Why Is Socialism Doing So Darn Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?

I can't respond to all of the crazy stuff ElectricUniverse has said in this thread but as a registered Republican I find it sickening how the "right wing" has demonized socialism and left wing politics.

First of all, Clinton and his cabinet had a huge part to play, just as much as Reagan and his trickle down economics, in deregulating our economic system which led us to where we are but it was the Republicans with help from the Dems in Congress that really stuck it to us with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Financial Services Modernization Act - also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed Glass-Steagall led by Phil Gramm. If you don't know him, I reckon you look him up because he certainly was no "leftwinger" as you describe it.

Secondly, those who preach the socialist boogeyman act are always talking about "the state" and although the government can be and sometimes is an authoritarian system what they seem to forget is that we live in a democratic republic. The state is supposed to be run by We the People and if run correctly nothing gets done without our say so. We are the State, and socialism is nothing to be afraid of when it is benefiting the people. Not putting everyone on a level playing field or taking your stuff away, but giving and ensuring basic needs.

As others have stated. The world is not as black and white as the propagandists would have you believe. Capitalism and socialism can work together and in fact would ultimately lead to prosperity for all the likes of which we've never witnessed.

Originally posted by PatriotGames2
I can't respond to all of the crazy stuff ElectricUniverse has said in this thread but as a registered Republican I find it sickening how the "right wing" has demonized socialism and left wing politics.

Keep calling yourself Republican, it is obvious you aren't. I presented facts, all you have done is presented nothing but false claims... If you believe "socialism can work" you are not a Republican, as being Republican means being in favor of SMALL GOVERNMENT, and socialism has NOTHING about small government, it is all big government...

Originally posted by PatriotGames2
First of all, Clinton and his cabinet had a huge part to play, just as much as Reagan and his trickle down economics, in deregulating our economic system which led us to where we are but it was the Republicans with help from the Dems in Congress that really stuck it to us with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Financial Services Modernization Act - also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed Glass-Steagall led by Phil Gramm. If you don't know him, I reckon you look him up because he certainly was no "leftwinger" as you describe it.

Phil Graham is what is known as a neo-con. He was a Democrat who became Republican, but really has nothing, or very little Republican about him. He changed to the republican party to continue to run for Senator after being thrown from the House Budget Committee for supporting Reagan's tax cuts.

BTW, in case you didn't know Reagan was a LIFELONG DEMOCRAT, although he changed somewhat to the right, because of his wife Nancy, the Hollywood leftwing mentality wasn't completely shaken off and it showed on many of his policies such as his stance on nuclear disarmament.

Originally posted by PatriotGames2
Secondly, those who preach the socialist boogeyman act are always talking about "the state" and although the government can be and sometimes is an authoritarian system what they seem to forget is that we live in a democratic republic. The state is supposed to be run by We the People and if run correctly nothing gets done without our say so. We are the State, and socialism is nothing to be afraid of when it is benefiting the people. Not putting everyone on a level playing field or taking your stuff away, but giving and ensuring basic needs.

Secondly, learn in what country you were born, and where you are living, this is not a Democracy, in Democracies the majority rules and can take away individual rights, and in this nation every individual is GUARANTEED their INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS... You are living in a constitutional Representative Republic, not a democracy...

Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a democracy... one in which the majority took away the rights of minorities such as the Kurds for the "good of the collective", and systematically committed genocide against the Kurds...

Originally posted by PatriotGames2
As others have stated. The world is not as black and white as the propagandists would have you believe. Capitalism and socialism can work together and in fact would ultimately lead to prosperity for all the likes of which we've never witnessed.

edit on 9-4-2013 by PatriotGames2 because: (no reason given)

A bunch of wrong people who want to ignore history and experience doesn't make them right even if they are a mayority... It just makes them a mob that are wrong with the "mob mentality" thinking they are right just because they agree with each other...

The propagandism is the claim that "socialism can work", when it has clearly shown it can't, and leads to dictatorships...

