Essay talk:Criticism of "Criticism of Socialism"

Keep up the good work!
Cheers. A somebody. (talk) 03:04, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"it's"
You're not using that contraction correctly. I've counted 10 times of its misuse on this page. 15:45, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * How dare you?! Do you really think OSD should have to take this from a peasant with no formal training in logic??? 16:24, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Training in logic? Well, I think I know how to redirect some pipes and untangle the spaghetti. 16:37, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a short lesson to why you don't edit on mobile. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the catch. Things would have been completely illegible otherwise. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 16:45, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yep. The wordy, clumsy prose was already difficult enough for me to maintain interest. 17:46, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, because at the end of the day it's style over substance right? Nothing passive aggressive or petty in pointing that out. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 17:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I’m sincerely amused (but not surprised) by the poor quality of this essay. From my understanding, you said that the article didn’t define socialism to claim that the criticism is not valid by other forms of socialism. Problem is, which forms of socialism support the same institutions on property rights, economic freedom, profit-motive, welfare state (or the lack of it) and inequality at the same time than we have right now on capitalism? Can you please give an example of where such system exists? A considerable part of the article is based on that sort of criticism. Just like in the talk page discussion, you’re focusing only on the economic calculation part of the article. When the article argues that free-enterprise, the system where some people own a company and others work on it, is the most efficient, isn’t it criticizing socialism as a whole or just the Soviet-style of socialism? That’s what I thought. Indeed, even the Wikipedia article that you quote say that socialism is “characterized by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.” That article makes the case that private ownership of these means is the way to go in order to achieve prosperity. It doesn’t matter if they are public or communal; any form of socialism is being criticized because they all lack at least some of these institutions. And no, using experiments that only exist in the minds of a few thinkers doesn’t make your case better.

You failed at understanding what Samuelson and Nordhaus said. They weren’t talking about capitalist countries, but about the capitalist system. Your examples don’t really qualify as capitalism because, well, they were not operating as capitalism when this sort of thing happen (I’m not saying that they are socialism either). As the article says more than once, non-capitalist institutions can exist in capitalist countries, just like capitalist institutions can exist in socialist countries. Nonetheless, your strawman is also flawed. How much of the American aggregate economy was affected by the Defense Production Act? How many prices controlled, just like during the Nixon Shock? (Remember, prices are one of the most important part of the argument) Central-planning is planning almost the entire economy, not only a few parts, and you failed at understanding it too, even though I told you many many times on the talk page discussion.

You also failed at understanding Mankiw’s quote. It’s not an argument against liberal welfare. The point is, even capitalist countries had to deal with these inefficiencies, so building better policies is important. I used it as a form of counter-criticism of socialism. Indeed, we’re way past the idea that welfare is a bad thing, and even radicals like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek supported UBI (the former being the father of NIT). You did get one thing right, however. The argument used by Mill and rebutted by Marx is incorrect. An early draft of my article had a citation about this, where Nobel Memorial Prize Abhijit V. Banerjee discredited the idea that people get lazy because of welfare, but due to a hardware failure I lost it and forgot to add again. That’s why this article remained on-hold for so long btw. I will edit the article in the future and correct this mistake.

I also find funny how you accuse me of focusing on the USSR and China and not of tiny, short-lived experiments which we have very little to know actual data except for the account of some people (IIRC most scholars have to use George Orwell as their source of Revolutionary Catalonia), when my article in fact quotes studies that covered dozens, sometimes hundreds of countries across decades. It’s in the intro of the article: there is very little data on these experiments, so almost no economist studied them (I checked, and I couldn’t find anything relevant). To my knowledge, no one tried to do what did to these small experiments. I also found funny that you completely ignored how I mention the capitalist elements in these two countries quite a few times.

Are examples you mentioned socialist experiments? Even the fucking Jacobin Magazine has an article on the Kibbutz and how they’re not socialist, for instance. Even if they are, do you really believe that these cases can tell us more about social facts than the big picture presented by say, Robert Barro and Daron Acemoglu? Of course, they don’t. These guys use hundreds of countries in their studies. This is how science is done. You’re just nutpicking a couple of cases and saying that they represent socialism better than huge countries that lasted for decades, countries that we have reliable data on. The article doesn't focus on the socialist experiments of the XXth century because they are the only form of socialism, but because other forms don't have empirical data.

