Big Problem For The Right: 'Socialism' Is No Longer A Bad Word. You Must Now Explain

Cypress said:
Nope, it is way too late for you to attempt to change the rules of the game.

The thread title is "Socialism", not "Marxism".

I realize you have a partisan agenda to attempt limit the use of the term socialism to the totalitarian Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist states of USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba.

But the leaders of your own party have called Western Europe "socialist" - therefore, by your own party's standards, we highlight Sweden, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, France all as excellent examples of the success of socialism.
Click to expand...

I didn't steer the conversation over to Marxism. As with liberalism, socialism is also used incorrectly. The politicos of Sweden and Norway have pointed-out with frustration that their countries are not socialist.

https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/10/23/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-success
 
Hello Howard the Duck,

Howard the Duck said:
Been tried, and failed. Starting with V. Lenin.
Click to expand...

Straw man. We are not advocating for what Lenin did. If you want to talk about why you object to what we want that's one thing. But calling it Leninist is a dead end. That's no more than false re-labeling. Has no bearing on the policy we would like to see.

Universal health care is not Leninism.

Why don't you talk about why you think Medicare for All couldn't work instead of calling it names and rattling off old fears from the past. Universal health care currently works quite well in most industrialized nations.

Do you dispute that the average life span of a human in nations with universal health care is longer than the average life span of an American?

Why do you want to stick to a failed system that lets people fall through the cracks, makes a few extremely rich, bankrupts others, and results in shorter lives?

I want to live as long as possible. I love life. I want a more effective health care system. I don't want to die sooner than I have to just so somebody who is already rich can be richer.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Howard the Duck,



Straw man. We are not advocating for what Lenin did. If you want to talk about why you object to what we want that's one thing. But calling it Leninist is a dead end. That's no more than false re-labeling. Has no bearing on the policy we would like to see.

Universal health care is not Leninism.

Why don't you talk about why you think Medicare for All couldn't work instead of calling it names and rattling off old fears from the past. Universal health care currently works quite well in most industrialized nations.

Do you dispute that the average life span of a human in nations with universal health care is longer than the average life span of an American?

Why do you want to stick to a failed system that lets people fall through the cracks, makes a few extremely rich, bankrupts others, and results in shorter lives?

I want to live as long as possible. I love life. I want a more effective health care system. I don't want to die sooner than I have to just so somebody who is already rich can be richer.
Click to expand...

You are the one who thought it would be a good idea to defend Marxism. I guess you should stick to defending progressivism, since, that is clearly your preferred ideology.
 
Donald the racist Trump has no respect for the Ameican system, no matter how you define it. He has ignored norms and sought ways to get more power. That is more like Lenin than a American president. He welcomed foreign interference in the elction. He atatcked his party members on a personal and childish basis. He has disparaged the FBI, the CIA and other government agencies. He has sought powers like no president in recent history. We willl be a better country when he is in jail where he belongs.
 
Hello Nordberg,

Nordberg said:
Donald the racist Trump has no respect for the Ameican system, no matter how you define it. He has ignored norms and sought ways to get more power. That is more like Lenin than a American president. He welcomed foreign interference in the elction. He atatcked his party members on a personal and childish basis. He has disparaged the FBI, the CIA and other government agencies. He has sought powers like no president in recent history. We willl be a better country when he is in jail where he belongs.
Click to expand...

He has been flouting the system his entire life. No big surprise he would be that kind of President. The fact that he ever got in there should serve as a huge wake-up call to apathetic Americans.
 
Howard the Duck said:
I didn't steer the conversation over to Marxism. As with liberalism, socialism is also used incorrectly. The politicos of Sweden and Norway have pointed-out with frustration that their countries are not socialist.

https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/10/23/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-success
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure you and you alone attempted to steer the conversation to Marxism - in a transparent attempt to link American liberals to totalitarian systems, aka Soviet Union, Lenin, Mao, North Korea, and Castro.

Throwing out the word "Marxism" is meaningless. I know zero people who are advocating "Marxism". Karl Marx lived almost two centuries ago, in a different time and context, and nobody today can claim they know what Marx would want in today's world. He is dead and gone an cannot speak for himself. The fact that the Soviet co-opted his name was an obvious attempt to legitimize themselves - they did not have permission from Marx to co-opt his name.