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


Why do you have to see things so black and white? In extremes.

Neither extreme left-wing or extreme right-wing are perfect. Both have their pros and cons.

Why can´t we just take the best ideas out of both all across the political spectrum and mix these together?

It's not doing well.

And it doesn't last long.

Why do you think it was easy to see that Hamilton was a buffoon?

Why were his ways considered so wrong? because they were...

But how could Hamilton have been convinced that what he thought was right?

For the same reason a beginner chess player believes his next move was a good one. Instant gratification. But unfortunately for the baby chess player, the master chest player already knows all of the effects of the one single move made. And while, in the beginning, the move puts the beginner at an advantage, that is really only an illusion, and the advantage never existed in the first place, but in reality, that advantage became the precursor to the utter destruction of the beginner's team.

You see, just like in chess, it is not the enemy's move that destroys us. They are our moves that destroy us.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall as part of a compromise. It was pushed be the republicans all the way, it was their free market deregulation dream legislation.

The Republic of the United States is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC... Not a "democracy"...

The US is no more a republic than a democracy. The U.S. is ran by an elected president, not by a prime minister.

Socialism is not a form of government, it is an economic system, and most of the people who claimed they were socialists, like Hitler, were not socialists, they were monarchists, and they believed in a system where the monarch owned and controlled everything, which is not socialism.

That being said, if you think the US government is so bad, then what form of government do you support?

Pssst, capitalism is not a form of government.

Originally posted by Cabin
Why do you have to see things so black and white? In extremes.

Neither extreme left-wing or extreme right-wing are perfect. Both have their pros and cons.

Why can´t we just take the best ideas out of both all across the political spectrum and mix these together?

Because you simply can't... It has been tried before many times with the same claims you are making now...

You can't reconcile socialism, which seeks to abolish all private property with capitalism, where every individual has a right to private property...

Despite the claims of socialists that people will own and control all infrastructure and manufacturing, how do you do that when one of the main premises of socialism is TO ABOLISH PRIVATE PROPERTY?...

People can't control what is not theirs to control in the first place... The GOVERNMENT will do it claiming they represent the people...

This has been the same modus operandi of EVERY socialist/communist regime which at the end have ALWAYS turned into leftwing dictatorships...

What you people, those of you who believe socialism can work, claim are socialist nations now are merely still in a stage to be converted into full socialism, but they are not there yet...

When the GOVERNMENT controls everything, and when no person, except the elites of course, can own private property, that's the day those nations will become socialist, and make no mistake, that's where those nations are headed because it is EXACTLY what the elites want to happen.

Socialism/communism/corporatism is how these people get control over entire nations.

Originally posted by poet1b

Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall as part of a compromise. It was pushed be the republicans all the way, it was their free market deregulation dream legislation.

Pushed by a man who was a neo-con, a known democrat who had simply ran as Republican to keep a job as a Senator... Not to mention that Clinton DIDN'T have to do it, he did it willingly, he wasn't forced... And not to mention that Clinton himself and other Democrats were pushing for this repeal as well...

Originally posted by poet1b
The US is no more a republic than a democracy. The U.S. is ran by an elected president, not by a prime minister.

You need to read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights within it, and you need to learn about the ELECTORAL COLLEGE... Presidents are not elected by a majority in the United States... That's why there is an electoral college...

The founding fathers knew the dangers of having the majority control the elections of the republic of the United States and that is why they implemented the electoral college...

...
Hamilton and the other founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. Hamilton and the other founders did not trust the population to make the right choice. The founders also believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others.
...

www.historycentral.com...

But the corruption even in the electoral college was set in through the international bankers who own and control the leftwing Federal Reserve, a central bank system which every socialist and communist nation has.

Through the Federal Reserve, and the IRS to collect taxes, these leftwing elites have made it possible that United States citizens do not really own any property, as the government can take it away if you can't pay the taxes on it even after having paid for the property in full...

