Why are you not democratic socialists?

[graffic]

I used to be a social democrat, i realize when I look at social democracy, it still be the same shit, but not as bad. Social Democracy really doesn't work from what, I had heard, because, the classes would end up exploiting one another. Someone tell me, If that wrong or correct?

Social Democracy is not the same as democratic socialism. Social Democracy doesn't specifically reject capitalism, it just says it needs to be tamed, as-well as many other things that I can't refer to specifically off the top of my head. Whereas Democratic socialism is socialism, but via a democratic path, ie education, protests, strikes etc. For example, Tony Blair and "new Labour" were seen as advocates of a form of social democracy and you could say the same about Obama in the USA. Social Democrats don't "believe" that workers should own the means of production whereas democratic socialists, such as, for example, George Orwell and many on the left of the Labour party are more radical in that respect.

[Scary Monster]

Well they were closer than most other "communist" states in implementing the communist plan. They abolished money and essentialy created a totally new society.

So from the record it seems communism might work if it's mixed with capitalism.

Quite a fantastic leap in logic- "Well they didnt have money. That makes them communist."

Social Democracy is not the same as democratic socialism. Social Democracy doesn't specifically reject capitalism, it just says it needs to be tamed, as-well as many other things that I can't refer to specifically off the top of my head. Whereas Democratic socialism is socialism, but via a democratic path, ie education, protests, strikes etc. For example, Tony Blair and "new Labour" were seen as advocates of a form of social democracy and you could say the same about Obama in the USA. Social Democrats don't "believe" that workers should own the means of production whereas democratic socialists, such as, for example, George Orwell and many on the left of the Labour party are more radical in that respect.

Why let a few people dictate industry when workers can run it themselves, the workers who industry would not survive 5 minutes without, and who actually perform all the services and makes and distributes all the goods. We wanna cut out the property owners who contribute nothing to society, yet who hoard up all the wealth created by the workers.

[#FF0000]

Whereas Democratic socialism is socialism, but via a democratic path, ie education, protests, strikes etc.

Cool, so when do the bourgeoisie see the error of their ways, drop to their knees and beg the heavens for forgiveness as they hand over all of the wealth and power they have ever amassed?

[mikelepore]

Socialism without revolution? But revolution means making fundamental change. How can you acquire fundamental change without making fundamental change?

[graffic]

I am defending the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line. Take any country we consider socialist, and that will prove to be better than a capitalistic one in all aspects.

Not true. USA and parts of Europe have a "better" political culture and standard of living than Cuba, in my opinion. I think it depends on individual opinions of course, but the proletariat n in a developed country in the USA or Europe for example are better off than if they had been born in Cuba. There is still poverty in the UK, for example, but it is being reduced and the majority of the population are middle class.

What is preserving feudalism today? Imperialism of course. Thus capitalism is also responsible for the feudal system in third world countries now.

There is no "feudalism". I agree that imperialism fucks up countries.

Any socialist country is better than any capitalist country.

You have to contextualize these generalisations i think.

I don't think we Maoists uphold the works of any such "elite" theorists.

Do you not think they are saying something quite important?

[graffic]

Cool, so when do the bourgeoisie see the error of their ways, drop to their knees and beg the heavens for forgiveness as they hand over all of the wealth and power they have ever amassed?

Thats just as likely as you convincing the working class in the UK and USA to drop their TV's, computers, free education and healthcare, comfortable houses, secure jobs and start hassling the bourgeoise.

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

[Scary Monster]

Thats just as likely as you convincing the working class in the UK and USA to drop their TV's, computers, free education and healthcare, comfortable houses, secure jobs and start hassling the bourgeoise.

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

Since when did we have free healthcare and education in the US? These things have become so much more inaccessible to the working class in the past year. Or are you saying we would have these things if we had democratic socialism?

[red cat]

Not true. USA and parts of Europe have a "better" political culture and standard of living than Cuba, in my opinion. I think it depends on individual opinions of course, but the proletariat n in a developed country in the USA or Europe for example are better off than if they had been born in Cuba. There is still poverty in the UK, for example, but it is being reduced and the majority of the population are middle class.

No revolutionary Maoist party calls Cuba socialist.

But anyway, at present Cuba is not involved in exploiting the masses of any other countries. The relative prosperity of USA and European nations is because the bourgeoisie of those countries are sucking the life out of third world masses.

There is no "feudalism". I agree that imperialism fucks up countries.

There is definitely feudalism in South Asia and perhaps also in Africa and Latin America.

You have to contextualize these generalisations i think.

Talk of any specific socialist country then.

Do you not think they are saying something quite important?

Many people claim to say important things. Generally we stick to the works of those who are directly involved in making revolution or upheld by revolutionary groups.

[Barry Lyndon]

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

These are really appalling lies that would make Joseph Goebbels blush. 'So many concessions'?
1) The only reason that people in the United States have things like the right to unionize, workers health insurance, nice houses, public education, in other words, the main reason a middle class in the United States exists is because of decades of often violent struggles for workers rights, usually led by Marxists and anarchists, not liberals, social democrats or 'democratic socialists' who took the credit after those victories were won. Hundreds of workers paid with their lives and thousands more were beaten, injured and/or jailed. That was the price paid for getting an 8 hour work day, a weekend, and end to child labor and the like. It was hardly capitalism peacefully reforming itself.
In Britain there is a considerable history of labor unrest too, with strikes shutting down the entire country in the 1920's for instance. In places like France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, Marshall aid supported extensive social programs in order to prevent Communists from coming to power.
2) Even with these victories, your assertion that 'we are all middle class' is laughable. Would you call the nearly 50,000 people who die in the United States every year because they can't afford health insurance a middle class? What about the fact that among African-Americans in places like Baltimore, the infant mortality rate is comparable to Bangladesh? I have been to the 9th Ward of New Orleans and I live on the South Side of Chicago, please tell those people that they are middle class. Yes, people on the whole are much better off in the United States then elsewhere in the world, but given how wealthy the United States is the amount of poverty that does exist is an outrage. And the gains American workers did make have been under intensifying assault from both Republicans and Democrats for the last 30+ years at least. The average American worker now makes less, in real dollars, then what he/she made in 1970.
3) Finally, all these fine products that American consumers have are usually made in brutal sweatshops(often using child labor) that are no different from what American workers suffered through in the 19th and early 20th century in places like Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Haiti, India, etc. etc.

[Scary Monster]

Finally, all these fine products that American consumers produce are usually made in brutal sweatshops(often using child labor) that are no different from what American workers suffered through in the 19th and early 20th century in places like Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Haiti, India, etc. etc.

And this is the main reason things like computers, televisions, clothing etc, are affordable, accessible and in great abundance to America's "middle" class in the first place.

[#FF0000]

Thats just as likely as you convincing the working class in the UK and USA to drop their TV's, computers, free education and healthcare, comfortable houses, secure jobs and start hassling the bourgeoise.

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

And those conditions, like everything else in the universe, are temporary, and subject to change. The west will not always have that same lovely standard of living that some workers get to enjoy.

The same goes for those democratic institutions that you'd hope we could use to get from here to there. Really, if things with the credit crisis went south, and it ended up being just as bad as people were fearing it'd be, to the point that our very system was in danger of breaking apart, how long do you think democratic processes would last? It's conjecture, but my point is that, no matter what any constitutions say, the "democratic process" in bourgeois society is strictly a privilege, and can and will be taken away if it threatened the stability of the state.

And then what do we do when the state takes away the game pieces, and we spent all our time rallying for lesser evils and reform? I certainly agree that reforms can be worth advocating and fighting for, but I think saying that we can reform our way to socialism is naive and misses the really important detail that revolution is really an act of self-defense on the part of the working class.

When things are business as usual and all clear in capitalism, the exploitation and violence against the working class is subtle and obscured behind legally binding contracts and bourgeois ethics and this and that, until there's a crisis. Then the ruling class shows what their laws and morality and rights are worth.

[Philzer]

Hi comrades,

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

Of course it is. Logically! From the big rest of the world, which is the majority, the Surplusprofit (in the sense of Marx) must be produced for the minority, the citizens of the democratic nations. The vertical hierarchy in the western democratic nations always obtained, but in addition the bourgeoisie created a horizontal hierarchy by exploitation of other nations from which their national workers benefit too. This results from big different wages and low prices of dumping goods imported from the 3rd world. This is a really big coup to blur as modern globalised democracy works.

Hundreds of workers paid with their lives and thousands more were beaten, injured and/or jailed. That was the price paid for getting an 8 hour work day, a weekend, and end to child labor and the like. It was hardly capitalism peacefully reforming itself.

I agree with you that is of course only a result of class struggle, nothing else. Lately I have seen a movie about Sacco & Vanzetti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

But class struggle can never be the instrument to overcome the class society. Class struggle is always the immanent contradiction in the dialectic unit of peoples and rulers. Class struggle is the moving power of this dialectic unit, and so the result of class struggle will never lead to overcome the system, but it causes shifting of the strongest inhuman exploitation to weakest individuals of the world (in age of globalisation). The class struggle in the western-nations caused the overcoming of the closed national democracy by leading to a model of open international democracy.

Note:

The obviously attribute, on which you can sure identify every kind of democracy is the difference between their economical (global) and democratically (national) range.
(Territory, resources and/or participants people)

Would you call the nearly 50,000 people who die in the United States every year because they can't afford health insurance a middle class? What about the fact that among African-Americans in places like Baltimore, the infant mortality rate is comparable to Bangladesh?

Also this is absolutely correct. Because this relates only to a minority there is no force to change this. Democracy is only the material corruption of the mass. Not more! This is all what the bourgeois need for the next election! Minorities are unimportant to hold the power in the democracy.


http://www.revleft.com/vb/democracy-...250/index.html


Kind regards

[graffic]

The relative prosperity of USA and European nations is because the bourgeoisie of those countries are sucking the life out of third world masses.

Explain that the "prosperity" of the USA and European nations is directly because of "sucking life out of" third world masses.

That the "free market" exists as an environment that allows certain businesses to exploit, to an extent, in disparate markets is a testament to the failure of different issues, such as governments and capitalism and individuals. Just because chain stores like "primark" sell cheap clothes that are made by children in sweat shops that does not mean the entire prosperity of USA and European is based on the same exploitation.

Exposing an unethical corporation run by parasites does not instantly turn me into a marxist shouting for revolution. Similarly, the fact that some Catholic priests have been exposed as pedophiles does not automatically provoke me to want to overturn or destroy the entire Catholic Church.

Hundreds of workers paid with their lives and thousands more were beaten, injured and/or jailed. That was the price paid for getting an 8 hour work day, a weekend, and end to child labor and the like. It was hardly capitalism peacefully reforming itself.

Thats just not true. For example, black civil rights were not won in U.S.A exclusively by marxists. Obama is not a marxist, he is about to reform healthcare.

Even with these victories, your assertion that 'we are all middle class' is laughable. Would you call the nearly 50,000 people who die in the United States every year because they can't afford health insurance a middle class?

I did not assert that we are all middle class. I quoted a Labour politician whose analysis makes sense in the UK, not so much in the USA perhaps.

[Glenn Beck]

I am not a "democratic socialist" precisely because I don't believe in the dogma that, despite its 100% historical failure rate, society can be fundamentally changed through the use of existing institutions that are themselves creations and tools of the current system (the "democracy" you talk about) without that system suddenly changing the rules and lashing out (see Chile and Allende). This doesn't mean that those institutions are inherently worthless and should be ignored. Nor does it mean that "revolution" needs to take one specific form (whatever it is that you have in mind when you think of that word).

Even an ideally "democratic socialist" movement, were it to be absolutely and completely successful, would at some point need to abolish the system of capitalist liberal democracy and thus carry out a revolution. Even if the act of doing so is completely nonviolent, it is an action outside the legal order that abolishes that order to create a new one. To do away with capitalism you also have to do away with the social structure that sustains it, but you seem to be fundamentally confused about this and believe that the "democratic" governments we currently have are independent from capitalism; this isn't so at all.

Doing away with the current order and replacing it with a new one: that is the essence of a revolution, and it doesn't matter if its completely peaceful and 100% of the population supports replacing "capitalist democracy" with "socialist democracy", it's still a revolution. In practice most revolutions start out as nonviolent and become violent in response when the established order uses force to maintain itself during a crisis of legitimacy. You do know that that is what governments are, right? The most fundamental aspect of any government isn't its "democracy" or the institutions it has, it's the fact that it has the power to maintain itself.

Let's be honest here, "democratic socialism" isn't about democracy because then popular sovereignty and how it is exercised either 1. wouldn't be the issue or 2. the issue wouldn't be democracy but violence, and you would be calling yourself a nonviolent socialist. "Democratic socialism" is about respect for existing institutions and the existing legal order above and against popular sovereignty, and that is why it is neither democratic nor socialism at all.

[red cat]

Explain that the "prosperity" of the USA and European nations is directly because of "sucking life out of" third world masses.

That the "free market" exists as an environment that allows certain businesses to exploit, to an extent, in disparate markets is a testament to the failure of different issues, such as governments and capitalism and individuals. Just because chain stores like "primark" sell cheap clothes that are made by children in sweat shops that does not mean the entire prosperity of USA and European is based on the same exploitation.

Exposing an unethical corporation run by parasites does not instantly turn me into a marxist shouting for revolution. Similarly, the fact that some Catholic priests have been exposed as pedophiles does not automatically provoke me to want to overturn or destroy the entire Catholic Church.

Look at all the MNCs making super-profits in the third world. Ever seen a third world company doing any business in any imperialist country? Do you know what percent of the leather that you use in the US is obtained from India and how?

What are the imperialist armies doing in Iraq ? Where did the ancient relics of the Mesopotamian civilization go? Who forces South Asian farmers to grow genetically modified crops ?

Answer the above questions and you will understand what imperialism does in third world countries.

[syndicat]

So perhaps you think that capitalism is wrong, eventually it will be overthrown. The system is unfair and workers are impoverished, i agree with this analysis for the most part. But Marxism itself is perhaps too ideological, too heavy and full of contradictions. Its too much philosophy and ideology, and all attempts to implement it so far have highlighted some serious dilemmas.

Hmm. It's not just that workers are "impoverished." You have a system based on control, oppression, subordination of the working class majority. People have no say at work, which is run as a tyranny.

And the capitalist firms intensify the pace of work, control over others, and expose them to dangerous chemicals, and these things are all threats to health. The working class doesn't live as long as the elite classes.

I would agree that Marxist parties had some mistaken assumptions. This is why I favor a libertarian socialism, based on democratic worker and social movements, not a party running a state.

But social democracy has similar problems. so-called "democracy' in USA and Europe is a fraud. The state is run to protect the interests of the capitalist and bureaucratic classes.

The welfare states that came into existence after World War 2 happened only because the capitalist elites had to make concessions in the face of massive working class rebellions, revolutions, and severe social conflict, and the prospect of competition with the Communist movement which, despites its warts, posed at least the possibility of an alternative to capitalism. It wasn't just because of the electoral presence of liberals or social democrats that the welfare states were constructed.

And now we see these welfare states being unraveled, and austerity being imposed on the mass of the population throughout the "first world" and beyond.

As a libertarian socialist, I think that it is possible to reorganize social production on the lines of direct worker management, getting rid of the managerial hierarchies and private ownership. There have been many cases of workers striving to take over production, many workplace occupations and seizures, from the early 1900s to relatively recently, as in Argentina in 2001 to the present, or the seizures of land and creation of cooperative communities by the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil.

Hierarchy and oligarchies are not inevitable, no matter what elitists say.

[syndicat]

Social Democracy is not the same as democratic socialism. Social Democracy doesn't specifically reject capitalism, it just says it needs to be tamed, as-well as many other things that I can't refer to specifically off the top of my head. Whereas Democratic socialism is socialism, but via a democratic path, ie education, protests, strikes etc. For example, Tony Blair and "new Labour" were seen as advocates of a form of social democracy and you could say the same about Obama in the USA. Social Democrats don't "believe" that workers should own the means of production whereas democratic socialists, such as, for example, George Orwell and many on the left of the Labour party are more radical in that respect.

The various social democratic parties often started out as "democratic socialists" or had tendencies of that sort within them. But running an electoral machine tends to encourage domination of the organization by politicians, who have a stake in ensuring their re-election. They gain prestige from the state programs they create and preside over. This tends to lead these organizations to interpret "socialism" in a statist direction: state running this or that, or controlling this or that. This merely empowers the bureaucratic class, not the working class.

