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Socialism sucks....seriously.

12K views 210 replies 33 participants last post by  buddyholly 
#1 ·
I admit they have got a very good propaganda machine around the world. Everybody likes to be labeled a "progressive". They've hijacked such a good and positive word. :-/

Anyway, as a person matures, all the socialist bullsh|t should become self evident. I find it hard to respect the intelligence of anybody over 30 who leans to the left.

But then I don't care too much about politics and would share a beer with them anyway.

I just want the word "progressive" back without any political affiliations.

:wavey:
 
#2 ·
Socialism is half a step away from communism.

Personally, I don't care too much for politics, because I know for sure that in today's world the little guy's voice doesn't matter and crooks will always fight even bigger crooks for power. This is evident everywhere in the world, even Australian government is 100% corrupt these days.
 
#28 ·
Socialism is half a step away from communism.
:facepalm: According to you, Norway, Canada and Israel, to give just a few examples, are only a step removed from communism, since the social services of the first two were clearly inspired by socialism, while the third was in fact created by a socialist party (Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan... according to you, they were all semi-Communists). Not to forget that, in that case, NATO was created by semi-Communists, since both Clement Atlee and his Foreing Secretary Ernst Bevin were hard-core Labour. If only Stalin had known!!

Socialism did work for Countries like the USSR.
I still don't get why some people think the USSR was socialist. Both posters above seem to not be able to tell the difference between socialism and communism. I know both terms are used as almost synonymous by some people, especially in the US, but I've always found that to be a good example of just how parrochial the US is in so many ways. (Another good example is how they use the word "liberal", they seem to think it is somehow related with the left, while in most of the world it is still used in its original meaning, as someone who defends freewheeling capitalism!!).

Wonder if mainstream Americans are ever aware that the Veterans Administration is often mentioned as a clear example of a socialized health care system. Not to speak of most of the US's social network or other highly succesful institutions harking back to New Deal.

I find it hard to respect the intelligence of anybody over 30 who leans to the left.
What really gets to me is how anybody over 30 can fail to grasp that the health care and educational opportunities that countries like the Scandinavian ones or the Netherlands grant their own citizens are pretty close to the best other nations could reasonably hope to get for their own people. Oh, I was forgetting, you think all their hospitals and public schools are a symptom of communism, how clumsy of me.

By the way, the sorry state of the world economy right now makes a very powerful case for the dismal failure of the neoliberal, unbriddled capitalist model, or doesn't it?
 
#3 ·
:facepalm:

A socialist would not want to be called a "progressive" in the sense of the word. They find that too tame.
 
#7 ·
when i was studying business administration and economics, i leaned heavily towards many libertarian principles. then over the years i fortunately learned to see thru all the bullshit and realize that the world is a lot more complex than many ideological ideas disguised as rational conclusions of a technical analysis.
 
#9 ·
Absolutely, no ideology is perfect for all situations. Common sense, compassion and truly empowering individuals to control their own fate is a way forward.

PS: I am reclaiming the word "progress" from the lefty loonies. Is there any word / phrase that the far right has taken over? I will need to campaign for that as well!
 
#13 ·
Socialism is just a word, a word that doesn't matter.

What matters is what a country actually does - and I doubt what India actually does could be considered "socialism" - seems to be to be a thorough-going embrace of right wing neo-liberal capitalism, no more socialist than China is still implementing Communist ideology, or North Korea is a Democratic People's Republic. If you think the right represents reform and change, then good luck to you. I suspect you'd find they're mostly cosmetic at this point.
 
#14 ·
There you go, you have a pro left tilt so you accuse me of having a pro right tilt. :-(

Here are some facts about India:

1. Socialism is in the constitution

2. All govt's since independence have been populist

3. Some reforms came in the early 90's and very few in the early naught'ies

4. Since 2004 we have got an even more socialist / populist govt at various states and the center

The right does try and push for "reform" (mostly economic). It always fails.

The right in India is pretty stupid and low in caliber.

The left holds on to power and loots the country.

Both the right and left pretend to be the cause of whatever development that has happened in the past two decades.
 
