The defamation of socialism

So as you look around the world now, which government do you, using your spidey sense, trust the most. Or distrust the least, might be better.

I found this an interesting take on what happened in Soviet Russia, but I think an even better description of what happened can be found in “The Gulag Archipelago”, from someone who actually suffered the betrayal.

Solzhenitsyn wrote:
“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes… That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations… Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.”
— The Gulag Archipelago, Chapter 4, p. 173

There is a pattern described here of how ideology works, and the pattern is being repeated again in our time. Just as then, people seem to be oblivious of the fact, even the evildoers. It is as though they are possessed.

The best systems available are democracies with strong limits on the powers of the government and robust tools for removing politicians.

So for example, increasing the length of time that a president or prime minister can serve would be strictly forbidden.

An example of robust tools, is the removal of Mussolini by the Grand Council of Fascism in 1943. When things got really got out of hand, they still retained ways of getting rid of the dictator. That significantly deduced the damage to Italy and the Italian people. (non-democratic example, I know :-$ )

Of course, if put your faith in democracy, you have to trust that the average human will do the right thing.

Yes, like National Socialism that has zero to do with socialism by any definition.

It’s often the case that politicians don the label of socialism to garner whatever appeal it may offer.

But it’s also prudent to be aware of the ongoing propaganda campaign to defame socialism by pointing to the USSR or the Nazis, neither of which had any socialistic aspects whatsoever.

Or Venezuela which neither puts the people in charge of production nor issues wealth to its citizens by virtue of having the largest oil reserve on the planet.

If Denmark tops every list of measures of prosperity, mainly due to its oil and lack of Islam, then how much more should Venezuela?

down with socialism.jpg

Government spending is an attribute of socialism and not necessarily the equivalency. However, it’s impossible to have a socialistic system without government spending.

The accretion of capital is an attribute of capitalism and the dispersal of capital is an attribute of socialism.

Even then, at least 50% of monarchies are social and fairly prosperous. Norway is a monarchy.

Norway is a unitary constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government, wherein the King of Norway is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of government. Power is separated among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, as defined by the Constitution, which serves as the country’s supreme legal document. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Po … government

The UK is a monarchy and Canada is technically under the Queen, so you’re living in one lol. Not so bad, eh?

I agree that a monarchy is not the way to go, even if it’s purely ceremonial.

The best democracies are those where people are encouraged to have informed debates on subjects, which are completely transparent as to where the people (or the information) are/is coming from. This is, of course, difficult because many people rely more on their uninformed “opinions”. I believe also that those who do have power should be held accountable, which also means that the job must be worth the hassle. :wink:

They do and did.

All 55 counties in West Virginia voted for Bernie, but Hillary won the state.

3 million more votes were cast for Hillary, but Trump won the election.

In 2000, Gore won 1/2 million more votes, but lost the election.

The people have excellent spidey sense, but the US does not have democracy.

There is also propaganda meant to demonize academia and intelligentsia causing people to believe there is virtue in ignorance.

“I realize you’re under a bit of a penalty because all our professors are stupid liberals, but that’s the best we can do.” rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015 … ain_folks/

That is spouted on AM radio and youtube daily.

And on here with this post speculating that “communists” have taken over academia: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=194702#p2720670

The first step is to attack and marginalize academia:

Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism

The totalitarian regime doing this is the plutocratic corporations, and Rush Limbaugh is their Goebbels.

Yes, there is an ongoing attack on academia, but the counter-attack seems to be falling into the trap that ideologies on both sides fall into. If you give your opposition what they’ve been giving you, you could adopt your own system of ideology and be in danger of being just the other side of the coin. I get the feeling that people know that the right-wingers are doing this, but are not aware that left-wingers tend to use the same strategy. You know when someone on the right oversteps the line of being beyond an appropriate reaction. Do we know when the left overstep?

I think the Orwellian warning is valuable in assessing the present situation because there is a tendency to confuse the whole issue, so that simple working people are left trying to work out what on earth is going on. There are many people who regard themselves as left-orientated who have now become confused when looking at the battlefield. It is hard to find the people you actually agree with.

Yeah. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are important for a democracy.

It has more democracy than a lot of places.

You guys don’t appreciate what you have.

Oh yes, I hate that the left focuses on Russian collusion and appealing to grave threats to humanity through climate change while legitimate perils of poverty and lack of education and healthcare exist. Their ploy seems transparent to me, but I hope it’s not too transparent to everyone else. I wonder if Chomsky is more sly than I thought. Maybe he doesn’t buy climate change, but knows it’s the surest way to slay the real dragon.

Green is the new Blue. The easiest way to make the country Blue is to first make it Green :wink:

For half a century Chomsky battled the corps with nary a mention of climate, then suddenly he jumped on the climate bandwagon and shutup about his most passionate crusade, only in the last handful of years.

But the working people of the future will be better equipped to handle it. We’re in a transition period from scarcity to abundance and such demands social reforms that those of old just can’t embrace because all they know is hardship and what it takes to overcome it.

All I have that you don’t have is sunshine… and the ability to go out and waste ammunition anytime I want. Canada tops the US in almost ever measure except prisoners and number of people thinking the devil is real.

Canada ranks 7th in happiness, the US ranks 18th.
Canada ranks 13th in life expectancy, the US 32nd
Canada ranks 4th in freedom, the US 53rd.
Canada ranks 6th in democracy, the US 25th.

