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"The fundamental failing of socialism was the inability to innovate, as illustrated by a 1940s motorbike still being produced in Soviet Russia decades later." Join Dr. Steve Keen as he dives into the complexities of socialism versus capitalism, drawing on historical examples and economic theories. Discover why socialism, despite its lofty ideals, struggled with innovation and how capitalism's relentless drive for competition spurred technological advancement. Through the lens of Janos Kornai's analysis, Keen explores the resource constraints and production challenges that shaped these economic systems. Learn about the Soviet Union's industrial stagnation and the enduring impact of capitalist innovation on modern economies. -- Join 10,000 Other Truth-Seekers by Downloading my new 'Funny
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"The fundamental failing of socialism was the inability to innovate, as illustrated by a 1940s motorbike still being produced in Soviet Russia decades later." Join Dr. Steve Keen as he dives into the complexities of socialism versus capitalism, drawing on historical examples and economic theories. Discover why socialism, despite its lofty ideals, struggled with innovation and how capitalism's relentless drive for competition spurred technological advancement. Through the lens of Janos Kornai's analysis, Keen explores the resource constraints and production challenges that shaped these economic systems. Learn about the Soviet Union's industrial stagnation and the enduring impact of capitalist innovation on modern economies. -- Join 10,000 Other Truth-Seekers by Downloading my new 'Funny
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| "The fundamental failing of socialism was the inability to innovate, as illustrated by a 1940s motorbike still being produced in Soviet Russia decades later." Join Dr. Steve Keen as he dives into the complexities of socialism versus capitalism, drawing on historical examples and economic theories. Discover why socialism, despite its lofty ideals, struggled with innovation and how capitalism's relentless drive for competition spurred technological advancement. Through the lens of Janos Kornai's analysis, Keen explores the resource constraints and production challenges that shaped these economic systems. Learn about the Soviet Union's industrial stagnation and the enduring impact of capitalist innovation on modern economies. -- Join 10,000 Other Truth-Seekers by Downloading my new 'Funny Money' Bundle for Free at https://new.stevekeenfree.com Are you an engineer, finance, or IT professional? If you are, the 7-Week Rebel Economist Challenge is for you. If you qualify, I will work closely with you every week to install 50+ years of real economics into you, in only 7 weeks. Working closely with the 5 best applicants this week. Apply here: https://apply.stevekeenfree.com -- Who is Dr. Steve Keen? Dr. Steve Keen is an influential economist who has dedicated over 50 years to challenging mainstream economic theories. Since his days as a university student, he has been engaged in a David vs. Goliath battle against conventional economic models. Holding a Ph.D. in economics, Dr. Keen is well-known for his critical analysis and advocacy for more realistic economic approaches. His work emphasizes the importance of accounting for financial instability and incorporates elements of complex systems theory. Engineers, finance professionals, and IT experts will appreciate his methodical breakdown of economic phenomena and his development of the Minsky software, which models financial crises. Dr. Keen's contributions are crucial for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how economic systems can impact technological and financial environments. His teachings offer valuable insights into the economic forces shaping our world. By following his analysis, professionals can gain a better grasp of economic dynamics that influence their fields. |
working socialism is a lie….
This guy is such a loser. He should ask himself why the third world capitalist countries aren't innovating anything. He would probably say the tired old line of the capitalists bUt tHaTs nOt rEaL cApItAlIsM
Professor Keen, in the conversation with Fridman you claimed that socialism is planned centrally by a State. However, there are possible decentralised and non-statist forms of socialism. The USSR was quite counter-revolutionary after the initial revolution and evolved quickly from a socialist economy (by workers self-managed Sovjets) to State Capitalism (which you describe in the conversation).
What do you think of Parecon for example? Have you read or considered reading Participatory Economics by Albert and Hahnel? Could you do a conversation with them?
And have you also studied the economy and society of the Spanish anarchists in the Spanish civil war? Or the recent (and continuing) developments of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, or Rojava in Syria?
He's deliberatly being misleading. Socialism is absolutely not a system of a central state planning the economy.
Socialism in modern terms is when the workers own the means of production and democratically vote on what the company does. Everything for sourcing resources to pay and profit sharing is to be voted upon. This eliminates the managerial class and the executive class because all the employees votes on who should represent (CEO) the company. The employer is the worker. None of this Employer dictating to the employee.
That sounds great for existing companies. Kick out the owners and let the workers control the company!
Now explain how businesses get started? Who is going to front the starting capital to run a business and take on a giant risk of failure when the reward for succeeding is you have your business taken from you?
That's not really the "modern" definition, that's Marx's conception where the workers own the means of production and democratically determine its operation. Otherwise, well said!
@@joevolpe7706if the workers owned the means of production then the workers would not be constrained to only make one product; ie an automobile factory could also be used to make refrigerators. This would also be encouraged because, without the profit motive, the vehicles would be built to fill human need and thus would be better built to last much longer and eventually everyone that needed a car could acquire one, leaving the factory available to diversify. Additionally, many more people could be hired because the exorbitant profits would be allocated more fairly rather than being disproportionately funneled to the shareholders. Because more people are employed, individual workers could work less hours allowing more innovation.
