Originally Posted by
IMPress Polly
I consider myself to be a socialist. I define socialism as a general system of social ownership and management; a state of affairs in which the means of production are public property and managed be either their workers, their consumers, or some combination thereof, preferably within the context of small-scale, democratically-planned economies that are not based on no-growth economics.
This view isn't agreed upon by all who call themselves socialists today by any means. Essentially Bernie Sanders has popularized the term among today's youth a considerable extent and when he calls himself a "socialist", he does NOT mean a general system of social ownership or management. He simply uses the term to describe, if you will, a kinder, gentler kind of capitalism that includes state guarantees against what he considers to be excessive poverty and excessive exploitation of workers and consumers. He opposes the idea of changing the ownership, or the general management structure, of the economy.
As to the old Soviet system and others like it, today I regard those as police states that operated according to the principles of state capitalism, meaning that their economies were built on a framework of extracting surplus labor for the state (i.e. turning the non-democratic state a profit, if you will). Generally, their economies were managed by state-appointed individuals or small groups rather than by worker and/or consumers (i.e. democratically), and none allowed the public to decide itself on prices and wages. Generally, they didn't even tolerate strikes, in fact. The whole premise was turning profits for the state. As time went on in the Soviet Union, this became gradually more parasitic in nature: eventually, from the mid-1960s, individual state companies were allowed to retain half of their profits instead of turning them over to the central government, and by the late 1980s formal privatization was being introduced for the purpose of saving money.
I regard the Soviet system as essentially similar in essence to old feudal systems. Feudalism being a state of affairs in which the state is private property (perhaps of an individual family or religious institution, for example), the Soviet system was one in which an individual political party essentially owned the state and used it to entrench itself and extract profits for its top bureaucrats.
Anyway, that's my view.