimate objective of socialism is to promote the betterment of the collective.”
Yes, but don’t forget that the collective is made of individuals, who participate because organized social action is the most efficient way to increase their personal, individual betterment.
“The primary mechanism is to create a planned economy with some sort of central authority making decisions.”
Not necessarily, and certainly not in my vision of socialism. That is to say, any undertaking of sufficient size and complexity needs central supervision and regulation; but this need not (and should not) preclude some degree of autonomy and initiative among regional or local units. Feedback (in both directions) is important, and some ultimate authority needs to be able to reconcile the goals of individual units which conflict with one another or with the goals of the collective.
Consider the case of a corporation with offices all over the world. Nobody would imagine making every decision from the central office, yet the central office provides organizational guidance, policy, arbitration and has the ability to override local or regional decisions in exceptional cases, having the “big picture” at its disposal.
“So the real question is, how important is the collective when weighed against the rights of the individual? How much of life should be regulated by central authority and how much should be left to personal discretion? The question will keep popping up each time the central authority comes up with another objective that it determines is useful to the collective.”
The same is true for any form of social organization whatsoever. It is true for democracy. What happens when some individuals want to discriminate against others on the basis of race, for example? Do we allow “state’s rights” or do we have the federal government intervene? This is a constitutional question. That is why I propose a form of socialism which extends constitutional democracy to the economic sphere. One must protect minority rights (in the broad sense of this term) while deciding which minority rights are reasonable (e.g., freedom from racist abuse) and which are really exploitative privileges masquerading as rights (e.g., “freedom” to make a private fortune by abusing employees and natural resources at public expense).
Of course, even comparatively democratic forms of government may be ushered in by non-democratic means. The American Revolution, in schoolbooks, is predicated upon “no taxation without representation”; but the Founders did not want representation: the American colonies qualified for a small number of seats in the British parliament, which, had they accepted, would have made them an outvoted minority, and left them as a largely ineffectual reform group on the margins. Instead, they chose to wage civil war against the homeland. The same arguments you are making against socialism, the British made against republicanism.
Yet, things turned out differently than the Russian Revolution. Why? In large part because of checks and balances included in the system that was set up to replace the old system being overthrown.
Of course, civil war is neither a desirable nor a viable means of attaining socialism in the contemporary United States. Some sort of transitionalism is in order, with industrial action (e.g., strikes) supplementing mainstream political work. If enough people in enough critical economic sectors walked out of their jobs, and could make it stick, concessions would come fast enough. But it needs a firmly democratic base, including a sympathetic middle class, and more importantly, an informed electorate who cannot be easily undermined by reactionary propaganda. In other words, the populace must be prepared, socially conscious and ready, and that is manifestly far from the case. Vast amounts of grassroots organizing, the establishment of an independent mass media, and loads of mainstream political work remain to be performed.
And frankly, since socialism is an economic system, the details need to be worked out and agreed upon ahead of time. To paraphrase H.G. Wells (himself a socialist), writing about the Russian Revolution in 1921, whatever you might say about capitalism, it’s functional; and a revolution is not the time for hare-brained experimentation. This is why it seems to me that a transition from 21st century American capitalism to 21st century American social-democracy, and then from 21st century American social-democracy to 22nd century American socialism, is in order: to attempt to jump from the first to the last without any gradualist phase-in and development strikes me as nonsense; certainly it is under current circumstances.

“A collective may simply be a voluntary arrangement in which individuals agree to share resources and/or responsibilities.”
Yes, it could happen (in theory), but since the entire arrangement is voluntary, so the individuals might choose to leave and presumably take their share of resources with them when they go. If they don’t have this option then the scheme is no longer voluntary.
“Doing so may increase the freedom of each individual of the collective, as perceived by each, by providing security, insuring orderly, equitable, and peaceful access to resources, fair sharing of responsibilities, and increased material standard of living: organized production of more food crops, for example, may be a collective goal: but if the fruits of production are shared equitably the individual finds that as a member his own standard of living increases.”
