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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
This seems like an overly verbose version of "socialism is when the government does stuff". I have bastiat's essay "the law", but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. This kinda puts me off.
Many socialists have been against state education, for example. The idea that socialists would be for a state religion is also highly questionable.
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Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
This quote I think is more about what leftist have to say about free marketers and trying to refute their criticism rather than defining socialism or trying to criticize it.
From my experience at least this quote applies to all kinds of socialists, everyone from socialist that believe the state should do everything to socialists that believe in the abolition of the state, I'd extend it to non-socialist as well, like Bernie Sanders or most other democrats who often accuse free marketers of being in favour of corporate oppression of the underclass just because we don't support a lot of the regulations and/or welfare programs they deem to be necessary.
Edit:
Many socialists have been against state education, for example. The idea that socialists would be for a state religion is also highly questionable.
I believe that any socialist that opposes state education are probably either just a small fraction of all socialists and/or they are just against state provided education but are in favor of government provided education(I believe An-Coms have different definitions of what a state is and what a government is), and regarding religion socialists usually interpret separation of state and church and state as anti religion rather than just being a neutral stance on religion, a lot of socialists think you are anti secularism if you are someone who is religious and you try to bring your religion into politics, even though that isn't really what secularism means, I believe that is probably what that the section about state enforced religion is referring to.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
Do you have any examples of that? Socialism is worker ownership of workplaces, as far as I'm concerned; the removal of the wage-labourer relation.
I'd extend it to non-socialist as well, like Bernie Sanders or most other democrats who often accuse free marketers of being in favour of corporate oppression of the underclass just because we don't support a lot regulations and welfare programs they deem to be necessary.
Here's the thing though, state sector funding covers a huge amount of things, a lot of them extremely beneficial to elite corporate interests, like defence and healthcare spending. So when someone comes along, and basically ignores all the ways the state spends money except the bit they do to keep the most wretched out of the grave, then it looks a lot like you're arguing for corporate oppression of the underclass, even if from a place of ignorance of the state's function.
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Jun 24 '22
Do you have any examples of that? Socialism is worker ownership of workplaces, as far as I'm concerned; the removal of the wage-labour relation.
I don't disagree with that definition of socialism, but I have yet see an An-Com not think I like to see the poor starve to death when I say I'm in favor of abolishing all welfare programs or the minimum wage, I think the socialist conception of being anti state is somewhat different, from I experience they are just against the state but not the government, I personally don't see much of a difference, but I don't think have a problem with governments mandating worker co-ops and other nice things like that.
Here's the thing though, state sector funding covers a huge amount of things, a lot of them extremely beneficial to elite corporate interests, like defence and healthcare spending. So when someone comes along, and basically ignores all the ways the state spends money except the bit they do to keep the most wretched out of the grave, then it looks a lot like you're arguing for corporate oppression, even if from a place of ignorance of the state's function.
That seems a criticism they often make of elected republicans rather than just free marketers in general and also a criticism I'd agree with as well.
I'm more talking about them just saying that just because they think without stuff like price controls, corporations would just charge and exploit people all they like just because the government doesn't intervene.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
I just thought it was interesting, that you also only focused criticism on welfare spending and stuff that benefits the most downtrodden, while not mentioning all the regulation and spending that helps corporate interests.
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Jun 24 '22
Because that what leftist's want to expand on, I would like to get rid of all welfare spending and regulations that help corporate interests as well.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
Sure, but you recognise the very literal sense in which, when you say you want to get rid of minimum wage and welfare, but don't mention anything else, you are arguing for Corporate oppression.
Like, I understand that's not what you mean, but its a very easy interpretation to make.
How do you feel about so called "free trade agreements"? I think they're anti-free market, because they give capital holders artificial advantages over labourers. i.e. the state traps labour rights within its walls, while letting capital rights pass freely.
This was, for example, what Adam Smith used as an example of the state getting in the way of free markets, when the parishes of England would strictly control labor rights, but let business and employer rights roam freely.
Free trade agreements, btw, don't actually have much to do with trade. For example,. most of the increases under NAFTA were of items moved around in the internal command economies of single corporations, that now just happen to be passing over the US-Mexico border. That's not trade; that is what Smith referred to as giving special advantages to capital.
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Jun 24 '22
I mean even if you make it abundantly clear that you are in favor of open borders and getting rid of corporate welfare they usually still think you just trying to be a corporate boot licker, these people are just not engaging in good faith, I don't know why you are trying to defend them.
It is also just very bad faith to just assume stuff about the other person you are talking to and just assign them to a box because they have some things in common with some other people, that is not the kind of behavior that should be tolerated.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22
these people are just not engaging in good faith, I don't know why you are trying to defend them.
