This is the thread devoted to the debate that Az and Ulrika have agreed to undertake after a bit of discussion via email and yahoo chat. The resolution to this debate will be: "Socialism is immoral". Ulrika will be defending the resolution, while Az will be opposing the resolution.

The rules for the debate are as follows:

1. This is a civil debate - there will be no insult hurling.
2. This debate will last five rounds. Each post must be under 1000 words.
3. Ulrika will present her argument with the opening post, Az will then present his argument. Rebuttals and defenses begin with the second round.
4. Unfamiliar terms will be defined upon request.
5. All sources will be cited properly.
6. What is moral is assumed by both parties. No digressions into what is and is not moral.
7. Both parties will try to be as straightforward and simple as possible.

Furthermore the participants have asked for a panel of judges. This panel will be decided upon in the commentary thread.

Is socialism immoral? Is socialism moral? Is socialism anything at all without the people that maintain its operation? It will be my obligation to answer, “No, ” to each of those questions, and explain why in a manner that will have people agreeing with me.

Joseph Stalin once said, “A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.”[1] I won’t deny it: there are examples of governments with a socialist economic systems that display some of the most putrid, most disgusting habits. We hear of them all the time; torture, fear propaganda, unimaginably poor working conditions, no concern for human rights, no regard for human decency. We picture their dictators sitting around, smoking cigars, shooting every scientist that walks in the room and hasn’t developed a nuclear bomb. We hear them talk about how great it’s going to be for the people when they get around to turning the state over to them. And in the meantime, they display behaviors that are a far cry from their promises. I’m certain that my opponent will give plenty of more concrete examples of these regimes, and I won’t disagree that any are immoral or that they are socialist.

To be fair, there are also plenty of examples of good socialist programs. Many are to be found in what Karl Marx described[2] as the new modes of production that gestate in the previous society before it replaces the old mode of production. It might be easier to call them the seeds of socialism; e.g., labor unions, social security, farming communes, state-funded medical care, and cooperative housing and villages. Are we to believe that these things are immoral? Certainly, they could be used immorally, but in and of themselves, immorality depends upon the people keeping it in operation, not upon socialism as a system. I argue that this is also the case with socialist nations; it is the people that operate the country, the politics of the country, that prompt immorality.

As a non-sentient, inanimate, non-object, socialism doesn’t have any intentions of its own. Saying otherwise is much like saying love is a naughty boy or that cleanliness is godliness. It may work as figurative speech, which personification falls squarely into, but as literal speech it falls short of widely accepted linguistic requirements.

Of course, things like rape and murder are also these sorts of non-sentient, inanimate, non-objects, and I think my opponent and I would both agree that the use of them by people inherently results in immoral behavior. If my opponent is to win this debate, she will have to show how and in what ways socialism inherently results in immoral behavior, as rape or murder does. And if I am to win this debate, I will have to show how immoral outcomes are circumstantial and wholly dependent on the moral behavior of the leaders and operators of socialist countries.

Allow me to outline a few general arguments against popular claims of the immorality inherently conjugated to socialism. First, racism; the argument goes that, in a socialist country, capital is owned by the state, which only benefits the people of that state. That is, citizens of this country do not allow capital to leave the country, and perhaps they may not even let new people into the country. To the former, the fact that socialist countries import and export goods, and are willing to work with other countries on various sorts of international projects, discounts any inherent extreme nationalism. To the latter, socialist countries don’t necessarily disallow immigrants. Some examples have closed their borders in the past, but that’s not an inherent trait of socialist countries. What happens when a person immigrates into a socialist country is they are integrated into the system. It is not harder to take care of more people, because more people means more work, and more goods. If there is a socialist country that hates a race of people by the merit of their race alone, this is a trait of the people, and not an implication of socialism.

Another argument is that socialist governments are inherently oppressive. Despite the quibbles we could have over what is and is not oppressive, the general idea is that people are hindered in political power and exploited in a variety of ways. All we need do is ask whether socialism declared it, and we know that this isn’t the case. Socialism is an economic method, not a system of government. We might associate communism with oppression, as it is a system of government, but there are different ways in which we could fulfill that system. For example, we could have a republic, a direct democracy, a dictatorship, or even a king and still have what would be called socialism. The fact that there have been more dictatorships than direct democracies with socialist economic structures, for example, does not justify saying that dictatorships are required. It therefore does not mean that oppression is inherent in socialist economies.

Racism, oppression, and other immoral behaviors continue to exist, and we are left with a sense of responsibility as humans to clean up our own act. It is important to be clear on who and what is at fault when these sorts of things happen, and if we persist in attacking abstracts like socialism instead of our own behavior, we will be tempted to think that the abstracts themselves are responsible. It will hinder our ability to deal with our problems. Socialism is not immoral; we are.


References:
1 Speech "The Elections in St. Petersburg". January 1913.
2 Das Kapital and Grundrisse.

This may come as a surprise (since I obviously had this one in the bag), but I am conceeding victory to Ulla. The reasoning is a little complex, but I'll try to explain.

Socialists (Marxists in particular) rely upon the trends they see in history to induct an outcome; namely, socialism. They assume that people will behave in a certain way, and that the world will work in a certain way.

But the world itself is not sympathetic. It is apathetic and absurd. I can take no more a leap of faith into the religion of history and socialism as I can into Christianity and God in general.

I know that none of this has anything to do with whether socialism is immoral or not, but this teeny thought I had while sitting at Perkins drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes has shaken my confidence to the point where I cannot discuss it and be honest about it. As I said, I therefore must conceed.

Congratulations, Ulla.