Standard of living and freedom are two completely different things. I’ll agree that a collective offering a high standard of living is more likely to encourage members to join voluntarily, but free people have many motivations and one person’s idea of high standard of living can be completely different to another. For example, one member wants to smoke a little weed in the evening and since this scheme is voluntary, there’s nothing the other collective members can do to stop him. Other collective members think that having a dope smoker around is bringing down their standard of living, and they get intolerant. Pretty quick you have your freedom going out the window.
Let’s say they are farming, and one of the jobs is lugging water up the hill for irrigation and that’s the hard job that no one wants to do. One particular guy gets the hard job and he’s unfit and gets tired quick and hardly carries any water so the crops dry out when this guy is on shift. The guy on the next shift sees the dry crops and has to lug extra hard to catch up or they are going to starve. It’s OK because the
“income continues to be equitably shared” so the guy who works hard gets the same as the guy who slacks off.
There was a saying in the Soviet Union, “If they think they are paying us, then by all means let them also think we are working.”
“As for motivation, the collective may agree to give special material incentives to those whose work benefits the collective in significant ways”
What links the incentive to the actual work done? Who gets to make the decision about one person getting rewarded and another person not getting rewarded? How is the collective going to come to an agreement on this? Collectives don’t think, individuals think.
“There is no need for trade secrecy under an arrangement in which the information benefits all: no need for competitors to reinvent the wheel or for resources to be wastefully divided and duplicated. And because information is free, research is broader and faster, and science, technology, management skills and systems, medicine and pharmacology advance faster and in ways that better serve broad public goals.”
Since your system is supposed to be voluntary (as you said at the beginning), many individuals will serve many goals and either share information or not as may suit them. Since your system does not constrain anyone’s freedom, they are welcome to contribute or not contribute whenever they like.
“That is to say, any undertaking of sufficient size and complexity needs central supervision and regulation; but this need not (and should not) preclude some degree of autonomy and initiative among regional or local units. Feedback (in both directions) is important, and some ultimate authority needs to be able to reconcile the goals of individual units which conflict with one another or with the goals of the collective.”
Well you said it yourself, there ends up being an ultimate authority who is more powerful than anyone else. Are all the individuals going to voluntarily follow this ultimate authority? What happens when this ultimate authority decides that the collective is full of subversives, and 10% of the population need to be killed? What happens when the ultimate authority decides that the special incentive rewards should all go to themselves for doing such an important job as “Ultimate Authority Man”?
“The same arguments you are making against socialism, the British made against republicanism.”
I’m pro-freedom and fully support the right of secession. If membership of any collective is voluntary then secession is automatically an option (and ultimately it is the only factor that gives the collective an incentive to honestly support individual rights).
“If enough people in enough critical economic sectors walked out of their jobs, and could make it stick, concessions would come fast enough. But it needs a firmly democratic base, including a sympathetic middle class, and more importantly, an informed electorate who cannot be easily undermined by reactionary propaganda.”
What would you do if those informed electorate chose an option other than socialism? I mean, free people might make any decision, that’s what freedom is all about.
“And frankly, since socialism is an economic system, the details need to be worked out and agreed upon ahead of time.”
I would expect that it would be possible to gradually introduce one element at a time, especially if each step was voluntary. By the way, I don’t seriously expect that your voluntary system could every work, but provided you are happy to offer me a voluntary mechanism to opt-out, I’m happy to support your plans.

Tel wrote:
“Standard of living and freedom are two completely different things.”
Not at all: there is considerable overlap, since freedom from want and freedom from fear are genuine elements of any meaningful form of PERSONAL freedom. If private owners with control of the means of production and control of property withhold from me employment and income, withhold from me the ability to purchase goods and services, withhold from me access to constructed shelter, withhold from me protection by the privately funded and controlled police, and I am reduced to living in rags while scavenging insects (since the hunting preserves, if there are any, are off limits to me and lakes, rivers, and shorelines and other land is under private ownership), yet they also allow me to hold whatever personal religious beliefs I like and allow me to speak freely, it’s clear that I don’t have much in the way of freedom. That, of course, is an extreme example, but one which illustrates the point clearly. This is why Roosevelt included four freedoms, not two, in his famous speech.
