Nadene Goldfoot
"Communism and socialism are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes. The two are interchangeable in some ways, but different in others.
Even Communist countries carry the word, socialism in their name. It's hard to tell who's a Communist and who's a socialist today. Here are comments I've found.
Communist countries are: During the time of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some of these nations, like the People's Republic of China, were (and still are) global players in their own right. Other communist countries, such as East Germany, were essentially satellites of the U.S.S.R. that played a significant role during the Cold War but no longer exist. Marxist-Lenin followers using Socialism in their name include Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos.
The currency of Russia is the Russian ruble (RUB). There are 146.8 million people in Russia. It's the largest country in the world as it covers 1/8 of the earth's surface.
China is a Communist country. "The currency of China is the Chinese Yuan (CNY) China has 1319.1 million people, the largest population in the world. India is 2nd largest. In 2015, China's Middle Class became the largest in the world". Not surprising as they have the largest population in the world.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (called Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic at the time), together with the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, on December 30, 1922. Out of the 15 republics that would make up the USSR, the largest in size and over half of the total USSR population was the Russian SFSR, which came to dominate the union for its entire 69-year history.
The Russian Federation is recognized in international law as a successor state of the former Soviet Union.
In a communist society, the working class owns everything, and everyone works toward the same communal goal. There are no wealthy or poor people -- all are equal, and the community distributes what it produces based only on need. The people as a collective own everything.
Nothing is obtained by working more than what is required.
Communism frequently results in low production, mass poverty and limited advancement.
"Communism is both a political system and an economic one. Communist parties have absolute power over governance, and elections are single-party affairs. The party controls the economic system as well, and private ownership is illegal, although this facet of communist rule has changed in some countries like China.
Poverty spread so widely in the Soviet Union in the 1980s that its citizens revolted.
Socialism’s main focus is on equality, Like communism, Workers earn wages they can spend as they choose, while the government, not citizens, owns and operates the means for production. The government owns the tools and buildings for production. There is no private property. Everything controlled by the state. Transitional between capitalism and communism. Unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
Workers receive what they need to produce and survive, but there’s no incentive to achieve more, leaving little motivation. Some countries have adopted aspects of socialism.
Socialist countries we hear about a lot are from the Scandinavians like Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Sanders, again running for President, is a Socialist and brags about their socialism. "While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal health care, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism. They are denying that they are practicing Socialism. Sorry, Bernie. They are practicing compassionate capitalism.
"The myth of Nordic socialism is partially created by a confusion between socialism, meaning government exerting control or ownership of businesses, and the welfare state in the form of government-provided social safety net programs. However, the left’s embrace of socialism is not merely a case of redefining a word. Simply look at the long-running affinity of leftists with socialist dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for proof many on the left long for real socialism."
.What Sanders and his supporters confuse us, socialism is actually social democracy, a system in which the government aims to promote the public welfare through heavy taxation and spending, within the framework of a capitalist economy. This is what the Scandinavians practice.
The Democrat Socialists of America's platform is: a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people. For example, they support reforms that:
What is the Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn? Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom which has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. ... Since leaving government, the party has been led by Ed Miliband from 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn from 2015.
Under Corbyn's leadership the Labour Party has shifted ideologically to the left and away from the centre-ground of previous leaders, such as the former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In January 2016, Corbyn initially called for a maximum wage cap, saying that he wanted “some kind of high earnings cap”. He did not specify an exact figure, but said it would be "somewhat higher" than his £138,000 salary. Later on the same day, Corbyn pulled back from the idea of a legal cap, instead suggesting that any business which was awarded government contracts would only be able to pay their highest-paid staff twenty times as much as their lowest-paid staff. He also suggested corporation tax cuts for businesses which showed restraint on executive pay.
Venezuela has been a socialist country and went from a great and rich country to nothing. It's an economic basket case today. "IT'S NO SECRET THAT things are bad in Venezuela. Rolling blackouts are causing infant deaths in hospitals where backup generators have ceased to function; the country is on pace to hit 700 percent inflation; outside of active war zones, the murder rate in Caracas is the highest in the world."
But then the USA was made up of disgruntled people who wanted to get ahead but were being held back in their old country for one reason or another and were daring people to come to the USA in the first place-chancing the oceans to get here and try their luck. The USA is made up of different people to start with; mutations themselves from the old country folks.
