The size of an economy has no bearing on quality of life, so why is Ben Sullivan using China as an example of positive Socialism in practice?

I'm not a socialist - however, I am sympathetic towards certain socialist concepts, particularly when it comes to the government's role in providing services like healthcare and education. The free market cannot be relied on to provide everything for members of society, and free market enterprises should NEVER be allowed to “regulate” themselves, simply because the temptation to abuse such powers will be too strong to resist.

he destroys his own logic when he talks on percentages - the past recessions had faster appearing growth rates because they too were coming from worse low points.

Did not define what "works" means...

Everyone should be allowed to hear him speak. He can show everyone how pitiful the case for socialism is.

The only true freedom is the freedom to be unharmed by others while you yourself leaving others unharmed.

If both socialism and capitalism work use the one that works better and this guy said that capitalism is better so use capitalism

I want so much for socialism to work for socialists. My advice would be for them to stop the ambition of seizing the means of production but to build brick by brick their own means of production. You see the means of production is the same as education. One has to start with almost nothing and then little by little learning and finally graduating. The shock factor of graduating without years of patiently learning is will be enormous. How would one like to fly a plane without having learned how to fly a plane? Or do brain operation without having learned to do brain operation? Now, politicians seizing the means of production, without them having built it up from scratch will be more or less the same. It will be catastrophic for the economy. That's the reason why all socialist take overs were followed by economic disasters. Seizing tge means of production does not guarantee production. It guarantees disaster. Socialists should insist on acquiring their means of production instead of seizing them. Any ideology with good intentions which insists on seizing is not worthy to be born. Anyone with firepower can just seize. But functioning workable ideology can develop its wealth by developing and producing its own without seizing from others.

This guy didn't define the debate very well. He seemed nervous, but got better as it went along.

Lol, people watch these videos, read that it says "does work" and immediately dislike and refuse to listen.

No it doesn’t. No where it’s been tried.

He was getting good there for a while until he used China as an example for his argument....EPIC FAIL.

Wow, I kinda feel bad for him. Looks like he really wanted to root for the opposition

How can you read off a sheet of paper at this level of debating?

I lived in China for a year. Trust me, you do not want to use them as an example to support socialism.

it's hard arguing for socialism when you can tell in his heart he knows it doesn't work. Also eyes off the paper. its the Oxford Union ffs.

"It's not hard to grow from an incredibly low place" and yet his opening salvo was on how the "capitalist" recession of 2008 as opposed to the "socialist" recessions of the 70's and earlier were overcome so much quicker? Doesn't that imply that the recent recession in fact had little effect on the overall value of our economy and simply took a small bite out of production? This guy needs to prepare his arguments better, he set himself up on that one.

He tries and narrows the debate to "Can Socialism work" on its merits. Well I hate to inform him it's not about merit but real life behavior. There is not one socialized country where the people benefitted more then its government run leaders. You simply existed to better the state not the person. This is why socialism fails, the state as value the person doesn't. The opposite is true of people, they will always put them self first over the other in most cases. Its simple human behavior. Its one reason government run socialism will always be by force.

lol "there is no reason why socialism cannot work..." obviously this guy has never read Mises. Yeah no reason at all... except the the problems of incentives, concentration of power, and, oh yeah... the calculation problem which is the clincher. This guy was a fail, at least become familiar with the history of your ideology.

does this guy seriously suggest to switch to the chinese model?

What people debate about socialism and capitalism which one is better than another one in macroeconomics but it is not the main purpose for socialism. Socialism is good because it is equally good for all the people in a society.

That is what HE means by socialism (which is always a highly contested term). At least he defines it, which most people in debates fail to do.

Apart from, USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, Angola, Vietnam, Cambodia, Eastern Europe, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela Socialism works, it was paradise for the people in those countries and do not let anyone else tell you any different.

A British socialist wearing tails. I love this... This is like watching a dog dancing on its hind legs

This is a Terrible arguing point. “Does it work” Yes it works, it works terribly for the majority of society. A true and more productive question is, “Is socialism a desirable system for most people in a given society to live in?” Merely asking if it works is baby food, which the opposing side properly threw up or spit out as a adult that eats baby food usually does. The opposition addressed and answered the productive question. Which I stated above. If I were to ask you does the least productive person at your job work? Yes would be the easy answer. But the true answer and most productive thing about his “work” is that it is undesirable to have him pulling little weight and his non production hurts the rest of the work team, so does he work, yes he does, but is it productive no it’s not.