“Let’s say they are farming, and one of the jobs is lugging water up the hill for irrigation and that’s the hard job that no one wants to do. One particular guy gets the hard job and he’s unfit and gets tired quick and hardly carries any water so the crops dry out when this guy is on shift. The guy on the next shift sees the dry crops and has to lug extra hard to catch up or they are going to starve. It’s OK because the “income continues to be equitably shared” so the guy who works hard gets the same as the guy who slacks off.”
This, however, presumes that the members of the collective, who run the collective, are complete idiots, have no power over their members, and are prevented from instituting changes in response to complaints or taking disciplinary action when warranted. If someone is unfit, they are not slacking off: the problem in this hypothetical of yours is the fault of managers who assign tasks to those unfit to carry them out, or continue to allow this once the lack of fitness becomes clear. The solution is to assign fit persons to perform the labor while gradually conditioning the unfit (assuming this is not due to disability) to be able to perform at a higher level of fitness; in the meantime these unfit individuals can perform other necessary tasks. Perhaps you have heard the phrase “from each according to his ability”?
If someone is simply standing around not performing their duties, that’s a different matter. All systems of labor in this world, whether privately owned or publically owned, have some disciplinary mechanism; in each case, the system provides for both supervision and remedial action.
“Who gets to make the decision about one person getting rewarded and another person not getting rewarded? How is the collective going to come to an agreement on this?”
Who makes the decision now? Who makes it in academia or business? A committee of one’s peers? A manager acting according to standards determined by the institution? How does an Oscar committee decide who gets the award? Democratic vote? You’re asking for details, not general methods.
What society must do is decide what it values, and reward those who advance those goals, in proportion to the advance made. This gives the incentive. Is a research team that cures cancer or AIDS deserving of special rewards? How about someone who makes great strides in the invention or refinement of alternative energy technology such as solar power?
As it now stands, someone who signs a contract as a research engineer for a corporation, which gives the company sole legal rights to the invention, and promises neither public accolades nor special compensation beyond their guaranteed salary, does not receive special incentive either. Yet new devices and processes are invented all the time. So please don’t try to tell me that under socialism there would be less incentive.
“Many individuals will serve many goals and either share information or not as may suit them.”
We were talking about company information, not personal information. And the companies are publically owned. It is not up to individual managers to hoard a new breakthrough in, say, the treatment of disease, for personal profit. It is their duty to share the information with other researchers so that the technique can be checked, developed, refined, implemented, and serve as the stepping stone for the next advance. The individual making the breakthrough can receive special material compensation as well as (if he or she so wishes) publicity.
“I’m pro-freedom and fully support the right of secession. If membership of any collective is voluntary then secession is automatically an option (and ultimately it is the only factor that gives the collective an incentive to honestly support individual rights).”
Really? What happens if you decide to secede from city services and stop paying your sewer bill or taxes? Maybe you would prefer to throw your fecal matter out the window? Should this be allowed? You might say that it’s your own property. What if it isn’t? Maybe you can’t afford to own a house? Maybe all of the property is privately owned by a handful of landlords and they only agree to rent. Then it’s their property. Their rules apply. How can you secede from a private agreement which you entered into? (Perhaps you can see that private contracts may be every bit as coercive as socio-political restrictions.) What if the public health authorities decide that your poop-out-the-window scheme is unsanitary and a threat to public safety, and therefore an infringement on the freedom of others (their reasonable freedom from fear)?
What you are proposing, Tel, is infantile libertarian dogma which you have not thought through. You cannot escape restrictive social obligations in any society, no matter whether ownership of resources is private or public. You cannot even secede from society itself if all land is owned by someone else, either priviate individuals or the state. Will you trespass? Squat? Live on a boat in the middle of the ocean, permanently?
“Well you said it yourself, there ends up being an ultimate authority who is more powerful than anyone else. Are all the individuals going to voluntarily follow this ultimate authority? What happens when this ultimate authority decides that the collective is full of subversives, and 10% of the population need to be killed?”
What happens when the CEO of the corporation you work for decides that the company is full of slackers and that 10 percent of employees need to be killed? Pretty silly. Why? It’s against the law. Well, why wouldn’t it continue to be against the law in a constitutional democracy whose economy just happened to be socialist rather than capitalist? Socialism is an economic system.
