Christopher Hitchens debates Dinesh D'Souza on "Is Socialism Obsolete?" 1989

[HSAdestroy]

I doubt this debate taught him anything he didnt know.

[najnasserio]

What about Scandinavian countries? Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Holland? Aren't all these highly social-driven countries? Lowest poverty/unemployment figures in the world. Common people, Socialism rules...

[TheEmptyHunter]

@najnasserio those countries are more like the welfare capitalism that D'Souza described. This being said, I don't think it's really right to call the soviet union and the eastern bloc communist in any true sense of the word.

[gsguns1]

portuguese translation please!!!11!!

[SallyMorem]

If there are no socialist countries now, and none in the past, doesn't this make socialism itself a grand fiction? One that has all sorts of opportunities to come into being, but hasn't? If so, why? Why hasn't this grand fiction ever come true? I suggest that the flaw lies in the mismatch between desire and productivity. Those who desire being rewarded for their desire, those who produce being punished for their production.

[omnicontrarian]

@SallyMorem True. But if you really want to be pedantic, and you define capitalism as a system whereby a free market allocates resources, then there has never and will never exist a truly capitalist economy. Every single market in the world is regulated, taxed, subsidized, or interfered with to some extent. Thus one could just as easily assert that capitalism is a fiction.

[UtopiaMinor666]

@SallyMorem Socialism was forever destroyed after stalin came into power, purged his "comrades" and then other revolutions: korea, indochina, china, vietnam, etc... took appeal to stalinism. You could look at the Spanish Civil war where trotskyist and anarchist almost succeeded in a "collectivized" society before it was destoryed by germany. True socialismt has never occurred, but i wouldnt call it a fiction.

[Morclaw]

There has never been a socialist country in the history of mankind to my knowledge.

[Fray2221]

@Morclaw Neither has there ever been a true Scotsman.

[pizzawar]

@Morclaw the third reich wasn't *true* nazism. true nazism has never been tried. mussolini's italy wasn't *true* fascism. true fascism has never been tried...

hoxha's albania, kim's north korea, stalin's russia, pol pot's cambodia, mao's china, all were socialist countries. socialism galvanizes power and wealth in the hands of the few more totally than capitalism ever could. marx has caused incalculable amounts of suffering for everyday people.

[Morclaw]

@pizzawar I am sorry but you are just wrong. Are you saying that Socialism was a leading movement in any of these totalitarian dictatorships you have just mentioned ? Get real.

[pizzawar]

@Morclaw Not the Socialist People's Republic of Albania? Or the Cambodian People's Party? What does the second "s" in USSR stand for? The more you control an economy, and economic activity, centrally, the more you seek to control human behavior. Seems pretty simple, actually.

I'm quite real. You, friend, still seem to cling to bloody utopian hogwash. Vaclav Havel just passed away; read his story, and also read Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago."

[Andrewh313]

@pizzawar

Yea! Just look at socialistic nations with social healthcare and see how messed up they are! Look how horrible it is to live in Norway, Japan, Canada, Australia, Sweden...

Oh, actually. It seems all those nations and more are socialistic... but actually have higher standards of living than the US and rank higher on the human development index.

Damn socialists.

[pizzawar]

Which is it: there has never been a socialist country, or iis any country with a social safety net "socialist" by your calculation? Norway, constitutional monarchy; J, constitutional, parliamentary monarchy; C, constitutional monarchy... get the picture? All with varying degrees of free market participation, especially Japan. Show me a successful self-declared socialist republic.

If this were 1960 and we didn't know what we know now you would be supporting Mao, Castro, Ceaucescu, et al. Pig.

[Andrewh313]

@pizzawar

lol what? Are we going to make a semantic argument then? I've heard many pundits speak of the horrors of "European Socialism." You don't agree?

If you want a safety-net capitalism that ensures healthcare as a basic human right, that ensures wealth is spread equitably as to prevent plutocracy, and that the ensures a high standard of living for everyone, then great! Call me a capitalist then because I support this by whatever name you call it.

[pizzawar]

No, I happen not to agree. Answer my question? Semantics has to do with words and meaning, I'm only asking you to pick A or B.

Wealth should not be equitable, opportunity should; not everyone's output is equally valuable. But people should be able to exploit their own abilities freely. A controlled economy minimizes that. Free markets and free markets alone seem to ensure high standards of living for an acceptable amount of the people.

