Thread: Re-writing Communism

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Well I guess that makes the USA communist then, it's not a free market!

Strawman.

I suppose I can move onto your other arguments now that you know we don't have a free market.

Come on dude, it's the capitalist, the free market aspects of the USA's economy that was responsible for the recent recessions and the Great Depression.

I would like to see your reasoning (and evidence) behind this statement.

Do you know what a speculative bubble is?

Yes.

Originally Posted by BLUELINE976

I would like to see your reasoning (and evidence) behind this statement.

In capitalism, every once in a while there is a sector of the economy that booms. Stocks and prices become inflated past their intrinsic value as investors rush to get a piece of the action. This creates a positive feedback loop known as an economic bubble. Sometimes economic growth is so fast and so promising that investors use unsecured assets, or basically funds they can't back up, this is a speculative bubble.

In any case, bubbles eventually burst as prices and stocks sharply drop back closer to their intrinsic value, ending in a stock market crash and recession. This is what happened to the US housing market in the 2000s, the IT bubble in the late 1990s and pretty much the whole market before the Great Depression. It is a natural cycle in capitalism and can be prevented by state regulation.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

In capitalism, every once in a while there is a sector of the economy that booms. Stocks and prices become inflated past their intrinsic value as investors rush to get a piece of the action. This creates a positive feedback loop known as an economic bubble. Sometimes economic growth is so fast and so promising that investors use unsecured assets, or basically funds they can't back up, this is a speculative bubble.

In any case, bubbles eventually burst as prices and stocks sharply drop back closer to their intrinsic value, ending in a stock market crash and recession. This is what happened to the US housing market in the 2000s, the IT bubble in the late 1990s and pretty much the whole market before the Great Depression. It is a natural cycle in capitalism and can be prevented by state regulation.

Au contraire.

Originally Posted by Housing

The story is told with great persuasive clarity in The Housing Boom and Bust (Basic Book, $25) by economist Thomas Sowell, who is a long-time senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution on the campus of Stanford University.

Sowell explains that the Federal government began a huge regulatory push to create "affordable housing" in the 1990s, under the presumption that the cost of acquiring a home was out of reach for a growing number of American families.

However, he shows that in general average American incomes were keeping up with or even exceeding the cost of buying a home in most of the U.S. The only problem areas were in places like California, where regulations on land development and home building were making land scarcer and more costly to buy.

Prominent Democratic and Republican members of Congress and both President Clinton and President Bush put pressure on lending institutions to lower their credit rating standards; reduce the minimum down payment requirements (in a growing number of cases, to zero); and introduce short-term flexible monthly payment methods that would only increase later on.

Often under the intimation of bank and mortgage market regulators, financial institutions greatly increased their lending to targeted socio-economic groups that were less credit worthy due to fears that they might otherwise be hit with anti-discrimination law suits. As Sowell points out, the tragedy of forcing banks to make home loans to people really not financially able to bear the costs of a house once times turned even moderately bad, is that foreclosure rates are highest for this segment of the population.
Two major vehicles for the growth of this unsustainable housing bubble were the semi-governmental agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress and the White House pressured both agencies to extend loan guarantees or buy up the mortgages of these credits unworthy borrowers, until finally before the housing crash last year these two agencies held or guaranteed around fifty percent of all the home loans in America.

The irresponsibility of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and those in Congress who pressured them to go out on this limb has been shown by their formal take over by the government and the huge sums of taxpayer's money that it has cost to maintain their solvency.

What also fed this housing market frenzy, Sowell explains, was the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. In 2003 and 2004, the central bank kept interest rates artificially at historically low levels. Indeed, when adjusted for inflation, for part of the time interest rates were zero or negative. Mortgage rates were pushed down to barely two or three percent in real terms.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the facts of the housing crisis, it is that its cause has been misguided and intrusive regulations and political pressures, and not any inherent weakness or instability in a market economy.

Originally Posted by IT

We understand the cycle as described by Mises and Hayek to be an ideal type, which more or less explains particular cycles. Praxeologically speaking, we can say that maintaining an artificial interest rate, like all price-fixing, will have unintended consequences that the price fixer can do little to control. But the particular consequences always involve particular historical circumstances.