They implemented high taxes on inheritance to slowly erode another right of the citizens, and which is another requisite in socialist/communist regimes.

They implemented progressive taxes, which Karl Marx himself stated would be the way to destroy capitalism, and is happening exactly this way...

They abolished the silver and gold standard, which the United States Constitution CLEARLY states shall be the only form of tender coin in the Republic of the United States...

Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1


No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

press-pubs.uchicago.edu...

President Ulysses S. Grant, during the legal tender cases, allowed Congress to make a paper currency BACKED BY GOLD, leading a precedence, together with what the Constitution says, that no currency can be allowed to exist that is not backed by the gold or silver standard, and LEFTWINGERS under President Franklin D. Roosevelt "nationalized" the gold and silver standard making it illegal for U.S. citizens, with a few exceptions, from owning gold or silver as tender coin.

Americans can own gold and silver now, but can not use it as tender coin, although some states are TRYING to change this and bring back the gold and silver standard.

...
National Bank / Federal Reserve
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

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"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson

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"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance." - James Madison

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"The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it." - Andrew Jackson
...

www.proconstitution.com...

Originally posted by poet1b
Socialism is not a form of government, it is an economic system, and most of the people who claimed they were socialists, like Hitler, were not socialists, they were monarchists, and they believed in a system where the monarch owned and controlled everything, which is not socialism.

That being said, if you think the US government is so bad, then what form of government do you support?

Socialism is BOTH, and economic system, and a form of government...

so·cial·ism

Definition of SOCIALISM

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods


2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property

b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

www.merriam-webster.com...

Hitler wasn't a monarch, he was socialist, same for Mussolini... Where the heck are you making this up from?... Every program Hitler implemented was socialist, he even FORCED, something the left LOVES to do, manufacturers to build "what was needed for the good of Germany" which was weapons and military equipment...

Originally posted by poet1b
Pssst, capitalism is not a form of government.

I never wrote it is... I know it is an economic system that is contrary to the socialist goals...

Pssst, learn to understand what people write instead of making up false accusations because you have no argument to speak of in the first place...

Some other people who warned Americans against allowing the bankers, and a central bank from having the economic power of the Republic of the United States include...

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace, and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.

Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country will endeavor and prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated into a few hands and the republic is destroyed.”

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864

www.reddit.com...

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”

– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s

www.globalresearch.ca...

“This (Federal Reserve Act) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Wilson) signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized….the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill.”

— Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. , 1913

silencednomore.com...

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States”
― Barry Goldwater

www.goodreads.com...

Anyway, back to the topic... Credit unions are NOT socialist/communist... In a nation, such as the Republic of the United States there can be MANY credit unions... NONE control the economy... Under socialism there is a CENTRAL BANK, which is exactly what the Federal Reserve is, a central bank that controls the economy of the Republic of the United States thanks to leftwingers...

BTW, in socialism "state" means the whole nation/central government.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


De-regulation was pushed by republicans, conservatives who preach the whole free market Mises nonsense.

You need to read the constitution again. The US President is elected, not chosen by congress.

Your definition of Socialism doesn't define it as a form of government.

This is a form of government, and it is clearly stated.

i.word.com...

Main Entry: dic·ta·tor·ship
Pronunciation: dik-ˈtā-tər-ˌship, ˈdik-ˌ
Function: noun
Date: 1542
1 : the office of dictator 2 : autocratic rule, control, or leadership 3 a : a form of government in which absolute power is concentrated in a dictator or a small clique b : a government organization or group in which absolute power is so concentrated c : a despotic state

Hitler was a dictator.

You call everything you don't like "socialism", and you don't even understand what it is

Originally posted by poet1b

De-regulation was pushed by republicans, conservatives who preach the whole free market Mises nonsense.

Yet your homeboy Clinton was the one to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act...

What you don't understand is that it was a set up to make people believe we need more regulations. The deception is working wonders more so on people like you.