You also seem to think that, because a problem exists in capitalism, the criticism of socialism is invalid. This is bad reasoning to say the least. So, because one structure is flawed, we can’t claim that the other also has similar problems? No, the criticism still stands, this is like saying that Americans couldn’t criticize Soviets for their lack of respect for the Human Rights just because their country was also doing poorly. And again, we have the scale problem. Sometimes the problem exists in capitalism, but it’s a lot worse in socialism, what makes the criticism even more compelling.

You don’t even seem to be aware that cooperatives are compatible with capitalism. They can exist and compete with companies within capitalism. There are many studies in this regard, showing both the strengths and weaknesses of those cooperatives. Mondragon, the most successful cooperative that I’m aware, for instance, basically became what is actually a “normal” enterprise because it was the only way that it found to remain competitive. The only way that a cooperative is not capitalist is when you outlaw any form private enterprise, which is not what these cooperatives advocate as far as I’m aware.

Another user (not you) talked to me in private however, and convinced me that I should write a better explanation of what is socialism. I’ll use Wikipedia’s definition and sources (already found some of them). Since my fucking grandfather is very ill right now (I’m with him in the hospital right know in the middle of the night, writing this thing while waiting), I won't do this in the following weeks though, I have more important things to do on my vacation, but yeah, guess that you were right on this point too, the definition is too vague and it will be fixed in the future.

Regarding market socialism, all I’m going to say is that the definition I used was quoted from, Andrei Shleifer, the most cited economist in the world. Does that mean that the definition is correct? No. But I don’t have any reason to trust you more than him. You should at least check the sources being used before calling them “biased” (as if bias was inherently a problem).

Which leads us to the single most bizarre part of your essay (which is a lot): the sources. I’ve used more than a dozen Nobel Memorial Prizes in my article, as well as 4 out of the five most cited economists in the world according to Repec. You used discredited sources, like Mariana Mazzucato. If you want to know how low you sank on this one, let’s use Repec again. Mazzucato is not even on the top 3000 names on the list. David Laibman, Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert not even on the list (there are more than 6 thousand names there). Even Peter Boettke and Randall Holcombe, the only two “modern” Austrian school economists I used on my article are more regarded than Mazzucato, and she’s your least fringe source according to Repec. There’s more: if you want to write an article, people expect you to use stuff like the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Political Economy like I did, not smaller journals, like Science & Society ( of only 0.867!). Sometimes, there is nothing wrong about using a few fringe sources, but using them as your main sources (or even as your only sources) is like to use global warming denialists as a source to write about climate change: it gives the impression that you just want to massage your biases. This is the source of denialism I criticize, not simply adhere to the Austrian school or the Post-Keynesian school. Oh, and yes, Hedrick Smith is (at least according to Wikipedia) used as an academic source. You can’t put him on the same level as those other two guys (though, again, I have conceded that they have a point). You are being dishonest when you said that their argument is “dismissed”. The page just say that there isn’t enough evidence yet for either side of the debate, and I’ve already told you that more than once, what makes me wonder if you’re not intentionally lying or if you are simply too oblivious.

These are not the only problems if you essay, there are many others. Amartya Sen as a right-wing libertarian? Wtf? When does the article suggest that socialism is always marked by SOEs? The article doesn’t say that there are arguments about the morality of socialism and about its efficiency. They are separate, the single conclusion is not that socialism is immoral. I’ve criticized economic denialism from the right just as much as I did from the left, you also lied about my own user page. Those are just some of your other mistakes on this page that I’m not addressing. Nonetheless I’ll stop here because I have more important things to do. I’ll repeat what I’ve already said to you before. We’re not on the same level. With all due respect, you’re an uneducated rube. You lack fluid and crystallized intelligence, and you are unqualified to write about this subject, or any subject at all. You can’t read a text in plain English and your writing skills are also appalling.

That being said. You don’t even understand how Wikis work. No one is preventing you from editing the article, I won’t rollback your edits unless I have a good reason, (say, using as your main source philosophers from the first half of the 20th century that wrote on prose, since most of them don’t present any empirical data) because I am myself biased on the subject. However, considering your poor understanding of socialism and capitalism, your even more abysmal understanding of research on social sciences (you don’t even know how to read a scientific paper) and based on this extremely poor essay, I think however that you shouldn’t write on the article. If this is the best that you can, well, then the one thing I just suggest you to do is study more and come back in a few years. You are still, however, entitled to write on the article because I’m not the owner of the article nor the Wiki, no one is, and unless you start posting gibberish written by hacks such as Mariana Mazzucato, like you did in this essay, I won’t revert you.