If a democracy is truly representative, the people themselves are the ultimate authority. If it isn’t, then it really doesn’t matter whether capitalism or socialism, or some combination, is the economic system, because a non-representational government can abuse its power in every case. Again, a constitution is needed to protect the rights of minority interests, with sufficient checks and balances as are needed to effectively prevent the seizure or abuse of power by components of that society, whether priests, policemen, politicians, or white land-owning males. the important thing is giving THE PEOPLE enough oversight, input and influence to be able to rectify problems of abuse and corruption.

With respect to the issue of gradualism, and the avoidance of catastrophic disruptions to the economic system, it helps as a starting point to consider the smallest change possible to the current system which might still be considered genuine socialism, and then consider refinements and alteration from there.
For example, imagine an economic system which is the same as we now have: the same workers, the same technicians, the same middle managers and the same executive managers — that is, those who know how to run businesses, because they ARE the ones running businesses. They retain the same ability they have now to hire or fire and continue to make such decisions. They continue to make the same marketing, pricing, and other decisions that they make now.
Now the socialist difference. We need to start somewhere, so simply as a working premise, we’ll say that the top 1,000 private corporations are turned over to public ownership. This means only that, each month, each household will receive a supplemental check representing their share of the profits of these 1,000 corporations. The size of each household’s check will be adjusted to reflect household size (up to a reasonable point), household income, and regional/local differences in cost of living.
Each household will be free to spend this money as it chooses, thus maintaining classical feedback links between consumers and producers. Businesses would continue to respond to consumer demand (at least, to the same extent that they can now be said to do so), and businesses that failed to turn a profit would go under, just as they do now.
Of course, that still leaves the question of traditional ownership functions (mergers, buyouts, etc.). I was going to suggest leaving the old owners on as salaried employees overseeing such duties, but on second thought they might run the companies into the ground out of spite. Still, since many of these owners themselves hire business specialists to plan and carry out such tasks, while they are yachting on the Riviera, there should be no shortage of competent technocrats — at least as competent, that is to say, as is currently the case (which may not be saying much, after all.)
Banking would of course be nationalized, but with the same managers, employees, and specialists as now. Loans would be made or refused on the same basis as now — actually, more soundly, one hopes.
Some additional changes: a new national minimum wage, much higher than now and constituting a living wage, which would also insure that small business does not cheat its employees on the public dime. This would include waitresses, etc.. If a business cannot run itself competently while paying its employees a living wage, then it doesn’t deserve to operate. Let someone else who has good business skills and is willing to pay a living wage, have a try.
Non-profit, nationalized healthcare. Everyone qualifies. Medical care will be a constitutional right.
A revamped national pension system.
A non-profit, nationalized universal insurance company. In the insurance business, the name of the game is spreading risk. For example, the claims of the sick can be paid because they are a minority of individuals in a broader pool of healthy individuals. I propose using the entire populace as the pool. Overhead could be kept down further by managing each account on a household basis and by administering the different insurance needs of each household within one account, so that your life, fire, theft, etc. insurance comes from one non-profit company. You would never be able to get insurance cheaper, anywhere.
New public standards governing employment conditions, which allow workers to decide on the proper trade-off between, on the one hand, work hours, productivity and material earnings, and on the other hand, personal leisure and family time, thus reflecting a truer standard of living than one based solely on wages.
Guaranteed employment. Just think how much there ALWAYS is to do in a country the size of America. Entire blighted neighborhoods (using unemployed persons from those neighborhoods whenever possible) could be beautified. Tenement houses painted and repaired. Shade trees planted. Eyesores like condemned buildings and empty lots filled with trash and weeds, torn down, cleared away and cleaned. Basic infrastructure projects completed (roads repaired and repaved, aging city water and gas lines replaced, etc., etc., etc.). In fact, anything else that society deemed worth doing. Mr. Talton’s laundry list (of policy fixes) could be fulfilled.
