Why I am a socialist

[subsuelo]

THE CORPORATE forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies.

We will find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism--one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars--or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. "A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial," Orwell wrote, "that is, when its ruling class has lost its function, but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud." Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

...

The corporation is designed to make money without regard to human life, the social good or impact on the environment. Corporate laws impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make as much money as possible for shareholders, although many have moved on to fleece shareholders as well.

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones," Albert Einstein wrote in 1949 in the Monthly Review in explaining why he was a socialist...

http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/13/why-i-am-a-socialist">Chris Hedges / SocialistWorker.org - read more

[mike_c]

1. first rec-- this is the TRUTH....

Lots of folks don't want to hear it, but that won't make it go away. We either CHANGE the fundamental way we operate in this country, or it will bury us.

[wake.up.america]

35. I have said that for the longest time. Greed and trickle down econimcs...

don't work and cause massive social problems.

There is a lot more in life then chasing down the almighty Euro or whatever

[Idealism]

2. K & R Free market Capitalism has run its course

[MannyGoldstein]

3. We're All Socialists

Everyone's in favor of a socialized military, police, fire department, roads, etc.

Some things work better when done by the government. Some things don't.

[acmavm]

4. I've always been socialist. The word scares people. They don't have

enough information about socialism. So many think that you can interchange the words 'socialism' and 'communism'. And I guess they don't want to take the time to learn the differnce.

Obviously capitalism is a huge joke. So much of capitalism's success depends on people and companies being honest, doing what's right. Well, look around. That hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. No, they don't want to learn

All those right-wingers calling Obama a "socialist" were only showing off their cluelessness, because

1) Obama isn't even close to being a socialist.

2) And even if he were, that would be a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. Obama is not a socialist -

which is the main reason i was so slow coming around to backing him, doing so only when it was down to him or Hillary.

We could use a bit of socialism right now, in regards to the electric grid, healthcare. Public health and safety should not be dependent upon the good will of the profiteers.

[VPStoltz]

15. Ain't it the truth.

I tell people I'm a socialist and they might as well had heard "your mama's a whore!"
Shock, dismay, and confusion comes over their faces.
As you said, they don't really know how to reply because most don't really understand what it is.
And then I love to ice the cake with "Oh, and I don't believe in god either!"

[Towlie]

23. But socialism IS the same as communism!

Here's all the proof a conservative needs:



The Cold War and Joe McCarthy taught us that communism is evil, therefore socialism is evil too.

So as long as we're willing to ignore the fact that everything we buy comes from China, case closed!

[TankLV]

6. We already PAID for all of it - we should act like we OWN it already...

and do for the COMMON GOOD...

but first - we should and MUST "blacklist" all the CEO's and Execs who ran these miserable companies into the ground so that they can NEVER AGAIN work in the industries that THEY RUINED...

[readmoreoften]

16. Excellent point. We make it. We PAY FOR IT. Then they REPOSSESS what we made and then purchased.

Capitalists are incapable of doing anything. Other than the 'petty bourgeois' who sell their own ideas and products, all capitalists do is manipulate the money their daddies stole from the workers a century ago. They steal from us by paying us a 'wage' for what we make, then reinvesting the profit as 'infrastructure.' Then they sell us the fruits of our own labor. But in advanced capital--they repossess the houses and the crap we first made and then bought but can no longer "afford" because they keep us dirt poor.

The perfect example of this is public highways turning into toll roads. Tax payers pay for the road, tax payers build the road, then the capitalist state sells the road to some corporation and the tax payers have to pay a toll on the road they built and paid for.

It's ours.

[Uncle Joe]

7. An excellent column, well worth the read.

"CORPORATIONS HAVE intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires."

I would also add, insurance and prison corporations to the list of entities sucking our life blood out.

One small example, you can't legally use the only viable means of transportation available in much of the United States to make any money for food, shelter, etc. without shelling out protection money; aka liability insurance to an insurance corporation, even if your automobile is paid for. There is only one primary reason for this law, insurance corporation profits trump individual freedom. In this case the driver is judged guilty until proven innocent, based on the premise of them possibly being the cause of having a wreck of such magnitude as to not be financially viable to make financial restitution. Therefore anyone using such a basic human necessity such as transportation in order to survive must pay racket money first to the insurance corporations. Is this not a forced tax to corporations?

