Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and hold
Speaker 1: your pause. Jerry Roland socialist and me socialist. It's so funny,
Speaker 1: it's it's a dirty word. Yeah, people love Colin politicians
Speaker 1: socialist these days they're just a socialist. Yeah. It's weird that,
Speaker 1: you know the fact that that is a dirty words
Speaker 1: because we stand in a moment in history where it's
Speaker 1: been drugging through the mud for a hundred years. But
Speaker 1: the tenets of it, the basis of it is the same.
Speaker 1: It's virtually unchanged, and it's still it's kind of sensible
Speaker 1: in some ways. Well, I mean I looked at there's
Speaker 1: been various we're going to talk about these, but various
Speaker 1: experiments socialist experiments throughout the years, and some work pretty
Speaker 1: well for a little while. But it kind of dawned
Speaker 1: on me at one point. You can't account for laziness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a huge that's when it all comes crumbling down.
Speaker 1: Everyone had that same work ethic, it could thrive, but
Speaker 1: as soon as that one dude, it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like working. Yeah, and I'm a sucker because if
Speaker 1: I do, because I get the same junk that you do,
Speaker 1: then it's just that's the beginning of the end. If
Speaker 1: everybody had the work ethic of the people depicted in
Speaker 1: w p A murals and post offices, we'll be fine,
Speaker 1: which do look uncannily similar to Soviet era depictions of
Speaker 1: workers too. Yeah, you know, because they're related. So we're
Speaker 1: talking socialism today, which is a huge, enormous, sweeping topic. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna try to explain it and as best
Speaker 1: the terms as we possibly can. Um. And it's really
Speaker 1: tough to talk about socialism without talking about capital as
Speaker 1: them too, because they're antithetical pretty much. But they're both
Speaker 1: based on the same idea that from your economy springs
Speaker 1: forth everything else. Like Karl Marx, Joseph Engels, the guys
Speaker 1: who got together and wrote the Communist Manifesto. Um, they
Speaker 1: basically said, it's the economy stupid. Yeah, what was that from?
Speaker 1: That's James Carville? Was that Carville? I thought there was
Speaker 1: some No, I was thinking of something else you're thinking
Speaker 1: of I'm with stupid or no, I know what you're
Speaker 1: thinking of. Lose weight, now ask me how what I
Speaker 1: can do this all day? Where's the beef? What else? Uh?
Speaker 1: Can't they get any other ad? Ever? I don't want
Speaker 1: to grow up. No, there was one stupid that was
Speaker 1: oil or gas commercial. It's the economy, bunch old gouts
Speaker 1: sitting on the porch. Oh yeah, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: fracking com. But I don't think they're saying like it's
Speaker 1: the economy stupid. They're they're saying, just sit there and
Speaker 1: shut up stupid. Probably that's that's more the kid. Let's
Speaker 1: just go back to James Cargle. So he said it's
Speaker 1: the economy stupid. It was one of the three main
Speaker 1: talking points for Clinton campaign. So Carl Marks didn't say that.
Speaker 1: But the idea was that you have this economy, and
Speaker 1: depending on what you do with it, you can either
Speaker 1: have a uh completely literally utopian society where everyone's equal,
Speaker 1: nobody wants, everyone's taken care of, and there is no
Speaker 1: class stratification. Or you can go the opposite way and
Speaker 1: let this economy run on its own devices and step
Speaker 1: out of the way, and what you have is capitalism.
Speaker 1: And the marks an angle's opinion that was basically the
Speaker 1: most inherently evil thing a state or government institution could do.
Speaker 1: Is it just let an accou onomy run rampant, right,
Speaker 1: because you have something called classes, you have stratification, you
Speaker 1: have um wealth gap. Yeah, and basically the exploitation of
Speaker 1: the very people who are producing the the goods in
Speaker 1: a society, the workers. Yeah, the workers, uh, stay poor
Speaker 1: and the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. And
Speaker 1: like you said, it was based on this word utopia. Um.
Speaker 1: A British writer named Thomas Moore in fifteen coined that term.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Utopia about a fictional island
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Ocean. And Um, there was no private property,
Speaker 1: there were no locks on the doors houses. You rotated
Speaker 1: houses every ten years. So even if your free house
Speaker 1: you thought your neighbors was better, ten years, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get in that same house. Don't worry about it. I
Speaker 1: just hope your neighbor doesn't trasted. In the meantime, exactly,
Speaker 1: they had all were the same clothes. There were no
Speaker 1: fancy clothes, six hour work days, free healthcare, state endorsed euthanasia,
Speaker 1: which in fifteen fifteen was pretty radical. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of killing. Back then, divorce was okay. So this
Speaker 1: was his version of utopia. And uh, one thing we'll
Speaker 1: talk about is utopian socialism. That that word utopian was
Speaker 1: tagged to it later on as like a majority of
Speaker 1: kind of like there is no utopia, you naive nini. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so your your socialism, your utopian socialism is not possible.