In the U.S., welfare and the public education system are a form of socialism. We're finding that the newer generations, many of who have graduated from college and have money to pay back, are all for socialism now and want to copy their European cousins. They bad mouth our system of capitalism without realizing that it's brought us the gifts that they are enjoying right now. However, it takes the desire and energy of our forefathers to keep it up, and they seem to lack the drive that they had. They want everything now, quickly without waiting.
Is Israel a Socialist country? That depends on what exactly you mean by “Socialist”, and what you are comparing it to. As others have explained the political history, I'll focus on the present.
Both are the opposite of capitalism, where limitations don’t exist and reward comes to those who go beyond the minimum.
In capitalist societies, owners are allowed to keep the excess production they earn. And competition occurs naturally, which fosters advancement.
Capitalism tends to create a sharp divide between the wealthiest citizens and the poorest, however, with the wealthiest owning the majority of the nation's resources."
"Capitalism is an economic system where private entities own the factors of production. The four factors are entrepreneurship, capital goods, natural resources, and labor. The owners of capital goods, natural resources, and entrepreneurship exercise control through companies. The individual owns his or her labor. The only exception is slavery, where someone else owns a person's labor. Although illegal throughout the entire world, slavery is still widely practiced." Wall Street is a good example of how capitalism works.
Capitalism results in the best products for the best prices. That's because consumers will pay more for what they want the most. Businesses provide what customers want at the highest prices they’ll pay. Prices are kept low by competition among businesses. They make their products as efficient as possible to maximize profit.
We have an enterprising supermarket chain called WINCO's. WinCo Foods is based in Boise, Idaho. It was founded in 1967, and the company is mostly owned by current and former employees through an employee stock ownership plan. WinCo operates distribution centers in Woodburn, Oregon; Myrtle Creek, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Phoenix, Arizona; Denton, Texas; and Modesto, California, and has a total of just over 18,000 employees company-wide.
The Socialistic representatives who are Socialists want to put a much heavier tax on the wealthiest of our people to pay for all the goodies they are demanding to come to them without their work or energy input to have them. It's the extremely creative minds who usually get into the highest of tax brackets. Wouldn't this stifle a reason to use that creativity that creates jobs for others not so endowed?
My father had his own business, WHOLESALE MEATS, and earned as we say, a living. He was able to finally expand and owned SILVER FALLS MEAT PACKING CO. His butchers kept an eagle eye on the hours they put in each week, and I made out their checks during his first business. They wouldn't go over a certain amount of hours as it could put them in a higher tax group taking out more of a % of taxes, so it wasn't worth the effort. These were people without college education but wise to the ways of government. Don't ever think that people are stupid. Only when a person is adequately paid do they extend themselves, like owning the business themselves. My father, the owner, was a workaholic. He got something out of it; many things, pride of ownership, money, success, the headaches of business, etc. etc. That gave him something to talk about.
"Besides the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, Estonia and the UK are listed as the most capitalistic countries in the world."
Resource: https://www.investopedia.com/video/play/difference-between-communism-and-socialism/
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/03/socialism-versus-capitalism-for-usa.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178
https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178?utm_term=socialist+countries+that+work&utm_content=p1-main-3-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=google_s&utm_campaign=adid-4ef367f2-1461-45ba-87ca-5421bae9c5ba-0-ab_gsb_ocode-4922&ad=semD&an=google_s&am=broad&q=socialist+countries+that+work&o=4922&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=4ef367f2-1461-45ba-87ca-5421bae9c5ba-0-ab_gsb
https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-socialist-nation
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/
https://www.foxnews.com/world/how-socialism-turned-venezuela-from-the-wealthiest-country-in-south-america-into-an-economic-basket-case
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-06/socialism-is-devastating-venezuela-and-americans-dont-seem-to-notice
https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/
https://www.thebalance.com/capitalism-characteristics-examples-pros-cons-3305588
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_leadership_of_Jeremy_Corbyn
https://www.google.com/search?q=Labor+Party+in+England-socialism%3F&se_es_tkn=gdnnooou
Webster's 7th new collegiate dictionary
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/#4cddd93d74ad
 |
| Chinese factory workers Communism: theory of eliminating private property; goods are available to all as needed, a stateless society; Marxist -Leninism |
"Communism and socialism are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes. The two are interchangeable in some ways, but different in others.
