That's the kind of black and white thinking we need to do away with. "Purity" is fun for theorists to talk about but in practice we basically never want pure systems.

Anyhow, how can capitalism and socialism coexists? Well, it already does! Every democracy which levies taxes to run shared services is partly socialist, since these means of production are jointly owned. You can even see the taxes as a way for the people to extract profits from every venture, for example in Sweden the state spends around 50% of GDP so it already owns 50% of everything even if the papers says otherwise, you can't come and say that something which can extract 50% of all value from something doesn't really own it! And every country where you can start, run and profit from companies are partly capitalist. Hence all western nations are partly socialist and partly capitalist. They are on different parts of this spectrum.

For example, most roads are socialist, you don't have to pay to drive on them even though they cost a lot of money. Very few argue that we need less socialist roads and more capitalist roads with toll booths.

Yes it is. It is a matter of degree. When you have an income tax, you have socialized income. If you have a "workers factory", you have socialized the means of production.

Your first paragraph seemed like you had the right insights, yet you contradicted yourself by the second.

I agree that this can exist and has the potential to exist, and the usage of the state temporarily to secure the power of the proletariat (their dictatorship) was something espoused by Marx and Engels. The issue is that it requires the proletariat as a whole to be in control of this state; at the moment, the state is run not by workers but by people who are acting as bourgeois on a global scale - buying and selling in a capitalist economy, trading commodities. They employ wage labour. As such, Venezuela does not operate a state Socialist system.

There is some confusion around the meaning of Socialism; in Marx's day, the word 'Socialism' and 'Communism' were synonymous, though Marx distinguished between lower and higher stages of Communism. The idea that Socialism is a form of state in the first place I am willing to concede, though this is largely a Leninist invention.

>So there still may be private capital, prices, money, and other things like redistribution in a state socialist country.

I don't know if I agree; the key component of a Socialist economy is outlined by what doesn't exist in the capitalist economy, namely in particular the absence of the law of value, which prescribes that commodities have both exchange and use value; if production is predominantly focused such that use values, but not exchange value is being produced (i.e we have products rather than the specific form of product, commodity) then it can be said that the workers own the means of production, that they are not paid wages in order to exchange products. Socialism is the breaking of Marx's chain of exchange (M-C-M').

The nationalisation of industry is conducted in the transition of power from the bourgeois state to the proletarian state (which necessarily incorporates proletarian democracy); however as soon as this transfer of power is complete, the state should start dismantling, withering away is Engels put it.

And we do not see this happening in Venezuela. The state continues to trade on a global scale (oil etc.), employing wage labour (showing that the state is not in the control of the workers) and is thus not Socialist. If you can find any major Socialist theorist who is in support of wage labour within a Socialist economy, I'd be surprised.

No, socialism says focusing on group cooperation optimizes aggregate wealth. Socialism says that somewhere between a completely shared economy and a completely private economy is a sweet spot where you get the best of both worlds.

You're very focused on this "socialism is anti-social" stance, but not only does it not make any intuitive sense, it is not backed up by any data. Show me a modern, prosperous state that absolutely abstains from social programs or promoting collective interest.

The very idea of a state is a threat to (completely) free exchange of property and labor. Most people are willing to buy security from the state in the form of regulations and taxes. We think our food should be safe to eat, so we make rules and add a cost to ensure a baseline. We want advertisements to accurately represent products. As individuals, we have little recourse against an industry which has decided to curtail consumer health in favor of increased profits. The state is simply a mechanism to ensure our collective will is met, not as entities in a capitalist network but as the weird little thinking, walking primates that we are.

Not to mention the fact he's wrong; contrary to popular belief, "socialism" has been described as many things but the simple fact of offering healthcare, market regulations and some amount of free Internet access(?) - Socialism is a mode of production in which means of production are operated and managed (and some would say "owned") collectively by the workers, i.e. the majority of the adult population. This is also a form of society in which abstract labour is not valorized. A modern nation with money, capital, rent, predominant wage labour, and capital accumulation is in no way "socialist" - never mind by Marx's term with which he considered "socialism" and "communism" to be one and the same thing.

Close, but I would say that socialists don't see it as close enough. Sweden holds a strong form of liberal egalitarianism, as propounded by Rawls in his less 'socialist' writings. But even then, the socialism is beyond its horizon. There is a 'property-owning democracy', and no egalitarian distribution. The capitalist parts of Rawls, without the public ownership of MoP socialist stuff.

The championing of liberal egalitarianism as "good enough" leaves other questions unanswered. Is social democracy still exploitative? Dominating? Alienating? Environmentally damaging? Inefficient? Those questions hold for any form of capitalism, defined as a society in which capital's self-valorization is predominant, and where there is wage labour.

So the question is what kind of argument would justify not only going beyond old school 20th c. death capitalism, but social democratic capitalism, too. Only if you look into whether (1) capitalist societies are exploitative (2) there is a normative reason to do away with it, and the same with alienation, domination and environmental concerns - then there is a good reason for socialism.

