Albert Einstein was certainly smart, but he did not live to see how socialism worked out.
Einstein lived long enough to see how Stalinism worked out; he outlived Stalin. On the other hand, by some definitions Norway is socialist and things seem to have worked out pretty good there.
This kind of discussion is pointless: everyone uses "socialism" to mean whatever they think it should mean and then argues. It's like a bunch of people getting together to play a game, except one is playing chess, one checkers, and someone else poker. Then they all get indignant and yell at each other, which I suppose is the real game.
By how much would the world supply of argumentation deflate if people paid attention to whether they were even talking about the same thing?
"everyone uses "socialism" to mean whatever they think it should mean and then argues"
The general idea of socialism is the forced redistribution of wealth or property, which pretty much doesn't change in all of the different versions of socialism.
I consider massive taxes to pay for government programs a form of socialism (taxes that go above and beyond the basic funding of a nation/country. IE: fire, police, roads, schools). As these taxes get bigger and bigger, the wealth distribution becomes equal and it starts to really become more of a communist system.
It seems to me that the people that don't want it called 'socialism' want to hide the fact that it's exactly that.
The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. - George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)
This should be posted at the top of every political discussion, in my humble opinion.
As someone earlier had pointed out, the totality of Socialism is not Marxist-Leninism. If you read the article, Einstein also warned that a planned economy did not preclude the enslavement of the individual.
Living is essentially a contradiction - each human being is an individual and as a creature of nature, possesses instincts which guards against others who seek to deprive him/her of his individuality and his chance to live. Yet he/she benefits from cooperating with others to achieve a greater goal larger than the sum of his/her parts.
This is a never ending struggle and it has dominated political discussion for twentieth century. It disappoints me that most people would take an extreme position - i.e. capitalism is good/evil or socialism is good/evil - leaves us no room to negotiate solutions which will work out for the individual and society.
Good points. I didn't really understand Einstein's points about the individual being so dependent on society, though. Therefore what? We shouldn't be so selfish? When I see government workers protesting cuts, while regular workers are losing their jobs quietly, and going back to work somewhere else, I think those protestors are selfish for thinking that their paycheck is a right - at my expense.
There are two other issues that I have with the piece:
Economic: what the owner sells is the not the product of labor, but rather the product of all inputs (investment) that went into the production of the good or service.
Historical: nuclear war (or WWIII) was not prevented by a supra-national organization, but rather the collapse of a (inneficiently) planned economy. But how could he see that coming?
http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/