Since socialism is a Utopian ideal and has never produced utopia, there has never been real socialism? 100,000,000 million deaths were not enough? let's give it a whirl one more time. Hell, the planet is over populated anyways.

Perhaps the Marxist/Lennonist ideology is a perfect system of human development? Yet is still impractical as humans themselves, are such imperfect creatures.

Has it been tried in the Soviet Union and China? socialism is just the path to true communism.

U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths; China: 65 million deaths

fas.harvard

Ho Che Minh, a communist. Remember, socialism is the path to communism.

  During the six years that he spent in France (1917–23), he became an active socialist under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”).

britannica

Hold on to your hat, your socialist utopia has arrived comrade. It's just a repackaged "serfdom", unfortunately for you, however.

Direct from the hermit kingdom itself.

"The DPRK is the Juche-oriented socialist state which embodies the idea and leadership of Comrade Kim II Sung, the founder of the Republic and the father of socialist Korea."

korea-dpr

Tocqueville On socialism

 

They hold that the State must not only act as the director of society, but must further be master of each man, and not only master, but keeper and trainer. 

For fear of allowing him to err, the State must place itself forever by his side, above him, around him, better to guide him, to maintain him, in a word, to confine him. They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.

lf-oll.s3.amazonaws

Let's not forget old "dof" now

National Socialist German Workers ' Party leader Adolf Hitler

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

--Adolf Hitler

econc10.bu

 source.....Boston University school of economics.

How about Hugo Chavez, leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela , widely praised by the left in America.

How does the present leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela , Nicolas Maduro misunderstand socialism? Why this out come?

While he’s not a Hollywood celebrity, David Sirota’s 2013 article in Salon, titled “Hugo Chávez’s economic miracle,” should not be forgotten, either. In it, Sirota suggested the United States follow Venezuela’s example and nationalize the oil and bank industries. “Chávez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism

It's socialism before they start stacking up the warm bodies and tossing them in mass graves.

and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results,” Sirota gushed.

Now, it's not socialism.

In secret recording, Venezuelan general pushes for snipers to control demonstrators

miamiherald

What if it not just bad luck that produced these monsters?

What if that is who rises to the top, in such a system every time it is tried?

Every attempt at utopia has produce dystopia.

If Socialism is responsible for Stalin, then Capitalism is responsible for Hitler... and Pinochet... and the Argentine dictators... and all those United Fruits dictators in Central America... and...

All of that is foolishness.

Dictators will use any lever they can get their hands on. Hitler didn't care about Capitalism, but he sure pumped a ton of money into Mercedes, Krup, BASF, and all the other big corporations (and their shareholders)... that are still there today... 

And Stalin didn't care about Socialism, but it gave him a lever to crush all opposition.

Dictators don't care about anything but power, so we need to be careful to distinguish between "means" and "end".

Hitler was a socialist. He was vociferously anti capitalist. It's profoundly ignorant to 

describe him as a supporter of the free market or someone  who respected private property.

He'd have fit right in with antifa, including his anti semitism.

Hitler was a socialist. He was vociferously anti capitalist. It's profoundly ignorant to describe him as a supporter of the free market or someone  who respected private property.

Let's unpack that, Sean...

Hitler was neither capitalist nor socialist nor whatever. He was authoritarian -- a dictator who would use whatever levers he found. What he found was Big Capitalism. Corporations like Mercedes, Thyssen-Krup, Messerschmitt, BASF, ... who would (like all big corporations) make deals with the devil himself if it increased shareholder dividends.

Those corporations took Hitler's money in exchange for whatever he needed for the war. They were happy to employ (and starve) the slave labor he sent them from his concentration camps. 

I did not say Hitler was a supporter of the free market, but then no real capitalist wants a free market. A nice, orderly planned economy, with guaranteed profits is so-o-o much better. Just ask America's cost-plus weapons industry!

And finally... Hitler certainly did not respect private property, any more than he respected anything at all. That signifies nothing about economics. It confirms that dictators are not nice people. Gosh!

Hitler's party's name was "National Socialist"... but I hope that you are not so foolish as to imagine that political names are Truth... Or do you admire the People's Democratic Republic of Korea for its popular democracy, too?

100,000,000 million deaths were not enough?

Ok, this is the second time I've seen this statement posted this morning.  Apparently you just can't math.

@Kpr37 :    "Since socialism is a Utopian ideal and has never produced utopia, there has never been real socialism? 100,000,000 million deaths were not enough? let's give it a whirl one more time. Hell, the planet is over populated anyways."