Even Communist countries carry the word, socialism in their name. It's hard to tell who's a Communist and who's a socialist today. Here are comments I've found.
 |
| Putin of Russia meeting with workers of the Kalashnikov Concern. |
Communist countries are: During the time of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some of these nations, like the People's Republic of China, were (and still are) global players in their own right. Other communist countries, such as East Germany, were essentially satellites of the U.S.S.R. that played a significant role during the Cold War but no longer exist. Marxist-Lenin followers using Socialism in their name include Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos.
The currency of Russia is the Russian ruble (RUB). There are 146.8 million people in Russia. It's the largest country in the world as it covers 1/8 of the earth's surface.
China is a Communist country. "The currency of China is the Chinese Yuan (CNY) China has 1319.1 million people, the largest population in the world. India is 2nd largest. In 2015, China's Middle Class became the largest in the world". Not surprising as they have the largest population in the world.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (called Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic at the time), together with the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, on December 30, 1922. Out of the 15 republics that would make up the USSR, the largest in size and over half of the total USSR population was the Russian SFSR, which came to dominate the union for its entire 69-year history.
The Russian Federation is recognized in international law as a successor state of the former Soviet Union.
In a communist society, the working class owns everything, and everyone works toward the same communal goal. There are no wealthy or poor people -- all are equal, and the community distributes what it produces based only on need. The people as a collective own everything.
Nothing is obtained by working more than what is required.
Communism frequently results in low production, mass poverty and limited advancement.
"Communism is both a political system and an economic one. Communist parties have absolute power over governance, and elections are single-party affairs. The party controls the economic system as well, and private ownership is illegal, although this facet of communist rule has changed in some countries like China.
Poverty spread so widely in the Soviet Union in the 1980s that its citizens revolted.
Socialism’s main focus is on equality, Like communism, Workers earn wages they can spend as they choose, while the government, not citizens, owns and operates the means for production. The government owns the tools and buildings for production. There is no private property. Everything controlled by the state. Transitional between capitalism and communism. Unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
Workers receive what they need to produce and survive, but there’s no incentive to achieve more, leaving little motivation. Some countries have adopted aspects of socialism.
Socialist countries we hear about a lot are from the Scandinavians like Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Sanders, again running for President, is a Socialist and brags about their socialism. "While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal health care, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism. They are denying that they are practicing Socialism. Sorry, Bernie. They are practicing compassionate capitalism.
"The myth of Nordic socialism is partially created by a confusion between socialism, meaning government exerting control or ownership of businesses, and the welfare state in the form of government-provided social safety net programs. However, the left’s embrace of socialism is not merely a case of redefining a word. Simply look at the long-running affinity of leftists with socialist dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for proof many on the left long for real socialism."
.What Sanders and his supporters confuse us, socialism is actually social democracy, a system in which the government aims to promote the public welfare through heavy taxation and spending, within the framework of a capitalist economy. This is what the Scandinavians practice.
The Democrat Socialists of America's platform is: a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people. For example, they support reforms that:
- decrease the influence of money in politics
- empower ordinary people in workplaces and the economy
- restructure gender and cultural relationships to be more equitable.
- They plan to restructure society. They are working on students from high school and college. They give no examples of doing anything.
- The United Kingdom provides basic needs like healthcare to everyone regardless of their time or effort at work. It seems like most of Europe and much of Africa are Socialists. There's the old ones and the newer ones. Not many are capitalists. England has different parties. Two are Socialists:
- Socialist Alliance (England)
- Socialist People's Party (Furness)
- They have the Socialist Labour Party: A forerunner, the original Socialist Labour Party, was formed in 1903 by Scottish socialists who wanted a party allied to workers in struggle. In May 1996, at its first congress at Camden Town Hall in London, the SLP was re launched by leading trades unionists and campaign activists.The re-establishment of the party came a year after Tony Blair's 'New' Labour abandoned any commitment to progressive change for socialism in Britain. The principles of the SLP are summarised in clause four of it's constitution, to 'secure for the people a full return' for the wealth and services they generate.
What is the Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn? Labour Party (UK) The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom which has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. ... Since leaving government, the party has been led by Ed Miliband from 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn from 2015.
