Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

[Flash]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Agit8r]

The US under trump is more like any of these totalitarian states than it is like "the free world" of yore

 

[danielpalos]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

 

[danielpalos]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet, right wingers refuse to abolish wasteful programs like our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror.

 

[BluesLegend]

I'll keep it simple, a % of the population are lazy deadbeat losers who want other people to work and pay THEIR bills.

Right wingers are intellectually lazy. Corporate welfare is alive and well and nobody is calling CEOs lazy.

From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.

CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978: Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time

The latest report in EPI’s annual series analyzing current and long-term trends in CEO compensation.

www.epi.org

Is this a rich people have more money than me post? Get a job loser earn your own damn money, hell start a business.

 

[Norman]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

 

[danielpalos]

I'll keep it simple, a % of the population are lazy deadbeat losers who want other people to work and pay THEIR bills.

Right wingers are intellectually lazy. Corporate welfare is alive and well and nobody is calling CEOs lazy.

From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.

CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978: Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time

The latest report in EPI’s annual series analyzing current and long-term trends in CEO compensation.

www.epi.org

Is this a rich people have more money than me post? Get a job loser earn your own damn money, hell start a business.

Right wingers are intellectually lazy. Corporate welfare is alive and well and nobody is calling CEOs lazy.

 

[danielpalos]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

It only works when Government, Governs it.

 

[22lcidw]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet, right wingers refuse to abolish wasteful programs like our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror.

And progs have done?

 

[Norman]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

It only works when Government, Governs it.

So you are now saying that capitalism requires the same institutions... as any other ism you would find, save a few fringe ones that do not actually exist in reality. Oh, what special pleading!

Retarded moron.

 

[Doc7505]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Bullshit for the millionth time it was WWII that created the middle class

I was born in the 1930's and saw the difficulties in a poor America. Both my mom and dad worked hard to raise us and make sure we went to school. My dad left school in the sixth grade while mom made it to the 7th grade. It didn't stop them. Even during the war my dad's salary was frozen at pre-war wages.
I can remember starting work at 0.75 cents an hour...
The middle class was created in the late 40's and early 50's....

 

[Doc7505]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

It only works when Government, Governs it.

That can only be made possible when the electorate controls the government and not the government control the electorate...

 

[Agit8r]

n0t sOciALiSm

Farmers Got Billions From Taxpayers In 2019, And Hardly Anyone Objected

Farmers got more than $22 billion in government payments in 2019 — and most of the money came through a program that Congress never approved. It's the highest level of farm subsidies in 14 years.

www.npr.org

 

[danielpalos]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet, right wingers refuse to abolish wasteful programs like our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror.

And progs have done?

You mean despite right wing obstruction? A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and healthcare reform.

 

[danielpalos]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

It only works when Government, Governs it.

So you are now saying that capitalism requires the same institutions... as any other ism you would find, save a few fringe ones that do not actually exist in reality. Oh, what special pleading!

Retarded moron.

Projecting much? Show us, right wingers, where true unfettered Capitalism actually exists in the real world.

 

[Norman]

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Why Socialism Is the Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism has been tried again and again, with varying degrees of failure every time Nobody ever seems to learn

www.intellectualtakeout.org

3 Sep 2020 ~~ By Dr. Rainer Zitelmann

What would you say to an amateur chef who baked a cake following a certain recipe only for everyone who ate a slice to fall ill quickly afterward? Being such an enthusiastic baker, they bake the same cake a second time just a few weeks later, again following the same recipe, but this time with one or two slight adjustments. Unfortunately, the result is the same – everyone who eats the cake soon ends up feeling sick.
The cake baker repeats this more than two dozen times, always modifying the recipe a little, but the basic ingredients remain more or less the same despite the fact that their guests throw up every time. Of course, there’s no way such a thing would happen. The cake baker would soon realize that there is a major problem with the recipe and throw it away.
More Than Two Dozen Failed Experiments
Yet this is exactly what socialists have done:

Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Benin, Laos, Algeria, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure. How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular? (p. 21)​

This is the central question asked by this extremely important book from economist Kristian Niemietz, who works at the London Institute for Economic Affairs. He manages to provide the answer to his question in one sentence:

It is because socialists have successfully managed to distance themselves from those examples. (p. 55)​

As soon as you confront socialists with examples of failed experiments, they always offer the following response: “These examples don’t prove anything at all! In fact, none of these are true socialist models.” During the “heyday” of most of these socialist experiments, however, intellectuals held quite a different view, as Niemietz illustrates with many examples.
[Snip]
When the Experiment Fails: “That Was Never True Socialism”
In his thorough historical analysis, Niemietz shows every socialist experiment to date has gone through three phases.