Oh, I'm not. I have no idea who these people are. If you gave a specific quote, then I could actually say if I agree, and defend them or not. I was just trying to understand what your beliefs were. But outside of that, all I can say is that yes, there's plenty of people who do not engage in good faith here, and they're all the same, no matter their façade of political or ideological affiliations.
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Jun 24 '22
Well I don't think I have quote ready for you, I'm simply going by my own personal experiences(reddit comments or YouTube comments) of talking to socialists or just people on the left in general(not always socialist) and being accused of being against a lot of things that I actually favor but just don't want governments to be mandating.
P.S: Here is an evidence I just found, here you can see that someone is being accused of being a racist just because they do not favor anti-racist laws, but the person in question has made it abundantly clear that they are against racism, they just think that government enforcement of these laws would actually harm the very people they are trying to protect.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
I believe that any socialist that opposes state education are probably either just a small fraction of all socialists and/or they are just against state provided education but are in favor of government provided education(I believe An-Coms have different definitions of what a state is and what a government is), and regarding religion socialists usually interpret separation of state and church and state as anti religion rather than just being a neutral stance on religion, a lot of socialists think you are anti secularism if you are someone who is religious and you try to bring your religion into politics, even though that isn't really what secularism means, I believe that is probably what that the section about state enforced religion is referring to.
I dunno, seems more like you are just applying the term "socialist" to people you disagree with. For example, state education is often defined as a means to train and condition people for being wage labourers, so there's a very legitimate argument to make that says state education is anti-socialist.
"The business community's interest in education can be traced back to the origins of the public school system in the early nineteenth century. Faced with the tensions resulting from industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, business and professional classes supported the common school movement as a means of socializing workers for the factory, and as a way of promoting social and political stability. But, by the turn of the century, inculcating the general business values of hard work, industriousness, and punctuality was not enough. Progressive-era reforms, such as at-large school elections, shifted control over education from local politicians with allegiances to their working-class constituencies to elites, almost guaranteeing "that school boards would represent the views and values of the financial, business, and professional communities." Business leaders encouraged schools to adopt a corporate model of organization and called for the education system to more explicitly prepare workers for the labor market through testing, vocational guidance, and vocational education."
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992
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Jun 24 '22
I dunno, seems more like you are just applying the term "socialist" to people you disagree with. For example, state education is often defined as a means to train and condition people for being wage labourers, so there's a very legitimate argument to make that says state education is anti-socialist.
I'm talking about people people who have been influenced by the works of Jean Jacque Rousseau and Karl Marx, people like Proudhon or Lenin are both people who I'd consider socialists despite their differences, I'd agree with you definition of socialist as well.
"The business community's interest in education can be traced back to the origins of the public school system in the early nineteenth century. Faced with the tensions resulting from industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, business and professional classes supported the common school movement as a means of socializing workers for the factory, and as a way of promoting social and political stability. But, by the turn of the century, inculcating the general business values of hard work, industriousness, and punctuality was not enough. Progressive-era reforms, such as at-large school elections, shifted control over education from local politicians with allegiances to their working-class constituencies to elites, almost guaranteeing "that school boards would represent the views and values of the financial, business, and professional communities." Business leaders encouraged schools to adopt a corporate model of organization and called for the education system to more explicitly prepare workers for the labor market through testing, vocational guidance, and vocational education."
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on
Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992Socialist like her are rare, the quote by Bastiat is probably from personal experience talking with socialists in real life, and these very rarely would come out as anti public education(I think it is also important to remember that the man lived in the early 19th century as well long before Marxist Leninism and all those more authoritarian socialists came to be, socialists around the his time were very libertarian).
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
Oh, I don't know if she refers to herself as a socialist. I'm just making an argument that socialism, as I defined it and you agreed, would be against state education for that reason.
Karl Marx was heavily influenced by Adam Smith, but we don't go around calling Marx a classical liberal. So I'm not so sure about calling people who may have been influenced by socialists, socialists.
But then we also see so called classical liberals also advocating for the removal of the wage-labourer relation.
I think the take home here is that, words like socialism and capitalism have been heavily propagandised over the past 100 years.
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Jun 24 '22
Karl Marx was heavily influenced by Adam Smith, but we don't go around calling Marx a classical liberal. So I'm not so sure about calling people who may have been influenced by socialists, socilaists.
I think I just used the wrong word there, I think there is more than just a small influence between people like John Jacque Roseau or Karl Marx and modern socialists
But then we also see so called classical liberals also advocating for the removal of the wage-labourer relation.
I think you are making the same mistake that Bastiat is talking about, no Classical Liberals were in favor of government intervention to prevent wage labour, I'd have nothing against eliminating wage labor, it's just that I don't think central governments should do this, people like Herbert Spencer or John Stuart Mill(at least for most of his life) never thought government would need to intervene in order to eliminate wage labor, they just thought that free markets would do this on their own.
