Agnapostate
2nd May 2010, 16:17
What specific rhetorical strategies do you look to in order to promote socialism and your own tendency ideology? Listing a few of my own:
I strongly avoid the usage of the phrases “in a [blank] society” or “socialism would do [blank],” since that causes conceptualization of socialism as distant and ethereal, in turn causing accusations of utopianism, promotion of an unrealistic garden of Eden that is “wonderful in theory, and horrible in practice.” Instead, I use active verbs in descriptions of socialism and communism. I also take care to avoid excessively utopian predictions, paying heed to a comment of Stephen Cullenberg’s:
Socialism has long been identified not only with an end to economic exploitation, exclusion, and alienation but also with the end of business cycles, the eradication of poverty, ecological sustainability, and the abolishment of racial, gender, and sexual oppression. This socialist imaginary has placed impossibly heavy burdens on socialist projects everywhere. Socialism’s burden has been that not too little but too much has been asked of if. No economic system can guarantee such a myriad of beneficial outcomes.
So the result is the elimination of this:
“In a socialist society, people would be rewarded based on how hard they worked, and no one would ever go hungry.”
Versus:
“Socialism ensures remuneration based on work effort.”
Emphasis on the nature of transition to socialism should change according to the political conditions of the given country or region, since an electoral referendum could theoretically accomplish the aim that a violent revolution does elsewhere. In politically stable first world countries, socialism must be a “program,” a “platform.” Electoral approval of nationalization and syndicalist policy is the means of instituting such a platform in, say, social democratic countries.
“Socialism merely allocates according to actual supply and demand criteria and ends the theft of the product of labor from workers. If such a program was in place, we would see more desirable results. I’m behind the socialist platform.”
In politically unstable third or fourth world countries subject to frequent regime change, civil war, regional conflicts, and extreme poverty, emphasis on utopianism is no longer so critical, since violent revolution is a feasible possibility. In these cases, socialism must be a revolutionary aim, the transformation into a “new world” for the workers. We still must remember the danger of placing impossibly high burdens on socialism, but this is where the radical nature of socialism can be emphasized, since this is where political instability facilitates the ease of sudden and violent transition to different political systems.
“Socialism means that the workers will come into their own, that the capitalist tyrants and despot profiteers that oppressed the working class will be vanquished and their power restored to its rightful owners, and that this country will enter a new golden age!”
Also, among my favorite tactics is that of “rhetoric theft.” I’ve written that “capitalism is an economic system characterized by profoundly authoritarian and inefficient central planning, which entails massive state intervention, the destruction of competitive market enterprise, and rigid dictatorial power structures.” Clearly, this is a condemnation that could be a standard anti-socialist line with the replacement of one word, but capitalism is reliant on state intervention for macroeconomic stabilization purposes, is characterized by monopolistic and oligopolistic concentration in many sectors, and gives rise to an authoritarian labor market and firm structure that would be condemned as that of a dictatorship if it was that of a state. The description therefore fits perfectly.
It’s also important to emphasize the meritocratic nature of socialism and communism compared to the materialistic nature of capitalism, since this is a rhetorical appeal to rightist ethical worldviews about the immorality of rewards to those that do not work, and the erosion of individual responsibility and self-reliance that this causes.
Socialism and communism are based on maximum effort extraction through remuneration based on work effort and work assignments based on individual abilities, whereas capitalism is reliant on remuneration based on the marginal revenue product produced by the combination of one’s labor and one’s capital (including financial capital), regardless of how it was obtained. This means that a person who inherited machinery, construction materials, and a substantial personal fortune, can easily be idle, while the hard-working who were not fortunate enough to come into such an inheritance toil without adequate compensation. That undercuts individual responsibility and self-reliance, since those who work hard are not rewarded and those that do not work hard are “rewarded,” which is a fundamental challenge to the rightist moral outlook. When that is combined with empirical research that validates the idea of inheritance playing the greatest role in wealth accumulation (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1833031), the foundations of the rightist perspective on the capitalist economy are torn asunder.