During the first phase, the honeymoon period (p. 56), intellectuals around the world are enthusiastic about the system and praise it to the heavens. This enthusiasm is always followed by a second phase, disillusionment, or as Niemietz calls it, “the excuses-and-whataboutery period.” (p. 57) During this phase, intellectuals still defend the system and its “achievements” but withdraw their uncritical support and begin to admit deficiencies, although these are often presented as the result of capitalist saboteurs, foreign forces, or boycotts by US imperialists.
Finally, the third phase sees intellectuals deny that it was ever truly a form of socialism, the not-real-socialism stage. (p. 57) This is the stage at which intellectuals line up to state that the country in question – for example, the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela – was never really a socialist country. According to Niemietz, however, this line of argumentation is rarely presented during the first phase of a new socialist experiment and becomes the dominant view only after the socialist experiment has failed.
Nowadays, Western socialists do not even attempt to oppose real-world capitalism with historical examples of socialism. Instead, they put forward arguments based on the vague utopia of a “just” society. Sometimes, they cite “Nordic socialism” – i.e. the variant of socialism that emerged in countries like Sweden – as an example, although they completely forget that the Nordic countries, having learned from their failed socialist experiments of the 1970s, have long since abandoned the socialist path. Today – despite having higher taxes – they are no less capitalist than, for example, the United States.
Socialists who criticize Stalinism and other forms of real-world, historical socialism always fail to analyze the economic reasons for the failures of these systems. (p. 28) Their analyses attack the paucity of democratic rights and freedoms in these systems, but the alternatives they formulate are based on a vague vision of all-encompassing “democratization of the economy” or “worker control.” Niemietz shows that these are the exact same principles that initially underpinned the failed socialist systems in the Soviet Union and other countries.

When contemporary socialists talk about a non-autocratic, non-authoritarian, participatory and humanitarian version of socialism, they are not as original as they think they are. That was always the idea. This is what socialists have always said. It is not for a lack of trying that it has never turned out that way. (p. 42)​

[Snip]
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the German philosopher Hegel observed,

But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.​

It could well be that Hegel’s verdict is too harsh. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of people are unable to abstract and draw general conclusions from historical experience. Despite the numerous examples of capitalist economic policies leading to greater prosperity – and the failure of every single variant of socialism that has ever been tested under real-world conditions – many people still seem incapable of learning the most obvious lessons.


Comment:
The Marxists say religion is the opiate of the masses but the truth is that socialism, in all its forms, is a far superior opiate for the masses and elites alike.
It gives salvationist zeal and self righteousness with none of that messy repentance guff that so turns off the world.
Marxist Socialism dictates that the people deserve what they didn’t earn and they are due it from the State.
Marxist Socialism tells the elites that they can do as they please as the great and the good, have limitless power to indulge their pride and ego.
It's the modern version of bread and circuses of the Roman era.
Marxist Socialist Communism is a combination of naivete on the part of the followers and something in human nature that makes people long for Utopia here on Earth. Falsely inculcated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of these longings and desires. Finally, It's a lack of education or indoctrination of the young by those who should know better on the evils and shortcomings of Marxist Socialism.

What is the alternative? Capitalism "died in 1929" and socialism has been bailing out capitalism ever since. Government is socialism and FDR's brand of socialism is what commanded our economy upgrade from the third world via second world command economics into the first world we have now. Free market capitalism exists nowhere on Earth since the fall of Mogadishu, last millenium.

Capitalism died because a stock market crash created by banks who were given special rights to print money by the government?

I don't think so. Freedom will never die, it works everywhere it's tried as it unleashes those who can do, to do. Socialism on the other unleashes those who want to take, to take.

The people on Earth who have No Government are the freest. Government is Socialism. Mogadishu lasted less than ten years.

That is not correct.

You bring Mogadishu, I bring... wait for it... AMERICA. Taxes less than 5% before the fucking stupid experiments in granting everyone the right to vote everyone else's money. It was an astonishing success that surpassed all expectations, similar to how socialism failed all expectations.

