Socialism will never work because it’s founded on emancipation, and you can’t force people to emancipate themselves. That would be the opposite of emancipation.
I’m not sure if this is a quote, I can’t remember where I heard it.
“Emancipation” in this case meaning emancipation from wage slavery.
Thats a first i heared the reason why socialism cant work being argued with an inability to emancipate.
But to answer your question: i am a socialist. For me looking at the pure nature of humanity threw looking at history, socialism is possible. We humans are social creatures and work best when working together in groups. Hate is taught and thus racism, sexism and so on, can be eliminated. A society without money, where all help together and work for the betterment of society, the greater good and not selfishness can function.
Eliminating the fundamental needs and guranteeing them. We have the resources and will and want to help others. What stops many people is that they feel it would then come to their backdraw, via losing money that one could spend on themself or afraid one loses their own status in society or wealth. What stands in the way of building houses, feeding everyone, is only corporation greed and legislation stemming based in greed and keeping up the current system.
In a socialist society everyone can persue their passions without needing to fear to loose essentials to live. No longer being forced to do work they dont want to but have to do be able to get food, water, shelter. People would gladly work for their community! Keep farms running, work in the forest, teach, help the elderly and so on. And as being part of the society you have an interest in keeping it up.
To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities.
I for example would have loved to become a teacher! But due to my neurodivergense hindering me to fill out standardised tests i could not advance academical to get the teaching license and study then teach. Gladly help out on farms for the harvest and people in need.
“But what against robbers?” What makes people robbers and criminals? Poverty. But we have eliminated that by ensuring the basic needs of everyone to be secured. Everyone owns everything there is no gain from taking stuff.
“What against people that work against this system?” Just as we did in tribal times. They become social outcasts. Capitalism rewards being the worst human possible, lying, bribing, corrupting, manipulating, abusing.
“What about violent people with weapons?” Same as we do right now. Have a dedicated body of people for that. And if they abuse their power they will be punished. This isnt working right now because there is no indipendent body to control the executive branch. Though in a good Seperation of powers this should exist.
And no PRChina, soviets, north korea, vietnam and others werent socialist. Socialism is inherently democratic and not opressive like they are/were.
It sounds utopian to many. In my opinion though thats a lack of faith in good of humans, lack of creativity/imagination and lack thinking outside the box. No offense.
[Apologies in advance for the essay]
I think your description is utopian because it distills civilization (and by extension the universe) into a stable system in an ideal balance. Any society has to exist within its material constraints and those limits invariably devolve and shift through entropy.
Socialism (and basically all early-modern political theory) was born in a time of incredible scientific advancement. It has an implicit axiom that all factors can be solved and accounted for, and by doing so we can asymptomatically approach a perfect society.
But we know a lot more now and can prove that’s just not possible. Our physical reality imposes instability on society whether we like it or not. An unstoppable, aggressive blight could destroy the agricultural output of an entire continent. Suddenly it’s just not possible to give to each according to their need and only the most insular and asocial pockets of civilization survive.
There’s no amount of creativity or human goodwill that can weather the unfathomable forces beyond our control. I mean, what happens to our carefully crafted socialist society when the earth’s magnetic poles flip. Or when the moon finally drifts away from the earth and permanently ends our seasonal stability. Or when the sun explodes or we deplete Earth’s finite resources or etc…
I don’t say all of this to be unreasonably pessimistic or nihilistic, but to point out that these ideological theories are fundamentally unsound. Our current world does desperately need these socialist policies, but dogmatic adherence to them as indelible rules is counter productive.
In my opinion we should focus on instilling basic guiding principles and solve our problems in any way that satisfies as many as possible. Some off the top of my head, in a rough ordering:
You’ll almost never be able to satisfy every principle, but establishing something like that as a baseline allows for good faith discussion and decision-making without the need to villify your opposition.