I think it is next to impossible to have a sensible discussion of socialism.   The reason is that the term ' socialism ' is grotesquely overloaded.   It means everything from brutal authoritarian command economy hell to some utopian existence where everyone is content and loving one another in harmony.

Well, bullshit to all of that.

Socialism (at least the core principle of socialism) is distributed economic freedom.   It is the economic opposite of capitalism.   Whereas capitalism allows a minority to control the flow of critical goods and services (aka the means of production and distribution - MoPD) socialism distributes that control among members of society.   The reason is to enable more equal opportunity (while necessarily supporting unequal results).

How that is achieved has been the subject of debate for centuries and I am not convinced anyone has the magical answer.  I am, however, quite convinced that there has never been a system of socialism at the societal / national level.   What we have seen historically are authoritarian systems hiding behind the labels of ' socialism ' and ' communism ' while engaging in authoritarian rule.

A few things that socialism is not:

• redistribution of wealth
• authoritarian rule
• state control of the MoPD
• eminent domain or any ' taking of property'
• everyone with equal pay, jobs, clothing, etc.
• universal welfare (and similar such as single-payer health care)
• public (aka social) services (e.g. firefighters, postal services)
• social democracy (i.e. capitalist economic engine funding public services)
• a spontaneous change in human nature where everyone loves one another and lives in harmony

I can go into detail on anything in this post.   Given this topic is very complex and historically rich, this comment is actually quite brief.

One more thing.   I am not convinced that socialism can be implemented in a manner that is more effective than capitalism.   If we are to improve our economic system, the improvement (in the distant future) might very well be a form of capitalism.   The distinction between socialism and capitalism is technical.   But I hold that there are systems better than what we have today and whether they technical fall under socialism or capitalism is not nearly as important as how the theoretical system actually works.

I agree that getting there from here looks awfully improbable. 

If the Ultra-Rich are smart enough to leave a few crumbs to us plebes, they will keep their power. And when computers become powerful enough, they won't even have to leave any crumbs. 

I'm very pessimistic. 

History has shown that aristocracy rules.   The players and organizations change, but there always is a relatively tiny minority in control.

Yup. 

Sorry about not Replying... There's something wrong with the email system -- I got no alert about your post, here, and the "Comment counter" is still at "1"... I saw your post, saying that I was not answering, in a different seed.

"Socialism" is not responsible for the deaths under Communism, any more than "Capitalism" is responsible for those under Fascism.

Both Capitalism and Socialism are economic systems. They are not political systems. Both economic systems may be coupled with either human rights or authoritarianism:

Socialism + human rights = European social democracy

Socialism + authoritarianism = Communism

Capitalism + human rights = American capitalism (for the moment, but it's in jeopardy!)

Capitalism + authoritarianism = Fascism

Note that "supply-and-demand", a method for allocating resources, is another independent element that may also be mixed and matched with any of the above combinations.

I think we should also take a longer historical view of the particular case of the USSR. That part of the world -- let's call it "Russia" -- has been authoritarian since forever. It was an absolutist capitalist empire before the Russian Revolution. Then it became an absolutist socialist dictatorship. And now it is an absolutist capitalist dictatorship.

There's a theme there, I think: Russia is a land and people that have never learned human rights. It would be wise not to draw any overarching conclusions from a Russian experiment. 

It was an absolutist capitalist empire before the Russian Revolution.

That is as profoundly ignorant a statement as can be made. There was almost no commercial class in tsarist Russia and the vast majority of Russian peasants lands were held communally. The idea that peasants could even legally own their own land was radical in the extreme and very few did. 

You are making some massively incorrect statements in your  survey that betray an almost total lack of understanding of history and the ideology behind fascism. 

It would be wise not to draw any overarching conclusions from a Russian experiment

You might possibly be able to argue Russia as an exception, but then you have China, Cuba, Venezuela, N.K. etc.. staring you in the face. Socialism is simply incompatible with human nature. Like any organization that attains total power, it attracts those who simply want power and privilige for themselves and do not share the original mission statement (a belief in socialism) It  invariable devolves into kleptocracy with a tiny entitled elite and a mass of citizens lacking any powers of self determination. 

You might possibly be able to argue Russia as an exception, but then you have China, Cuba, Venezuela, N.K. etc.. staring you in the face.

... and on the "capitalist dictatorship" side of the scale you have... every other dictatorship in the last five hundred years!

It's a lot simpler to say that dictators don't give a fuçk about economics. 

Like any organization that attains total power, it attracts those who simply want power and privilige for themselves and do not share the original mission statement. It  invariable devolves into kleptocracy with a tiny entitled elite and a mass of citizens lacking any powers of self determination.

You have described American corporatism and capitalism and the American oligarchy.