Prison corporations can only profit by lobbying for more draconian laws against the American People's freedom and privacy. They're anathema to the very idea of freedom, except in regards for them to freely imprison the American People to make a buck. The more they can criminalize the American People, the more gold for the growing prison corporations.

[infidel dog]

36. Score one for the truth, Uncle Joe. Kudos to subsuelo and yourself from a proud socialist.

[FraDon]

8. Preach, citizen! • We elected a Socialist US Senator,

and most of us Vermonters are proud and happy to have done so (and will do again). • More and more of the somnambulists are being rudely shaken awake to the black black heart in the bony chest of Capitalism. Through the jack hammer din of the propaganda industry, bruised and battered citizens are starting to hear the clarity of Bernie, Dennis & others, and damn, they're making sense.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

[bvar22]

9. K&R

:patriot:

[Political_Junkie]

10. Ain't it the truth!

K & R

[jtrockville]

11. The free market has FAILED. Can we move on now please?

[Ken Burch]

29. And if it had actually BEEN a "Free" market, they wouldn't have made us give them money each time.

n/t.

[jtrockville]

39. LOL, the "free" market is too expensive.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. K&R

[OhioChick]

13. K&R

:kick:

[slay]

14. yes yes YES!

This IS the solution. This has always been the solution. It's a shame that most Dems/Repubs (voters) still do not seem to realize exactaly how bad things are and that bailing out the banks that got us into this shit is not the solution. This article posted here by subsuelo (thanks!) IS the solution. Read it, learn it, love it. I can see Dem voters going along with this - but man, it is going to be a battle royale to get the repubs to.

[Azlady]

17. Love Einstein, this is the answer to our mess... n/t

[leftstreet]

18. All ur Capitalism r FAIL

[Two Americas]

19. does my heart good

It has been 40 years since I heard that word used in earnest.

[Ghost Dog]

20. "The corporation is designed to make money without regard to human life, the social good

or impact on the environment."

There you have it. A new socialism will need to permit and regulate only those private enterprises that fit the needs of a socially- and environmentally- as well as mentally-sane society. The rest needs to be organised and carried out by society itself, looking for a fair and healthy return, without need for greed or for usurous and militarised profit motives.

[ExPatLeftist]

21. K&R! So many Americans are brainwashed

To see socialism as a "bad word" that they closed-mindedly choose not to even consider.

Never mind the fact that the US itself is "socialist" in many ways. Never mind that socialism is most often not an absolute but a shade of grey that can vary a great deal depending on the system. Never mind that the US is FAR to the right of almost all nations in Europe. Yes, this includes the Democratic party, which is only a hair's breadth to the left of the Republicans on a global scale.

Despite the facts, many Americans of all political stripes have become convinced that socialism = communism = the USSR = evil incarnate. And to take it a step further, right wingers put an "= Democrats" in there in order to demonize and frame the debate. These tactics are cynical and planned by the powers that be, but the truly scary thing is that so many in the US buy into this notion and believe it entirely.

Education is needed about the truth, real education as opposed to the jingoistic propaganda that passes for it these days.


Also: Let's never forget when and where the corporation was invented: in Italy under Benito Mussolini. It was a central component in the creation of Fascism.

[ImOnlySleeping]

22. Eugene Debs

back in 1900

Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that the advance of Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

[RandomKoolzip]

24. Trouble is that the word scares lots of Americans.

This is the result of social conditioning over the last several decades. The right's intellectual warriors and manipulators turned "liberal" into a slur; the word "socialist," now, is much worse than a slur - it's a warning, a curse. To label someone or something socialist is more like applying one of those green "Mr. Yuk" stickers parents used to put on medicine bottles to keep kids away from using the medicine. In fact, now that I think of it, socialism IS the medicine that can cure the country (in alloted doses - not the whole bottle at once, mind you), we all know it, but the right and the right-controlled media keeps warning us kids away from the yukky poison inside that tempting bottle....