In terms of "the investment into building new factories, if the community identified a need for a new factory and voted to construct it, the community would all pitch in. And because people had more free time, more people could contribute to the construction. Many hands make for light work.
@@joevolpe7706 – it doesn't work like that. It's a different approach to organising production. There is no "preplan" to socialism today, anymore than the nascent capitalists of 16th century Netherlands could envision something like, say, Google or Raytheon. The thing, like with capitalism, is a guiding set of principles that inform the formation of production and labour. It's just that the guiding principles for socialism are not "turn over all the wealth and power to the greediest and most venal wealth hording monsters and expect everything to turn out great." like under capitalism.
@@joevolpe7706 The enterprise starts the same way it always does. The minute the enterprise requires more than one person to achieve its fruition, it de facto becomes a democracy, the owner is subsumed into the workforce by the new reality with the understanding that he will recoup his initial investments and an ongoing dividend for any original innovations, all to be determined by the employees together. Ownership / innovation is just one phase until the operational necessity for other human beings naturally, immediately makes it a democracy; 'my idea, my business' MUST become by definition a democracy the moment I can't plan/produce it all by myself, at which point I understand I'll get back what I put in plus a little more for any original inventions as I become another worker, perhaps even a coordinating administrator. Zero tolerance for authoritarian hierarchies of control, which are artificial constructs denying the reality of natural democracy when many people work together.
Fascism is literally the opposite of socialism, fascism is the highest degree of capitalism and imperialism, it's a dictatorship of the private sector over the society, while socialism is the workers owning the means of production
I agree partially with the professor because without the brutal exploitation of the the global south, which the socialist didn't do,there no successful capitalism.
Steve Keen has massive blinkers on when he defines socialism. The king of the fence sitters.
Asset strip the workers. Then when there's no money left, walk away.
Isn't this a VERY partial rendering of Marx, Steve?
Pretty sure Steve's bias is about the notion that he has been studying and trying to "fix" capitalism for so long he can't admit the failure at the core of capitalism.
Then he promotes the myths of socialist failure in just the same way the fascists did. (and the anarchists for that matter)
Socialism did not fail. Stalin was not a bogeyman. His crimes were small compared with the racist horrors in the West.
The mistakes of one context are not the rules of a whole system.
Just like Steve is not an example of a man by which all men ought to be judged, the soviet union was not the whole of socialism.
To declare socialism failed, is stupid, because it brought millions into prosperity compared to what they had before. Socialism helped the bulk of humanity.
To declare Capitalism succeeded, is to declare that most of the global South nations are prosperous because they are capitalist. ie; Bullshit.
This is not difficult to understand. Socialism did innovate. First probe on the moon, on Venus, first satellite, first man in space, abolition of homelessness, a right to work, equal rights for men and women… in fact most of the Western left learned what they know about crafting an ethical society from the fucking socialist pioneers in the USSR. The New deal was a response to the fact that the people knew the Soviets had rights which resulted in prosperity. It was bribe the workers, or lose the capitalist class entirely in a bloody revolt. The bribe of the new deal worked, for a while.
Steve, pull yer head out of the smelly history narrative which was crafted by the oligarchs who hated the idea that their role is being rendered obsolete. Capitalism isn't about innovation or freedom, it is about a few people owning and operating the whole damned show, and telling tall tales about how that's a good thing. Just like you.
Elon Musk is a capitalist psychophant who refuses to help humanity if that requires him to reduce his own power and wealth.
That's capitalism. Private power. Private individual control of the resources of our world without the consent of the people. Fuck capitalism. The Soviets would have been better than this if they had not been betrayed by their own representatives. Here in the West, I think I am betrayed by my own representatives. At least the Soviet traitors ended the cold war. My traitors ended housing affordability, and brought us to another nuclear threat worse than before.
ed: Hoo-ray. RIght? Freedumb for the rich is not freedom for me. I'd rather be fucking poor in a soviet structure, than fucking poor in a capitalist one, because in the soviet structure I have a right to eat and have a home, and in the capitalist one, I have a right to lick the boots of Elon whilst I live in a gutter under a bridge and go hungry.
You all have to accept that the bad parts of capitalism are worse than the bad parts of socialism.
Right now burning the whole Western warfare/plutocracy shit show down seems better than just doing nothing.
Ed: but my hair is grey, and my back hurts, and I've no cash, and I've done nothing wrong. I've studied ethics and philosophy, physics and psychology. I've read things which blew my hair back and I've voted as hard as anyone can vote.
It doesn't matter.
The plutocrats roll on.
The illusions of democracy and emancipation roll on.
The beauty of the system Steve inadvertently revealed, is that it does not have to make sense, it does not have to be adequate, or rational, it just has to keep aspirational fools occupied being clever enough to point out the flaws, particularly in neo-classical narratives.
The powerful old money plutocrats just don't care that their narratives can be dismantled.
They will change the rules any time anyone threatens their position as unjustifiable rulers.
The wealth will flow up, or there will be violence.
The rules don't matter, Steve.
