People have been brainwashed to believe that socialism is evil...

It amazes me just how many poor schmucks who live paycheque to paycheque humping 50hr/week jobs will argue that the resources of their country should belong solely to private entities.

Oh I completely agree with you. I have spent so much time researching socialism, communism, fascism, national socialism, etc, and both socialism and communism, in the form presented by Marx and Engels, is a much better solution that capitalism imo. First of all, all of those people who will want to reply and say "but look at the former USSR, China, N. Korea, etc, they are not doing too well," and to those people I will just say that you are uninformed. What these countries have implemented is NOT socialism or communism at all. That is a lie told and perpetrated because of an agenda, and simply reading the philosophy of the inventors of this system, you will quickly understand that you have been lied to.

It is important to understand the socialism is a process. Communism and socialism are NOT the same things. Communism is the stage reached after socialism. The main thing that proves these other countries who are called communist are not truly communist is that they have strong central governments, the people own nothing, etc. That is not how communism works at all. Socialism is supposed to have a small central government to ensure that things work smoothly, but nothing like what we see in these so called socialist countries. And then, after socialism reaches a certain stage, there is a transition to communism and the abolishment of government in the main sense of the word, and the equality of all citizens, and all citizens own a share of the means of production.

If this were truly implemented, the majority of the population would all have the same income, and would virtually be middle class, living a comfortable existence. Thing of all the money in the US that is owned by the financial elite, and think about that money being divided up evenly between the entire country. Then think about that happening for all the wealthy people. Everyone would be living comfortably. So don't believe what the media and the government says, because they are either lying to you or none of them have bothered to actually read the doctrines of these forms of government and economics.

Sometimes,

I am doing thought "exercises" how our society will be viewed as, like, say, 100, 200 or 300 years in the future.
Because it is amazing to read history books and then look at how our society was, say, just 100-200 years ago, what entirely WEIRD and ODD ideas people had. The role of the women, slavery, economy, the rich and the poor etc. Even worse if you go further back in history.

The trend is very clear to me. Go look at history of the world and how societies worked, if you will, start 2000 years ago at the Romans and then observe how things change.

My thought experiment is that in 200 or so years from NOW, people will look at our current society and economy and no one will be able to BELIEVE the absurdity of it.

People in the future will remember a time where people had to work "for others", for (as someone else nicely said in this thread) "having a place to sleep between shifts". This is still REALITY for a very large number of people today.

People in the future will also wondering what an absurd society it was where one had millions or billions while others didn't have a roof over their head or couldn't afford medical care to safe their lives.

This is a very logical step if someone observes society over the last several hundred years.

What I am saying here is that we are looking at our life NOW as something "normal", like "having to work to eat" or "having to work to have a place".....but IN ESSENCE this is entirely absurd. Only today, people do not realize the absurdity of this. But they will realize in the future, in the same way as we realize(d) the absurdity of throwing people before the lions, slavery or forbidding women to work or that it was taboo that someone from one social standing would marry someone "underneath them".

But...no worries, this entire system will some day be gone, be assured. Maybe we are seeing the first signs that it's already crumbling.

reply to post by Wildbob77

Originally posted by Wildbob77
I like the concept of Socialism but I've yet to see a population that thrives under the implementation of Socialism

The Nordic countries? Britain? Even Australia? They all have socialist systems in the form of universal healthcare, safety nets. If what you're really talking about is communism then no, there hasn't been a population that has thrived under such a system. But Communism and Socialism aren't one the same, they may be related in some ways, but aren't the same.

Now Free market capitalism, I haven't see a population thrive under such a system in modern times. We're talking about markets that have minimal regulations, no public healthcare, no safety nets, just the private markets that humans solely rely on with the government mainly enforcing and protecting property rights, policing violence. There is no such country with a system in place, there never has been if we look back to over 100 years. There is Somolia, but their population is not exactly "thriving".

You can't just say Socialism is evil or wrong, that's a lack of research and/or understanding. This is purely because there's many types of socialism and it depends on the people trying to apply it.

For instance : State socialism hands private ownership over to the government. (I personally don't agree at all with this version.) Libertarian socialism hands ownership over to the people to run in groups. (I like this one instead.)

