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Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

In theory those are different. In practice though there hasn't been a single socialist country that hasn't at least devolved into authoritarianism or even has been so right from the start (Scandinavian Socialism and modern day German Social Market Economy could be considered exceptions but I doubt these can really be considered socialist.).

People keep saying: "This isn't true socialism." Well, then true socialism seems to be nothing but a pipe dream that in reality can't be implemented and hence should either be revised or replaced by a better concept.

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Not sure it’s a fair argument to exclude dozens of the wealthiest countries in the world because they own definition of socialism —that they practice— does not meet your imagined one.

The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.

if you define success in terms of wealth (which is a decent way to do it for most people). But these 'wealthiest countries' are doing some pretty scary stuff in the world, and on massive scales which threaten the potential for future generations to even inhabit the planet comfortably without massive restrictions and compromises.

By that definition France is a socialist country. I suppose you could say that to some extent but France isn't what one usually thinks of when it comes to real-world socialism. I think socialists in particular will argue against that notion.

Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.

That would be because "socialist" and "totalitarian" are orthogonal.

One describes the methods of organization of the state and its economy; the other describes the goals of the government of the state.

I think many American Republicans would consider France to be socialist.

And would view many other countries as socialist, if they have things like national medical insurance and free college tuition. Except China. China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist, despite the pictures of Chairman Mao on the currency and at Tienanmen Square. And except Russia, whose authoritarianism is admired.

Talking perception here, not reality. The perception of people who used to be a marginal group of extremists but now have many people in positions of Governor, house of representatives, etc.

And unfortunately they now have a real shot at the White House in the personage of their tribal Duce (a pathological egomaniac whose politics are unclear and span all ends of the spectrum within any given time period).

> China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist

For the purposes of western companies with ties to China, they have capitalism - after all, allowing child labor in sweat shops is very capitalistic.

On the other hand the state controls a majority of enterprise assets even though the number of enterprises fully owned by the state is around 30%. And they also impose their will on privately owned companies, with the market not being free.

Also, don't confuse capitalism with democracy ;-)

Someone else being wrong (and a straw person at that) doesn't make you right.

> Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.

Consider that Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto spent a whole chapter tearing into other socialist ideologies, ranging from ideologies they saw as reactionary and anti-democratic and even feudal, to utopian systems that were basically anarchist.

Socialist ideologies have historically spanned the spectrum from extreme libertarianism (the term libertarian was first used for a political system by a French anarcho-communist that was so anti-authority he criticised Proudhon - a prominent early anarchist - for not going far enough) to systems that basically argued for technocratic feudal systems with welfare.

Using the term without specifying more is meaningless if you are talking about a specific ideology or system rather than generally about systems with certain shared characteristics.

For the record, though, I agree with you that the definition in the comment you reply to doesn't make sense - it would exclude many prominent socialist ideologies.

> By that definition France is a socialist country.

France is currently governed by a majority led by the Socialist party.

> The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.

Many socialist ideologies reject the very idea of public authorities. Talking about them owned by the public would work better, but would exclude many other socialist ideologies.

E.g. Saint Simons original socialism involved a technocratic society where the actual key change was that people would be paid according to merit.

In Marxism too, that is the key defining aspect of socialism: Marxism sees the capitalist as not contributing work, but capital, and hence he's overpaid if measured by the merit of his work. (Marx was very clear on the distinction between socialism and communism as an end stage of a long period of development here: socialism would not involve full redistribution, but a process of redistribution by first levelling thing by paying people by merit, and then evening things out further by changing to pay based on need).

Public ownership in Marxism, is not a requirement per-se, but is seen as a consequence of the intent of giving everyone control over their own work and ensuring everyone is paid on merit.

This is the same in many other socialist ideologies, and hence you will also find distinctly socialist ideologies that accepts full private ownership, but instead e.g. relied on heavily progressive taxation as a means of reducing the difference.

You would be sort-of right that many socialist ideologies do share that characteristic, but it is not sufficient nor necessary in all instances.

> they own definition of socialism —that they practice—

> The definition is not complicated:

I probably should have been clearer, but that definition was explicitly the one adopted by the socialist parties who alternatively lead a majority of European countries (the “dozen of the wealthiest country in the world”).

There are other definitions of socialism, but I prefer to see how people practice it.

TIL the United States is a socialist country.

Indirectly it kind of is. The Government, owned by the people determines whether some companies continue to produce, or fail. Under natural capitalism Amtrak would have died years ago.

Actually someone defined the USA situation as Inverted Totalitarianism, where things are as you say but the power relationship is reversed.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

That's interesting. I've never heard of that.