We believe the events comprising the dot-com boom and bust can be illuminated by tracing the Cantillon effects as new money made its way from the Federal Reserve, through the banking system, and finally to the dot-com startups.

This liquidity led them to bid up the price of capital goods that were complementary to their business plans. As those prices rose, it became clear that many of their plans were not feasible. Broad-based price indices, such as the CPI and the PPI, mask such important phenomena as the steeply rising prices for web programmers, Silicon Valley real estate, and Internet domain names—precisely the effects predicted and explained by ABCT [Austrian Business Cycle Theory].

Consumer behavior during the period shows that, much as Mises (1998, p. 567) described, artificial booms are characterized by both malinvestment and over-consumption. In addition to the stock market bubble, the period in question saw increasing consumer leverage, a booming housing market, increasing debt-to-equity ratios, and lower down payments on homes.

The turn that came in 2000 triggered the liquidation of boom-inspired
malinvestments. The Federal Reserve attempted to engineer a “soft landing” with a moderate tightening of credit conditions. We suggest that was a problematic solution. The large buildup in consumer debt that since has helped to maintain housing prices and consumer spending has cast an ominous shadow over the prospects for a smooth recovery.

Originally Posted by The Great Depression

What triggered the crisis?

Fischer explained it was a combination of Marxian crisis theory and Keynesian under-consumption theory: "People who wanted to consume all did not have the means, and the people who had the means could not consume all. Hence our reduced purchasing power."
What needs to be done? "Divide and redivide profits," he said. "That is the way out." There should be "provision for a perfectly equal division of surplus value in years to come"; we should eliminate "the profit of the capital owner" and create "socialism."

Hazlitt responded by showing Fischer's figures on surplus value to be based on a "fallacy of selection." Fischer had picked base years (1899 and 1929) with a purpose in mind and then confused anomalies with a general trend. Two can play this game, and Hazlitt showed that labor's product can be said to have been increasing relative to output by picking other years (1869 and 1921).

Moreover, Hazlitt asked, why if labor's decreasing share of profits is the cause, how do we explain economic recoveries during the same period in question? How can we explain. using this reasoning, why the crisis did not come sooner?

As Hazlitt said, Marx's theory "makes it difficult to explain why we are not always in a crisis, and impossible to explain how we ever surmount one." On that basis, he dismissed the broader implication that the 1929 crash represented anything like a long-running trend in the structural basis of the economy.

But what if Fischer were right, that labor really was earning a smaller return relative to capital? Hazlitt noted this would not necessarily mean that people are being exploited. It could just mean the volume of capital in industry was increasing at a greater rate than that of labor, which indicates increasingly efficient technology. If so, that might lend weight to the expectations of the classical economists that labor would own more capital as productivity increased. For example, the number of stockholders increased dramatically during the 1920s.

Having dispensed with Fischer's sweeping Marxian theory, he argued that the best period to examine from an economic point of view was the time "between the last crisis and the present one—the period, say, from 1922 to 1929." In this period one notices that the prices and output of capital and labor in the industrial sector were growing out of proportion to the agricultural sector. That may not have any significance to the cause of the crisis, but it brings into question the idea of economy-wide exploitation of labor.

Having exploded Fischer's data and economic theory, he went on to speculate on an alternative. There was no visible free-market theory on why the U.S. was in crisis. But Hazlitt knew from his reading of history of the trouble that comes with an overactive and indebted government. He knew the secret to the crash resided with these problems.

A stable market order, he said, requires an atmosphere free of shocks, or at least a government that allows the economy to correct once those shocks had occurred. The war had artificially inflated the prices of commodities and they needed to correct downward to a more realistic level. He argued the crisis of 1929 was that downward correction.

"But the focus of this collapse," he wrote, "was aggravated enormously by the whole series of post-war policies." Among these he listed the "vicious Treaty of Versailles," the "disorganization caused by reparations and war debts," the "preposterous tariff barriers thrown up everywhere," the abandonment of the gold standard and the adoption of the "gold-exchange standard," and "reckless lending to foreign countries.

