The Official Socialism/Democratic Socialism/Communism/Marxism Thread

[Type Username Here]

"Marxist nonsense" was a key influence in the development of Social Democracy, as were other forms of Socialism. I think you're trying to paint an unrealistically narrow picture of what qualifies as Socialism.

Pretty much this.

It's a form of Socialism called the Nordic Model, and it does qualify as a mixed-market economy but there is no denying that it leans heavily to socialism policies.

 

[TheReal_Broke_88m3_13]

 

[The Real]

With that said, in a lot of ways this thread is a socialist propaganda thread lol, and I think to be fully balanced we should talk about where socialist societies are failing (if you consider them socialist that is, and if not then why), and where they can improve and what they should improve. I think that's something @The Real or @Type Username Here would have to do because I'm not the expert there (and I just don't feel like playing contrarian this time) and you seem to be the biggest proponents of socialism.

I'll go into more depth later, but I think I already hinted at a few in my big post earlier in the thread.

1. Statism- one-size fits all strategies where you indiscriminately nationalize. Several countries are guilty of this. Furthermore, there are too many autocratic leaders in Socialist countries. People need to divorce this guiding-hand leadership that allows for tyrants from the socialist project.

2. Compromise- some Socialist countries give up and embrace cynical capitalism while denying it, which makes Socialism look bad.

3. Understand Socialist economics- Socialist economics isn't just Keynesianism, though there's obviously a relationship, but some Socialist countries have really short-sighted economic policies that masquerade as genuinely Socialist, instead of reading and building upon the work of actual Socialist economists.

4. Don't be unrealistic- there's a lot of wishful thinking in some Socialist countries about the human capacity to organize and about the fact that we live in a global capitalist economy.

5. Embrace technology- Socialism can't work without embracing technological development. Focusing on farmers and "old-school" production isn't enough, even in the developing world.

6. Understand that culture is important- some Socialist countries adopt the ultra-liberal model and ignore public culture completely, allowing ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and other traditional barriers to get in the way of the egalitarian ethos. Furthermore, people living in poverty with little education aren't suddenly going to become model Socialists if given a social safety net- the survivalist mentality and trying to game the system will still be part of their thinking many times, and it's unrealistic to expect otherwise. In short, you need to actively work on building a public culture that makes Socialism possible. This also ties into education policy.

7. Stand up to the US/corporatism- this one is self-explanatory. Socialists need to be willing to defend and even promote their ideas if need be rather than retreating from the international stage or grandstanding with no substance.

 

[No1]

How did you guys come to your current political views? @ everyone in this thread not just the socialists... we're you like this in college/highschool etc?

I used to be what you would call a "conservative" when I was young... like 11-12-13-14-15 (I was a braniac kid so I followed politics)... I rooted for Bush over Kerry in 2004 and supported the Iraq war (again I was a kid)

As I got older in highschool I fell into conspiracy theories... 9/11 stuff () and became a Ron Paul stan like heavy in the game from like 16-18... I still didn't really care about economics or how things like that worked so I thought Libertarianism was very rational, and it is at face value.

From like the financial crisis onward, I really wanted to understand what happened and I think that single event taught me more about anything than my years at college ever will. I formed my entire ideology based off really what happened in those few months and from then the missing pieces of the puzzle started to all fill in. I still am very hawkish probably because of my conservative leanings of the past and I am very pro liberty but I think the reality of the true workings of the world were made clear by the Lehman Collapse.

My other posts have spoken to this (Rawls in college), my family being more to the left but my grandfather being a Reagan Republican. I was always connected to politics though. My family is very politically active. I've worked on campaigns dating back to high school. But remember, I'm from here:

According to the Providence Plan, a local nonprofit aimed at improving city life, half of all West End residents are Hispanic while 19% are African-American, 14% white, 13% Asian, and 1.6%Native American. 68% of children under the age of six speak a language other than English as their primary language.[2]

The median family income is $23,346

I always got into the best schools, but those who didn't had to go to local high schools and at one point they did not have homework because there was not enough books for every kid. I could never grow up there and be a conservative, and it's why I get annoyed with people who are just willing to allow the benefits to those sorts of being disappear for the sake of political purity. I can't do that in good faith.

