Is Conservatism just NeoTraditionalism these days?

[Consul]

In every real-world case in history, Socialism has turned to a devastated economy and piles of corpses. No exceptions. So only when Socialism is not the dominant economic or political strategy in a place is any measure of it even tolerable. And there's a serious doubt that it's ever functional, let alone ideal, even then.

You are right only if socialism is equated with (Soviet-style) communism.

For example, socialized medicine, even in a basically democratic polity like the UK or Canada, bankrupts the medical system.
Public schooling turns into a propaganda factory. Social welfare turns out to be beset by freeloaders. And so on. Every socialized program turns out to be more expensive and less efficient than it ought to be, and ultimately unsustainable. That's a serious problem for any Socialist. But I never hear them talk about their own 100% record of failure.

The social (welfare) state with its institutions of social security such as health insurance and unemployment insurance (as we have it in Germany) does have a record of success! It's a very good humanitarian thing!
(I'm not denying that an excessively, inflationarily generous welfare state creates new problems, such as attracting too many immigrants.)

If public schooling is (mis)used for ideological indoctrination by the (Far-)Left or the (Far-)Right, then the problem is not public schooling as such, especially as private schooling as such doesn't guarantee freedom from propaganda either.

Two problems, though. One is that in real life, equity is completely impossible. It never exists, anywhere.

Do you mean equity (qua justness/fairness) or equality (qua sameness in some respect or other)? As for the latter, if egalitarianism were the view that all people ought to become or be made equal in all respects, it would be quite silly indeed—but it is not that view! Trying to realize absolute egalitarianism means trying to do the in-principle impossible, but trying to realize relative egalitarianism doesn't. People will never be equal in all mental or physical respects, but equality (or almost-equality at least) in other respects is not a natural impossibility.

The other is that given secularism, there's no rational explanation of why we owe it to each other even to regard each other as theoretically equal, even if we admit that, in practice, it remains impossible to actualize.

A moral conception and justification of equality or equity (qua justice/fairness) doesn't require any non-secular underpinnings. Generally, ethics is independent of theism and theology.

In what way can a female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual be made the equal of a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual? What's the recipe for getting that done? And then, what's the rationale that explains why it is incumbent upon our society to try to make the Chinese man the "equal" of the black girl?
Or if we mean that they are, in some value sense, each other's "equals in value," to whom or what is that value delivered, and why should we assume that they have the same value to that?

"A female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual" and "a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual" certainly cannot become physical/corporeal equals, but they can become ones in other respects (moral, legal, social, political, economic ones).

Of course, can doesn't imply ought; and there is an ongoing debate over how much moral, legal, social, political, or economic inequality is justifiable.

There is no way to explain what's "equitable" in forcing the black girl to suffer some sort of "equivalent" inhibitions to the Chinese man. What's "just" about crippling or limiting her potential in some way, in order to make sure he doesn't feel bad?

You've erected a straw man against egalitarianism here!

Right. Which means force of some kind. The black girl must be excluded, denied access, inhibited, discriminated against in some way, so that some standard of "equity" we can't even agree on is "satisfied" that we have hammered her enough, or bestowed so many unearned privileges on him that our personal estimation of "equity" has been met. But we have absolutely no metric for determining what that point is, or what is just another form of inequity.

I don't believe in objective moral facts, so I agree that there is no objective moral "metric for determining" equity or "justice as fairness" (John Rawls).
From the socialist perspective, equity and equality are intimately connected. Here, the moral default position is that (except for certain natural inequalities) inequality is unjust/unfair.

I do see the big problem that there is a clash of equality and liberty: The more the state is turned into an equity-through-equality machine, the more coercive its instruments will have to become in order for it to succeed. – The Woke Left will reply that they are legitimately using the power of the state and the law for the sake of their good cause.

Wait. That doesn't answer the fundamental question. The real question is how any faults or "evils," if we can use that word, ever come to exist when people are all essentially good in the first place. They say "society": but society is composed of nothing by good and meliorable human beings, allegedly: so whence this social maladjustment that is alleged to be producing all the problems? Why is a group of supposedly sociable, morally-well-arranged not either properly sociable or morally well-arranged when they combine into a society? And why do they need any amelioration, when they're already good people?

Is it a socialist principle that "people are all essentially good in the first place"? I don't think so.

"Socialists regard humans as essentially social creatures, their capacities and behaviour being shaped more by nurture than by nature, and particularly by creative labour. Their propensity for cooperation, sociability and rationality means that the prospects for personal growth and social development are considerable."

(Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies: An Introduction. 7th ed. London: Red Globe/Macmillan, 2021. p. 56)

"Essentially social" doesn't mean "essentially good", and I don't read this description of the socialist view of human nature as meaning that everybody is, will, or can become a good person, or that nobody has an anti-social or anti-rational habitus.

However, even mafiosi are sociable in the sense of being "naturally inclined or disposed to be in company with others of the same species" (OED). They are not sociable in the sense of being "characterized by, pertaining to, contact, intercourse, or companionship with [all] others in a friendly or pleasant manner". (OED)

What is our evidence that it's not a delusion? That we don't want it to be a delusion? That it sounds nice, optimistic and humane if we say such a thing? Or that history gives us some evidence that would give us some reason to think that's true?
Where has this "progressive belief that the conditio humana can be improved" been realized, so that we may marvel?

I already mentioned the welfare state (which doesn't exist in all countries). It is an empirical fact that it has reduced a lot of human suffering (through poverty or illness).

Then why did they "make themselves up" so badly? How did we get gulags, re-education camps and Auschwitz from good and ameliorable human beings "making themselves up"? Where did that evil come from?

Following Rorty's logic, one would have to say that many people freely decide to become evil and to do bad things.

I'm convinced that a person's habitus (in the sense of a dispositional matrix of ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving) is at least partially determined by nurture, by their non-innate, non-nature-given conditions of socialization and enculturation (including education), which needn't stay the same from one generation to the next. However, I don't agree with Rorty's extreme opinion that "there is no such thing as human nature." I was not born as a complete tabula rasa. Human self-creation or self-determination in his absolute sense is a fiction.

Well, you could answer the question before posing the counterquestion, of course.

How about Proudhon's anarcho-socialism?

"To the extent that society becomes enlightened, royal authority diminishes; this is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the birth of nations men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods, without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they do not know what is justice and what deception; then the authority of kings is immense, since no knowledge has been acquired to contradict it. But little by little, experience brings habits, which become customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, set down as principles, and in short transformed into laws, to which the king, the living law, is forced to render homage. There comes a time when customs and laws have so multiplied that the will of the prince is as it were entangled with the general will, and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that he will govern in conformity with customs and usages, and that he is only the executive power of a society whose laws are made independently of him.

Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and as it were unconsciously, but let us see the end point of this movement.