I have noted more than once that you are very confused, and when things don't go as you want you try to twist them for your advantage but in the end you are just showing more and more confusion on your part.

I have backed everything I have written. All you have done, and others like you, is make claims without any evidence whatsoever.

Originally posted by poet1b
You need to read the constitution again. The US President is elected, not chosen by congress.

I have actually read it, people like you haven't. The president is chosen yes but is not chosen by the majority, the electoral college also counts for the voting process... I have already explained this and showed links to the Constitution itself and to how the founders made the voting process in the Republic of the U.S.

Every year the voters, and the electoral college vote for the President, by representatives supposedly chosen by the people. G.W. Bush won because of the electoral college. The popular vote went to Al Gore, which was "supposedly" the majority of the voters, which wasn't by much, about 500,000 more votes, but the electoral college thought that Bush was a better candidate and more of them voted for Bush.

A lot of people who are ignorant on the voting process in the U.S., such as is obvious you are, thought that because Bush became President when Gore got more votes that the voting process was rigged, but in fact it was just that the electoral college decided that Bush was a better candidate than Gore.

Originally posted by poet1b

Your definition of Socialism doesn't define it as a form of government.

The link CLEARLY states "any of various economic and political theories"...

Under socialism, despite the claims from some, the government always takes control, which is why it is both an economic system and a political theory/form of government...

Originally posted by poet1b
Hitler was a dictator.

You call everything you don't like "socialism", and you don't even understand what it is

Hitler was a socialist, a National SOCIALIST...

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler

(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)

....
Hitler was intent on having a community of mutual interest that desired mutual success instead of one that was divided over the control of money or differing values.

THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST -
THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE PROGRAM. BREAKING OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST - THAT IS THE KERNEL OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM.

In these straightforward statements of intent, Hitler translated his ideology into a plan of action which would prove its popularity with the German people throughout the coming years. For many, the abruptness of its departure from the tradition of politics as practiced in the western world was as much of a shock as its liberal nature and foresight of the emerging problems of western democracy.
...

constitutionalistnc.tripod.com...

Every program he implemented was leftwing, and including socialist. From Hitler's youth movement, to every program in between, to Hitler FORCING the owners of businesses to build "what was needed for the greater good of Germany"...

People like you just don't want to accept the facts about socialism, and where it leads because either you do want to believe the lies, or you know exactly where it leads and that's what you want...another socialist dictatorship...

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


You provide links but they don't back up your claims.

The president can not repeal an act of congress approved by a previous president.

Clearly you do not understand the constitution.

dealbook.nytimes.com...

But 10 years ago, the revocation of Glass-Steagall drew few critics. In the House, 155 Democrats and 207 Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.

Just because the NAZIs claimed they were socialist doesn't make them socialist. The Japaneese claimed that their empiror was a god. Do you think he was a god because they claimed he was a god?

Your definition of socialism does not state it is a form of government because it is not.

Hitler was an old fashioned dictator backed by capitalists to bust German Unions.

Oh, and GW was illegally put into office by the SCOTUS.

Occasionally in a close race a president that has less votes wins because electorial votes are allocated by states. Twice in US history a president has been elected who did not get a majority of the votes.

The current HOR has republican control, but demos in the house actually got more votes.

Originally posted by anton74

Originally posted by VitriolAndAngst

Originally posted by anton74
This is an interesting topic but, I think when it comes to this topic people miss 2 key points.

1. Social programs are not Socialism.

2. Most countries that call themselves Socialists are only socialist in name or are partially socialist. There are only a few truly socialist countries.

Socialism is like other forms of government, in its pure form it doesn't work so well.

Sounds like you are trying to rationalize liking something but then finding out that it's that dreaded Socialism you are supposed to hate. Look; no country is purely any ideology. The USSR was a poor example of Communism, but it was called one just the same.

The US acquired a lot of Socialist-type policies after FDR -- right up to Nixon.