I can't help but notice the differences in preparation or lack thereof. He isn't even "thinking" here. He's just spewing a salad of letters on a piece of paper that were chosen prior to his presentation.

well that was awkward

i believe he just said capitalism is better then socialism.

I lived and travelled throughout Socialist Czechoslovakia during the 80's and what I witnessed was horrifying! Poverty. Empty shops with people queuing outside to buy the remnants. Eggs and milk that were possibly ok or possibly not, with no chance whatsoever of returning the "off" products to the shop or store - a case of "you spend your monies and you takes your chances". Lines of men and women lining the streets, paintbrush in hand... painstakingly... snail-like slow... painting miles of walls. Wages so low that poverty was the norm. Socialism and then of course Communism - the so-called 'step up', do not work. Simply because the people don't work! And why don't the people work? Back to the wage problem which is absolutely SHOCKING in Socialist/Communist countries... but they won't tell you that!! That's why the farms failed big time and the people starved! No pay - no play... and it all makes perfect sense!!!

Mr. Sullivan is correct that socialism is fundamentally an economic system based on public or collective ownership of the means of production. But unfortunately he does not quite grasp what "public ownership of the means of production" means or meant in the context of socialism. The idea of "public" or "common" ownership in socialism is to re-organize the economy into a single interlinked network/organization for production and distribution (historically this was called "production for use" or "planning"). Simply having the state own shares in companies but having these companies organized as business enterprises (capitalist entities) is not socialism. It is just a different institutional form of capitalism - this applies to the UK in the Attlee period and China today.

3:57 THERE FACES XD

This young man looks pretty Nervous

Ben Sullivan chooses to omit the issue of ethics from the debate of whether or not the economic system of socialism works or not. I would reply to him that one cannot quite separate practicality from morality, insofar as economies have a significant effect on people's well-being and livelihoods - it is quite appalling he uses China as an example of a successful socialist economy (when in fact it is a state capitalist economy). I also dislike how he gets very flaky and says how he might even be on the other side if this was a debate about whether socialism or capitalism is the better system, considering the fact he is on the side of people who are devout advocates of socialism.

Makes some reasonable counterpoints on it. Good video.

The guy at the beginning supports socialism... I wonder how socialism got him into Oxford...

Moyes Out.

"In order to win the debate tonight we on side opposition we don't need to prove socialism is better [...] but rather it is a workable system". And there is where they lost the debate. This is purely rethorics. Dictatorship is also workable. The better proof is that history is full of such systems and humans have survive under these systems. And so what? To win the debate there are two questions they need to answer: First question, the one they avoid by rhetorics is "compare to what?". And the second, they did not answer at all is: "at what cost?". One has to take into account what is lost. Corrollary of the cost is the following question "how much time bearing the cost?". The "workeable" notion suppose answers on the costs of the system to be maintained in a perspective taking also into account long term. Look: USSR is workeable, at the price of millions of deads by hunger and direct killing by the state. And it last several decades. And so what? Would you say it is workeable? I can draw complete stupid examples: In the way to increase my blood pressure I can throw myself into the lion's cage of a zoo. It is fully workeable. Tell me about my very same blood pressure one minute later once lions will have torn me apart? This video is complete bullshit reasoning.

He did very well to frame the proposition accurately. It is not whether socialism is desirable but whether it "can work". And rather like a jalopy "works", socialism works.

well fuck, anarchy "works," if your definition of "works" is broad enough. if the first thing you do is loophole your way around the proposition by stretching the meaning of the word "work," that pretty much tells us how much confidence you have in socialism. this is a hurried 10 minute excuse/apology.

This guy is soooo wrong on China. There are more bronze busts of John Cowperthwaite (Former Governor of Hong Kong + famed Neo Liberal) than Karl Marx there, and their state sector is half the size of ours (with no NHS, and next to nothing in state benefits). There's also the small problem of all those Gulags and the dreadful (thankfully mostly renounced) legacy of Maoism.

Economy 101: don’t compare different economic growths from different countries in different years.

Why did I slip into a daydream of digging my own eyeballs out with a spoon while listening to this dude?

We just watched this young man describe what took China 6,000 years to build vs what took America 500 years to build. Dating Christopher Columbus's voyage at 1492... so truly it is what really took America far less than 500 years to build.

"You'll find that you're wrong." I lost my shit.