[Pharaoh]

25. Kudos! K&R

Yes socialism takes care of people first!

[Lucky Luciano]

26. ok with most of your desires...except that I hope one day to be a hedge fund manager.

[Ken Burch]

28. Well, given that it's unlikely that anyone not managing hedge funds now will ever GET to do that

You don't have to worry about any contradictions there.

[Lucky Luciano]

31. heheh...don't be so sure.

[Ken Burch]

47. Well, you might have a edge, if you take after the, er, ENTREPRENURIAL nature of your namesake.

n/t.

[byrok]

27. My response to idiots

who drop their jaws when I speak of Socialism:

"See, under Socialism, you'd have a much better education and therefore be able to understand the differences between Socialism and Communism."

Edited to add: Rec

[ExPatLeftist]

37. HAHAHA I am going to use that one! :) nt

[onehandle]

30. Why I'm not.

I look bad in drab gray.

[Ken Burch]

49. What part of "socialism isn't MAOISM" do you not understand?

n/t.

[StillHopingForChange]

33. Wish I could rec...

But I can't.
I wonder exactly how long it will take for capitalism to be accepted as a failure. I call myself a socialist all the time, and am looked at like I have three heads by who people who cant understand why I don't worship the long, glorious history of the Capitalist society <Sarcasm>

[chill_wind]

41. I'll spot you one. One rec coming right up.

Welcome aboard.

[tomp]

34. the essentials of common interest should be in common hands ...

air, water, land, natural resources, power, just to start.

the govt should be uncorrupted and incorruptible with SEVERE penalties for betrayal of the common trust.

i don't care what you call it. the above is my bottom line.

[Confusious]

38. Who am I

To disagree with EINSTEIN?

[fascisthunter]

40. All the Folks on This Thread...

are the same folks I seem to have much in common with... at least in regards to social justice and economics. Very interesting.... K&R

[burythehatchet]

42. funny how that works. Maybe I've been around too long but I can

sometimes tell my favorite posters just by reading the subject line of their replies.

[EnviroBat]

43. Socialism is the only thing that can save this miserable country right now.

The republican age of, "I've got mine, fuck you..." needs to end. We are in the grip of fascism, by which the corporations are running our government, our media, our health and welfare.

I too am a Democratic Socialist!

Ad saeculum deporto virtus!

[Gonzo Gardener]

44. K&R

[lostinacause]

45. If you look at any country that has a decent standard of living and decent human rights,

they all share one common thing. The method of wealth generation is largely through the corporation. It's easy to blame the corporation or greed for the problems that arise but the true culprit is an institutional structure whereby harmful actions are rewarded. The blame for the state of the institutional structure is the fault of the politicians who do not put an appropriate structure in place and the voters who do not demand better.

The solution is neither more intervention nor less intervention. The solution to problems is to find the right intervention that provides accessible economic benefits and the freedom for an individual to pursue reasonable goals.

People like Einstein are not usually more enlightened then anyone else on social-economic issues. An intuitive grasp of physics does not translate into an intuitive grasp of economics and economics is the most quantitative of the relevant disciplines.

[tama]

51. There's nothing "decent"

about consumerism that is making this beautifull planet unlivable for humans and many other species.

[Ken Burch]

52. Actually, the method of wealth generation is largely through the work of the EMPLOYEES

of the corporation. We cannot retain any humane values or indeed any dignity as individuals or a society if we work from the assumption that we owe everything to the corporate "masters of the universe". We managed before CEO's let their egos ascend to the stratosphere, we can do fine without those types.

We have now reached the stage where even our previous Democratic president essentially accepted the idea that corporations should get a veto over economic and budgetary policy in this country(and that our foreign policy should essentially be a function of a corporate-dictated economic policy). This is more dangerous to our survival as any form of a democracy than a million bricks thrown through a million Starbucks windows.

[yurbud]

46. k & r

[Karenina]

48. bttt!

[Blue_Tires]

50. ttt

[DUlover2909]

53. I agree with all that, so I guess I am a socialist too.

:kick:

[yurbud]

54. replace corporations with successful structure of credit unions, which are essentially co-ops