There is only class capitalism. If the narratives which are supposed to craft popular consent fail, then, there is fascism. Fascism is a small step away from Neoliberalist capitalism, the only difference is the degree of violence inflicted on the workers. Otherwise these are the same thing: private power over the state. The state is constituted by the privately wealthy, and they are psychopaths.
Right now, there is a genocide of Palestinians, Russian ethnicity in Ukraine, Minorities in Myanmar, and more, all approved by the capitalist empire. The US Empire. So it goes. THe wars never stop, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, more and more. It is as if the capitalist empire is so incapable of being stable, that it must EAT other nations and CRUSH others, just so the plutocrats can keep sucking up the wealth other people worked to create.
So it goes.
I'd prefer socialism to a genocidal empire. Thanks. Every day of the week.
You should too, son. You should too.
Yeah big fan of Steve but he's got this one wrong. Perpetual innovation is not an innately desirable thing. We reached peak car decades ago. Now we, the west, have reached the point of producing the same car just with ever more pointless electronic shit at lower quality. Innovation in consumer goods is driven less by consumer demand than by producer demand for new markets and producers compete firstly by marketing and to a much lesser extent through innovation or pricing. I had a 1980's Skoda and it was great. It fulfilled the function of car. I'd be fine with a world that just produced those at a low price and with a fraction of the resource cost of yearly retooling. And if car wasn't solved in the 1980's it was certainly solved by the series 2 Ford Mondeo. However we're getting a graphic demonstration every day now that where innovation really was demanded the Soviet Union was better at it than we were. I refer to the increasingly obvious fact that 1980's Soviet weapons were superior to 1980's/1990s NATO weapons.
False.
There was NO private property in Nazi germany.
Not even "your" home.
0 legal protections at all.
I'll give you a hint folks.
Workers and educated people are a means of production.
Schools are a means of production for special types of people.
That means that government control of them IS socialism.
Even the backbone of the financial system…the Means of Value Exchange is not sound money with inherent value but mere inflationary currency.
And completely controlled by government, it prints it at will and it sets the price of currency at its own behest. I.e. it's socially controlled by the government. I.e. Socialism.
Even these large predatory corporations are by definition organs of the state shielded and enabled BY the state for easy control.
Large corporations are inherently inefficient due to the inability to set internal prices.
They only exist because of a mountain of red tape hindering small enterprises.
Do you know who also liked to integrate the means of production into large entities for easy control ?
The National Socialists ( the racial socialists ), The Fascists ( State Syndicalist Socialists ) and the Marxists-Leninists/Stalinist/Moaists.
They also liked to socialise the other means of Production ( workers) into Socially ( i.e. State ) labor front(s).
I'd include the Really Real Socialists(tm) of the Khmer Rouge variety somewhere…but those guys were REALLY serious about progressing to the end of history and as such were really into the Destruction of Everything.
Obfustication of what's happening and what is and Socialism ( State control ) and what's Capitalism ( Free Market economy). And specifically whome gets blamed for what for a given situation makes for an interesting conversation.
Free Markets ?
We don't have em IMHO.
My take on socialism is that it allows free market economy and private properties but with a Progressive Trickle-up Tax system: the more you make (income/capital gains) the % you pay all the way to 60-70%. Like in the US before Reagan and some Nordic countries today.
Low and average income earners may pay 0 or little to give them more purchasing power and social mobility. High tax rate on luxury goods as well such as super cars, yachts, branded items…what rich people usually buy.
"Real communism has never been tried" – utopian idealist morons turning into mass murderes everytime their stupid system collapses and they want to convince everyone to it try again.
Public ownership of the means of production is a necessary requirement for tight definition socialism, but it is not sufficient. Even if the Nazis outright nationalized their industries, they would still not be socialists. Socialism also includes the right of the workers to get the fruits of their labor and not just be a pawn of some controlling class. It includes social ideas like from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. These ideas conflict with fascism. Fascism is about blood and soil. Fascism does not care about worker rights or welfare. It cares about the whole. It cares about the true group that matters and who must survive, rule, and maximize its power. If we want to use a broad definition of socialism, then the word has very little specific meaning and it conflates a wide range of varying ideologies and situations.
Even the poorest Americans are richer than
WAY OVER HALF OF THE WORLD.
So “sack-up”!
Invent. Reinvent. Add value.
Get rewarded.
Even the poorest Americans are richer than
WAY OVER HALF OF THE WORLD.
So “sack-up”!
Invent. Reinvent. Add value.
Get rewarded.
And to be clear:
It doesn’t matter if:
Governments
Corporations
Religions
own everything…
It’s all
“COMMUNISM”/ “DICTATORSHIP”
Capitalism is THE best way to ensure
“Personal Sovereignty”
It may not be ideal or not flawed, but that’s why we have regulators and elections.
🇺🇸
Yes. It is the least imperfect system of all of the imperfect systems available to us.
China is both innovating and producing in high volume. They’re overcoming the issues the USSR couldn’t.
Communism fundamentally could never work because we are all different. We are individuals at our core. This is objective fact. It puzzles me that we are still debating this topic.