Socialists & progressives, are you National Socialists/Progressives?

Can't tell if trolling.

 

Hahahaha. Thank you. Beautiful. To the nice "socialists", this is the guy who would win, and you'd all be dead.

 

If you ignore the condemnations of the socialists calculation debate... then sure.

 

I'd like to see him try. Upon opening my door he'd find himself staring down the barrel of a very big and very powerful gun.

 

Our Founding Fathers did an excellent job at the convention with our federal Constitution. It is only their posterity that slacked.

 

Well, I wouldnt call myself a socialist, more like social democrat, but yes, I do think socialist elements should be nationaly oriented. Its a bad thing that national socialism got tainted by nazism, because redistribution on a national scale is ideal. On an onternational scale, it is unsustainable and downright idiotic.

 

Why would everyone else be dead?

 

That is true. People get too caught up in emotional appeals. They don't analze the good and bad of a government system, but just automatically claim it's bad because there was one bad leader.

 

That is true. People get too caught up in emotional appeals. They don't analze the good and bad of a government system, but just automatically claim it's bad because there was one bad leader.

 

Can't speak for Socialists, while I do agree with some of it, I am not a socialist per say. I am a progressive Democrat. And by progressive I mean we should be keeping up with the times as needed. Ideally I support full national health care, not the watered down version we have now before us, I also support education and social programs that keep those wanting to work working, and help those unable to work to either find employment or get the help they need to live. I support raising the minimum wage as needed to stay with the cost of living. I think every one should be taxed fairly. The more you make, the more taxes paid. I support workers rights and unions, free speech, right to bear arms and a woman's right to abort if she chooses to. I support equality for every one, right down to gay marriage and adoption. We should keep capitalism going but in a truly democratic progressive way which is fair to every one.

 

Fortunately for us, our Founding Fathers did an excellent job at the convention, with our federal Constitution and only enumerated sufficient socialism, to provide for the general welfare and common defense.

 

Once again, for the moronic western, wanna-be "socialists" out there. Socialism is "labor in control of the state, with state in control of the means of production". Not "anything done by a large state apparatus that benefits the collective on face value". I just hope the majority of you don't owe 10s of thousands for a college education that seems to have served zero purpose.

 

Actually, socialism is a requirement for States and Statism to exist, simply providing for a Power to Tax and fund a public sector, is a form of socialism and not capitalism.

 

Hey, he doesn't represent me. The guy doesn't actually know what socialism is.

 

Simply resorting to special pleading for your Cause is no way to inspire confidence in your sincerity.

 

My own personal preferred utopian ideology. I believe in an ideal world, designed from the ground up, libertarian market socialism would be my utopian ideal. Unfortunately we do not live in a world I can design from the ground up. So there needs to be a practical path from where we are now, to a point I want us to go to. I cannot see any reasonable practical path towards libertarian market socialism. I can easily see a path towards more authoritarian stalnist or maoist forms of socialism, but I prefer capitalism to the nightmares of stalinism.

The problem, as it has always been, is that capitalism is FAR more durable and adaptable than marxists ever give it credit for. The idea that the natural evolution of history will see the collapse of capitalism, and the rise of radical democratic communism, has been shown to be complete nonsense. The only path towards socialism that has ever shown itself to be viable, is vanguardism. Where the vanguard leads the way towards socialism, but on the way, must combat the forces of capitalism to get to socialism. Because obviously, the capitalist class will not just give up their property willingly. So what you get is extreme violence. Vanguards by their existence are opposed to the idea of radical democracy, as the vanguard is the new elite which rules in order to bring socialism about. On top of that, if they hope to beat the forces of capitalism, they are forced into even further centralization of power, as war always leads to further centralization of power. During that war time, any form of atrocity is justified as being "in defense of the revolution." In a world of perpetual revolution, acts committed in defense of the revolution don't end when the original civil war ends. Any person who speaks out against the path a socialist vanguard has taken a country are marked as enemies of the revolution, and we all know the rest of that story. It is how you get the gulags, the great purges, the Chinese reeducation camps, murder of intellectuals, doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc in China and cambodia. The list of despicable crimes goes on.