Do you use any of these approaches? What others would you advocate that fall into this category?
I strongly avoid the usage of the phrases “in a [blank] society” or “socialism would do [blank],” since that causes conceptualization of socialism as distant and ethereal, in turn causing accusations of utopianism, promotion of an unrealistic garden of Eden that is “wonderful in theory, and horrible in practice.” Instead, I use active verbs in descriptions of socialism and communism. I also take care to avoid excessively utopian predictions, paying heed to a comment of Stephen Cullenberg’s:
Socialism has long been identified not only with an end to economic exploitation, exclusion, and alienation but also with the end of business cycles, the eradication of poverty, ecological sustainability, and the abolishment of racial, gender, and sexual oppression. This socialist imaginary has placed impossibly heavy burdens on socialist projects everywhere. Socialism’s burden has been that not too little but too much has been asked of if. No economic system can guarantee such a myriad of beneficial outcomes.
So the result is the elimination of this:
“In a socialist society, people would be rewarded based on how hard they worked, and no one would ever go hungry.”
Versus:
“Socialism ensures remuneration based on work effort.”
Emphasis on the nature of transition to socialism should change according to the political conditions of the given country or region, since an electoral referendum could theoretically accomplish the aim that a violent revolution does elsewhere. In politically stable first world countries, socialism must be a “program,” a “platform.” Electoral approval of nationalization and syndicalist policy is the means of instituting such a platform in, say, social democratic countries.
“Socialism merely allocates according to actual supply and demand criteria and ends the theft of the product of labor from workers. If such a program was in place, we would see more desirable results. I’m behind the socialist platform.”
In politically unstable third or fourth world countries subject to frequent regime change, civil war, regional conflicts, and extreme poverty, emphasis on utopianism is no longer so critical, since violent revolution is a feasible possibility. In these cases, socialism must be a revolutionary aim, the transformation into a “new world” for the workers. We still must remember the danger of placing impossibly high burdens on socialism, but this is where the radical nature of socialism can be emphasized, since this is where political instability facilitates the ease of sudden and violent transition to different political systems.
“Socialism means that the workers will come into their own, that the capitalist tyrants and despot profiteers that oppressed the working class will be vanquished and their power restored to its rightful owners, and that this country will enter a new golden age!”
Also, among my favorite tactics is that of “rhetoric theft.” I’ve written that “capitalism is an economic system characterized by profoundly authoritarian and inefficient central planning, which entails massive state intervention, the destruction of competitive market enterprise, and rigid dictatorial power structures.” Clearly, this is a condemnation that could be a standard anti-socialist line with the replacement of one word, but capitalism is reliant on state intervention for macroeconomic stabilization purposes, is characterized by monopolistic and oligopolistic concentration in many sectors, and gives rise to an authoritarian labor market and firm structure that would be condemned as that of a dictatorship if it was that of a state. The description therefore fits perfectly.
It’s also important to emphasize the meritocratic nature of socialism and communism compared to the materialistic nature of capitalism, since this is a rhetorical appeal to rightist ethical worldviews about the immorality of rewards to those that do not work, and the erosion of individual responsibility and self-reliance that this causes.
Socialism and communism are based on maximum effort extraction through remuneration based on work effort and work assignments based on individual abilities, whereas capitalism is reliant on remuneration based on the marginal revenue product produced by the combination of one’s labor and one’s capital (including financial capital), regardless of how it was obtained. This means that a person who inherited machinery, construction materials, and a substantial personal fortune, can easily be idle, while the hard-working who were not fortunate enough to come into such an inheritance toil without adequate compensation. That undercuts individual responsibility and self-reliance, since those who work hard are not rewarded and those that do not work hard are “rewarded,” which is a fundamental challenge to the rightist moral outlook. When that is combined with empirical research that validates the idea of inheritance playing the greatest role in wealth accumulation (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1833031), the foundations of the rightist perspective on the capitalist economy are torn asunder.
Do you use any of these approaches? What others would you advocate that fall into this category?