Speaker 1: I see, you know, very clever. Sure, it's funny what
Speaker 1: people can do with words to just completely tarnish the
Speaker 1: concept because he can't account for laziness. So you've got
Speaker 1: Thomas Moore writing in fifteen and he coins the term
Speaker 1: utopia and it's not in and of itself socialism, but
Speaker 1: it has a lot of the hallmarks of socialism, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's no it's a classless society. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a society that's operated and owned by
Speaker 1: the people, very people who are producing goods. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: we should have set up front there are dozens of
Speaker 1: types of socialism. So this this could be like a
Speaker 1: wealth part series and it will be. And this is
Speaker 1: my god, now, well no, this this one. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: this fits into what's become our socioeconomic suite. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a death suite. We've done so much economic
Speaker 1: stuff and socio economic stuff that I feel like we've
Speaker 1: got a suite coming up that I'm gonna put together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Thomas Moore comes up with utopia, but he's not
Speaker 1: the first person to ever write about the concepts the
Speaker 1: basic foundation or principles of um socialism. That award goes
Speaker 1: to Plato, who described a place in his republic Um
Speaker 1: that basically had two classes, the governed and those who governed,
Speaker 1: and the government were completely subservient to those who governed,
Speaker 1: but those who governed were just basically inherently perfect in
Speaker 1: every way, shape or form. And aside from that there
Speaker 1: the there, it was classless, right, everybody else was very
Speaker 1: much equal in the over and where this hierarchy of
Speaker 1: a blunted pyramid um, but they decided who was going
Speaker 1: to make what and in what amounts. So you have
Speaker 1: this hallmark, this other hallmark of socialism, which is complete
Speaker 1: and utter government control of an economy, which constitutes a
Speaker 1: planned economy. Yeah, and uh things, Uh, we're talking about
Speaker 1: utopian works. Between seventeen hundred and eighteen fifty, these were
Speaker 1: very popular because these themes were because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of oppression going on in that hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years still is around the world, of course, but it
Speaker 1: became a popular theme in books and novels to write
Speaker 1: about these utopian societies like, man, it could be so
Speaker 1: much better. No oppression of slavery, everyone is all boats
Speaker 1: are rising. Um. And then a French revolutionary named Francois
Speaker 1: Noel Babouf is considered the first socialist because he is
Speaker 1: the first one who um said, you know what, no
Speaker 1: more private property. We should all be equal, and I'm
Speaker 1: the first socialist. Yeah. He the reason he was no
Speaker 1: and he had his head cut off by the French
Speaker 1: Revolution at age thirty seven for his views where technically, um,
Speaker 1: today he's referred to as a revolutionary communist. Yeah, UM
Speaker 1: should go ahead and cover that. Yeah, because socialism was
Speaker 1: the word was around when he was around, so he
Speaker 1: was called a socialist, but his views were so militant,
Speaker 1: um that he's now considered a revolutionary communist and that
Speaker 1: that sort of communism is basically like socialism with guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're a communist, socialism is a UM. It's a
Speaker 1: transitional state between a capitalist society and a communist society.
Speaker 1: So it's a temporary point in the glorious transition from
Speaker 1: capitalism to communism because communists know from experience now that
Speaker 1: you can't just go from capitalism to communism overnight. You're
Speaker 1: going to completely cripple your economy. People are going to
Speaker 1: starve to death. You just have huge problems, so you
Speaker 1: have to go to socialism. So the difference between socialism
Speaker 1: and communism is that in a socialist country, everybody's producing
Speaker 1: for the general good, but what you receive is based
Speaker 1: on your merit, whereas with communism, everyone's producing for the
Speaker 1: general good and what you receive is based on your need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and communism is is a militant takeover and utopian socialism.
Speaker 1: The main difference there is the idea is that everyone
Speaker 1: is on board and just gives this stuff up. There's
Speaker 1: no overthrow of the upper class because the upper class
Speaker 1: is like, no, I'm on board, right, that's an utopian socialism.
Speaker 1: But with communism, though, I think it's kind of gotten
Speaker 1: the I I think in practice it's been uh at
Speaker 1: the at the barrel of a gun. Basically, like mouse said,
Speaker 1: power springs from the barrel of a gun. So the
Speaker 1: idea that communism and militancy are associated has you know,
Speaker 1: become kind of a thing. But I think theoretically they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily related, right you know. Uh, And then a
Speaker 1: few others. You have, um, market socialism, which Yugoslavia and
Speaker 1: Hungary had a version of in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and that is most people see that as as sort
Speaker 1: of the bridge between socialism and capitalism, where the government
Speaker 1: does own the resources, a lot of them at least,
Speaker 1: but market forces determined production and demand, so there is
Speaker 1: incentive and true socialism, there's no incentive to work harder. See,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's necessarily true. I think it's
Speaker 1: communism and socialism you're still allowed to give incentive for
Speaker 1: harder work. Well, which kind of socialism though? Um remember
Speaker 1: our blimp episode. Remember the helium supply that the US
Speaker 1: government controls. That's an example of market socialism. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good point. I think we're demonstrating just how hard
Speaker 1: it is to define it because there are so many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah we can you can talk about it in pure terms,
Speaker 1: which we let's let's do that. And then I think
Speaker 1: if you understand, you know, just the pure definition of socialism,
Speaker 1: you can start to understand you can recognize it in
Speaker 1: the real world. Right, So with socialism you have um,
Speaker 1: no no classes. Everybody is told what to do, to
Speaker 1: what to make, where to go to work, and the
Speaker 1: production output is determined by a central planning committee in
Speaker 1: most cases the government, and then that same committee takes
Speaker 1: all these this production and distributes it according to who
Speaker 1: needs what, and the economy is completely controlled and playing
Speaker 1: end and uh, this plan is put into effect by
Speaker 1: the workers and everybody's equal. And there's no private property.
Speaker 1: And that's a tricky one too, because if you went
Speaker 1: to Soviet Russia in the sixties, you go into somebody's
Speaker 1: house and they had a TV set and that was
Speaker 1: that family's TV set. So the distinction that I came
Speaker 1: across for private property is there's in socialism people can
Speaker 1: own TVs, but nobody owns the factory that makes the TVs.
Speaker 1: So by the government controlling the factor that makes TVs,
Speaker 1: theoretically you can make even more TVs and more people
Speaker 1: can enjoy the fruits of the TV factories production. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Okay? I think if you want to
Speaker 1: explain something, do it, and by explaining it in terms
Speaker 1: of TV and TVs. Jerry just she went to Cuba
Speaker 1: this year, remember, and had an experience with the communism.
