Page 22 of 49 [ 777 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 ... 49  Next

DarthMetaKnight
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 16 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,105
Location: The Infodome

26 Jan 2018, 1:31 pm

Darmok wrote:
That moment when "progressive" American socialists discover that National Socialists really are socialists, and decide, well, maybe National Socialism isn't so bad after all.

The Nation and the Nazis

... [Left-wing Nation witer] Donna Minkowitz describes a secret meeting organized by alt-right figure Richard Spencer that she crashed in mid-November at an organic winery in Maryland. Upon arrival, Minkowitz writes that she was surprised to find that the discussion centered not only on the usual brown-shirt Jew-hating you might expect from neo-Nazis, but also on what she says is a “new emphasis on economic issues” that she found “seductive.”

Why seductive? Because the white supremacists’ views on economic issues sound a lot like, well, like views espoused by the Nation and Democratic party progressives. In what could pass for Bernie Sanders campaign literature, she quotes Spencer saying “I support national health care” and railing against “the trillions spent in insane wars.” Minkowitz also quotes Spencer blasting the GOP tax plan as “stupid .  .  . Reaganite nostalgia” and supporting a universal basic income. Another speaker decried that everything is seemingly becoming “corporatized and capitalized.” Wait—is this a white supremacist conference or a New York Times editorial board meeting?

She quotes another speaker exclaiming that “2018 is going to be the year of leftists joining the white-nationalist movement!”


http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-natio ... le/2010847


I could just as easily point out all the racists who support capitalism. The KKK are pro-capitalist. The YouTube user Fringe Elements is a capitalist racist. Same goes for Hans-Hermann Hoppe ... and Murray Rothbard ... and Stefan Molyneux ... and r/physicalremoval.

Nearly ever racist site is full of capitalists who rant about "Jewish communists" and black "welfare bums". In fact, the black welfare bum stereotype is one of the most common racist stereotypes about black people.

If you try to refute the Nordic model using the Hitler card, you're gonna have a bad time.

Image


_________________
Synthetic carbo-polymers got em through man. They got em through mouse. They got through, and we're gonna get out.
-Roostre

READ THIS -> https://represent.us/


Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

04 Mar 2018, 12:11 am

Image


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!


Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

12 Mar 2018, 11:18 am

Late-stage socialism in action, in what formerly was one of the wealthiest countries in South America.

Weaponizing hunger is a new low for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

On May 20, Venezuela will hold presidential elections. These elections will not be fair and do not meet basic standards of transparency, according to the vast majority of the Venezuelan opposition and members of the international community. They are poised to re-elect President Nicolas Maduro for another six-year term.

The Maduro government is using the dire conditions of most Venezuelans to stay in power.

Ninety per cent of Venezuelans reported not having enough money to purchase food in a nationwide survey. The vast majority of Venezuelans eat less than three times a day and more than half have lost an average of 24 pounds.

Income-related poverty has increased to 87 per cent of households, with 60 per cent in extreme poverty. In a context of hyperinflation and scarcity, more than a third of households report not purchasing any source of protein while more than 40 per cent of households rely mostly on tubers as the basis for their dietary needs.

The government clings to a discourse that apparently favours the poor, building on the memory of the oil bonanza and the social policies erected by the Bolivarian Revolution. As the country’s economic crisis unfolded in the past five years, these policies have deteriorated or have been eliminated altogether. The few that are left are used as mechanisms of social control and political coercion.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... t-nicolas/


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!


auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,605
Location: the island of defective toy santas

13 Mar 2018, 2:51 am

it has been my experience, that people who are not gifted with excess brainpower and energy [IOW regular working stiffs and not Horatio Algers], tend to do better under quasi-socialist regimes, than they would under untrammeled capitalism.



bethannny
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

Joined: 3 Aug 2016
Gender: Female
Posts: 211
Location: Ontario

13 Mar 2018, 8:01 am

Americans seem to be obsessed with the word ''socialism'' seeing it entirely in a negative light. You do not realize that government funded programs can reduce poverty, bring down crime and improve the lives of the poorest citizens.

Unfettered capitalism leads to a permanent underclass that wants to kill you. It's no wonder gated communities have exploded in popularity in the U.S and a couple of other countries who are cutting down their social programs.

