What are your conceptions on "socialism"?

[Black_Rose]

What do you think socialism is? What are socialism’s values?

I consider myself sympathetic towards socialism (I consider myself sympathetic to the Chinese New Left to be more precise) and I most certainly do not advocate:

1. Its supposed celebration of the vices of sloth and envy. (Since all endeavors of great human accomplishment required human effort, promoting sloth would not be wise for the promotion of societal welfare.)
2. Its supposed advocacy of absolute economic equality. (people will indeed need incentives to do things, and some form of economic inequality would be the result. However, other non-economic incentives and people’s desires and passions can also be a form of motivation too that would be emphasized.)
3. Its supposed prohibition of owning any private property. (Socialism prohibits one from controlling a significant share in the means of production, allowing one to live off their capital without contributing to society; it does not prevent one from owning a car.)

I would designated myself a socialist, not because I am a dogmatic Marxist or Maoist, but because I find the ideology to be a negation of neoliberalism.

 

[TEPO]

What do you think socialism is? What are socialism’s values?

I consider myself sympathetic towards socialism (I consider myself sympathetic to the Chinese New Left to be more precise) and I most certainly do not advocate:

1. Its supposed celebration of the vices of sloth and envy. (Since all endeavors of great human accomplishment required human effort, promoting sloth would not be wise for the promotion of societal welfare.)
2. Its supposed advocacy of absolute economic equality. (people will indeed need incentives to do things, and some form of economic inequality would be the result. However, other non-economic incentives and people’s desires and passions can also be a form of motivation too that would be emphasized.)
3. Its supposed prohibition of owning any private property. (Socialism prohibits one from controlling a significant share in the means of production, allowing one to live off their capital without contributing to society; it does not prevent one from owning a car.)

I would designated myself a socialist, not because I am a dogmatic Marxist or Maoist, but because I find the ideology to be a negation of neoliberalism.

Socialism, what a joke… Americans have been force-fed this topic when the real problems remain left unnoticed…! The problem is that all systems are designed not for us but for the corporations.

If you’re concearned about your freedom, neither socialism nor a free capitalist economy will give US freedom, because freedom belongs to the corporations.

It should be our “Civil” and “Human” rights that we SHOULD be concearned with…! They are dwindeling away very very quickly.

Both systems belong to those who want to destroy civil and human rights in replacement for capital gains. Don’t let them show you a non-issue as a cover-up for what the real problem is.

 

[TEPO]

You claim to by sympathetic to Chinese New Left, so what does that mean for freedom in china…? That is, freedom for individual humans and their rights and not the type of freedom for special groups, or privileged classes of people…?

christusrex.org/www1/sdc/hr_facts.html
"Human rights violations in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remain systematic and widespread. The Chinese government continues to suppress dissenting opinions and maintains political control over the legal system, resulting in an arbitrary and sometimes abusive judicial regime. The lack of accountability of the government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) means that abuses by officials often go unchecked."

 

[Biggie]

Socialism, however, in whatever form necessitates a planned economy. Who does the planning? By what right does that new elite govern, exempt as it is from the consequences of its own decisions?

Socialism, in whatever form, assumes that the societal ills it supposedly addresses can be corrected through material positivism. It is the diametric opposite of the Judaeo-Christian prediction, wherein the ills of people and society are recognized as properties of the human being, not the economic system, and therefore the natural enemy of Christianity. Where is the evidence that positivism can correct greed, envy or selfishness?

The conundrum for the Socialist in the post-Soviet era is that absent Marx, one must ask why Socialism? And present Marx, one must ask why Socialism? On the one hand, Socialism has lost its reason for being; on the other it proved a monster of historic proportions. What remains is neoliberalism, a flight from Marx, who can no longer be claimed by respectable intelligentsia as an ancestor, toward an insensible end that merely preserves the untouchable status of elites by attempting to graft on an anemic semi-free market. So where’s the brief - or more exactly, where’s the beef - for Socialism?

And, by the way, your persistent threads hearkening Mao, etc. - make me weary.

 

[Black_Rose]

And, by the way, your persistent threads hearkening Mao, etc. - make me weary.

A large portion of my posts cite a certain Maoist intellectual – Henry CK Liu – not to support Maoism, but to provide readily available elegant arguments against neoliberalism. However, only one thread has been about Chairman Mao which was locked. This thread is not about Chairman Mao or China per se.

