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Post by assisi on Apr 23, 2018 12:59:35 GMT
A magazine sent to me last week, whose articles I would usually take with a grain of salt, mentioned an irony in it's March edition that I couldn't help being struck by. After several statistics from polls taken in American universities"... Half of millennials , roughly ages 18-35, believe Americans would be better off living under socialism our communism (44% and 7%)...", the editor points out "these stats could be replicated in any Western nation. Certainly in Britain, where large numbers of young voters cheer on Marxist Jeremy Corbyn just as American youth flock to Marxist Bernie Sanders. APPARENTLY THE CYBER GENERATION WITH WORLD HISTORY AT IT'S FINGERTIPS CAN'T BE BOTHERED GOOGLING THE HISTORY OF COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF AMERICAN AND BRITISH GOVERNMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS OR ACCOUNTS OF THE HELLISH MARXIST STRIFE IN 1970S ENGLAND" You can't help wondering if he has a point about the amount of information now available and how sensibly it's used(or not). I saw a 'vox pop' recently on youtube where an interviewer asked some young people in the U.S. to define socialism. The answers were so fuzzy and basically along the lines of 'socialism helps the poor, I think'. No mention of all powerful central governments, censorship, outlawing religion and engineering the family unit and forced uniformity. Nothing but a vague and fuzzy idea of helping the poor!
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 23, 2018 13:08:16 GMT
Well, the thing is that its critics are often quite fuzzy too. Is Scandinavian style social democracy socialism? It would be according to some definitions, or some rhetoric.
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Post by assisi on Apr 28, 2018 12:57:13 GMT
Well, the thing is that its critics are often quite fuzzy too. Is Scandinavian style social democracy socialism? It would be according to some definitions, or some rhetoric. I don't know enough about Scandinavia to be able to answer that. I would be interested to hear other's view on that. However my sense would be that there is a sliding scale between a consumerist democracy and end-game socialism. By end-game socialism, I mean the likes of the experiment in USSR that lead to an all powerful central government that actively, and using any means, was the ultimate arbiter of the lifestyles of its peoples. It actively suppressed other 'competitors' that could influence its peoples, particularly religion and family. So, perhaps the likes of Sweden and other nations might be closer (but not yet there) to end-game socialism than, say the U.S., due to the power invested in the government. The UK for example, has a National Health Service free to all citizens, a state run facility, but the UK wouldn’t be termed socialist. In the USSR the socialist experiment was driven by a big idea, that of bourgeois v proletariat. I think the big idea is back with a vengeance, but it has changed. This time it is oppressed minorities v Christian tradition and Nation state. When I think of socialism, it is in the context of the journey towards this end game socialism. Some countries are edging closer than others but the push in the direction of end game socialism is definitely here. Hence the frustration with fuzzy definitions such as it ‘helps the poor’.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 28, 2018 14:42:26 GMT
Quite honestly, I don't think socialism comes into it at all, in our time. I think it's entirely about the erosion of tradition and Christianity. This certainly involves increasing the power of the state, though.
I think Marxism has now morphed into cultural Marxism and doesn't really care about economics or the means of production, distribution and exchange.
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Post by Tomas on Apr 28, 2018 19:27:01 GMT
Well, the thing is that its critics are often quite fuzzy too. Is Scandinavian style social democracy socialism? It would be according to some definitions, or some rhetoric. As one native living in Sweden, I feel obliged to agree that contemporary socialism comes in various "reformed" more or less peculiar forms, and that our state of affairs partly would qualify to that brand also. But what is worst on a more general level? Plutocracy and neoliberalism merged with hybrids of Socialist-Capitalism and its increase of State power, or some kind of return of old school Marxism in culture or more towards economic issues and in political science? What theorist Marxists has to say about political economy is not much of a threat to tradition or religion. So a new more sinister or extreme brew of sectarian New World order, neopagan or other (a post-Protestant Plutocracy and neo-neoliberalism putsch against the weakened remnants of societal traditions and truth?) seems like a more dangerous prospect for the many poor. The devil we know is perhaps a lesser evil than the one we don´t know.
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Post by Tomas on Apr 28, 2018 19:40:29 GMT
Btw I miss MourningIreland at the forum. She began this thread, and have posted most of the important themes in the whole matter. Hope all is well for her too!
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Apr 28, 2018 20:57:01 GMT
Sometimes I wonder if she has been disillusioned by the falling out of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, or the direction the Trump administration is taking. I miss her, too.
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