Hilariously enough given all of this there is still a backlash against abortion, access to abortion and birth control. Don't you know that, that is the one thing in the long run that keeps an angry poor population at bay.



Goldilocks
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

Joined: 7 Nov 2017
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Posts: 228
Location: The woods

13 Mar 2018, 9:08 am

See I'm all for state help and benefits because if it didn't exist people w/ disabilities would suffer considerably

Americans are strange and seem to eat up a lot of 'socialist' propaganda.

I mean I get the fear because of their (USA) constant need to be in some form of conflict will inevitably cause paranoia but socialism IS NOT communism

Socialism is basic universal healthcare, whereas conservatism is 'if you get sick you die. Tough tits, next time be born rich'


_________________
It has all happened before, it will probably happen again.
Nothing is new in the face of the Universe.


auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,605
Location: the island of defective toy santas

14 Mar 2018, 12:06 am

American style conservatism is IMHO chock full of dark-triad traits, it celebrates them in fact.



Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

01 May 2018, 3:37 pm

May 1: Victims of Communism Day | Ten Films to Honor the Dead

Perhaps as many as a hundred million people were victims of communism in the last century, deliberately rounded up, shot, starved, or simply forced to march into snowy wasteland until dead, exterminated by communist regimes.

The most comprehensive statistical source for democide statistics, Death By Government, puts the toll at 106 million. Necrometrics estimates that Stalin and Mao alone killed 60 million. Wikipedia, defining democide more narrowly, puts the toll between 21 million and 70 million. The Museum of iCommunism estimates 100 million murdered. The Black Book of iCommunism estimates 80 to 100 million....

[W]hile socialists blissfully celebrate their worker’s paradise this May Day, indifferent to the human cost of their political philosophy, I propose that well-meaning people consider watching a film on the subject, both out of respect for those lost and to be intellectually armed against the ignorance of those still in denial. Here are some recommendations.


http://missliberty.com/may-1-victims-of ... -the-dead/


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!


SZWell
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 23 Aug 2017
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Posts: 397
Location: Orlando, FL

01 May 2018, 5:02 pm

Ironically, just read a good piece on Socialism... If it hasn't been posted here already

By Nate Robinson

Quote:
SOCIALISM AS A SET OF PRINCIPLES

Image
We’re not talking about a social engineering system but a set of social ideals…

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON
Nearly half of millennials describe themselves as sympathetic to “socialism” and not terribly fond of “capitalism.” Yet if you asked each of them to explain the mechanics of how a socialist economy would function, I doubt many would have especially detailed answers. Jacobin magazine’s ABCs of Socialism consists of answers to skeptical questions about socialism (e.g. “Don’t the rich deserve their money?” “Is socialism pacifist?” “Will socialism be boring?”) but notably “How will socialism actually work?” is not among them. With twelve million Democratic primary voters having cast ballots for a self-described “socialist,” isn’t it concerning that nobody has explained in detail how socialism will “work”? Embracing a new economic system without having a blueprint seems like it could only ever lead to something like Venezuela’s collapse.

I think this criticism seems very powerful, and comes from an understandable instinct. But it has a mistaken view of what socialism actually means to the people who use the label. In the 21st century, for many of its adherents socialism is not describing a particular set of economic rules and government policies, some clearly-defined “system” that must be implemented according to a plan. Instead, it describes a set of principles that we want the economic and political system to conform to. Bringing the world into harmony with these principles will require experimentation, but that lack of rigidity is an asset. Because 20th century “socialist” states attempted vast social engineering projects, there is a tendency to think of “a socialist economy” in engineering terms. Capitalism is an engine, with its parts all working together to produce an effect. Socialists come along and say that the engine should be designed entirely differently, with a totally different set of rules in order to produce better effects. If this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about “capitalism versus socialism,” then it’s completely right to ask for an explanation of how the proposed alternative works. We’d be very suspicious of someone who said they had reinvented the combustion engine but refused to tell us how the alternative would work and insisted that before trying it we destroy all of our combustion engines.

