Why the left isn't socialist

If you define "socialist" as advocating government ownership of the "means of production," which is what I've always understood socialist to mean, then, no, modern leftists (or progressives or whatever they want to be called) no longer believe that, right now at least, widespread government ownership of economic enterprises is a good strategy.

As a sketch of that now-obsolete view of socialism, consider Lenin in State and Revolution:

"The development of capitalism ... creates the preconditions that enable really "all" to take part in the administration of the state. Some of these preconditions are: universal literacy, which has already been achieved in a number of the most advanced capitalist countries, then the "training and disciplining" of millions of workers by the huge, complex, socialized apparatus of the postal service, railways, big factories, large-scale commerce, banking, etc., etc. Given these economic preconditions, it is quite possible, after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to proceed immediately, overnight, to replace them in the control over production and distribution, in the work of keeping account of labor and products, by the armed workers, by the whole of the armed population. Accounting and control -- that is mainly what is needed for the "smooth working", for the proper functioning, of the first phase of communist society."

Pretty much everybody these days, including some leftists, believes that this notion -- that with good accounting all problems of production can be solved -- is naïve.

Leftist media types can dance around it all they want, but the fact is this: The left advocates a totalitarian type of government, wherein the freedoms and liberties of the individual are severely curtailed (compared to our historic high levels of freedon and liberty in our past hstory).

Them's fighting words, and if the truth came out, there would be an awakening of the masses more so than what we have now. IMO it may even foment the inevitable coming Civil Unrest.

An unusually poorly predicated article from the American Thinker.

If you define "socialist" as advocating government ownership of the "means of production"

No we don't. No one does.

Socialism and Fascism are about control of the means of production.

Communism is about ownership of the means of production.

The systems are very similar: both are totalitarian and crush human freedom.

This article seems to propose that as long as you are not trying to destroy the concept of property you are not trying to steal it - wrong!

That isn’t how I define socialism. The issue is not the ownership of the means of production so much as it is the control of the means of production. Or if you like, consider that one of the definitions of the term ownership is the right of control, so that in reality ownership and control are really the same thing. It doesn’t make sense to say that the government controls the means of production but does not own it. The Dems clearly favor government control of the means of production. Without private control of the means of production, you don’t have capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t work without a profit motive and the profit motive does not work if the capitalist does not have control over his business.

Communists, who believe that everything must be run by the government through central planning, are still around. Don't get deceived by various terminologies. It is true, the train of thoughts that seems to develop among the leftist academia is that the old-style communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, etc., ignored the human rights because they didn't allow people to choose. The new concept of 'socialism' (although often they come with different names), then, is to let the plans coming from below: from community level. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, given to (a political scientist) Ostrom, highlights this idea.

Community-level organization might work to manage resources, but I don't think it can work in the city, state, or national level without coercion. When Chavez came to power, his supporters argued that his concept was 'a new style of socialism, where ideas come from below, not top'. The problem with that is, when people have different ideas, at the end there has to be a mechanism to decide which one is to be used. In 'democracy', it is at the hand of the voters. As Chavez has shown, as he got more trouble with those who don't share his ideas, he became increasingly authoritarian.

"Ownership" is a fuzzy term anyway. The Nazi's, for example, left owners in place, but they dictated what was to be produced, what designs and materials were to be used, what prices were to be charged, how much employees and executives were paid, etc. So the "owners" were basically just state pensioners.

The objective of socialism is central economic planning. Whether this is achieved directly by killing off the legitimate owners or indirectly by shackling businesses to the dictates of global warming abatement committees is just a matter of method.

the first phase of communist society

All the available responses I've read are on the mark so I will use my space to suggest what people on the left are missing.

Democrats and their useful idiot socialist liberals are wont to point out that America is not socialist. What they are actually asserting is that America is not yet socialist.

However, the current administration is clear evidence that some Americans are willing to take America in the direction of socialism. In essence, these socialist Americans attempt to sell other Americans the idea that there is no reason to oppose socialism until it has happened. The age old wise observation that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance never did make much sense to socialist.

In order for the socialist among us to prevail, America must first abandon the Republic guaranteed by the America’s Constitution in favor of a Democracy. Only after the rule by the majority in a Democracy has overtaken the rule of law in a Republic can socialism prevail.

It is possible that these misguided socialist Americans are not keen enough thinkers to realize the full implications of their actions, or worse, they do realize.

Socialism and its accompanying tyranny do not come to people as a hammer over their head. It will first appear as a savior, a solution to all that troubles a nation, a benefactor if you will. People who lack the ability to think through the reality of their lives are susceptible to this approach. To make matters even worse they do this with a clear conscience as they torment us for what they ignorantly believe is for our own good. Every nation must suffer its fools.

Capitalism should never be the issue. Capitalism exists with all forms of government. The difference is who controls the capital. America has only two ultimate choices,

a competitive free enterprise system in a Republic with private ownership and control of capital,

a monopolistic state controlled capital system under a fill in the blank Oligarchy. (Socialism, Fascism, Communism, or any Oligarchy you wish)

At this point it's an entirely theoretical consideration, and the answer to the question depends on the degree to which you overlay a classic economic model on the messy, inchoate, ever-changing continuum that is an actual modern economy. Not even Marxists agree on the point at which state ownership of the means of production reflects a transition from a hybrid socialist economy to a communist one. Nor is there any actual set definition of "means of production" - it remains controversial whether this entails state ownership of people, for example. One may define oneself into or out of that difficulty but one is only playing definitional games in doing so.

To illustrate this, let us take the example of General Motors at the moment. Is this literally "owned" by the state? No, of course not, there is still stock and there are still shareholders, the possession of stock according its owner the right to participate in the decision of who sits on the Board of Directors...but wait a moment. When those decisions may be overridden, as they were, by the government, can we say that stockholders are still "owners"? And what happens when the largest shareholders are the labor unions and the state itself? Well, you have a mess that doesn't really fit any of the theoretical models very well (it doesn't appear to be running the company very well, either).

One question the author is asking is whether this model more closely resembles that of small-f fascism, with the nominal ownership of the means of production in private hands but directed by state fiat in the form of state representatives - commissars. Not exactly. That requires, as with socialism, essentially a command economy, which is decidedly not the case, or at least not yet. An inefficiently-run state enterprise still stands a risk of going under (see General Motors, above) as a consequence of a more or less open market. But with each successive "bailout" even that becomes less and less true.

So - no clean theoretical model at all, IMHO, which must have von Mises chuckling. What we do have is a hundred-legged beast muddling along despite the theorists, not because of them. Of course the beast can be improved. It can also be killed. Lenin found out all about that during his first three disastrous years. By the time his New Economic Policy (1921) came along the theorists were most concerned about finding someone to blame. That part, at least, does sound familiar.

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