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From: mcgeer@ucbvax.ARPA (Rick McGeer)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Health Care, Wonderful Market for
Message-ID: <10659@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 22:52:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10659
Posted: Mon Oct 14 22:52:38 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Oct-85 05:10:38 EDT
References: <204@gargoyle.UUCP> <10516@ucbvax.ARPA> <787@psivax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 62

In article <787@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <10516@ucbvax.ARPA> mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) writes:
>>
>>Damn right.  An economy is either competitive or command.  Feudalism and
>>socialism are both command economies, which means that the goodies are
>>passed out to political favourites.  If it quacks like a duck...
>>>
>	You seem to be confusing the economy of modern "communist"
>nations with a true socialist economy. Properly speaking socialism is
>based on *community* ownership of recources, and is not necessarily a
>"command" economy at all. In fact it may well be totally democratic(in
>the old sense of every member voting on every issue). Actually, the
>only truly successful socialist entities I know of are small,
>democratic communities. They exist right here in the US, as well as in
>Israel(If my memory serves me right). They do *not* exist in any major
>communist nation. It is interesting to note that the word "communist"
>and the word "community" are closely related.

You mean the Israeli kibbutzim.  The difference there is that the individuals
in a kibbutz have pooled their marbles voluntarily, and people may leave
the kibbutz -- in general, taking stuff with them.

In true socialism, you're there for life, and if you manage to leave you
get the shirt on your back.  Anyway, "community" ownership is a myth.  In
practice, as well you know, one person or a small group of people control
the use of any given resource.  This is certainly true in any entity of
substantial size.  Hence that person or small group owns the resource, and
can dole it out as they see fit: they command the resource, and, human
nature being what it is, dole it out to their buddies.

>	In Russia the recources are "owned" by the *state*, not the
>community, so I would call thier economy a *statist* economy. The same
>is true of the other major "communist" nations. Statism and socialism
>are not at all the same thing.

Humph.  All right, show me a socialist, non-statist society.

>	Even feudalism is not exactly a command economy. It is based
>on a hierarchy of authority and rights. No one really "owns" anything,
>but everyone(ideally) has *rights* to some portion of the *production*
>from some resource, and every resource is assigned to some person or
>set of persons for management purposes. Higher levels have no control
>over the use to which the production is put by the person recieving
>it, they recipient is even entirely free to sell it, and often did.
>The result is sort of a mixture of authoritarian and free-market and
>even socialist economies.
>-- 

And how are the rights enforced?  In any real situation, the person that
receives a good from the "higher levels" does so not once but many times --
and that means that the "higher levels" can cut off his flow any time.  This
gives the "higher levels" considerable authority over the blokes at the bottom
of the ladder.  "Yes, Comrade, everything is ours, but nothing is mine".


						-- Rick.

>
>				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)
>
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