Don’t bother answering, I’ll not read it, since you all did so far is this piece of strawman and I doubt you’ll learn something new the short term; because you’ll probably just move the goalpost and JAQ off like you always do; and because I don't have time since I have to take care of my family (my grandparents are very ill). As I said, I don’t believe you really have anything to teach me here because, well, you don’t know a lot about the subject. I know, however, that you will still answer this post because you also lack emotional intelligence, and you don’t know when to stop, even when you lose a debate. Indeed, I’ve never seen you not answer a post on a discussion. Just keep in mind that you’ll answer to no one since, as I’ve already said, I don’t think you have nothing to contribute and I won’t read what you have to say, probably wouldn’t do it even if I had time. Nor will I read the rest of your “essay” if you keep writing it.

One last thing I’d like to suggest you is, stopping taking this whole thing so seriously. Not everything is about you. You’re writing an entire bloated excuse of an essay using laughable sources because you disagreed with someone on the Internet. I feel like I’ve just rented an entire apartment on your head, and that’s not what I wanted when I wrote my article. This is not healthy for you. I can only help but imagine what would have happened to me if this sort of meltdown happened every time I had discussions on talk pages on Wikipedia since February 2006, when I created my account. In the end, this piece says a lot more about you than about my article of socialism, or capitalism.

If you still want to go on with this pathetic attempt to debunk my article, my suggestion is, this whole thing and start again. And read my article with more attention before starting to write this verbal diarrhea. I’m sorry for the many typos, as I said I’m writing this long comment on my phone from the hospital, where I am with my grandfather. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 02:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Why do you say "please give an example" and then say "I won't read any response you post"? Isn't that counterproductive to the purpose of discussion? Also Kibbutzim were projects of direct participatory democracy engaging in a communal lifestyle, which were essentially a manifestation of utopian socialism in a Palestinian context (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41420450). You criticize OSD for "failing to understand socialism and capitalism" but you make many basic errors in your own critique here, including saying kibbutzim were never a socialist project when they very much were, even if they no longer qualify as socialist today. You yourself engage in fallacious tactics like poisoning the well and the genetic fallacy by insinuating that OSD's sources cast shade on their entire essay without addressing the content of the essay or the sources. You can't claim to have "won the debate" when you make basic factual errors and engage in fallacious debating strategies. You also conflate capitalism with market economics, when there is a clear distinction between the two. Capitalism is a system fundamentally based on extracting wealth through private control of the means of production, markets are merely modes of exchange between two or more parties. In this response to OSD you still fail to account for non-economic perspectives (like from a sociological or anthropological perspective, e.g. your comments about human nature in your article being geared towards rational behavior when the economies of hunter-gatherers are fundamentally gift economies, and even in recent settings barter was mostly used as a mode of exchange between groups, and not within groups. Culture and overall environmental conditions have a not insignificant influence on how human nature manifests in a given setting that your article and response fails to account for.) Carthage (talk) 02:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

you are not yourself when you are hungry, have a snickers. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

less callous criticism by lgm
The talk page for that article you're criticizing, I could read more easily and I found myself siding more with the criticism there. Again the issue I had with the essay is mainly wordy, difficult to follow, begins with a combative tone, but I do think the essay has similar arguments I'd make against that criticism of socialism page. I'm socialist too, and I did find that article criticizng socialism very off, like incomplete, scope is too narrow to be a good page applicable to socialism as an ideology, definitions aren't good (a fundamental flaw of that page). And so on. I still advise you to cut down on verbiage. Just get to the point. Limit your series of prepositional phrases, don't spend too much on introduction. It's very crucial you keep your introduction acceptable because if it's overly wordy, people risk just not wanting to read the work. I've attempted to read your work a few times. It's difficult. 18:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Being concise is something I struggle with and it’s been noted by my professors in the past. It is not surprising it would also be an issue here. I am going back and forth, re-reading sentences, and seeing where I can “trim the fat”. I think in regards to the introduction I may re-work it entirely to present a single thesis, and try to keep it as short as possible. I may also plug some passages into a grammar checker. Reading the talk page about the possibility of the “criticism of socialism” page being moved into the essay space had me consider abandoning this project all together. I still found to be a valuable learning experience and I may just compile the sources I used for future use. I am starting to feel bad for Gee, as I think he is getting too much attention and conflict while in an emotionally difficult space. I don’t want to contribute too much to that. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:44, 9 July 2023 (UTC)