[specialist]

There's A LOT of daylight between liberal capitalism and communist socialism.

The social democracies, a middle path, as the Nordic countries have experimented with, seem to have done quite well. And there's now strong evidence that our system (neoliberalism) has stunted economic growth.

Regardless...

I support simple social reforms, like sovereign wealth funds (Alaska, Norway) and universal healthcare, greatly reducing the tension between labor and capital. Then these labor, employment, and ownership reforms wouldn't be so fraught.

[lupusreal]

This discussion is about the proposal to, by law, force all businesses to be workers cooperatives. That's not the liberal capitalism found in Nordic countries, it's communism.

[ClumsyPilot]

Communism does not have businesses, worker owned or otherwise. It does not even have currency and money at all.

Early form of capitalism didn't have limited liability companies. Just because you have to use Unlimited Liability Partnerships, for example, that does not mean it's not capitalism.

Once we move beyond capitalism, there are other words too, like mercantilism, imperialism, Neo-feudalism (arguably what we are getting to), schumpeterianism, etc. Expand your vocabulary.

[shiroiushi]

>Communism does not have businesses, worker owned or otherwise. It does not even have currency and money at all.

Huh? You seem to know absolutely nothing about how the Soviet Union worked. They certainly did have money and companies. (And don't give me that BS about the CCCP not being "true communists" -- No True Scotsman fallacy)

[ClumsyPilot]

> You seem to know absolutely nothing about how the Soviet Union worked

I think it’s you who doesn’t. Notice USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was not a Union of Communist Republics. Have you stopped to think, why is that?

Leaders of USSR were communists, as in they believed in Communism. However, according to them, the country was socialist and they were working towards the goal of achieving Communism. That goal would be achieved eventually, when society or economy or technology was ready. But no official or leader of the Soviet Union would claim that they have already achieved communism.

So you can use USSR to claim that putting communist leaders in charge is a bad idea, but you cannot claim that USSR was an example of communism because not even people running it at the time claimed that it was.

And yes, the eventual goal was to get rid of the concept of money. You can read any of the soviet sci-fi, like Bull's Hour, and see how they imagined it would work.

[shiroiushi]

Again, No True Scotsman.

[nayuki]

Why would a communist society need money in the first place? Isn't everyone given some fixed ration of goods? Or that he can take what he needs?

[shiroiushi]

A "true" communist society like you're talking about has never existed, outside of possibly Israeli kibbutzes and also tribal hunter-gatherer societies before civilization was invented.

In real communist societies like the Soviet Union (which are more accurately labeled "authoritarian socialism"), they need money to control allocation of goods, just like any other modern society. How exactly do you decide how many rolls of toilet paper to give to people? Some people need more than others, so either you have a giant government bureaucracy just to police how much toilet paper people use, how much of every possible type of food to eat, etc., or you just give people money and set prices for stuff, and let them figure it out themselves. These societies were centrally planned, but at some point it's simply impractical to plan everything.

[kerkeslager]

That's not what I'm arguing for. I'm just shooting down fascile anti-worker rhetoric.