Meaninglessness of "socialism"

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It's been dark comedy watching the Republican Rump lamblast centre-right Obama for his "socialist" policies - like raising the income tax rate for the wealthy a marginal few percentiles or mulling over whether to create a fully two-tier healthcare system in America.

The banality of the Republican temper-tantrum is staggering. This is a party whoose operatives regularly distribute propoganda to the base calling the Centrecrats "socialists" or Obama a "Marxist". This is a party whoose officialdom mulled over whether it they should formally call the Democratic Party the "Democrat-Socialist Party" and instead passed a party resolution that...

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/ ... ocialists/

But this isn't too unusual, after all. Increasingly over the past fifty years the word "socialism" has lost its intellectual content and has taken on purely affective connotations. At one point - and almost all self-described socialists still use this definition - socialism meant "worker self-management" or "worker ownership". Then it was redefined as anything Lenninist (Lennin didn't believe in the core of socialism - worker self-management). Now it's been further redefined as "ANYTHING GLENN BECK, RUSH LIMBAUGH, OR MICHAEL WEINER SAVAGE DISLIKES". It's lovely watching the degeneration of a concept. Chomsky has a nice word on it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ[/youtube]

The one aspect of the hypothetical idea of socialism that I like, or perhaps more the case with communism, is guaranteed employment. However, how it is instituted, or has been instituted, sucks. I prefer the freedom of choice in America, which is probably just the same in most capitalist countries. The one law that I do not like though is the one allowing for "at-will" employment, allowing for approximately zero job security.

I agree that socialism is quite meaningless at this point. I mean, it is cast about everywhere by everyone, regardless of where they stand on the political issue. Frankly, it is to the point where it angers me, and I don't care much about defending the honor of socialism.

Yeah, the problem with guaranteed employment is likely going to be labor market inflexibility. The major issue I can see one way or another way on "at-will" employment, is that the harder it is to fire workers, the less willing a company will be to hire workers. This is simply due to the fact that compliance processes could be an annoyance to deal with, thus putting a cost on firing, which means less flexibility, so companies may be less willing to take in people who for jobs that are less secure anyway. Now, I am not sure how this all comes out empirically, it is one thing to make arguments one way or another, it is another to see how these trade-offs play out(or even if other factors are such where a possible trade-off does not exist), however, I think that higher European unemployment rates are often considered a result of their relatively strict labor laws. And I think some statistics have suggested that where the US is having more unequal wages, Europe tends to have higher unemployment rates in response to technological changes to the distribution of wealth(or whatever it is that has been affecting income since about the 80s).

For me it is difficult just to find work because I was fired once two years ago, could be worse if the paperwork increased the effort and then discouraging companies from hiring people. Since America operates under the private enterprise system though, I plan on starting some small businesses. Perhaps an ebay store selling Sci-Fi games, books, multimedia, along with some resources on Latin and other things that would interest me as well as the market I'd want to sell to. I have a bonded pair of cockatiels, and I may look into starting a business in aviculture, selling the hand-tamed and parent-fed young birds on an individual basis. After I am through with sufficient coursework, such as Tax Accounting and Business Law, I may offer services of tax preparation also on an individual basis. Perhaps I could also offer services of Latin translation and composition for people on forums or other areas who just think Latin is cool as I do. Thing is though, there is always the risk of having no return on investment, but if nothing is invested there can be no return.

Sometimes I would be willing to trade off the flexibility in favor of stability, but of course in all human institutes there will always be some form of corruption, some form of deceit, some form of power mongering, and some form of excommunication or other punishment for crossing people who think highly of themselves due to their authority.

erm, evidence? and no, the core of socialism is both the abolition of private property and the dictatorship of the proletariat, at least for a Marxist like Lenin.

1) Evidence: "Socialism" was used both by countries ran by sole "Communist Party" states as "socialist". Almost all of those states - or at least the Eastern Bloc - were operated by Party oligarchs and technocratic/bureaucratic officals. This is Lenninism and - for some time - it was the only definition of socialism both the American and Soviet Spheres of influenced used in applying "socialism".
2) Socialism existed almost a century before Karl Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto.

Its still very much a fabric of ideas, like any idea it has its first renditions and as time goes on with trial and error people can become more self aware and build better and better models. That said though it seems like the competing definitions come from so many different schools of thought ranging from those who are more almost religiously bent on the idea of economic equality through government ownership of everything or as much as possible to those who are for nationalizing only certain sectors, all the way to those who would even want to set their nationalization up in such a way that it would be built to work as something like a mock-capitalist set up fed of course by tax dollars first and foremost.