An intellectually honest way to have this conversation is to recognize that to the extent any America liberal advocates for democratic socialism, they are obviously riffing off the highly successful Scandinavian model.

Your own party has a long history of calling western Europe socialist. So if we use the very standards your own party set up, then Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, et al. are shining examples of the successes of socialism by global standards and historical standards.

Leading Republicans Refer to Western Europe as "Socialists"

....(and let's not forget, rightwing message boarders have spent years calling western Europe "socialist")......

Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.310f3f267a8a

Leading Republicans Call Western Europe "Socialist"

Newt Gingrich has constantly accused the president of being a "European Socialist", often adding in a reference to an all-but-forgotten community activist from Chicago, who died in 1972, but whose Democratic-leaning writings are thought to have influenced the current president

"I am for the Declaration of Independence; he is for the writing of Saul Alinsky. I am for the Constitution; he is for European socialism," Mr Gingrich told voters in Florida last week.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16583813

Bill O'Reilly noted rightwing blowhard: Western Europe is basically socialist

"I received a letter from Rhonda Hallett who lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina asking me to define Bernie's doctrine of Democratic socialism. Ok. That's basically what some countries in western Europe have, a political system that limits personal income through taxation in return for cradle to grave payouts from the governments. That's the trade."

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/02/14...atic-socialism

Mike Pence is on record referring to western Europe as "socialist".

when Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, denounced “European-style socialism,” in his speech at the conference on Thursday, the jeers from the crowd did not exactly signal an openness to debate it on the merits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/w...leibovich.html

European socialism taking root in US, Fox News's Stuart Varney says
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics...us-varney-says
Click to expand...
 
Hello Cypress,

Cypress said:
I am pretty sure you and you alone attempted to steer the conversation to Marxism - in a transparent attempt to link American liberals to totalitarian systems, aka Soviet Union, Lenin, Mao, North Korea, and Castro.

Throwing out the word "Marxism" is meaningless. I know zero people who are advocating "Marxism". Karl Marx lived almost two centuries ago, in a different time and context, and nobody today can claim they know what Marx would want in today's world. He is dead and gone an cannot speak for himself. The fact that the Soviet co-opted his name was an obvious attempt to legitimize themselves - they did not have permission from Marx to co-opt his name.

An intellectually honest way to have this conversation is to recognize that to the extent any America liberal advocates for democratic socialism, they are obviously riffing off the highly successful Scandinavian model.

Your own party has a long history of calling western Europe socialist. So if we use the very standards your own party set up, then Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, et al. are shining examples of the successes of socialism by global standards and historical standards.
Click to expand...

Awesome post.

I love it when I learn something.

And you are so right. Using the word 'Marxism' is even less effective than using the word 'socialism.'

Open minded people are not afraid of either word any more.

Thank you, Bernie!

Now we can get on to making America greater with a great Safety Net!
 
StoneByStone said:
And it's getting out that Venezuela failed because of American meddling.
Click to expand...

American power cripples Socialist, Communist or governments that want to control their own resources. Overthrew Irani government, boycotted Cuba for 60 years, Went to war in Iraq nd other middle east countries. Our military and CIA have been making the world safe for our corporations.
 
Nordberg said:
American power cripples Socialist, Communist or governments that want to control their own resources. Overthrew Irani government, boycotted Cuba for 60 years, Went to war in Iraq nd other middle east countries. Our military and CIA have been making the world safe for our corporations.
Click to expand...

It's too bad, a lot of the lies that Fox News told about Obama would have been great if they were true, such as Obama supposedly wanting to reduce American power on the global stage.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Cypress,



Awesome post.

I love it when I learn something.

And you are so right. Using the word 'Marxism' is even less effective than using the word 'socialism.'

Open minded people are not afraid of either word any more.

Thank you, Bernie!

Now we can get on to making America greater with a great Safety Net!
Click to expand...

Reichwing posters have a vested interest in trying to dishonestly and deceptively link American liberals with the USSR, Leninsim, Stalinism, Mao, North Korea, and Cuba.

Because conservatives find it extremely difficult to attack the Scandinavian model that some American liberals would like to emulate. Because the Nordic model is probably in many respects the most admired economic system on the planet. A democratic social welfare state, a hybrid of free enterprise and democratic socialism.