In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. When you are threatened from outside, authoritarianism becomes easy to take hold.

There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed "successful", e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century.

And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.

Whenever anyone from the US is involved, there is invariably some confusion between socialism as defined by Marxists and Leninists, and socialism as defined by social democrats. Most people in Europe mean social democracy when they talk about socialism, except when they talk historically, say, about the GDR.

You must always assume that a US citizen does not know that social democracy existed before communism was even invented, and that liberalism has right-wing and left-wing branches.

It is possible to roughly translate between the jargons, though:

US progressive leftists ~ EU democratic socialists

US libertarians ~ EU right wing nutcases, confused anarchists (ardent US libertarians) or slightly confused liberals (moderate US libertarians)

US liberals ~ EU anti-capitalist scum (it's what it means translated, but nobody says that in the EU, of course)

I could go on but prefer to stop here, because there will always be some smartass who thinks he knows better and doesn't realize that words are just words and it's the concepts that count anyway. I'm prepared to get downvoted by butthurt Americans.

"Socialist" is too general a descriptor, and has been deliberately ruined by overgeneralisation. The distinction should be between "Social Democrat" and "Communist". The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections.

> The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections.

A whole lot of the people who consider themselves communist do too. In fact, the Bolsheviks murdered a huge number (tens of thousands is a very low end estimate) of communists who opposed them and who supported multi-party democracy.

Including a whole lot of communists who were members of the socialist parties that beat them in the elections to the constituent assembly shortly before their coup, but they also ended up murdering tens of thousands of members of their own party who opposed the authoritarian turn it took.

The original Bolshevik revolutionaries believed in democratic elections as well, they just saw the legitimate institution of government starting from the worker's councils (called soviets) that sprung up in workplaces around Russia during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. This is why they called their system the soviet socialist republic, and why the prime government body was the supreme soviet.

What actually happened in practice was a bloody civil war made democracy of any kind impossible. And out of the ruins of that civil war "pragmatists" like Stalin rose, purged the former revolutionaries completely, and restored the authoritarianism of the tsarist era.

If you look at the Communist Party of the 1930s there are none of the original Bolshevik (and fellow travellers) cadre left. They were all brutally assassinated. The most prominent being Trotsky but there were dozens of similar cases.

The civil war first started after they had conducted their anti-democratic coup, though.

They got about 10% of the votes in the elections for the constituent assembly due to write the new constitution. They responded by overthrowing the Duma and calling off the assembly.

I agree with you that many of their members probably did support democracy - in fact, many of them lost their lives for holding on to that belief and resisting an increasing authoritarian leadership.

I didn't make the distinction mainly for simplicity because even if we draw a clear line and go all black and white and call every Bolshevik anti-democratic, the majority of socialist and communists in Russia were not Bolsheviks.

Part of the problem with the Bolsheviks, to me, stands with Lenins idea of the vanguard party, which was part of the issues surrounding the disagreement between Martov and Lenin that led to the split: With the idea that they made up a revolutionary vanguard, coupled with the fact that they were outlaws for a large part of their existence, they conditioned themselves to believe they "knew better" and that they would have support, and that anything indicating anything else was just another part of government or counter-revolutionary propaganda. Then with the creation of the Soviets following the February revolutons - standing against the Duma as an alternative seat of power -, they surrounded themselves with people who supported them, and this helped them legitimise to themselves the idea that they did actually have support.

When the constituent assembly elections provided evidence that showed they had pretty much no support outside of the big cities, it was easy for them to dismiss it as the result of "counter-revolutionary" activity etc.

The civil war certainly made it worse. It both provided good reason and an excuse to crack down on opposition. When parts of the opposition chose to fight on the other side because they had legitimate reasons to fear a party that had just conducted a coup, it just made it easier to crush them and write them off as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

Everyone disagrees what socialism is. Is Nordic or German social democracy not socialism? Maybe it isn't. But what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be "socialists" but never ever want to abolish the free market or parliamentary democracy?

"Socialism" can either be a common name for ALL the ideologies that branched from the original throughout history, or it can be a specific ideology that is closer to what we today would call "Communism". It's not entirely clear which is meant, if someone says "socialism" or that they are "socialists".

> what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be "socialists"

What about them? I think it is widely spread that socialism is like, if not the same as communism.

My point is that they call themselves socialists but they are social democrats. They like free markets, democracy, and a progressive and redistributive tax system.

Those were all the cases where socialism was installed through some form of revolution or war. It's not specific just to socialism, basically any movement that has risen to the power by force will try to use that same force to stay in power (there are exceptions, of course, but rare).

True Scotsman

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