Of course, unemployed specialists (construction, plumbers, painters, landscapers) would be in charge of such projects, and the rest of the unemployed who participated would act merely as laborers to do the low-skill tasks; but those who demonstrated the inclination, talent, ability to learn, and persistence, could be enrolled in free training and qualifying classes and start work in journeyman positions in the trades. And that in turn is an incentive for increasing skilled workers. (Do you want to man a sorting station in a recycling plant, or would you rather do something more interesting and perhaps less onerous?)
Housing could be made both affordable and guaranteed to anyone employed: and since employment is guaranteed, that is equivalent to guaranteed affordable housing. Don’t forget also that with public ownership and redistribution of the profits of the (in this hypothetical) top 1,000 corporations, those at the lower end of the current income spectrum could expect to see dramatic gains, while those in the lower middle class could expect to see modest gains. (It’s important to remember also that “1,000” is just a figure selected at random for illustrative simplicity.)
The question of non-controlling shares of corporate stocks owned by individual small investors and institutions, requires special attention, but could be worked out. Since these corporations are still “public”, albeit in a much broader sense, and their combined profits are distributed to the public, this, taken together with guaranteed employment, healthcare, insurance, and housing, as well as retirement income, as well as reduced costs for healthcare and insurance — should give the vast majority of individuals a better deal.

The phrase “freedom from want” is just a subversion of the meaning of freedom. Inevitably some committee gets to decide what I want and how they are going to give it to me.
The real meaning of freedom is to let the individual decide that he/she wants.
“This, however, presumes that the members of the collective, who run the collective, are complete idiots, have no power over their members, and are prevented from instituting changes in response to complaints or taking disciplinary action when warranted.”
So your plan started off as voluntary (check above where you said it was all going to be voluntary) and now it includes special members who run the collective and have power over other members, for disciplinary action when warranted. Who gets to say when it is warranted? Well no doubt we will need a special committee for that too.
As with all socialist designs, great at the handwaving phase but boils down to Authoritarianism in disguise as soon as it takes even a few steps into the implementation phase. If I’m running out of options and I’m forced to choose an Authoritarian government then I’ll at least choose the honest Authoritarian who knows his business (I can at least bargain for my life with this guy), rather than the feel-good socialists who have an unworkable dream and will resort to violence when their beliefs are threatened.
“Who makes the decision now? Who makes it in academia or business? A committee of one’s peers? A manager acting according to standards determined by the institution? How does an Oscar committee decide who gets the award? Democratic vote? You’re asking for details, not general methods.”
Errr, I would have thought that a simple detail like “Who gets power under this proposed system?” is not small and irrelevant, it is indeed the whole crux of the issue. Under a system of property rights and ownership, the owner ultimately makes the decisions that relate to that property. If we are talking about a business, then the business owner makes the decision, or if the business is owned by shareholders then the shareholders defer the decision to one or more directors as chosen by the shareholders. That IS the general method of the way the capitalist world operates.
Individuals are free to either join an existing business or start their own as they see fit.
Under every real example of a socialist system, there has been some central committee that holds power and it may or may not be democratic (usually not) but success in the socialist world depends entirely on approval from the central committee.
“Maybe you would prefer to throw your fecal matter out the window?”
If you want to get into technicalities, the safe reprocessing of biological waste matter can be achieved in quite a small physical space with simple technology. Many cities are designed to run at a higher density which forces the reprocessing to be removed from the city itself.
In terms of an economic system, presuming the individual has a choice of buying a small apartment in the city (which is heavily dependent on external infrastructure) or a large piece of land in the country (which is mostly self-contained) then the market price of these options will float to the level where the maximum number of individuals get their best possible preference. Same with solar power vs grid power, rainwater vs town water and so on.
If you really want to argue the issue of infrastructure centralisation then at least use a sensible example which is fuel. It takes a fairly large chunk of land to be self-contained with respect to heating fuel and then the only fuel choice is wood. Anyhow, the point is not to muddle through exactly which options are available to the individual, or which technology might be better than another. The point is that the individual DOES HAVE OPTIONS and uses their free choice to make decisions.
“How can you secede from a private agreement which you entered into?”