It certainly is far more admired than the kind of Darwinian capitalism the American rightwing dreams of having.

And that is why you will find teabaggers desperately trying to link Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders to Lenin, Mao, and Castro, while trying to obscure any link between the Nordic countries and what American liberals would like to have.

The weird thing? Teabaggers have spent entire careers calling western Europe "socialist", so it is way too late for them to claim they never meant it in the first place.

Leading Republicans Refer to Western Europe as "Socialists"

....(and let's not forget, rightwing message boarders have spent years calling western Europe "socialist")......

Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.310f3f267a8a

Leading Republicans Call Western Europe "Socialist"

Newt Gingrich has constantly accused the president of being a "European Socialist", often adding in a reference to an all-but-forgotten community activist from Chicago, who died in 1972, but whose Democratic-leaning writings are thought to have influenced the current president

"I am for the Declaration of Independence; he is for the writing of Saul Alinsky. I am for the Constitution; he is for European socialism," Mr Gingrich told voters in Florida last week.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16583813

Bill O'Reilly noted rightwing blowhard: Western Europe is basically socialist

"I received a letter from Rhonda Hallett who lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina asking me to define Bernie's doctrine of Democratic socialism. Ok. That's basically what some countries in western Europe have, a political system that limits personal income through taxation in return for cradle to grave payouts from the governments. That's the trade."

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/02/14...atic-socialism

Mike Pence is on record referring to western Europe as "socialist".

when Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, denounced “European-style socialism,” in his speech at the conference on Thursday, the jeers from the crowd did not exactly signal an openness to debate it on the merits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/w...leibovich.html

European socialism taking root in US, Fox News's Stuart Varney says
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics...us-varney-says
Click to expand...
 
Hello Nordberg,

Nordberg said:
American power cripples Socialist, Communist or governments that want to control their own resources. Overthrew Irani government, boycotted Cuba for 60 years, Went to war in Iraq nd other middle east countries. Our military and CIA have been making the world safe for our corporations.
Click to expand...

TOTALLY TRUE!

We learned that from the British Empire.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Nordberg,



TOTALLY TRUE!

We learned that from the British Empire.
Click to expand...

TOTALLY UNTRUE!

The need to control or own all their own goods and services cripples Socialist, Communist or governments that want to control their citizenry, from cradle to grave,
 
Hello Cypress,

Cypress said:
Reichwing posters have a vested interest in trying to dishonestly and deceptively link American liberals with the USSR, Leninsim, Stalinism, Mao, North Korea, and Cuba.
Click to expand...

I think it is a basic stinginess. When somebody creates a personal fortune, they have a tendency to fear seeing everyone else do the same thing. Anyone else. So, upon climbing the ladder of success, there is a prevalent urge among the less mature, the less wise, to pull that ladder up after them. Because if others have what they have, that makes them less special. And for some, it's not the having at all. It's the thought that they have something other people don't.

Cypress said:
Because conservatives find it extremely difficult to attack the Scandinavian model that some American liberals would like to emulate. Because the Nordic model is probably in many respects the most admired economic system on the planet. A democratic social welfare state, a hybrid of free enterprise and democratic socialism.

It certainly is far more admired than the kind of Darwinian capitalism the American rightwing dreams of having.

And that is why you will find teabaggers desperately trying to link Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders to Lenin, Mao, and Castro, while trying to obscure any link between the Nordic countries and what American liberals would like to have.
Click to expand...

Such clarity! Very well said.

Cypress said:
The weird thing? Teabaggers have spent entire careers calling western Europe "socialist", so it is way too late for them to claim they never meant it in the first place.
Click to expand...

I know, right? They want to redefine terms at will, but then they don't want to admit it when those very same new definitions don't work in all cases.

I derive no pleasure from making them eat their own words. The lesson for me is observing the false nature of their motivation for believing the things they do. When I see that what they believe in is based on falsehood, it reaffirms my own beliefs. When I see that their attempts to criticize my beliefs are based on falsehoods, then it reaffirms my own beliefs.

If a conservative could offer a valid criticism of my strong liberal values, then I would be forced to reconsider why I believe in them. But that has not happened. So I remain strongly and proudly liberal. I am with the caring side. I am with the people who genuinely care about others. And that feels good. It feels like I am doing the right thing. The right thing for me and the right thing for the world. I want to act in such a way that if everyone acted like that, the world would be a better place.

