ILN: Because we're not anarchists and believe that government is essential to success.

The social market economy is not the same thing as social democracy. The former was the brainchild of the German right, not the German left, as they were much more concerned about maintaining competitive markets than social democrats are.

@Invictus
Social democracy is a means to an end, and seems to put a lot of favor in socialism. Social market economy is itself an end, and is meh about both. It isn't the biggest fan of either in their purest, untouched forms. I pulled the name mostly out of thin air, but after some (read: a lot of) digging to find out if my term was an actual thing, I found others have applied the same name. Sorry that I prefer to say, "I'm a socio-capitalist," rather than saying, "I'm an advocate of a social market economy." I prefer to use less syllables. It's also a bit convenient in that it uses a prefix variation (sort of) of socialism and the word capitalism, so it places similar importance on both to show it has distinguishing factors of both, such as in a social market economy itself. That's a stretch, but it's the best excuse I have other than the syllable thing.

TrPrado: I would like to point out that socialism is in my view not at all incompatible with capitalism. They are not on the same spectrum. You don't have to go with "social market economy" to in an effort to 'mix' the two concepts.

I agree that capitalism and socialism in and of themselves are not compatible. However, certain qualities (my favorite qualities, no less) can be blended together to make something superior to either individually, in my opinion.

"The social market economy is not the same thing as social democracy. The former was the brainchild of the German right, not the German left, as they were much more concerned about maintaining competitive markets than social democrats are."

If that's true, then I was wrong. It does sound mostly right, knowing what I do about the SPD up to the German Revolution (where my specialized knowledge on Central European history peters out). Goes to my earlier point about the terminology being so complicated.

TrPrado: Uh, I was saying that they wer compatible.

were

Socialism has *everything* to do with the Soviet Union.

"Socialism is not compatible with bourgeois democracy. I will resist to my last breath the attempts to define socialism into some weak form of social democracy."

Has someone lost their dinosaur?

@ILN
"I don't get why socialists don't just get together, buy up massive amounts of land somewhere and live their communal fantasies. I'd be glad if it would turn out great and it might even make me change my views."
The answer to this question lies in the behaviour of the US towards similar states in post-war history.
The Allende government in Chile was democratically elected by its people. The US CIA intervened by a coup which imposed a murderous military junta.
In Cuba, the CIA led a coup ('The Bay of Pigs') against its socialist government. It failed. Subsequently, Castro enjoyed about 50 years of popular support, despite a punitive US blockade designed to impoverish the Cuban people.
US foreign policy has repeatedly demonstrated that it considers all nations to be free to choose any form of government (even the most brutally repressive) as long as it is not founded on socialist principles.

partly relevant: http://www.tickld.com/x/wtf-is-wrong-is-wrong-with-americans-this-guy-nails-it

@TRPrado: "socialism for the benefit of workers and individuals, capitalism for the benefit of corporations and the economy as a whole"

Implying that interests of capitalist and workers are not opposed and conflicting. Maybe technical improvements have allowed workers' right to improve, and at the same time they have increased the incomes of capitalist. But under the same conditions, you can only benefit one of the two, at the expense of the other.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, let's just say if you increase the rights of the worker (pension, salary, health insurance, vacations, safety in the workplace, ...), there will be less money left for the capitalist to win, and vice versa.

JECE: Sorry for misreading that, double negatives can be a bit annoying sometimes.

Capitalism is by definition an exploitative system. You sell your labour power, and your employer takes what you have produced and re-sells it for a higher value. The difference between the two is, of course, called "profit". In a socialist economy, the workers own the means of production, so this excess value is returned to the workers - those who produced it - and not some capitalist overlord who did very little for it.

JECE: Back to what you originally said to me. I don't HAVE to choose the social market economy for that effort, there are indeed several ways in which the two concepts mix, but I like this variation the best.
AlexSG: I agree to the extent that the market needs to be free enough for corporations to have room to grow, but regulation keeps from taking potentially unethical behaviors. This isn't necessarily (in fact, more not than often) financially.

mendax: That is Marxist rhetoric: necessarily communist but not necessarily socialist.

TrPrado: You should watch "The Corporation". (It's a bit old, so their might be newer movies now.) If you're going to put the needs of a modern-day, shareholder-bound, profit-driven corporation on equal footing with the needs the workers, you're going to create a rather inefficient system. A much better approach would be to change the rules of the game through regulations that turn corporations into humane, worker-friendly businesses.

Marx's analysis of capitalism is pretty spot-on, so I thought it worth repeating here.

"Socialism has *everything* to do with the Soviet Union."

Tendmote is saying more and more true things.

"Has someone lost their dinosaur?"

Yeah who needs Lenin when you've got xenophobic neocons ala NuLabour.

"US foreign policy has repeatedly demonstrated that it considers all nations to be free to choose any form of government (even the most brutally repressive) as long as it is not founded on socialist principles."

Which is why these social dems don't have a clue. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can prevent US imperialism from overthrowing socialism.

Or, you know, you can bring social democracy/democratic socialism to the States.

Mendax: Laissez-faire, not necessarily capitalism as a whole, is by inevitability, not by definition, an exploitative system. The production of goods is only half the work, the other half is finding a way to make money off of it, and there is a bit of planning involved in that. The people who turn that profit have to pay not only for the workers that make a product, but also the resources they use. Their job is finance. Which brings me to a correction of myself.
JECE: I realize that I probably shouldn't have said that "more not than often" corporations' unethical behavior is financially involved. That's the opposite of true because mostly everything a corporation does has to do with finance. I do agree, though, that corporations definitely need to be regulated because otherwise they can become legally invincible, and that could very easily get very bad.

"Or, you know, you can bring social democracy/democratic socialism to the States."

Working on it.

TrPrado: Capitalism is the system where the means of production are owned privately and operated for profit. "Privately" and "profit" are key terms.
Laissez faire, on the other hand, "is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from intrusive government restrictions, tariffs, and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights" (Quoting from wikipedia, but still I think it is a good definition)

Having this in mind this, why do you say it is Laissez-faire and not capitalism the source of exploitation?

Because it is capitalism at its most extreme. I didn't say capitalism itself wasn't exploitative, just that it as a whole isn't NECESSARILY exploitative. Variations, especially laissez-faire, are definitely very exploitative. "With only enough regulations to protect property rights" is almost nothing. It basically means that theft from those private parties is illegal. The desired regulations that keep corporations from unethical behaviors are absent in laissez-faire.

Note because I'm sure I'll get flack for the second clause of the second sentence: I mean that not every variation of capitalism is exploitative.

Socialism is what Democrats want to do. National Socialism is what Republicans want to do. Amiright?