Under Corbyn's leadership the Labour Party has shifted ideologically to the left and away from the centre-ground of previous leaders, such as the former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In January 2016, Corbyn initially called for a maximum wage cap, saying that he wanted “some kind of high earnings cap”. He did not specify an exact figure, but said it would be "somewhat higher" than his £138,000 salary. Later on the same day, Corbyn pulled back from the idea of a legal cap, instead suggesting that any business which was awarded government contracts would only be able to pay their highest-paid staff twenty times as much as their lowest-paid staff. He also suggested corporation tax cuts for businesses which showed restraint on executive pay.
 |
| Venezuela It has a refugee problem as seen here at the border with Columbia. |
Venezuela has been a socialist country and went from a great and rich country to nothing. It's an economic basket case today. "IT'S NO SECRET THAT things are bad in Venezuela. Rolling blackouts are causing infant deaths in hospitals where backup generators have ceased to function; the country is on pace to hit 700 percent inflation; outside of active war zones, the murder rate in Caracas is the highest in the world."
But then the USA was made up of disgruntled people who wanted to get ahead but were being held back in their old country for one reason or another and were daring people to come to the USA in the first place-chancing the oceans to get here and try their luck. The USA is made up of different people to start with; mutations themselves from the old country folks.
In the U.S., welfare and the public education system are a form of socialism. We're finding that the newer generations, many of who have graduated from college and have money to pay back, are all for socialism now and want to copy their European cousins. They bad mouth our system of capitalism without realizing that it's brought us the gifts that they are enjoying right now. However, it takes the desire and energy of our forefathers to keep it up, and they seem to lack the drive that they had. They want everything now, quickly without waiting.
 |
| Our country where we can be Jewish, where we have socialism and capitalism, even communists in our government. Pictured at THE WALL in Jerusalem, praying |
Is Israel a Socialist country? That depends on what exactly you mean by “Socialist”, and what you are comparing it to. As others have explained the political history, I'll focus on the present.
Compared to the USA, then yes, we are moderately Socialist. BUT for Americans this term is a “bogeyman” and very few have a real idea as to what this means.
Compared to Europe, we are LESS socialist than many countries,especially the Scandavian ones.
Israel created the kibbutz between 1918 and 1921. They are collective villages with the main principles resembling those of the Kevutzah -cooperative agricultural group in Israel working a common farm on national land. Production and purchase are collective, consumption being based on the principal of satisfying needs within the ability of the economy. The kevutzah bears responsibility for housing, health, and education. It is the creation of large workers' groups doing contract work and the need to develop wide tracts of land engendered the broadening of the Kevutzah concept to incorporate industry, wage labor, and the removal of restrictions on the size of the group. You are voted on to join them. They have a communal dining room and take turns working in the kitchen. They have a communal area to care for small children not yet in school, and have a school for kibbutz children. They vote on buying things for the kibbutz. Each one has some sort of specialized work they do. I vistied kibbutz Degania Aleph that started in 1910, the very 1st one. Marvelous. The distinction between a kevutzah and kibbutz has progressively decreased.
Israel created the kibbutz between 1918 and 1921. They are collective villages with the main principles resembling those of the Kevutzah -cooperative agricultural group in Israel working a common farm on national land. Production and purchase are collective, consumption being based on the principal of satisfying needs within the ability of the economy. The kevutzah bears responsibility for housing, health, and education. It is the creation of large workers' groups doing contract work and the need to develop wide tracts of land engendered the broadening of the Kevutzah concept to incorporate industry, wage labor, and the removal of restrictions on the size of the group. You are voted on to join them. They have a communal dining room and take turns working in the kitchen. They have a communal area to care for small children not yet in school, and have a school for kibbutz children. They vote on buying things for the kibbutz. Each one has some sort of specialized work they do. I vistied kibbutz Degania Aleph that started in 1910, the very 1st one. Marvelous. The distinction between a kevutzah and kibbutz has progressively decreased.
Both are the opposite of capitalism, where limitations don’t exist and reward comes to those who go beyond the minimum.
In capitalist societies, owners are allowed to keep the excess production they earn. And competition occurs naturally, which fosters advancement.
Capitalism tends to create a sharp divide between the wealthiest citizens and the poorest, however, with the wealthiest owning the majority of the nation's resources."
