Social Liberalism, or Welfare Liberalism, is more in line with Socialism than Classical Liberalism.
What you refer to is liberal democratic capitalism, which is a center-left variant of capitalism (as opposed to the rightist Anglo-Saxon capitalism and the leftist social democratic capitalism). This economic ideology is quite opposed to the public ownership of the means of production, inasmuch as it utilizes the state to correct the market failures of negative externalities, market concentration, and asymmetric information, providing overall macroeconomic stabilization and sustaining the private ownership of the means of production as well as the physical efficiency of the working class that toil in the capitalist economy. This is in obvious conflict with socialism.
Now I have no idea what you mean by "modern" Capitalism but considering your propensity for making inaccurate statements, my guess would be that you're talking about our "mixed" economy and not Capitalism.
Capitalism is defined by the conditions of the private ownership of the means of production, market exchange as the primary means of resource allocation, and the existence of wage labor, all three of which are present in our modern economic structure. The mixed economy is the fundamental basis of capitalism inasmuch as the state is an integral agent in the capitalist economy. You probably refer to a theoretical abstraction of "laissez-faire" capitalism that has been perpetually nonexistent, rendering promotion of it comically utopian.
Actually, what I said was that Progressives and Socialists have a great deal in common, I didn't mention "modern" Liberalism at all... But since you brought it up:
That you inaccurately define economic rightism as "liberal" does not interest me. What's more relevant is that liberal democratic capitalism is quite opposed to socialism.
Its really not that difficult to understand, all Collectivist ideologies share the same basic principles.
Indeed. Just as liberal democratic capitalism is opposed to all shades of collectivism, which is the basis for my opposition to it.
Once again, you are 180 degrees wrong. "Modern" Liberalism is phasing out capitalism through the "mixed" economy.
More effective... like the Leftist policies that have made Michigan the economic powerhouse that it is today.
You seem to have forgotten to refer to the empirical research that I mentioned. You must need another source. Try Mares's
The economic consequences of the welfare state:
What are the economic and employment consequences of larger social insurance programmes? Are larger welfare states diverting resources from economic activity and distorting the investment decisions of firms? I examine theoretical and empirical research on the economic consequences of the welfare state. This review shows that the predictions of a negative relationship between higher levels of social protection and growth have not been borne out in the data. Both insurance programmes and other policies that increase investment in human capital or the overall productivity of workers generate important economic externalities that outweigh the potentially distortionary effects of higher taxes. Empirical studies also fail to uncover a consistent negative relationship between larger welfare states and the level of employment. The employment consequences of the welfare state are mediated by existing institutions and policies—such as the level of centralization of the wage bargaining system—which affect the redistribution of the costs of higher taxes among workers and firms. As a result, the employment consequences of larger welfare states are non-linear.
The welfare state in particular is an important agent in the maintenance of stability in the capitalist economy, thus rendering comparisons with "socialism" ludicrous.
Red Herring/Strawman. I didn't bring up market socialism.... Pay attention Julian, David Schweickart cant help you here:
You didn't mention market socialism, which is why I did. What you inaccurately refer to, of course, is the somewhat outdated market socialism of figures such as Lange. I refer to the republican market socialism of Schweickart and the "post-Hayekian" socialism of Theodore Burczak, their primary appeal being the ability to bypass the economic calculation problem.
Price controls are a central concept of command economies.
Price controls are existent to some degree in every viable economic structure, which accounts for their prevalence in the capitalist economy, particularly during periods of crisis.
What I said was, socialism and progressivism share common ground, and they do. According to your narrow definition of socialism, "government ownership and control of the means of production", socialism is based on central planning and a command economy. So you bringing up these offshoots of socialism, "decentrally planned socialism" and "market socialism", is simply an attempt at a Red Herring.
A comical claim. My definition of socialism is the public ownership and management of the means of production, or more descriptively,
"a social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community." Government ownership is in sharp conflict with this due to the detachment of aims between a political regime and the general public that will ensure that political power is
not exercised by the whole community in the case of "government ownership."
It is on that basis that I disavow central planning and a command economy and instead advocate decentrally planned socialism, where horizontal confederations of decentralized collectives and communes engage in economic direct democracy. Consider, for example,
this review of the "participatory economics" (parecon) advocated by Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, which I'd describe as a form of "libertarian collectivism." It's theoretically compatible with either minarchism or anarchism, and is collectivist in nature, as it's reliant on the abolition of markets but preservation of remuneration primarily based on individual measurements of labor inputs rather than needs, as communism would be.
This is a model designed to yield Pareto optimal allocation through decentralized planning. It is an effort to overcome the commodity fetishism of markets, market-bias towards private goods at the expense of public goods, externalities, and market failures of all kinds. Additionally, their model attempts to go beyond the hierarchical decision-making inherent in central planning. It is in many respects a well thought-through effort to go beyond markets without succumbing to the domination of central planning.
The model relies on the existence of "consumer councils" organized geographically by neighborhood, municipality, state, and federal jurisdictions. They start out small and local, yet become aggregated until their plans combine into a national system. The "consumer councils" are assumed to be self-interested with each member assumed to act in her/his own individual interest. They are "rational maximizers" as is assumed in neoclassicism. The effective "check" on each unit is the fact that they exist within a network of other local consumer councils, who also want to maximize self-interest. Also, the self-interest of consumer councils is checked by the rational maximizing behavior of "worker councils" in production. "Worker councils" likewise seek to achieve the best working conditions and most income under conditions that are not competitive but that are collectively monitored by other competing workers' councils. The democratically run worker councils are grouped by industry and proceed from the shopfloor upwards to the federal level. Plans are drawn through an iterative process in which consumer councils articulate what they want to purchase and worker councils articulate what they want to produce. Each person, as both consumer and producer, gets to vote according to the extent to which she/he is affected by the decision.
My own preferred "system" is somewhat to the left of that as it's both explicitly anarchist and communist in nature, but the fundamental elements of decentralized socialist economic planning are present in both.
