The Values of America need to change

[Highlander9687]

Achievement
Individualism
Universalism
Fetishism of Money

This is not good.

[AK]

Welcome :lol:
Why is achievement bad, though? Only achievement at the expense of others is bad.

[Blackscare]

Yes achievement is fine.

Also, depending on the context in which you think, so is individualism. So long as a person can look beyond himself/herself and see issues that effect all of society and have a political aspect to their lives, the idea of individuality is not at all bad. Now, political and economic individualism isn't good, granted.

[Q]

Socialists are in fact very selfish, as we realise that we can only fight for our own good if we organise collectively and therefore better our collective ;)

Or another one: individual freedom can only become real once we have collective freedom of the working class.

You get the picture: individuality is not opposed to collectivism. It is atomisation and alienation that we oppose.

Edit:
Oh, welcome :p

[Nolan]

Socialists are in fact very selfish, as we realise that we can only fight for our own good if we organise collectively and therefore better our collective ;)

Or another one: individual freedom can only become real once we have collective freedom of the working class.

You get the picture: individuality is not opposed to collectivism. It is atomisation and alienation that we oppose.

Edit:
Oh, welcome :p

That's probably the best way I've ever seen it put.

Welcome. :)

[Veg_Athei_Socialist]

Welcome to Revleft:)!

[AK]

Socialists are in fact very selfish, as we realise that we can only fight for our own good if we organise collectively and therefore better our collective ;)

Or another one: individual freedom can only become real once we have collective freedom of the working class.

You get the picture: individuality is not opposed to collectivism. It is atomisation and alienation that we oppose.

Edit:
Oh, welcome :p
This quote by Bakunin sorta sums it up:

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.

[Queercommie Girl]

Achievement
Individualism
Universalism
Fetishism of Money

This is not good.

If fetishism of "achievement" results in the kind of gross inequality in economic and other spheres that exists in the world today, then frankly FUCK ACHIEVEMENT.

I'd much rather have a generally less productive world than the grossly unequal world that exists today. Productivity should not be emphasised at the expense of productive relation. Socialism primarily seeks to transform the production relation. Advances are good if they serve the public, otherwise they are not. I'd much rather have the Iron Rice Bowl system under Maoism where every worker is paid a salary even if he/she works very little.

Any genuine socialist worth his/her credentials must feel real indignation bordering on literal hatred in the face of every kind of inequality.

The inequality in the world today makes me feel sick. That is why I am a socialist, and I will never stop until either I die or every last instance of inequality is utterly wiped out from the surface of the world.

If the "magic word" for capitalists is "freedom", then the "magic word" for socialists is Equality, equality for all people, without exception. I pledge my life to the struggle for equality across the world in every sphere and will never sway from my belief.

[Queercommie Girl]

Welcome :lol:
Why is achievement bad, though? Only achievement at the expense of others is bad.

But people's abilities are naturally different. If there is only the focus on individual achievement but no sense of helping other people to achieve as well, then inequality will naturally emerge.

It's not enough that one does not hinder other people, one should actually actively help other people. This is the one thing that is missing in mainstream American capitalist culture, the sense to literally help others, at the expense of one's own time and energy. Capitalist America is a highly competitive culture where social darwinism prevails and the winner takes all. If you lose, if you end up in a battered house in downtown New York or in a mental asylum for criminals, it must always be your own fault, not the society's. Everyone is expected to watch out for himself/herself. It's like a petit-bourgeois hellhole of "all against all free competition". Europe is better in this as in European culture there is a stronger sense of solidarity and public welfare due to its long legacy of Social Democracy.