It is right to care about others and to support policy that puts such caring in action. It is logical. It is the epitome of win/win philosophy. The conservative thinking that wants to pull that ladder of success up, pretend that all really have the same opportunity to succeed as they passively and actively suppress the chances of others to succeed, thus fooling themselves, is logically flawed. It is win/lose philosophy. The very nature of conservative thinking, that freedom means the chance to succeed or fail, is nothing but win/lose philosophy; usually presented by 'winners' who think they will 'lose' if others get closer to what they have.

Win/win is why humans are as advanced as we are. We got this advancement, not by taking it from others, but by creating it through working together. No single human could have created all that we enjoy without the help of others. It took people working together. That's win/win philosophy. Win/lose is dead end shallow thinking.

Win/lose is why Edison blew Tesla off. Edison could have realized that Tesla had a better idea than Edison. But Edison thought he was right. After all, Edison was a successful businessman. Tesla was just a guy off the street with nothing but an idea. Tesla was willing to share what he had with Edison. But Edison already had some meager success with DC Power distribution. He didn't want to admit he was wrong, that Tesla's AC Power distribution idea was really the way to go. Too bad for Edison. His win/lose greed caused him to pass up the opportunity of a lifetime.
 
Earl said:
TOTALLY UNTRUE!

The need to control or own all their own goods and services cripples Socialist, Communist or governments that want to control their citizenry, from cradle to grave,
Click to expand...

What country does that? You are repeating a silly meme.
 
There is nothing inherently wrong with state-ownership of companies.

The Nordic model shows that this can be a highly successful form of socialism.

In reality, the Nordic economies do not provide any support for the idea that relatively high levels of state ownership are incompatible with stable and successful economies. Sweden has 48 state-owned enterprises, Finland has 67, and Norway has 74.

The level of state ownership in Norway in particular is staggering, even after two successive conservative governments have chipped away at it. The Norwegian state owns the country’s largest oil company Equinor (previously called Statoil), the country’s largest telecommunications company Telenor, and the country’s largest financial services group DNB. This would be like if the U.S. government owned Exxon Mobil, Verizon, and JP Morgan Chase.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/07/there-is-nothing-inherently-wrong-with-state-ownership
Click to expand...


Do Republicans consider highly successful and widely admired Scandinavian and western European countries to be "socialist"?
Yep..they do.
Leading Republicans Refer to Western Europe as "Socialists"

....(and let's not forget, rightwing message boarders have spent years calling western Europe "socialist")......

Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.310f3f267a8a

Leading Republicans Call Western Europe "Socialist"

Newt Gingrich has constantly accused the president of being a "European Socialist", often adding in a reference to an all-but-forgotten community activist from Chicago, who died in 1972, but whose Democratic-leaning writings are thought to have influenced the current president

"I am for the Declaration of Independence; he is for the writing of Saul Alinsky. I am for the Constitution; he is for European socialism," Mr Gingrich told voters in Florida last week.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16583813

Bill O'Reilly noted rightwing blowhard: Western Europe is basically socialist

"I received a letter from Rhonda Hallett who lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina asking me to define Bernie's doctrine of Democratic socialism. Ok. That's basically what some countries in western Europe have, a political system that limits personal income through taxation in return for cradle to grave payouts from the governments. That's the trade."

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/02/14...atic-socialism

Mike Pence is on record referring to western Europe as "socialist".

when Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, denounced “European-style socialism,” in his speech at the conference on Thursday, the jeers from the crowd did not exactly signal an openness to debate it on the merits.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/w...leibovich.html

European socialism taking root in US, Fox News's Stuart Varney says
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics...us-varney-says
Click to expand...
 
Hello Cypress,

Cypress said:
There is nothing inherently wrong with state-ownership of companies.

"The Nordic model shows that this can be a highly successful form of socialism.

"In reality, the Nordic economies do not provide any support for the idea that relatively high levels of state ownership are incompatible with stable and successful economies. Sweden has 48 state-owned enterprises, Finland has 67, and Norway has 74.

