Has there been a socialist country that's failed?

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The two are usually somewhat connected, however.

All societies rise and fall. I wouldn't call Rome a "failure" simply because it doesn't exist anymore. There are always factors that act upon fate that cannot be contended with.

Their system was demonstrably feasible, certainly within their own small and primitive societies (no, I do not use "primitive" in derogatory meaning here!).
The ideas used to justify collectivization today have afaik never proven to be feasible. (I am going out on a limb here, without having read this entire thread ). So unless someone has already me wrong here , I believe it was their reasoning that was the "sounder" one and not the other way round

I think we are more physically capable of a proper collectivist society today. I don't think their reasoning was less right than today's, I just don't think identical reasoning from their day can apply to ours.

Oh, it was somewhat of a misunderstanding then. It was your claim of many successful collectivist societies that caught my attention.

No, I was just using it as an example of a demonstrably different value system from ours.

This is where we agree. I've always considered anarchism to be predominantly lefty idea, so the "anarcho-capitalism" thread from a while back caused somewhat of a cognitive dissonance in me - and made me wonder: if there is no state, who gets to decide whether this is "anarcho-communism" or "anarcho-capitalism"? Just goes to show that extremists from both sides are complete morons, I guess.

I'd say over-zealous, not necessarily moronic.

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Bless you.

 

[Yeekim]

All societies rise and fall. I wouldn't call Rome a "failure" simply because it doesn't exist anymore. There are always factors that act upon fate that cannot be contended with.

Well, at least they didn't have to desert the city because of "deforestation or over-hunting"- since advanced trade networks (probably a boon of advanced concept of "property" enabled Rome to sustain population considerably over 40 000.

I think we are more physically capable of a proper collectivist society today. I don't think their reasoning was less right than today's, I just don't think identical reasoning from their day can apply to ours.

What do you mean by "physically capable"?

 

[.Shane.]

Maybe this got said a few posts back, but isn't the true question "have any social democracies failed"?

 

[luiz]

Maybe this got said a few posts back, but isn't the true question "have any social democracies failed"?

Define "social democracy" and define "failed".

 

[cool3a2]

I guess what he means by social democrazy is what I have defined it once in this thread (page 2 or 3) and what icarus (I hope I haven't mixed up the users) called western modell of socialism. I think shane is right. I thought about what icarus said why he calls the systems in western, and now also in eastern, europe socialism and I came to the result that his was not quite right. He gave a list of major points that define socialism. This definition may be right, I'd say. He called those western european systems socialism, because they show 2 or 3 of those mentioned points from the list. But it is fact that those systems also show strong capitalistic elements like markets with private enterprises that are also concurents of each other and that own production goods (private property of production good in capitalism vs. state property of production goods in socialism). Not enough the state even tries to prevent monopols and cartells to keep the markets working. This way you find at least as much points for calling those systems capitalism as for calling them socialism. That's why I think icarus' definition fails, but well, definitions are definitions. You can define everything the way you want if you want. That means there is no wrong definition. But I see my argument from the beginning proofen: people got confused by calling those systems socialism. Not only Shane shows me this, also the post about Sweden does for example. The solution for this would be considering those western european system as a hybrid of socialism and capitalism or as a step from apitalism towards socialism and call it social democrazy. I'm pretty sure this is what Shane was thinking of by saying social democrazy. I'd also say that this is the usual terminus they use for the western european systems outside the US, although I don't know how British do it.

EDIT: The users name was Icaria not Icarus. Sorry.

 

[cool3a2]

