>
> PS. To answer the remainder of your comment - social regulations is as
much
> a part of what you call the "capitalist system" as the price structure and
> competition (aka market.) The difference between "capitalism" and
> "socialism" is not really about social regulations vs markets but about
> different proportions of each. The proportion or mix of regulations and
> markets developed under the label "capitalism" proved superior to the mix
> developed under the label "socialism."
>
> Wojtek
>
I would ask where but that would be futile given your aesthetic read of history is contemptuously a non-history which implies a non-sociology. Ian wants to know what is socialism. Which one? I can't tell you talk about previous successes and failures of the various past present socialist experiments we talk about necessary and sufficient conditions for the success of present ones (Cuba, Venezuela, Ethiopia) and necessary and about necessary and sufficient conditions for future socialist experiments if you all would like.
I guess if I had to chose my single acid test, it would be about the extent to which access to the wage contract determined the developmental possibilities of individuals and their communities.
Notice that on this scale we could even have woj's beloved grey scale in which Sweden sat somewhere closer to the socialist side of the ledger and the US somewhere closer to the capitalist side. And yes given Sweden's higher egalitarian ethic and institutions I think the world would be in a much better condition to deal with global warming under an International regime dominated by the Swedes than we are by one dominated by the US.
Notice, however, that even this minor "bourgeois socialist imagining" is hopelessly utopian.but then:
"Disutopia is the most significant project of our time. It is not the temporary absence of Utopia but the celebration of the end of social dreams. Social dreams have become a nightmare in which it is impossible to materialise our desires into a collective thought. Disutopia should not be confused with the form in which it appears: indifference. Disutopia entails an active process involving simultaneously the struggle to control diversity and the acclamation of diversity; the repression of the struggles against Disutopia and celebration of individual self-determination. The result of this is social schizophrenia. In so far as diversity, struggle and contradiction cannot be eliminated by political or philosophical voluntarism, Disutopia has to be imposed. The advocates of Disutopia spend a huge amount of time in de-construction, repentance, denial, forgetfulness, anti-critique, coupled with academic justifications and the scientific classification of the horrors of our time. Whilst the reality of capitalism is destroying planet earth, Disutopia pictures Utopia as a romantic, naïve and old-fashioned imaginary that is accused of not dealing with the real world. However, our point is that Disutopia can only be sustained by denying the real content of life, i.e. the foundations of the real world. The result of all this together is mediocrity."
Dinerstein and Neary "Class struggle and the Communist Manifesto" (2001, p. 4).