Most importantly, he blamed the "artificial cheap-money policy pursued both in England and America, leading here to a colossal real-estate and stock-market speculation under the benign encouragement of Messrs. Coolidge and Mellon." This malinvestment, caused by inflationary policies, created distortions in the capital stock which called for correction.

Later Hazlitt would conclude that malinvestment was the central problem, not only in the Great Depression, but in all business cycles. He did so under the influence of Ludwig von Mises, whom he met about a decade later. Together they advocated the gold standard as a policy, and the "Austrian" theory of the business cycle. The theory, developed by Mises, points to the way markets coordinate plans over time and the way central bank money and credit expansion disrupts those plans.

One such patently absurd recommendation in Fischer's essay, according to Hazlitt, was his call for high new taxes on capital. This measure "would violently aggravate the catastrophe," Hazlitt said, by causing business to take another downturn that would make the 1929 crash look trivial. An increase in wages would be undesirable as well, Hazlitt said, because that would cause their cost to business to increase and lead to even more unemployment. In order to make the economy recover, he said, we need more private capital, not less, and that means letting markets work.

Uhm, not to attack your sources, but did you happen to get your info from this website http://mises.org/?

It goes without saying that a libertarian website that promotes laissez-faire capitalism will favour the opinions of like minded authors, and by looking at the comments under the housing post, not everyone agrees with these assertions.

Originally Posted by Wiki

The financial crisis has been linked to reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States.[4] The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. A more broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices.[5][6] The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance.

Originally Posted by Wiki

The "dot-com bubble" (or sometimes the "I.T. bubble"[1]) was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 (with a climax on March 10, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields. While the latter part was a boom and bust cycle, the Internet boom sometimes is meant to refer to the steady commercial growth of the Internet with the advent of the world wide web as exemplified by the first release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 and continuing through the 1990s.
The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. Companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name and/or a ".com" to the end, which one author called "prefix investing".[2][not in citation given]
A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, market confidence that the companies would turn future profits, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an environment in which many investors were willing to overlook traditional metrics such as P/E ratio in favor of confidence in technological advancements.

Originally Posted by Wiki

The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash,[5] was a time of wealth and excess, and despite caution of the dangers of speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."[6] However, the optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shattered on "Black Tuesday", October 29, 1929, when share prices on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) collapsed. Stock prices fell on that day and they continued to fall, at an unprecedented rate, for a full month.[7]

Words that keep coming up: speculative, deregulation, etc.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Uhm, not to attack your sources, but did you happen to get your info from this website http://mises.org/?

Yes indeed. Amazing website for learning about economics.

It goes without saying that a libertarian website that promotes laissez-faire capitalism will favour the opinions of like minded authors, and by looking at the comments under the housing post, not everyone agrees with these assertions.

Yes, and?

Like-minded authors that have spent years studying economics, human action, and various crises.

Words that keep coming up: speculative, deregulation, etc.

From wikipedia, no less.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with the merits of the arguments?

Originally Posted by BLUELINE976

Yes indeed. Amazing website for learning about economics.

Yes, and?

Like-minded authors that have spent years studying economics, human action, and various crises.



From wikipedia, no less.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with the merits of the arguments?

You'd be surprised about wikipedia, I dare you to find a less biased source of information.

Anyways, I'm not an economist, nor have I access to the data and numbers to be able to tear that deeply into the inner workings of the american economy.

I base my arguments off of experience and observation. I have travelled my area a lot, my part in particular is very close to pure socialism. I have also travelled to the US a lot, and things generally seem worse off there, in a nation that has a much greater amount of total wealth. I talk to friends living in the USA and they complain about economic or social problems that are alien to me because our system is quite frankly better.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

I base my arguments off of experience and observation. I have travelled my area a lot, my part in particular is very close to pure socialism. I have also travelled to the US a lot, and things generally seem worse off there, in a nation that has a much greater amount of total wealth. I talk to friends living in the USA and they complain about economic or social problems that are alien to me because our system is quite frankly better.

Unbiased does not always mean "correct" .

Where do you live? A lot of the "wealth" here is artificial. We're living beyond our means due to the government's easy money/credit policies.