The first three minutes are skippable all he does is identify the opposition and guests.

The whole debate link: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qN-Ve6yKndumnoU.html

Socialism even with the best minds in the USSR trying to make it work..failed. China, with 1.5 billion minds fails to make it work.... Every time socialism raises its head, it falls short. From Venezuela, to Cuba, from Cambodia to North Korea.... Those that advocate socialism and state control, don’t realise how destructive a force it usually is. I’ve debated socialists who thought the dictionary definition was far right propaganda..yes, the oxford English dictionary definition.. when asked name a socialist country..say Scandinavian nations..Holland and Germany.( not socialist no5 anywhere near)..not Venezuela or the like.. Socialist delusion is only a poor substitute for wanting control over others to supplement the lives of the pigs at the top of that pen.

Sorry, but this kid does not understand anything, but he might be right in saying that the Socialism and Islam is on the march to world domination. So have we failed in the past, but never on this scale.

I'll just put this here "Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be. There is a great gulf fixed. It is not a gulf of method, it is a gulf of principle … Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference … Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly." Winston Churchill - 1908

Who's the fellow speaking at 7:25?

The left arguing that millions of Chinese people working in sweatshops is a good thing, haha

What points did he make?

An old man in the USSR lines up for hours to buy meat, only to find out there’s none left. He flies into a rage, screaming about how horrible and stupid communism is. A KGB agent walks up to him and tells him to calm down, adding “don’t forget what happened to people like you back in the old days” and making a “gun” shape with his hand. The old man goes back to his apartment, empty-handed. His wife says, “they’re out of meat?” He replies, “it’s worse than you think: they’re out of bullets.”

I would hate to be mr. Sullivan and go down forever as a dogmatic ideologue.

That's the ONLY way you can make it sound like a real possiblity - that there is no reason to think that it will not work in Britain... nice one!!! But pull the other one - it's got bells on!!!

Sullivan countered the Point of Information about the Nordic country having a twelve percent growth by dismissing it as a product of recovery from a devastating economic downturn. He then follows with an analysis that China is doing great. Since the Chinese economy has only recently joined the world marketplace in such force, his argument can be dismissed by his previous counter-argument.

This guy is twitching too much

My father in law was the Director General of a massive steel plant in the USSR. His brother was a Professor in Physics in the University in Moscow. His another brother was the Soviet Representative in the UN Peace Keeping Force. My wife and brother in law were students in the same factory school alongside the sons and daughters of ordinary workers. They both have to do work as ordinary workers for two years before they were allowed to go the University, where sons and daughters of the ordinary workers could go straight. My wife had worked as a cleaner in a hospital before she was allowed to be a student in the Medical School of the Moscow State University. My brother in law had to work as a metal worker before he was allowed to a student of the Baumann University Engineering school in Moscow. This was Socialism in the USSR. It had worked very well before it was destroyed by Yeltsin and his cronies.

It is not the Ideology that gives people good or bad government socialism, capitalism, fascism all can work with honest government that works for the people. Not government that works for the benefit of the few.

Thank you for the gentleman in you that appreciates there is a limit on spitefulness. Thank you for being adult enough to see not all dialog is acceptable. Lets leave on at least respectful terms in that we both have different views that we rightly or wrongly will probably will never change our views. However i am sure we both truly believe that we want what we our self consider is best for the UK long term regardless of each others views. I just think we should respect other views as God forbid if we ever had to go through what we did in the past we would all need to help each other and fight as one. I can remember one cold snowing day on a London underground train a young West Indian girl collapsed on the packed train and everyone just stood there ignoring her plight. I took it upon myself to walk through the carriage to help to revive her. I pulled the Emergency Handle and after several minutes working on her with my untrained medical ability i asked is there any Doctors or Medical people on this train. To my total amazement a Women in her mid 40's came forward and said yes i am a nurse ! WHAT ? Your standing there when i am working on this girl to save her life alone? She said yes you seemed to be doing just fine so i let you get on with it! WOW ! With that the Train driver appeared with Paramedics who put her on a stretcher and away they went thanking me over their shoulder for my help. I just got up walked off back to where i was standing beforehand as if nothing had happened. Never did hear the outcome but i would hope that young lady survived and was just fine. It just goes to show all too many people are prepared to just stand by the wayside and almost let someone die in front of them without even offering to help. I thought that could have been my child or my family member and many people would just stand by and watch you die in front of them without conscience. We should help each other respect each other without hesitation, regardless of colour or creed it's irrelevant as far as i am concerned. I would do it again in a heartbeat. You just never know when you need the very person who is standing next to you to save your life. I hope you agree. Be nice ague your case but be nice not too angry or spiteful. p.s i know i can be as much to blame in triggering your reaction but thats what i was trying to do get under your skin and by rising to my bait it seemed to be working. I could see i was getting your goat and that was a perceived win as that was my intention. But jokes and provocation can get out of hand which is what i didnt intend i would never really want to hurt you i just wanted to win the argument which we both know can never happen as we both have our committed points of view. So i am sorry for that my friend.