#15 ·
i don't know much at all about indian politics but here's a pretty interesting article about the search for economic development of india's educated youth.

All Aboard The Slave Ship

An open letter to Young India, callous and comfy in its cocoon

Dear Citizen of Youngistan,

Hi!

You are the talk of the town these days, so, you know, I wanted to talk to you.

You are a student. You seek to be highly educated, but you turn a blind eye to the academic terrorism that routinely cripples and kills poor students in universities. You never acknowledge the privilege of exclusivity. You strut about with the confidence that you will never slip below the poverty line. You never know the pain of exclusion. You would have never lost your home in a slum demolition drive.

On the other hand, you know, with self-assured grace you make up India’s fanciful, much-advertised youngistan edge. You flaunt the fact that you are one of the 120 million youth that your country will add to its workforce over the next decade. You forget that this workforce, devoid of any working class consciousness, shall only serve to launch the latest edition of slave trade. Welcome aboard, dude! The Slave Ship is waiting for you. If and when India’s economy goes into freefall mode, you will be the first to flounder. Just remember that.

You also like to imagine yourself as a sexually restless youngster. Sadly, diktats and death threats make you seek shelter in matrimonial websites with drop-down menus listing 450 sub-castes. You blame this casteism on parental pressure. In your hallowed opinion, caste should be annihilated. You say that this is possible only by discontinuing affirmative action policies for adivasis and Dalits. You have anecdotal evidence to prove that reservation equals ruin.

You also think that India’s biggest problem is a boatload of terrorists from Pakistan. You have not heard of Khairlanji or Gadchiroli or Koodankulam; they are multi-syllable names of places that have never managed to sneak into your sublime conversations. Ultra-ambitious, you only enter lands that require your passport, your visa and your commercialised skill-sets. You are India’s shining, swaggering export. You have sold your soul for a song. You have sold your song for a sophisticated accent. You have sold your sophisticated accent for a sanitised silence.

Most of the time, you do not even speak your mother tongue. You only learn the languages that pay: C++, Java, Python, English. In spite of your mastery over two-and-a-half languages, you choose to remain voiceless. Abjuring violence in the way of old souls, you renounce every aggressive drive to assert yourself.

Maybe you earnestly believe in the development panacea. Maybe you are bamboozled by its seductive, saleable divinity. You don’t realise that government-style development is a devil that walks backwards, drinks blood, feeds on corpses and fattens on millions of tonnes of bauxite and iron. It goes by multiple aliases: Essar, Vedanta, Posco. Like its cross-cousin democracy, development is widely believed to be a rumour to keep rural masses in a hysteric state.

And perhaps, like your home minister, you take pride in being a patriot, unaware of the atrocities of your army in Kashmir and the Northeast and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and far-flung African countries. You are blase about how your tax money ends up being used for mindless militarisation projects. Since “our republic cannot bear the stain of killing her own children” (as the Supreme Court observed in the fake encounter case of Maoist spokesperson Azad), the state has efficiently come up with an arrangement of convenience in which the children pay for each other’s bullets. The republic remains stainless and squeaky clean. You end up with blood on your hands. Perhaps you sponsored the bullets that killed seven Dalits in a police firing at Paramakudi last month.

Unrest simmers all over society, but as you are extremely busy hanging out in some shopping mall, you have no time to tell your government to behave. How can you talk to power when you do not teach yourself the truth? You do not know who or where the dam-displaced are. You have never shed tears for the victims of Operation Green Hunt. You do not bother to know that hundreds of Tamil fishermen from your country were shot dead by the Sri Lanka navy even as the Indian coast guard roamed the seas. You know next to nothing about India’s flawed foreign policy, not even the fact that your government supplied arms and strategic advice as it actively colluded in the genocide of one hundred thousand Tamils in Sri Lanka in May 2009. You buy the lie that everyone who died in Mullivaikkal was a Tiger and a terrorist. Why, even the discovery of more than two thousand bullet-ridden bodies of Kashmiri youth in mass graves does not drive you to despair.

