Labour still want to tax and spend the country into bankruptcy

[lizmachin]

GOVERNMENT ownership. Not ownership by the people.

 

So who owns the government?

[lizmachin]

In russia and china? Well certainly not the people.

 

The animals then?

[dagaul101]

Seems the current government still want to implement these spending cuts, so nothing has changed really

[dell12]

A Society without money? That could have advantages. Nobody would have to pay any tax - you want something, you work for it or go without.

 

Landowners (we could call them 'feudal lords') could hire workers ('serfs and villeins') to work on their land and in return those serfs and villeins would be allowed to cultivate enough land to feed their families. Life might be a bit hard for those who lived in the cities - but I suppose they could spend all day in the cinema.

 

 

There would be no point in taxes necessarily.

 

Continuing the Kibbutz analogy, each person would have what they 'need' to live. No more, no less, or "from each according to ability, to each according to needs"

[Darth Vader]

So who owns the government?

 

I think there's joint ownership at the moment, between Rupert Murdoch, a couple of Lords, and a handful of Sirs.

[Harleyman]

GOVERNMENT ownership. Not ownership by the people.

 

The government are the people and vice versa or supposed to be anyway.

 

Seems that most governments these days cant seem to do a half decent job in governing their countries never mind butting their noses into how the country's business affairs and industry should be organized and run.

 

But on the other hand the banks, Wall street et al are a bunch of incompetents also

[Harleyman]

There would be no point in taxes necessarily.

 

Continuing the Kibbutz analogy, each person would have what they 'need' to live. No more, no less, or "from each according to ability, to each according to needs"

 

 

"Each according to ability" are the key words. That's why some get rich and prosperous while others are content to do with less due to "lesser ability"

The problem here though is that that eventually the ones who are content to do with less want to grab some of the riches accumulated by those who gained it by their ability

[lizmachin]

Well, i would agree that is what the ideal is - in reality we have governments who (are supposed to) represent us, rather than the people being the government, if you see what i mean. But in China and the USSR, they didn't (or don't) even have the pretence of being of the people (other than in their home propaganda), they are dictatorships. Dictatorships are actually further away from socialism than they are from democracy, odd as it might sound. Agree with the rest of your post.

 

 

So which socialist state would you put forward as the shining beacon that we should aspire to become?

[lizmachin]

I have repudiated/explained these points already in post 50.

 

I thought it was a load of rubbish there too.

[Harleyman]

Well, i would agree that is what the ideal is - in reality we have governments who (are supposed to) represent us, rather than the people being the government, if you see what i mean. But in China and the USSR, they didn't (or don't) even have the pretence of being of the people (other than in their home propaganda), they are dictatorships. Dictatorships are actually further away from socialism than they are from democracy, odd as it might sound. Agree with the rest of your post.

 

My point as regards China is that the Chinese government are slowly moving away from the concept that everything should be owned and run by the government. A few decades ago anyone earning a profit through his or her own initiative would have been labeled a "vile capitalist" and severely punished.

 

These days though individual enterprise is very much encouraged by the government and many small privately owned businesses have appeared in the last two decades.

 

The large businesses are still very much under government control but eventually these too will be privately owned and run.

 

China unlike Russia realized that the "Communist system?" could not be dumped overnight and that the transition would be a slow and cautious one and with good reason judging from what they saw happening in Russia