Even When Times Are Tough Keep Socialism as Your North Star, Though Building fully socialist society takes long time, we should never lose sight of it

[justoffal]

If human beings were selfless angels, capitalism would be vastly less objectionable

But we’re not angels. So we need to be socialists instead

Even When Times Are Tough, Keep Socialism as Your North Star

Achieving a fully socialist society is going to take a long time, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But we should never lose sight of the goal, because every step we take in that direction makes life better for working-class people and deepens democracy.

jacobin.com

Doofus....history is full of fully socialist societies....NONE OF THEM SURVIVED.....
There's reason why its not a going thing. Same reason the Dodo bird is gone.

JO

 

[justoffal]

I don't think you can accomplish anything by cutting right to the chase and shoving it down their throats like that. First off, most of them have no real concept on what socialism or socially responsible government even means.

It's worth saying though that Biden rammed it up their rear ends when he conned them into saying that they didn't want and never did want to eliminate social security and Medicare!

Now Biden gets to run around like a mad hatter, expounding on his slamdunk.

When in fact, Marjorie and her gang of hoodlums will just turn 180 in the wind and try to say they didn't say it.

Quite a remarkable slamdunk for Biden; that and the rest of his speech. Even though we should all know it was his speech writer.

Socialism is like any other human edeavor...it depends on humans to administrate it. As long as that remains the case it will also, like any other system administrated by humans, be abused for selfish purposes.

JO

 

[Smokin' OP]

Doofus....history is full of fully socialist societies....NONE OF THEM SURVIVED.....
There's reason why its not a going thing. Same reason the Dodo bird is gone.

JO

What republicans consider "socialist" countries are gone?

Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, even Israel?

Countries With the Highest Health Care Costs in 2022

• The United States - $12,318.
• Germany- $7,383.
• Switzerland - $7,179.
• Norway - $7,065.
• Austria - $6,693.
• Denmark - $6,384.
• Sweden - $6,262.
• Netherlands - $6,190.

Each country is given a score for each of the above factors and then a total score out of 100. According to this index, the ten countries with the best health care are:

1. South Korea
2. Taiwan
3. Denmark
4. Austria
5. Japan
6. Australia
7. France
8. Spain
9. Belgium
10. United Kingdom

 

[dudmuck]

The number of people in the world who think the entire economy should be in the hands of the government, with things manufactured and distributed according to a plan, is so close to zero as to be its equivalent.

The main problem with a state-run, non-market economy is that it is impossible to fix rational prices for things. This is known as the 'Socialist [sometimes 'Economic'] Calculation Problem'. It is irrefutable, which is why the economics department of universities in the old Soviet Union, generated the first advocates of the market. The same is true for the Economics Department at the University of Havana today. Even Fidel Castro knew that the planned economy doesn't work.

When I visited Cuba about 20 years ago, I was struck by the fact that almost everyone I talked to -- street traders, the owners of the Casas Particulares (private homes) where we stayed -- knew that the system was crap. Cuba is not North Korea, and, so long as you don't try to organize your opposition, you can say pretty much what you like, if you keep it abstract.

And the Cuban leadership knows this as well.

If the stupid people who make American foreign policy would just drop the blockade, flood Cuba with tourists, set up a massive 'cultural exchange' program (sending tens of thousands of American kids to Cuba to learn Spanish, and bringing Cuban kids here), socialism would be gone in five years, if not sooner.

Not through a bloody uprising and the return of the exiles ... but by the Cuban leadership taking the 'Chinese Road'. And once they do that, the end is inevitable.

Cuba is a beautiful country. Send some American speculators down there with fistfulls of dollars... the kind of people who'll drape their arm around the shoulder of a Cuban bureaucrat in charge of a government hotel, and say, "You know, Jose, you and I could make a shitload of dinero in a joint venture here ... I'll modernize this place, with this beaufiful beach, and we'll have more Yanquis queueing up to have a cheap two-week holiday here than you can shake a stick at."