I noticed that someone claimed that the GDR (I am assuming he meant the GDR - German democratic republic = Deutsche demokratische Republik) did a good job. I don't think that's true. If a country has to build a wall to avoid that 2.6 million people leave the country within 12 years, then there is certainly something wrong. Those people don't go without reason. Same can be said about the Stasi (secret service). Sure, there may be positive aspects, such as cheap flats, well educated workers and some positive sides in the health system. But there were quite a lot of dark sides, too. Let's start with the health system. If you have a flu, this system was good. No long waiting times at the doctors and the medicine really hepled. But think of the following scenario: you are a man with a serious diseas, like cancer. Even today and even in the western world cancer is a problem. But there are chances to survive. But even if the GDR would still exist your chances would be zero. There was almost no technological progress due to the lack of concurrency on the markets. This means it will take much longer to develop new medical machines for therapies and new medicines. Therefore it is more probable that you'd die before you could be healed. Well, that may be now economic problem, but nevertheless a problem that has to be considered when deciding whether the GDR did a good job or not.
Slow technological progress was not only a problem of the health sector. I'd say the biggest part of the advance at IT was based on "trouser pocket imports". That's nothing else then copying the others ideas and products.
Last thing is, that there were often almost empty stores because the was nothing to sell (according to reports of people I know). They were running out of goods. Stuff like fruits were really rare. I mean there may have been apples from time to time, but nothing like bananas or oranges or something like that. There is a joke that says everything:
- Why can't the eastern Gemans be descendents of the monkeys?
- Monkeys would never have survived 40 years without bananas.
Not to mention that the GDR has survived this long only because of soviet help, otherwise they would have failed much earlier. Nevertheless the GDR went bankrup. This is way it collapsed. Since the last two years my newspaper claims relatively often that the events of 1989 and 90 were a revolution. That's overly glorified. The end of the GDR simply came, that's all. I'd change my newspaper, but there is no alternative in the region besides of some revolver pages... However, considering the GDR did a good job is simply wrong.
There was also no fashion, no computers, only stinky Trabants etc. People lived with at minimum.

 

[cubsfan6506]

Iceland....

 

[Icaria909]

I can't speak for germany, but i can say this about the USSR. There wasn't a constant shortage of goods in stores in the USSR, even though that is what western states like to claim quite often. What ended up happening is that when the soviet union's government directed that certain goods be sent to certain cities in a certain amount, and they would get their figures wrong. This didn't even happen until the Kruschev era, when the Soviet economy had expanded to a level that party planners couldn't plan for every economic need (this demonstrates that demand economics was in fact beneficial to the state in the early years until the economy began to grow more complex). Every time there was a shortage in one city, the Soviets would put too much of the same commidity in another city. One city would have no razors, and the other city would have so many razors that no one needed to use them fast enough to get rid of them. Thats why we capitalists view the invisible hand of the market as a good thing.

Also, socialism doesn't necesarilly entail government intervention in the economy (except that the gov takes inheretance). TO mess with the economy has been around since forever (we can specifically date it back to the crisis of third century in rome), and the US and western europe both mess with their economies, but mostly to avoid recesions (thank you greenspan). Western europe is socialist though because it has many aspects of socialism as defined by the man who invented socialist thought.

And messing with the economy to prevent monopolies is not capitalist in any sense. Even the american progressives who went around trust busting and breaking monopolies didn't even believe that they were acting on the behalf of capitalism. America and europe are the most capitalist societies on earth (each hates tariffs, mostly, free trade, let the buisness run by itself etc.), but neither society follows capitalism perfectly. Original capitalism has many flaws which these states have sought to correct, but to say that they are socialistic because of that is an error of thought.

PS. THanks for spelling my name correctly.

 

[Pokurcz]

There is an interesting biproduct of Soviet style socialism/communism conected to the availability of goods during that era, that one still can stumble upon in post Warsaw pact countries.

It is the effective amount of power that store clercs or waiters/waitresses had then that shows it self today in some people that had those jobs during socialism/communism. It is a matter of philosophy, they did not share the view that "The customer is always right" or that they where there for the customers sake, wich one is more or less used to in "the West", but rather lived by the maxim that the customers where there for the clercs/waiters sake.

In Poland and Slovakia I have stumbled upon prise specimens of this, like female clercs in their fifties in a enormous supermarket still trying to order you about as if you are some lowlife who shuld be thankfull that you are even admitted to gaze upon the merchandise.

A particulary fond memory is that one of my visit to the restaurant in the TV tower in Bratislava.
We arrived there at seven or eight, after allready having had dinner at an other place. Whilst the cafe was closed we sat down at a table in the barely half full restaurant and ordered pastries and coffe/tea.
The waitress reacted as if she had been insulted or something, an argument ensued, we had to order dinner to be able to get coffe, "but we allready had had dinner", "but this is a restaurant", "please can we have some coffe and enjoy the view?". She took a few steps away from the table and stopped. "have you heard of anything like it?" she asked the other (idle) waitress by the kitchen entrance, "They only want some coffe and pastries!". Our host hid his face in his palms in embarrasment.
Even though there were not enough guests in the restaurants for the waitresses to even seem to have anything to do, they could not serve us, we had to leave.

This is of coarse a dissapering fenomenon, usualy more common in smaller cities. The other extreme are younger clercs/waiters that are capitalist minded to the extreme and who are only there to get money at the expence of your enyoyment of the establishment.

People do in deed need a period of getting used to new systems of government.