Speaker 1: That was really interesting. We should do a podcast on
Speaker 1: Cuba as a whole and have Jerry sit in and
Speaker 1: not speak. You just write things down and we can
Speaker 1: relay the message. And like I said, to understand socialism,
Speaker 1: it's you have to also understand capitalism. And capitalism is
Speaker 1: basically like the the supply and demand runs everything, and
Speaker 1: the if somebody needs something, they're willing to pay a
Speaker 1: higher price for it, which means the sector over here
Speaker 1: will start to ramp up because they want to make
Speaker 1: more money. There's no planned economy. It just changes based
Speaker 1: on the needs of the individual. Yeah, and there's uh,
Speaker 1: there's competition. It's encouraged in capitalism, not so much in socialism,
Speaker 1: not at all in socialism, because competition is one of
Speaker 1: the great evils of capitalism. And that it's right if
Speaker 1: you make a bunch of money and we're in the
Speaker 1: same industry. I'm not making a bunch of money and
Speaker 1: I can go bankrupt and my family could starve, But
Speaker 1: you're really rich. I like that. Yeah, imaging imagine if
Speaker 1: the shoe on the other foot. I want us to
Speaker 1: all be rich. What's that called socialism? Okay, alright, So
Speaker 1: I was talking about Francois Babouf and uh. He was
Speaker 1: credited with being one of the first socialists, but the idea,
Speaker 1: the concept wasn't really popularized on a broad scale until
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds thanks to something called the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: which is when as everyone knows, uh, Robert Baron's kind
Speaker 1: of started opening factories and controlling the wealth and putting
Speaker 1: people out of work or making people work for or
Speaker 1: offering people work I should say, uh, for very little money.
Speaker 1: And there was a big wealth gap. That was the
Speaker 1: first big wealth gap. Um. The rich got richer in
Speaker 1: that case, and the poor got poor and people got um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of unrest because of the slave labor,
Speaker 1: and the idea of socialism kind of became more popular
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, right. It seems like any time
Speaker 1: that um, business and industry has overstepped its exploitation of
Speaker 1: the working class, socialism has kind of been there to
Speaker 1: step up as a solution to that, and people have
Speaker 1: been more prone to adopt it. Yeah, and and tough
Speaker 1: times obviously, because that's one of the byproducts of socialism
Speaker 1: of a group of the government controlling industry. That means
Speaker 1: that the government also protects the workers from being screwed
Speaker 1: over by industry because you're working for the government and
Speaker 1: the government is not seeking to screw you over. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah, I feel like I'm not explaining
Speaker 1: this correctly and striving me a little bonkers. Frankly, No,
Speaker 1: you're doing great because of this. Um the Industrial Revolution, though,
Speaker 1: there were these communes that started to pop up and
Speaker 1: all over the place that, uh, we're people. They were
Speaker 1: kind of socialist experiments. One was called Brook Farm in
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties just outside of Boston and West Roxbury,
Speaker 1: and it was founded by a Uterian Unitarian minister and
Speaker 1: his wife, George and Sophia Ripley, and they said, you
Speaker 1: know what, you can choose your job, you can do
Speaker 1: whatever you want to do. Um, everyone's gonna get equal pay.
Speaker 1: We're gonna base our little society on a guy named
Speaker 1: a Frenchman named Charles Furrier who just died a few
Speaker 1: years ago. But he was super smart, we think, and
Speaker 1: uh he actually coined the term feminism. So ladies are
Speaker 1: going to be equal a huge thing. Because this was
Speaker 1: the eight forties, that was way ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: And uh, they had visions to build this big structure
Speaker 1: called a Fallon story, and that was their undoing. It
Speaker 1: seems like there's always this one thing that ruins these experiments,
Speaker 1: and that was their's fire destroyed it and basically bankrupted
Speaker 1: them by eighty seven. So that was the end of
Speaker 1: brook Farm. And that's just one example, yeah, one of many, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, there are a lot of communes that
Speaker 1: sprung up within larger capitalist systems, but that practiced their
Speaker 1: own brand of socialism. There were Christian socialist communes, like
Speaker 1: the Shakers were socialist community. Yeah. I was wondering about
Speaker 1: the Amish, and I looked up like our Amish socialists,
Speaker 1: and I think they have a hierarchy. Yeah, and they weren't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're thought of as true socialists, but
Speaker 1: they have a lot of the same values. I think,
Speaker 1: like we all worked together, we all work hard for
Speaker 1: the good of all of us, and values are what
Speaker 1: drove um all of these socialist experiments, including the Christian
Speaker 1: socialist experiments, because basically they were saying, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: we don't think capitalism really jibes with Christian teachings. We
Speaker 1: think socialism does a little more. So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: off and try this and don't even try to persecute
Speaker 1: us because religious freedom. Religious freedom. Yeah, you've seen the
Speaker 1: bumper stickers. Jesus was a socialist. I haven't they're out there.
Speaker 1: Last one I saw said easy does it? So check
Speaker 1: your like you were saying, like this is brook Farm
Speaker 1: wasn't didn't exist in a vacuum. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of these socialist experiments going on everybody. There seemed to
Speaker 1: be two types. There was one that just wanted to
Speaker 1: just get away from the world. Just leave us alone.
Speaker 1: We're doing our own thing. If you want to come
Speaker 1: join us, awesome, but we're not trying to change the world.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to change the world, our world. There
Speaker 1: were other ones that sought to like basically perform this
Speaker 1: experiment that demonstrated that this that socialism worked and in
Speaker 1: the hopes that it would spread out to the rest
Speaker 1: of the country or the rest of the continent or whatever.
Speaker 1: And one of them was in Scotland, formed by a
Speaker 1: guy named um Robert Owen who was a wealthy, wealthy,
Speaker 1: wealthy capitalist who decided that capitalism was evil and then
Speaker 1: he was going to use his wealth to try socialist experiments.
Speaker 1: And the first one was in Scotland, in um New Lanark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty six. Um. He he basically moved out there.
