I'm going to say this for the blue zillionth time: for some reason "socialism" outside the United States seems very, very different from socialism in the United States.
Outside the United States socialism is a means of achieving and maintaining national independence and sovereignty. It is patriotic, nationalistic, and almost xeonophobic--a sort of John Birch Society for the oppressed. Even in white countries like Ireland and Scotland socialism blends with patriotism and nationalism, often claiming it will end "foreign rule" and a "phony independence" where the government is actually ruled by "foreign bankers in another country" (sound familiar???).
Meanwhile inside the United States socialism seems to stand for destroying the country, submerging it in a "one world government" (what's gonna happen to all those other countries that socialism restored sovereignty to?) and even for a self-hatred that is downright sick (right now the United States and Israel seem to be the two countries that "should never have been founded").
Has anyone other than myself ever noticed this discrepancy? In America, socialists burn the national flag and mock the national anthem. In Ireland they wave the flag and would scream bloody murder if someone wanted to replace The Soldier's Song with some mushy sentimental lyric. Can anyone imagine a militant IRA or SNLA nationalist burning the Irish flag or the Saltyre?
This simply makes no sense. Socialists in and outside the US may share an economic philosophy but otherwise they appear worlds apart. Outside the US socialist economics is supposed to be "patriotic," to make the country truly free of "foreign bankers." In America socialism is allegedly secretly run by foreign bankers who can only be defeated with capitalism.
When someone intentionally alienates people (as with burning the flag) I immediately think of a foreign "heel" in a professional wrestling "angle." Why do American socialists spit in their countrymen's faces while socialists elsewhere celebrate their countrymen and culture?
Socialism seems to be the outside world's version of the American "patriot movement." And our "patriot movement" seems to be the actual American counterpart of socialists elsewhere . . . not the self-hating American "left."
It's probably simply a matter of degree. The meaning of the word socialism is:
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
On the other hand, Marxist socialism is:
the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
Europeans who have passed the stage of socialism into communism wave flags only because their dictators force them to do it.
Yes. Think of "socialists" as malignant Straussians: "Whatever works". Instrumental, deeply cynical, power-besotted, "socialism" is in fact a mass of operational propaganda that deserves as much intellectual attention as the ravings of Josef Goebbels, and for the same reason.
Analysis of "socialism" should always be a Machiavellian analysis of the state of play of the "socialists" and their path to power -- absolute, unanswerable, totalitarian power. Ideological issues, contradictions, and "messages" to the masses should be totally ignored as distractions and disinformation.