If the OP is still around, I'd like to talk about Communism. I just finished Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism: Volume I but if you don't want to talk about Marxism then you will have to state what school of thought you are talking about in terms of 'Communism.'

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

If the OP is still around, I'd like to talk about Communism. I just finished Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism: Volume I but if you don't want to talk about Marxism then you will have to state what school of thought you are talking about in terms of 'Communism.'

If you wanna talk communism, I'm game.

Originally Posted by drew

If you wanna talk communism, I'm game.

Well you have to start off by distinguishing what school of thought within socialism we are discussing. Are you a communist like the OP?

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Well you have to start off by distinguishing what school of thought within socialism we are discussing. Are you a communist like the OP?

By school of thought I assume you mean strand. I am not a communist, which might lead to a stale discussion between us if you aren't either.

Anyway, Leninism, Marxism, Neo-Marxism & contemporary Marxism. You name the -ism and I'll play ball.

Originally Posted by drew

By school of thought I assume you mean strand. I am not a communist, which might lead to a stale discussion between us if you aren't either.

Anyway, Leninism, Marxism, Neo-Marxism & contemporary Marxism. You name the -ism and I'll play ball.

I'm not one either so it would be pretty boring but I don't think that 'Neo-Marxism' is actually a coherent school of thought. Without dialectical materialism, it ceases to be Marxism. It is reduced to what Marx himself called 'utopian.'

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

I'm not one either so it would be pretty boring but I don't think that 'Neo-Marxism' is actually a coherent school of thought. Without dialectical materialism, it ceases to be Marxism. It is reduced to what Marx himself called 'utopian.'

It's essentially a modern perspective rather than a new paradigm of Marxist theory. However, Marx only called former attempts at socialism 'utopian' because they didn't objectively look at society and draw conclusions, as his 'scientific socialism' did. Neo-marxism is quite coherent, it just fails miserably in its attempts to observe modern society as a purely hegemonic class system when it clearly no longer is.

Originally Posted by drew

It's essentially a modern perspective rather than a new paradigm of Marxist theory. However, Marx only called former attempts at socialism 'utopian' because they didn't objectively look at society and draw conclusions, as his 'scientific socialism' did. Neo-marxism is quite coherent, it just fails miserably in its attempts to observe modern society as a purely hegemonic class system when it clearly no longer is.

No it was utopian because it did not recognize the objective historical laws of nature. It merely appealed to certain classes, usually bourgeois, and did not realize socialism is inevitable regardless of popular appeal. Remove alienation which is essential to dialectical materialism and you have taken the Marx out of Marxism.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

No it was utopian because it did not recognize the objective historical laws of nature. It merely appealed to certain classes, usually bourgeois, and did not realize socialism is inevitable regardless of popular appeal. Remove alienation which is essential to dialectical materialism and you have taken the Marx out of Marxism.

You've essentially paraphrased what I wrote, they were utopian because they failed to arrive at conclusions based on empiricism and analysis. Most utopian socialists didn't appeal to the bourgeois, Charles Fourier's ideas weren't exactly appealing (to anyone, for that matter). In fact, some of the very first socialists were the English levellers, who found their movement crushed by Oliver Cromwell crushed once they became a threat.

Marx tried to reconcile socialism as a viable means of government, and communism as a beneficial replacement of capitalism. His criticism of utopian socialists sought to re-establish socialism as a realistic proposal.

Originally Posted by drew

You've essentially paraphrased what I wrote, they were utopian because they failed to arrive at conclusions based on empiricism and analysis. Most utopian socialists didn't appeal to the bourgeois, Charles Fourier's ideas weren't exactly appealing (to anyone, for that matter). In fact, some of the very first socialists were the English levellers, who found their movement crushed by Oliver Cromwell crushed once they became a threat.

Marx tried to reconcile socialism as a viable means of government, and communism as a beneficial replacement of capitalism. His criticism of utopian socialists sought to re-establish socialism as a realistic proposal.

