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What is socialism?

America has had a long and contentious history with the word ‘socialism’. For conservatives, most often it’s a dirty word – even unpatriotic. For many liberals, it’s about social justice and compassion. However, for better or worse, it remains a red line within the electorate.

[rt.com]

Other than when I began this group as I was advocating for Jill Stein of the Green Party, although still Marxism, the majority of my time here has been spent on advocating for you members to take a hard look at educating yourselves on Socialism and begin to support it. More preciously, at Marx's theory of democratic socialism. I've made various attempts at this with the WSWS new source, their related party, (Socialist Equality Party) and post from Professor Wolff who can break down the 3 basic types of socialism in simple terms. [democracyatwork.info]

Socialism, like capitalism, mean different things to most people and countries. You simply can't argue against this fact, other than which would be more beneficial to society, which political side is right or wrong, only who is actually better educated on the 2 issues. Here in the US, republicans have their view, democrats their view on capitalism. Then theirs everyone in the middle who are mostly left out of the discussion. They tend to be forced into one of those sides to have an opinion.

Most of these people share the same views but are divided by propaganda that condition them into separation falling into one of the divided sides. Those views that we commonly share are mostly related to the aspect of socialism. We are at a point where we need to separate ourselves from the managed perceptions being forced onto us and pick a side. Currently our population in the US is beginning to lean towards socialism. Quite frankly, rightfully so, finally. Only that same propaganda is turning people towards the wrong type of socialist groups and parties, in my opinion.

Both capitalism and socialism have been experiments in our society. Capitalism with a substantial amount of more time. But also with a long history of failures that have entailed keeping it alive coming off the backs of the working class. Quite frankly, parts of the upper middle class and small businesses also. When ever tax cuts are made and austerity measures are heightened, these parts of society also, seemingly, blissfully join the middle class in supporting the benefits that go to corporations and the ruling class capitalist. Blissfully? Well, they tend to always support the very people taking advantage of them the most. And as Wolff would describe to us, capitalism isn't much different at all compared to the centuries of 2 other systems before that have reeked havoc on our societies. While socialism has always been confronted by the global capitalist propaganda to ensure a false perception of failures.

Which Peter Lavelle attempts to do right after Caleb Maupin represents Marxism. Maupin does a great job of pointing out some of the main aspects of socialism, short of explaining the democratic nature of the working class Marx's theory represents. Such as democracy in the workforce where employees have a say on how products are made, what type. For an example, during the first year of this virus. With a genuine socialist government (more on that right after this) workers could have drastically curved the hospital crowding by voting on changing production towards breathing machines and many other supplies in various sections of the country with honest information on what we were facing. I shouldn't need to detail how we wasted weeks if not months on being justly informed. I'll argue we still haven't been.

Then Lavelle chimes in with a deceptive statement that everything is essentially centralized by the state. Well, only to a conservative planting a false narrative wanting to scare you as though were talking about China. Who did a better job of managing the virus? But my point is, he took the democracy of Marxism out of the discussion and Maupin never followed with a rebuttal afterwards to explain that. Where if you have a well functioning electoral system such as Venezuela, a democracy votes in a government they trust for a system that works for them. The problem with us in the US is that a vast amount of the voters don't recognize we don't have that here. We're limited to 2 parties who both control their candidate outcome, which some 80% of the population don't trust, but keep voting within their structure. Nearly 5 decades of the very same policies reeking havoc around the world and our country falls apart under our feet while we're firing at each other from rabbit holes they created for us.

He, Lavelle, again later leaves you only 2 choices, state or oligarchs. I'll argue we in the US are already looking at an oligarchy with a state they works for them. They sure the hell aren't working for us, our foreign bothers and sisters, or the planet. We are kept basically at bare minimum while more and more people fall through the cracks each year. Democracy as a society benefit is purposely left out again.

Jones finally gets to chime in a make the point missing.

Lavelle makes the most important statement though as he backs up what I found during the 2016 primary cycle. There's a lot of republicans willing to go with socialism. I don't know if Lavelle was as negative towards trump and republicans as he is liberals here, but he doesn't seem to be the normal conservative here.

All in all it's a great discussion to get us thinking.

William_Mary 8 May 22
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4 comments

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1

All ya can do is try; put the information out there and hope some small portion will trigger the desire to learn more and question old ideals.