Either way, if you have a corrupt government and/or groups of people allowed to mess things up it won't work properly, simple as. Now you could have a programming agenda behind the scenes right now to push the idea of socialism so that another corrupt version (probably a distorted state socialism version.) of it could surface in the near future in one or more big countries, but it still wouldn't mean that socialism failed, or that it was evil. It'd simply mean that an agenda was pushed so that another corrupt version of it could surface.

Marxism and socialism have a lot of good ways at dealing with the corruptions of capitalism, but they have to be applied properly without all the corruption. You could say capitalism is evil, but again it's probably not right, because it takes corrupt, deluded and greedy people to make it evil, etc.

You need to do the research into the different types of socialism and realize that there's many variations.

Personally I'm more into the idea of Libertarian socialism, (and yeah I know "Libertarian" is often a dirty word to Americans, but that's because the term has been distorted.) which is explained very briefly here :

Libertarian socialists are strongly critical of coercive institutions, which often leads them to reject the legitimacy of the state in favor of anarchism. Adherents propose achieving this through decentralization of political and economic power, usually involving the socialization of most large-scale private property and enterprise (while retaining respect for personal property). Libertarian socialism tends to deny the legitimacy of most forms of economically significant private property, viewing capitalist property relations as forms of domination that are antagonistic to individual freedom

Libertarian Socialism

Yes, it says anarchism there, but again, it's another term that's been warped. Anarchic principles are geared towards removing the power of a ruling elite. If you don't like that and like a ruling elite instead, fair enough, we'll agree to disagree. To briefly show this, from etymology online :

1530s, from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), noun of state from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" + arkhos "leader" (see archon).

Anarchy - Etymology Online

But again, Libertarian socialism won't work if a bunch of corrupt people try to implement it wrongly. If done properly though it breaks down the chances of corrupt corporations and governments surfacing, the two things that right now are creating so much of the current mess.

reply to post by Malynn

I would seem clear after reading this post that you did not read the other posts in the thread. So I'll give you a cliff notes: a. socialism has never been tried

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit I guess. Keep your cliff notes, I'm betting there half empty. Socialism has been tried all over the world for quite some time, mostly in the form of political party ideals, policies and agendas. Because it hasn't been the sole directive of a country thus far does not mean that it hasn't been tried, it just means that the agenda has failed which was the point of my statement. Many countries around the world now and in the past could be considered largely socialist or at least driven by socialist ideals, none of which are heading in the right direction.

This is relevant. The title is "Capitalism and Anarchism", but he's also talking about libertarian socialism :

Originally posted by POXUSA
reply to post by Cabin

 

Its just the opposite - people have been mind controlled into thinking and believing that Marxist communism and other forms of socialism are not evil - when everyone in their right mind knows that they are surely EVIL.

edit on 8-3-2013 by POXUSA because: txt

Marxism is simply an economic theory. It can't be bad or evil. It's meerly one extreme end of a spectrum of ecomonic theories. Put Laissez-faire Capitalism (look it up) at the other extreme. Both are theorized ideals that can't be put into practise.

I would postulate that both are evil, that anything to the extreme is evil.

P.S - I wouldn't say that Cuba has failed. Considering the harrasment by the US it's done pretty well - even without soviet backing. Near 100% literacy, one of the best health care systems in the world with world renowned emergency response teams. After Katrina, the cubas offered to send 150 doctors with medical teams to help - good ole George II turned them down. Didn't want to get infected by that nasty socialism meme.

Originally posted by CosmicCitizen
Socialism, albeit altruistic in theory, progressively leads to communism where the state not the individual is paramount. State centrist systems are empowered by a monopoly of force and to "take" from those that have and give to others is a form of "theft" even if necessary for the protection of the state and the common good.

And I would counter that Private Ownership of Public Resources is Theft.

The idea that you TAKE from one to GIVE to another is incorrect. In a socialist system the Resources and perhaps the mean's of production are held collectively by the citizen's. It's the difference between a Bank (private owership and profit - the public foots any loses) and a Credit Union (members are the owners and share in the profits and losses).

reply to post by Cabin


I disagree. I do not see this large equating Socialism with Communism that you speak of. They are two separate systems. Most people who care to know what they are talking about learn this and know the differences.

