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→Socialist or Capitalist?
There are cases where agricultural societies, within states, did form a type of socialist or even relatively equal societies, although often they were more similar to vertical egalitarian societies that displayed familial or kinship variation in their access to resources and power. In Middle East, so-called agricultural cooperatives, which shared land, did form in the Medieval and early modern periods from the 19th century and lasted even until today in places. These were villages that collectively owned land, where annually families who shuffle to different plots of land, so that no family could have sole access to the most productive areas. Similar collective agriculture existed in the Lake Huron region among the Iroquois and Aztecs. However, these societies were never fully equal. Among the Aztecs, power difference were evident among the elites. For the Iroquois, matrilineal decent sometimes meant that women yielded more power in society, where wealth could be transferred through the female line. Nevertheless, the Iroquois, relative to colonists they encountered in the 17th-18th centuries, often displayed relatively more limited wealth disparities and showed evidence of equality towards the sexes. However, even Iroquois did keep slaves and wealth differences among leading families and chiefs were evident.
==Socialist or Capitalist?Modern Socialism== In many respects, socialism is a modern concept, as no large-scale society that is agriculturally-based in the ancient or more recent past can be called socialist. However, examples of the Iroquois and collective farming communities indicates a form of consensus building and limitation of power and wealth accumulation is possible by pooling resources. In fact, in those case, where societies tend to best pool resources, it is evident that these societies also formed a type of democratic system in that consensus building had to be developed through agreement or voting. The main problem has likely been that it is hard to have a large-scale society that is socialist, in its true sense, because large-scale societies are often held together by power structures. In effect, society is large-scale because there are people who are dependent on others through economic or power relationships. If that was not the case, very likely small communities that could potentially disassociate from a central authority could emerge. For modern states, what is intended by socialism is not so much a classes society, even if that is what is stated as the ideal by the state, but rather there is an extensive social welfare program that includes health care, transport, access to work, housing, and other aspects. Examples, including Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and New Zealand, are not fully socialist but they have wide ranging welfare systems that lower wealth disparities often evident. They are, in effect, capitalist societies but with a socialist structure that assists in key areas or if people fall on harder times.
==Summary==
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