Meaninglessness of "socialism"

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Does not count. It was pre Industrial Revolution. Various schemes of communal living have been tried, going all the way to the earliest Christian communities. None of them are Marxist or Fabian. They all have one thing in common though; they all failed. Human nature is inherently selfish and all communal schemes will fail for that reason.

ruveyn

1) Please don't deliberately take my sentences out of context to make them ambigious and interpret them in the most banal of ways. I was clearly refering to the idea of socialism preexisting Marx by a centrury. Editing out context and offering pretentious remarks is no substitute for intellectual analysis.
2) a. I'll play your game - though. Robert Owen's cooperative movement was an example - it set up a community in New Harmony. While - in the long run - an empirical failure, it was a pre-Marxist socialist society.
b. The Paris Commune (1871) - before the thugs of Europe decided to deciminate the experiemental society - was a socialist community. Karl Marx wasn't the unchallenged intellectual head of socialism at the time of the Commune and even disapproved of the Commune's strategies. If you want to be snide, yes this wasn't "a century" before Marx. But it was still (more or less) a Pre-Marxian socialist society.

I notice total abscence of any reference to workers councils, participatory democracy, or worker self-management - all quintessential in libertarian socialism, ultraleftism, and mutualism.

Lennin...

1) Established the tyrannical Cheka secret police.
2) Issued his infamous Hanging Order.
3) Rationalized the "Vanguard Party". How the concept of a "Vanguard Party" can be seen as anything but a cynical grasp for oligarchic power eludes me.
4) This brought him to the truly oligrachic and anti-democratic tactic of disolving the multi-party Russian Constituent Assembly and eventually banning all other parties.
5) Undertook the truly reprehensible act of undermining the Worker's Soviets. Socialism without worker control is oxymoronic.

All this proves that Lennin is the one-party theoritician of oligarchy as well as a true tyrant. The difference between him and Stalin is one of degree.

To quote another WP member:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

The article is fairly lengthy. I don't think the term "socialism" is very useful at describing anything since there's so much disagreement about what it means.

Isn't the "Liberal" party in Australia actually the conservatives?

An intellectual current originally formed on the basis of anti-feudalism and opposition to rigid aristocracy is likely to differentiate into multiple sub-varieties as its more core tenants are adopted.

Glad you added those - absence in my case wasn't intended as exclusion .

Yes. They were experiments in the common ownership of property. This urge to pool the assets goes back at least to the time for the first Christian communities or churches. These failed experiments were based on a moral principle, rather than on a scientific-material principle as was Marx's system. Marx proposed a process of economic development in which the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production was a necessary intermediate phase. Hence The Capitalist Manifest. According to Marx there could be no socialism without capitalism developing first.

During the overthrow of the monarchy in England, during the time of Oliver Cromwell there were the Equalizers who insisted on the common or at least equal ownership of land. Fortunately these people were frequently hanged.

None of these could be properly called Socialism in the Marxist sense of the term. That is because they were based on a moral principle which assumed inequality of means of livelihood was inherently wrong.

In more recent times, the insanity of Pol Pot and his buddies were based on a similar kind of impulse.

In every instance the essential selfishness and egotism of human nature brought these experiments to their inevitable failure.

ruveyn

Currently at one point during the Health Care Farce I come to realize that conservatives and teabaggers define socialism as anything public funded that is not toward defense, subsidizing corporations or big business directly or indirectly, or puritanical interests. Most Americans either do not know the real definition of socialism or simply do not care, even if you present them the real definition. This is because most Americans are socialized by school, peer culture, and the media at a early age to be disinvovled and apathetic towards politics and governance.

Last edited by Jkid on 01 Nov 2009, 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OTOH, libertarians like myself include all public funding, including all the goodies that pork-happy Republicans want to spend on. I have no problem declaring that the military is socialist, that the massive bailouts to the banks are socialist. They were funded by using the mighty hand of government, the only organization in our society allowed to use violent means to accomplish its ends. Private organizations must convince you to give them your money. Government just takes it. Squawk and you'll be doing time in tax prison. I'm not saying that's bad. Just that you're relying on a violent organization to accomplish your goals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_pledge

first can you at least try to spell Lenin's name right at all?

while I realise the utter futility of arguing with someone willing to repeat that nonesense I shall forge ahead:

1) The Cheka was established in the middle of a civil war to exterminate spies and saboteurs and was used as such - name me one state, kingdom or any other organisation that has succeeded in a war of any kind without properly eliminating as many such threats to security as possible.
2) and?
3) er, no. I'm not convinced hysterics should illicit a response at all. the most I'm really willing to say is that the worker party was a concept established by Marx and Engels for well supported reasons.
4) have you looked at both the actions and reasoning for this? at all?
5) that's pretty hard to maintain considering what he and the Bolsheviks were fighting for. namely the power of the Soviets. democracy in the soviets was suspended because they were in the middle of a fight to the death. The Paris Commune was crushed and tens of thousands executed in no small part because a) they insisted on holding votes and ballots - drawing all the strongest advocates of the commune off the front line to the ballot box. Your vote isn't much good if the enemy you were supposed to be fighting has waltzed through you front lines because the people with the least interest in preserving the commune were left to their own devices and frequently abandoned their posts. In a revolution you smash the people you overthrow first, then you can think about changing society b) because they failed to properly implement an organisation like the Cheka. perhaps we should bear in mind the act by the commune to found a Commitee of Public Safety type organ to conduct exactly the operations the Cheka carried out.

thank you for repeating all the old, old arguments which are trotted out again and again - like a tired old cotton plantation mule - by every Liberal, Centrist, Anarchist and Ultra-leftist......well most people who can't be much bothered with looking at both sides of an argument and assessing the veracity of each, but instead simply rattle of a few things somebody else has said. All delivered with the same intellectual rigour. All comfortably refuted by both Trotsky and Trotskyists since, well, the end of the Russian Civil War. One idiocy more or less....



