Response to The Socialist Party of Great Britain

Central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population.

Totally agree with this and from this we know right away that any implementation of socialism will be an utter disaster. The tradegy of the commons proves that resources held in common ownership will be wasted.

But does it really make sense for everybody to own everything in common? Of course, some goods tend to be for personal consumption, rather than to share—clothes, for example.

Even socialists recognize common ownership is impractical at some level. So they make an exception for 'personal consumption'. Of course without defining what that is. So the leadership of socialist countries tend to be a little more equal than others. Causing people like Castro and Chavez to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm sure only for 'personal consumption'.

People 'owning' certain personal possessions does not contradict the principle of a society based upon common ownership.

Yes it does, directly. You're just being inconsistent because when it comes to your personal items you have the intellectual capability to recognize it would be horrible to not personally own those items. But since you're envious of what other people own and want an excuse to steal it, you look for an excuse to define that property as common.

In practice, common ownership will mean everybody having the right to participate in decisions on how global resources will be used.

In small groups this can sometimes remain democratic and peaceful. Although it's really hard to determine what the population actually wants. So what happens in practice is that a strong man takes control. One example of where this worked peacefully is the Isreali kibbutz. These where fanatical socialists, mostly from the soviet union who fled from there but still loved socialism. Only even if this system works on a democratic level, it still destroys whatever resources are in the system and prevents the creation of any new resources. But looking at history, when a strong man does take control, chances are he'll commit genocide.

It means nobody being able to take personal control of resources, beyond their own personal possessions.

Except the single strong man leader has been able to take control of almost all resources almost every time. So this delusion is entirely based on wishful thinking and in conflict with reality.

Democratic control is therefore also essential to the meaning of socialism.

The problem with that is that power affects the mind at a biological level causing corruption, even in normal people
The only reason the example of the Jewish Kibbutz remained pretty Democratic and peaceful is that they where very small communities, a couple of hundred people, so the leaders had very little power.
So when you want to a global system you guarantee massive corruption.
Another problem with this is that democracy is a bad system in principle. It's rule of the majority over the minority. Of course the majority is going to steal from the minority. You also end up with one rule for everyone. Which is terrible because everyone is different. One rule does not fit all. People find this appealing because they believe the government fairy tales that things will be far worse without government. Even though there's no evidence for that. But we do have evidence that things get better without or with less government: https://mises.org/library/stateless-somalia-and-loving-it. Believing in government is akin to believing in religion and believing in democracy akin to believing in creationism.

Socialism will be a society in which everybody will have the right to participate in the social decisions that affect them.

Does voting for a politician who does the opposite of what you want count as 'participate'? Because that's what this will mean in practice.

These decisions could be on a wide range of issues—one of the most important kinds of decision, for example, would be how to organise the production of goods and services.

This means taking freedom away from individuals to do things in their own way. So you're an enemy of freedom. Which always ends in disaster. Just to name a few examples; In Venezuela people are starving because it's the governments responsibility to feed them. And they're importing oil because it's the governments responsibility to produce the oil. It turns out you can't 'decide' what the right way to do something is. The only practical way of figuring out how to do things is to have different people each try to do it their way and see which ways works best. Often that's multiple ways for different people.

Production under socialism would be directly and solely for use. With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs. This would entail an end to buying, selling and money. Instead, we would take freely what we had communally produced. The old slogan of "from each according to ability, to each according to needs" would apply.

Socialists misunderstand freedom as lack of economic need. When you create this it removes motivation for people to work. We've seen this every time socialism has been tried. An early attempt where religious fanatics who came to the US as pilgrims.
They where a close-knit community and strongly religious, but even that could not motivate them to do work or respect the community resources. This is why socialism is such a dirty word in the US, abandoning it is what allowed the people to live.
Another reason economic need is necessary is that it allows people to punish corruption. Every individual can decide to not interact with a corrupt person and therefore punish them. When all needs are satisfied horrible behavior won't be punished. We'd depend on the government to determine what bad behavior is, which gives that government enormous power. We'd depend on the government to determine who's behaving badly, which requires that government to know what everyone is doing all the time. This is why every socialist country has turned into a totalitarian dictatorship.

So how would we decide what human needs are? This question takes us back to the concept of democracy, for the choices of society will reflect their needs. These needs will, of course, vary among different cultures and with individual preferences—but the democratic system could easily be designed to provide for this variety.

So human need is what the majority wants and it's the same for everyone. Or at least within that community, it can't work.

In socialism, everybody would have free access to the goods and services designed to directly meet their needs and there need be no system of payment for the work that each individual contributes to producing them. All work would be on a voluntary basis. Producing for needs means that people would engage in work that has a direct usefulness. The satisfaction that this would provide, along with the increased opportunity to shape working patterns and conditions, would bring about new attitudes to work.

Like humans do work for fun, that goes for about 5 minutes and only for a very small portion of jobs. The value of work is far more than just whether it gets done. It's also whether it's done consistently when it needs to be done. It's never pleasant to meet these needs, people do it in order to get paid.

Socialism in reality

Communism and nazi'ism are just different ways of implementing socialism. Socialism has consistently produced genocide and totalitarian dictatorships. In order to want to try it again one must believe that their form of socialism will be unique, against all evidence.
It's hard to believe that socialists really believe in it, because within most current societies they're perfectly capable of living a socialist life. They could get together with a group of socialists, share their resources and live in a socialist way.

An actual solution

From the evidence we see a positive correlation between economic freedom and quality of life in many ways.
Since everything government does opposes freedom and I'm also in favor of personal freedom, the solution is to abolish government entirely.