By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas man finally acquires the idea of science, that is, of a system of knowledge conforming to the reality of things and deduced from observation. He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies, the system of organic bodies, or the system of the human mind, and the system of the world: why should he not also search for the system of society? But having reached this point, he understands that political truth or science exists quite independently of the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular beliefs; that kings, ministers, magistrates, and peoples, as wills, have no connection with science and are worthy of no consideration. At the same time he understands that if man is born a sociable being, the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his father; that his true chief and his king is demonstrated truth, that politics is a science and not a matter of stratagem, and that the function of the legislator is reduced, in the final analysis to the methodical search for truth.

Thus, in a given society the authority of man over man is universally proportional to the intellectual development which that society has reached, and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, that is, for a government based on science. And just as the right of force and the right of strategem retreat before the growing awareness of justice and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will gives way to the sovereignty of the reason and ends up being replaced by a scientific socialism. Property and royalty have been crumbling ever since the beginning of the world. As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy."

(Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. What is Property? [1840.] Edited and translated by Donald R. Kelley & Bonnie G. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 pp. 207-9)

But the truth is that the fact that they have to ditch science, logic and reason has come recently to the Left: but it's because the hopes of what they call "crude Marxism" turned out to be dusty if science, logic, history and rationality were regarded as reliable at all. Hence, the Postmodern critiques that emphasize this are testament from the Marxists themselves to the rational, historical and scientific failure of original Marxism.

Marxists don't have to accept postmodern relativism (or epistemic antifoundationalism, or semantic antirepresentationalism, or metaphysical antirealism), do they?

Marx was a fraud. Not only did he not "enlighten" anyone, his thinking has proved to be a Stygian mess. He was no economist, and none of the theories he tried to sell as "scientific" were in any way scientific in actuality. He was an ideologue and a secular prophet, a self-professed genius, whose chief personal project seems to have been to obtain a free ride. But for some inexplicable reason, the Left loves the guy.

No, Marx was not a fraud, but a serious and able analyst of capitalist society. Scruton calls him a social scientist, but he can as well be called a social philosopher; and his "scientific socialism" is actually not as scientific as Marx believed it to be.

"Marx, Karl (1818–83)

A Young Hegelian turned social scientist, who lived for much of his life in exile, having lent support to the revolutionary activity of 1848. Together with Engels he wrote the Communist Manifesto, and developed a philosophy of man, history and politics that would give hitherto unprecedented authority to the communist cause. This philosophy has undergone many changes (see dialectical materialism, Marxism-Leninism, neo-Marxism). The form in which it is found in Marx has three distinct, but interdependent, parts.

(i) Human nature. This theory shows the influence of Hegel and finds fullest expression in Marx’s early writings (e.g. The 1844 Manuscripts). The nature of man is not immutable but historical, changing in accordance with social and economic conditions. But the prime mover of history is man himself who, through labour, remakes the world in his own image and changes his image in accordance with his powers. The nature of man therefore depends upon the conditions in which he labours. Private property creates the division between the classes, and also the condition of alienation which is overcome only by overthrowing the institution which creates it. With the abolition of private property man ceases to be a mere object or means; he is restored to his dignity as subject, or end in himself. He then becomes free, and his social relations become classless.

(ii) History. The philosophical idea of the ‘historical essence of man’ is recast in the later writings (notably Capital, vol. I, 1867) as a scientific claim concerning the evolution of human societies. All social forms have a function, and this function explains their existence, their survival and their destruction. Marx’s theory is a form of materialism: history is propelled by material forces – the productive forces – whereby nature is transformed into use-values and exchange-values. These productive forces compel the creation and destruction of successive systems of production relations between people. These systems, or economic structures, form the material base of society upon which the many-tiered superstructure of institutions is erected. Among the possible production relations are those of feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. The superstructure consists of the legal and other institutions which consolidate these arrangements, together with the ideology that pertains to them. Productive forces have an intrinsic tendency to develop, as human knowledge of and mastery over nature increase. As they develop successive economic structures arise and give way, and the social superstructure changes along with them. At a particular point of development the productive forces and the production relations enter into conflict: the latter being unable to contain the former. Society then enters a period of revolution. People become conscious of this by recognizing the existence of class struggle, between those whose activity fits them for the new economic structure, and those who are guardians of the old. This consciousness is not the cause, but the effect, of the material conflict which generates revolution.

(iii) Economics. Marx put forward a version of the labour theory of value. Since exchange-value enters the world only through labour, attribution to it of autonomous power is a form of fetishism (see commodity fetishism). Exchange-value is in reality ‘congealed human labour’. The accumulation of surplus value is explained as the extortion of hours of unpaid labour; exchange-value therefore accumulates in the hands of the capitalist, and never in the hands of the worker. This is the only explanation of regular capital accumulation that is compatible with the truth of the labour theory (but cf. primitive accumulation); it follows that capitalism is of necessity a form of exploitation.

The combination of these views leads to a prediction. At a certain point of development the economic structure of capitalism will no longer be able to contain and facilitate the everdeveloping productive forces. Hence there will be a crisis of capitalism to be resolved by revolution. This revolution will transfer power to the proletariat, and there will follow a development towards an economic arrangement that will be communist (since that is the only arrangement suited to the final mastery of nature), and also classless. Marx is famous for his attacks on ‘utopian’ socialism,
describing his own form of socialism as ‘scientific’. In retrospect, however, the motive of his thinking in all its forms appears decidedly utopian, and its brilliance no longer disguises the fact that Marx’s scientific pretensions are illusory."

(Scruton, Roger. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. pp. 424-5)

There's no such thing. For the Left, "social" means "the people," and the only "people" who count are the Socialists. Thus, there's no "democracy," because people have no power not to be Socialists or to choose anything that is not Socialism. So that's just a nonsense term, like "new antique."

Yes, there is such a non-nonsensical version of socialism as social democracy.

"Social democracy is an ideological stance that supports a broad balance between market capitalism, on the one hand, and state intervention on the other. Being based on a compromise between the market and the state, social democracy lacks a systematic underlying theory and is, arguably, inherently vague. It is nevertheless associated with the following views: (1) capitalism is the only reliable means of generating wealth, but it is a morally defective means of distributing wealth because of its tendency towards poverty and inequality; (2) the defects of the capitalist system can be rectified through economic and social intervention, the state being the custodian of the public interest; (3) social change can and should be brought about peacefully and constitutionally."

(Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies. 7th ed. London: Palgrave, 2021. p. 95)

"Tensions Within Socialism:
Communism <–> Social democracy
scientific socialism <–> ethical socialism
fundamentalism <–> revisionism
utopianism <–> reformism
revolution <–> evolution/gradualism
abolish capitalism <–> ‘humanize’ capitalism
common ownership <–> redistribution
classless society <–> ameliorate class conflict
absolute equality <–> relative equality
state collectivization <–> mixed economy
central planning <–> economic management
vanguard party <–> parliamentary party
dictatorship of proletariat <–> political pluralism
proletarian/people’s state <–> liberal-democratic state"

(Heywood, Andrew. Political Ideologies. 7th ed. London: Palgrave, 2021. p. 97)

No, Fascism is Left. It's Socialism. Libertarianism, individualism, genuine democracy, conservatism, classical liberalism...these are on the right.

No, it's rubbish to count fascism and national socialism among the left-wing ideologies.

"[N]eo-Marxists were usually at odds with, and sometimes profoundly repelled by, the Bolshevik model of orthodox communism." – A. Heywood

At odds with, yes: repelled by, no.

No, Heywood is right!

Orthodox Communism is a universal failure. Even the Neo-Marxists had to accept that. But they tried to save the theory by their bait-and-switch move. See James Lindsay, "Race Marxism."

(I have a copy and read it.)

Of course, there is still something Marxist about Neo-Marxism; but it remains true that it is relevantly different from orthodox communism.

The Frankfurters are famous for their critical studies of fascist/nazist authoritarianism (totalitarianism). There is a book titled The Authoritarian Personality (1950) by Adorno et al.; and Marcuse wrote a whole book on orthodox communism: Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958)

Isn't their fight for the right to gender self-determination (through self-identification) a fight for an individual right?

No. It's a fight for group pre-eminence. The individual is of no interest to Socialism, except as a token of the group. That's why they define every individual by his/her race, class, sexuality, disability, fatness, etc., and treat those as socially-determinative of what every individual is.
…They stereotype and lock in everyone according to the Socialist ideologues' own conception of class/race/sex/sexuality essentialism. If you're outside of that essentialist conception they impose, if you are a rejector of their Socialist group, if you're an individual, if you're not like the others they expect, then you just don't count. Nothing could be more evident from their rhetoric. You are not "the People," as Mao said; you're "against the People."

"The New Left was born in the early nineteen-sixties as a revolt against the modern university, and it died less than ten years later, in the auto-da-fé of Vietnam. Although it helped mobilize opinion on issues like civil rights, urban poverty, the arms race, and the war, the New Left never had its hands on the levers of political power. But it changed left-wing politics. It made individual freedom and authenticity the goals of political action, and it inspired people who cared about injustice and inequality to reject the existing system of power relations, and to begin anew."

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021 ... e-new-left

The >80s Woke Left (aka identitarian/minoritarian Left) is the successor of the 60s/70s New Left; and I don't see that they are ultracollectivists, who have completely abandoned the values of individual liberty and authenticity.

Lindsay & Pluckrose speak of…

"The Loss of the Individual and the Universal

Consequently, to postmodern Theorists, the notion of the autonomous individual is largely a myth. The individual, like everything else, is a product of powerful discourses and culturally constructed knowledge. Equally, the concept of the universal—whether a biological universal about human nature; or an ethical universal, such as equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, or sexuality—is, at best, naive. At worst, it is merely another exercise in power-knowledge, an attempt to enforce dominant discourses on everybody. The postmodern view largely rejects both the smallest unit of society—the individual—and the largest—humanity—and instead focuses on small, local groups as the producers of knowledge, values, and discourses. Therefore, postmodernism focuses on sets of people who are understood to be positioned in the same way—by race, sex, or class, for example—and have the same experiences and perceptions due to this positioning."

(Pluckrose, Helen, and James Lindsay. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity; and Why This Harms Everybody. Durham, NC: Pitchstone, 2020. p. 42)

However, according to the following description of postmodern politics, the individual is not lost: "…the right to individual and collective forms of…"

"Postmodern politics, then, can be described – at the same time – as a ‘politics of identity’, as a ‘politics of difference’, and as a ‘politics of recognition’:

A. As a politics of identity, it defends the right to individual and collective forms of performative expressivity as long as this does not involve the discrimination of other members of society.

B. As a politics of difference, it advocates the right to individual and collective forms of sociocultural idiosyncrasy, irrespective of whether people belong, or think they belong, to group-specific minorities or majorities.

C. As a politics of recognition, it endorses the right to individual and collective forms of public visibility, sustained through both the quotidian and the institutional acknowledgement of relationally constituted identities constructed, and constantly reconstructed, within spatiotemporally situated communities.

Arguably, ‘[t]he “struggle for recognition” is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century’ and, most likely, will continue to be of great significance throughout the twenty-first century. The ‘recognition of “different voices”’, different identities, different belief systems, different social practices, and different life forms is central to demonstrating that – to recall an influential aphorism of second-wave feminism – ‘the personal is political’. In other words, the seemingly most private aspects of human existence are profoundly public, in the sense that the struggle for recognition of one’s identity cannot be reduced to the realm of subjectivity but takes place within the wider context of society, which is pervaded by – relatively arbitrary – symbolic and material hierarchies of legitimacy.

‘Postmodernist thought, in attacking the idea of a notional centre or dominant ideology, facilitated the promotion of a politics of difference’, thereby drawing attention to the dangers arising from marginalizing processes by means of which members of discriminated or disempowered groups are ‘defined or “othered” as inferior with respect to’ members of dominant and empowered sections of society. To be sure, both legitimization and delegitimization mechanisms can be realized on multiple levels – in particular, on economic, political, ideological, cultural, ethnic, sexual, gender-specific, generational, and physical grounds. It is open to question whether or not power is – or, at least, can be – ‘used in all societies to marginalize subordinate groups’. Yet, regardless of whether one considers social marginalization processes to be a historical contingency or an anthropological invariant, the detrimental – and, possibly, pathological – consequences of power dynamics can be sought to be minimized by virtue of an inclusive ‘politics of identity, difference, and recognition’.

What much of anti-classist, anti-elitist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ageist, and anti-ableist projects have in common with postmodernism is that they condemn ‘the legitimating metadiscourse’ put in place to ensure that those who, in a particular realm of social life, have the upper hand in the present continue to do so in the future. The ambition to seek both individual and collective forms of empowerment able to oppose this is vital to the idea of a postmodern politics. Rather than conceiving of the self as ‘autonomous, rational, and centred, and somehow free of any particular cultural, ethnic, or gendered characteristics’, we need to acknowledge that an actor’s numerous dispositions internalized in relation to other members of society, as well as an actor’s manifold positions occupied within different spheres of an asymmetrically structured reality, need to be taken into account in order to generate an empowering ‘politics of difference’. Hence, we are confronted with ‘a new kind of emancipation, one of a liberation of difference’:
—
Emancipation, here, consists in disorientation, which is at the same time also the liberation of differences, of local elements, of what could generally be called dialect. With the demise of the idea of a central rationality of history, the world of generalized communication explodes like a multiplicity of ‘local’ rationalities – ethnic, sexual, religious, cultural or aesthetic minorities – that finally speak up for themselves.
—
In other words, the struggle for the recognition of differences, expressed in the multiplicity of spatiotemporally constituted particularities, lies at the heart of postmodern politics. Accordingly, postmodern politics can be characterized by reference to various significant normative features:

a. its ‘deliberate open-endedness’ (anti-dogmatism);

b. its ‘infinitely skeptical and subversive attitude toward normative claims, institutional justice and political struggles’ (anti-conventionalism);

c. its advocacy of ‘trans-social networks of mutual recognition and arrangement’ (anti-parochialism);

d. its preparedness not only to appreciate but also to ‘celebrate diversity’, along with its conviction that ‘plurality is preferable to singularity, difference to identity, otherness to sameness’ (anti-universalism);

e. its critical engagement with the emergence of ‘a multi-cultural and fragmented civil society’ (anti-monoculturalism);

f. its willingness to challenge traditional ‘ideas of national commonality’ insensitive to ‘the multiple parts of the marginalized’ and voiceless (anti-nationalism);

g. its ability to destabilize ‘the configuration and perceived transmission’ of dominant cultural identities reproduced on the basis of ‘hegemonic memory politics’ (anti-hegemonism);

h. its attack on mechanisms of ‘social exclusion, domination and subjugation’ (anti-exclusionism);

i. its insistence upon the fact that complex societies require post-traditional models of citizenship capable of ‘incorporating a sensitivity to “difference”’ (anti-monism); and

j. its open-minded readiness to experiment with ‘multiple projects’ embedded in constantly shifting structures of ‘intersectionality’ (anti-traditionalism).

In short, postmodern approaches to politics are committed to acknowledging the distinctive normative weight, and power-laden implications, of social differences."

(Susen, Simon. The ‘Postmodern Turn’ in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. pp. 182-4)
——————
"Somewhat schematically, it is possible to distinguish two main types of justice claims, both of which have had, and continue to have, a significant influence on contemporary conceptions of social struggle.

A. There are ‘redistributive claims, which seek a more just distribution of resources and wealth’ – for instance, a fairer ‘redistribution from the North to the South, from the rich to the poor, and (not so long ago) from the owners to the workers’. Owing to the rise of neoliberalism and the corresponding revival of free-market policies in large parts of the world, advocates of redistributive models of justice have been ‘on the defensive’, finding themselves in an increasingly weak position in recent decades.

B. There are recognitive claims, which aim for a more just recognition of identities and differences, especially of those of relatively marginalized and disempowered members of society, who may suffer the consequences of domination based on class, ‘race’, ethnicity, culture, ideology, religion, gender, age, or ability – or on other sociologically relevant variables. Given the growing impact of multiculturalism and the parallel resurgence of inclusivist policies in numerous societies around the world, proponents of recognitive models of justice have been on the offensive, benefiting from a gradually more influential position in the contemporary era.

In short, whereas the former model endorses social-democratic politics oriented towards the redistribution of income and wealth, the latter model advocates multicultural politics oriented towards the recognition of group-specific identities and differences. Surely, it may be legitimately objected that this twofold categorization is founded on a false opposition and that, more importantly, ‘justice today requires both redistribution and recognition’. In other words, if it is the case that ‘neither redistribution alone nor recognition alone can suffice to overcome injustice today’, then it is also true that ‘they need somehow to be reconciled and combined’, rather than being considered and treated as mutually exclusive. The shift from modern to postmodern conceptions of politics is reflected in the transition from the ‘paradigm of redistribution’ to the ‘paradigm of recognition’ and, hence, from the universalist concern with ‘equality’ to the particularist engagement with ‘difference’."

(Susen, Simon. The ‘Postmodern Turn’ in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. pp. 185-6)

[Immanuel Can]

In every real-world case in history, Socialism has turned to a devastated economy and piles of corpses. No exceptions. So only when Socialism is not the dominant economic or political strategy in a place is any measure of it even tolerable. And there's a serious doubt that it's ever functional, let alone ideal, even then.

You are right only if socialism is equated with (Soviet-style) communism.

I'm completely right. There's not a single case of Socialism being the regnant economic plan, and there not being death and economic disaster. But if you think otherwise, just name this Socialist success story...

For example, socialized medicine, even in a basically democratic polity like the UK or Canada, bankrupts the medical system.
Public schooling turns into a propaganda factory. Social welfare turns out to be beset by freeloaders. And so on. Every socialized program turns out to be more expensive and less efficient than it ought to be, and ultimately unsustainable. That's a serious problem for any Socialist. But I never hear them talk about their own 100% record of failure.

The social (welfare) state with its institutions of social security such as health insurance and unemployment insurance (as we have it in Germany) does have a record of success! It's a very good humanitarian thing!

Until it crashes the economy. But that's what it does.

I'm all for free healthcare, if it could be made sustainable. Unfortunately, there's no example of it doing that.

If public schooling is (mis)used for ideological indoctrination by the (Far-)Left or the (Far-)Right,

Which "far right" has any influence in public education? It's always the Leftists.

Two problems, though. One is that in real life, equity is completely impossible. It never exists, anywhere.

Do you mean equity (qua justness/fairness) or equality (qua sameness in some respect or other)?

Well, nobody can say what the first one is. How does one pin down what "fairness" entails? Who gets to say when something's "fair"?

People will never be equal in all mental or physical respects, but equality (or almost-equality at least) in other respects is not a natural impossibility.

Well, it is, actually. We can provide something like relative equality of opportunity, all things being equal, but never any equality of outcomes...especially because compelling alleged equality of outcomes invariably requires injustice toward some in the alleged interests of others.

The other is that given secularism, there's no rational explanation of why we owe it to each other even to regard each other as theoretically equal, even if we admit that, in practice, it remains impossible to actualize.

A moral conception and justification of equality or equity (qua justice/fairness) doesn't require any non-secular underpinnings. [/quote]
It's much worse than that: from secularism no explanation of why we even owe anybody this "equity" or "equality."

Generally, ethics is independent of theism and theology.

It isn't. Secular ethics has prove to be a total failure from a rational point of view. The current field, broadly speaking, is split between Deontologies of various kinds, Consequentialisms of various kinds, and Virtue Theories of other kinds. And there's no meta-basis for adjudicating between them, or even of saying that we owe any of them anything.

In what way can a female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual be made the equal of a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual? What's the recipe for getting that done? And then, what's the rationale that explains why it is incumbent upon our society to try to make the Chinese man the "equal" of the black girl?
Or if we mean that they are, in some value sense, each other's "equals in value," to whom or what is that value delivered, and why should we assume that they have the same value to that?

"A female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual" and "a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual" certainly cannot become physical/corporeal equals, but they can become ones in other respects (moral, legal, social, political, economic ones).