"Capitalism is an economic system where private entities own the factors of production. The four factors are entrepreneurship, capital goods, natural resources, and labor. The owners of capital goods, natural resources, and entrepreneurship exercise control through companies. The individual owns his or her labor. The only exception is slavery, where someone else owns a person's labor. Although illegal throughout the entire world, slavery is still widely practiced." Wall Street is a good example of how capitalism works.
Capitalism results in the best products for the best prices. That's because consumers will pay more for what they want the most. Businesses provide what customers want at the highest prices they’ll pay. Prices are kept low by competition among businesses. They make their products as efficient as possible to maximize profit.
 |
| WinCo in Hillsboro, Oregon |
We have an enterprising supermarket chain called WINCO's. WinCo Foods is based in Boise, Idaho. It was founded in 1967, and the company is mostly owned by current and former employees through an employee stock ownership plan. WinCo operates distribution centers in Woodburn, Oregon; Myrtle Creek, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Phoenix, Arizona; Denton, Texas; and Modesto, California, and has a total of just over 18,000 employees company-wide.
The company reduces operating expenses by purchasing directly from manufacturers and farmers; operating basic, no-frills stores; not accepting credit cards; and not providing bagging service. This is a product of capitalism and solving problems to make a net profit. It does have a ring of communism here with the workers being the owners. They do have the best prices, lowest in town. They don't have a huge variety of brands.
The Socialistic representatives who are Socialists want to put a much heavier tax on the wealthiest of our people to pay for all the goodies they are demanding to come to them without their work or energy input to have them. It's the extremely creative minds who usually get into the highest of tax brackets. Wouldn't this stifle a reason to use that creativity that creates jobs for others not so endowed?
 |
| Dad-Maurice Goldfoot at 21, boxing professionally as Billy Meshke at the Neighborhood House in Portland, making some money- starting out in life.His mother didn't want him doing this. His father had died when he was 4; so he had taken odd jobs ever since. No silver spoon in his mouth. He had determination. Meshke was Yiddish for Morrie-Maurice and that was anglicized for Moses. |
 |
| Dad's cattle truck -Silver Falls Meat Packing Co His drivers went from eastern Oregon to Portland, Oregon, about 400 miles. He had his own feed lot in eastern Oregon. He, the boss, wore jeans and cowboy boots and flannel shirts. He drove an old car, but he was an owner! |
My father had his own business, WHOLESALE MEATS, and earned as we say, a living. He was able to finally expand and owned SILVER FALLS MEAT PACKING CO. His butchers kept an eagle eye on the hours they put in each week, and I made out their checks during his first business. They wouldn't go over a certain amount of hours as it could put them in a higher tax group taking out more of a % of taxes, so it wasn't worth the effort. These were people without college education but wise to the ways of government. Don't ever think that people are stupid. Only when a person is adequately paid do they extend themselves, like owning the business themselves. My father, the owner, was a workaholic. He got something out of it; many things, pride of ownership, money, success, the headaches of business, etc. etc. That gave him something to talk about.
"Besides the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, Estonia and the UK are listed as the most capitalistic countries in the world."
Resource: https://www.investopedia.com/video/play/difference-between-communism-and-socialism/
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/03/socialism-versus-capitalism-for-usa.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178
https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178?utm_term=socialist+countries+that+work&utm_content=p1-main-3-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=google_s&utm_campaign=adid-4ef367f2-1461-45ba-87ca-5421bae9c5ba-0-ab_gsb_ocode-4922&ad=semD&an=google_s&am=broad&q=socialist+countries+that+work&o=4922&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=4ef367f2-1461-45ba-87ca-5421bae9c5ba-0-ab_gsb
https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-a-socialist-nation
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/
https://www.foxnews.com/world/how-socialism-turned-venezuela-from-the-wealthiest-country-in-south-america-into-an-economic-basket-case
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-06/socialism-is-devastating-venezuela-and-americans-dont-seem-to-notice
https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/
https://www.thebalance.com/capitalism-characteristics-examples-pros-cons-3305588
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_leadership_of_Jeremy_Corbyn
https://www.google.com/search?q=Labor+Party+in+England-socialism%3F&se_es_tkn=gdnnooou
Webster's 7th new collegiate dictionary
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/#4cddd93d74ad
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