But this is a poor way of thinking about what is being advocated by socialists. Books are a better analogy. We have, in our hands, a badly-written manuscript and are trying to edit it into a well-written manuscript. But there’s no blueprint for the well-written manuscript. We create it through a process. Delete a passage here, insert one there, move this around, move that around. And in doing this, we follow a set of principles: we want it to flow well, we want the reader not to get confused, we want all our sentences to be forceful and precise. Those principles aren’t handed down from on high, and there are lots of different ways we could write the book that would produce something satisfactory. But asking at the beginning of the process “Well, what will the finished product look like?” makes no sense. If we could present a blueprint for the finished book, we wouldn’t need a blueprint because we would already have finished the book.

Socialism can be conceived of similarly: socialists are trying to make society better, so that its operations meet a particular set of ideal criteria. Here, I want to quote Leszek Kołakowski, the Polish scholar of Marxism, who was a vicious opponent of communist governments but drew an important distinction between socialism as a system and an ideal:

[It would be] a pity if the collapse of communist socialism resulted in the demise of the socialist tradition as a whole and the triumph of Social Darwinism as the dominant ideology….Fraternity under compulsion is the most malignant idea devised in modern times… This is no reason, however, to scrap the idea of human fraternity. If it is not something that can be effectively achieved by means of social engineering, it is useful as a statement of goals. The socialist idea is dead as a project for an ‘alternative society.’ But as a statement of solidarity with the underdog and the oppressed, as a motivation to oppose Social Darwinism, as a light that keeps before our eyes something higher than competition and greed—for all these reasons, socialism—the ideal, not the system—still has its uses.

By his last years, Kołakowski was bitterly disenchanted by the left to an extreme I find off-putting. But even he offered high praise for the great socialists of early 20th century Europe, and the ideals they embodied. They “wanted not only equal, universal and obligatory education, a social health service, progressive taxation and religious tolerance, but also secular education, the abolition of national and racial discrimination, the equality of women, freedom of the press and of assembly, the legal regulation of labour conditions, and a social security system. They fought against militarism and chauvinism [and] embodied what was best in European political life.”

Here we begin to see what socialist principles actually involve. How can they best be summarized? Kołakowski suggests it’s “fraternity,” but that seems too limited and too squishy. It does start there, though: with a feeling of connectedness and compassion for other human beings. “We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is,” as Kurt Vonnegut said. Many socialists begin with that feeling of “solidarity” with people whose lives are needlessly hard and painful, and a sense that we are all in this together.

Socialism also has a firm idea of the kinds of deprivation that this “fellow-feeling” leads us to care about. Everyone should be meaningfully free to have the most fulfilling life possible. “Meaningfully” free means that they need to be able to have that life in reality rather than just in theory: if every child who can afford it can take a trip to Disney World, but some children cannot afford it, then not everyone is free to go to Disney World and it would be cruel and false to tell a poor child that they were free to go if they wanted to. We can debate the ingredients of a fulfilling life, but for libertarian socialists like myself they include a high degree of personal autonomy and the ability to shape your own destiny.

This is what leads socialists toward the idea about “collective ownership of the means of production,” which is often cited as the core tenet of socialism. The reason socialists talk about “ownership” so much is that “ownership” refers to decision-making power. If I own a book, it means I am the one who gets to decide what happens to it. I can write in it, sell it, or throw it away. The instinct that “people should be able to shape their own destinies” leads socialists to endorse what I think is the core meaning of “democracy,” namely the idea that people should have decision-making power over those things that affect them. If we think people’s choices should be valued, then they should be included in decision-making that affects them.

Hence all this business about the “means of production.” The workers in an auto plant are strongly affected by the decision as to whether or not it should close and move production elsewhere. Yet because they do not “own” it (i.e. have any decision-making power), the choice will be made without the participation of those it will impact most. This violates the core principle of democracy. The whole reason socialists are critical of the concentration of private property in few hands is that it constitutes a concentration of socially consequential decision-making power. Say I have been renting my apartment for 30 years. I have made it my home, I have loved it and improved it. Yet I don’t have decision-making power over what happens to it, because I am not the owner. The building can be sold and I can be evicted, without having any right to participate in the decision. It’s not that I am necessarily entitled to get my way. But democracy does entitle me to have a share in the decision-making proportional to my stake in the outcome. Free market capitalism ensures no such participation; the ones who decide what happens are the ones who own the most resources.