Please describe the ways in which some countries are "fairly" socialist but aren't actually socialist. I'm not aware of a single example of a socialist nation succeeding in any regard towards creating prosperity for its people. Nor am I aware of a successful national experiment in socialism in the last two centuries of various attempts. Every historical attempt has ended extraordinarily badly, universally failing to accomplish high living standards.

None of the Scandinavian nations are even remotely close to being socialist. They all rely on the market economy, they all embrace Capitalism to significant degrees, they all have property rights enshrined into the core of their economies, they all allow for the vast accumulation of wealth without forced redistribution, they all allow for the private ownership of production, they all allow for the accumulation of and investment of capital privately, they all utilize equity and bond markets that can be bought and traded freely (another critical point to Capitalism), and on it goes. They're all substantially closer to Capitalism than Socialism, which is course why they're able to pay for their large welfare states and other actual Socialist nations universally fail at that. Sweden for example famously had drifted too far toward being an over-burdened welfare state - circa the 1970s and 1980s - and had to de-regulate and de-tax their economy, which then resulted in boom courtesy of increased Capitalism. The nations you refer to, are actually welfare states, not Socialist - there is a very big difference.

This is like calling ancient Sparta - where the Spartans lived in an egalitarian structure while simultaneously oppressing their Helot slaves - socialism.

Or for a more a recent example, apartheid South Africa, where whites received a great deal of support via government policy that practically ensured their prosperity. That wasn't socialism, either.

Socialism is not about centralized state control. It's about whether the state plays a strong role in ensuring a standard of living for all it's citizens. In successful examples (like Social Security and Medicare in the US) it has accomplished this while the majority of the economy is not under state control.

Gun control is also a spectrum, but you can call it gun control for every step on the scale, not just when every gun is banned for everyone.

> Many aspects of the US are socialist.

Yes, and those aspects are an immense burden on society, and often achieve the precise opposite of the stated goals. To the extent that these policies successfully achieve goals, it is unclear that these goals weren't already being met. The policies characteristic of the "war on poverty" are not correlated with any positive outcome for the rate of poverty.

> Scandinavia has implemented notably socialist policies.

To the extent that each Scandinavian country is socialist, it is having trouble funding the policies. Norway noticed this was happening in the early '80s and course corrected by slashing taxes and regulations. Sweden had a lot more runway, but they're starting to feel the weight of the promises their social programs made. Denmark could not be described as very socialist today. Sweden is both the most socialist, and the most troubled of the three Scandinavian nations despite having a lot of industrial momentum in engineering and energy.

But it is, socialism is when there is no private ownership of the means of production, that is core to it. Europe has social democracy combined with capitalism, there is no socialism there. Social democracy has nothing to do with socialism, they are completely different concepts.

Edit: Some social democracy might stem from socialist movements, but there is none of that left today. No part of Europe is moving towards socialism, they are all happily capitalist with a majority of their economies being in the private sector.

Social democracy is mainly about the government serving the people and ensuring everyone gets to live a decent life. So health care, social security etc. The same thing USA does but a bit more. It doesn't have anything to do with the means of production except trying to ensure that the system serves the people.

"I've thought a lot about this, actually; it was not a casual remark. I think the fundamental question is not whether the government pays for schools or medicine, but whether you allow people to get rich.

In England in the 1970s, the top income tax rate was 98%. That's what the Beatles' song "Tax Man" is referring to when they say "one for you, nineteen for me."

Any country that makes this choice ends up losing net, because new technology tends to be developed by people trying to make their fortunes. It's too much work for anyone to do for ordinary wages. Smart people might work on sexy projects like fighter planes and space rockets for ordinary wages, but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing of e-commerce probably have to be developed by entrepreneurs. Life in the Soviet Union would have been even poorer if they hadn't had American technologies to copy.

Finland is sometimes given as an example of a prosperous socialist country, but apparently the combined top tax rate is 55%, only 5% higher than in California. So if they seem that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don't spend so much on their military."

http://paulgraham.com/resay.html

(I know that in the US anything even vaguely leftist gets called "socialism", but Thomas Piketty, the author, is a genuine strong supporter of the French Socialist Party, and the focus of the book is explicitly on government action to prevent anyone from getting 'too' rich. I think it's a fair criticism.)

EDIT: To those not familiar with British history, things got really bad during the 1970s. Inflation peaked at 27%. The government went bankrupt and had to go "cap-in-hand" to the IMF for a bailout. Garbage piled up in the streets because the sanitation workers were on strike. Bodies piled up because the gravediggers were on strike... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent). I don't want to get into an argument about Thatcher, but everyone at all familiar with the history agrees that the country was in a mess.

That already has a name: mixed economy.

"Socialist" in the American vernacular is too coarse grained when talking about politics beyond its own borders, since the connotation seems to always just be "left of American politics"... :)

It will sound like a nitpick but it's not: there's no socialism in Europe. Socialism is an economic system, not a synonym for "socially-focused policies" through societal-level welfare.

European countries are capitalists, completely. What we do have is a better support system for welfare, more labour protections and regulations to protect against the massive power imbalance that untamed capitalism creates but it's not socialism. Not even close.