Speaker 1: He bought um, like you said, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of money. He's a big philanthropists, and he bought a
Speaker 1: mill and said, you know what, this cotton mill. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna base this cooperative society around this mill, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be our foundation. That's how we're gonna make our money.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna divide up property among everyone, and everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna work the same and get paid the same. And um,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, of course, but he was huge
Speaker 1: in the early um progression of childcare basically, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was really big on protecting children. He raised minimum the
Speaker 1: minimum age to ten. Yeah, the working age to ten
Speaker 1: and uh not minimum age, like you have to have
Speaker 1: a childless ten years old. If you're born under the
Speaker 1: age of ten, you go to jail. But um, he
Speaker 1: instituted infant childcare for the first time in Great Britain.
Speaker 1: He h preschool, Yeah, first preschool, first public library. Uh,
Speaker 1: first public school too, I think like free public school.
Speaker 1: So he led a lot of reform but it didn't
Speaker 1: work out in England, so he said I'm sorry Scotland.
Speaker 1: I know, I think new Landark it's self worked out,
Speaker 1: but it didn't catch on. And so he said, nuts
Speaker 1: to you guys. I'm going over to America where they're
Speaker 1: way more open minded. That's right. So he went over
Speaker 1: and Um, there was some land in Indiana in a
Speaker 1: place called Harmony. Uh it was actually that was already
Speaker 1: a commune of sorts there. Um that lasted eleven years,
Speaker 1: from eighteen fourteen to eighteen Yeah, but they were a
Speaker 1: non socialist religious commune right now, they were totally socialists.
Speaker 1: They were they were separatists from the German Lutheran Church
Speaker 1: and they formed their own little socialist society there in
Speaker 1: Harmony and succeeded for eleven years thanks to their German
Speaker 1: work ethic. And then they decided they wanted to go
Speaker 1: back to Pennsylvania. Yeah, they just left. And then um
Speaker 1: Owens comes in says, hey, this land, I'd like to
Speaker 1: buy it from me. I'll name it New Harmony and
Speaker 1: I'll start my little experiment over here in the United
Speaker 1: States and see how it works, and basically did the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, they said, thanks chump, but that lasted
Speaker 1: just two years. Um. Yeah, this was not Owen's fault here. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean from what I gathered that the main reason
Speaker 1: that it didn't work out is that people liked it
Speaker 1: so much. It was a bit chaotic, though, and they
Speaker 1: started splintering off, forming their own communes, and all these
Speaker 1: other communes started popping up, and it just couldn't survive anymore. Okay. Well, also,
Speaker 1: his business partner for the commune took all the money
Speaker 1: and left. Yeah. I didn't see that that was the
Speaker 1: main reason, though. I think they were dead in the
Speaker 1: water by that point. That might have been the nail
Speaker 1: in the coffin, right, So you pulled the Mr Burns,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So, um there there, that's three there's that's
Speaker 1: just three communities. Community he went back to and he
Speaker 1: was like, all right, yeah, I guess I'm out of here,
Speaker 1: and he started but he um he really, I guess
Speaker 1: got a lot of press and raised awareness for the
Speaker 1: concept of labor reform and really helped set the stage
Speaker 1: for the labor struggles that would take place in Europe
Speaker 1: and the United States throughout the nineteenth century. And again,
Speaker 1: this is the result of a couple of things, but
Speaker 1: mostly the Industrial Revolution, because in the Industrial Revolution, business
Speaker 1: owners were the income inequality gap was growing by leaps
Speaker 1: and bounds because business owners could buy a machine that
Speaker 1: could do the work of ten people for a tenth
Speaker 1: of the price. And so as a result of this
Speaker 1: you have experiments and socialism. You also have another thing
Speaker 1: grow up called um. Blood eye is UM. You know
Speaker 1: the Ladites, they're supposedly afraid of technology. That's that's really
Speaker 1: a misinterpretation. UM. The Loodites like to smash technology that
Speaker 1: took their jobs. They weren't afraid of the few future
Speaker 1: or anything like that. They just wanted to keep their jobs.
Speaker 1: So Leoodite sprang up at about the same time too,
Speaker 1: so you have Loodite socialism. And in eighteen forty eight
Speaker 1: there is what's called a revolutionary waves similar to the
Speaker 1: Arab spring of what two thou twelve, two dozen thirteen,
Speaker 1: where almost all of the monarchies in Europe faced challenges
Speaker 1: from socialist revolutions, and most of the revolutions were crushed,
Speaker 1: but some of them had lasting effects. Like you know
Speaker 1: how Sweden is considered a UM partially socialist state. UM.
Speaker 1: Same with Denmark and all these other countries, France, all
Speaker 1: of them had to do with these the socialist uprising
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight. They made an imprint and impact,
Speaker 1: and when the when the revolutions themselves were crushed, they
Speaker 1: started to move over here in the US, and that's
Speaker 1: when you saw a lot of these socialist experiments pop up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and every country still has a lot of socialist programs,
Speaker 1: um that you could label a socialists for sure. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about social salism in the United States
Speaker 1: right after this, so choke, we're talking about socialism in
Speaker 1: the US, which people are like, what are you talking
Speaker 1: about the US as a capitalist society. Well, there's actually
Speaker 1: been a lot of socialism throughout the history of the US.