Social programs are of course part of Socialism -- or do you have any examples that are socialism, but don't require redistributing something to benefit everyone? Collective action with Democratic controls is Democratic Socialism.

It's not the dirty word we were brought up to think it was.

Social programs can be part of a Capitalist Nation. Having "Socialist-type Policies" doesn't make a country Socialist.

I'm trying to get people to understand the difference between Social Programs and a Socialist government.

It sounds like you are confusing me for a Ultra-right wing conservative.

Sorry dude -- the network was so slow I was trying to reply to ANOTHER comment -- then I came back, I must have had the wrong one come up -- so apologies. You were not confusing "socialist countries" with socialism. And it's all graded on a curve -- it's not an exact science. Some things are better done by marketplace, others by government -- I'm for tweaking more than absolutes.

reply to post by poet1b


The one lying, and exaggerating has been you...

You claim socialism was invented to scare little kids, yet AGAIN you forget that under socialism/communism more people have been MURDERED and IMPRISONED than all other wars and conflicts combined...

Hitler and Mussolini were both SOCIALISTS, and under different SOCIALIST systems, just like many others, millions of people have been murdered, and millions more have been imprisoned for not fully embracing the socialist/communist ideals...

YOU are the ignorant person here...

Originally posted by anton74
This is an interesting topic but, I think when it comes to this topic people miss 2 key points.

1. Social programs are not Socialism.

2. Most countries that call themselves Socialists are only socialist in name or are partially socialist. There are only a few truly socialist countries.

Socialism is like other forms of government, in its pure form it doesn't work so well.

^^ This, ladies and gentlemen, is the shizzle.

Originally posted by poet1b

You provide links but they don't back up your claims.

The president can not repeal an act of congress approved by a previous president.

Clearly you do not understand the constitution.

Are you claiming now that Bill Clinton didn't sign into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act?...

Statement on Signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
November 12, 1999

Today I am pleased to sign into law S. 900, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This historic legislation will modernize our financial services laws, stimulating greater innovation and competition in the financial services industry. America's consumers, our communities, and the economy will reap the benefits of this Act.
...
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act makes the most important legislative changes to the structure of the U.S. financial system since the 1930s. Financial services firms will be authorized to conduct a wide range of financial activities, allowing them freedom to innovate in the new economy. The Act repeals provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act that, since the Great Depression, have restricted affiliations between banks and securities firms. It also amends the Bank Holding Company Act to remove restrictions on affiliations between banks and insurance companies. It grants banks significant new authority to conduct most newly authorized activities through financial subsidiaries.
...

www.presidency.ucsb.edu...

Wow...can you show some more ignorance please?...

Originally posted by poet1b

Just because the NAZIS claimed they were socialist doesn't make them socialist. The Japaneese claimed that their empiror was a god. Do you think he was a god because they claimed he was a god?

The NAZIS were SOCIALISTS, they didn't just claim to be... ALL their programs were socialist, from Hitler's youths to everything in between...

Heck, Hitler wanted to make every German into a vegetarian, not only did he want to impose his version of socialism...

BTW, Hitler only allowed industrialists to keep their factories ONLY if "they built what Hitler claimed was needed for the good of Germany"...

As for "the Germans fighting Communism", that doesn't make them any less socialists... Plenty of other socialists and communists raised arms against other socialists and communists because they all in fact seek to have all power, hence if they have no common enemies they normally turn against each other. Stalin ordered the death of Trotsky, and Trotsky himself wrote about it..

Forty Years Since Leon Trotsky's Assassination – Lynn Walsh

Exile and Repression
Stalin conducts the struggle "on a different plane with different methods."


This year is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky.


On 20 August, 1940, Trotsky was struck a fatal blow with an ice-pick by Ramon Mercader, an agent sent to Mexico by Stalin's secret police (the GPU) to murder the exiled revolutionary-alongside Lenin, the leader of the October revolution, the founder and leader of the Red Army, and the co-founder of the Third, Communist International.