Robert Owen appealed to the state for trade unions and also appealed to the capitalists to disregard their behavior and see the errors of their ways, Charles Fourier actually waited a hour everyday in the cafes looking for a capitalist sponsor and yes his ideas were appealing, there were actually Fourierite colonies in America. I think Owen is the only one who had more successful colonies. Proudhon thought he could keep the bourgeois class and elevate the proletariat, Lassalle thought government reforms could lessen the suffering of the masses. And what is this nonsense about Levellers being socialists? John Lilburne and Richard Overton were not socialists. The Levellers were actually the first organized libertarian movement. The first socialist in western civilization is obviously Plato.

How are you defining socialism by the way? Because Marx never appealed to what would be called 'socialism' today. Socialism is actually a genre which actually contains several schools of thought from communism to fascism. The only transitional period between mature capitalism and fully realized communism is dictatorship of the proletariat in which a certain class takes over 'emergency powers' which allows it to finally snuff out the last capitalists who would be a small group due to capital concentration.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Robert Owen appealed to the state for trade unions and also appealed to the capitalists to disregard their behavior and see the errors of their ways, Charles Fourier actually waited a hour everyday in the cafes looking for a capitalist sponsor and yes his ideas were appealing, there were actually Fourierite colonies in America. I think Owen is the only one who had more successful colonies. Proudhon thought he could keep the bourgeois class and elevate the proletariat, Lassalle thought government reforms could lessen the suffering of the masses. And what is this nonsense about Levellers being socialists? John Lilburne and Richard Overton were not socialists. The Levellers were actually the first organized libertarian movement. The first socialist in western civilization is obviously Plato.

How are you defining socialism by the way? Because Marx never appealed to what would be called 'socialism' today. Socialism is actually a genre which actually contains several schools of thought from communism to fascism. The only transitional period between mature capitalism and fully realized communism is dictatorship of the proletariat in which a certain class takes over 'emergency powers' which allows it to finally snuff out the last capitalists who would be a small group due to capital concentration.

Yes, Robert Owen was a successful capitalist who treated his workers well. He created small communities in America which failed to operate as he planned. I presume you just googled 'english levellers' and read the wikipedia article, because it isn't nonsense at all. I talk of the movement lead by Gerrard Winstanley, which apparently is better known as the 'true levellers'. Try to read more than a wikipedia article before you discredit what I say.

Socialism obviously has many different forms, the four main categories being revolutionary,evolutionary, democratic and social democracy. The third way is the most recent installment in socialism. I think you're confusing fascism with national socialism. Fascism is much closer to 'chauvinist' nationalism than socialism.

Originally Posted by drew

Yes, Robert Owen was a successful capitalist who treated his workers well. He created small communities in America which failed to operate as he planned.

Actually he had a very successful community in New Lanark so it wasn't just America. I bring it up because it was actually his most successful.

Originally Posted by drew

I presume you just googled 'english levellers' and read the wikipedia article, because it isn't nonsense at all. I talk of the movement lead by Gerrard Winstanley, which apparently is better known as the 'true levellers'. Try to read more than a wikipedia article before you discredit what I say.

You presume incorrectly.
History of Economic Thought Volume I

Let's not engage in puffery.

Originally Posted by drew

Socialism obviously has many different forms, the four main categories being revolutionary,evolutionary, democratic and social democracy. The third way is the most recent installment in socialism. I think you're confusing fascism with national socialism. Fascism is much closer to 'chauvinist' nationalism than socialism.

No fascism is clearly a form of socialism.
'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state'

Robert Owen was a socialist. He brought industrial socialism to New Lanark, Scotland and a U.S. town. Despite the reports of positive benefits in New Lanark, his experiment was a miserable failure in the U.S.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Well I guess that makes the USA communist then, it's not a free market!

Come on dude, it's the capitalist, the free market aspects of the USA's economy that was responsible for the recent recessions and the Great Depression. Do you know what a speculative bubble is?

It's actually called a 'mixed economy'
Concerning your statement about how you're not an economist...well if you weren't an economist on some level then how can you formulate a theory about what you experienced concerning economic affairs? Your comment about having friends who complain about the state of affairs then try to compare it to what you live under is pretty silly. Alienation of one's own society is much more common then alienation from a foreign one so one will always see faults in one's country while thinking others are holy lands.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

If every person received the same grade regardless of what they did, they would show less initiative because if the end result is the same, it is easier not to work at all than it is to work.