I can only guess from the spelling that you are quoting yourself there.

You really have no concept of the issues involved, you obviously know nothing of the struggle to maintain the workers state and the soviets, nothing of the reasons for the removal of support for the provisional government and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. As for the "truly reprehensible act of undermining the Workers Soviets" this would of course be a very damning indictment of the man, if, of course it had a shred of truth to it.

Next no doubt you will next role out the lie that the Petrograd uprising and over throw of the provisional government was nothing but a 'putsch'

Perhaps sharing a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples drafted by Lenin for the SFSR would be relevant at this point when discussing the 'meaning of socialism' (I'm fairly sure this one is accurate and complete, I've just had to do a quick google search for it to copy and paste):


Constitution Of The RSFSR, Part I: Declaration Of The Rights Of The Toiling And Exploited Peoples
Article One
1. Russia is proclaimed a Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. All central and local authority is vested in these Soviets.
2. The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the basis of a free union of free peoples, as a federation of National Soviet Republics.

Article Two
The Constituent Assembly establishes its fundamental goals as the suppression of all forms of exploitation of man by man and the complete abolition of class distinctions in society. It aims to crush exploiters unmercifully, to reorganize society on a socialist basis, and to bring about the triumph of socialism throughout the world. It further resolves:
1. In order to bring about the socialization of land, private ownership of it is abolished. The entire land fund is declared the property of the nation and turned over free of cost to the toilers on the basis of equal rights to its use. All forests, subsoil resources, and waters of national importance as well as all livestock and machinery, model farms, and agricultural enterprises are declared to be national property.
2. As a first step in the complete transfer of factories, shops, mines, railways, and other means of production and transportation to the Soviet Republic of Workers and Peasants, and to ensure the supremacy of the toiling masses over their exploiters, the Constituent Assembly ratifies the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets' laws on workers' control and on the Supreme Council of National Economy.
3. As one of the conditions for the emancipation of the toiling masses from the yoke of capitalism, the Constituent Assembly ratifies the transfer of all banks to the ownership of the workers' and peasants' government.
4. To do away with the parasitic classes of society and to organize the economic life of the country, the universal duty to work is introduced.
5. To give all power to the toiling masses and to make impossible any restoration of the exploiters' rule, the toilers are to be armed, a socialist Red Army established, and the propertied classes disarmed.

Article Three
1. The Constituent Assembly expresses its firm determination to rescue mankind from the clutches of capitalism and imperialism, which have brought on this most criminal of all wars and have drenched the world with blood. It approves wholeheartedly the policies of the Soviet Government in breaking with secret treaties, in organizing extensive fraternization between workers and peasants in the ranks of the opposing armies, and in trying to bring about -- at all costs, by revolutionary means -- a democratic peace between nations on the principles of no annexation, no indemnities, and free self-determination of peoples.
2. With the same goal in mind, the Constituent Assembly demands a complete break with the barbaric colonial policies of bourgeois civilization. They enrich the exploiters of a few select nations at the expense of hundreds of millions of the toiling people of Asia, the colonies, and the smaller countries in general. The Constituent Assembly welcomes the policies of the Council of People's Commissars in granting complete independence to Finland, removing [Russian] troops from Persia, and allowing Armenia the right of self-determination. Soviet law repudiated the debts contracted by the government of the Tsar, landholders, and the bourgeoisie. The Constituent Assembly considers this a first blow against international banking and finance capital. It expresses its confidence that the Soviet Government will adhere firmly to this course of action, until the complete victory of an international revolt by labor against the burden of capital.

Article Four
1. The Constituent Assembly was elected on party lists made up before the November Revolution. At the time, the people were not yet in a position to rebel against exploiters (whose powers of opposition in defence of their class privileges were not yet known) and had not yet done anything practical to organize a socialist society. Thus the Constituent Assembly feels that it would be quite wrong to put itself in even technical opposition to the Council.
2. At this moment in the decisive struggle of the proletariat against the exploiters, the Constituent Assembly believes there is no place for the latter in any organ of government. The government belongs wholly to the toiling masses and their fully empowered representatives, the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies.
3. In supporting the Soviets and the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars, the Constituent Assembly admits that it has no power beyond working out some of the fundamental problems of reorganizing society on a socialist basis.
4. At the same time, wishing to bring about a genuinely free and voluntary (and consequently more complete and lasting) Union of the toiling classes of all the peoples of Russia, the Constituent Assembly confines itself to working out the basic principles of a federation of the Soviet Republics of Russia. It leaves the workers and peasants of each people to decide independently at their own plenipotentiary Soviet Congresses whether or not they desire to take part in the federated government and other federal Soviet institutions (and if so, on what conditions).

Damn, hard to believe I wrote this like five years ago.

^

What do you make of the old you? I'm occasionally surprised when I read my own old posts, sometimes I find real gems, sometimes junk that hasn't aged well at all, but it always interesting on a personal level to see where I've changed over the years. I've had a lot of my own opinions change in the years I've been on here, and while I wouldn't say my personality is radically different from when I started, I'd certainly say it's less overtly combative and more subversive these days.