The only way that those societies can be described as “socialist’ is if socialism and / or communism is stripped of all association with political and economic democracy and the key Marxist concept of the “self emancipation’ of the working class, and is reduced down to state intervention, ownership or control of the economy.

However popular this definition of socialism may be, it is one that Marx, Engles and Lenin all rejected and ridiculed. See for example Lenin’s “The State and Revolution’: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

I also have to disagree with Daveo’s assertion that “Socialism has always been to work within the capitalist system’.

Socialism has been used to describe forms of capitalism, such as “state capitalism’ or capitalism with a welfare state, but this has not “always’ been the case.

Even the term “social democracy’ was originally associated with those who’s aim was to abolish capitalism and replace it with a democratic socialist system.

Lenin’s party for example was originally the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a name the Bolshevik faction retained until after the 1917 Revolution. The Bolshevik’s then changed their name to “communist’ because the term “social democrat’ was associated with the German party (itself officially Marxist) which had supported World War One.

If there is a meaningful distinction between “socialism’ and “communism’ within the Marxist tradition it is that “communism’ is sometimes seen as the final goal of a classless, stateless society. But most of time, at least as far as Marxists are concerned, the terms are interchangeable.

I’m specifically thinking of management capture of public companies, financial institutions and like. Seems the PC theorists gave the public sector a good going over but the private sector is just assumed to be immune for what seem to be not very good reasons.

You aren’t going to get good economic or political policies if the theory that the policies are based upon have no relation to reality.

I can concede objections to Public Choice Theory on these grounds, but not to the wider field of economics (and particularly behavioural economics). And even PCT has a fairly good track record of predicting reality, so can’t be dismissed so glibly as this just because it sometimes ends up at ideologically inconvenient conclusions.

My point is that the tools employed in political science and economics are valuable, and shouldn’t be discounted simply because the ideological right has used them to ends you happen to find distasteful. The tools themselves can be use toward other ends, and it would well behoove the left to adopt them and begin employing them in earnest.

The USSR and China proved that there are people who will do anything for power not that Marx’s ideas don’t work because the Paris Commune proved that they did.

The USSR and China proved that one should never implement a political system where power is concentrated in a small subset of individuals who emjoy impunity. The trouble is that that’s what Marxism requires. The Paris Commune proved nothing: in terms of scale, it was too small to be especially relevant — making a scale model of society, proves nothing much towards the goal og making an actual society on the nation scale. The reason for this is that as the number of players increases, so does the complexity of the strategies they’ll employ. Likewise, in terms of durability the Paris Commune proves nothing. It doesn’t make a government appear to function for a couple of months at a time. The same reason as above: as time passes, things get more complicated.

L

economics and public choice theory are not the problem;

They are the problem because they happen to be wrong. You aren’t going to get good economic or political policies if the theory that the policies are based upon have no relation to reality.

as explicated by Marx and as implemented by all of those who’ve implemented it.

I do not know what I am but I do know that I am not a Marxist, Karl Marx, 1851
He did say great things about the Paris Commune though which was, essentially, anarchist and was destroyed by the capitalists because it was working and was a threat to them.

much more marketable than socialism which, in implementation, has been proven to be none of those things.

This is incorrect. The USSR and China proved that there are people who will do anything for power not that Marx’s ideas don’t work because the Paris Commune proved that they did. The general consensus in academia is that communism in the USSR existed for almost 50 days.

Tanzania never had the violent upheaval of society you mention (although a small part of it, Zanzibar, did go through something along those lines it was geographically isolated). ‘Ujamma’ was introduced by Julius Nyerere not as part of some social upheaval but as a utopian social policy.

Therein lies a clue to the mistake you are making. Under colonialism these countries already suffered extremes of wealth and poverty, and the resulting injustice and imbalances eventually resulted in a forceable overthrow of the prevailing order.

All of history shows that this kind of social and economic discontinuity, that all uprisings, revolutions and dramatic political changes are followed by a considerable period of dysfunction. Evolution is preferable to revolution, if at all possible.

Take Ghana after independence under Nkrummah.

Look at Uganda under Amin when he forceably ‘redistributed’ the wealthy Asian elites assets and gave them to his poor supporters.

Finally do a little research on the ‘Afican Socialism’ of Tanzania to see how to make your people poorer rather than wealthier by following equality over growth.

For a start, you have to convince a majority of NZers to vote for an economic system to replace capitalism. You have to win the argument.

Having voted it in, then you need a mechanism to prevent Nzers from voting it out (particularly during the transition period).

So on one hand, you need to convince Kiwis that the new economic system (whatever it is) will be more “democratic” and at the same time you need to make the electoral system less democratic.

The link I provided to the Equality Trust provides a wealth of data from many countries, analysed in a number of different ways. It is considered an exceedingly robust project of it’s type. I warmly recommend a long quiet read of it.