Apples 1984 Commercial

Ironic how the critics of police state are today mostly socialists, when capitalists seem to praise this book. Yet, the author of 1984 was a socialist as well...

PS. No, i don't see China and North Korea as socialist states, i see them as fascist hypocrites, just like the US, Italy and Russia. The closest thing to REAL socialism has been achieved in the Nordic countries Sweden and Norway.

If you see China and North Korea as non-socialist, you are the very paragon of doublethink. Congratulations, citizen. Doubleplusgood.

The very goal of socialism is to achieve justice and equality for all. Do we have anything that remotely resembles this in china and north Korea?

No, we have a movie fanatic with luxury mansions as a leader while the population starves

There are very few ideologies surviving today that don't list justice and equality as stated goals/aims. Ideologies are most meaningfully defined operationally - HOW do they aim to achieve what they state they want to achieve? Socialism is and has always been the belief that nationalization of some or all products and services (healthcare, basic supplies distribution)serve to gradually eliminate the existence of socioeconomic class without serious economic repercussion (hasn't worked once yet)

Although corruption has never been avoided when this has been tried in the past (a political upper class replaces the economic one), there's ample evidence it wouldn't work even if corruption were stamped out. With heavily decreased incentive of advancement, and little or no chance of being fired, most end up lowering the quality of their work significantly, lowering overall economic output without lowering wages or work-time. Further, vast resources are consumed by a notoriously *continued*

Sorry, i ran into a reply-limit...

...inefficient bureaucracy. So, production efficiency decreases and administrative costs skyrocket.

Now, socialism is a general term for a class of ideologies. The most famous special-case socialist administrative method is the Command Economy - applied most completely in Bolshevik Communism (a class of "Utopian Socialism"). In this sort of economy, EVERYTHING is centrally controlled, and there is no currency - individuals are allotted goods and services.

As an aside, I'd like to point out that George Orwell was at one time an Anarcho-Syndicalist, and was involved in the troubles in Barcelona - not directly a socialist. Anarcho-Syndicalism does believe in communal control of goods and services (in a complete way, as in a Command Economy), but NOT in any central control. Instead, that ideology believes in a sort of "rule-by-trade-union". Orwell became disenchanted in that movement after the Spanish civil war, as he did with other Utopian movements

You don't have to explain how most "socialist governments" work, i am very aware of that. Yet, we cannot call them "socialist", because socialism is a utopia, which none of them have reached.

And what you have explained is really what today is called as a "communist" system (we can't really call it communist, because communism is a utopia just like socialism). As i hope you know, "socialist" party's have nowadays a politic that is very similar to the one that socialdemokrats had 70 years ago.

They have nowadays embraced the liberal democracy, they accept the fact that capitalism can't be abolished over night and they also know that the economy cannot be centralized.