The land is fertile, the countryside and seaside are unspoiled, the people are friendly ... there are taxis which have a little American flag attached to them! ...

And there are LOTs of vintage autos, dating back to before the 1959 revolution. Although most have had their engines replaced, if they were auctioned off to Yanqui collectors, Cuba's GNP would double in a year.

We've got to stop being held hostage to the desire of Cuban exiles for revenge. We need to approach Cuba with love ... the kind of love a lothario has for a beautiful woman. Capitalism, in a few decades, took China from one of the poorest countries in the world, to one that now has a larger economy than the US, and which will, in a decade or so, have a larger per capita income than the US. (Assuming Peter Zeihan is not right and that they don't have a demographic collapse.)

A capitalist Cuba will race into prosperity much faster. Drop the blockade ... bring capitalism to Cuba!!!

what defines capitalism is the employee-employer relationship, which power is centralized at the employer. Similar to past fuedalism, the lord-serf relationship. Or the other system, master-slave relationship.

The employer can just as easily become the state in some cases, then its known as state-capitalism.

The original intent of socialism was to distribute the power among the workers, or among the public at large. Similar in the way democracy distributes power among the people.

But as far as Cuba, what you seek appears to already be there --> the hidden wealthy in cuba.

 

[Cellblock2429]

If human beings were selfless angels, capitalism would be vastly less objectionable

But we’re not angels. So we need to be socialists instead

Even When Times Are Tough, Keep Socialism as Your North Star

Achieving a fully socialist society is going to take a long time, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But we should never lose sight of the goal, because every step we take in that direction makes life better for working-class people and deepens democracy.

jacobin.com

/——/ Move to a socialist country and leave us Capitalist the hell alone. I guarantee you’ll be back in the good ole USA in no time.

 

[Doug1943]

Cuba has capitalism, just not with the US.
Obama had a decent start, but like anything that had Obama's name on it, Trump reversed.

April 17 2019
The Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded several Obama-era policies toward Cuba, while imposing tough sanctions against Venezuela and Nicaragua – as part of a new crackdown on what National Security Adviser John Bolton dubbed the “three stooges of socialism."

Bolton outlined the steps during an event in Coral Gables, Fla., honoring veterans of the United States' failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Among the moves being taken against Cuba, the Trump administration is restricting non-family travel to the island and limiting the amount of remittances a person in the U.S. can send to family in Cuba to $1,000 per quarter.

Trump's reversal of Obama's moves toward normalizing relations with Cuba was a huge mistake. Bolton's influence ran counter to Trump's instincts.

If Cuba is capitalist, then any and all societies that have ever existed and ever will exist, are capitalist. It robs the word of any real meaning.

The Cuban economy is almost entirely in the hands of the state. There are tiny, tiny shoots of free enterprise -- you can rent out a room in your apartment to tourists, and create a mini-cafe in your apartment, and little else.

That's why people still have to queue up for their food rations.

Everyone in Cuba knows socialism has failed there, and especially the U of Havana Dept of Economics. If the US would just treat Cuba as a normal country, it would put it on the path to becoming a normal country. The Cuban leadership would take the 'Chinese Road' and re-introduce capitalism, ie let their people decide what to make, what to buy and sell, and at what price.

Cuba would very quickly become a prosperous country, and eventually, a democratic one. The Cuban government could -- and should -- prevent it from becoming a Mafia whorehouse again, or an intermediate staging area for America's insatiable appetite for drugs.

We should work out a deal for the long-term compensation of Cuban exiles for the property they lost. It should be better than the deal the American loyalists who fled to Canada after the Revolution got for their left-behind property, ie nothing (from the Americans).

 

[Mac-7]

The difference between people running a government, and people running a business, is that if the latter make too many mistakes and don't satisfy their customers, they'll go out of business.

