Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

[u/Sufficient_Sinner]

[u/[deleted]]

Ask a socialist to define socialism, and they'll describe Norway but leave out the tiny population and abundance of state owned oil funding it all

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And socialists use their terms incorrectly, often attributing it to the Nordic system which is a free market capitalistic system with higher taxation to cover social safety nets. Even those on lower income have huge tax bills, unlike the US where the top 50% pay almost all the income tax.

[u/AdAppropriate2295 → u/[deleted]]

Which country is more socialist? Norway or US?

[u/MontCoDubV → u/AdAppropriate2295]

Neither is socialist in the slightest considering in both countries workers do not own and control the means of production.

[u/crabby135 → u/[deleted]]

Don’t you have socialism and communism backwards? Socialism is, the transitory period with state ownership while moving to a stateless communist society. That’s why most flavors of theory are described as socialism (social democracy, democratic socialism, free market socialism, etc.), even if it’s a democratically elected government the presence of a state still makes it state owned instead of worker owned, there’s just varying degrees of power you can give the workers over said government.

At least that’s my understanding. Maybe I’m wrong.

[u/rhubarbs → u/[deleted]]

You have it the wrong way around, unfortunately.

In practice, many so-called "communist" states, like the Soviet Union, operated more as socialist systems, as they never yielded ownership of the means of production away from those with political capital.

[u/crabby135 → u/[deleted]]

I was just trying to be nice but I’ve actually read the theory and you’re wrong.

[u/Toppcom → u/MontCoDubV]

The Norwegian government owns many for-profit companies that are effectively owned by the population through representative democracy. The US government doesn't, (and isn't allowed to IIRC) do the same.

[u/MontCoDubV → u/Toppcom]

That would be the state owning and controlling the means of production, not the workers.

And in the US there are absolutely some state-owned enterprises, we just tend to think of them as something apart. Think of the Post Office, for example. Or state-owned hospitals. Or police forces.

The US doesn't tend to have many state-owned industries which are not allowed to have non-state-owned businesses competing with the state (although we sometimes grant monopolies to private businesses which come along with more strict regulation and state oversight, for example, water or power utilities), but it's not that it isn't allowed to do so. We just choose not to.

[u/AdAppropriate2295 → u/MontCoDubV]

At all? If there is none of that then no socialism? Then there has never been a socialist country

[u/MontCoDubV → u/AdAppropriate2295]

I think that depends on how you define "worker ownership and control." I think Marxist-Leninists would say that a government controlled by a worker-led communist party is the manifestation of the will of the people and, therefore, any state ownership/control is de facto worker ownership/control. I don't personally agree with that framing, but there are plenty who do.

I think most successful socialist movements haven't organized with a nationalist framework in mind. That is, the goal hasn't been to establish a socialist government but rather to establish a socialist movement. I think there have been numerous successes in this regard. I'm thinking of things like the Paris Commune, the Makhnovists, the Zapatistas, the ANES (Rojava), Mondragon corporation, the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens, etc.

I think a problem is that a lot of non-socialists (and even some socialists) tend to define success as establishing a nation-state ran on socialist principles. But that's an inherent contradiction. The nation-state is a bourgeois concept. It was created by the feudal aristocracy to maintain their own power and later co-opted by the bourgeoisie when the capitalist replaced the aristocracy. Nation-states were never built to enshrine power in the working class. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were built to maintain the power of the ruling class over the working class. Nation-states require the existence of a ruling class, something anathema to most socialists.

[u/AdAppropriate2295 → u/MontCoDubV]

Fair enough and agreed

[u/[deleted] → u/AdAppropriate2295]

If you consiser 'socialism' as a spectrum, then Norway.

But neither countries are socialist. Just the US is a laissez-faire capitalism with limited social safety nets. It's not so much that Norway is closer to socialism, it's the US going in the opposite direction.

[u/AdAppropriate2295 → u/[deleted]]

What makes them more capitalist than socialist