This is also why authoritarian “socialist” regimes don’t deserve the name. The whole purpose here is to increase people’s control over their circumstances. If you’re simply vesting that control in a government, and people have no say in that government, then there’s nothing socialistic about what is going on, unless the term is meaningless. Collective ownership means collective decision-making power. Without democratic decision-making, then there’s no collective ownership. There’s just government ownership, and governments themselves only conform to the principles of socialism to the extent they are democratic. In fact, “democratic socialism” should be a redundancy, because socialism should consist of the application of democracy to all aspects of life.

There are plenty of different ideas for how to make the world more democratic, to ensure that people’s lives aren’t being controlled by mysterious private or state forces that they have no control over. Socialists have a variety of proposals for economic democracy, such as the Universal Basic Income, worker cooperatives, and mandating profit-sharing. But the democratic principle isn’t just about economics. It’s also what turns socialists into feminists and anti-racists. Sexism and racism are outside forces that are acting on people against their will, making their lives more difficult on account of demographic characteristics that they cannot choose. The principle “everyone should have the most fulfilling possible life” means that women shouldn’t be harassed at work, transgender teens shouldn’t be bullied, and people of color shouldn’t face unique structural disadvantages.

One may think that by identifying ideas like “giving everyone a maximally fulfilling life” as core principles, I am draining socialism of meaning. After all, who doesn’t want people to have fulfilling lives? If socialism just means “things should be good,” everyone is a socialist. But that’s part of the point: socialism tries to apply values that are essentially universal. What differentiates the socialist and the non-socialist is the “apply” part. Everyone talks about democracy and freedom and fulfillment, but socialists are concerned to figure out what those things would really entail, and ensure that they are meaningful components of everybody’s lives, rather than only existing for some. The United States is “democratic,” and people are “free.” But when the public’s views don’t affect the government’s policies, and when people can’t get vacation time to go and take advantage of their freedom, these concepts are not being fully realized. Socialist principles may sound like platitudes, but when taken seriously they have radical implications: they mean a world without war, crime, prisons, and vast wealth inequality. A socialist world would be very different from our current one.

The principles themselves, though, don’t contain any definitive prescription for how to get there. My comparison with the “edit and rewrite” process may imply that I am advocating “piecemeal reforms” or “baby steps.” But that’s not what I mean by experimentation. Experimentation doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be bold. It just means constantly checking to make sure you’re upholding the principles. Preferring principles to systems doesn’t mean you can never be a revolutionary, it means making sure your revolution is actually advancing your principles rather than “breaking a lot of eggs but never getting an omelet.” Nor does it mean that “socialist” today means “social democrat,” i.e. capitalism with a welfare state. It could mean that, if that were the best we could hope for. But genuine socialism is idealistic: the perfect application of its principles would only occur in a utopia, which means the work will never fully be done.

The millennial embrace of socialism, then, does not mean that millennials are trying to implement some complicated new economic system that they do not understand. It means that they measure any economic system by the degree to which it is humane and democratic, and they are angered by the degree to which our current one fails people. It means that they reject selfishness and believe in solidarity. And it means that they are determined to help each other build something better, whatever that may be.


_________________
Following my footsteps


Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

01 May 2018, 7:14 pm

Remembrance of May Days Past

I woke up this morning and realized it was May Day — and was unutterably relieved things have changed from the May Days of my childhood.

May Day was a holiday — no work/school — being International Worker’s Day. I remember dreary days with nothing on the TV but the might of the USSR and its satellites, in fantastic display.

Troops and groups of workers, flying red flags paraded before podiums ornamented with red paraphernalia, a seemingly invincible might, a proud and unquestionably enthusiastic multitude of workers and soldiers, of farmers and peasants. It seemed the whole world was submerged in red for the occasion, and our own local idiots would demonstrate and commit acts of senseless violence, which was the reason I resorted to the TV. Mom wouldn’t let me go out....

Usually, the unctuous and respectful narration in Portuguese said things along the lines of “look upon this parade and despair.” “Now we see the blah blah missile, an improvement on the whatever missile and a symbol of Soviet industry and science.”

