Please define socialism for me and explain how it works

@CSKA_Moscou said in #9:

If you're about socialism as it is present in the political landscape of capitalist countries as a party, it's is very far from the theory of Marxist socialism or socialism according to anarchists.

The abolition of classes and the end of capitalism are not priorities for these parties. Today, socialism as a party is in a way a socialism within capitalism, a sorta of socialism that will supports a fairer economic redistribution, that will try to reduce unemployment, a more open borders politic, but it will not fight against great fortunes, will not guarantee that in fact there is more equality nor that they will listen the working class.

Interesting.

So is it more like Keynesian economics? Where you avoid recession and try to keep full employment by heavy government spending? I've always been a proponent of laissez-faire economics myself, but I can see the logic behind Keynesian reasoning.

Socialism is when we produce stuff,everyone who worked on it gets the same share from profit or product,Rather than the financer gets %90 in capitalism.And the financer just finances ,doesnt practicly do nothing but hire the people to produce the stuff.

it is not a fact but a thinking that assumes that most folk are lazy , but even if it was partly true this can be worked around
as you know if you work , the job isnt all about working , many times its just watching the clock go by , but it is slow when you are watching it , time flies when you graft , so its a way ofthinking , put the graft in and it is soon done ,
we also now enter a new era in work the advent of artificial intelligence
but because we live under a capitalist system it means most of us will be poor and unemployed whilst the bosses get even richer saving a fortune in wages
sio you need to ensure that everyone has their needs met , the basic stuff food housing or it will provoke civil unrest on a scale i cannot even imagine , and ive looked at how humans have opted for revolution in the past , i get the feeling it will way surpass that
the socialist in me has no problem with us having the drudgery of work of human backs , but it has to come with opening access to education arts etc things that enrich our species for the good of all;
i seek to be treat as i treat others so i try to always be fair , but its still a millennias old hope isnyt it and id like to see a true socialist society arrive

@TheCaptain7777 said in #1:

an somebody please explain what a day would look like in a socialist state
Try to be more specific with your questions.
For example, describe how a day would go in a capitalist country - maybe then it will be clearer what you are interested in.

Of all the socialisms mentioned above, there was only one that actually worked - the Soviet one.
And I could try to answer your questions based on my experience of living in the Soviet system.
Along with this, you could watch Soviet films. There is a Mosfilm channel on YouTube, where the copyright holder has provided free access to dozens of films, and many have English subtitles.

Before meeting with Gorbachev, President Reagan watched the Soviet film "Москва слезам не верит" (Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears) twice.

@PTX187 said in #14:

Of all the socialisms mentioned above, there was only one that actually worked - the Soviet one.
And I could try to answer your questions based on my experience of living in the Soviet system.
Along with this, you could watch Soviet films. There is a Mosfilm channel on YouTube, where the copyright holder has provided free access to dozens of films, and many have English subtitles.

Please explain to me in what ways Russian working class men and women constituted the ruling class in the Soviet system after the mid 1920s. What were the democratic bodies that they participated in to decide the priorities of their society? Why did Stalin purge many of the "old Bolsheviks" in the trials of the 1930s and why did he exile Trotsky and eventually have him assassinated?

@stockwellpete said in #15:
Too many too complicated questions)
If I start answering them, I'm afraid this thread will be ruined - the topic will be changed.

@PTX187 said in #16:

Too many too complicated questions)
If I start answering them, I'm afraid this thread will be ruined - the topic will be changed.

It is a discussion about socialism, isn't it? For me, that means working class men and women (the vast majority of the population) must decide how that society is organised and who will be its leaders. If a society was truly socialist then it should be easy to identify those democratic mechanisms which were the basis of how everything was decided. I don't think that you can do that for the Stalinist system that eventually collapsed in 1990/1, because it was a totalitarian police state, not a democratic worker's state moving towards communism and the abolition of all social hierarchies.

An old joke.

A programmer was assigned to make a program for a ministry. It was time to hand in the finished program, but nothing worked for him.
Then the same task was given to another programmer, and a month later he demonstrated a working program. The first programmer, who was present, jealously remarked: if I had known that such a simple program was needed, I would have made it in one week! To which the second programmer replied: if I had known that a non-working program was needed, I would have made it in 10 minutes.

@PTX187 said in #18:

An old joke.

It doesn't seem as if you have any answers for me. At least this thread is demonstrating that there are indeed three main types of socialism represented in the world today - Classical Marxism (social revolution leading to mass participatory democracy of working class people), Social Democracy (incremental socialist change within the framework of capitalism using bourgeois representative democracy) and various forms of Stalinism (where the "Great Leader" or party elite decide everything and enrich themselves without any democracy at all).

A classic objection to socialism: human self-interest.

E.O Wilson said in reference to ants that "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species. With the ants, he was right. In their world, the individual is nothing, the society is everything."