What are these "respects" of which you speak? Take any of your specific cases, and show how the Chinese man can be made authentically equal to the black woman.

Of course, can doesn't imply ought; and there is an ongoing debate over how much moral, legal, social, political, or economic inequality is justifiable.

Right. It doesn't imply "ought." So we can't even know that we owe the Chinese man and the black woman equality...or that we owe it to anybody. ("Ought" as you will know, is a contraction of "owe it".) That's why there's an "ongoing debate," and one without any possibility of adjudication.

There is no way to explain what's "equitable" in forcing the black girl to suffer some sort of "equivalent" inhibitions to the Chinese man. What's "just" about crippling or limiting her potential in some way, in order to make sure he doesn't feel bad?

You've erected a straw man against egalitarianism here!

Not at all. It is precisely how calls for egalitarianism are actualized today. For instance, at Harvard University, Chinese students have much higher entrance demands placed on them than whites, or Hispanics or blacks. And this is done in the name of "fairness" and "inclusion" and "equity." So addressing the "egalitarian" needs of these minorities discriminates against the Chinese.

Any problem with that?

From the socialist perspective, equity and equality are intimately connected.

They're opposites, actually. So no, Socialists don't affirm both, because they cannot. Equality says all students at Harvard should rise to the same entrance standard; equity says the "underprivileged" minorities, which do not include the Chinese, must be given extra advantages. The doing of the second destroys the first, and the application of the first destroys the second.

Here, the moral default position is that (except for certain natural inequalities) inequality is unjust/unfair.

Why? What makes this "moral" or even possible?

I do see the big problem that there is a clash of equality and liberty: The more the state is turned into an equity-through-equality machine, the more coercive its instruments will have to become in order for it to succeed. – The Woke Left will reply that they are legitimately using the power of the state and the law for the sake of their good cause.

Well, the "good cause" of racial purity spurred the Holocaust. So just how "legitimate" is that excuse for totalitarianism?

Wait. That doesn't answer the fundamental question. The real question is how any faults or "evils," if we can use that word, ever come to exist when people are all essentially good in the first place. They say "society": but society is composed of nothing by good and meliorable human beings, allegedly: so whence this social maladjustment that is alleged to be producing all the problems? Why is a group of supposedly sociable, morally-well-arranged not either properly sociable or morally well-arranged when they combine into a society? And why do they need any amelioration, when they're already good people?

Is it a socialist principle that "people are all essentially good in the first place"? I don't think so.

Well, one of the hallmarks of Socialism is the belief that all evils are products of social systems and social conditioning, not of human nature. The shift from the personal responsiblity of the individual to the blaming of "structures of oppression" requires us to accept that the evils do not come from human beings, but from some other dynamic. And Socialists are notoriously vague on what that dynamic is.

How can a society created by people who, if not "good" are no worse than social structures make them, become the constructors of social systems that make them into bad people? How does that work?

"Essentially social" doesn't mean "essentially good", and I don't read this description of the socialist view of human nature as meaning that everybody is, will, or can become a good person, or that nobody has an anti-social or anti-rational habitus.

How do you read Heywood's explanation for this "anti-social" behaviour and the "anti-social habitus" that makes it happen?

What is our evidence that it's not a delusion? That we don't want it to be a delusion? That it sounds nice, optimistic and humane if we say such a thing? Or that history gives us some evidence that would give us some reason to think that's true?
Where has this "progressive belief that the conditio humana can be improved" been realized, so that we may marvel?

I already mentioned the welfare state (which doesn't exist in all countries). It is an empirical fact that it has reduced a lot of human suffering (through poverty or illness).

We must be careful, though, to discriminate between Socialist polities and those that, like Denmark or Norway, have social assistance systems built on "capitalist" economics. When the worst effects of Socialism are buffered by the influx of large amounts of cash from profit-driven businesses (like oil, in the case of Norway) we can't speak of what Socialism itself is doing: it's not doing the real work of creating the means of its own functioning, but rather draining of the surplusses of capitalist enterprise.

So places like Norway and Denmark would be a tribute not to Socialism, but to capitalism: because their free marked policies make any measure of their "welfare" programs possible. On their own feet, they would never be anything but economically crippling. So ironically, the luxury of praising Socialism is only something one can have when one is already flush with surplus value from capitalism. Give Socialism the reins, and everything goes in the tank.

Then why did they "make themselves up" so badly? How did we get gulags, re-education camps and Auschwitz from good and ameliorable human beings "making themselves up"? Where did that evil come from?

Following Rorty's logic, one would have to say that many people freely decide to become evil and to do bad things.

I'm convinced that a person's habitus (in the sense of a dispositional matrix of ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving) is at least partially determined by nurture, by their non-innate, non-nature-given conditions of socialization and enculturation (including education), which needn't stay the same from one generation to the next. However, I don't agree with Rorty's extreme opinion that "there is no such thing as human nature." I was not born as a complete tabula rasa. Human self-creation or self-determination in his absolute sense is a fiction.

"Partially"? No doubt "in some part." But how much?

And Rorty essentially is arguing the opposite. For what Rorty says would not rationalize the placing of the welfare of the masses in the unmonitored and unrestricted care of any group of persons. If individuals cannot be trusted, then distribution of powers, limitations of powers, term limits, free democratic elections, and so forth become the appropriate remedy. But a Socialist system cannot endure those, because they inhibit the potential of Socialist control.

Well, you could answer the question before posing the counterquestion, of course.

How about Proudhon's anarcho-socialism?[/quote]
Well, this is one of the funniest lines ever:

By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas man finally acquires the idea of science,...

Wow. Talk about a non-explanation offered as if some sort of profundity.

Anyway, on we go.

But having reached this point, he understands that political truth or science exists quite independently of the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular beliefs; that kings, ministers, magistrates, and peoples, as wills, have no connection with science and are worthy of no consideration.

He thinks this is some sort of universal pattern, rather than a product of unique events such as Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence? Well, he'd sure need to show that. How soon should we expect this enlightenment to hit the other countries that are not democratic?

...a government based on science.

Here's the problem: in Marxist thought, "science" is "wissenschaft," which is not per se what English speakers think of as "science." It's not anything like the rigorous and disciplined sticking to a method of experimental analysis of empirical facts. It's a much more general, more maleable term, embracing all kinds of other stuff, from "knowledge-seeking" and "wisdom" to all sorts of academics and their speculations. And worse than that, Marxism itself regards itself as a "scientific analysis" of society, for no better reason than that Marx promised it was. So "science," in Marxist ears, merely means "ideologically Marxist."

So the last thing we'll ever need is a Marxist government. They've already proved that they are far worse than useless; they're deadly.