The government has not gone out of business in spite of being TOTALLY INCOMPETENT

It just get bigger and the pinheads in charge live like princes and princesses

The richest county in America is just outside washington dc

 

[Dogmaphobe]

AKA -- "I don't want to work, but want other people to support me"

 

[Smokin' OP]

/——/ Move to a socialist country and leave us Capitalist the hell alone. I guarantee you’ll be back in the good ole USA in no time.View attachment 755945

Why do teabaggers always confuse socialism with dictatorships?

The most common destination for the exports of Venezuela are India ($2.03B), China ($464M), Malaysia ($387M), Spain ($302M), and Italy ($184M).

The following types of Venezuelan product shipments represent positive net exports or a trade balance surplus. Investopedia defines net exports as the value of a country’s total exports minus the value of its total imports.

In a nutshell, net exports represent the amount by which foreign spending on a home country’s goods or services exceeds or lags the home country’s spending on foreign goods or services.

1. Iron, steel: US$920.7 million (Up by 130.4% since 2020)
2. Organic chemicals: $479.6 million (Up by 165.7%)
3. Ores, slag, ash: $385.3 million (Up by 324.6%)
4. Fish: $294.5 million (Up by 23.5%)
5. Aluminum: $118.3 million (Up by 242.7%)
6. Live animals: $79.7 million (Down by -1907.3%)
7. Copper: $63.8 million (Up by 81.8%)
8. Fertilizers: $41.4 million (Up by 48.2%)
9. Salt, sulphur, stone, cement: $41 million (Up by 4366.9%)
10. Beverages, spirits, vinegar: $34.6 million (Up by 89.7%)

Sounds pretty capitalistic to me.

But....................

Extreme poverty and lack of food and medicines has pushed more than three million Venezuelans to leave the country in recent years.
Andres Bello Catholic University conducted a study of poverty that found the poorest 20% of Venezuelans had 1.4% of the nation's wealth, down from 3.4% in 2014, while the richest 10% had 61% of the nation's wealth, up from 30%.

Looks so familiar.

 

[Cellblock2429]

Why do teabaggers always confuse socialism with dictatorships?

The most common destination for the exports of Venezuela are India ($2.03B), China ($464M), Malaysia ($387M), Spain ($302M), and Italy ($184M).

The following types of Venezuelan product shipments represent positive net exports or a trade balance surplus. Investopedia defines net exports as the value of a country’s total exports minus the value of its total imports.

In a nutshell, net exports represent the amount by which foreign spending on a home country’s goods or services exceeds or lags the home country’s spending on foreign goods or services.

1. Iron, steel: US$920.7 million (Up by 130.4% since 2020)
2. Organic chemicals: $479.6 million (Up by 165.7%)
3. Ores, slag, ash: $385.3 million (Up by 324.6%)
4. Fish: $294.5 million (Up by 23.5%)
5. Aluminum: $118.3 million (Up by 242.7%)
6. Live animals: $79.7 million (Down by -1907.3%)
7. Copper: $63.8 million (Up by 81.8%)
8. Fertilizers: $41.4 million (Up by 48.2%)
9. Salt, sulphur, stone, cement: $41 million (Up by 4366.9%)
10. Beverages, spirits, vinegar: $34.6 million (Up by 89.7%)

Sounds pretty capitalistic to me.

But....................

Extreme poverty and lack of food and medicines has pushed more than three million Venezuelans to leave the country in recent years.
Andres Bello Catholic University conducted a study of poverty that found the poorest 20% of Venezuelans had 1.4% of the nation's wealth, down from 3.4% in 2014, while the richest 10% had 61% of the nation's wealth, up from 30%.

Looks so familiar.

/——/ You always turn every debate into a sex perversion. Teabaggers is a gay liberal thing. So, let me quote your leader on socialism and communism: "The goal of socialism is communism." - Vladimir Lenin

 

[BackAgain]

Whatever were the possibilities in 1818, today one of the granite-hard guiding principles of all serious statesmen should be: STAY OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S COUNTRIES.

