The reason Socialism prevails is because it's based in psychology

[FJO]

Perhaps you could define socialism ? What is it ?
I suspect that would get a 100 different answers.

What is your definition? I will accept it.

Bill Shankly put it best.

Its how we build communities.

So, this football guru believes that If Liverpool wins the championship it will share the rewards with Manchester? Or that Tottenham is working for Wolverhampton?

What a nutbar.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Perhaps you could define socialism ? What is it ?
I suspect that would get a 100 different answers.

What is your definition? I will accept it.

Bill Shankly put it best.

Its how we build communities.

So, this football guru believes that If Liverpool wins the championship it will share the rewards with Manchester? Or that Tottenham is working for Wolverhampton?

What a nutbar.

Seriously ? I could explain it to you but I am not sure there would be a point.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

 

[ding]

He certainly lays out a case that supports Marxist theory.

Actually he doesn't. He lays out that we have become materialistic at the expense of what matters most.... virtue and morality.

 

[ding]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

I think you misconstrue Marx's materialist way of understanding historical relationships for materialism, which is clearly a symptom of Western capitalism. It's not the same.

Marx understood that behaviors were determined by the economic model employed by society. That from its base economic model sprung the laws and customs that instruct societal values.

Considering historical shifts in relations of production, most importantly, the shift from feudalist to capitalist production, Marx was not content with Hegel’s theory. He believed that the shift to a capitalist mode of production had sweeping implications for the social structure, culture, institutions, and ideology of society—that it reconfigured the superstructure in drastic ways. He posed instead a “materialist” way of understanding history (“historical materialism”), which is the idea that the material conditions of our existence, what we produce in order to live and how we go about doing so, determines all else in society. Building on this idea, Marx posed a new way of thinking about the relationship between thought and lived reality with his theory of the relationship between base and superstructure.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

What type of society do you think should have arisen out of an economic system that promotes individual economic self interest as its primary engine?

Ummmm... that was an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I'm pretty sure he understood Marx pretty well.

I wasn't challenging his understanding, I was challenging yours.

My understanding is captured in the signature line of every single post I make and is based in part on the work of Igor Shafarevich.

 

[eflatminor]

Socialism prevails because when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.

 

[ding]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

The role of the government is to do for the people what the people cannot do for themselves. That's not socialism. The role of the government is not to do what the people can and should do for themselves.

 

[ding]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

Even FDR realized that:

"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14890

 

[Tehon]

He certainly lays out a case that supports Marxist theory.

Actually he doesn't. He lays out that we have become materialistic at the expense of what matters most.... virtue and morality.

Yes, yes, he does, you're not paying attention.


Solzhenitsyn told the Harvard grads that Western capitalism gave them all the material benefits that they could want, yet they still clamored for ever more material possessions. The ability to achieve their desires was made possible by the capitalist mode of production, the base.

Then Solzhenitsyn goes on to tell the grads that it is the organization of society, specifically its laws, that have proven an impediment to moral rightness. The superstructure.

Base and superstructure are two linked theoretical concepts developed by Karl Marx, one of the founders of sociology. Simply put, base refers to the forces and relations of production—to all the people, relationships between them, the roles that they play, and the materials and resources involved in producing the things needed by society.

Superstructure, quite simply and expansively, refers to all other aspects of society.

It includes culture, ideology (world views, ideas, values, and beliefs), norms and expectations, identities that people inhabit, social institutions (education, religion, media, family, among others), the political structure, and the state (the political apparatus that governs society). Marx argued that the superstructure grows out of the base, and reflects the interests of the ruling class that controls it. As such, the superstructure justifies how the base operates, and in doing so, justifies the power of the ruling class.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

Our society is built upon the foundation (base) of individual economic self interest (capitalism). From that develops the structure of our society (culture). Materialism is a natural consequence of individual economic self interest. The legal system provides the framework which excuses individuals of their moral indiscretions. This is what Solzhenitsyn lays out in his speech and that which supports Marxist theory whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.

 

[peach174]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

No, socialism is having the government provide goods and/or services instead of the private sector.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

 

[peach174]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

So does everybody else in America.
That is not socialism it's necessary government.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

So does everybody else in America.
That is not socialism it's necessary government.

It's socialism by definition you idiot.

See? The poster's idiocy above is a perfect representation of the Right. They're not against socialism, as long as they have the power to decide what will be socialist and what will not.

 

[peach174]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

So does everybody else in America.
That is not socialism it's necessary government.

It's socialism by definition you idiot.

See? The poster's idiocy above is a perfect representation of the Right. They're not against socialism, as long as they have the power to decide what will be socialist and what will not.

NO!
It isn't.
Socialism is welfare programs, health care programs, education,housing, federal bank.
None of which our Feds should be in.

 

[regent]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

So does everybody else in America.
That is not socialism it's necessary government.

It's socialism by definition you idiot.

See? The poster's idiocy above is a perfect representation of the Right. They're not against socialism, as long as they have the power to decide what will be socialist and what will not.

NO!
It isn't.
Socialism is welfare programs, health care programs, education,housing, federal bank.
None of which our Feds should be in.

How about the states?

 

[Tehon]

If you really don't believe in socialism, abolish your town's highway department and plow your own road when the snow comes.

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

No, socialism is having the government provide goods and/or services instead of the private sector.

It's crap. I don't want a nanny state. What good is socialism if it does not place the decision making power in the hands of the workers? Those that physically produce the goods and services. You end up with a State capitalist system, which is just another hierarchical structure that the American left should reject.

 

[peach174]

That is not socialism, that's necessary government functions.
Socialism is collecting taxes to pay for anything our government comes up with, to pay for welfare programs, in order to get votes.

My town votes to have a highway department.

So does everybody else in America.
That is not socialism it's necessary government.

It's socialism by definition you idiot.

See? The poster's idiocy above is a perfect representation of the Right. They're not against socialism, as long as they have the power to decide what will be socialist and what will not.

NO!
It isn't.
Socialism is welfare programs, health care programs, education,housing, federal bank.
None of which our Feds should be in.

How about the states?

If the voters want government dependants rather than freedom in their States ,then go for it.
If they want to pay out 50 to 60% to the State to support those programs.
Don't ask for Federal funding for them as help either.

 

[ding]

Yes, yes, he does, you're not paying attention.

Obviously you did not read the entire address.

"I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death."

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

 

[regent]

Is there any nation on this earth that practices Marx's communism?
I wonder if there are any nations on this earth that does not have some socialism? If the states were responsible for welfare in the US in the beginning, why did the federal government take over much of the welfare?
Why did Marx's dialectical materialism, not work in the US and many other nations?