People use all sorts of metrics to determine whether or not a state is socialist or not, so it’s hard to find neutral terminology everyone can agree with. North Korea calls itself socialist and has a centrally-planned economy, and has been historically aligned with other countries that also call themselves socialist (such as the USSR and PRC), so it seems reasonable enough to me to call them socialist. Should I call them capitalist instead? Seems a little odd, especially since I live in the US which has a much larger proportion of the economy in the private sector.
The means of production are mixed between public/state ownership, collective ownership, and private ownership, actually.
I take it that your metric for whether or not a state is socialist is something like, “Worker ownership of the means of production.” But that metric has a lot of ambiguities that make it difficult to apply practically in an objective way. Which workers own which means of production, and in what form? Suppose we have a system where everything is state-owned and the state determines who can use what when based on a truly democratic process - but then, an organization of trained professionals in a given field go on strike to demand things be done the way they want. If all the workers should own all the means of production, then the strikers are out of line, but if the workers in a particular field should own the means of production in that field, then the state is out of line.
And should the economy be transformed, fully and immediately, to that ideal? Historically, both the USSR and PRC attempted widespread collectivization of farms, like with the Great Leap Forward, which was an abject failure. That’s not to say that farming collectives cannot be successful, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect immediate and total transformation to that model or else a state isn’t socialist.
People use all sorts of metrics to determine whether or not a state is socialist or not, so it’s hard to find neutral terminology everyone can agree with. North Korea calls itself socialist and has a centrally-planned economy, and has been historically aligned with other countries that also call themselves socialist (such as the USSR and PRC), so it seems reasonable enough to me to call them socialist. Should I call them capitalist instead? Seems a little odd, especially since I live in the US which has a much larger proportion of the economy in the private sector.
They’re not socialist because the means of production is owned by literally one guy?
The means of production are mixed between public/state ownership, collective ownership, and private ownership, actually.
I take it that your metric for whether or not a state is socialist is something like, “Worker ownership of the means of production.” But that metric has a lot of ambiguities that make it difficult to apply practically in an objective way. Which workers own which means of production, and in what form? Suppose we have a system where everything is state-owned and the state determines who can use what when based on a truly democratic process - but then, an organization of trained professionals in a given field go on strike to demand things be done the way they want. If all the workers should own all the means of production, then the strikers are out of line, but if the workers in a particular field should own the means of production in that field, then the state is out of line.
And should the economy be transformed, fully and immediately, to that ideal? Historically, both the USSR and PRC attempted widespread collectivization of farms, like with the Great Leap Forward, which was an abject failure. That’s not to say that farming collectives cannot be successful, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect immediate and total transformation to that model or else a state isn’t socialist.