Most people today have national pride, or some close equivalent. They want to be ruled by those who look like them, talk like them, have the same skin color as they do, share the same religions.

The poor Africans and the people of the Caribbean islands would be far better off, materially, if they were still ruled by the British. But they would rather live as they do, under their own rulers, than be ruled by foreigners.

So let them be. We should have learned our lessons with Iraq and Afghanistan.

[There are always exceptions to every rule. Normally, ethnic diversity means civil war, but the Swiss are an exception. Normally, people would rather live in squalor and crime than be ruled by foreigners, but the Puerto Ricans (in their majority) are an exception.]

If the US were to adhere to your counsel and advice, that is; if we stayed out of other countries, there are other major players on the international arena who would not.

That doesn’t necessarily help the peoples of those countries. But it might freeze us out of sources for our industrial needs and markets for our producers.

I agree that for the most part we shouldn’t be imposong ourselves on other peoples who don’t want us. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to take your advice, either.

 

[Smokin' OP]

Trump's reversal of Obama's moves toward normalizing relations with Cuba was a huge mistake. Bolton's influence ran counter to Trump's instincts.

If Cuba is capitalist, then any and all societies that have ever existed and ever will exist, are capitalist. It robs the word of any real meaning.

The Cuban economy is almost entirely in the hands of the state. There are tiny, tiny shoots of free enterprise -- you can rent out a room in your apartment to tourists, and create a mini-cafe in your apartment, and little else.

That's why people still have to queue up for their food rations.

Everyone in Cuba knows socialism has failed there, and especially the U of Havana Dept of Economics. If the US would just treat Cuba as a normal country, it would put it on the path to becoming a normal country. The Cuban leadership would take the 'Chinese Road' and re-introduce capitalism, ie let their people decide what to make, what to buy and sell, and at what price.

Cuba would very quickly become a prosperous country, and eventually, a democratic one. The Cuban government could -- and should -- prevent it from becoming a Mafia whorehouse again, or an intermediate staging area for America's insatiable appetite for drugs.

We should work out a deal for the long-term compensation of Cuban exiles for the property they lost. It should be better than the deal the American loyalists who fled to Canada after the Revolution got for their left-behind property, ie nothing (from the Americans).

I don't disagree.

But the way republicans describe "socialism", is a dictatorship.
Which Cuba is.
Like democrats want to get rid of capitalism..........Completely, and use dictatorships as an example of socialism.
Every government in the world is capitalistic and socialist.
Not every country has dictators, which rule, oppressing it's own people.

 

[Mac-7]

If the US were to adhere to your counsel and advice, that is; if we stayed out of other countries, there are other major players on the international arena who would not.

That doesn’t necessarily help the peoples of those countries. But it might freeze us out of sources for our industrial needs and markets for our producers.

I agree that for the most part we shouldn’t be imposong ourselves on other peoples who don’t want us. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to take your advice, either.

If the US were isolationist as libs dream of china, russia, north korea and iran would take our place

and the world including America would be in deep doo doo

 

[Smokin' OP]

If the US were isolationist as libs dream of china, russia, north korea and iran would take our place

and the world including America would be in deep doo doo

Sure like these "libs"?

May 13 2022
On Thursday, Senator Rand Paul single-handedly stalled a bipartisan effort to fast-track an additional $40 billion to assist Ukraine and its regional allies in the fighting against Russia. But this was not the first time the Kentucky Republican has opposed aid to Ukraine, nor is he the only Republican to object twice.

In March, the Senate successfully passed a $1.5 trillion appropriations package—which included $13.6 billion in emergency funds for Ukraine—but the legislation did not have the support of 31 Republican senators and 57 GOP representatives.

Where the anti-aid position gets extra spicy, though, is among the right-wing commentariat, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington last month was met by intense vitriol.