But the truth is that the fact that they have to ditch science, logic and reason has come recently to the Left: but it's because the hopes of what they call "crude Marxism" turned out to be dusty if science, logic, history and rationality were regarded as reliable at all. Hence, the Postmodern critiques that emphasize this are testament from the Marxists themselves to the rational, historical and scientific failure of original Marxism.

Marxists don't have to accept postmodern relativism (or epistemic antifoundationalism, or semantic antirepresentationalism, or metaphysical antirealism), do they?

Not if they want to go back to "crude" or failed Marxism. They can do that. But what hope lies for them there?

...his "scientific socialism" is actually not as scientific as Marx believed it to be.

Marxism is nothing that deserves the adjective "science" at all, in fact. It's a wild and erroneous imagining created by narcissist and sociopath.

No, Fascism is Left. It's Socialism. Libertarianism, individualism, genuine democracy, conservatism, classical liberalism...these are on the right.

No, it's rubbish to count fascism and national socialism among the left-wing ideologies.

The "National Socialists" were not really Socialists? Make your case, then.

"The New Left was born in the early nineteen-sixties as a revolt against the modern university, and it died less than ten years later, in the auto-da-fé of Vietnam.

That's actually wrong. Where they went is to the teacher's colleges, and from there to the universities, and into the professions, by way of what Socialists dubbed "the long march through the institutions."

It did indeed turn out to be a "long" march, but they're not hard to find today. Their "marching" is evident in the whole Woke movement, among other things. They're at the WEF, in Hollywood, in politics, in the public schools and universities, in the human resources departments of major companies, in the "colleges" of law, education and psychology...and they're still working on their "revolution," using identity politics rather than class analysis.

But they sure haven't given up, and they sure haven't disappeared after the '60s.

[Gary Childress]

...

So you want absolutely no secular social programs. The only social programs you approve of are religious ones? Is that correct?

[Immanuel Can]

...

So you want absolutely no secular social programs. The only social programs you approve of are religious ones? Is that correct?

No. I just don't want Socialism, especially as a comprehensive economic strategy -- which, unfortunately, is what its proponents invariably want it to be. We can have such welfare programs as our free voluntary organizations will sustain, or as our free markets can offset the liabilities created by them, and as our personal freedoms permit. But when they exceed that level, they become toxic.

[Gary Childress]

...

So you want absolutely no secular social programs. The only social programs you approve of are religious ones? Is that correct?

No. I just don't want Socialism, especially as a comprehensive economic strategy -- which, unfortunately, is what its proponents invariably want it to be. We can have such welfare programs as our free voluntary organizations will sustain, or as our free markets can offset the liabilities created by them, and as our personal freedoms permit. But when they exceed that level, they become toxic.

Fair enough.

[promethean75]

"I just don't want Socialism, especially as a comprehensive economic strategy -- which, unfortunately, is what its proponents invariably want it to be. We can have such welfare programs as our free voluntary organizations will sustain"

But you're cool with the workers forming unions at least, right? C'mon man u gotta give me sumthin.

[Gary Childress]

"I just don't want Socialism, especially as a comprehensive economic strategy -- which, unfortunately, is what its proponents invariably want it to be. We can have such welfare programs as our free voluntary organizations will sustain"

But you're cool with the workers forming unions at least, right? C'mon man u gotta give me sumthin.

So, IC would you at least give workers the right to form unions to advocate for themselves against the owners of industry?

yes: ___ , no: ___ , undecided: ___

[Immanuel Can]

But you're cool with the workers forming unions at least, right? C'mon man u gotta give me sumthin.

Today's Socialists now hate the unions: haven't you heard? They're all "deplorables" and "rednecks," they want us to think. The new proponents of Socialism (for us only, mind you, not for them) are the business bigwigs and the government establishment. They've figured out that what they want to do is "milk" the ordinary person -- and unions are a nuisance, because they advocate for the proles.

[Immanuel Can]

So, IC would you at least give workers the right to form unions to advocate for themselves against the owners of industry?

Voluntary unions. No forced membership. And the unions are not permitted to collude with government or business, or conspire to exploit their members in any way. Then they'd be fine.

[Gary Childress]

So, IC would you at least give workers the right to form unions to advocate for themselves against the owners of industry?

Voluntary unions. No forced membership. And the unions are not permitted to collude with government or business, or conspire to exploit their members in any way. Then they'd be fine.

Sure. And in parallel would you be in favor of creating a rule that businesses cannot prevent workers from joining a union, or retaliate on people who do or collude with government or other businesses or conspire to exploit their members in any way?

[Immanuel Can]

So, IC would you at least give workers the right to form unions to advocate for themselves against the owners of industry?

Voluntary unions. No forced membership. And the unions are not permitted to collude with government or business, or conspire to exploit their members in any way. Then they'd be fine.

Sure. And in parallel would you be in favor of creating a rule that businesses cannot prevent workers from joining a union, or retaliate on people who do or collude with government or other businesses or conspire to exploit their members in any way?

You want to allow unions to collude with government and business to exploit members of the union?

[promethean75]

"and unions are a nuisance, because they advocate for the proles."

If course becuz everything's all wonky. The federal government employs wage earners in a free market capitalist economy, just like the private sector does. Becuz it (the gov) is using the wage working class, naturally it wants to pay the lowest possible wage. Partly becuz it's so broke already and is tryna cut expenditures.

So a union forces wages up and the gov, like the capitalist looking to maximize production and profit and pay the lowest wage, doesn't like a union.

Summary: the only labor force available to fill the federal jobs are wage and salary workers looking to maximze their wages, so government competes with private employers in the same industries over the workers. This competition forces wages up and prevents government from fixing wages. That's the good news.

But the unions are bad news for any employer sourcing its labor from a competitive wage worker market. Amazon, Walmart, GM Motors, Government, all capitalist entities exploiting the workers.

Caveat. So even tho some of the government's profits from the workers' labor goes back into federal and state utilities, programs, and resources for the workers, it's not exploitation of the severest nature; the profiter is a private citizen who'll spend nothing of the money u made him on anything u would be able to use.

[Gary Childress]

Voluntary unions. No forced membership. And the unions are not permitted to collude with government or business, or conspire to exploit their members in any way. Then they'd be fine.

Sure. And in parallel would you be in favor of creating a rule that businesses cannot prevent workers from joining a union, or retaliate on people who do or collude with government or other businesses or conspire to exploit their members in any way?

You want to allow unions to collude with government and business to exploit members of the union?

No, if you were literate you'd be able to read what I said. You didn't answer my question. If I agree with your condition that unions not force people to join and not collude with government or businesses or conspire to exploit their members will you agree that businesses should be likewise, not prevent people from joining unions, not be permitted to collude with government or conspire to exploit people? It seems fair and reasonable to me that if you make those conditions of unions, then the same ought to go for business owners and management. I don't think unions should force people to join or exploit members. I nowhere suggested anything like it. Nice strawman attempt, though.

