Pakistan - Socialist or Capitalist?

[Edevelop]

This is a serious concern for Pakistan as America is a Capitalistic society and has been hit badly with recession. In their system, there is no health care, rich is rich, and poor is poor. In comparison with Cuba, being a socialist society, there is an excellent health care system and furthermore, everyone is equal.

Please post your thoughts and ideas for Pakistan's future.

 

[sparklingway]

Firstly, "influence" might not have been my word of choice, rather it does not fit in the sentence. Mods please change the title to a much more understandable and meaningful one.

Secondly, Socialism cannot be "adopted" or "applied". It's an economic, political and social system that guides in its classical and original form to an eventual political system of governance form called communism. Since then, of course democratic socialism and many other political philosophies have been put forward. For anybody willing to criticize the rather naive, fairly flawed and hollow claim that I've made in these few sentences, I apologize but I was trying to summarize an entire political and economic philosophy and the transitional process in as few words as I could. Pardon my failures, for I'm no academic.

As for the socialism vs capitalism debate, it's not a one line argument. Much has been penned down on it from its very fathers who established the initial thoughts to its modern day philosophers. While socialist philosophy has evolved much from the times of both Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky, the initial and fundamental study is still limited to their original works.

I being a leftist with partial center-left inclinations of course dream of Pakistan being a socialist economy but these things aren't simple. It's naive to think of such huge transformations and also compare socialized medicine across different countries as a marker of success. Highly capitalist societies like Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Britain have socialized medicine with varying degrees of coverage. Britain's NHS is different than the Japanese model and Switzerland adopted socialized health in 1994 after a hotly contested referendum. The debate isn't simple and arguing over such wide matters in forums never yields anything positive. These debates are best suited for academic journals, for it is there that "real" debate can take place and one can establish an argument in its pristine form without having to indulge in off topic rants.

PS:- If anybody has an academic background in philosophy and political philosophy, he's more than welcome (rather I'll be honoured) to contact me as I've been working with a group to write our original and definite socialist account on Pakistan.

 

[NWO]

Problem with Socialism is that it give the government the power. In a free-market economy, the people have the power because we decide which company can stay, based on their product but also how the companies donates to charity, treats its employees, etc.

US is not very free-market today. Medicare, invading countries left and right, Obama's new socialist health-care plan, getting rid of the gold standard, and having hundreds of regulations all contributed to its current recession and none of which are in a free-market economy. Every president since 1901 has been pretty socialist, and the Federal Reserve created in 1913 put the nail in the coffin.

China, with its economic reforms since 1978, is more free-market than US today and look how they are doing compared to US. The Austrian School of Economics are the way to go.

 

[heavystorm]

This is a serious concern for Pakistan as America is a Capitalistic society and has been hit badly with recession. In their system, there is no health care, rich is rich, and poor is poor. In comparison with Cuba, being a socialist society, there is an excellent health care system and furthermore, everyone is equal.

Please post your thoughts and ideas for Pakistan's future.

Dear friend, I come from a socialism country--China. You may say that China isn't a socialism country now, half is true, other side is not true. I think that the caplitalistic economic model suit most of the developing countries. The tradition socialism model such as Soviet and north Korea was not a good model, because it limited the activity of producting and creation. Those countries who hold the tradition socialism model will not inhance their economy level fastly.

The Chinese model is different from the traditional model, Chinese connected the good side of capitalist with the usefful things of socialism, created a new model, which is called "the socialism which have the Chinese characteristic".

Chinese model is good to the developing of economy,at the same time, this model can avoid the crash of ecomony. The Chinese model can make the society stable. Except those side, I don't think this model has something better than capitalist. There are many poor people and some rich men in China. There are few people who are too poor to go to the hosipal yet. But our country is trying to solve this problems. I believe that we will live better tomorrow.

 

[Nima]

You don't have to choose one and take it to the extreme like the Soviets and Americans.
Look @ Europe! A lot of the countries in Europe have free health care etc... and enjoy much better financial equality.
America, just like the Soviet union, is an extremist country.

