Off Topic Political Debate

You are wrong, I do not believe that taking a socialist route will improve the conditions for inhabitants of the countries which we have discussed i.e UK, France & Greece. That is my view, based on my experience living in the UK & France.

You should listen and learn from your leader Merkel, she has many values similar to our wonderful underrated Mrs Thatcher.

 

We are still waiting for you to define what you mean by 'Socialist' before bandying the word around right left and centre. So far you have used it to describe everything from Honecker's death squads to Ed Balls. Many of the things which you describe as 'Socialist' have absolutely nothing to do with my understanding of that word.

 

Look up the meaning on wikipedia if it helps. I define it as interference by the state in the capitalist system, Obviously I disagree on the percentage of state involvement for the common good.

Your earlier reference to present day skinheads in Germany, didn't they invent them in the 1940's? They were called hitler youth.

 

We have nothing more to discuss here as I feel we are getting absolutely nowhere and it no longer has even a resemblance to real debate.

 

Thankfully I fully agree.

Pray for Greece if their current political leaders have views similar to yours, abject poverty looming.

 

I have only just caught up with this debate and feel slightly guilty that I have might have sparked it off. Seems to me that the argument comes down to what we mean as Socialist. I think that Lenin once described it as the halfway house between capitalism and communism. He realised that things were changing in the economic world and you couldn't simply quickly go from one system to another. Today our understanding of the meaning can mean many different things. The socialist party in England is still proposing that the state should own everything and provide everything that families require, with work being voluntary. The Labour party in the UK is calling itself socialist. In many countries, including Hitler's Germany, parties were describing themselves as Socialist. As with so many things descriptions, words and their meanings have changed over the years.

Over the past ten years living in France I have been taken aback by the amount of private companies involved in public services. Lots of them provide us with a good health system that I have no objection to contributing to. Autoroutes are owned by private companies, and I have the choice of using them and paying the price, or using the Route Nationals free of charge. It seems to me that a good mixture of state and private company involvement can work well, but it has to be in the context of what else is happening in the world. The so called Socialist government of Mr. Hollande came to power saying that they could go against all wisdom of reducing the state expenditure, no one would suffer any reduction in living standard, and everyone could enjoy the fruits of state spending. This has turned out to be a myth of course, with ever increasing unemployment, companies unable to pay the crippling taxes imposed on them closing down and the population turning against the President.

Tomorrow sees the second round of voting in the French elections. The present political turmoil suggests that the Socialism of the present government has simply fed into the hands of the FN an extreme right wing party. The old ideas of what socialism meant years ago, and what it means to the voters tomorrow are poles apart

 

Absolutely, Frenchie, and whilst these old battles are fought the world dies. Neither Socialists nor Capitalists think beyond the short term. They both seem to have a naive belief that our resources are infinite. In fifty years time, when many people are desperate for water, they will rue the fact that sensible choices weren't made now. But, then, most socialists and capitalists living now won't be alive then, so why should they care. Caring gets in the way of ideology.

 

Well put Frenchie,

your experiences mirror my wonderful time living in France. Of course the high tax rates there produce good infrastructure, healthcare and public facilities. France has huge potential to be a real force if only it dropped its aversion to any policy that remotely appeared to follow the UK/US brand of capitalism. I knew several young French potential entrepreneurs who craved to start their own business but were prevented by the system which encourages state reliance and discourages self responsibility.
Another example was a local British builder who employed about 13 staff until successive governments increased taxes on his business so much that it became unviable resulting in the loss of all jobs. The cost of employment is so high and the employee protection is so stringent that the norm is to avoid staff recruitment unless vitally necessary. Zero hours contracts are rife in France.
Although the level of French education is of a high standard it is far too rigid. It does not encourage development of alternative ideas which could later benefit the country.
I can only imagine the limiting control (brainwashing) that some of these more extreme countries have on their children.
It is no wonder there are so many young French people working in the UK although they will probably retire back home once their fortune has been made.
Unless France addresses its debts and production costs it will not be able to sustain the standards highlighted above.

 

Pre-revolution Tunisia was an excellent Socialist regime. It provided great care and advancement for the nation on scarce resources. As all know I'm a lot further to the right than any socialist but the crux is that if you get the right people who are honest and abide by their true objective both systems can be made to work. The problem on this planet isn't capitalism or socialism but it is human corruption.