Would you care to understand the pressing need for plebiscite in Kashmir, or the separate statehood for Tamils in Eelam? You have no sympathy for states that seek to break away. You are taught to think that Telangana spells trouble. In your limited worldview, secession is a swear word, self-determination is suicide...
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278704
 
#16 ·
Socialism did work for Countries like the USSR. For a long while they stood up to the monopolies of the United States. And gave them a good answer.

As for Political philosophies,I for one cant understand the obsession of teaching others what works for you.

Be it Democracy,Socialism or anything else. Every Country and its culture is unique and people of the country themselves have to find what works best for them. Free Liberal Democracy worked for United States and some countries in the Western World. And then they started teaching the world that their Method of Governance is the Best.

And for this reason i would support Socialism because Atleast USSR didnt preach as loudly and in a Self Righteous Way that Socialism was the Best.

As for Socialism in India, it really was a disaster. Just after Independence people of India just were happy that they got their freedom after a long time. Hence the Government exploited that feeling by bringing absolutely minimal changes and reforms in the name of socialism for a long long time. To think of it, The reforms came into the 90s which was almost 50 years after independence is just criminal.

They are many Indian states with high level of intellectual potential but are really stagnant in more ways than one. Kerala and Bengal are amongst them.
 
#21 ·
Socialism did work for Countries like the USSR.
:spit:


when i was studying business administration and economics, i leaned heavily towards many libertarian principles. then over the years i fortunately learned to see thru all the bullshit and realize that the world is a lot more complex than many ideological ideas disguised as rational conclusions of a technical analysis.
Good to see you back. :wavey:
 
#25 ·
Politics has its own language. Here are some commonly used terms and their definitions:


"Progress" Movement towards a particular ideology, whether it works or not.

"Liberation" Forcing "progress" on an entity.

"Moral" The party's policies.

"Immoral" The opposition's policies.

"The people" Members of the party.

"Failure" Whatever the opposition does.

"Corruption" Any activity the opposition is involved in.

"Imperialist" Foreign country with a different ideology.


And there are loads more...
 
#29 ·
While I certainly dislike communism, some aspects of the social democratic model that we have in the Nordic Countries are such that I would hope many other countries would have as well... Naturally there are many things that we do poorly as well. But public education, free university-level education and universal healthcare are good things. Now, as far as Finland goes, I think we've gone too far with taxation and that a smaller government could handle things more cheaply (still not compromising from the most important things).

So in Finland, I'm on the right but probably somewhere else might be on the left :lol:.
 
#30 ·
No "social" programme can work if they're "progressive". It can only work if based on traditions and implemented within the framework of the nation and people's sovereignty. There can't be any global socialism. Those Trotskyists who argue in favour of mass immigration and globalism, and (and as far as Europe is concerned) in favour of "another EU" (while the EU cannot be any different than what it IS) are the useful idiots/agents of the system. :lol: (love that)

The great French philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa noticed the left-wing mistake or lie, when they call the capitalist system conservative. Capitalists hate local traditions and nations. It's the party of movement and progress aiming at a man without cultural background and cultural ties. The founding fathers of liberalism (Smith, Ricardo, Tocqueville, etc.) were considered leftwingers in them days. The founding fathers of communism (Marx & Engels) considered themselves neither ... nor ... And in recent years, it's rather telling that leaders of two influential international institutions were - at the same time - two French "socialists" (DSK at the IMF and Pascal Lamy at WTO but now DSK has other occupations :lol:). They were actually typical leftwinger but no socialists.

Also socialists should drop their dreams of a classless society and rather call for a class collaboration in the form of employee share ownership, as promoted by General de Gaulle (rejected by so-called "socialists" ... of course).
 