So what we are left with is a choice between authoritarian communism or capitalism where people at the very least have the illusion of choice. Capitalists want to control the capital, they don't care about the other choices people make. In that scenario, I choose capitalism with all it's flaws, and just hope to mitigate those flaws by passing sensible government regulations and laws to address market failures and distorted incentives brought about when negative behavior is incentivized when it becomes profitable(healthcare is a perfect example, because it is profitable for people to get sick, stay sick, and spend lots of money getting better. There is no incentive to change that, because it is profitable, even if far from optimal). I guess that makes me an anti-capitalist leftist, who is even more strongly anti-marxist. I am still hoping for some alternative which I see as not only desirable, but also as obtainable!!

 

What if the public sector does things like use the military and law enforcement to protect the property and profits of capitalists, as our public sector currently does? What if it uses similar apparatuses to protect patents, copyrights, pass laws to protect corporate profits, pass laws to reduce competition for capitalists, etc. This is once again a vast misunderstanding of capitalism(something pretty much every radical capitalist I know of does). People who define themselves as capitalists, are actually free market fundamentalists, who for whatever absurd reason define capitalism as the free market. When they are of course entirely distinct ideas. Capitalism is about the means of making goods, providing services, etc being privately owned by people with capital, who use their capital and ownership to create and accrue even more capital. That system can exist in congruence with some form of reasonably free market, but certainly doesn't have to. It can just as easily exist in congruence with a highly regulated market, especially a market regulated to favor capitalists(like our current system). But capitalism has NEVER existed in congruence with a truly free market. So defining an organically created system(meaning unlike marxism you can't claim something isn't capitalism because it doesn't meet the criteria dreamed up in the minds of men, because the definition of capitalism is created by simply observing capitalism) by insisting it have a characteristic, which it has never actually had(not ever), is intellectually bankrupt nonsense. Capitalism is no more in keeping with free markets and a lack of government, than socialism.

 

If I were the grand benevolent wizard and could shape society to anything I wanted and control the impulses and actions of every participant I might choose Communism. A stateless classless society where everyone gives freely out of concern for the community. That's really the only way that could ever exist though.

It's durable and unstable, but as you point out resilient and has increased the size of the pie and made all those who participated better off.

 

I know and every time I here a socialist say that I ask them to go to the middle of nowhere Alaska or Canada and see if they can get more out of their labor than they can selling it to someone else.

 

In economic terms they'd technically be better off, they'd get the full value of whatever they did, there'd be little to no value, but it'd be all there's to wallow in.

 

There is of course a much simpler solution, which is self-employment. Or collectives within a capitalist system. A socialist need not remove themselves from a capitalist system to avoid having the product of their labor stolen(in their opinion). They can do it just fine within the confines of the current system. However, the question for a socialist would then be, whether they care about the same thing happening for the people around them. If one believes capitalism involves theft, it is reasonable that they not be satisfied by avoiding the theft of their own labor, but would want to stop that theft in general. Unfortunately, the only alternative I have seen actually tried is to have the state even more obtrusively and clearly steal the product of ones labor. I don't see how that is an improvement.

 

That is because labor has never controlled the state in a capitalist system. Voting is not control if you can only pick from who the elite present as options. We could draw names out of hats and get better representation at this point, for even in their ignorance, they would at least have the nation at heart, which is more than any can say as to the current "intellectuals" in charge. DC consists of those who don't care about workers, and those who claim to but are as wealthy as the others and believe in handouts vs jobs. Labor has no one on their side in modern America. No one. Of course such a system will go nuts. Modern America allows only the elite or statists at the table, and statism doesn't equal what's best for workers. Just as socialism only allows workers and statists at the table, it is just the opposite side of the coin. When it comes to the market, labor on an individual basis isn't as powerful as wealth, so to balance that you need a government where wealth isn't as powerful as labor. And in America, the representation of labor is nowhere to be found.

 

I'm a national anarcho-syndicalist. This thread convinced me.

 

I just want my piece of the pie and be able to eat it on a smooth, level, playing field. But if I don't get my piece of pie, I'm willing to artificially level the field but taking it from the rich.

 

So basically, we need to constantly fight government theft of our income, but "just move to the middle of nowhere" when it comes to business' theft of the full productive value of our labor?

You realize the two are the exact same thing, only one is being done by government and one by business, right?