Instigator / Pro
7
1266
rating
119
debates
15.97%
won
Topic
#606

You don't know what socialism is (for right wingers only)

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
2
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

GuitarSlinger
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
12
1435
rating
15
debates
33.33%
won
Description

No information

Round 1
Pro
#1
No right winger I have ever witnessed in the history of the world has an accurate understanding of what socialism is. You all seem to have this idea in your right leaning brains that right wing is synonymous with freedom and the more left wing you are the more you want the state to run everyone's lives and steal from all the hard working rich people to redistribute wealth to the worthless lazy parasites known as the working class.

In the words of child molester, devil worshiper, and KKK grand wizard Karl Marx:
 "Socialism is when the government does stuff and the more stuff the government does the more socialister it is".

Meanwhile in reality, there is a much more nuanced way of looking at things.

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production andworkers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be publiccollective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.[5][14][15]
Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms.[16] Non-market socialism involves the substitution offactor markets and money with engineering and technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing an economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws from those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system.[25] By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm, or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend.[26][27][28] The socialist calculation debate concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a socialist system.
Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist in orientation; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions, and at other times independent and critical of unions; and present in both industrialised and developing nations.[29] Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form ofincome redistributionregulation, and a welfare stateEconomic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism where there is more decentralized control of companies, currencies, investments, and natural resources.
The socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism.[13] By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.[30][31] By the 1920s, social democracy and communism had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement.[32]By this time, socialism emerged as "the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. It is a political ideology (or world view), a wide and divided political movement"[33] and while the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism[34][35][36] or a non-planned administrative or command economy.[37][38] Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, some socialists have also adopted the causes of other social movements, such asenvironmentalismfeminism and progressivism.[39] In 21st century America, the term socialism, without clear definition, has become a pejorative used byconservatives to taint liberal and progressive policies, proposals, and public figures.[40]

Con
#2
Simple definition of socialism:  a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Typically, how does the community as a whole own or regulate it?  GOvernment.  
Round 2
Pro
#3
Forfeited
Con
#4
Simple definition of socialism:  a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Typically, how does the community as a whole own or regulate it?  GOvernment.  

Round 3
Pro
#5
I rest my case. The only thing right wingers (think they) know about socialism is OMG BIG GOVERNMENT BAD BAD BAD.

If you look at what socialism is actually about though, it inherently entails the decentralization of power because it is all about collective ownership of the means of production rather than private or state ownership. The more right wing a system is, the more wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of the few.

The terms right and left refer to political affiliations originating early in the French Revolutionary era of 1789–1799 and referred originally to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France.[1] As seen from the Speaker's seat at the front of the Assembly, the aristocracy sat on the right (traditionally the seat of honor) and the commoners sat on the left, hence the terms right-wing politics and left-wing politics.[1]
Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was the Ancien Régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic or royal interests and the church, while "The Left" implied support for republicanismsecularism and civil liberties.[1] Because the political franchise at the start of the revolution was relatively narrow, the original "Left" represented mainly the interests of the bourgeoisie, the rising capitalist class (with notable exceptions such as the proto-communist Gracchus Babeuf). Support for laissez-faire commerce and free markets were expressed by politicians sitting on the left because these represented policies favorable to capitalists rather than to the aristocracy, but outside parliamentary politics these views are often characterized as being on the Right.
The reason for this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that those "to the left" of the parliamentary left, outside official parliamentary structures (such as the sans-culottes of the French Revolution), typically represent much of the working class, poor peasantry and the unemployed. Their political interests in the French Revolution lay with opposition to the aristocracy and so they found themselves allied with the early capitalists. However, this did not mean that their economic interests lay with the laissez-faire policies of those representing them politically.
As capitalist economies developed, the aristocracy became less relevant and were mostly replaced by capitalist representatives. The size of the working class increased as capitalism expanded and began to find expression partly through trade unionist, socialist, anarchist and communist politics rather than being confined to the capitalist policies expressed by the original "left". This evolution has often pulled parliamentary politicians away from laissez-faire economic policies, although this has happened to different degrees in different countries, especially those with a history of issues with more authoritarian-left countries, such as the Soviet Unionor China under Mao Zedong.
Thus the word "Left" in American political parlance may refer to "liberalism" and be identified with the Democratic Party, whereas in a country such as France these positions would be regarded as relatively more right-wing, or centrist overall, and "left" is more likely to refer to "socialist" or "social-democratic" positions rather than "liberal" ones.

So by definition, socialism is an extension of egalitarianism and libertarianism (liberalism in the classical sense). Authoritarian socialism is the result of  failed socialism as it goes against the fundamental basis of what socialism is supposed to be. In Marxist socialism the role of the post-revolution state is to set up socialism, not to be a permanent factor and to perpetually run things with central planning, and it is meant to be largely democratically run as well. Maoist China was not even an example of socialism, it was a failed attempt to set up socialism i.e the collective ownership of the means of production. 

So in sum socialism is inherently not a system where the government controls everything and that's all that right wingers think of when they hear the term.

Con
#6
So tell, me in your terms (not wikipedia's), how, pray tell, does the community as a whole control the means of production etc?  What's the mechanism for doing that?