Speaker 1: There's been, um, the Socialist Party. Milwaukee has had some
Speaker 1: socialist mayors. Uh. If you live in Vermont, one of
Speaker 1: your senators as a socialist, Bernie Sanders. And there's this
Speaker 1: kind of long storied history springing out of workers rights movements,
Speaker 1: labor movements in the United States that were supported by
Speaker 1: socialists and actually gave rise to UM, the Socialist Party
Speaker 1: here in the US. Yeah. In eighteen seventy six, the
Speaker 1: Workingmen's Party was formed and then a year later changed
Speaker 1: their name to the Socialist Labor Party and uh, of
Speaker 1: which Jack London writer was an early member. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were called the Works, and they had someone on the
Speaker 1: presidential ticket re election from seven nineteen seventy six, and
Speaker 1: had a little know that. Oh yeah, they had a
Speaker 1: newspaper called The People that was finally folded in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, and they even had an office in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, although as of two thousand and seven they
Speaker 1: only had seventy seven members, and apparently the the official
Speaker 1: meetings in San Francisco we're only attended by three to
Speaker 1: six people. That is, that's a far cry from the
Speaker 1: peak when Eugene Debs, who was the socialist candidate for
Speaker 1: the fifth time I think, when he was in jail
Speaker 1: and still managed to get a million votes in the
Speaker 1: general election for president as a socialist. Not bad. And
Speaker 1: then they're down at three to six members in San Francisco. Well,
Speaker 1: that was in two thousand seven and eight. Maybe they've
Speaker 1: they're booming again, who knows. But part of it is
Speaker 1: because the term socialism, since socialism is basically in a
Speaker 1: lot ways antithetical to capitalism, has been, like I said,
Speaker 1: dragged through the mud over the centuries. And it was
Speaker 1: about this time, actually it was in nineteen seventeen that
Speaker 1: it really started in earnest. Yeah, the government here in
Speaker 1: the US and acted the Espionage Act and kind of
Speaker 1: tied everything tonton, not everything that socialism, at least to communism,
Speaker 1: and um made a lot of things illegal to like
Speaker 1: and publicly endorsed things like communism or socialism and criticized
Speaker 1: the involvement in World War One. Yeah, and so, which
Speaker 1: is why Eugene Debs was in jail. By the time
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties rolled around, through McCarthyism, which we have a
Speaker 1: great episode of McCarthyism, the Socialist Labor Party was waning
Speaker 1: because you did not want to be tabbed a communist. No,
Speaker 1: unless you were a communist. I mean, you could basically
Speaker 1: like lose your career by being blacklisted by the McCarthy trials.
Speaker 1: And that's in the US. Elsewhere in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: long before the nineteen fifties, it was a dictator in
Speaker 1: the Soviet and named v I. Lenin you might have
Speaker 1: heard of, and he was the first world leader to
Speaker 1: really implement socialism on a big, broad government scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: up to that point, it was all theoretical except for
Speaker 1: little experiments or a little communes. Lenin was the one
Speaker 1: who said, let's see if this can work. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he was a communist, but um, he implemented socialist initiatives
Speaker 1: after taking over the nineteen seventeen nationalized industry, UH to
Speaker 1: a large degree in agriculture. Um, but things were not profitable.
Speaker 1: So he kind of had to backtrack a little bit
Speaker 1: to a mixed economy a little bit. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why things weren't profitable, Chuck, was what you
Speaker 1: were talking about was account for the lazy Yeah, incentive.
Speaker 1: People didn't have incentive, and Lenin didn't. He hadn't figured
Speaker 1: out that to truly incentivize people in the absence of money,
Speaker 1: you needed violence. And so Stalin came in and recognized
Speaker 1: the is you won't die pretty much. And tens and
Speaker 1: tens of millions of people died under Stalin's rule as
Speaker 1: he basically forced communism to work by stripping people of
Speaker 1: any kind of private ownership of land or farms or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Institute and collectivism and really taking communism
Speaker 1: in this communist experiment and making it function by forcing
Speaker 1: the gears together. And a lot of blood came out
Speaker 1: of that interaction, but it worked for a little while.
Speaker 1: Like in the sixties, the Soviet economy was growing at
Speaker 1: a rate of about twice that of the United States
Speaker 1: per year. And this is all considering that the government
Speaker 1: is deciding exactly how the economy is going to go.
Speaker 1: And then post World War One, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of activity in Europe uh socialist parties springing up in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium,
Speaker 1: Great Britain, Africa, Latin America, Asia, people were dabbling in it. Basically,
Speaker 1: governments were dabbling in it. There's a wave of it
Speaker 1: in Africa in the seventies too, um And in part
Speaker 1: that was because while there's proxy roars being fought between
Speaker 1: the United States and the uss are UM. But also
Speaker 1: it's because the uss are appeared successful. And can we
Speaker 1: talk about the U S. S R for a second
Speaker 1: and how it worked. So basically, every year the Government
Speaker 1: Planning Committee created the gosp Plan, which is like this,
Speaker 1: the plan for the Soviet economy. They would say, okay,
Speaker 1: so we need this, this, this, and this and this
Speaker 1: million different things and each of these million different things
Speaker 1: cost this government sets the price right right, So they
Speaker 1: would say, how can we make this happen? And they
Speaker 1: would send it down the chain and everybody would take
Speaker 1: a look at it and figure out their plan. Like
Speaker 1: this main plan would be split into thousands of tiny
Speaker 1: subplans and components, and the people who are actually carrying
Speaker 1: out the war would look at it and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can do this and this and this, and I
Speaker 1: can get you this many tons of cotton, and we
Speaker 1: can do this many tons of potatoes, and this is
Speaker 1: how we're gonna do it, and they would send it
Speaker 1: back up the chain, and for the year the economy
Speaker 1: would be planned. And it actually did work for a
Speaker 1: little while. But the problem is it's like you say,
Speaker 1: you can't account for laziness, and there was a you
Speaker 1: can also not account for an action. There was a
Speaker 1: huge criticism of this um plan by capitalist economists who
Speaker 1: were saying, this can never work. And the reason it
Speaker 1: can't work is because in a capitalist society you rely
Speaker 1: on the markets for information. You guys don't have a market.
