What Democratic Socialism Was Actually Like

The problem as I see it, living in the UK, is that captialism and socialism are two sides of the same coin. We all need to live, and that means earning money in order to buy food, shelter, clothes, etc. So whichever system is chosen by those in charge, the outcome is more or less the same. Poverty for the masses and riches beyond avarice for the elites. However, the problem is that wealth has to be created in order that it can be earned and distributed, and this is where the capitalist system wins over a purely socialist system.

Under capitalism, anyone who has a bright idea can look for sponsors in order to create wealth from it. Mr Dyson and his bagless vacuum cleaner is a case in point, and just goes to show how something as simple as a vacuum can be such a money spinner. Under a purely socialist system that can't happen because the state is the arbiter of who does what. So the state sets up endless bureaux in order to develop and control all ideas. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and more often than not, it doesn't. However, even a purely capitalist system like the US also relies on bureaucracy to oversee what gets promoted and what gets discarded. In terms of safety, the US government has had to take charge of public health and I believe that in the US children get an enormous number of innoculations even before they start school, which doesn't happen elsewhere, even in socialist countries. Furthermore, such things as US electrical wiring and outlets are governed at state level if not at federal level, and all dwellings have to adhere to a code of practice for their electrical setup.

In contrast, in the capitalist system people like Tesla for example (the bloke, not the car company) can emerge and prosper. He was a genius, and he even developed a car that ran on electricity harvested from the Earth's magnetic field. However, the oil industry didn't want to be made obsolete by his invention, so they used the government to confiscate all his inventions, and instead the internal combustion powered car became the norm.

Nowadays electric cars are what the government want to impose on us all, and they have the details of the Tesla, so if they really were serious about pollution, they could release the details and tell all car producers to use the Tesla system. This would stop pollution in its tracks and mean a much cleaner enviroment for all our children. But they won't, because they want the tax revenues they get from the internal combustion engine in the form of fuel tax, despite the air pollution it creates.

There is also the human aspect to all this. In both the capitalist and socialist systems, corruption is rife. The amount of corruption is very similar in both cases. Despite socialism being touted as the way to enrich the masses at the expense of the rich, the opposite is the actual outcome of socialist policies. The rich leave the country and take their money with them, so that overall the country becomes much poorer than it was. The tax burden on the poor is then ramped up in order to pay for the government's social policies, and this only deepens the economic misery even more.

Is there an answer to this conundrum? Yes, I think there is. The normal way that the UK has worked in the past and quite successfully, is that it's had what's called a, "Mixed Economy". This means that essential services such as health (NHS), transport infrastructure (roads) and electric power infrastructure (national grid) are government owned and maintained, while just about everything else is privately owned, so there is room for entrepreneurship. In this regard, industries such as water, steel, rail transport, and gas services which used to be nationalised, have been turned over to private ownership. However, this has led to a growth in corruption at the top of the privatised industries (water being the most obvious) that is now forcing the government to rethink the strategy for the future. Indeed, there is even a new left-wing political party that's just been formed with the avowed intent of re-nationalising such things as the railways, steel, and other huge industries that were previously government owned during and after WW2. In this way it's hoped that the corruption of the upper management of those industries will be stopped, and any profits from them will be fed back into the system once more, instead of sliding off into the back pockets of the rich.

Will it work, who knows? But there are many left-wing supporters who swear by it. Personally I think they'll end up swearing At it, not By it when even the newly appointed government placemen start trying to line their own pockets at other people's expense..

 

*Norway