Socialism

I will probably not be using a google doc for this since I don't think will go over the 10,000. I will address the definition of socialism my opponent provided, and provide another definition, which is " a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production" [1] Now, I'm not going to argue semantics, but I will be arguing for a specific kind of socialism and ignore the rest, since because we are arguing about socialism in general, I only need to show that one form of socialism is feasible to show that socialism is a viable alternative to capitalism. The reason I provided the above definition of socialism, is because the socialism I advocate would fall under that definition, and not the definition that my opponent provided. Democratic control of the means of production can occur in a couple of ways, and like my opponent argued for, one way is through a democratic government controlling the means of production, however, I would argue that this can be done in a much more decentralized way in which individual freedoms are still maintained. If we were to have a system of only cooperatives, which are democratically-run businesses, individual freedom is still maintained. In fact, I would argue individual freedom under this system is better maintained than under capitalism. Under capitalism, which is the private ownership of the means of production, you give up a lot of your freedoms in order work. You have to do what your boss says or else you are fired and can no longer provide for yourself. Under a socialist system, there is not one person who sets the rules of the business, but rather the workers themselves set the rules. In this case, there is a majority rule, but this is preferable to just having one person rule, which could potentially go against the will of the majority of the workers. THE NON-AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE My opponent argues that socialism violates the non-aggression principle. He says that aggression should only be used to preserve freedom and liberties, however in capitalism, liberties are encroached upon all of the time by the employer. For example, society used to be segregated by race, and employers would not hire people of color. This is a violation of liberty, and in this case, is a reason to use violence in order to protect our liberties. The best way to protect liberties, is to transition from an oligarchic system to a republican or democratic system. Capitalism is an oligarchic system, as there are usually only one or a few people at the top of a business. Just as the founder of our nation rebelled against a monarchy that was encroaching on our liberties, so must the workers of our nation rebel against the oligarchs who are business owners who could take away our liberties at any given time. LIBERTY My opponent argues that a person has a right to charge a price for their own products and own their own factory. I don't directly oppose this, and mostly agree with my opponent. However, I must point out that a person doesn't have a right to workers. That would be slavery otherwise if they were entitled to have people work for them. I would go as far as saying that a person is not entitled to have someone work for them, even if the workers agree. The reason being is that there are only a few people who would control businesses in capitalism. If all of them decide to not budge on being lenient to their workers, or give them fair working conditions, which often happens under capitalism(one only needs to look at a history book about the working conditions of the 1800s to see what capitalism does) then the worker has no choice but to put up with poor working conditions, low wages, etc because that's all that is available by the people who own companies. The best interest for the workers is for them to own businesses themselves through a cooperative, and not subject themselves to capitalist business owners. This would preserve the liberty of the workers. The question basically is: whose freedom is more important: the business owners', or the workers'? Well, both are important, but since it seems that they are at odds with one another under capitalism, the solution is to get rid of one of the positions: the business owner, and have only workers control businesses. The reverse can't really happen feasibly since workers are absolutely essential for a business, but as cooperatives prove, a single business owner is not essential. PRODUCTIVITY My opponent claims that under socialism, GDP would not grow much, however this is blatantly false. I shall provide two examples of socialist nations who's GDP increased, and standards of living went up in those two countries plus another one. Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, had the highest standard of living of any Eastern European nation, a GDP growth of greater than 5% for most of the years it was socialist, and poverty also declined significantly.[2] Yugoslavia did not see this kind of growth under Capitalism. While it is true Yugoslavia fell eventually anyways, this was in large due to NATO and Reagan inciting a silent revolution in Yugoslavia to introduce and pressure them into taking a market economy.[2] [3] In fact "There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia." [3] Secondly, there is Bolivia. Since having voted in a socialist party in 2006 and which has become more socialist since, Bolivia has had it's GDP soar from $8 billion to $33 billion[4] and has the fastest growing economy in Latin America. In addition, the extreme poverty levels went down from 38.2%, just before the socialists were elected, to 18.8%[5] and the general poverty rate went from 68.4% to 38.6%[4]. While Bolivia is still a poor nation, it is improving widely under socialism. Bolivia did not see this kind of growth under capitalism. Thirdly, In the Spanish Civil war, Revolutionary Catalonia had the standard of living of the average worker go up significantly after implementing socialist ideas [8]. I can't find anything else about other indicators of economic improvement for Catalonia unfortunately, such as GDP growth. This is likely because they existed for such a short period of time, as they were eventually taken over by the Fascists and Franco. The fact the standard of living went up though, we should be able to assume the GDP did as well. There are of course, examples of socialist nations that have done very poorly, but there are also many examples of capitalist nations doing poorly. My intent with this, however, was to show that socialist nations have the potential to do just as well or better than capitalist nations. MORALITY: I shall add this discussion into here since my opponent did not. I believe that capitalism is inherently immoral because it has a hierarchical system which has people at the top which take money away from what could be going to the workers. I believe that a business owner is completely unnecessary, and only is a position of power that takes away profit that could be going to the worker. If I establish that a business owner is unnecessary, then this shows that capitalism is immoral. I believe that cooperatives show that business owners are unnecessary. Cooperatives lack a single business owner, and the workers themselves own the business. Cooperatives can be just as successful as or better than capitalist businesses, but due to an implicit and explicit bias in the economy that favors Capitalist companies, they are the majority. The first indicator that cooperatives are better than traditional business models, is that 80% of cooperatives survive the hard first five years of being in business, compared to just 41% of traditional businesses [7] In a comparative study performed by Gabriel Burd"n and Andr"s Dean, where they looked into how cooperatives performed in the Uruguayan economic crisis between 1999-2001, it was found that Workers cooperatives employment index rose, while their capitalist counterparts fell in employment. [1, pg. 520] In addition to this, average wage remained higher in worker cooperatives than in capitalist businesses. [8, pg. 523] Next, I will point out that it is possible for worker cooperatives to be extremely successful and that they can turn over profit at a rate as good, or even often better than traditional businesses. Mon dragon Corporation is the largest cooperative in the world and "is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country." [9] Therefore, it is not the case that traditional businesses have a monopoly on profit turnover. All of the above shows that cooperatives could easily replace traditional, capitalist businesses. A society of only cooperatives would be a socialist economy essentially, and this, ,combined with the three examples above, shows that socialism can in fact be successful. While I am running low on my word count, I don't need to go to a google docs since I am finished and sufficiently argued my case I believe. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org... [2] [3] http://www.globalresearch.ca... [4] http://data.worldbank.org... [5] [6] http://econfaculty.gmu.edu... [7] www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/co-op_economy_2015.pdf [8] http://disjointedthinking.jeffhughes.ca... [9] www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf