The dawn of American socialism

The Week ^ | January 11, 2018 | Ryan Cooper

[C19fan]

The Russian revolution was the most utopian left-wing project in history, and it was a cataclysmic disaster. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Western observers concluded that the old Marxist dream was dead forever.

But they spoke too soon. History is not over, and with the absence of any Soviet competition, Western capitalist countries — and especially the United States — have become hideously unequal, misery-ridden, and economically stagnant. In many ways, socialists in the early 21st century stand just about where they were in the early 20th century: politically marginalized, but leveling an economic critique that becomes more convincing with each passing year.

[C19fan]

This guy is even wackier than Bernard Sanders. His entire argument is to be like Norway with state owned companies and a generous welfare state. He does not mention oil and gas accounts for 22% of Norway's GDP and 67% of its exports. The author does not seem to get the irony of using a country whose main resource is a contributor to global warming I am sure this guy believe in. Other resource extracting industries in Norway, for example hydro power, is dominated by the state. What might work in a small resource rich ethnic monoculture would be a disaster in the US. Our experience with state owned enterprise would be more in line with multiethnic Brazil where state owned enterprises were just vehicles for corruption and a spoils system.

[reasonisfaith]

Socialism is pretending to believe in something that you oppose with your daily activities.

[Buckeye McFrog]

He goes off the rails in the second paragraph.

History is not over, and with the absence of any Soviet competition, Western capitalist countries — and especially the United States — have become hideously unequal, misery-ridden, and economically stagnant.

so....it is the lack of keen, sharp competition from the Soviet Union that led to all of our economic shortcomings. Riiiiiiiiight.

[The Great RJ]

Socialism inevitably leads to a loss of personal liberty and a lower standard of living. Von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom sadly is not being heeded

[Theodore R.]

So many in the USA now believe that government can “help them” with another “social program”: they just don’t call it “socialism.”

[C19fan]

have become hideously unequal, misery-ridden, and economically stagnant.

So why is the whole of the the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Africa and Latin America are trying to come to the West?

[Paulie]

Yeah, that caught my eye as well.

It’s possible it wasn’t meant that way, but I doubt it.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Socialism provides equal misery.

[Tzimisce]

Karl Marx HATED the middle class.
He wanted them DEAD.
He wanted their blood FLOWING in the streets.

But you middle class Marxists just LOVE your Socialism. :)

[Karliner]

Norway again. They have no military budget. It’s American. They would be rolled by Russia in less than a day. Plus those idiots are allowing islum to infect them same as Sweden. Socialism ALWAYS reverts to slave labor be they Hitlers camps, gulags, China’s slaves( still there ) North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam. Name the country it needs slaves and cheap labor. Socialism from what I’ve seen in the 20th century makes everyone equally miserable. We should fight this and idiots who promote this with everything we have.

[HLPhat]

>>The Russian revolution was the most utopian left-wing project in history,

Wouldn’t have been much of a project without the machinery required to protect it - obtained in exchange for Ukrainian grain... while 6-10 million Ukrainians were starved to death.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Holodomor+genocide&atb=v39-7a_&ia=web

Whose project was that?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=200+years+together&atb=v39-7a_&ia=web

Opinions seem to differ.

What would Herbie Marcuse do?

[a fool in paradise]

The goal of Socialism is Communism, according to Marx

[ctdonath2]

“hideously unequal, misery-ridden, and economically stagnant.”

Lots of people buy into such rhetoric readily, despite their own experiences being polar opposites.

Terms like “unequal” focus on jealousy of relative success, ignoring how well oneself is doing. “Misery” is largely a choice, again usually connected to jealousy, willfully failing to appreciate what one has over most others. “Stagnant” was a characteristic of a socialistic-oriented administration, and also hinges on one’s own motivation to improve circumstances.

The US “poverty line” is at the 80th percentile of world income. If you’re doing better than 80% of everyone on the planet, you have little to complain about.

There’s an art of persuasion [ab]using language which people readily own. Communists are quick to use it.

[FiddlePig]

“As long as larceny lives in the heart of humankind, there will be Democrats.” - RedNeckoBlogger

[kabar]

Poll: Nearly Half Of Millennials Prefer Socialism To Capitalism

Nearly half of American millennials (44 percent) would rather live in a socialist society than a capitalist one, according to a report from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) which relied on YouGov polling data. Even so, there’s widespread ignorance among millennials about socialism and communism — only 71 percent of the millennials surveyed could properly identify what communism is and many often conflated the two economic systems.

This ignorance among millennials isn’t surprising, as a 2016 CBS/New York Times survey found that only 16 percent of millennials could accurately define what socialism is. The VOC survey also found that 23 percent of those between the ages of 21-29 said Joseph Stalin was a “hero.” As leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin oversaw the death of millions and the infamous “gulag archipelago” of deathly work camps for political dissenters. An equal number of 20-somethings described North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, who has imprisoned an unknown number of political dissidents in labor camps while thousands of his people starve, as a “hero.”

[Buckeye McFrog]

If American Socialism is dawning it’s only because we’ve been able to import and mis-educate a sufficient number of people who are willing to vote for it.

[bar sin·is·ter]

“Poll: Nearly Half Of Millennials Prefer Socialism To Capitalism”

Oddly enough, that is congruent with the fact that nearly half of millennials are all morons.

[cincinnati65]

I quit reading after he said the closest we had come to a Socialist Utopia was the Soviet Union — and it was a cataclysmic failure. Then proceeded to support how it would just be better if we got it “right”.

[WayneS]

Well, that’s three minutes of my life I can never get back.

Tired old arguments from a useless idiot.

[kabar]

As well as being voters and Bernie supporters. A 2016 poll:

A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows.

America will be lost thru the ballot box. Our education system is brainwashing our people.