A good question. Yes I believe there should always (by law) be an implicit escape clause from every contract. It should never be acceptable for someone to sell themselves into slavery, nor sell their children. There may well be some penalty to discourage the breaking of contracts, but the penalty must not be too severe. Maybe the penalty should be either a fine equal to the provable financial damages caused by breaking the contract or six months in prison (but no criminal record) if you can’t pay the fine.
Most people would negotiate an easier way to terminate the contract and insert the explicit escape clause as part of the contract to be signed.
“What you are proposing, Tel, is infantile libertarian dogma which you have not thought through. You cannot escape restrictive social obligations in any society, no matter whether ownership of resources is private or public. You cannot even secede from society itself if all land is owned by someone else, either priviate individuals or the state. Will you trespass? Squat? Live on a boat in the middle of the ocean, permanently?”
All I ever proposed is sensible use of the term “socialism” to mean that the individual is subservient to the collective and use of the term “freedom” to mean that the individual can make his/her own choices. I guess must be infantile to attempt to use language in a consistent manner because it is such a handy thing to be able to redefine your terms whenever convenient. Well, hey send me to voluntary reeducation camp so I can learn to be free in a state sanctioned manner. Sorry to have upset you Mr Committee Member.
“What happens when the CEO of the corporation you work for decides that the company is full of slackers and that 10 percent of employees need to be killed?”
Then the employees go to the police of course, or take up arms in their own self defense if the situation is such that the police are not available in time. The CEO is never given power over life and death precisely because property rights are a deliberately limited form of authority. The CEO can dismiss 10% of the employees (subject to the details of whatever contracts they might be under) and they are then free to find other jobs, probably with a competitor.
“Again, a constitution is needed to protect the rights of minority interests, with sufficient checks and balances as are needed to effectively prevent the seizure or abuse of power by components of that society, whether priests, policemen, politicians, or white land-owning males.”
That’s a great idea, but the details of those “checks and balances” are really important. Handwaving is insufficient. If the constitution that you propose allows the individual to be sacrificed to achieve collective objectives then the result will be a central planning committee enforcing its decree by Authoritarian means. You might not have intended that result, but that is what you will get.
If the constitution maintains strict limitations on the power of the state and guaranteed individual freedom then you are unlikely to get the equality that you hope for because some individuals are going to be exceptionally successful, and some are going to be complete failures and that’s just a fact of life.
“We need to start somewhere, so simply as a working premise, we’ll say that the top 1,000 private corporations are turned over to public ownership. This means only that, each month, each household will receive a supplemental check representing their share of the profits of these 1,000 corporations.”
So you are saying that the existing shareholders should get nothing?
“Each household will be free to spend this money as it chooses”
But not free to invest that money into buying shares (unless they want to be next in the line of losers when whatever they buy gets nationalized).
“Still, since many of these owners themselves hire business specialists to plan and carry out such tasks, while they are yachting on the Riviera, there should be no shortage of competent technocrats — at least as competent, that is to say, as is currently the case (which may not be saying much, after all.)”
Most of the owners are just people who worked hard, got some extra money and invested it because they saw the investment as better than sticking cash under the pillow or buying gold bars.
“Banking would of course be nationalized, but with the same managers, employees, and specialists as now. Loans would be made or refused on the same basis as now — actually, more soundly, one hopes.”
On what basis would a nationalized bank make better decisions than a private bank? The guy working in the nationalized bank knows he is guaranteed a job, and knows the government will never allow the nationalized bank to go broke so he can make any decision and it all comes to the same thing. Besides, he will just give an extra loan to his Uncle Fred, because Uncle Fred has party connections.
“A non-profit, nationalized universal insurance company.”
So everyone has no choice but to use this company and probably they are not even going to be able to choose whether they want to insure. In other words, your system is fully voluntary, and ensures freedom for everyone until they might want to do something different. That’s pretty much what I expected, and I don’t find it attractive one bit.
You still have not explained how you intend to manage this other than “the government will run it all”, you still face corruption, inefficiency, people with no incentive, and the inevitable rise of Authoritarian force that will be required to try and hold it together.