So... Giving away free shit and having standards drop is a good strategy? And then borrowing against the future while output drop is a good economic policy? What the heck did you put in your tea?

I fully expect this person to be a Tory politician in 10 years time because he fundamentally does not understand socialism. One day he will explain that he spoke from the idealism of youth and had now matured and realised the errors of his youthful exuberance. The truth is that socialism DOES work but for none of the reasons that he gave in his argument.

People always die in Socialism. But this guy can make it better, I guess.

If other countries use policy A that works better then policy B, then why would I implement policy B in my country? It would be less competitive and so it wouldn't work.

This aged so well

Imagine thinking that an economy of over 1 Billion people being larger than most nations with less than 100 million people is an example of success...the irony of him claiming pointing out Iceland's fast recovery from 2008 is a "clever use of statistics" while making a fallacy based on the Money Illusion. Fun fact about 2008 from within the industry FYI: The global market recession was caused by the NYSE and NASDAQ which were caused by the US housing bubble....itself caused by the nationalization of the mortgage market. Not exactly a great case for nationalization and against free markets. Iceland wouldn't have had to recover anything had socialist ideology not taken over the US federal reserve and housing approach in Congress...not to mention their faster recovery was the result of free market choices.

We are all aware that socialism is theoretically possible (or "works"), but it is not moral nor liberal.

The kid is clever and pretty quick on the ball. He's wrong as far as his arguments are concerned. But he clearly did a lot of work on information gathering, even if it was gathering information from a biased source.

Uses china as example but answered his own question before with iceland - its not hard to grow from a low base .

The USSR was a market economy, central plans are just loans and private plots were extensive

This guy actually made the best speech of the whole debate. All other speakers misinterpreted the motion and argued that socialism is worse than capitalism rather than it can’t work. Well done on him he dealt with the POIs well and had sound arguments.

I'm unhappy that his introductions did not echo the decency and respect of the first introductions.

Ridiculous argument about China being socialistic. China has been socialistic for more than half a century. All those decades, they have been dirt poor. China only became richer recently only to the extent they converted significant portion of their already socialistic economy to market economy. The relative gain in their prosperity is proportional to the amount of adoption of capitalism. In other words, china is successful DESPITE it's still persisting ridiculous control of large portion of it's economy.

OK,Ok.Now for all those who dont understand whats going on, let me put it simply.You only have three options in life 1-you can choose to be poor and suffer 2- you can be a 9 to 5 slave and live from week to week or 3- build your own wealth and prosper.Thats it,thats all you need to know.Everything else is bullshit.

Isn't it rather pathetic that a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, China, (more than 4 times the population of the USA) isn't the largest economy? (Yes, I know, at PPP it now has a narrow lead, but at nominal GDP, it's still a distant second.)

I just saw in the description box that the motion was defeated. So that means it was voted that socialism does work?

A guy in white tie with a quarter million in education telling us socialism will run the world

The only place where socialism survives is in social democracies and even there the people pay for the misadministration of a government who overstretch its responsibilities and runs on debt. A rich country can hold that for more time if it has low corruption but ultimately what awaits is failure.

A weak speaker. I would have personally argued that unregulated capitalism fails and therefore is dead without socialist policies.

I know that feel bro.....he already tried hard to defend his point of view.

It is a different kind of socialism, not the one that failed yesterday and the day before and before that. Please just one more try!!

how come none of these speakers talk about market socialism and worker cooperatives.

China is not socialist anymore. Yes, the state has still a too large influence but the trend of increasing wealth and living standards was thanks to the state's role decreasing and Deng allowing private ownership.

I lived in China. Great place and people, but far fewer freedoms, corruption of public services with and an elite class and massive poverty of the people.