Idk, maybe I'm spending too much on the internet but it seems like the discussion around inequality has shifted from "let's increase the welfare state" to "let's dismantle capitalism and give socialism a try". There seem to be a lot of people these days that call themselves Marxists or capital-S Socialists, and even some who are apologists for the likes of Stalin and Mao. These people are everywhere on Reddit and HackerNews.

I'm all for the Scandinavian model (which, to be clear, is capitalism with a large welfare state and a sovereign wealth fund, not socialism), but do I want a planned economy or a dictatorship of the proletariat? No, because it doesn't work.

> And those "disastrous" times you're talking about are more the result of dictators, than any economic system used.

Socialists use this argument a lot but I can't think of a scenario in which socialism doesn't eventually devolve into fascism. Even if the means of production are owned by the workers, the workplaces are run democratically, and resources are allocated by direct consensus, you'll still need to use coercion to force people to participate in the economy. If people in village A need more grain and the farmers in village B don't want to produce more grain, do you point a gun to the farmers' heads and make them produce more grain? Disagreements will still happen in Socialist societies. People will still fundamentally be selfish. People will still want to barter with each other and enrich themselves through their labor, intellect, and unique talents. How do you seize peoples' property, prevent them from bartering and hoarding, and force them to participate in a planned economy without a massive and violent state apparatus?

The great thing about capitalism is that it recognizes the inherent self-interestedness of human beings and channels it into something that is (mostly) positive for society. Socialism starts with the premise that human beings would behave in higher-minded way if only they had more economic power, which I think is a flawed assumption and the reason why socialist economies will always fail.

This is the probably the best point to start from when discussing Socialism. So it was the point I started with:

"Socialism is about how workers organise their workplace (owning, managing and sharing the produce and profit of their labour)"

As the Oxford Dictionary says:

"a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

So Socialism is something very specific, but Socialists often associate themselves with other principles that they believe are in line with their moral values, see as a helpful strategy for achieving their ideals, or their Socialism is part of a larger political philosophy (Communism etc.) This association (and some detractors using the word Socialism to define everything they don't like) are what lead to confusion.

Socialists joke that detractors believe "Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff it does the more Socialist (or Communist) it is." But some commentators - see current popular right-wing American opinion pieces - really do seem to believe this.

There is no mention of state, government or rulers of any kind in most definitions of Socialism (most Anarchists are Socialists too). Of course some Socialists have believed that the state can act in the interest of the public by being stewards over these resources with the ideal of later devolving this to the communities and workers. Which has led to State Socialism (which Lenin called State Capitalism) on the one hand, and Social Democracy on the other. Some (like myself) think both strategies are flawed as do non-hierarchal Socialists (Anarcho-Communists, Syndicalists, Libertarian & Council Marxists, Democratic Confederalists, and maybe Agorists etc.)

There is also no mention of private - non-personal - property (although some Socialists like myself are against that too, but other Socialists see the issue as an irrelevance or inevitability).

Some see Socialism as sufficient in itself, others see it as part of the progress toward Communism (stateless, classless, moneyless as stated before).

Do you have a different definition of Socialism?

This too is ironically it's own redefinition because originally (and still to many socialists today) socialism means workers' ownership of the means of the production, which undemocratic centrally planning states never were and never could be.

I didn't say that at all. You can review my comments. But the point is that socialism doesn't distribute power, it concentrates it because "society" is never in control of anything. They'll elect representatives and they will be in charge. It is something that would work, provided human nature didn't exist.

> Not really, if the workers have ownership over the company and the capital, then they "own the means of production".

Shareholders have control over capital and have ownership.

> Sure, resource allocation is hard, but "lets just let the rich/monarchs/the lizard people decide" is a cop-out.

That's not what anyone is saying and that's not what is happening today.

There may be some who have a philosophical difference about "many" being in charge versus a "few". But just because I believe that in plurality of power it doesn't mean I believe socialism is the best way to get there.

I am not going by Twitter here. I have read a lot on the subject. Most of what I see uses socialism as a shorthand for "common good" and capitalism as shorthand for "greed". It is incorrect.

As an analogy, imagine if we're taking about ethics and morality and how to have a better and just world. If this was 100 years ago in the west, "Christianity" would be shorthand for morality and "Atheism" synonymous with evil, greed, and depravity. We've moved beyond that today and realized that neither of those will necessarily lead to a more moral or just world, and that ethics and morality are nuanced topics with a lot of details to be worked out. Simply being Christian doesn't make you one or the other, although hard to prove that to an average American in 1895. Furthermore, of the two, one is more static, dogmatic, and leads to corruption. I view the socialism and capitalism debate in the same vein.

What you just described is not socialism, or even approaching socialism. It could be best described as social-democracy, which is a completely unrelated concept. Socialism would be banning private enterprise in favor of direct state ownership of the economy.

That's why people have an aversion to the word, because it's an awful concept. Not because of some irrational fear.

This is incorrect. Socialism is workers owning the means of production. Communism is a post-capitalist classless stateless society. When people say socialist in terms of the Nordic countries, it is more about social democracy than workers owning the means of production.