What has changed is that I'm perhaps less liberal than I am when I was 17-19. In the sense that I used to be very adamant about my way or the highway. Remember, Ann Arbor, MI is probably the most liberal city in American. Most of my friends are liberals. But when I was working in DC, I remember talking to a high level staffer of a U.S. senator and how he told me that the bill they were working on now didn't have a chance of going into effect for another 40 yrs. He seemed so disgusted with the process and I sat there those summers, and I saw good bill after good bill die. It seems negotiations were more about limiting damage than improving conditions. I realized just how impossible it is to change something quickly in DC. It's why I always say the changes must come from the grassroots level before anything can ever change at the top. I left completely disengaged and disheartened with politics. I turned down job offers in D.C. in political organizations and headed to law school. It's also why I say "hyper-liberal" people annoy me, but I think they're necessary to remind me to not just fall into this game of "okay this isn't even worth considering" where I forget the end-game.

 

[Type Username Here]

Yea but those Norwegian children weren't allocated their yearly clothing stipend yet by the Department of Marxist Boot Makers. They don't have bootstraps to pull. How will they survive?

 

[Type Username Here]

 

[Type Username Here]

 

[Type Username Here]

Dr. West shytting on the centrist-right corporate President and party

 

[Type Username Here]

 

[TheReal_Broke_88m3_13]

It's true. BO didn't neccessarly come from the slums nor did he attend some average state school or college....

 

[Type Username Here]

Dr. King

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.
Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. ”

 

[No1]

It's true. BO didn't neccessarly come from the slums nor did he attend some average state school or college....

But this is what I mean by blatant propaganda and poorly articulated arguments (this image and the one before put together). The one before claims that the student debt is a purposeful disciplinary tools as opposed to just a money grab with no support for it. This one ignores Obama's point. He represents a minority that is only 12% of the US population, there is no other example of that in the Western world. He was making a racial and cultural argument, not a class argument. That's just someone decontextualizes a quote to meet their ends and it isn't even necessary. He's correct without using that false example. Furthermore, Obama was not rich, he became wealthy after he became a senator (which represents a problem in and of itself with a lot of these guys). Going to elite institutions is not a sign of someone being indoctrinated to act a certain way, if that were the case why did Chomsky endorse Jill Stein, a product of Harvard University....

TUH, is having fun and doing it all in one thread so I'll let it rock lol

 

[Type Username Here]

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

- MLK

 

[Type Username Here]

But this is what I mean by blatant propaganda and poorly articulated arguments (this image and the one before put together). The one before claims that the student debt is a purposeful disciplinary tools as opposed to just a money grab with no support for it. This one ignores Obama's point. He represents a minority that is only 12% of the US population, there is no other example of that in the Western world. He was making a racial and cultural argument, not a class argument. That's just someone decontextualizes a quote to meet their ends and it isn't even necessary. He's correct without using that false example. Furthermore, Obama was not rich, he became wealthy after he became a senator (which represents a problem in and of itself with a lot of these guys). Going to elite institutions is not a sign of someone being indoctrinated to act a certain way, if that were the case why did Chomsky endorse Jill Stein, a product of Harvard University....

TUH, is having fun and doing it all in one thread so I'll let it rock lol

Get your corporate/Democrat ass out of here with your threats.

That's why you get clowned in here, pretending to be a leftist when you're a Democratic-corporatism supporter through and through. No need to pretend.

Chomsky didn't say a single thing was not factually incorrect. Only to someone already indoctrinated to the system would defend it, thus only furthering the strength of his point.

Go make a Centrist-Corporate thread and you can enjoy posting pictures of Obama memes. At least the Anarcho-Capitalists and conservatives are honest about where they stand.

Let me educate in here along with my comrades.

 

[Type Username Here]

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America
Wage theft is fast becoming a top trend of the 21st-century labor market.

Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.

http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-...ic-thats-sweeping-america?page=0,3&paging=off