Regarding the Chinese New Left:

archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2000m07.2/msg00286.htm (a mailing list post from Henry CK Liu)

The importance of this development is that the youths of China have finally
rediscover the right path, unlike the misguided students in Tiananmen
Square in
1989. In 1989, the students, who were already a privileged elite enjoying the
unequally distributed fruits of China’s new experiment with market economy,
were agitating for a still better deal for themselves and for the right to
indulge in bourgeois liberalism, and US style "democracy and individual
“freedom”, much of the poison fed to them blind by US journalists. The
Tiananmen protestors, in their ignorance of the West, mistook US prosperity as
proof of the correctness of the capitalist/democratic system, not realizing
that that very prosperity had been achieved through oppression both internally
and globally. The New Left are students who have lived in the West for a
decade and have first-hand knowledge of the reality of capitalism.

The New Left among Chinese youths is significant because it can play a timely
role in the ideological and policy struggle within the CPC that is expected to
come to a climax within the next two years. The CPC is committed to a
jeunvenization program and is seeking a balance between the development of a
modern economy without total surender to US globalization. The left has two
favorable conditions at its disposal against overwhelming odds. The odds are
that to fight globalized finance capitalism is easier said than done. The
odds are made more high because many leftists reject serious studies of finance out
of ideological distaste. Sunzi, the ancient Chinese militarist said: “To
win a battle, one must first know one’s enemy.” The favorable conditions are: 1)
communist parties as political institutions fundamentally understand that in
building capitalist economies, they are also digging their own institutional
graves, and 2) capitalist systems do not tolerate new late comers as
equals; thus it is not the best game for Third World economies to play.
These conditions will
give socialism in the Third World an adventage.

Socialist economic structure has to be made evident that it can deliver
prosperity with equality. Though all leftists subscribe to that proposition,
that is a challenge the difficulty of which should not be minimized.
The road is long and hard, but the destination is within sight.

LI: Yeah. I would say probably all of them. And by the mid-1990s things started to change. You started to have some intellectuals who criticized the market-oriented reform, the neoliberal ideas, and so that by the late 1990s, early 2000s, you could say that a new trend that was referred to as the New Left emerged in China. In today’s Chinese context, this term New Left is used to refer to a very broad category that ranged from everyone from social democrat, nationalist, left nationalist, to Marxist. What they have in common is that they all are to different degrees critical of market-oriented reform, to a different degree critical of neoliberalism, and to a different degree have a generally positive view of the Maoist period, with different emphases.

therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2087

JAY: And is this left trend pushing for a kind of European social democracy, or a return to a full-on state socialism?

LI: Well, that varies. And there are some of them who are in favor of social democracy, more or less in line with the official slogan of the current Chinese administration, the Harmonious Society, and there are some others who argue that for China to further develop, China must manage to upgrade China’s technology, must pursue high-tech development, and for that purpose you need a greater role of the state. And so you need to develop something like state capitalism. There are also some people who are in favor of the return to socialism. And so, in addition to intellectual development, another new development that is interesting is that in addition to the New Left intellectual trend I just talked about, you also have, outside of intellectuals, various Maoist activists, who are in favor of a kind of return to Maoist-style socialism.

therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2088

As for the Chinese New Left, unfortunately, I am not ethnically Chinese, but I envy since they have intellectual firepower in their movement (Henry CK Liu and Minqi Li), a passionate youthful following committed to “social justice” (defined from a “socialist” perspective which differs from the application of the word here), and a respectable cultural heritage of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism (which I find superior to the bourgeois Enlightenment ideas of liberty and economic freedom and the Protestant work ethic).

BTW, your post was exactly what I was looking for in this thread

 

[ManOnFire]

Socialism, what a joke… Americans have been force-fed this topic when the real problems remain left unnoticed…! The problem is that all systems are designed not for us but for the corporations.

If you’re concearned about your freedom, neither socialism nor a free capitalist economy will give US freedom, because freedom belongs to the corporations.

It should be our “Civil” and “Human” rights that we SHOULD be concearned with…! They are dwindeling away very very quickly.

Both systems belong to those who want to destroy civil and human rights in replacement for capital gains. Don’t let them show you a non-issue as a cover-up for what the real problem is.