Speaker 1: You have government control the markets, so there's no real
Speaker 1: information being gleaned, so you can't possibly know who needs
Speaker 1: what where. And this very famous communist economists came back with,
Speaker 1: actually that's not true. All we have to do is
Speaker 1: look at stocks. If we have a lot of surplus
Speaker 1: of something, then we know that we need to lower prices.
Speaker 1: If they're a scarcity of something, that we need to
Speaker 1: raise prices. Hence, communism works, and for a little while
Speaker 1: it looked like it worked until the whole thing broke down.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing broke down was because you have
Speaker 1: people whose job it is to set prices who were
Speaker 1: scared to death of screwing up, so they would just
Speaker 1: remain inactive, and ultimately, by the time they did respond
Speaker 1: to something, it was too late and people would starve
Speaker 1: or the whole system would be totally thrown off. Because
Speaker 1: if you have a planned, managed economy, you if one
Speaker 1: little bit is thrown off, the whole thing can break down.
Speaker 1: So that ultimately is why the Soviet experiment failed. It
Speaker 1: was just too tightly controlled. That's a good one, all right.
Speaker 1: Back to the United States, despite McCarthy ism and the
Speaker 1: threats of the McCarthy era, there were some prominent socialists
Speaker 1: in the US and there still are. Actually. Albert Einstein
Speaker 1: was famous for a paper called hy Socialism in where
Speaker 1: he a plan to and it was all education based,
Speaker 1: which is good, but um he advocated for playing economies
Speaker 1: and wanted every citizen to to be had their livelihood insured. UM.
Speaker 1: Some other notable American socialist uh ed Asner and Saul Bellow,
Speaker 1: Patch Adams, famous clown doctor, UH, comedian Lewis Black, singer
Speaker 1: Harry Belafonte all identify as socialist to this day. UH.
Speaker 1: And I guess we can't talk about um socialism without
Speaker 1: talking about Britain post World War two. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: the winds of change were brewing because Winston Churchill was
Speaker 1: defeated in his re election bid by Clement Atlee, who
Speaker 1: was the head of the Labor Party. And that's what
Speaker 1: the you because it's England and uh, it was a
Speaker 1: democratic socialist party and established a nineteen hundred and Churchill
Speaker 1: was the head of the Tory Party, the Conservatives, and
Speaker 1: UH they were after World War two. They were the
Speaker 1: citizens were fed up. They said, our healthcare stinks, there's
Speaker 1: labor problems all over the place. And I don't think
Speaker 1: Churchill's got the goods to uh to right the ship.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna elect this at Lee fella. And he
Speaker 1: had some pretty lasting changes he. Um. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of improvements under some of the nationalization policies under Athlee,
Speaker 1: like coal miners were given paid vacations, they were taken
Speaker 1: care of safety wise, they were given sick leave. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course when you nationalize industry like that, it
Speaker 1: became unprofitable because you can't account for laziness and there
Speaker 1: was no competition and workers weren't motivated. But his big
Speaker 1: legacy was the NHS, the National Health Service, which was
Speaker 1: established in nine UH, which provided free medical care and
Speaker 1: it is still in use today because it was super popular,
Speaker 1: even though uh financially it didn't work out for quite
Speaker 1: a while. Scotland is talking about going independent right now.
Speaker 1: There's a referendum coming up, and one of the main
Speaker 1: talking points is if Scotland can go independent, that the
Speaker 1: Scottish NHS can stay socialist rather than you know, get
Speaker 1: sold off the private industry, right um, like they think
Speaker 1: it's going on in England. Oh, is that what's going
Speaker 1: on right now? That's what That's what the pro Scottish
Speaker 1: independence people are accusing the English of I did not
Speaker 1: know that. Interesting. Well, they love their free healthcare, um,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it. UH. In the seventies, that
Speaker 1: was incredible inflation going on over there. Percent in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five and the winter of discontent. UM of nine.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy nine was a dark time over there because
Speaker 1: there were a lot of major labor strikes going on
Speaker 1: and the country was headed in the wrong direction. Um
Speaker 1: until Margaret Thatcher came along. And despite what you think
Speaker 1: about her, she did right the ship economically in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Uh. One thing she did was she
Speaker 1: reduced spending UM and education and healthcare. Uh. Inflation went down.
Speaker 1: Unemployment rose still though, and she started to denationalize a
Speaker 1: lot of the major industries, like the telecom industry and
Speaker 1: selling it off to the private sector, and things started
Speaker 1: making a profit again, which was seen as a big victory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's really um, that's a great Britain is a
Speaker 1: good example of the response people being people being screwed over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: socialism steck being in, Socialism getting out of control and
Speaker 1: then capitalism coming in. I think capitalism runs rampant, people
Speaker 1: start to get screwed over again, socialism starts to step in.
Speaker 1: There seems to be like an ebb and flow between
Speaker 1: those two and mostly just those two, especially if you
Speaker 1: consider communism socialism, and it's strange, is there like a
Speaker 1: third one out there that we're missing? There's really just
Speaker 1: capitalism and socialism. I don't know. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: socialism as it stands today in just a second. Let's
Speaker 1: just take this message break first, Chuck. If there's anything
Speaker 1: the web has done, it's democratize humanity. Yeah. And one
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Speaker 1: It's also very intuitive doing this. You don't have to
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Speaker 1: can just drag and drop to create a really great
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Speaker 1: Your content is going to be the focus. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be creating your logo. You're gonna be able to sell stuff.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be able to show off your art or
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Speaker 1: gonna get that ten percent off your first purchase and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be glad you did it. Okay, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the NHS. It's still around today. It's an
Speaker 1: example of a socialist government system. Canada has something similar. Um.