Once again, only focusing on the negative. Focusing on what “the other guy” has. No appreciation of what you have.

Once again, only focusing on relative prosperity “well wage slavery is bad, but be thankful you’re not a real slave, so let’s not aspire for more, but be happy with what we have.” Focusing on what the other guy has to justify your own suffering. No motivation to prosper, but only motivation to perpetuate suffering in the name of appreciation.

Chomsky talked about the proliferation of religion as a means for people to take their focus off of this world and concentrate on the other. “Well don’t worry about this place or bettering yourself, just focus on the next world.”

Don’t worry about this world…
Be thankful for what you have…
Now bend over and grab your ankles!

No thanks, I don’t want that philosophy.

Suit yourself. It’s your life.

The “Fallacy of relative privation” is the dismissal of arguments due to the existence of more important arguments. Saying the US doesn’t have it as bad as other countries seems to fit this, especially in response to the argument that the US could have it better. The US having room for improvement isn’t a failure to appreciate what it does have.

There is something wrong with a system that boils down to just two representatives to figurehead one of two political agendas that they choose, and even if more people vote for one, the other gets in. Even when the more popular does actually get in (I wonder how much it resembles random chance), it’s unclear whether it would have been any different if they hadn’t. It’s still all just lobbying by rich people anyway… To call that democracy is generous even if there is some truth to it. The format of it all too, is exactly like a sports game - support your team and watch them try to win, then resume your life as normal. You could get less democracy, but you could get more! An argument in its favour is that at least the two choices you’re ultimately left with have to be offering something at least partly preferable to the populace that they are to be governing, but a skeptical point might be that it is just another autocracy like any other undemocratic rulership - only it’s a rich, powerful and well connected one. I.e. the democracy thing is just PR, when really things are just being run for you and happen to be going relatively well. A lot of the reason why the PR of Socialism or Communism hasn’t done well is because the rich, powerful and well connected countries cut them off in addition to the infrastructure that they’re left with being poor to begin with. We all know that the US was founded on genocide, but somehow it’s only remembered and reprimanded when poorer, more economically isolated countries with different PR do it.

In short, you have to wonder how much politics is just smoke and mirrors, and how much it’s all really to do with resources, infrastructure, trade agreements and reputation. To phyllo, I’m not flatly saying it’s all the same anyways, but the degree to which it is all the same anyways is not to be underestimated. The ways in which it’s not all the same anyways - that at least seems to matter in theory, and I would like to test whether it actually does.

:laughing: Nearly fell outta my chair laughing :obscene-drinkingcheers:

I gave him a link to the Democracy Index and he knows that the US ranks 25th out of 167 countries. He still makes this bizarre statement: " … but the US does not have democracy."

What can one say? Count your blessings. Get therapy.

Various forms of democracy, communism, fascism, monarchy, etc have been tried and tested.
You don’t think the differences have been shown? It’s just PR?

What I find about the whole discussion today is that it is taking place on the wings and people in the center are becoming more and more confused. The secret agendas of the various people involved are not so secret as they would have us believe since it is often just an overdoing of what everybody does. If you don’t have a political agenda, you are criticized by both the right and left, even though your agenda may be just getting through the day.

I’m not familiar with all these colour definitions, after all, I’m a Brit in Germany, and I’m not so sure they actually represent anything that we can grasp.

Chomsky is fighting for the lost cause of socialism, which only works when the country is thriving. The problem is that when the country is thriving, most people don’t want socialism. It is when the country isn’t prosperous that people turn to socialism, but that only means that they fall foul of the secret agendas of their leaders, who are often dictators.

I’m not so sure they will be better equipped. The illusion of continual growth is slowly losing its appeal. People are finding that the elderly are continually and evermore falling into poverty because their precautions have proven to be inadequate, or haven’t kept up with the cost of living. There, and of course, single parents, who have to work at three jobs to get through, is really where the society is failing, rather than with those who have a regular job. In Europe, the children that suffer under the poverty of their parents have a chance to get back on the ladder, which seems to be less possible in the USA. So that may be an area that needs more attention.

How do the extremes criticize the center for not having an agenda? I’m confused.

Oh, well, I can help:

Red = all the red parties in history = communists, nazis, various totalitarians, the RedCoats defeated in the Revolutionary War in America (the Tories), class feudal structured societies, Republicans (republics), etc. Essentially, top-down governments.

Blue = worker’s rights = socialism, democracy, unions, etc. Bottom-up governments.

Green = climate and environmental awareness.

Green has been merged with Blue, but now appears to be splitting into factions where Blue = economic conservatism + social liberalism (like Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton) while Green = progressive = economic and social liberalism + environmental concern.

That’s an interesting point. Yes, that’s what happened: from 1930 to 1980 america enjoyed the prosperity of socialism, but the prosperity caused people to let their guard down while the Reds slipped in the back door. Perhaps taxation and regulation became somewhat overbearing too, so the Reds had some justification. But the cycle continues with the disaster the Reds have made that will usher the Bluish Greens into power.

Even Milton Friedman admitted that perpetually growth isn’t a requirement.

Welfare for the rich demands low interest rates (QE, money printing) so the elderly can’t earn interest on savings.

Yes, Bernie Sanders intends to fix that.