Tel wrote:
“So your plan started off as voluntary (check above where you said it was all going to be voluntary) and now it includes special members who run the collective and have power over other members, for disciplinary action when warranted. Who gets to say when it is warranted? Well no doubt we will need a special committee for that too.”
Tel, please refrain from straw man arguments. You originally claimed that “individuals will always lose some of their freedom when they join a collective”. I then responded: “Not always. A collective may simply be a voluntary arrangement in which individuals agree to share resources and/or responsibilities.”
Now you have taken this perfectly sensible remark out of context, and generalized it in an attempt to claim that I propose a *system of government* which is completely voluntary! Absurd.
I don’t see how “authority” is intrinsic to socialism. It’s intrinsic to representative democracy also. It’s intrinsic to capitalism, too. None of those systems works on anything approaching a strictly voluntary basis. You are also conflating “authority” with “authoritarian”. Unless you are an anarchist, you can’t avoid authority. And you can’t *genuinely* avoid it with anarchism either, in this world.
I have no time tonight to respond to your other (equally silly) remarks. Perhaps I can catch up over the next few nights if I am so inclined.

Tel wrote:
“The phrase “freedom from want” is just a subversion of the meaning of freedom…The real meaning of freedom is to let the individual decide that he/she wants.”
Freedom means not only the ability to make choices, but also having a range of choices which are meaningful and desirable to the individual.
As a citizen of the Soviet Union you might have had a number of candidates to choose from for certain political positions. However, to the extent that these candidates represented the narrow views of a monolithic, dogmatic, and incompetent single party, the differences between such candidates may have been correspondingly small. Would you say that you had freedom simply because you were given a choice?
Freedom from want and fear are much the same: those subject to want and fear, because others have limited their choices by controlling and circumscribing their circumstances, genuinely have less freedom.
If I am a pauper because those who control the economic system are able to exploit me, my freedoms may be severely restricted as a result. I, my, wife, and my young children, might want my wife to stay home and look after the children, but she may have to work because I do not earn enough to support us. We might want to live in a safe, nice neighborhood, but cannot afford to move or pay higher rent. We might like to take walks at night, or let the children play outside, but be afraid to do so. I might like time to think, time to pursue personal interests, time with my family, but instead be forced by my economic masters to spend all my time working, eating, sleeping, and commuting. The quality of food and clothing, the frequency with which we can eat or replace worn garments, and the availability of affordable entertainment (as well as the time to enjoy it) may all be severely restricted. Having no health insurance, we may be one major illness away from economic disaster. Having no job or income security, and living check to check, we know that at any moment we might lose the home and the children. We live in a constant state of anxiety and dread, ugliness and discomfort — or else the dull apathy of minds deadened so as to avoid feeling.
These are all restrictions on our desires, circumscribing our choices and forcing circumstances upon us that we do not want. These are chains binding the human spirit, which wants comfort, security, and happiness, not hopeless drudgery, ugliness, discomfort, poverty, and ever threatening dangers. That is not freedom.
(Still trying to catch up to the rest of your comments — more responses as time permits.)

Tel wrote:
“Most of the owners are just people who worked hard, got some extra money and invested it because they saw the investment as better than sticking cash under the pillow or buying gold bars.”
First of all, most individuals are not owners. Second, we were talking about those with a controlling interest in the top corporations: those who are not typically salaried employees, even at the executive level, but who instead take a cut of company profits as (part of) their personal incomes, after all company expenses (including salaries, capital investment, research and development costs, and taxes) have been paid.
You don’t get a billion dollars, or 100 million, or 50 million by working hard and investing a little extra money. Most jobs don’t pay remotely enough to support that. Assuming that you don’t get it by winning the lottery, you get it by one of the following methods: (1) exploiting all the little guys who labor to produce your fortune; (2) fraud; (3) theft, whether or not using force or the threat of force, or both; (4) playing the system (including political manipulation); (5) inheritance by X steps removed from someone who obtained it, or some substantial seed of it, by one or more of the preceding methods, originally.
(I’ll try to reply to more of Tel’s endless stream of conservative propaganda as time permits. My online time is highly restricted of late.)