Trotsky's assassination was not just a malicious after-thought on the part of Stalin.

It was the culmination of a systematic and bloody terror directed against a whole generation of Bolshevik leaders, and against the young revolutionaries of a second generation prepared to defend the genuine ideas of Marxism against the bureaucratic, repressive regime developing under Stalin.
...

www.socialistalternative.org...

As a matter of fact, Trosky HIMSELF stated the following...

..
I have said before that Lenin, from his deathbed, was preparing a blow at Stalin and his allies, Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze. Lenin valued Dzerzhinsky highly. The estrangement began when Dzerzhinsky realized that Lenin did not think him capable of directing economic work. It was this that threw Dzerzhinsky into Stalin’s arms, and then Lenin decided to strike at him as one of Stalin’s supports. As for Ordzhonikidze, Lenin wanted to expel him from the party for his ways of a governor-general. Lenin’s note promising the Georgian Bolsheviks his full support against Stalin, Dzherzhinsky, and Ordzhonikidze was addressed to Mdivani. The fates of the four reveal most vividiy the sweeping change in the party engineered by the Stalin faction. After Lenin’s death, Dzerzhinsky was put at the head of the Supreme Economic Council, that is, in charge of all state industries. Ordzhonikidze, who had been slated for expulsion, has been made the head of the Central Control Commission. Stalin not only has remained the general secretary, contrary to Lenin’s wish, but has been given unheard-of powers by the apparatus. Finally, Budu Mdivani, whom Lenin supported against Stalin, is now in the Tobolsk prison. A similar “regrouping” has been effected in the entire directing personnel of the party and in all the parties of the International, without exception. The epoch of the epigones is separated from that of Lenin not only by a gulf of ideas, but also by a sweeping overturn in the organization of the party.
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www.marxists.org...

Leon Trotsky

Stalin Seeks My Death

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Written:24 May, 1940
First Published: The Fourth International, Vol. 2 No. 7, August 1941, pages 201-207
Translated: By The Fourth International
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2008. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License [You can freely copy, distribute, and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.]

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The following article, now published for the first time, was written by Trotsky two weeks after the May 24, 1940 attempt to assassinate him. As the article relates, Stalin’s GPU was able to bring powerful pressure on the Mexican police to steer Its investigation away from the GPU murder band which had attempted to kill Trotsky. Shortly after this article was written, however, the investigation was brought back on the right track. Our press at the time published all the details of how the police arrested David Serrano, David Alfaro Siquieiros and a score of other Stalinists; how some of them confessed their complicIty, and the guilt of the Stalinist murder machine was established.

For reasons best known to themselves, the Mexican authorities have not yet completed their case against the GPTJ band. According to Mexican law, the investigating judge is required to complete his investigation and hand down a verdict within a year’s time. Although Slqueiros admitted his participation in the attack upon Trotsky’s house, he and the GPU found judges who released him on the ground that he was not seeking to murder Trotsky! The others are still in prison. Similar delay is occurring in the case of “Frank Jacson,” the GPU assassin who succeeded In striking the death-blow on August 20, 1940.

Trotsky’s article gives us his own description of the May 24th attempt on his life and of the events of the next two weeks. Another article by Trotsky on the attempt was “The Comintern and the GPU” published in the November, 1940 Issue of FOURTH INTERNATIONAL.