[Immanuel Can]

Sure. And in parallel would you be in favor of creating a rule that businesses cannot prevent workers from joining a union, or retaliate on people who do or collude with government or other businesses or conspire to exploit their members in any way?

You want to allow unions to collude with government and business to exploit members of the union?

No, if you were literate you'd be able to read what I said.

So what you were trying to ask is whether I would be in favour of a rule that businesses have to allow workers to join unions? We already have that rule, and it's fine. If people want to join unions, they can: but unions cannot compel it, or retaliate against those who choose not to. That would be my rule.

But nobody's asking me, so that's speculation. Still, be aware that unions can be bullies. In their zeal to increase their own power, they often try to force all workers to comply with their dictates, and then they also often sell out individual members to the management, when it's in the interest of the power and influence of the larger union to do it. The individual doesn't actually matter much to some unions. So they're not the advocates for the workers that they pretend to be, sometimes: sometimes they're only advocates for their own power and leverage.

[Consul]

You are right only if socialism is equated with (Soviet-style) communism.

I'm completely right. There's not a single case of Socialism being the regnant economic plan, and there not being death and economic disaster. But if you think otherwise, just name this Socialist success story.

Not all socialists are absolute anti-capitalists preferring an anti-free-market, anti-private-property, & centrally state-planned economy. There are market socialists, and social democrats accept a private-property-involving mixed economy.

"market socialism. Term sometimes used to denote a theory which attempts to reconcile the belief in the market, as a system of exchange, with belief in social ownership of the means of production. The argument is roughly this: a market is (at least to some extent) a self-regulating mechanism, and allocates resources without recourse to tyrannical measures designed to force an unwanted pattern of distribution on a reluctant society, and without all the manifold incompetences and inhumanities witnessed in the state-controlled systems of communism. At the same time, private ownership of the means of production leads to exploitation and injustice, together with unacceptable accumulations of capital in the hands of the few. The ideal would therefore be to combine the benefits of the market mechanism with a social ownership that would remove its injustices."

(Scruton, Roger. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. p. 421)

Here are some interesting distinctions drawn by John Rawls:

"Let us distinguish five kinds of regime viewed as social systems, complete with their political, economic, and social institutions: (a) laissez-faire capitalism; (b) welfare-state capitalism; (c) state socialism with a command economy; (d) property-owning democracy; and finally, (e) liberal (democratic) socialism."

(Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. p. 136)

"…the distinction between a property-owning democracy, which realizes all the main political values expressed by the two principles of justice, and a capitalist welfare state, which does not. We think of such a democracy as an alternative to capitalism."

(Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. p. 135)

——————
Rawls' "two principles of justice" in his famous book A Theory of Justice:

"First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.
Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all."

(Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. p. 53)

——————

"[W]e see from the ideal description of the first three kinds of regimes, (a) to (c) in 41.2, that each of them violates the two principles of justice in at least one way.

(a) Laissez-faire capitalism (…) secures only formal equality and rejects both the fair value of the equal political liberties and fair equality of opportunity. It aims for economic efficiency and growth constrained only by a rather low social minimum (…).

(b) Welfare-state capitalism also rejects the fair value of the political liberties, and while it has some concern for equality of opportunity, the policies necessary to achieve that are not followed. It permits very large inequalities in the ownership of real property (productive assets and natural resources) so that the control of the economy and much of political life rests in few hands. And although, as the name "welfare-state capitalism" suggests, welfare provisions may be quite generous and guarantee a decent social minimum covering the basic needs (…), a principle of reciprocity to regulate economic and social inequalities is not recognized.

(c) State socialism with a command economy supervised by a one-party regime violates the equal basic rights and liberties, not to mention the fair value of these liberties. A command economy is one that is guided by a general economic plan adopted from the center and makes relatively little use of democratic procedures or of markets (except as rationing devices).

This leaves (d) and (e) above, property-owning democracy and liberal socialism: their ideal descriptions include arrangements designed to satisfy the two principles of justice.
…
Both a property-owning democracy and a liberal socialist regime set up a constitutional framework for democratic politics, guarantee the basic liberties with the fair value of the political liberties and fair equality of opportunity, and regulate economic and social inequalities by a principle of mutuality, if not by the difference principle.

While under socialism the means of production are owned by society, we suppose that, in the same way that political power is shared among a number of democratic parties, economic power is dispersed among firms, as when, for example, a firm's direction and management is elected by, if not directly in the hands of, its own workforce. In contrast with a state socialist command economy, firms under liberal socialism carry on their activities within a system of free and workably competitive markets. Free choice of occupation is also assured."

(Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. pp. 137-8)

"The contrast between a property-owning democracy and welfare-state capitalism deserves closer examination, since they both allow private property in productive assets. This may tempt us to think they are much the same. They are not.

One major difference is this: the background institutions of property-owning democracy work to disperse the ownership of wealth and capital, and thus to prevent a small part of society from controlling the economy, and indirectly, political life as well. By contrast, welfare-state capitalism permits a small class to have a near monopoly of the means of production.

Property-owning democracy avoids this, not by the redistribution of income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (that is, education and trained skills) at the beginning of each period, all this against a background of fair equality of opportunity. The intent is not simply to assist those who lose out through accident or misfortune (although that must be done), but rather to put all citizens in a position to manage their own affairs on a footing of a suitable degree of social and economic equality.

The least advantaged are not, if all goes well, the unfortunate and unlucky— objects of our charity and compassion, much less our pity—but those to whom reciprocity is owed as a matter of political justice among those who are free and equal citizens along with everyone else. Although they control fewer resources, they are doing their full share on terms recognized by all as mutually advantageous and consistent with everyone's self-respect."

(Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. p. 139)

The social (welfare) state with its institutions of social security such as health insurance and unemployment insurance (as we have it in Germany) does have a record of success! It's a very good humanitarian thing!

Until it crashes the economy. But that's what it does.

I don't think so. The big threat isn't the welfare state but global financial capitalism!

I'm all for free healthcare, if it could be made sustainable. Unfortunately, there's no example of it doing that.

For example, the public healthcare system in Germany is in fact sustainable.

If public schooling is (mis)used for ideological indoctrination by the (Far-)Left or the (Far-)Right,

Which "far right" has any influence in public education? It's always the Leftists.

Nope! The fascists and the nazis (mis)used public education for indoctrination!
Or what about the ultraconservative school laws in the US against gender theory, critical race theory, and liberal sexual education in general?

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill limiting LGBTQ classroom instruction"

Generally, ethics is independent of theism and theology.

It isn't. Secular ethics has prove to be a total failure from a rational point of view. The current field, broadly speaking, is split between Deontologies of various kinds, Consequentialisms of various kinds, and Virtue Theories of other kinds. And there's no meta-basis for adjudicating between them, or even of saying that we owe any of them anything.