Tel wrote:
“So you are saying that the existing shareholders should get nothing? ‘Each household will be free to spend this money as it chooses’, but not free to invest that money into buying shares (unless they want to be next in the line of losers when whatever they buy gets nationalized).”
Small investor shares will NOT be worthless. The typical household investor will do very nicely. One idea I like a lot is for the face value of shares to be converted into home equity (don’t forget that the banking system has been nationalized, and the large realty development corporations and other large corporations are now publically owned, so lenders and builders will present no obstacles). Renters could apply their equity credit toward purchase of a new home (house, condo) in the future. To sweeten the deal, this “realized capital gain” would be offered tax free. This would be a boon to the whole middle class and to homeownership in particular. Increased demand would be met by assigning resources to meet it, and by developing additional resources (e.g., a larger pool of trained construction labor) as needed, so that shortages need not arise except in the short term.
In cases where small investors already had full home equity, one idea would be to offer guaranteed tax credits on the same terms, spread out over a period of years. I don’t like this much, because the government in such circumstances needs to convert paper wealth (shares) into material gains (home equity, for example) without compromising its revenue base (e.g., with massive tax credits). But there are lots of options.
Of course, the multi-billionaires who own controlling shares in the corporations will be out of luck: they will no longer be permitted to own the means of production where large corporations are concerned. But they have enough additional financial assets to continue to live in luxury without ever having to enter the job market, so don’t cry too much for them. (I saw today in the Business section of the paper that one well-known oligarch (most of them are obscure by design) is only worth $48.1 billion, down from $61.7 billion at the start of the year. One, two, three….”Awwww!”.
“If the constitution that you propose allows the individual to be sacrificed to achieve collective objectives then the result will be a central planning committee enforcing its decree by Authoritarian means. You might not have intended that result, but that is what you will get.”
A central committee? You mean, like a corporate board of directors? Or perhaps a managers’ quorum dictating policy to company employees? What about your elected representatives, whose laws are enforced by the police? Does that qualify as an “authoritarian central committee” in your book? If not, what are you worried about? I said “constitutional democracy” not totalitarian dictatorship.
The difference is that under socialism, factory committees will be representing your interests, not those of the oligarchs who formerly owned the factories. And if you don’t like them, you will be able to vote them out. Fair enough? I suspect that politicians will be much more responsive to public needs also, since they will no longer get their campaign funding from wealthy private interests. And that WILL be in the constitution, along with freedom of speech, religion, etc.. I agree, though, that the details are exceedingly important.
“On what basis would a nationalized bank make better decisions than a private bank? The guy working in the nationalized bank knows he is guaranteed a job, and knows the government will never allow the nationalized bank to go broke so he can make any decision and it all comes to the same thing.”
He is guaranteed a job but not THAT job. Remember, I said that as an initial premise, hiring and firing decisions would be made on the same basis as is the case at present, by the same individuals currently managing those enterprises, and that loans would continue to be made or refused on much the same basis as at present. A bank manager fired for incompetence would have two options: to coast along on his savings or last check and look for new work elsewhere in his field, on his own, just as now; or else (the new option) to enroll in the government’s public works service where he will be paid minimum wage (the new minimum wage) and be assigned to some project that may not be at all to his taste. (We wouldn’t want an incompetent bank employee involved in the financial side of any government program, of course, so he might end up manning a materials separation station in a recycling plant.)
Nationalizing banking would smooth out the economic system in so many ways. No credit crunch, for example, and such problems that did arise would be more easily corrected from a single nationalized bank whose branches exist across the nation. Funding for important capital investment projects (e.g., alternative energy source development) could also be made available more easily than at present. We need to stop sucking the teat of oil and coal, and as soon as possible develop practical, clean and inexpensive alternative sources of energy and implement them on a national basis. It’s really quite important.
“Besides, he will just give an extra loan to his Uncle Fred, because Uncle Fred has party connections.”
Very silly. Not legal. Didn’t I say that banking would be managed much as usual, and by most of the same managers?
(Believe it or not, I STILL haven’t replied to all of Tel’s remarks from his November 1st comment — not even all of the remarks I wish to address. More replies as time permits.)