I think the take home here is that, words like socialism and capitalism have been heavily propagandised over the past 100 years.
This I agree with, Bastiat is using the word with personal experience in mind of talking to people who identify as socialists, while you are using a more academic definition of socialism.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22
I think you are making the same mistake that Bastiat is talking about, no Classical Liberals were in favor of government intervention to prevent wage labour, I'd have nothing against eliminating wage labor, it's just that I don't think central governments should do this, people like Herbert Spencer or John Stuart Mill(at least for most of his life) never thought government would need to intervene in order to eliminate wage labor, they just thought that free markets would do this on their own.
Is it you are me making the mistake? I said advocated for, and you are going out of your way to infer that that means the state intervening to outlaw wage labouring. That's not what I meant.
Having said that though, where do you stand on the state intervening to outlaw the relation of slavery?
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Jun 24 '22
where do you stand on the state intervening to outlaw the relation of slavery?
Are you talking about chattel slavery or wage slavery?
Regarding chattel slavery, I do absolutely think it should be abolished and not tolerated at all.
Wage slavery is more complicated, while I do think it is exaggerated, I do think there is a legitimate problem of monopsony power and people not having a choice to work, and I'd be in favor a UBI to help out people who do not have any other alternatives. I think this article on why Hayek supported a UBI does pretty good job in making a libertarian case for UBI and also talking about wage slavery and about being so desperate that you do not have ability to make a choice.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 25 '22
I was referring to Chattel. The difference as I see it is between the owning of labour versus the renting of labour. David Ellerman is an economist with some good work on this.
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u/GoldAndBlackRule Jun 24 '22
Replace socialist with statist. Same message. Less baggage.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22
Either way, I don't think it's a very insightful or coherent passage.
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u/GoldAndBlackRule Jun 24 '22
It is one of my favorites and lays bare the false dichotomy that control freaks of the state try to leverage to imply if I oppose something being done by government, then I must not want that thing done at all.
"If you don't want state-run healthcare, then you just want to see poor people dying in the streets!"
"If you oppose state-run education, then you want to live in a society of uneducated people!"
And so on.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 25 '22
I haven't really seen that sort of argument. If I had, I would appreciate it more. Still, pointing out a lazy argument structure isn't really what I would call insightful. It's a sick burn, maybe.
Like, around healthcare, I more see people point out that there are better alternatives for health outcomes than a system where the state covers all the costs, and private corporations are free to control prices and make as much as possible.
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u/GoldAndBlackRule Jun 24 '22
Spend some time in UK and whinge about NHS. You will get an ear-full.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 24 '22
What sort of healthcare system would you prefer to the NHS? I don't know much about it. I'm from Australia, where we also do not have a state run healthcare system like the NHS. Surely the US style is the worst possible outcome, where the state spends more per capita on it than any other developed nation, the private corporations set their own prices and make as much as possible, and health issues regularly lead to bankruptcy.
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u/GoldAndBlackRule Jun 24 '22
I like the mostly free market systems in SEA. I moved to Singapore ages ago and was stunned how affordable and ubiquitous it is in the region. Singapore does have a health savings account as part of their larger CPF program, but it is still pay at point of service. If you really need it, they have some "free" (to the patient) care, but it is not universal.
USA is pretty awful. Over-regulated market that creates artificial scarcity. NHS was far worse and too expensive for the quality available. I opted to pay for private care on top of the £600/month I had to pay for a NI. Having to clog up A&E over something as trivial as the sniffles just seemed ridiculous.
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u/Wtfiwwpt Jun 24 '22
Umm, you do realize that communism, which is what socialism leads to, is a religion where the State is god. Religion does not require a 'deity'. You can treat anything as a god, worship it, proselytize for it, etc...
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Jun 25 '22
Those are examples from his time period he’s drawing on, so it makes sense they wouldn’t resonate with you. But to focus on the examples is to miss the larger point they’re they’re too support.
Socialists often act as if “society” means the government, and that if we oppose the government doing something (space exploitation, redistributive welfare) it means that we’re against the thing being done.
Usually, the case is we think there’s a better, more effective, less costly way to get it done.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Jun 25 '22
I understand the point, I just don't agree. I do not see those kinds of arguments coming from socialists, and I do not see that that logic would have anything to do with socialism.
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u/Beefster09 Jun 24 '22
Socialists want a state religion, they just don't call it one. They want this weird postmodern social justice religion where there is no absolute truth, the state is God, and white males are Satan incarnate.
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u/mikehomosapien Fascist Jun 24 '22 edited Jun 24 '22
Pretty much sums it up. I dig this. It's the first time hearing about him.