Speaker 1: It's often very criticized as being very expensive, very inefficient,
Speaker 1: very slow, but there's a lot of people who get
Speaker 1: health care that otherwise wouldn't. Yeah, I think about of
Speaker 1: every dollar in Canada goes to the health care systems,
Speaker 1: are right, That's that's a lot. That's a lot, and
Speaker 1: every Canadian I know says still better than what you
Speaker 1: guys got. I mean, it's definitely cheaper than what the
Speaker 1: Americans spent on healthcare for sure. Yeah, like we went
Speaker 1: and we may have to wait for our m r I,
Speaker 1: but at least we're not going broke because we get sick.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's a good example of socialism versus capitalism.
Speaker 1: If you go to Canada, if you're a Canadian and
Speaker 1: you go to the hospital, I should say, Um, your
Speaker 1: m RI is going to cost the same no matter
Speaker 1: what hospital you go to, which I guess is zero dollars.
Speaker 1: But that but if there, if there is a charge
Speaker 1: of the government, it's going to be the same price,
Speaker 1: right roughly the same price. If you go to the
Speaker 1: United States, you can go to two different medical clinics
Speaker 1: in the same town and you could have a discrepancy
Speaker 1: of maybe ten thousand dollars for a single MRI I procedure. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's because in Canada, the government controls the cost
Speaker 1: of healthcare. It says this is how much an m
Speaker 1: r I cost. In the United States, there's a free
Speaker 1: market for people who have MRI s that they wanted
Speaker 1: contract out to use and they can charge whatever they want,
Speaker 1: so there's a big discrepancy. Yeah, and uh, they give
Speaker 1: one example in this article in Canada of a woman
Speaker 1: um who had identical quadruplets that they could not be
Speaker 1: delivered in Canada because they didn't have the resources, so
Speaker 1: she had to go to Montana to have her baby
Speaker 1: is born. So that's just one example of maybe some
Speaker 1: of the downfalls of socialized medicine. Yeah. So here in
Speaker 1: the United States, like you said, socialism gets tossed about
Speaker 1: is a um. It's a sugatory term and a little
Speaker 1: willy nilly if you ask me it is. It's also
Speaker 1: very glib, especially if you're saying socialism doesn't work or
Speaker 1: socialism is exists in an evil direction, because what you're
Speaker 1: talking about then is pure socialism and pure socialist theory.
Speaker 1: Depending on how you look at it, Yes, maybe it
Speaker 1: does strike you as evil, especially if you think of
Speaker 1: communism as being militant. The thing is, you can make
Speaker 1: the same arguments about pure capitalism, where it's just a
Speaker 1: completely unfettered free market with no regulation whatsoever. The income
Speaker 1: and equality tends to develop and progress and people tend
Speaker 1: to get trampled. So the idea of saying, like a
Speaker 1: politician and socialist or something like that. Um, if they're
Speaker 1: a United States politician, yeah, they probably do have some
Speaker 1: sort of socialist tendencies in that they are they're voting
Speaker 1: to continue funding Medicare or medicaid, social security, welfare of
Speaker 1: any kind, any kind of government regulation in the United States.
Speaker 1: The very fact that there is a rule for a
Speaker 1: particular industry that says, no, you can't, um, dump toxic
Speaker 1: chemicals into a river. Sorry, that's socialism. That's government control
Speaker 1: over an industry. In part. It's not nationalization, which is
Speaker 1: a hallmark of socialism where the government says, hey, your
Speaker 1: board of directors has gone and these government employees now
Speaker 1: run this company. Um, but it's still the same. It's
Speaker 1: still a version of socialism. So well, you have today
Speaker 1: in most western developed nations is what's called the third way,
Speaker 1: which is a mixed economy where you have a free
Speaker 1: market and supply and demand uh runs that market, but
Speaker 1: you still have government protections. You probably have welfare programs,
Speaker 1: and that is public libraries. Yeah, that is rather than
Speaker 1: this have been tied in spasms between socialism and capitalism.
Speaker 1: This this pendulum swinging back and forth. It feels like
Speaker 1: the two are starting to or have merged together, into
Speaker 1: a hybrid that could conceivably smooth out over time. Conceivably
Speaker 1: smooth out over time. Yeah, yeah, it would be great.
Speaker 1: It's possible. That's what we're seeing right now. So in
Speaker 1: the future, all economies will be mixed economies. That's my
Speaker 1: prediction all over the world. Yeah. Yeah, Do you got
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else? Well? Cool. I did
Speaker 1: read one article that I thought was interesting about the
Speaker 1: United States military being the ultimate socialist experiment. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: tell well it was just I think it had a
Speaker 1: lot of holes in it, but just the idea that
Speaker 1: the military like you dress alike, you all live, you know,
Speaker 1: you have different ranks of course, but you're essentially equal,
Speaker 1: all working together for the greater good. Um. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting perspective. But like I said, I had as
Speaker 1: it's like Swiss cheese. Yeah, it's a It's a good
Speaker 1: idea though, right, It was interesting. So, um, what that
Speaker 1: sounds like it's talking about is is what people I
Speaker 1: think are ultimately saying when they're saying like communist, capitalist
Speaker 1: pig that kind of thing, and they're throwing like slander
Speaker 1: back and forth from either way, what you're really saying
Speaker 1: is collectivist or individualist. If you take the economy part
Speaker 1: away from it, what you're saying is, are you the
Speaker 1: kind of person who subscribes to everyone working together for
Speaker 1: the greater good? Or are you the kind of person
Speaker 1: who subscribes to the idea of individual liberty where people
Speaker 1: should be allowed to express themselves and move freely and
Speaker 1: and not be fettered by any kind of constraints. That's
Speaker 1: what it all boils down to. That's a bumper sticker.
Speaker 1: That's a long bumper sticker. Just truncate. It's got nothing else.
Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about socialism, you
Speaker 1: should type that word into the search bart how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And uh, since I said search bar,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener man. Yeah. Hey, before I read this,
Speaker 1: I want to say thanks to our friends Josh and
Speaker 1: Joel Over at pod on pod Yeah. They're a podcast
Speaker 1: review podcast and they gave us. We didn't know they
Speaker 1: were doing this, We just saw it and they they
Speaker 1: gave us like the best review. It was really really nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they gave us like a very well thought out review.