In the US, I don't believe people are taught Socialism is evil as you put it. We live in a Capitalistic society and Socialism simply has no place here - it will conflict too much with the Capitalistic views in which our economy is based. It would undermine and destroy our economic infrastructure. Perhaps if we were a young country starting from scratch a Socialistic approach could be made to work if implemented correctly but it cannot work now - it is too different from the current system and would cause too much to change throwing the US into chaos..

Originally posted by Golf66
Not unless stupid ineffective and evil are synonyms. Socialism is counter to human nature. I don't want to type out the "scorpion and the frog" parable it's applicable in this case.

In fact cooperation (socialism) has been shown to be beneficial to evolutionary progress - look it up!!!

www.scientificamerican.com...

On the other hand ingnorance is not....

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
I think the OP's comments are spot on. All the necessities of life should be delivered through non-profit means.

Socialism for our needs, capitalism for our wants.

Here! Here! Well Said!!

This thread comes as no surprise to me; I have said before this forum was full of Marxist of various flavors and there really is no appeasing you or middle found because you cant get what you want without taking from others.The traditional response will be required and human population to have found a way to reduce itself again. Ironic

Originally posted by cavtrooper7
In the final analysis it comes down to humanity and leadership. Any system would probably work if the leadership was benevolent,and that is the crux of the issue.An artist in communism is a surrogate for the state,to put out art the state wishes.This is not in keeping with the imagination and freedom of speech we enjoy.
Socialism demands uniformity and punishes anomalies. That isn't going to happen either. There are a great deal of mistakes being made in our republic because our leadership lacked the character and strength to be independent from money.

Do you see any individuality in the US. We all want the same cars (they all look the same), the same houses (they all look the same) the same religion (if you're not christian, you're not american), the same thoughts (socialsm bad - Corporate Welfare - good). Get over it - there is no rugged individuals in the USoA - when they are they get run over by the teaming masses of conformists walking in lock-step.

reply to post by Cabin

We are presented facts.
The number of citizens who were killed
when a socialist regime took power more
than speaks to how well SOCIALISM works.

To say we are brainwashed into thinking SOCIALISM is EVIL?

Socialism/atheistic communism will always fail on
the earth because basic human nature is evil and bad.
Leaders will be corrupted by the power of the office.

Originally posted by luciddream

Originally posted by Golf66
Not unless stupid ineffective and evil are synonyms. Socialism is counter to human nature. I don't want to type out the "scorpion and the frog" parable it's applicable in this case.

Capitalism is human nature?

taking advantage of lower working class?

I think Socialism is more close human nature, sharing the hunt, shelters etc.

The Scorpion and Frog story does make sense, as in revert back to their naturalistic ways, but humans are a bit different then basic animals.. what if there is consequences, penalty for not doing what you suppose to do? So everyone pulls the same load, and not doing it would be crime? more you disobey the worse field you are put to work at?

That is corporatism. Corporatism is expanded by the state. It's nothing short of socialism for the wealthy and well connected at the expense of both economic and individual liberty.

Corporatism, like socialism is simply the empowerment of the state.

Capitalism is the voluntary participation of individuals and groups in the market. Be it a goods and services market or the market of ideas. Socialism requires that everyone agrees with the greater good, even if that greater good is a detriment to the individual. The same can be said for corporatist practices and communism. Centralizing power in any manner that pretends to place the "rights" of the collective as decided by the state versus the natural rights of the individual, is a sure recipe for tyranny.

reply to post by JiggyPotamus


atheistic socialism and communism will not work
on earth as basic human nature is bad and evil.

Originally posted by Cobaltic1978
Capitalism rocks!!!


The elite keep us believing their system is best and the majority of people keep buying it.

You forgot tithing to the shines of Reagan and Thatcher What a privilege.

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Originally posted by MajorKarma
This thread comes as no surprise to me; I have said before this forum was full of Marxist of various flavors and there really is no appeasing you or middle found because you cant get what you want without taking from others.The traditional response will be required and human population to have found a way to reduce itself again. Ironic

A population isn't reducing itself at all if the workers have control of the places they work in, instead of corporate heads sat around in a boardroom raking in most of the profits for themselves, and then colluding with governments to make themselves even more powerful in several ways. (and in turn, helping the keep the government in power if it does their bidding properly.)

You don't understand the various forms socialism enough.

But hey, even though this is a thread about socialism, lets talk about how marxism means fleecing ourselves and handing over power to the communists who are about the take over the western world instead.