Exactly. That is the problem with distribution, especially distribution to the point of forced equality or near equality. It is a problem even when social classes still exist if the distribution is extreme enough. Distribution takes away incentive. Equal distribution destroys it almost completely.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

This differs from communism in the following points:

• In communism you do not get compensated regardless of how you perform, you are expected to meet targets, quotas or whatever you want to call them. The state expects a return on its support.

Expected? So what? The idea is that everybody owns everything together. That leads to mass slacking off, which is always dealt with through extremely strict oppression. Fear and greed are the only things that make a national economy work, and greed is far more effective than fear because fear makes people just want to get by while greed makes people (particularly business owners and executives) go for the pinnacles of their abilities.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Communists are compensated according to their abilities and needs, not necessarily "evenly".

It's extremely close, close enough to be part of efforts aimed at classless society.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

SKA, if a university with 20,000 students had a system in which grades are evenly distributed, what would be the result?

I guess then the students wouldn't have a good idea of how well they are doing in their study. I don't believe I've ever said school grades should be equally distributed.

But let's stick to the core of this topic.
Let me first say that I am not 100% against any free-market kind of system.
It's just that I think some sectors of society, the vital ones, should be state owned and free of charge.

When it concerns anything else, I don't see a big problem with having a free market system. So basically I would settle for a more socialistic system.


A good way to realise this would be to make the basic nececities of life free of charge and evenly distributed.
This means food, warm water, electricity, drinklable water, housing, healthcare and education.

If those basics were free of charge and equally accessable to everyone, then the rest could be free-market orientated. I just don't think ANYONE should be denied or limited in these basic nececities. Off course this requires more ideology to serve as the replacement incentive of moneyprofit. This is where a Government can help.

Other, more luxurious things(like cars, swimming pools, sportclubs, world travel..etc) could be subject to Free-market regulations.

I'd like to see homeless people, people to poor to pay for healthcare or education and people starving due to poverty belong to the past one day.

If you work hard & earn alot of money then you could by a car, or have a swimming pool built in your backyard or travel to distant countries. It would be accessable under the condition of working and saving for it.
However I don't believe it is moral to cut poor people off from basic nececities such as Healthcare, food, housing and education because their income is too low; That should be unconditional.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Actually he had a very successful community in New Lanark so it wasn't just America. I bring it up because it was actually his most successful.



You presume incorrectly.
History of Economic Thought Volume I

Let's not engage in puffery.




No fascism is clearly a form of socialism.
'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state'

Fascism is not a form of socialism. Just because it shares some principles of socialism does not mean it is socialist, that is a very, very common assumption made by Americans.

Socialism sees the state as a vehicle towards greater equality. Fascism does not. You are confusing authoritarianism with socialism. The now-dead fascist ideology believes that the ruler is supreme, and thus their state is supreme. The superiority of the state ties in with several things, but chiefly, it is the will of the leader. Fascists believe that the leader is always right, no matter what. Remember that Hitler despised and killed the communists.

Originally Posted by SKA

It's just that I think some sectors of society, the vital ones, should be state owned and free of charge.

Well let's not be naive here. Nothing is 'free of charge'

Originally Posted by SKA

A good way to realise this would be to make the basic nececities of life free of charge and evenly distributed.
This means food, warm water, electricity, drinklable water, housing, healthcare and education.

Why do you choose the government to handle these things? Experience has shown that the state is a very incapable institution except in exerting force.

Originally Posted by SKA

Other, more luxurious things(like cars, swimming pools, sportclubs, world travel..etc) could be subject to Free-market regulations.

Free market 'regulation' is an oxymoron.

Originally Posted by SKA

If you work hard & earn alot of money then you could by a car, or have a swimming pool built in your backyard or travel to distant countries. It would be accessable under the condition of working and saving for it.
However I don't believe it is moral to cut poor people off from basic nececities such as Healthcare, food, housing and education because their income is too low; That should be unconditional.

Well I see you feel strongly about this so I must ask what is stopping you from organizing a charity to disseminate such necessities? Why seek the state which is built on involuntary contributions?