The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh dubbed Zelensky a "grifting leech;" Tucker Carlson called him a "strip club manager" whom U.S. lawmakers love more than their own constituents; and Donald Trump Jr., refighting old family battles, labeled him an "ungrateful international welfare queen."

Polling shows GOP support for Ukraine aid has already declined, and it's not difficult to imagine House Republicans feeling pressure from the base to move from skeptical to outright critical of Ukraine aid if remarks like these continue.

 

[BackAgain]

If the US were isolationist as libs dream of china, russia, north korea and iran would take our place

and the world including America would be in deep doo doo

That’s my basic premise.

I mean, let’s face it. If we were the sole nation on Earth to abide by the environmentalist whacko’s demands for carbon reduction, the human-caused emissions of so-called green house gasses would remain very high. It’s not as though China and India would follow our lead.

China is moving all over the planet. They own large tracts of land in many African nations. THEY certainly wouldn’t follow our lead in leaving other nations alone.

So the OP’s proposal is simply not going to fly. While we can all agree to behave “better” when we do seek to reach deals with foreign governments, I don’t believe we should refrain from interacting with other nations.

 

[Mac-7]

Sure like these "libs"?

May 13 2022
On Thursday, Senator Rand Paul single-handedly stalled a bipartisan effort to fast-track an additional $40 billion to assist Ukraine and its regional allies in the fighting against Russia. But this was not the first time the Kentucky Republican has opposed aid to Ukraine, nor is he the only Republican to object twice.

In March, the Senate successfully passed a $1.5 trillion appropriations package—which included $13.6 billion in emergency funds for Ukraine—but the legislation did not have the support of 31 Republican senators and 57 GOP representatives.

Where the anti-aid position gets extra spicy, though, is among the right-wing commentariat, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington last month was met by intense vitriol.

The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh dubbed Zelensky a "grifting leech;" Tucker Carlson called him a "strip club manager" whom U.S. lawmakers love more than their own constituents; and Donald Trump Jr., refighting old family battles, labeled him an "ungrateful international welfare queen."

Polling shows GOP support for Ukraine aid has already declined, and it's not difficult to imagine House Republicans feeling pressure from the base to move from skeptical to outright critical of Ukraine aid if remarks like these continue.

Because you are a democrat in practice if not officially you are unable to criticize your own kind

And you expect me to be equally as inflexible with the republicans

But you are wrong

I dont agree with Rand Paul on this issue and do not agree with trump in many cases either

Independence for Ukraine is very important and worth the cost in material that we are spending

 

[Soupnazi630]

If human beings were selfless angels, capitalism would be vastly less objectionable

But we’re not angels. So we need to be socialists instead

Even When Times Are Tough, Keep Socialism as Your North Star

Achieving a fully socialist society is going to take a long time, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But we should never lose sight of the goal, because every step we take in that direction makes life better for working-class people and deepens democracy.

jacobin.com

Capiutalism works

Socialism does not


History proves this conclusively

Socialism needs to be a guide of what NOT to attempt.

 

[Smokin' OP]

Because you are a democrat in practice if not officially you are unable to criticize your own kind

And you expect me to be equally as inflexible with the republicans

But generalize about democrats being isolationists?
WHEN they have been in favor, of supporting US aid to Ukraine?

But you are wrong

I dont agree with Rand Paul on this issue and do not agree with trump in many cases either

Independence for Ukraine is very important and worth the cost in material that we are spending

Correct, Ukraine IS worth the cost.

 

[Mac-7]

But generalize about democrats being isolationists?
WHEN they have been in favor, of supporting US aid to Ukraine?

Correct, Ukraine IS worth the cost.

You misread my post

I have not accused democrats of being isolationist

In fact I’m hopeful that biden will extend the Ukraine policy to Taiwan

 

[Smokin' OP]

You misread my post

I have not accused democrats of being isolationist

'If the US were isolationist as libs dream of china, russia, north korea and iran would take our place........"