As far as the right is concerned though, despite appearances it seems like they're really railing against the old fashion ideologue outlooks on socialism that seem to push the concept that most of what the secular right sees as fundamental problems with human/animal nature vs. socialism is purely ingrained by culture or that everything from bad habits to even gender identity are products of nothing more than good old fashioned bigotry. As far as socialism goes that's the Evangelical-Pentacostal flavor and admittedly its that philosophically dogmatic form that seems to frighten people on the right, center, and center-left.

American politics still hasn't left the 1950s, and has selective amnesia about it past. All that has happened is name calling and character assassination has come to the front, and policy debate takes a back seat.

There is this obsession with communism, and 'pinkos', etc. The rest of the world looks at the two main parties and finds them remarkably similar in practice.

What was interesting is that the Democrats used to be the party of the KKK, and Lincoln was a Republican. It just shows how much has changed.

Where?

ruveyn

Maybe he thinks liberte egalite fraternite of the frog revolution was socialist.

As someone who calls himself a Democratic Socialist, I find this quite irritating. I certainly don't want to be associated with the politics (which are admittedly slightly less bad than the Republicans) that the Democrats stand for.

1) that's not evidence that's intellectually lazy. what you are referring to is Stalinism, the proponents of which call it Marxist-Leninism (which I think aptly demonstrates their ineptitude in the fields of theory, Marxism and history - for god's sake a Marxist approach to Lenin's ideas[!]. That's like saying you're going to adopt a Capitalist interpretation of Keynesianism.)

2) Yes I'm aware of that - and not one of them made any headway whatsoever against capitalism, or anything else for that matter.

You could add 16th century Jamestown to that list as well, probably many examples before that. The founding fathers of the Constitution actually wrote at length about the socialist theories that Europe was already ablaze with and that they were steadfastly against, Marx just took it from being a theory of trying to redistribute wealth and made it something much more of an absolute struggle of good vs. evil, slave vs. slavemaster, have vs. have not, and made it something much more idealistic, revolutionary, and ultimately much more sexy in its appeal to the general public.

revolutionary yes. Idealistic no, at least not in the sense of German Idealism, which Marx, Engels and Lenin were very acerbic about. And he didn't make it an 'absolute struggle' (or about good vs. evil, at all) he simply identified what was already taking place and described it as it was (speaking as a Marxist)

The term "liberal" has clearly lost its sting. Now, "Socialist" is the favourite epithet of Right Wing Nut Jobs, er, I mean, Republicans.

What a load of rubbish, Lenin was a Marxist who fully supported Trotsky on his theory of permanent revolution, the complete antithesis of Stalinism which is what you are describing above.

I will however agree with you that the words Communism, and socialism have been misused and abused over the past 80 or so years as demonstrated by your example above.

Concepts of socialism did indeed exist prior to Marx, however these were fantastical constructs without any real understanding of the nature of class conflict.

To quote Engels on Utopian socialists “were utopians because they could be nothing else at a time when capitalist production was as yet so little developed. They necessarily had to construct the elements of a new society out of their own heads, because within the old society the elements of the new were not as yet generally apparent; ...”

And Marx “the utopian founders of sects, while in their criticism of present society clearly describing the goal of the social movement , the superscession of the wages system with all its economic conditions of class rule, found neither in society itself the material conditions of its transformation nor in the working class the organised power and the conscience of the movement. They tried to compensate for the historical conditions of the movement by fantastic pictures and plans of a new society in whose propaganda they saw the true means of salvation”

Instead of seeing that the task of socialism was to analyse the historical events leading to the creation of the bourgeoisie and proletariat and by doing so understand the way to the emancipation of the proletariat lay in revolution , the Utopians instead stuck to the belief that socialism could be manufactured by truth and reason, rejected the notion of class struggle.

Marx writes in the Communist manifesto “ They want to Improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured, hence they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction......Hence they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for a new social gospel''

And this has continued to this day, hence the utter confusion of most people as to the actual meaning of socialism. what most people regard as a route to socialism is some sort of fantastical natural progression that the slightest analysis shows has no historical or materialist basis. Or they believe the lies of the media and governments about the nature of totalitarian dictatorships when they are described as socialist or communist.