More posts: Socialism
Selected posts on Socialism:
Why I Am a Socialist By Chris Hedges
Five benefits of not having money by Janet Surman
Brian Moore, Socialist Party USA Nominee on C-Span
Is Barack Obama a Socialist. or simply a centrist with integrity? By Paul A. Donovan
The ruling class is wealthy and we work for a living…
Libertarians and Socialists as Workers Must Unite by Lo
Dying to the World and the American Dream Lie
Workers need bailout plan – Fed payouts to mortgage banks are a crime
Venezuela: What a pro-worker government looks like by Trent Hawkins
The happy slave syndrome by Peter Rigg
How can socialism become reality?
Jesus Christ, Revolution and Socialism (subtitled)
War: the socialist attitude by Gwynn Thomas
The Audacity of Revolution VS The Hope of Chumps by Manila Ryce (video)
The world crisis of capitalism & the prospects for socialism Part 1 By Nick Beams
Sicko by Michael Moore (full movie)
Venezuela’s Chavez: Socialism still our goal by Federico Fuentes
Thought for food by Janet Surman
Socialism Is the Only Way by Malcolm Martin
Do You HATE Government? A 10-Step Program for Libertarians by Bob Maschi
Socialism in a nutshell by World Socialist Party (US)
Quiz time: Are you a Libertarian? How about a Populist? Maybe a Socialist or a Green? by Lo
America in Crisis: The Liberal Challenge and the Prospects for Socialism by Susan Rosenthal
Who controls the world: the Illuminati or the Market? by Adam Buick
Socialism in America Equals Hope for the World By Paul A. Donovan
Socialism from my old blog
Filed under: Dandelion Salad News or Politics, Economy, Labor, Politics, Socialism, Trade | Tagged: Socialism on Dandelion Salad, The Economy Sucks and or Collapse
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
Socialism in a Nutshell
What is socialism?
so·cial·ism: Pronunciation[soh-shuh-liz-uhm]
–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
It’s like this people. You pay taxes, the government provides social services. That’s socialism.
Education: You pay taxes > government produces the money for the school > and distributes it accordingly.
Social Security: You pay taxes > government produces the money for a person > and distributes it accordingly.
Roads/Infrastructure: You pay taxes > government produces the money for roads/buildings > and distributes it accordingly.
National Security: You pay taxes > government produces the money for our military/police forces > and distributes it accordingly.
HealthCare(as it is/will be… either way): You pay taxes > government produces the money for your healthcare costs > and distributes it accordingly.
DISTRIBUTES TO WHO? LETS SEE SHALL WE.
Education. Everyone (social). Still have a choice for private/home school.
Social Security: Everyone (social)
Roads/Infrastructure: For everyone (social).
National Security: For everyone (social).
Healthcare is tricky. Now, it is only for who needs it. Why is healthcare different than every single other thing our government does for us? Is there a reason? Should you have to afford to be healthy? That’s like saying a mentally handicapped person that is a janitor and not so handicapped as to live on his own shouldn’t be able to get treatment if he can’t afford it.
With everything else being social in our country, it is only the greedy that keep with tradition alive. If everyone receives treatment and were treated as equals, then the people that can AFFORD (monetarily) good health would have to wait in line… like everyone else. So, I call you people elitists.
Common arguments include:
Q: Who will pay for all this?
A: You! Like you pay for roads, and the military, and your social security.
Q: Will the government tell me which doctor I HAVE to see?
A: No! Does the government tell you which road to drive on? Does the government tell you which public school your child must go to?
Q: How will we be able to afford EVERYONE being healthy?
A: The same way that your insurance company does except the government is FORCED by THE PEOPLE to keep us healthy; as opposed to insurance companies, you pay lots of money while they pay people to find ways not for you to receive treatment. The government isn’t in it for profit, at least not monetary profit. The profit is that the government (which is our voice and in turn is us) is that all citizens are healthy and not sick, suffering, and/or dying.
Q: Is this like communism?
A: Good and bad are not black and white. Hitler was an BAD horrible person, but you can’t deny that he was a very GOOD orator. Murder is wrong. Killing in defense of your life is ok. See where I am going.
HAVE A GREAT ELECTION.
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What? 1/4 of our GDP is comprised of Government spending, and that is not Socialism? Sure its not stragiht up communism, at least not yet, but I would hardly consider our present economic system free market capitalism by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure, its corporation centered, and a person who knows how to work the system can make a great deal of money, but in the end the Banks owns the corporations and the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve controls the economy and the economy controls the politicians, all of whom come back to their districts bragging about how much money they brought into the area. The politicans who play along get the money, and re-elected, which is their job, to get re-elected.
Even in Socialism, people have jobs and they work, the corporations are a conduit for socialist policies as they are contracted through the government or inticed through incentives to do certain things, whether those things are to build and new aircraft carrier or a new transmission line for a wind farm is irrelevant. The market conditions are not determined by free people and free markets but by government.
When a corporation fails, frequently the government will come in and bail them out. This is true for both republicans and democrats. Reagan bailed out Crysler and Harley Davidson for example. I bet that the Government will pick up the tab for UAW employee retirement plans too.
Look what Bush does… Bush comes into office saying that he want every American to own a home, and does something to lower the requirements to get a home loan, then we magically have this housing boom, then the bust and we are talking about bailing out homeowners and banks who have either gotten in over their heads or made bad loans.
Clinton did the same thing for the internet, seeing that it would be a great growth area for american technology, the government and banks created conducive conditions for the dot coms and all was great until the bubble burst. At least only the investor class got stung with that one.