MAGA all the way.

That is not correct. I can make up any fantasy as well. Why would anyone who lives with no Government not be freer than anyone who lives under a form of Government.

Well that's obvious, they don't pay for military to keep invaders out, and get invaded and killed. That does not sound free to me.

Somalia... not very free.

But sure, if you can show me such a system working and keeping invaders and thieves in check, then you are correct. So far only talk.

Thanks for acknowledging capitalism only works in a vacuum of special pleading.

It does work pretty much everywhere it has been tried. I have no idea what you are getting at with your special pleading - but I can assure you that socialism required a lot more of it, no matter what it is you were getting at.

In any case it is irrelevant, I don't care what capitalism requires to be frank, everyone can see the prosperity and true progress that results.

And to maintain it we need to keep super losers like you out of any decision making capacity. Frankly even your life would be better if someone smarter was calling the shots. One of the bad consequences of freedom is the ability to make dumb ass decisions for yourself, but we still embrace it.

It only works when Government, Governs it.

So you are now saying that capitalism requires the same institutions... as any other ism you would find, save a few fringe ones that do not actually exist in reality. Oh, what special pleading!

Retarded moron.

Projecting much? Show us, right wingers, where true unfettered Capitalism actually exists in the real world.

America in the 1800-1900 period could be used as a definition. Unlike leftists we are not about platonistic ideals but ideas that work and are within reach.

 

[Kilroy2]

How can an idea, which has failed so many times, in so many different variants and so many radically different settings, still be so popular?

People become corrupt with power. It all depends on who is in power and can they maintain a stable life for the majority of people in that country. The leader is the primary driving force. Can he keep most of the people happy.

The US had a revolution. It failed obviously but what if the South won? . There is still those who still talk about breaking away and they are not all on the left. There are those who still talk about the federal government as being the deep state.

Yet the point is they wanted to secede from the Union. They fought a war and lost. If they had won it then it is not because capitalism was a failure but other issues became more important. Socialism, Capitalism, and whatever is just a name. The majority of people have to be content. In an ideal world they should all be content.

The USSR was a socialist country and they changed direction because of one leader who fought for change. The are currently a product of their past. This is why Putin is now President for life. Is that a democracy and they did have election. Yet they do have capitalism. China is the same.

It seems to be a blend and people will use parts of something to form something else.

They say absolute power corrupts but it obvious anyone in power can become corrupt.

So government fall because they fail to keep the majority happy and are generally corrupt. The US can fail not because they are have capitalism but because their leader is corrupt.

 

[22lcidw]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet, right wingers refuse to abolish wasteful programs like our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror.

And progs have done?

You mean despite right wing obstruction? A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and healthcare reform.

Somewhere there is balance in capitalism and social programs. You can talk about your interests, however on one point there are hundreds of taxes that we all pay. I tis not just the federal income tax. The taxes add up. State, local, federal, city with fees and fines for most other things. There are government worker who are police and fireman who after a few yeas of retirement have become millionaires. Not to disparage them. They are not alone. If you are in a privileged job, you have done well. Government entities have to pa this out. How much of a pension with benefits is a person worth who worked for government, a monopoly or large privileged union? This is the start. Port workers earn massive income as another example. Costs are passed on to the consumers.

 

[BluesLegend]

I'll keep it simple, a % of the population are lazy deadbeat losers who want other people to work and pay THEIR bills.

Right wingers are intellectually lazy. Corporate welfare is alive and well and nobody is calling CEOs lazy.

From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.

CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978: Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time

The latest report in EPI’s annual series analyzing current and long-term trends in CEO compensation.

www.epi.org

Is this a rich people have more money than me post? Get a job loser earn your own damn money, hell start a business.

Right wingers are intellectually lazy. Corporate welfare is alive and well and nobody is calling CEOs lazy.

LMAO what "corporate welfare" be specific then I'll destroy you.

 

[Flash]

Have a government to steal your money and give it away to other people. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet, right wingers refuse to abolish wasteful programs like our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror.

You are confused Moon Bat. It is not about waste. All government programs are wasteful.

Socialism is about thievery. The fucking government stealing your money and giving it away to greedy assholes that didn't earn the money. Disgusting and a disastrous economic model that destroys countries.