The Night of the Assault

The attack came at dawn, about 4 A. M. I was fast asleep, having taken a sleeping drug after a hard day’s work. Awakened by the rattle of gun fire but feeling very hazy, I first imagined that a national holiday was being celebrated with fireworks outside our walls. But the explosions were too close, right here within the room, next to me and overhead. The odor of gunpowder became more acrid, more penetrating. Clearly, what we had always expected was now happening: we were under attack. Where were the police stationed outside the walls? Where the guards inside? Trussed up? Kidnapped? Killed? My wife had already jumped from her bed. The shooting continued incessantly. My wife later told me that she helped me to the floor, pushing me into the space between the bed and the wall. This was quite true. She had remained hovering over me, beside the wall, as if to shield me with her body. But by means of whispers and gestures I convinced her to lie flat on the floor. The shots came from all sides, it was difficult to tell just from where. At a certain time my wife, as she later told me, was able clearly to distinguish spurts of fire from a gun: consequently, the shooting was being done right here in the room although we could not see anybody. My impression is that altogether some two hundred shots were fired, of which about one hundred fell right here, near us. Splinters of glass from windowpanes and chips from walls flew in all directions. A little later I felt that my right leg, had been slightly wounded in two places.
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www.marxists.org...

The above information comes directly from MARXIST WEBSITES...

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Karl Marx didn’t invent the progressive income tax, but he was one of the first to articulate its usefulness in undermining the economic system he hated: capitalism. In fact, Marx said, “My object in life is to dethrone God, and destroy capitalism.” []According to Marx, and later Lenin, the advantage of a progressive income tax system is that it allows those in control to debauch the currency and make economic success a matter of luck and political connection, rather than skill or hard work.

As a side "benefit," the progressive income tax system is an excellent tool in promoting class warfare. FDR was famously quoted as having told two democratic senators in 1937 that using the progressive income tax to support claims of the rich not paying “their fair share” would be worth “at least 10,000,000 (votes).” And like our current denizens in Washington, he played class warfare to the hilt and into a three term presidency.
...

www.policymic.com...


In Cuba, the older generation knows, and remembers that Camilo Cienfuegos was in fact assassinated on orders from castro, and one of the Cuban officers that Castro ordered to murder Camilo Cienfuegos confessed, and explained what happened, but this confession is in Spanish. Castro ordered his death because Camilo was more popular than Castro himself, and Castro thought that Camilo would eventually take the power from fidel Castro.

Socialists and communists have turned against, and even murdered, or ordered the murder of other socialists and communists... This FACT doesn't, and didn't make any of them any less socialist or communist...

Originally posted by poet1b
Your definition of socialism does not state it is a form of government because it is not.

It is not "MY" definition...it is the true and original definition of socialism, which unfortunately socialists and other leftwingers have been able to change what socialism really is to lure people...

Definition of SOCIALISM

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods


2a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property

b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

www.merriam-webster.com...

I can post dozens of socialist websites which CLEARLY state not only that private property is abolished, but that the means of production cannot be owned, hence the people really have no power or control over the economy/infrastructure of a nation...

Originally posted by poet1b
Hitler was an old fashioned dictator backed by capitalists to bust German Unions.

Originally posted by poet1b
Oh, and GW was illegally put into office by the SCOTUS.

Occasionally in a close race a president that has less votes..

the Electoral College was not implemented recently, it was implemented by the FOUNDING FATHERS because they knew that a "dictatorship of the majority" would be a bad idea...

Even Thomas Jefferson said it...

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Thomas Jefferson quotes (American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826)

thinkexist.com...

Today’s presidential election is likely to be relatively close, at least in terms of popular vote totals. Should either candidate win the election but lose the overall popular vote, we will be bombarded with calls to abolish the Electoral College, just as we were after the contested 2000 presidential election. After all, the pundits will argue, it would be “undemocratic” to deny the presidency to the man who received the most votes.

This argument is hostile to the Constitution, however, which expressly established the United States as a constitutionally limited republic and not a direct democracy.

The Founding Fathers sought to protect certain fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of speech, against the changing whims of popular opinion. Similarly, they created the Electoral College to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections. This is why they blended Electoral College votes between U.S. House seats, which are based on population, and U.S. Senate seats, which are accorded equally to each state. The goal was to balance the inherent tension between majority will and majority tyranny. Those who wish to abolish the Electoral College because it’s not purely democratic should also argue that less populated states like Rhode Island or Wyoming don’t deserve two senators.

www.lewrockwell.com...