I don’t own a large corporation. I just don’t understand the anti-corporation sentiment. If you’re complaining about their ability to buy legislation because of their campaign donations, then the answer is to have federallly-subsidized elections where each candidate is given the same amount of taxpayer money, no special interest group or corporate doantions or advertising is allowed, and only personal yard signs are allowed other than what the candidate spends from his/her federally-allotted advertising budget.

 

[Biggie]

A large portion of my posts cite a certain Maoist intellectual – Henry CK Liu – not to support Maoism, but to provide readily available elegant arguments against neoliberalism. However, only one thread has been about Chairman Mao which was locked. This thread is not about Chairman Mao or China per se.

Regarding the Chinese New Left:

archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2000m07.2/msg00286.htm (a mailing list post from Henry CK Liu)

therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2087

therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2088

As for the Chinese New Left, unfortunately, I am not ethnically Chinese, but I envy since they have intellectual firepower in their movement (Henry CK Liu and Minqi Li), a passionate youthful following committed to “social justice” (defined from a “socialist” perspective which differs from the application of the word here), and a respectable cultural heritage of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism (which I find superior to the bourgeois Enlightenment ideas of liberty and economic freedom and the Protestant work ethic).

BTW, your post was exactly what I was looking for in this thread

Yes, yes but who cares about Mr. Liu’s thoughts? Your thoughts were those my post was addressing. Let’s, for example, talk about Socialist elites in a planned economy. Where there is central planning, what qualifies the planner? Why is a governmental elite who can exercise the full coercive force of the state to be preferred over a capitalist elite, chosen by the market place, who have no such coercive power?

 

[johns58w]

Socialism, however, in whatever form necessitates a planned economy. Who does the planning? By what right does that new elite govern, exempt as it is from the consequences of its own decisions?

Socialism, in whatever form, assumes that the societal ills it supposedly addresses can be corrected through material positivism. It is the diametric opposite of the Judaeo-Christian prediction, wherein the ills of people and society are recognized as properties of the human being, not the economic system, and therefore the natural enemy of Christianity. Where is the evidence that positivism can correct greed, envy or selfishness?

The conundrum for the Socialist in the post-Soviet era is that absent Marx, one must ask why Socialism? And present Marx, one must ask why Socialism? On the one hand, Socialism has lost its reason for being; on the other it proved a monster of historic proportions. What remains is neoliberalism, a flight from Marx, who can no longer be claimed by respectable intelligentsia as an ancestor, toward an insensible end that merely preserves the untouchable status of elites by attempting to graft on an anemic semi-free market. So where’s the brief - or more exactly, where’s the beef - for Socialism?

And, by the way, your persistent threads hearkening Mao, etc. - make me weary.

You got that right!

Socialism: Russia 1917-1989, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba. We have seen the “so-called” good of socialism.

Socialism: Birth control, population control, eugenics, abortion, ethnic cleansing.

Socialism: People are property slaves to the government.

Socialism: Rations on food,fuel,medical and the list goes on. Severe restrictions on travel.

Socialism: Eradication of organized religion. Catholics and other Christians
imprisoned,tortured, murdered.

Socialism: Say goodbye to the U.S. Constitution. Say goodbye to your rights.
Religion, speech, voting, arms etc.

Socialism: Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao-Tse-Tung,
Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Kim Jong IL

Socialism: COMMUNISM

 

[ManOnFire]

Socialism: "A teacher started the semester by informing the class that all the test scores would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade. The first exam was given, and the “A” grades averaged with the “F"s to produce a “C” average. As a result, the disappointed A and B students studied a little less for the second exam. The second exam averaged into everyone receiving a “D.” The third exam averaged an “F” since the motivation was gone.” Welcome to Socialism, where the govt.'s heavy hand is the only motivator.

Socialism in China works because of the U.S.'s capitalism. How ironic.

 

[TEPO]

I don’t own a large corporation. I just don’t understand the anti-corporation sentiment. If you’re complaining about their ability to buy legislation because of their campaign donations, then the answer is to have federallly-subsidized elections where each candidate is given the same amount of taxpayer money, no special interest group or corporate doantions or advertising is allowed, and only personal yard signs are allowed other than what the candidate spends from his/her federally-allotted advertising budget.

I just wish that there was a law to protect the privacy of peoples public records. You can go ahead and laugh at me now, since I’m a loser who cant find a job because of my previous personal life, which has become free public knowledge for all potential employers to see.

