State controlled by the workers - question

This is perhaps more directed at FB vadz and Neil.

Over the last week I have seen some fairly fiery vitriol from left wing supporters about national voters being selfish etc. I don't care too much but i have accused them of not understanding anything but stereotypes and propaganda about their opposition (their words), so i would like to be schooled please.

I'm not suggesting all labour supporters as far left and i can understand many labour voters but i have trouble understanding the far left ideas/ideals which is where many of the party faithful seem to want to send the country.

So could someone explain where im going wrong.

One of the issues i have always had with left/socialist type govts/people is that the party members are career politicians/ unionists who are internally judged by their conviction to the 'cause'. It appears few of them are actually 'workers' any more than the 'managers and company owners' that they rail against.

Now of course in simpler times you could have a leader who was also a full time worker but those times are long gone and it makes sense to have leaders and followers and an ecology that breeds and kills off leaders as conditions change.

*ANY* organisation requires certain relevant roles to be effective so why are academics and union organisers respected by managers, owners and financiers evil? I am by no means advocating complete free-market but why do things have to be so left/right black/white? Why is a system that encourages new ideas rather than stifling them a bad thing?

The other issue is will a country or the world ever get to that ideal? The basic premise of everyone being equal (except party members) seems to result in huge reductions in output compared to the rest of the world. Is this simply countries not doing it right or an inescapable side effect of those policies?

Where does my understanding fail? (be gentle please).

it's not about everyone being equal, it's about everyone having an equal chance is life whether they're a man, a women, gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor, have parents with money, have parents without money.

It's about asking yourself, if you had no choice over whether you were born a man,women, to rich parents, poor parents etc, how would you want society structured.

The right consistently misrepresent this as some desire to turn everyone into "the same".

bob, I understand that my own perspectives are often flawed and are bourgeois socialism. What I mean from this is that often I'm divorced from the will of the workers.

Cases in point: civil unions, prostitution law, anti-smacking, and electoral law reform

I supported all of them, but the workers didn't.

(that's a bit off topic)

Now, I don't dislike managers, owners, or financiers per se. But the fact is that there is an ongoing conflict between management etc who seek profit, vs workers who seek fulfilment in their working.

Finally, there's no reason the state can't do anything that the free market does. Be ruthless sacking people who are liabilities (however, with a social welfare net)

True lefties - don't think of fishy here - are utterly ruthless. They are akin to a corporate CEO. However, their outcome is the good of the people, not profit.

Hippies have given the left a bad name.

Indeed, bob, I often agree with some of your points, albeit in a slightly different way.

For example - firing people. Yes, the current system is insanely difficult. But why does it have to be so? Because the nature of capitalism is such that bosses will seek to eliminate workers for their own ends, and workers need protections. In other words, in order to defeat the inherent unfairness of capitalism, we have to "load the dice" for the workers.

Now, this doesn't mean that true socialists believe that workers deserve to be coddled. One of the true tenets of Marxism is pride in one's work. The Soviets made labour their highest goal. Stakhanovites set new records in industry.
It's all a bit confusing . I'm not being very clear.

I guess the key might be that in a socialist system, all people will be cared for. If they're incompetent in X, they go to Y, or Z. And they'll only be sacked from X if they truly are incompetent, not because the boss dislikes them. And if they are sacked, there's a safety net.

The second issue is that working for the state is designed for the common good, so punishing incompetence in those areas is far more necessary.

Summed up: true socialists don't believe in coddling laziness. However, we have those protections because bosses would abuse them otherwise. It's not an optimal system.

This is what i dont get. It seems a fair goal but the methods you espouse are not what (i believe) most people believe in.

For instance - your stance on private property. Now i can understand that a person who gains some assets in life and passes it to their children means that those children start life with something more than others might. For arguments sake those assets could be money, land or even knowledge.

Taking that a step back you could say (as i think you do) that that person shouldn't have been allowed to gain property (or perhaps it should revert to the state on death??). So am to understand that people *shouldnt* be able to make choices of how they live? ie all individual *needs* are provided and all output goes to meeting the needs of the state/people.
If there is choice, where does it fit in and to what degree does it go? ie can you choose to forgo a creature comfort to give your child more food/education.

Vadz - I'm definitely not right wing overall but i have *some* right wing beliefs but i have massive difficulty with the method of achieving the perfectly reasonable goal of egalitarian society.

The reason i have so much difficulty (i think) is that to me choice (or the perception of) and a sense of achievement are inherent needs of humans. Now where this seems to start to conflict with socialism at its more extreme end is that 'for the state' seems to imply one goal or direction. For the soviets this was effectively a race against the west.... but to what end?

Does socialism need a goal or an enemy to work towards/against? what if the direction of the state is not aligned with the majority or minority of some of the people? ie does the lack of a 'struggle' promote infighting and complacency? (same could be said for capitalism in some circumstances).

My other quick questions without rambling too much are.

How does innovation work in extreme socialism?

How do academics/brainy people get treated in socialism - reason i ask this is i know of an east German genius (friends dad) was made to become a jeweller as they needed jewellers not geniuses at the time.

Do people who work towards the *party manifest* get promoted and how is the party manifest checked/ updated - does it tend to stagnate?

I really should put these thoughts more concisely but i lack the time and haven't written them down before.

Yes, it needs a goal. It was initially survival, then defeat of an opposing system.

As for innovation - now I'm no expert in a lot of fields, but Soviet rocket technology, aerodynamics, advances mathematics and physics etc was all up to Western standards, or even better. Electronics didn't do as well, simply because they didn't perceive the need. But hey, capitalism has given us reality TV, because reality TV meets a consumer demand, so don't tell me it's a better system

Plenty of geniuses were treated shoddily, plenty were treated very well.

And yep, thats what killed the USSR. People stopped believing. Corruption became endemic. The wheels started clogging up.

Socialism doesn't stop innovation, it just ensures that innovation is targeted. Same as your boss in an R&D company would make sure you target your work

‘state controlled by the workers’ - yet if it was only the workers who were allowed to vote, a left wing government would never get in! haha

I'd like to hear neil_a's answer to this too.

or genetic advantage