What is this thing called socialism?

Cosmic Charlie · Aug 20, 2012

catholicbybirth said:
Oh, is this what you are wanting to U.S. to adopt? Well, it has been tried, but each time it has become corrupt, rather like our system has become corrupt. But when the socialists become corrupt the poor suffer even more atrociously than under our system.

I'm getting old. My words are failing. In the U.S. we have a system in which goods are bought and sold and the demand, or lack of it, for goods is what controls the price. I can not for the life of me remember the word. Can someone help me here. I do believe it begins with a "c".

Janice

Here's thing:

Everywhere Capitalism has been tried it always become monopolistic and socially controlling.

This is referred to as the cancer stage of Capitalism. It happens in every capitalistic system, was foreseen by none other than Adam Smith himself who advocated severe regulation to control it and has happened twice in American history.

We are at that point again.

The prices of things are no longer set by supply and demand but rather by pricing fixing by monopolistic international bankers and mindbogglingly rich families.

Example:

The price of oil.

At least a 1.25 at the pump can be traced to unregulated speculation. The worldwide demand of oil is down thanks to more efficient use and the world economy. Production in the US is actually up over the last 4 years yet the price keeps going up.

The market is being manipulated.

This is unsustainable and only has one end unless it is put under control (which is highly unlikely given the bought and paid for Congress and the totally corrupted court system)

Complete economic implosion.

The next investment bubble that bursts, with the American people sick of 1 trillion dollar bail outs

That's the end guys.

JimR-OCDS · Aug 20, 2012

Brooklyn Knight said:
I have no problem living in a socialist democracy, but as is now, it's nothing more than a pipe dream.

The you would've supported the Nazi Party?

Jim

MikeK · Aug 20, 2012

JimR-OCDS said:
The you would've supported the Nazi Party?

Jim

Dude, it's 9am and I'm at work.

Oh well, down the hatch!

JimR-OCDS · Aug 20, 2012

MikeK said:
Dude, it's 9am and I'm at work.

Oh well, down the hatch!

Well, the Nazi Party was a democratically elected Socialist Party, which the poster claimed he's in favor of.

Jim

Needing_Grace · Aug 20, 2012

JimR-OCDS said:
Well, the Nazi Party was a democratically elected Socialist Party, which the poster claimed he's in favor of.

Jim

Except, in spite of the name, the Nazi Party was fascist, not socialist. It's like the People's Republic of China...like the people are really in charge...

Sent from my iPhone using CF

MikeK · Aug 20, 2012

JimR-OCDS said:
Well, the Nazi Party was a democratically elected Socialist Party, which the poster claimed he's in favor of.

...except that the National Socislist party was not a Socialist party, in spite of the name. Note that they were strictly anti-union, and that private industry - even private industry critical to the war efforts, like Krupp, were often privately held. Furthermore, durring the Night of The Long knives, Strasserists were targetted specifically because they protested against Hitler's failure to adopt an anti-capitalist stance.

Erose · Aug 20, 2012

MoreCoffee said:
Well no. Marxism is quite distinct from socialism. Marxism is usually called communism. It's main thesis is that all of the means of production are to be in the hands of the proletariat and that private property is outmoded, a thing to be repressed in favour of communal ownership. Neither of these things is the agenda of socialism as it exists in the nations I have previously mentioned:

Germany

Norway

Sweden

Finland

Australia

Canada

Communism is socialism taken to its full definition. The countries that you outlined are not pure socialistic countries.

MoreCoffee · Aug 20, 2012

Come on, Erose, socialism is not communism and nobody is going to believe it is unless they do not know what the two words mean.

Leap · Aug 20, 2012

Brooklyn Knight said:
Guy, what's so hard to understand? Why can't a society have both a socialist and capitalistic system?

You mean a mixed economy? That is what we have now in Britain....and it is no better than Socialism and Capitalism.

Antigone · Aug 20, 2012

JimR-OCDS said:
The you would've supported the Nazi Party?

Jim

Bottoms up!

Cosmic Charlie · Aug 20, 2012

JimR-OCDS said:
Well, the Nazi Party was a democratically elected Socialist Party, which the poster claimed he's in favor of.

Jim

1) The Nazi Party never won a free, democratic election in Germany. In fact they never took a majority of the Riechstag until after they took over the government via a combination of terror, severe voter suppression and illegal influence by the head of State.

2) The NAZI may have the word Socialist in there name but they were in no way shape or form socialist. They were a death cult in the guise of a political party. They included the name socialist because in Germany, being a socialist country, socialist was a much more palatable name than "Fascist death cult craziods"

See "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for more on this the formation, naming and actually political activities not this.

So lets get our fact straight before we invoke:

************ NAZI RULE ****************

Automatic loss of argument

and

EVERYBODY DRINK

*************************************

MoreCoffee · Aug 20, 2012

Cosmic Charlie said:
...
See "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for more on this the formation, naming and actually political activities not this.
...

Excellent book, great recommendation. I had an old copy that I read in the 1980s and I recently bought the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition.

And yes, the person who introduced NAZIS into the conversation lost immediately.

benedictaoo · Aug 20, 2012

Cosmic Charlie said:
Here's thing:

Everywhere Capitalism has been tried it always become monopolistic and socially controlling.