Why does the govornment have to hold a “record” for me and show it to every corporation I apply to for employment. As long as I’m not incarcerated, and with a valid drivers license, I should have the same legal chances to gain employment as anyone else… I should be judged solely on my abilities… But that’s just not how it works.

Now do you see how my liberty is gone…?
Now do you see how laws are set up in favor of corporations…?
Now do you see how my privacy is made public…?
Now do you see how “freedom of information” is not freedom at all…?
Now do you see how my basic human rights (to find employment) are violated, right here in “the great” America…?

I’m not really free.

 

[lutherlic]

I don’t actually have any problem personally with people choosing socialism, as long as they move to a socialist country to live it. I certainly do not want them to make my country socialistic.

As far as we Catholics are concerned, we reject it. Three popes addressed it thus:

“…Socialism…cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.”
QUADRAGESIMO ANNO, 117, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI
Reconstruction of the Social Order, May 15, 1931

“…no Catholic [can] subscribe even to moderate Socialism.”
MATER ET MAGISTRA, 34, Pope John XXIII
On Christianity and Social Progress, May 15, 1961

“Socialists…debase the natural union of man and woman…the [family] bond they…deliver up to lust. Lured…by the greed of present goods…they assail the right of property. While they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title, by labor, or by thrift.”
QUOD APOSTOLICI MUNERIS, 1, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII
On Socialism, December 28, 1878

 

[St_Francis]

What do you think socialism is? What are socialism’s values?

I consider myself sympathetic towards socialism (I consider myself sympathetic to the Chinese New Left to be more precise) and I most certainly do not advocate:

1. Its supposed celebration of the vices of sloth and envy. (Since all endeavors of great human accomplishment required human effort, promoting sloth would not be wise for the promotion of societal welfare.)

Have you ever talked to someone from the Soviet Union? Altho socialism does not intentionally *promote *sloth, its structure ignores human nature to the point that that is the result.

1. Its supposed advocacy of absolute economic equality. (people will indeed need incentives to do things, and some form of economic inequality would be the result. However, other non-economic incentives and people’s desires and passions can also be a form of motivation too that would be emphasized.)

What are these other non-economic incentives and desires and passions which can be a source of motivation that socialism can utilize?

1. Its supposed prohibition of owning any private property. (Socialism prohibits one from controlling a significant share in the means of production, allowing one to live off their capital without contributing to society;

Owning stock is *not *not contributing to society, because investing in companies allows companies to expand and hire more people, allows them to do research which benefits us in many different ways, etc.

Moreover, pension plans almost all seem to involve some form of investing one’s capital, so a lot of the people who are “not contributing to society” because they are living off their capital are little old ladies in Pasadena.

(Altho I am personally against the corporate structure, mostly for other reasons)

it does not prevent one from owning a car.)

Hmmm, there may not be a law against owning a car, but believe me, cars were few and far between in the Soviet Union and in communist China til they loosened up.

In 2003 Russia, car ownership had really improved since the break-up of the Soviet Union, doubling from 1993 to 141 cars per 1000 people. In China, [t]he per-capita car ownership ratio in China will increase by 67% to 40 cars for every 1,000 citizens by 2010 from the current 24, according to a report by Chinanews. By contrast, the US has 765 vehicles per 1,000 (2002 data), while Europe (including the FSU countries) has an average of about 300 vehicles per 1,000.

I would designated myself a socialist, not because I am a dogmatic Marxist or Maoist, but because I find the ideology to be a negation of neoliberalism.

Socialism is not the only negation of neoliberalism (whatever all that may be…). Socialism, too, is built on the so-called Enlightenment way of thinking, and you may recall what I think of that (BTW, I pm’ed you about that info you asked me about)

 

[Darkbloom]

Black Rose, do you not feel at least a little conflicted by using your freedom of political speech to advocate a political system that would deny you freedom of political speech?

 

[Black_Rose]

Black Rose, do you not feel at least a little conflicted by using your freedom of political speech to advocate a political system that would deny you freedom of political speech?

Doubt is reactionary. Every statement is a form of generalization. The test is
where the generalized statement leads to. Revolutionaries cannot afford doubt.
They must be convinced of the correctness of their ideology. The right to
believe that some people should starve while others drink champaign is not a
civil right. The right to a decent diet for everyone is.
We can have freedom of expression only after the total demise of capitalism. At
this moment in history, freedom is a capitalistic tool. Revolutions are not
debating societies in search of self gratification for passive intellectuals.
Revolutionaries know where they are going and have not time for those who value
personal freedom above the need to forge forward the movement’s objectives.

