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by galacticpony2 3219 days ago
> It seems to me that you define socialism as whatever it fails and capitalism as whatever it works.

No socialist state that called itself a socialist state has been a success. None. Zero. There are democratic countries that may at some point have "social democrats" or even "socialists" in power. These countries may have passed some laws that are "socialist" in spirit, but virtually all of those countries employ a capitalist free enterprise market. Then you have countries like China that call itself communist and still employ capitalism.

Yet, socialist thinkers are pre-occupied with the perceived evils of capitalism (and finding means to abolish it), even though it has outperformed any socialist economic model thus far conceived. Capitalism is blamed for practically every ill, including the failure of socialism itself.

> So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.

Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do.

1 comments

So, if they are successful and call themselves communist they are not really communist. There are not private banks in China, for just pointing a random fact. I'm not defending the Chinese model, but the diminishing of poor people in the world that you pointed before is mostly due to China.

>>"Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do."

I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".

In your opinion, what is this mix composed of?

Anyway, I think we are discussing about semantics.

> So, if they are successful and call themselves communist they are not really communist.

China is still very much communist in every way but economically. I don't mind calling them communist, it's just that if we're talking about an economic system and I'm looking for success story of socialism, you can't bring up China. Ever since China abandoned planned economy and employed capitalism, its economy has grown by leaps and bounds.

> I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".

Whatever you want to call it, does "more socialism" or "more capitalism" correlate strongly with wealth? What about individual freedom?