He makes some terrible arguments in favor of socialism. He actually contradicts himself. In knocking down the growth rate of capitalist Iceland since the recession of 2008, he cites that it's easy to grow when you start from such a low point. Then he cites China's high growth rate as a victory for state planning (socialist economy) when the truth is China's growth A) still starts from a very low point of wealth and B) China's growth is coming at the expense of capitalist countries because labor is cheap. This guy is a nitwit.

Clearly Mr Sullivan prefers the wealth of investment banking as he now works for Evercore😆

Personification that not everyone from oxford is intelligent.

this guys out here talking about how socialism is not completely controlled by the state, he clearly hasnt done his history lessons

I didn't quite catch it. When did these people climb out of the sewers?

Everyone loves China now! LMAO

That's one way to ruin your political career before it even started lol

what is the difference between chinese 50% ownership of companies, and 10% income tax versus 35% corporate gains tax plus 25% average income tax? i will tell you: china has less paper work. otherwise the effect is the same.

share the wealth, capitalism might be a perfectly productive system but it does not distribute resources in a just method

At 08:05, "It's not hard to grow from an incredibly low base." Which he then contradicts by trying to say China is "working socialism", since it was Socialism that put China down to practically total economic collapse, with the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. It is only the Chinese abandoning principled Socialism and allowing some measure of Capitalism that has brought on growth, and even while hampered by the continuation of Socialist intervention, "it's not hard to grow from an incredibly low base." The "Special Economic Zones" of China are a direct admission that Socialist intervention destroys wealth, and they know it, so when they want human flourishing they repeal those interventions.

I consider myself to be left-leaning but he really didn't argue his points well enough. China is, absolutely, not the best model to use to advocate for social change and he tries to use the economic argument of recessions; not exactly the best way to convert the capitalist mind-set when, by his own admission, "happen all the time." In truth, you need to distribute power as fairly as possible and this hasn't really proved successful in either capitalist or communist regimes. There isn't a perfect answer because completely reinventing the wheel inevitably causes wanton destruction, but maintaining the status quo is also flawed in how it spreads disillusionment and increases vulnerability. I'm no expert but eliminating corporatism and crony capitalism would be a good start so then smaller businesses and the "disaffected" might have a fairer chance of prosperity and that might even out the financial imbalances. Also, fairer taxation for companies would help (admittedly this would need to be agreed globally) but the truth is nobody will forfeit their power.

I think he does not fully understand China's economic situation. Yes, it is true that over 30% of the companies are owned by the government and it also seems that the government manages them well. However, it is doubtful if China has sound law and order system to run such a so-called socialism society. Without the basis of democracy, the brutal intervention of China government is always the case which cannot offer a stable environment for foreign business to invest. I support socialism yet it is hard to agree with Chinese style socialism especially when the leader's opinion is always more important than ordinary people's needs and there is no room for negotiation.

I feel very bad for this guy. He was too nervous.

Also the recession is a world wide event. We live in a global economy to ignore that is to be disingenuous.

Oh it's interesting watching this now considering the recent global events. With the poor workers rights, human rights and the appaling nature in which they handled Covid-19.

To operate our political dialogue around the false dichotomy of capitalism vs socialism is highly reductionist. In reality we want to be able to balance freedoms with state security and that balance does not lie in one camp or another but in whatever course of action fufills the principles we are working on. Ultimately we need to agree on what the role of the state is before we can determine and vocalise precisely the principles it is founded on. Most of us agree that the state should function for some kind of balancing effect, thus why it is responsible for administering justice and arbitration, sometimes through sanctioned force. If we accept that the state should exert this kind of moral judgement then it stands to reason that it would also be involved in balancing society through constructive projects also. But the truth is the state evolved into something which stood for social justice late in life. It started from the biggest and strongest or most resourceful one in the gang winning in the competition for leadership. Those who all too often win in these kinds of competitions are those who are most pre-occupied with their own interests. Though these seem like they are seperate issues they do not operate in a vacuum. "Capitalism" has all too often been used in a "bait and switch" for policies which really operate on principles of selflsh greed from the policy makers and the same can be said for scoialism. Both ideologies have a principled application and a corrupted application. The secret to building a state that really works, for everybody, will be that state which gets excellent at expressing consistent moral principles and then making and executing policies based on them and does not get caught up in the socialism vs capitalism zero sum game. In our modern day, this is the least we should expect from our most prominent collective institution, our government.