Speaker 1: Wasn't just you know, like we love these guys. It's
Speaker 1: a great podcast. They explained what they liked about it,
Speaker 1: and well that's what they do on their show. I
Speaker 1: listen to some other ones and they really if you're
Speaker 1: looking to get into other podcasts, I would start with
Speaker 1: pod on pod and listen to some of their reviews
Speaker 1: because the review like the sound quality and the production exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean, just professionalism and um well thought out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very well thought out and they did a great job.
Speaker 1: So um thanks to Yeah, go check out pot on pod.
Speaker 1: They gave Jerry like huge glowing review. I think they
Speaker 1: called us the new standard and sound quality. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: You know how about that over Mark Marine when they
Speaker 1: said just gave me tingle. All right, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this email. UM, be careful, becks. Um. She was listening
Speaker 1: to our Elevator podcast and I've mentioned something about hearing
Speaker 1: that you're less likely to get injured in an accident
Speaker 1: if you're drunk, and she said she related her story
Speaker 1: because it happened to her. She was at a house
Speaker 1: party across the road from a friend of hers made
Speaker 1: the mistake of drinking beer than wine, so she was
Speaker 1: really really drunk. She and her friend decided to go
Speaker 1: into town, got to the main street and bumped into
Speaker 1: two guys who said, hey, come over and uh, come
Speaker 1: have a drink with us at this pub. Um. It
Speaker 1: was in West London, and she says, now when she
Speaker 1: thinks back at thirty five, how a stupid she was
Speaker 1: to just like attempt across the street and join these
Speaker 1: two random strangers while she was drunk, She is, she's
Speaker 1: very um wary of that now, but she says she
Speaker 1: went across. I looked first left, which was my biggest
Speaker 1: mistake here in London, because we drive on the left,
Speaker 1: so you should always look right. Uh, and you've ever
Speaker 1: been over there, They say that on the street for
Speaker 1: us dumb Americans like at the airport and say look
Speaker 1: right on the sidewalk. Um, she says, she only looked
Speaker 1: left and decided to take her for my drunken brain
Speaker 1: that she would just step out into the street. I
Speaker 1: remember my friends screaming becks. No, she got hit by
Speaker 1: a car on her right. She landed on the bonnet
Speaker 1: and the driver hit his brakes and I hit the tarmac.
Speaker 1: That's the street. Oh my god. He was going forty
Speaker 1: miles and he was only about three feet away when
Speaker 1: I stepped out, had no chance of stopping. He got
Speaker 1: out of the car, got a pen and paper and
Speaker 1: wrote my name on it, and then wrote I accept
Speaker 1: full responsibility for this accident, and made me sign it
Speaker 1: as I lay there on the pavement, and then he
Speaker 1: drove off. Um the guys that offered us to come
Speaker 1: over and join them for a drink carried me across
Speaker 1: the road and into the pub and called an ambulance.
Speaker 1: They stayed with me until it arrived. Matros all right,
Speaker 1: I'm very great, all of them. Still, my injuries were
Speaker 1: this one grays little finger. That is it. No hen injury,
Speaker 1: no broken bones, no nothing. And I attributed it to
Speaker 1: two things. One I didn't see it coming, so I
Speaker 1: wasn't tensed up into I was properly drunk, so I
Speaker 1: didn't tense up. I did end up in the hospital
Speaker 1: later that night when I when the shock set in
Speaker 1: and I got a headache, and my family was worried
Speaker 1: that I was concussed, which I was not. Um as
Speaker 1: an aside, I did not escape the incident mentally unscathed.
Speaker 1: I suffered a period of real sadness and remorse for
Speaker 1: weeks afterward, because I felt guilty that I had come
Speaker 1: out of it unharmed. When so many little kids get
Speaker 1: hit by cars through no fault of their own and die,
Speaker 1: survivor guilt? Is that what that is? That's what Jeff
Speaker 1: Bridges called it. When what was that called survivor? No
Speaker 1: big Lebowski something less? Uh? I think it was called
Speaker 1: survivor He survives a plane wrecking like learns to Live now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't called Survivors. Remember he was a good movie.
Speaker 1: Are you sure it wasn't called survewever? Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: called Uh, I Can't Die or something like that. You're
Speaker 1: thinking of Unbreakable, that's Bruce Willis Now. I watched that
Speaker 1: the other night again, though, good movie. It holds up,
Speaker 1: Huh it does. That's funny because that was the one
Speaker 1: that was the toughest to watch the first time. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from signs and all that clapchat, but I mean,
Speaker 1: like the sixth sense goes down easy. Sure, Unbreakable it
Speaker 1: takes a It's it doesn't go down quite as easy.
Speaker 1: But I would suspect that means that it still resonates
Speaker 1: more later. Yeah. He uh, fearless, fearless, I knew, what's
Speaker 1: something less? He um. I think the working title was
Speaker 1: Survivor um. So that is from Beck's Bloomfield. And she
Speaker 1: is a graphic designer at Little Red Robot Design, which
Speaker 1: you can find a Little Red Robot dot ceo dot
Speaker 1: m Z because she lives in New Zealand now and
Speaker 1: she is the one who sent in a picture of
Speaker 1: her awesome dog, Stanley with holding a sign in his
Speaker 1: mouth saying I heart s Y s K, Emily and Becks.
Speaker 1: But everyone's okay, maybe take that as a gift. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a mulligan. She's over the guilt by now, I think. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have an amazing story that you want to share,
Speaker 1: we love hearing those. You can tweet it to us
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
Speaker 1: should send us an emails stuff podcasts at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and join us at at home on
Speaker 1: the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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