The level of state ownership in Norway in particular is staggering, even after two successive conservative governments have chipped away at it. The Norwegian state owns the country’s largest oil company Equinor (previously called Statoil), the country’s largest telecommunications company Telenor, and the country’s largest financial services group DNB. This would be like if the U.S. government owned Exxon Mobil, Verizon, and JP Morgan Chase.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/07/there-is-nothing-inherently-wrong-with-state-ownership"
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link. I am learning so much. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

What a great article:

"The New York Times’ Bret Stephens is a sloppy opinion writer who builds his arguments on claims that are clearly untrue. His latest piece, “Democratic Socialism Is Dem Doom,” is no exception to his now-familiar style. The piece contains many factual errors, but here I want to address one in particular: the 1992 Swedish banking crisis.

Stephens writes:

The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, believe in economies defined by state-owned enterprises and worker-owned cooperatives. Versions of this have been tried to varying degrees before: Israel in its first decades; post-independence India; Sweden in the 1960s and ’70s.

It always led to crisis: hyperinflation for Israel in 1980s; an I.M.F. bailout for India in 1991; a banking meltdown for Sweden in 1992. It’s usually a recipe for corruption: State-owned enterprises such as Pemex in Mexico or Eskom in South Africa are local bywords for graft and mismanagement. It frequently leads to dictatorship. Hugo Chávez was also a democratic socialist.

The link Stephens uses for his citation about Sweden is a slideshow created by the former Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. Borg is a member of the right-wing Moderate Party and created the slideshow when Sweden was under a right-wing government in 2012. The slideshow does not talk about the 1992 banking meltdown. It is, in fact, completely unrelated.

Stephens omission of any information about the 1992 Swedish banking crisis is curious. That crisis was caused by the popping of a housing bubble that left banks insolvent, which was the exact same thing that blew up the global economy in 2008. In fact, the two events were so similar that the New York Times published a piece in 2008 titled “Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way” that begins like this:

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?

How this is an indictment of socialism is beyond me. Asset price bubbles that blow up financial systems and plunge economies into recession are generally considered crises of capitalism. Moreover, if the 1992 Swedish banking crisis disproves socialism, then does the much bigger 2008 U.S. banking crisis disprove capitalism?"

Same old same old. The detractors of socialism always refer to the most glaring failures as examples of why they believe socialism 'always fails every time it has been tried in history.' That's why they are all about Venezuela now. Just a few years ago it was Greece. They simply pretend that Norway is not socialist. Which is why they gain no traction with me. Because they SAY that if we were to nationalize any big companies, 'that would be socialism.' But apparently, when Norway has already done so, then they say it is really capitalism. This hypocrisy is why they will never convince me. I don't understand how they can justify these musical arguments, but to them it all somehow makes sense. If the government owning businesses is not socialism, then what is?

I don't expect any conservatives to even attempt to justify this. They probably won't even comment on this post. If they do, they certainly won't address this glaring hypocrisy that sinks their own argument. It is indefensible.

Cypress said:
Do Republicans consider highly successful and widely admired Scandinavian and western European countries to be "socialist"?
Yep..they do.
Click to expand...

Yes, but only when it is convenient. They have to wait for the music to stop before they decide which chair to sit in.
 
PoliTalker said:
Hello Cypress,

Thanks for that link. I am learning so much. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
Click to expand...

I am no expert in Scandinavia, but am willing to learn from their experience.

Imagine the good we could do in this country if our oil, gas, and mineral resources were considered a public trust, and put largely under the control of a government-owned companies mandated to ensure the resource wealth were spent on the public commons and public welfare.

It's not a Kenyan-Marxist hellhole - it is Norway.

Wrapping up, Republicans have a long history of calling western Europe and Scandinavia "socialist". I am not sure they intended to highlight Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, et. al as examples of Socialism. But if they want to provide that opening, I am more than willing to exploit it.

By the standards conservatives have set on message boards for years, a country like Norway with a remarkable amount of state owned companies controlling large sectors of energy, finance, and telecommunications, plus a generous social welfare state certainly sounds to me like a Socialist Paradise.
 
Socialism is becoming more acceptable because Americans are beginning to understand what the wealth gap is and what the Repub plans are. The people are being looted and it is getting worse. They are well aware that other countries get much better medical care and are not being looted for bad care. They are not worried about gaps in healthcare or losing it all together.
 
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