#38 ·
The great French philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa noticed the left-wing mistake or lie, when they call the capitalist system conservative. Capitalists hate local traditions and nations. It's the party of movement and progress aiming at a man without cultural background and cultural ties. The founding fathers of liberalism (Smith, Ricardo, Tocqueville, etc.) were considered leftwingers in them days. The founding fathers of communism (Marx & Engels) considered themselves neither ... nor ... And in recent years, it's rather telling that leaders of two influential international institutions were - at the same time - two French "socialists" (DSK at the IMF and Pascal Lamy at WTO but now DSK has other occupations :lol:). They were actually typical leftwinger but no socialists.
i don't think it's fair to say that "capitalists hate local traditions and nations". they just don't normally consider them in their so called technical analysis and choose to focus on the decisions and freedom of the individual in particular. i'd say that in modern times this is a typical behaviour of all right wingers -not just the purely capitalist ones, or libertarians as some call them in the USA- as opposed to left leaning blokes who tend to center their analysis on society in general.

then again, i do agree with your main idea but that depends on what we understand for 'capitalist system'. in its pure form, and much like communism, capitalism has never truly existed (maybe with the exception of medieval iceland being a notorious case of study). what we have today is a system that badly approaches to it and fails when we consider the size of the state and all of its tools to run the economy. in most cases, be it in europe or the USA (but more in the USA), the rich end up more protected than the poor. if that's what we understand today for "capitalism system", then it is evidently an idea extracted of the right wing agenda.

as for libertarians (or semi-pure capitalists, whichever term you like best), i mostly see them as clueless. i don't think they fully grasp the complexities of the world's markets and how badly things would be if some of their ideas were implemented. i wouldn't tag them as right wingers, though.
 
#61 ·
it depends on what you mean by 'wrong' or 'right...

let's start with something basic: do you approve the existence of a minimun wage?
Do you approve of freedom? Or do you wish the super state dictates everything?

What we need is capitalism with compassion. But not a super state structure with billions of regulations. That's just an invitation to corruption which leads to situations worse than the ills of capitalism.
 
#33 · (Edited)
soviet russia certainly wasn't rich by any modern (and western?) world stretch and it was far from being a paradise either (for one thing the limited freedom its citizens had left a lot to wish for) but... it was economically safe for the average joe. people had their jobs and had the basic means to sustain themselves. that's something that changed drammatically when boris yeltsin and his western-backed capitalist style came to power in the nineties. millions of russians fell into poverty and the GDP plumetted while some filthy gangsters, local and outsiders, managed to become billionaires at the expense of the poverty of a whole nation. for years -even to this day- thousands of russian women went to the west to work as prostitutes just because they didn't have any type of labour opportunities back home.

i'm sure russians at the time would have preferred to keep their "socialist paradise" alive instead of having no food on their plates in yeltsin's capitalist-oriented russia.

things have been getting better for the russians lately, though. as corrupt and shady as putin might be, he's still miles better than boris -and most russians know that.
 
#36 ·
With all due respect, I don't think the Nordic countries can be used as a comparison. They don't face 1/100th of the challenges countries like India and China face.

Here's what the lefties are thinking: "OMG some people in India are actually breaking the shackles and doing well. Let's start attacking them about the gap between them and the poor of their country."

The only way to uplift people is to free them and give them opportunity. Socialism wants the state to run all enterprise and force people into dependence on the inefficient and corrupt state machinery. Screw that.
 
#39 ·
Soviet was a Success story and the Yanks got riled because of that. For the first time they saw somebody standing upto them. Soviet rattled the Americans. And hence they started working overtime just to bring Soviet down and got obsessed with it. They sowed the seeds of the Modern Islamic Terrorism to get even with the Soviets.

All the Osamas and the Pakistani terrorism have their roots in Yanks supporting them to get even with the Soviets.
 
#41 ·
Just because bunch of people running away from the USSR doesn't mean that the system was a failure. There were just too many forces working against them. The Western Propoganda, the Islamic nations. In the end it showed the World a new system and it stood up for a long time. I would appreciate that anyday.
 
#43 ·
I was talking about Communism and Soviet. How has North Korea come into the picture. And anyways if North Korea shows enough Clout Financially,Culturally or in Sporting Arena i would appreciate that also. Maybe i could move in North Korea also. As it was said by W.H Somebody. The World is an Open Place.:rocker:
 
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