 

[Awesome]

Now free-market concerns aside, socialism for a little while can work in Pakistan and won't be the evil thing that its portrayed as in the west.

A major problem in Pakistan is that all of it's land is owned by a select few. The last time ZAB tried out his fake socialism the plan was to redistribute the land take it out of the control of the feudal lords, but what the happened actually was that the land's deeds were transferred onto the lackeys of the feudal lords and life went on as normal - Bhutto did this himself too.

Socialism got personal. Bhutto took out his revenge on the people he didn't like and the people he liked were allowed to get away.

So socialist policies are needed to redistribute the wealth, which has been granted to a select few since the time of the British Raj or the Mughals of the past and then let people be capitalists after an even playing field has been set.

Right now the people who live on lands owned by feudal lords can't even vote as they want to. For them feudal lords are gods that they have to worship and obey. Which is why most successful politicians in Pakistan are feudal lords, they have millions of votes guaranteed by people who live on their lands.

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

Bhutto had nationalized industry and big banks , so we can say Pakistan had Socialism under him but he didn't touch the land lords in nationalizing their agriculture land. (double policy)

All the big banks like MCB HBL Allied banks were private banks when Bhutto nationalized.

If a new Socialism come with land reforms, it will be good for Pakistan.

 

[heavystorm]

Bhutto had nationalized industry and big banks , so we can say Pakistan had Socialism under him but he didn't touch the land lords in nationalizing their agriculture land. (double policy)

All the big banks like MCB HBL Allied banks were private banks when Bhutto nationalized.

If a new Socialism come with land reforms, it will be good for Pakistan.

---In 1912,the Chinese democracy revolutionary leader Sun Zhongshan created a way to solve land lords problem.
---The land lords must measure the price of their land and provid this number to goverment. The gov will harvest tax as the value of land. If a land lord who think his land is expensive, he must hand in more tax. So most of the land lords wouldn't say that their land is expensive. The goverment have right to buy the land lords' land as the value which was provided by the land lords. So land lords want to provide a higher price of their land, but they must hand in more tax at the same time. This contradition make the land lords provide the true value of their land to the goverment. As a result, goveriment needn't to pay more money to by the land lords' land. By this way, the land of one country will be owned by the goveriment,not owned by the land lords.

 

[Awesome]

Bhutto had nationalized industry and big banks , so we can say Pakistan had Socialism under him but he didn't touch the land lords in nationalizing their agriculture land. (double policy)

All the big banks like MCB HBL Allied banks were private banks when Bhutto nationalized.

If a new Socialism come with land reforms, it will be good for Pakistan.

Bhutto and all the feudal lords mainly circumvented the land reforms. Only those who were Bhutto's enemy had the law applied on them. The others pretty much changed the deed titles onto somebody else's names and making them the land owner on paper.

Bhuttos themselves did this.

This is politics of vengeance, not socialism.

 

[nom]

So our country is socialist ??

 

[sparklingway]

Bhutto and all the feudal lords mainly circumvented the land reforms. Only those who were Bhutto's enemy had the law applied on them. The others pretty much changed the deed titles onto somebody else's names and making them the land owner on paper.

Bhuttos themselves did this.

This is politics of vengeance, not socialism.

That's the usual urban narrative largely supported by - dare I say - Punjabi lords. No enemy, no friend was targeted in general. The lack of application of the law with enthusiasm wasn't surprising considering the ineffectual state structure itself, and the fact that ZAB had to get support from the landed class to maintain stability.

I've got a mini library on land reforms in Pakistan, legal, social and historical.

 

[somebozo]

I think zardaris, millitarist, racist, beggarist fits perfect.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Nationalist - Dictatorship is need of time

 

[Patriot]

Socialism is failed project - Capitalism was/is the future.If Bhutto had not tried his failed socialist project we might have a fully industrialized economy.He bankrupted people who would become Pakistani Tatas, Ambanis etc.Besides American Economy has gone down due to number of reasons including highly inflated price of property, huge wars spending billions on war, credit card boom etc.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

I have done an extensive study in this issue...A mix of socialism, karl marx-communism and capitalism is the best way forward.