You are getting terrible answers here, and your question is a bit confusing. So lets clarify terms a bit first, and see if we can get you a decent response:
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Socialism is defined as the state ownership of property, and central management of production and distribution.
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Communism is the absence of private property.
Which is why your question seems odd. Instead I think you mean ‘socialistic’ which is what we have in westen democracies today:
- Democratic redistributive socialism is private control of property with heavy progressive taxation of profits. This is what we do in most countries today. It preserves both the ability of individuals to conduct economic calculation and the incentives necessary for them to act in concert to fulfill the desires of others for purely selfish reasons. THe general argument is predicated on the idea of Pareto Efficiency: that you can take something from someone and give it to something else, as long as it does not make him worse off. Which in political terms means that the individual does not lose his incentive to produce at the same level as he does prior to the theft of his property by the government for redistribution to others. The logic of this is that for businesses to grow and expand, consumers must have money to spend and that more additional money is made when they spend it, and so, at least in the end result, everyone is always getting better over time. … I will not follow the entire economic cycle here but in theory and practice, to a limited extent, it is not a bad idea even if it feels immoral to many of us.
WHY THE SOCIALIST NON-ECONOMY DOES NOT WORK
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Prices are an information system that tells people what they need to do to satisfy the needs of others.
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Without prices it is impossible for humans to plan the production of complex goods.
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Without prices people cannot have the information needed to have the incentives to engage in productive activity.
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any attempt to use computers and static means of production would be forced in to autarkic production (a need to be totally self sustaining) by relative decrease in productivity, followed by constant impoverishment (See Cuba).
It does not work outside of the family, and only works within the family, because of parental dictatorship, and our instincts for consanguineous cooperation and care-taking.
The world has abandoned both communism and socialism, and has assumed highly redistributive consumer capitalism Which is ‘socialistic’ but not technically socialist. This maintains prices, and incentives, and the ability to plan complex production while taking as much profit as possible from producers without destroying incentives.
It appears that outside of the west, most countries have or will, adopt totalitarian consumer capitalism, which in practice, in China for example, is an oligarchy running major state industries and finance, and redistribution in the form of easy credit and public services to ‘everyone else’. This seems to be the pattern. It is not any different from what we have in the USA, it’s just more obvious.
But no, since communism is the abandonment of private property, no it is not possible, ever, under any circumstance, which is why it’s been abandoned.
Socialism cannot exist either because it is not possible for people to operate an economy without money, prices and property, becasue neigher economic calculation nor incentives can exist.
But that has not stopped the desire for it. Any more than people have stopped the desire for the absurdity of divinities and afterlife. These ideas are a religious need, a spiritual need, in many people. SO this is why they have turned to the religion of Postmodernism as the newest reformation of socialism.
POSTMODERNISM
In response to the total failure of the Communist and Socialist agendas, both in theory and in practice, most of the left intellectuals have adopted Postmodernism which is where the idea that
Forgive the long quote here in exchange for its value:
“In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.
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On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.
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On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.
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Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.
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Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
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Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.
There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next. Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.
They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.
They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.
Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.” – Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (2004)
COMMUNISM->SOCIALISM ->POSTMODERNISM ARE RELIGIONS
“Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism). Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism). Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation). Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).” – Hicks.
CHOMSKY IS THE ONLY LEFT PHILOSOPHER
Because he has mastered the art of using untrue language. That is his contribution to the new religion of Postmodernism. He invented linguistic tricks that could deceive human beings.
Cheers
Curt.