The experience of places like Soviet Union, eastern Europe, China, Cuba etc is of limited relevance. These countries were extremely backward, economically, socially and politically. Socialism’s failure or defeat under these conditions was not surprising.

Why hasn’t socialism taken off in more developed places like Nth America and Western Europe? A good question. Here is another good question. Why did it take industrial capitalism a few hundred thousands years to first catch on?

i ask this in good faith.

Ken

I read your comment and I agree that thrusting infants into day care has had debilitating effects; however, a cursory reading of Marx and Engels will reveal that neither had a favorable view of what we call the “nuclear family”. In keeping with dialectical materialism, the family as a social construct emerged at a given stage in human evolution as a reflection of capitalist society.

Just as the capitalist owner exploits his workers, so do the father (or mother, or both) exploit the children, and this construct will fade away as society changes the way in which it produces and allocates its resources. Said another way, just as the means of production will be collectively owned, the parenting of children will become a collective responsibility to the extent that children are unable to raise themselves. “It takes a village to raise a child”, as it were.

I’m not saying I agree with this, I’m merely saying that this is how most orthodox communists would answer your question. Whether or not it has any scientific merit or is beneficial for the child is a different matter.

Same comment, spelling corrections:

I am worried about your definition of Socialism. Is not true socialism a form of economic organization in which productive enterprises are owned, oropganized and directed by the workers who operate them? Optimally very decentralized and democratic. Is not anything else “State Capitalism?” Central state owns all enterprises. Can go very sour. Consider the Soviet Union.

Also I take issue with your restriction of the population that would continue to need public help (welfare) in your economic paradise. You limit it, I believe, to the disabled and the very sick. Has it not occurred to you that women in the throes of raising infants and toddlers have too much on their plate to be earning a decent living in the out-of home workplace, no matter how kind the economy is to paid workers—that is to workers whose labor is included in the definition of pay worthy work. In our country, we so automatically exclude the work of raising the next workforce—-which is extraodinarily intense when these tiny future workers are new to the world—-from the definition of legitimate labor that we can overlook the need to provide it with material support.

Or do you assume that infants will naturally go into day care immediately after birth so their moms can go right back to their day jobs and support themseves? In which case I think you will be looking at a lot of social trouble. Get a university librarian to generate a list of articles on the connection between the level of stress hormones in the infant brain and the growth of brain cells and the development of synapses. Or ask some elementary school teachers about the deep anger of elementary school children whose mothers have only been available to them on a very limited basis for all of their young lives.

You might study the child allowance systems of the worlds most successful socialist states, the Scandinavian socialist democracies. Or check out Veneuzuela’s federal housewives’ payment. Better yet, raise a child from infancy and find out for yourself. I admire your ambition, but as the person who designed the nation’s 1960s nuclear civil defense program for Hudson Institute at the far too young age of 24, I can tell you that it it is an enormous mistake to start designing social institutions before you have had some hands on experience in child rearing, and understand the intensity of its demands on the adults who are brave enough to attempt it. The infants in my plan would have died.

Please organize your socialist polity to pay for the necessary work of nurture.

Sincerely yours,

Sara Dustin

I am worried about your definition of Socialism. Is not true socialism a form of economic organization in which productive enterprises are owned, oropganized and directed by the workers who operate them? Optimally very decentralized and democratic. Is not anything else “State Capitalism?” Central state owns all enterprises. Can go very sour. Consider the Soviet Union.

Also I take issue with your destriction of the population that would continue to need public help (welfare) in your economic paradise. You limit, I believe, to the disabled. Has it not occurred to you that women in the throes of raising infants and toddlers have too much on their plate to be earning a decent living in the out-of home workplace, no matter how kind the economy is to paid workers—that is to workers whose labor is included in the definition of pay worthy work. In our country, we so automatically exclude the work of raising the next workforce—-which is extraodinarily intense when these tiny future workers are new to the world—-from the definition of legitimate labor that we can overlook the need to provide it with material support.

Or do you assume that infants will naturally go into day care immediately after birth so their moms can go right back to their day jobs and support themseves? In which case I think you will be looking at a lot of social trouble. Get a university librarian to generate a list of articles on the connection between the level of stress hormones in the infant brain and the growth of brain cells and the development of synapses. Or ask some elementary school teachers about the deep anger of elementary school children whose mothers have only been available to them on a very limited basis for all of their young lives.

You might study the child allowance systems of the worlds most successful socialist states, the Scandinavian socialist democracies. Or check out Veneuzuela’s federal housewives’ payment. Better yet, raise a child from infancy and find out for yourself. I admire your ambition, but as the person who designed the nation’s 1960s nuclear civil defense program for Hudson Institute at the far too young age of 24, I can tell you that it it is an enormous mistake to start designing social institutions before you have had some hands on experience in child rearing, and understand the intensity of its demands on the adults who are brave enough to attempt it. The infants in my plan would have died.

Please organize your socialist polity to pay for the necessary work of nurture.

Sincerely yours,

Sara Dustin

I’ve perused your material before and I must say that you are probably the most cogent socialist thinker I’ve seen on the internet. Having said this, I don’t necessarily agree with everything you say and I struggle with some of your ideas but you’ve clearly demonstrated that you’ve given your position careful and detailed thought.

Essentially, what I’ve gathered from you is that our current economic system is the product of evolutionary development and does not exist is stasis but continues to change within the context of an evolutionary continuum. I’m not sure if you’ve been asked this before, but one of the things I don’t understand is why, given this fact, our society must of necessity become socialistic within the narrow definition of Marx and Engels. It almost sounds like something imposed by design rather than the product of evolution.

In other words, given that evolution itself is an inherently ateleological process, why do you think and how do you know that a socialist society is an historical inevitability? Perhaps you’ve already addressed this in some of your other works but in the event that you haven’t, your insight would be welcome here.

Cheers,
Ethan

I plan to continue valiantly soldiering on with the counter-intuitive idea that socialism can deliver small government. It is a work in progress.