[Andrewh313]

@pizzawar

"free markets alone seem to ensure high standards of living for an acceptable amount of the people."

I'm confused as to what point you are trying to make. Do you not agree that every nation that ranks higher than the US on the human development index has highly socialistic civil institutions? They have market economies for most things, of course. They're not communists, but they do follow a social philosophy and its working.

Whatever you call that, I want it here.

[pizzawar]

No, I do not. US is #4 on the 2011 HDI. Not bad, out of a field of 150+. Norway is a mixed economy with state ownership in strategic areas - such as we already have, in public transportation and elsewhere. Australia is a G20 and WTO member we have a free trade agreement with. Holland is one of the most lasseiz-faire economies in the world.

And, the free market doesn't even have any gulags or forced labor camps to answer for, such as socialism does.

[Andrewh313]

@pizzawar

Ok, the US is doing better in the numbers with this years' overal HDI, I admit. But I would urge you to realize that life is good in modern socialist nations, and the US is NOT doing good at all in specific numbers. 34th in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy, 37th in overall healthcare. Surely you can understand why I envy socialist nations.

And blame Stalinist Communism for the gulags. Modern socialists don't support Stalinism, obviously!

[Morclaw]

@pizzawar Oh come on! Naming North Korea DPRK does not make it any more Democratic does it. My point was that dictatorship took the socialism because it was a popular idea within inteligencia and lover classses and used it to gain popularity. None of them ever acctually tried to pursue it. About Havel, I am from Slovakia. I never liked Havel. After the Ghastly Comunist Regime fell , its henchmen became the most wealthy privatizers. He was soft on crime and bassically useless.

[pizzawar]

Why should you be surprised about the profiteers? When you centralize an economy you amass society's wealth centrally, where every knowing thief gets a piece and the rest are left with crumbs. A capitalist economy leaves open the possibility of advancement through thrift, work, and self-improvement outside of government control. Economic liberty is the key issue here.

[Morclaw]

@pizzawar First of all do not change the course of our argument. I really agree with Andrewh313 on this issue. My argument with you was that there were no socialist countries in history. We can agree we will disagree on that one. Now it seems to me you hold free market not responsible for any international wrongdoings. Google Bhopal , then google Salvador Allende. In a funny turn of events a socialist regime was overthrown by a free market sponsored and initiated dictatorship.

[Graham6762]

The cold war was really a tie.

[unfad1ng]

first and only time hitchens losses a debate

[unfad1ng]

Most ppl cannot make everything they want for themselves as quick, efficient and as good as possible since you cannot specialize in everything

Therefore specializing in making one thing can allow you to help others gain something quicker more efficient and of higher quality than they would otherwise get and in exchange for that you can get something from them that you cannot make as efficient, quick and of as high quality as they could

hence every1 is better off by trading

this is capitalism

[unfad1ng]

the lady that talked about use is stupid. ofc we produce for use rather than profit, but once we have what we can use theres no reason to keep making it unless theres a profit motive, which motivates us to share our discovery so that others can use it since we wount work hard for someone if theres no profit motive unless they are close friends or family.

[unfad1ng]

the internet solved the massmedia problem

[cabgt]

Like all socialists, Hitchens cannot grasp economic concepts. Socialism is a detriment to the practice of "economizing." Period. This is on-top of the immorality of socialism.

[colz22]

@cabgt this is one of the worst sentences i have ever read.

[Kida001]

D'Souza needs a primer on the history of marriage.

[crackwad420revived]

Dinesh completely misses the point here. He based his entire argument on a strawman that he didn't even realize he was making. Fucking idiot.

[cabgt]

@crackwad420revived What strawman?

[crackwad420revived]

@cabgt the examples of socialism that he kept citing like the soviet union and other unjust dictatorships are not supported by hitchens or anyone else who believes in true social equality, he kept using them as examples of what his opponents were in favour of thus creating a strawman rather than debating the alternatives to capitalism that the people he disagrees with actually support

[acphenom]

Dinesh lost me when he claimed that marriage curbs sex drive and allows people to have monogamous relationships. Yeah, because you need marriage to do that...my God, what a buffoon. His understanding of socialism is very shallow and narrow too, relegated only to the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, of which it was highly influential on. He refused to analyse socialist theory in more complete terms

[dashercronin]

Did it ever exist?

[LCXXXSR]

wow, i didnt know that these two went this far back. amazing how they've been debating for 20 years now about everything from socialism to god :)