Originally posted by Southern Guardian
The Bank of Dakota is not a private organization of private account holders, it's a State bank created by the North Dakota government, funded by tax payer money.

I get it, now. It's a bank that's funded by coercion and theft. Yup, perfect example of a Socialist bank.

/TOA

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
The NAZIS were SOCIALISTS, they didn't just claim to be... ALL their programs were socialist, from Hitler's youths to everything in between...

You've got that backwards. The Nazis were not socialists, but Hitler did claim they were:

Hitler said in 1927, "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

(Source).

Hitler was lying. He later admitted his definition of 'socialism' was radically different; it did not really mean 'socialism' as everyone else understands this term:

In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term ‘Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not."

In 1942, Hitler privately said: "I absolutely insist on protecting private property ... we must encourage private initiative".

(Source).

So as you can see, Hitler was strongly anti-socialist as well.

The Nazis were a right-wing nationalist anti-communist fascists with populist policies and an anti-capitalist bias. Yet they never attempted collectivisation or a centrally planned economy. They privatised public services (the opposite of socialism) endorsed market competition, and never abolished private ownership:

Hitler believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical". Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals then the state could nationalize it.

Although the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control. Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished; nevertheless, Hitler's social Darwinist beliefs made him reluctant to entirely disregard business competition and private property as economic engines.

(Source).

The Nazis' preferred economic model was mercantilism.

Originally posted by Sankari

Hitler was lying. He later admitted his definition of 'socialism' was radically different; it did not really mean 'socialism' as everyone else understands this term:
...

Of course it was different... There are different branches of socialism, it doesn't make ANY of them any less socialist, just like there are different branches to communism, yet they are ALL communist...

Mussolini was also a fascist/socialist but his type of fascism/socialism was different than that of Hitler, yet this didn't make him any less socialist or fascist...

Your argument makes no sense, just because there are differences in all the branches of socialism and communism doesn't make them any less socialist, or communist...

And BTW, Hitler coerced industrialists to build not what they wanted, and what would make them more money, if they wanted to keep their factories they had to build and make what "was good for Germany and the collective".

Yes, there were industrialists that benefitted, mostly from the slave labor that Hitler provided by enslaving Jewish people, but they still had to make and build what Hitler wanted, not to mention that they would have been scared of the communists taking over which would have been worse than Hitler himself for these industrialists.

reply to post by Sankari


And btw, I see that you decided not to include EVERYTHING that he said about private property such as...

...On yet another occasion he qualified that statement by saying that the government should have the power to regulate the use of private property for the good of the nation.
11] Hitler clearly believed that the lack of a precise economic programme was one of the Nazi Party's strengths, saying: "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all."[12] While not espousing a specific economic philosophy, Hitler employed anti-semitic themes to attack economic systems in other countries, associating ethnic Jews with both communism ("Jewish Bolsheviks") and capitalism, both of which he opposed.

en.wikipedia.org...

The same source you used, yet for some reason you seemed to have decided not to post this fact.

BTW, I don't know how many times I have tried to explain this, but some people don't want to accept this fact... Stalin, a communist who believed mainly on "national communism", was against Lenin's "international communism." He saw Lenin, Trotsky, and other communists and socialists as a threat to his power, so he ordered their death... The same thing has happened between many other socialists and communists in power, from the castro brothers ordering the arrest, and they were going to publicly execute other socialists like Matos, and ordered the death of Camilo Cienfuegos, the only true poor man among the group of "revolutionaries" since all of the others came from wealthy families such as the castro brothers, fidel was a lawyer, and Che Guevara was a doctor... The same happened to many others, even in other socialist and communist regimes...

These are FACTS that although I can see many leftwingers don't want to accept, it doesn't change that they are FACTS.

Socialists and communists have turned against each other, and other socialists and communists who believe in other branches of "socialism, because it was a threat to their own version of socialism or communism.

BTW, ALL communists are also socialists, although not all socialists are communist. Communism is a form/branch of socialism.