From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!hou5f!npoiv!npois!houxm!5941ux!machaids!hocda!spanky!ka
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: What IS wrong with socialism
Article-I.D.: spanky.214
Posted: Sun Feb 20 19:05:06 1983
Received: Mon Feb 21 04:08:50 1983
References: genradbo.1415 mitccc.349

I think	that Zig is confusing the difference between capitalism
and socialism with the difference between democracy and	totali-
tarianism.  "One's life	is not one's own ..." describes	the
difference between the latter two ideas, not the former	two.


	The best argument for this [Zig's] position skips over
	the never ending theoretical debates on	political systems
	and looks at the fact of the matter in the world today:
	Socialist countries are	the least free,	the most oppres-
	sive, and the most imperialistic in the	world today.

"The fact of the matter" is that many countries	are oppressive,
some of	them socialist and some	of them	not.  Russia is	imperial-
istic (and was before it became	communist), but	how many other
imperialistic countries	are socialist?	Making accurate	comparis-
ons between socialist and nonsocialist countries as groups re-
quires a lot more work than I am willing to put	into the task.
If anyone wants	to rate	each country on	a scale	as to how social-
istic it is and	how oppressive it is, I	would certainly	like to
see it.	 Even that would only show the existance of a correla-
tion, rather than proving cause	and effect.

	... people no longer own the means of their livelihood or
	even their homes. Their	lives are not their own	in all
	material respects.

How many people	own the	means of their livelihood in the United
States today?  Many people do own their	own homes, but that is at
least partially	due mortage rates artificially lowered by the
government--the	sort of	government intervention	in the economy
which conservatives are	supposed to despise.  More to the point,
what really is the great advantage of owning your own home rather
than renting it?

	And to maintain	this hold over their people most social-
	ist states wind	up abandoning democracy	and taking away
	from their people even more control over their lives.

I cannot think of a single example.  Off the top of may	head, I
can think of two cases where democracies have been replaces by
dictatorships:	the current government of Argentina, and Hitler
in Germany.  Both these	were non-communist--in Reagan's	terms,
merely authoritarian rather that totalitarian.

	In other words succesful socialism is the tyranny of the
	many over the individual...

That's a good definition of pure democracy, not	of socialism.
Replace	the word tyranny with a	less loaded word, and you accu-
rately describe	definition of the social contract theory of
government that	is reflected in	the Declaration	of Independence.

	... and	most socialism in practice is just plain tyranny.

If you have a dictatorship, you	probably have tyranny no matter
what philosophy	the government nominally follows.  Do you think
that thing such	as laws	granting unions	the right to strike, or
the social security system (both bona-fide socialist programs
which were in the platform of the American communist party) are
examples of tyranny?
				Kenneth	Almquist