0

All governments, societies and families are socialist, just not enough.

When you apply the sense that through society many aspects of our functions come from citizen participation, whether voluntary or not, this should be obvious. Unfortunately, many people refuse to see this reality due to propaganda conditioning and perception management. We must explain this to our peers.

By "just not enough" is the reality that those people should recognize that there are people and leaders who hold themselves above the rest who are taking advantage of everyone else and using the system to vastly benefit themselves. We must explain this to our peers who keep supporting them.

1

If we took away all the socialist benefits of our capitalist infrastructure, most people would go bonkers.

KateOahu Level 8 May 22, 2021
1

Here's one take...

phxbillcee Level 10 May 22, 2021

Terry Bodanski
, former Armor Crewman at U.S. Army (2003-2008)
Answered December 12, 2017

Guaranteed public education

Public transportation

Fire departments

Police departments

Public libraries

Every branch of the US military

Roads & highways

Social Security

Medicare/medicaid

Public, not private prisons & jails

Public hospitals

The Veterans Affairs Administration

Public universities

Public parks

Public toilets

Public drinking fountains

Public parking

Public everything.

We live in a hybrid society, along with every other society in the world to their own varying degrees. I do not think a country in the world exists without, at the bare minimum, police, firefighters, libraries, and public roads. Socialism essentially boils down to the things that the citizens demand and the leaders must deliver lest they be deposed. These deliveries can only be done through taxation, hence socialism is when everyone puts capital in the pool for the benefit of all. Here’s one people rarely take note of; state lotteries. That, my friends, is purely socialistic even though the results are capitalistic windfalls to the winner.

It’s impossible in practice to be a society of purely private ownership, and the ones that have tried full public ownership have generally been disasters. The misconception that everyone sees day in and day out is the equating socialism to communism, in which the state controls the means of production and nothing else. Socialism =/= Communism =/= Collectivism. None of those words are synonymous and one of them has nothing to do with economics, yet some people cannot, or refuse to understand the distinction.

Full disclosure; I am not of the left. I am not of the right. I’m a centrist liberal and I’m one that fails to see the harm in the scale of socialism common throughout liberal democracies. In fact, every incident of this country nearly collapsing that doesn’t involve war have been capitalist bungles, not socialist ones.

@phxbillcee

{It’s impossible in practice to be a society of purely private ownership, and the ones that have tried full public ownership have generally been disasters.}

If you mean socialism by public ownership. The flaw in this analogy erases the interferences by the westernized private supporters brought onto the public/socialized. You can't justly leave this factor out and genuinely arrive to the conclusion that socialized governments, especially those in Central and South America, have been brought down or drastically hampered from reaching a sense of fruition without outside interference. Therefore their experiments in this endeavor can't truly be a measure of disaster.

There are many examples of publicly and worker owned entities that are quite successful.

China as a state run communist country has over the past 30 years built the fastest growing middle class society and making strides to combat its 19th century flaws and social issues. Taking a page out of Venezuela's book on the society front.

I'll argue Venezuela's biggest problem today, since Chavez even, is that they didn't/haven't taken enough power from the oligarch's, especially on the manufacturing aspect. The oligarch's/private industry there is holding the country back both within manufacturing and information fronts. Which again is caused by pressure from outside global capitalist. And even against those odds, Chavez greatly reduced poverty in Venezuela. Maduro recently accomplished building over 3 million homes for lower and middleclass citizens started by Chavez and vows to move on to 5 million. Despite all efforts to bring this country to its knees since 2000, a vast amount of its citizens still support their government. Approximately 80% of who get no recognition from our MSCM. Every child can get 3 meals a day with healthcare. The only reason healthcare there is hard to manage is because of illegal sanctions being imposed on them. If they didn't have to rely on Cuba, Russia, and China to help in so many areas, left alone to trade and use their resources as the US does, they would be a fine example to how a socialist country can prosper on its own.

But there's an agenda for us not to witness such a thing. So their gas, oil, and gold are stolen and handed over to criminals so Maduro can't provide for his citizens.

It's just not as simple as you put it when the underlining issues are exposed. Next they'll tell you how many people communism has killed while leaving out the death and destruction 2 ancient systems committed and the current system is committing daily now. Exacerbated since 9/11. It is not the communist or socialist running around the globe working with terrorist and murdering people, or destroying entire cities and countries.

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