Reagan did it with the S&Ls, and now they are doing it with Wind Farms, Solar, biofuel and all of the other green technology junk. That’s why they are trying to sell us wind farms, saying that somehow its magically going to put gas in our tanks or fuel oil in the furnace. Of course if you notice, both Obama and McCain never mention the most practical solution right now which would be syngas from coal.
The trouble with socialism in a democracy is that our current form of democracy is mob rule and you can always expect the mob to react emotionally like a herd of sheep running from one wolf into the entire wolf pack. Take the war on drugs, the war on terror, the cold war and of course Global Warming. The mass media is always telling us that there is some urgent problem that need heroic efforts to resolve, and the majority of people always believe them and the solution to the problem always causes more secondary problems, that the really smart banker types anticipated because they were the ones who created the primary problem, lnowing that the mob would react like a bunch of sheep.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe in government, and I believe that we all have social obligations. I am all for helping those that are less fortunate such as the mentally retarded and the unfortunate souls who are bonafide lunatics and need to be in insane asylums. I am all for locking up criminals in humane jails and prisons. I am all for taking care of the elderly, and providing kids with either a college or vocational education. But socialism beyond that always seems to get messed up.
To some degree socialist enterprize could be effective, but there is always going to be some competing interest, and the battlefields are always going to be politics, and things are just going to get drawn out and end up being ineffective unless you have a strong leader with a good plan. For example, Adolf Hitler was one of the most effective socialists because he was able to unite Germany under an idea that superceded socialism, racial nationalism. While Mussolini failed when he tried to unite Italy under the concept of Italian Nationalism. Tito of Yugoslavia was more of a socialist that either Hitler or Mussolini, was less effective than both because he had to be more of dictator to counteract interal stife in his nation, as well as Soviet and Western Influences.
France is perhaps the most successful examples of socialism, but the French have always been a very advanced nation with a strong national identity. Obviously the cracks in the system have started to appear as recent immigrants to France are demanding ever greater egality with the native French. Also in the 70’s and 80’s the French were dedicated to building a strong self reliant infrastructure including nuclear energy and high speed rails so they would not have to be dependent on foriegn trade. Still the French Franc was in serious trouble before they switched over to the Euro.
Hugo Chavez is making an excellent run at socialism, of course having a lot of oil helps, still last couple of years inflation in Venezuela has been murder even though they conduct most of their foriegn trade in US dollars and Euros. Still, he has yet to prove that Socialism can be a success, even though I am impressed with his efforts.
Take a country like the United States, we are way too diverse to be united behind any serious issue. Say to follow France’s lead and dedicate ourselves to building an oil free infrastructure by electrifying our rails and building a high speed train network. This is something that we could do in less than 10 years. It would reduce our need for gasoline and reduce carbon emissions for the Global Warming believers, but it won’t happen because the regional air carriers like Southwest will stamp their feet and cry, Boeing will too, as will the car companies and you end up with a big political mess just for trying to solve a real world problem.
Instead they give us something like Wind/diesel electricity to solve a non-existent problem like Global Warming and now that Global Warming has stopped T. Boone is telling us that it will help the price of gasoline. BS!!! Think wind power is just a Democrat deal? Nope. I’m a Texan and we are a very Red State, and I live in a very red Congressional district. My very conservative congressman wrote the local news Paper the other day bragging about how he got billions BILLIONS of dollars for our district to put up wind farms. Hell, why don’t we just give our congressmen X dollars to spend in their district, or give the State X dollars to invest as they please?
But it will be nice, they tell us. It will bring all sorts of growth and progress into out area, never mind that a lot of us liked things the way they were. So this growth and progress means that we have to build new housing, wider roads and the money trickles on through. Landowner class makes even more money, working class stays employed, and the big box retailers get to put in another Starbucks. Yeah! We all win, right? But at what cost?
The value of the dollar depends on the Government’s ability to collect taxes, and even that is not enough to justify the current value of the dollar, while congress shows no signs of ending their spending spree, so what is the solution? Growth! We have to grow our economy! Well, one person can only be so productive, so they import a bunch of foriegn labor and joila, we become a multicultural country, with even less national unity, less common history and culture than we had before, with more strain on our natural resources. Also, we are forced to maintain an empire to secure foreign buyers of our currency, of course we have to pay to maintain the empire, and so on and so forth. This is why we have this big push for globalism now.
Sooner or later, we are going to have to take Tito’s or Stalin’s example with a strong leader running a police state or we are going to collapse.
Don’t worry about me, or my opinion though, I’m sure that you will get your green socialism, plus a new carbon trading market to boot. I say don’t worry about me, because my opinions are always on the wrong side of history, or at least have been since the revolutionary war, and even then I would have lost out on the slavery issue. I will lose this one too, but hopefully I will still be around when the entire system implodes, so I can say “I told you so.”
Johnnyb, obviously you haven’t read any of the posts listed here. You might want to do some more research before saying that “what we are living … in the US is Socialism.” We live in a capitalistic country, run by corporations. Just look at the number of lobbyists influencing our elected officials from corporations.
Socialism is very much ethical. It is not authoritarian. You’ve been taught wrong.
Learn more about it.
This is socialism. This, what we are living right now in the united States is socialism.
Like it? Do you really like central economic planners? Do you really like an idiotic and corrupt government thinking that they have all of the solutions?
No, socialism sucks because its unethical. Socialism can only be implemented by force and is destructive towards personal freedom.
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]
Thanks, Gary for being open minded and for trying to learn more about Socialism. You are correct that in Socialism ALL the people are worthy. Socialism gets a bad rap mostly because it is misunderstood. That’s exactly why I made this archive of posts.
Lo, I’m not 100% sold on Socialism yet but i’m going to study it some more. All I know is from what i’ve learned so far Socialism CARES about all people.
[...] What is Socialism? (archive of posts) [...]