The CPC is both the solution and the problem. The solution because socialism is
the only solution. The problem becuase the CPC is fighting a defensive
ideological battle with the rest of the world which is under the control of
capitalism. In order to interact with the rest of the world in this age of
forced globalization, the CPC has to face facts which are contrary to both
reason and ideology at this moment in history. There are those within the CPC
who argue that to survive, the party has to make compromises. The are others in
the minority that argues that compromises are merely a slow raod toward
surrenderism. The global left has essentially given up and has taken refuge in
the establishment’s tolerance for intellectual freedom, notwithstanding the fact
that such freedom is granted as a sign of establishment security. In other
words, leftish ideas are no longer considered dangerous to the sytem. China is
not free for good reasons. Freedom of expression and though is dangerous to the
socialist cause not only in China but in the whole world. Capitalist democracy
is one integral concept.

archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2001/msg03644.htm
archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2001/msg03558.htm

 

[Darkbloom]

“Every statement is a form of generalization.”

The sentence quoted above is a generalization, and is therefore reactionary.

“Revolutionaries cannot afford doubt.”

So the revolution won’t do with people asking questions?

“We can have freedom of expression only after the total demise of capitalism. At
this moment in history, freedom is a capitalistic tool.”

That seems a bald face promotion of suppression of descent and an admission that socialism is structurally anti-freedom.

“The global left has essentially given up and has taken refuge in
the establishment’s tolerance for intellectual freedom, notwithstanding the fact
that such freedom is granted as a sign of establishment security.”

Yet further proof that the only way socialism is ever considered to be desirable is when people are not allowed to think for themselves.

 

[St_Francis]

Black Rose,
When you put things in quotes, it’s harder for us to quote them. (That’s why I make my quotes other colors, which I do by hitting that blue A above.)

Doubt is reactionary. Every statement is a form of generalization. The test is where the generalized statement leads to. Revolutionaries cannot afford doubt.

Well, certainly *leaders *of revolutionaries cannot afford their followers’ doubts. But how are they to know whether they have picked the right system? Communists still rely on a man-made system, what makes it better than any other?

Moreover, you have been putting Lui as a socialist–he seems very Communist to me!

They must be convinced of the correctness of their ideology. The right to believe that some people should starve while others drink champaign is not a civil right. The right to a decent diet for everyone is.

And how many people *starved to **death ***under Communist leaders? While in the USA, maybe the poor don’t drink champagne, but they are not dying of starvation.

We can have freedom of expression only after the total demise of capitalism.

Black Rose, how old are you? I only ask because this has all already been answered by the reality of what has occurred in communist nations. 70 years into the Soviet Union, and freedom of speech was, well, believe me, they had no freedom of speech. They didn’t even have freedom of religion.

At this moment in history, freedom is a capitalistic tool. Revolutions are not
debating societies in search of self gratification for passive intellectuals.
Revolutionaries know where they are going and have not time for those who value
personal freedom above the need to forge forward the movement’s objectives.

Oh, yeah, can’t have the useful idiots thinking for themselves, that’s for sure.

The CPC is both the solution and the problem. The solution because socialism is
the only solution.

Soooo not true. We can do things God’s way, or we can do things Man’s way. God’s way is not being tried in any part of the world right now. We have seen the devastation wreaked by Man’s way over the course of the past two or three centuries…

(I have a little more to add, but I have to run right now… CU!)

 

[Biggie]

archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2001/msg03644.htm
archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2001/msg03558.htm

At this moment in history, freedom is a capitalistic tool. Revolutions are not
debating societies in search of self gratification for passive intellectuals.
Revolutionaries know where they are going and have not time for those who value
personal freedom above the need to forge forward the movement’s objectives.

And here is a breathtaking statement that the sooner Americans fully understand this is the sentiment that underlies the radical left and socialist fellow travelers in this country the sooner the romance with them will end. This is the true heart of the left, lying nascent on our University campuses and now skulking the halls of the Capital, the truth they have been desperately denying. I wish the sentences quoted could be read in every household in the country. It reveals the true enmity that exists between those who cherish personal freedom and those who pine for Socialism. And it makes clear the course of action - cast them out at the ballot box and defeat them at every turn.