 

Frenchie - the term 'Socialist' has become historically suspect and is used by different people to mean different things. The same is true of 'Fascist` which accurately described only the regime of Mussolini - but was, nonetheless, used to describe every policeman on demo control ! Whether 'Socialism' describes the period of transformation from capitalism to communism - or communism describes the transformation stage to socialism is also not entirely clear. It has been used by people such as Pinochet and Thatcher in such a loose way as to describe all political opponents, regardless of colour. It is also used to describe Keynesian economics as against monetarism on the other side. I use the historical definition as implying collective ownership of the means of production. In Marxist ideology this is predated by an intermediate period of state control - but the end function of the state, according to Marx, is its own dissolution. Other forms of Communist thinking dispense with this intermediate stage - presuming,rightly, that such a phase would tend to become permanent. According to Anarcho Communist thinking (Bukharin, Kropotkin etc.) true Communism can only be built from below and based upon voluntary association - in this case collectives and workers cooperatives. Examples of states built upon these later principles are, unfortunately in my opinion, historically rare, the most well known case being the movement in Catalonia which was suppressed by the combined interests of Franco, Hitler and Stalin ! Also important is that Socialist/Communist thinking (can you use the terms interchangeably ?) did not begin with Marx - but came originally from religious roots, to describe forms of living found in the Bible. For me the union of red and green thinking found amongst the so called eco socialists - and being experimented with in Bolivia, is the most interesting. Which moves on to NZHorns`points. Of course a poisoned fish in a river is not concerned whether he was poisoned by capitalists or communists. However, I feel more comfortable if the dominant form of economic organisation in my town is that of the workers cooperative (for me the only valid form of Socialism) because there is more chance that the decisions made by local people under those circumstances will respect my environment (because it is also theirs).

 

Companies are unelected? The structure of companies tends to be either private or public. At the end of the day capitalism encourages growth in popular companies providing goods people want or need with competition providing a check on monopoly and governments providing regulation. At the end of the day a company cannot exist without selling its products and its customers therefore define its direction. Boards of directors whilst not elected by the general population are elected usually by shareholders again a democratic process.

 

The first part I highlighted isn't a problem, because you're well looked after, with or without a job. The French aren't idiots, they work to live not live to work. The quality of life there is unbelievable, in most jobs you will have 1h+ lunchbreaks, christmas bonuses, paid overtime, etc...Also, employers can't just fire you when they feel like it, giving someone a job is seen as a serious contract between you and them.

The rest of the stuff you highlighted is not even worth commenting on. Having grown up in France I have several well-suited expressions that apply here, but it's a polite forum so I'll just end it there.

 

Youth unemployment in France is touching 25%.
I agree the quality of life has been excellent but the state will not be able to afford such generous benefits in the future unless they address their rapidly worsening finances. France's unfavourable competitiveness against the Germans will only increase.

 

I would not be quite so sure about Germany's future. It has a very large demographic problem ie. the only country in the industrial west with a sinking population. Not enough children being born, and not attractive enough for migrants. Take a look on this board, how many on here have lived in France (or had something to do with the country) compared to Germany. If present demographic trends continue then France will have the biggest (and possibly also the youngest)population in Europe in about 20 years time.

 

I would have thought there would be no shortage of available labour from Eastern Europe. The salary gap between german and some of the very poorly paid other countries is still significant.
My point was that France, a country I love, could be heading for real decline unless it addresses its borrowing. Like Greece if the money markets lose confidence in your ability to repay the loans then interest rates increase culminating in a downward spiral. France's credit was recently reduced again in Dec 2014.

 

It's been for me the most irritating thing about this debate (see post #311) that like the Caterpillar (if I remember rightly) in Alice in Wonderland there's a tendency to use the word 'socialism' to mean what we want it to mean. Its not easy to pin it down, but I certainly wouldn't rely on Wikipedia for a definition. It ought to be possible to divest it of derogatory implications, hard as that may be.

 

Couldn't agree more - and whilst I am more on the left than right politically I think the same can be said about capitalism to an extent.

 

I agree that we are having problems of definition. The same applies to the left-right spectrum, what you see as left or right depends on where you are on that spectrum. In their historical use left and right are only economic terms - referring to collective ownership at the one extreme and monetarist laissez faire ideology on the other. Later complications arise perhaps because of the need for the left to distance itself radically from the idea that eg. National Socialism (Nazism) could have been born on the left. Hence the 'Left' has come to embrace concepts such as multi culturalism, social libertarianism, support for gay marriage etc. themes which are not intrinsic to socialism. Any more than Keynesian economics is intrinsic to Socialism. As monetarist ideology came to dominate the thinking of the mainstream after Thatcher, as the worship of the free market became the new, and only, religion - so, everything which resembled regulation became known as 'Socialism', whether it was or not.

 

The early exit polls here suggest the PS of Mr. Hollande have been decimated which is no great surprise, but the scale of it could be more than expected. The parties led by a coalition of conservatives and democrats have made very large gains across the whole country. The threat of the FN of Marine Le Pen has been seen off with very few if any councils won. Because of the bad showing of the socialists, Le Pen is claiming that her party is now the opposition in many councils. The sad part though is that only 46% of voters turned out.

 

There can be various ways to interpret "small government". It could be a small number of people in charge of a country, small areas of a country having more control over those areas from central government or just simply the government of a small country - which do you mean?