Or it could be the new tractors or the new tanks that were thus described, and always, always, in the narration, was the assumption that the numbers coming out of the USSR were real, and that it was a model of creativity, influence, and efficiency. The May Day displays convinced everyone — more or less — that the future was inevitably communist. How could the disorganized, muddled, flailing efforts of capitalists match it? Didn’t we know how often we worked at cross purposes? Look at all the Soviet workers united! And look at how proud Soviet workers and soldiers were!

This was the seventies, and in 20 years all that might, all that “efficiency” and all that pride would be revealed for what they were: a hollow shell, a projection of force abroad, a shout of defiance from a dying, sclerotic regime, upon which the dead hand of the past and the even deader hand of Marx weighed like the agonies of death.

However, the scene setting was fantastic. And because no contrary words made it out of the totalitarian hell that was the USSR, the world believed it.


https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/remembran ... days-past/


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!


auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,605
Location: the island of defective toy santas

02 May 2018, 12:10 am

it needs to be repeated, why can't there be "capitalism with a human face"? (instead of the usual greedheaded GOP gargoyle spouting "I got mine, so FU!") the only major rightie who actually believed in [the otherwise oxymoronic] "compassionate conservatism" IMHO was the late Jack Kemp, which made him something of a bad joke among his fellow righties.



VegetableMan
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,208
Location: Illinois

03 May 2018, 6:23 pm

auntblabby wrote:
it needs to be repeated, why can't there be "capitalism with a human face"? (instead of the usual greedheaded GOP gargoyle spouting "I got mine, so FU!") the only major rightie who actually believed in [the otherwise oxymoronic] "compassionate conservatism" IMHO was the late Jack Kemp, which made him something of a bad joke among his fellow righties.


The short answer to that is that humans are greedy and power hungry. The only way that will change is if there is a massive revolution of the human mind. No political system, no amount of social engineering, will ever produce a totally equalitarian society.


_________________
What do you call a hot dog in a gangster suit?

Oscar Meyer Lansky


auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,605
Location: the island of defective toy santas

03 May 2018, 9:27 pm

VegetableMan wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
it needs to be repeated, why can't there be "capitalism with a human face"? (instead of the usual greedheaded GOP gargoyle spouting "I got mine, so FU!") the only major rightie who actually believed in [the otherwise oxymoronic] "compassionate conservatism" IMHO was the late Jack Kemp, which made him something of a bad joke among his fellow righties.


The short answer to that is that humans are greedy and power hungry. The only way that will change is if there is a massive revolution of the human mind. No political system, no amount of social engineering, will ever produce a totally equalitarian society.

it is just that common decency has become passé, like it went out with liberal republicans 2+ decades ago.



Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

09 May 2018, 1:36 am

Image


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!


AngryAngryAngry
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

Joined: 11 Feb 2016
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 496
Location: New Zealand

09 May 2018, 4:08 am

Yep stop the Socialist Bail Outs of the Banks!! !



Darmok
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,030
Location: New England

11 May 2018, 7:38 am

As inflation devastates Venezuela, artists make purses and paintings out of bills

Economic crises like Venezuela's upturn lives – but that doesn't mean creativity disappears. Some Venezuelan artists are making a point, and art, out of the country's now near-worthless currency.

Inflation has been a challenge in Venezuela for years, but over the past 12 months, the bolívar has become more valuable as an art and craft material than in the bank. Just look at Jesús Campos, who can sell a purse crafted out of hundreds of folded bolívar bills for about $10 – when the notes alone wouldn’t have been enough for a cup of coffee. Another artist in Venezuela is using the currency as his canvas and selling his painted bolívares online. The government has acknowledged money isn’t stretching as far anymore – but President Nicolás Maduro places the blame on “mafias” trying to take down Venezuela’s socialist movement. He’s vowed to slash some of the zeros off of prices – and wages – by June. Few economists see that as an effective solution. “We might be able to count prices easier,” says one Caracas-based economist of the government’s plans. “But if inflation continues at the same rate, those new bills will soon become useless.”


Image

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/America ... t-of-bills


_________________
 
There Are Four Lights!