Why is socialism becoming increasingly popular in the United States?

Because their economic model doesn't work.

 

Some have very large electorates. Millions of Russians are voting as we speak.

 

Our non-profit businesses work.

Mondragon CERTAINLY worked.

The increasing variety of worker-owned workers' co-op we have in the US (over 600 now) seem to be working.

Question: can you imagine a system in which businesses are run for the benefit of society instead of for wealth accumulation of the owner?

 

Free markets have been undermined by large corporations, unions, churches, activists, and both political parties. Ever the problem of democracies.

 

Most of our large corporations exist because of FDRs policies. Under FDR we went from 50 odd car companies to 5 and now 2 chrysler being owned by Fiat. I can't remember the last time I saw Democrats vote in mass to block a merger. Cars are now being essentially designed by the government.

 

Democrats created the foundations of most of those large corporations during the Great Depression under the National Recovery Act.

 

If you are posting a rebuttal against the post that said socialism doesn't work, you should cite examples of socialism. The profit motive of capitalists provides major benefits to society in the form that society wants and likes

 

Don't you know yet what socialism would be? Why didn't you dare try to answer my question?

Yep, like unaffordable healthcare, planned obsolescence, A.L.E.C. and campaign contribution laws that are destroying any representative democracy we ever had, climate change and all it brings, periodic recessions with their unemployment problems, constantly increasing income and wealth disparity, crushing education debt, and u affordable retirement to name just a few such "benefits"?

 

Your first comment is nonsense (see above). Some collective production doesn't make the entire country socialist. Your second comment is absurd (see above). If some part of the country is socialist, by your definition the entire country is socialist.

I'd like to see you try to explain how public schools and the military aren't collective production.

 

Some, yes. The more successful collectives aren't really large organizations, and they're run as a business. Capital is hard to assemble by collectives without a capital base that finances operations that can pay off loans (translation: make enough money to cover the cost of capital).

Must be 100,000 employees now. I just don't think it's scalable for important new businesses.

Amazon is already 100+ times the size of Mondragon.

Some do, yes--and very well. I was a long-time member of a farm coop. I'd still be if I lived in the area.

Only if the government is strong enough to control them. I don't hold out much hope here, at least not in the near future.

"The business of America is business." -- Calvin Coolidge, 1923. Still is.

 

You should be careful not to mistake causation with correlation.

We're a high-cost producer. When GM went under 15 year ago, the settlement with pensioned autoworkers paid out an average $4000 a month in pension. We all paid too much for cars until we had competition. Unions drove up the wages and the government, under both parties, protected the companies from foreign competition while they paid their workers high wages.

 

Today, we have large global corporations, many started somewhere else. You're talking about 90 years ago and a lot has changed. The NRA was scuttled by SCOTUS.

 

Only as a sometimes side effect.

 

The capitalist imperative was at the fore in relation to the Ford Pinto car.
The capitalist American health care system leaves millions to suffer, or camp in tents in the woods to pay the capitalist system for their care. Is that of benefit to the home of the brave?
How come all schools aren’t fee paying, and all roads toll roads, and why don’t the armed services make a profit, and the judicial system, and the police?

 

That would be no. In fact successful companies stay successful by meeting the needs and desires of it's customers at a reasonable price. Politicians and bureaucrats only add to costs. The only two things we need Bureaucrats and politician for in a business since is to police fraud and to prevent the formation of megacorps. In essence we have megacorps because politician and bureaucrats haven't done there job.

 

Homelessness is a dereliction of duty and a failure to understand economics on the part of government. Capitalism has nothing to do with that.

 

Wouldn’t tackling homelessness need a degree of the dreaded socialism?

 

I try to be an exception to the rule of behavior you appropriately mention. I try to mean what I say and say what I mean.

My only point was that pretending that most legislation has no unintended consequences should be avoided.

 

See, LM? Right there. You stepped into it by associating socialism with public schools in your answer to his question. This is why I am careful to point out that public schools, Medicare, S.S., the USPS, etc. are "socially-beneficial programs in capitalism" and do not mean we have socialism. The defenders of capitalism use confusion as a main weapon.

 

Try reading up on Lenin's NEP where he says state capitalism may be necessary for a time to develop the productive capacity.

 

No reason to waste my time.

 

Again??? Okayyyy.....

Socialism has always been the "antidote" to capitalism. It would end private ownership of the MoP for private profit. It would reverse the employer-employee relationship, and it would accomplish all this by transitioning control of the MoP to the workers who do the producing. And that would require a government that is required in the Socialist Constitution to facilitate, protect, and advance worker management of the MoP.

 

Gotta backtrack, LM! The discussion and question was about the armed forces.

 

Finding that balance between profits and benefit of society is the most difficult part.

 

Do you think there is no possible way to solve that? I think there is. Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Maggie Hassan introduced two bills in 2017 which aimed at expanding the number of small employee-owned ventures. (S.1O82 & HR.2357). The "Work Act" would be based on the model of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center, a nonprofit that helps businesses facilitate the transfer of ownership to their employees. In 2016, the center helped two companies become employee-owned, while three others became worker cooperatives. That legislation would have provide $45 million in federal funding to help states create and expand employee ownership centers. A second bill would have created a U.S. Employee Ownership Bank, which would be allocated $500 million to offer low-interest loans and assistance to help workers purchase businesses through stock purchases or plans to form a cooperative.

And that would be a beginning.

Again, I do not think problems and obstacles are unsolvable.

If we're talking about a capitalist's government that is administering a capitalist economy, then I agree. But I'm thinking of a socialist government with a socialist Constitution which spells out the supportive role of facilitating a growing socialist economy.