Shadow Minister, socialism means a switch from private ownership, particularly by the rich, to collective ownership by everybody.

The question of control, ie, the locus of decision-making, will depend on the type of decision. Some decisions will be more centralized some less so. The claim that socialism necessitates excessive centralization is erroneous. Even allocation of investment funds can be decentralized.

The claim that socialism has been shown to be an abject failure is lazy thinking. 20th century socialism had some very specific and contingent features. You had communists coming to power by historical accident in backward countries scarcely ready for capitalism let alone socialism. And then the regimes in slightly less backward eastern Europe owed their existence purely to the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. A future revolution in advanced capitalist societies will not be a cake walk but it will have a far more solid economic and social foundation.

LEGO, "Socialists don't believe in censorship, Byork? Gee, that's funny, national socialist Germany, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Communist China, and every East European country in the Warsaw pact who had socialism imposed upon them by Russian bayonets, all had strict censorship of the press".

National Socialism in Germany had nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with stopping socialist revolution and then regulating the economy in the interests of the dominant capitalist class. You must think the German Democratic Republic was democratic - after all, it had that in its name. Hitler used the popularity of socialism for very anti-socialist ends. The first concentration camp - Dachau - was built for socialists and communists. Hitler's economic policies shifted from privatisations, when they served big business, to tight regulation, when it served his war objectives. He was anti-socialist, an extreme Right-wing anti-communist.

You have acknowledged that it can be legitimate to impose restrictions on press freedom during war and that is what happened after the Russian revolution, when 14 countries sent in troops to try and restore the old order and then when Britain allowed the rise of Hitler, rejecting Stalin's pleas for collective security against Hitler, and a devastating war resulted.

As for East Germany et al, I applauded their downfall, as did every other leftist I know. I marched in solidarity with Polish workers and students on a May Day march around 1970 or 1971. State capitalism without democracy is not socialism. Mao used the term 'social fascism' to describe such developments. He had the post-war Soviet Union in mind.

China during the cultural revolution witnessed a flourishing of newspapers and big-character posters. They were hardly party mouthpieces, given that many were 'bombarding the headquarters'.

Again, the problem is ignorance about socialism and what its proponents actually stand for. If you think Conroy is on the left, then you're bound to get it completely wrong

LEGO,
Do you mean to say 830,000 people in Australia on disability pensions are all involved in false pretences and misappropriation of public money, or should you refer to those milking the system as pension thieves or similar?
As for Jihadis running around Syria as you say, surely it is the law that is at fault for letting them and their family be on an Australian pension.
Yes, it seems many single mothers are using the system, but that too involves misappropriation of public money that is fault of Parliament for allowing it to continue.
It does not hurt me to hear the truth, however the truth is that I think you should be referring to thieves and criminals and bludgers without pointing the finger directly at pensioners and aboriginals in general, as you did in your earlier comment.
Cheers.

DM,

The problem with socialism is that people will never be ready for it. It works well in kibbutzim where everyone is committed to the ideal, but where the majority of people are motivated not by the communal good but by achievement and reward, the socialist system can only exist by force.

Secondly where all the methods of production are owned by the state, and decisions are made by political appointees not entrepreneurs the results are usually bad ones, and the products are the crappy rubbish that those in the soviet union were forced to buy.

Is anybody else having trouble figuring out where Barry York is coming from?

He submits posts that appear to give the Left a serve, and then he comes right out and shows his true colours by advocating the state ownership of the means of production. He even claims that "social control" of the means of production "would make individuals freeer." Jesus, what planet is this bloke from?

Planet Earth calling Barry York. Socialist economics on this planet failed in every state and city it was tried. How many times does something need to fail before you figure out it is a bad idea? But socialism is not just economics. Socialist social theory based upon the notion that all people are equal, and that they must be treated absolutely equal, unless they are poor, crime prone, and totally dysfunctional, in which case the "rich" must be at fault through discrimination and oppression, and they must pay to make the poor the equal of everybody else. What the Left wants is a society totally dependent on the state for their incomes. This idiotic notion is presently sending previously wealthy European nations broke.

Angela Merkel summed it up best when she stated that the reason for European economic stagnation Europe's biggest problem was because "Europe had 12% of the world's population, 26% of the world's manufacturing capability, and 56% of the world's welfare recipients." The Left thinks that growing the welfare dependent in every capitalist society is the way to go. That is why they support third world immigration into first world societies. Third worlders are still dumb enough to believe in socialism because they like the idea of somebody else paying for their upkeep. And you can bet that every third worlder who scores a goal and makes it into a first world country will vote for the socialists to keep the gravy train flowing along.

The inevitable end of that sort of thinking can be seen in what happened to Detroit. Democratic Party socialists, black minorities, and greedy and uncompromising unions thought that they could squeeze the capitalist golden goose forever.

LEGO, where I'm coming from is the 'red left' tradition - definitely not green. Of course, this causes cognitive dissonance in those who believe in 'Watermelons'.

There is nothing left-wing about climate alarmism because it's reactionary and anti-progress. The doom-and-gloom outlook of the pseudo-left in general is the opposite of the revolutionary optimism of a real left-wing outlook.

Regarding socialism, the USA has a capitalist economy which, like all other capitalist economies, relies on tax-payer, or 'state', funding especially in times of periodic crisis.

Detroit is a fine 'tribute' to capitalism, when even state subsidy can no longer keep the zombie system going. All that plant, equipment, tools, machinery, technology - means of production - standing idle while most of the locals are out of work. That is the system you seem to support.

Under social ownership of means of production, the workers would have the opportunity and ability to make productive use of those means of production, real wealth would be created by and for the producers. But under the system you seem to prefer, production and employment are at the whim of the 'one percent' (or a fraction thereof) who own the means of production.

Needless to say, the capitalist system is also hopeless when it comes to innovation, with those market-driven big companies largely dependent on state-funded universities and research institutions to fund the R&D that serves them.

So, where I'm coming from is a fairly standard orthodox left-wing position influenced by Marxism. Just because the ABC regularly promotes the pseudo-left does not mean that a real left outlook does not exist.