5 ms·

I have also found that socialist positions get downvoted here. I'd recommend that people read the works of socialists (Marx, Rosa, etc.) because most of my nega

by ixtli 9y ago

I have also found that socialist positions get downvoted here. I'd recommend that people read the works of socialists (Marx, Rosa, etc.) because most of my negative associates came from liberal insinuation I received growing up in the US :) The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia (which, btw, hasn't been anything remotely socialist in a very very long time.)

MaysonL 9y ago
And yet there seems to be a fair amount of support here for guaranteed basic income / guaranteed employment.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Basic income is a capitalist solution - a patch to keep the whole thing going. It has long been supported by people on the economic right (e.g. Milton Friedman's negative income tax).
- ixtli 9y ago
  As the other commenter said: it's a capitalist solution. But as well I find that the concerted effort to paint the word 'socialism' as a bad thing implicitly in america is exactly why the effect you observe happens. I think, from talking at length with lots of people from various places, background, and of various identities that americans are pretty amenable to socialist policy we just have some cultural peculiarities that make it hard to talk about. This is why bernie's platform vs trump's platform get more and more interesting to me as the majority continues to rebel against _how_ trump governs. It shows me that people really do want a progressive populist but there are a lot of bizarre little artifacts in our culture that keeps them from accepting certain concepts at face value. I guess what I'm saying is that socialism needs rebrand AND people need to be encouraged to discover the rich American history of socialism from the union workers in Appalachia that were attacked by our government for striking, to harriet tubman, mlk, and eugene debs.
microcolonel 9y ago
> The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia It might also have something to do with the roughly 85-100 million people whose deaths can be directly attributed to policies enacted in support of socialist utopia during the 20th century. Advocates of socialism like to say that they're anarchist, or that they're anti-authoritarian; but enacting socialism inherently requires authoritarian measures, because it is so rarely the will of competent people to receive as little as incompetents. In cases such as the red terror, competence and success are explicitly terrorized and destroyed in service of the goal. Socialism is authoritarian because at least one person, myself, is unwilling to have his tools and life work taken from him, and given to a fool who will squander them just as that fool squandered the opportunity to attain them.
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  Socialism is about improving the lot of workers, and ordinary people and giving them more power, for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss. In that respect the USSR has very little to do with socialism, more resembling state capitalism. See Chomsky: The Soviet Union vs Socialism. https://chomsky.info/1986____/ https://chomsky.info/1986____/
  - ixtli 9y ago
    yes. the person you're responding to is getting caught up in a very narrow style of authoritarian communism which honestly i can understand being repulsed by! But, as i was saying in the original comment: hundreds of years of work has been done by thousands of scholars and activists to develop marxist theories. the person you're responding to paints leftists as a bloc, all trying to accomplish the same thing! If only!
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss. Which means of production will they own? The ones that previously belonged to their rightful owners? Who really owns the means of production if the only way to seize it is through the state? How can that process be anything except authoritarian? If I have a farm, and you intend give it to billy who usually only turns the manure, what non-authoritarian means will you use to enact that goal? The USSR has everything to do with socialism, as does the Khmer Rouge, as does the Great Leap Forward, as does Venezuela's oil socialism. Noam Chomsky can write on Lymphoma vs. Melanoma all he wants, it doesn't make the United Soviet Socialist Republics have any less to do with socialism. If you think socialism is something else, you are thinking about something that isn't socialism. Democracy is the enemy of socialism. You and I both know that your socialist utopia requires killing or imprisoning me, so let's not be coy about it.

by ixtli 9y ago

MaysonL 9y ago

And yet there seems to be a fair amount of support here for guaranteed basic income / guaranteed employment.

icebraining 9y ago
Basic income is a capitalist solution - a patch to keep the whole thing going. It has long been supported by people on the economic right (e.g. Milton Friedman's negative income tax).
ixtli 9y ago
As the other commenter said: it's a capitalist solution. But as well I find that the concerted effort to paint the word 'socialism' as a bad thing implicitly in america is exactly why the effect you observe happens. I think, from talking at length with lots of people from various places, background, and of various identities that americans are pretty amenable to socialist policy we just have some cultural peculiarities that make it hard to talk about. This is why bernie's platform vs trump's platform get more and more interesting to me as the majority continues to rebel against _how_ trump governs. It shows me that people really do want a progressive populist but there are a lot of bizarre little artifacts in our culture that keeps them from accepting certain concepts at face value. I guess what I'm saying is that socialism needs rebrand AND people need to be encouraged to discover the rich American history of socialism from the union workers in Appalachia that were attacked by our government for striking, to harriet tubman, mlk, and eugene debs.

microcolonel 9y ago

> The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia It might also have something to do with the roughly 85-100 million people whose deaths can be directly attributed to policies enacted in support of socialist utopia during the 20th century. Advocates of socialism like to say that they're anarchist, or that they're anti-authoritarian; but enacting socialism inherently requires authoritarian measures, because it is so rarely the will of competent people to receive as little as incompetents. In cases such as the red terror, competence and success are explicitly terrorized and destroyed in service of the goal. Socialism is authoritarian because at least one person, myself, is unwilling to have his tools and life work taken from him, and given to a fool who will squander them just as that fool squandered the opportunity to attain them.

Synaesthesia 9y ago
Socialism is about improving the lot of workers, and ordinary people and giving them more power, for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss. In that respect the USSR has very little to do with socialism, more resembling state capitalism. See Chomsky: The Soviet Union vs Socialism. https://chomsky.info/1986____/ https://chomsky.info/1986____/
- ixtli 9y ago
  yes. the person you're responding to is getting caught up in a very narrow style of authoritarian communism which honestly i can understand being repulsed by! But, as i was saying in the original comment: hundreds of years of work has been done by thousands of scholars and activists to develop marxist theories. the person you're responding to paints leftists as a bloc, all trying to accomplish the same thing! If only!
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss. Which means of production will they own? The ones that previously belonged to their rightful owners? Who really owns the means of production if the only way to seize it is through the state? How can that process be anything except authoritarian? If I have a farm, and you intend give it to billy who usually only turns the manure, what non-authoritarian means will you use to enact that goal? The USSR has everything to do with socialism, as does the Khmer Rouge, as does the Great Leap Forward, as does Venezuela's oil socialism. Noam Chomsky can write on Lymphoma vs. Melanoma all he wants, it doesn't make the United Soviet Socialist Republics have any less to do with socialism. If you think socialism is something else, you are thinking about something that isn't socialism. Democracy is the enemy of socialism. You and I both know that your socialist utopia requires killing or imprisoning me, so let's not be coy about it.