Divine-command ethics provides no rational alternative. Anyway, it presupposes the truth of theism, which makes it inacceptable in principle for atheists like me.

"A female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual" and "a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual" certainly cannot become physical/corporeal equals, but they can become ones in other respects (moral, legal, social, political, economic ones).

What are these "respects" of which you speak? Take any of your specific cases, and show how the Chinese man can be made authentically equal to the black woman.

For example, same basic liberties (e.g. freedom of speech), same human rights, same right to non-discrimination, same rights to political participation (e.g. right to vote and be elected), same right to education, (in the event of need) same right to access to and support by the welfare state (e.g. public healthcare).
They could as well be made equals with respect to their wealth, since it's not a law of nature that the one is poorer/richer than the other.

Of course, can doesn't imply ought; and there is an ongoing debate over how much moral, legal, social, political, or economic inequality is justifiable.

Right. It doesn't imply "ought." So we can't even know that we owe the Chinese man and the black woman equality...or that we owe it to anybody. ("Ought" as you will know, is a contraction of "owe it".) That's why there's an "ongoing debate," and one without any possibility of adjudication.

You are not a metaethical nihilist, are you? You don't share the Foucauldian Left's antifoundationalist view that ethics & politics are basically nothing but a brute power game, an exercise of the will to power, do you?

You've erected a straw man against egalitarianism here!

Not at all. It is precisely how calls for egalitarianism are actualized today. For instance, at Harvard University, Chinese students have much higher entrance demands placed on them than whites, or Hispanics or blacks. And this is done in the name of "fairness" and "inclusion" and "equity." So addressing the "egalitarian" needs of these minorities discriminates against the Chinese.
Any problem with that?

If the idea of helping disadvantaged members of minorities in the education system results in blatant reverse racism and sheer anti-meritocracy, I do have a problem.

From the socialist perspective, equity and equality are intimately connected.

They're opposites, actually.

John Rawls would reply that (social) justice qua fairness requires that…

"All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.
Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Of course, this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation."

(Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. p. 54)

(Footnote: Rawls' political philosophy is known as political liberalism, but it's a quasi-socialistic, egalitarian liberalism that is essentially different from classical liberalism and neoliberalism.)

Well, one of the hallmarks of Socialism is the belief that all evils are products of social systems and social conditioning, not of human nature. The shift from the personal responsiblity of the individual to the blaming of "structures of oppression" requires us to accept that the evils do not come from human beings, but from some other dynamic. And Socialists are notoriously vague on what that dynamic is.

Yes, from the combined perspective of Marxist socioeconomic determinism and postmodernist antihumanism, the individual human agent/person/subject is no relevant causal or moral factor anymore, being just a puppet on strings manipulated by impersonal power structures (as linguistically embodied by Foucauldian "discourses"), in which case there is no room for personal responsibility but only for universal victimhood.

"French anti-humanism entailed, generally speaking, a denunciation both of foundationalism and of an Enlightenment-inspired, progressivist view of history as the result of the actions of autonomous agents."

(Han-Pile, Béatrice. "The 'Death of Man': Foucault and Anti-Humanism." In Foucault and Philosophy, edited by Timothy O'Leary and Christopher Falzon, 118-142. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. p. 119)
——————
"Post-humanism. Humanism is the philosophical view that understands persons to be the unique and unified source of meaning and agency. By contrast, post-humanism is that form of thinking that displaces the idea of the whole person as being the most significant level of analysis and understanding. In the context of cultural studies, post-humanism is most associated with structuralism, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis.

As an approach concerned with structures or predictable regularities that lie outside of any given person, structuralism is post-humanist in its de-centring of human agents from the heart of inquiry. For example, in proposing a form of structuralist Marxism, Althusser argued that human beings were not to be understood as agents of their own destiny but rather as the products of social structures and relations as epitomized by Marx’s book Das Kapital (in Althusser’s reading). In particular, he argues that ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects and thus has the function of constituting concrete individuals as subjects. This argument is an aspect of Althusser’s anti-humanism in that the subject is not grasped as a self-constituting agent but rather as the ‘effect’ of the structures of ideology.

The poststructuralist work of Derrida and Foucault can also be understood as post-humanist. Thus Foucault asserts that discourse constructs subject positions that we are obliged to take up so that subjects are the ‘effects’ of discourse. Here being a person is constituted by those positions that discourse obliges us to take up and not by our own individual acts of self-grounding agency. Discourse constitutes the ‘I’ through the processes of signification and the speaking subject is dependent on the prior existence of discursive positions. Thus, what it is to be a person is held to be wholly and only the product of language, culture and history.

Derrida’s critique of what he calls ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’ in Western philosophy is also a form of post-humanism because he is undermining the idea that the individual human being is the source of stable meanings. For Derrida any reliance on fixed a priori transcendental meanings (logocentricism) or on the priority given to sounds and speech over writing (phonocentricism) is an untenable attempt to find truth and subjectivity through reason unmediated by signification. The privileging of speech, argues Derrida, allows philosophers to regard the formation of subjectivity as unmediated agency in a way that would involve the unique experience of the signified producing itself spontaneously from within itself.

Finally, psychoanalysis is post-humanist in that the self is conceived of in terms of an ego, superego and the unconscious. This view of personhood immediately fractures the unified humanist subject and suggests that what we do and what we think are the outcome not of a rational integrated self but of the workings of the unconscious that is normally unavailable to the conscious mind in any straightforward fashion. Here the humanist unified narrative of the self is understood to be something we acquire over time through entry into the symbolic order of language and culture."

(Barker, Chris. The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE Publications, 2004. pp. 151-2)

"Essentially social" doesn't mean "essentially good", and I don't read this description of the socialist view of human nature as meaning that everybody is, will, or can become a good person, or that nobody has an anti-social or anti-rational habitus.

How do you read Heywood's explanation for this "anti-social" behaviour and the "anti-social habitus" that makes it happen?

Well, there is no such explanation in his book.

I already mentioned the welfare state (which doesn't exist in all countries). It is an empirical fact that it has reduced a lot of human suffering (through poverty or illness).

We must be careful, though, to discriminate between Socialist polities and those that, like Denmark or Norway, have social assistance systems built on "capitalist" economics.

According to Heywood, the two major subdivisions of socialism are communism and social democracy. The former seeks to abolish capitalism, whereas the latter (& social liberalism) seeks to tame it and to make it humane.
I'm not praising communism here but social democracy (& social liberalism)!

No, it's rubbish to count fascism and national socialism among the left-wing ideologies.

The "National Socialists" were not really Socialists? Make your case, then.

Yes, they were really not socialists (but only collectivists). We've already had this discussion!
See:
* viewtopic.php?p=652530#p652530
* viewtopic.php?p=652758#p652758
* viewtopic.php?p=652774#p652774
* viewtopic.php?p=652795#p652795