It does not tend to emphasize workers running anything. And over time it tends to drain the radical spirit and aspiration out of them, as we've seen with the European Socialist parties.

[<Insert Username Here>]

Can you prove that new founded socialist societies are "better" than capitalist societies? I think it depends on the context.

Guaranteed work, food, housing, healthcare, education, opportunity for all.

Your move capitalism.

[syndicat]

I just think the "ruling class" have made so many concessions that, as Labour MP John Prescott says, " we are all middle class now". This doesn't apply to the whole world of course, but certainly in USA and parts of Europe.

They made concessions in the past only in the context of working class uprisings, such as the massive rebellion in the USA between 1933 and 1938 -- over 500 workplace seizures, five city wide general strikes, a quandrupling of union membership as workers formed large numbers of new unions -- followed by the greatest strike wave in US history in 1944-47, including milliions participating in wildcat strikes.

Nowadays they aren't making concessions. Since the '70s the ruling class in the USA have been on the warpath: they've reduced the top income tax rate from 90 percent to 28 percent, shifted taxes to sales taxes and lotteries and other things falling more on the working class, greatly reduced the corporate tax burden, with many big companies paying zero tax. They've engaged in massive illegal firings to avoid unions, and have been able to reduce union membership to only 7 percent in the private sector even tho a majority of workers in polls say they'd rather belong to unions.

From the '70s to today the average real wage for male high school graduates has declined by 25 percent, for females by 17 percent. They've succeeded in blocking increases in the minimum wage to account for inflation so its real value has greatly sunk. The capitalists successfully prevented a European single payer type health care system being enacted, and instead have simply created more massive subsidies for private capitalist insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and allowed huge disparities in health care coverage to continue. the working class in the USA now works on average more hours per year than in any other industrial country...they need the longer hours to survive. meanwhile, temp and part time labor has proliferated.

altogether a huge ramping up of the rate of exploitation. meanwhile, they've used "law and order" and racist propaganda to pursue a "war on drugs" so as to not have a large unemployed population footloose on the streets, possibly fomenting rebellions. So now the USA has 1.5 percent of its entire population stuck in cages in prisons. this is only one of the ways in which reality of life for the African-American working class has sunk since the '70s.

an intense, rigid "tracking" system has been constructed in the schools, with sections of public schools being carved out as private fiiefdoms for the children of the capitalist and bureaucratic classes, while working class kids are subjected to regimes based on rote learning and constant test taking, while the children of the well off get more enriched, looser learning environments where they get to explore more subjects. all of this is enforced by the use of standardized tests that notoriously measure class and race background.

[Barry Lyndon]

graffic: Exposing an unethical corporation run by parasites does not instantly turn me into a marxist shouting for revolution. Similarly, the fact that some Catholic priests have been exposed as pedophiles does not automatically provoke me to want to overturn or destroy the entire Catholic Church.

No, but the fact that clergy all the way up to the pope were/are protecting pedophile priests DOES make me want to overturn the Catholic Church as an institution.
Capitalists, also, exploit children by making them work for pennies an hour in conditions where they are often beaten, die, or are sexually abused. And such conglomerates, far from being punished, are often rewarded with government subsidies and bailouts.

graffic: Thats just not true. For example, black civil rights were not won in U.S.A exclusively by marxists

I never said that it was. But since you brought it up, the civil rights movement in large part grew out of the labor movement, which was one of the first arenas in which blacks and whites worked together on a large scale. THE leader of African-American labor and a major figure in the civil rights movement was A. Philip Randolph, who was a member of the Socialist Party for many years. For years the Communists were the only non-blacks who sent lawyers to protect black people from lynchings and Jim Crow kangaroo courts, such as the 1930's defense of the Scottsboro boys, while the liberals refused to even touch the issue.
Also, the federal government finally decided to intervene on the side of civil rights in large part because the Soviet Union was using the racist oppression of blacks as a propaganda weapon against the United States in the Cold War, a fact that was cynically admitted by John F. Kennedy and other liberal politicians/intellectuals.

graffic: Obama is not a marxist, he is about to reform healthcare

Yeah, healthcare reform that FORCES people to buy private health insurance. That's really great, doesn't even rise to the level of the systems they have in Canada or Britain, which are hardly socialist.