This is referred to as the cancer stage of Capitalism. It happens in every capitalistic system, was foreseen by none other than Adam Smith himself who advocated severe regulation to control it and has happened twice in American history.

We are at that point again.

The prices of things are no longer set by supply and demand but rather by pricing fixing by monopolistic international bankers and mindbogglingly rich families.

Example:

The price of oil.

At least a 1.25 at the pump can be traced to unregulated speculation. The worldwide demand of oil is down thanks to more efficient use and the world economy. Production in the US is actually up over the last 4 years yet the price keeps going up.

The market is being manipulated.

This is unsustainable and only has one end unless it is put under control (which is highly unlikely given the bought and paid for Congress and the totally corrupted court system)

Complete economic implosion.

The next investment bubble that bursts, with the American people sick of 1 trillion dollar bail outs

That's the end guys.

That is exactly the thing.

benedictaoo · Aug 20, 2012

Leap said:
You cannot have "Socialism based on the Christian message". Socialism is almost as opposed to the state that Christianity promotes as is Capitalism. Choosing a lesser evil is still choosing an evil. Socialism has not strayed as far as Capitalism has, but it has still strayed a long way and is no place to call home.

A Christian world has to be pre-modern. It has to be about institutions (such as marriage, family, community and most importantly Church, the body of Christ, for example). It has to be about tradition, rather than doubting what we are bequeathed and seeking something new. It has to be about faith, rather than seeking to doubt and rationalise, as if it is for us to measure God! Socialism provides for none of those thing, instead standing opposed to them. It replaces the natural institutions with the State. It replaces faith with rationalised plans. Finally it replaces tradition with a drive for innovation.

No, sorry, Socialism is too alien for Christianity to truly survive there.

that's exactly what JPll said...

benedictaoo · Aug 20, 2012

Leap said:
If Distributism is used to promote a continued consumerist market (ie, one based on the principle of discard/procure/use/discard/procure) it remains unhelpful. Thus distributism alone is not itself a solution - it requires a change in our society from a consumer based stance to a custodian based stance. One where we swap discard/procure/use/discard/procure for inherit/hold-in-trust/bequeath. Without that change in principle, Distributism suffers the same problems as Capitalism and Socialism (specifically, that it would remain in opposition to the pre-modern, and thus just another stooge of the Liberal agenda).

Distributism would work just fine. It will promote, grow and encourage all those institutions you mentioned earlier and it's Church friendly, Church approved.

Simply put, its a world where, you sell the hammer and i'll sell the nails and we work for ourselves and its a family business and we do not have to commute or leave our families for lengths of time or have the government all up in our beeswax. Its kinda like the Vietnamese do when they come here, they all work in the family business.

Erose · Aug 20, 2012

MoreCoffee said:
Come on, Erose, socialism is not communism and nobody is going to believe it is unless they do not know what the two words mean.

Let us look at the two then shall we. The main difference is that communism is a political/economic model, and here we are looking at their economic models since that seems to be what we are looking at.

Both systems have the following in their definition: That goods and services produced in the economy should be owned publicly, and controlled and distributed by a centralized organization or government. Here is the difference though, socialism says that goods and services should be distributed according to the amount of production one puts in (most of you probably didn't know that did you?). Communism on the other hand says goods and services should be distributed evenly throughout society, no matter what one contributes.

But that being said there really isn't much difference between the two economic models and like I said before communism is socialism in its purest form.

Erose · Aug 20, 2012

Cosmic Charlie said:
1) The Nazi Party never won a free, democratic election in Germany. In fact they never took a majority of the Riechstag until after they took over the government via a combination of terror, severe voter suppression and illegal influence by the head of State.

2) The NAZI may have the word Socialist in there name but they were in no way shape or form socialist. They were a death cult in the guise of a political party. They included the name socialist because in Germany, being a socialist country, socialist was a much more palatable name than "Fascist death cult craziods"

See "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for more on this the formation, naming and actually political activities not this.

So lets get our fact straight before we invoke:

************ NAZI RULE ****************

Automatic loss of argument

and

EVERYBODY DRINK

*************************************

I think the Nazi rule has been established by former Nazis and pushed by those who wish everyone to forget what happened in WWII. Granted some take it overboard but if the shoe fits...

You know what they say those who forget the past (The true purpose of the Nazi rule) are doomed to repeat it. Anyway that is my conspiracy theory.

benedictaoo · Aug 20, 2012

Now it makes sense... so socialists are the Republicans and Communists are the democrats. We're pretty screwed.

MoreCoffee · Aug 20, 2012

We're not screwed but some are quite unaware of the meaning of words. It is easy to remedy ignorance by education. Take up a dictionary of political philosophy and read what 'socialism' and 'communism' mean. For a working definition of socialism see the original post, for a working definition of communism I offer the following

Communism (from Latin communis - common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order. This movement, in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by communist parties) and the "western world" (countries with capitalist economies).

Marxist theory holds that pure communism or full communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals. The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninism adds to Marxism the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to secure all political power after the revolution for the working class, for the development of universal class consciousness and worker participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism.

See Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

benedictaoo · Aug 20, 2012

We have elements of both. So what if its not *the* definition... it doesn't have to be.

I long been saying that these parties are on the same team... the goal is for the evil powers that be to control us in all things accept for our morals, they could care less about those. They want our money, not our God.

What is this thing called socialism?

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