[omegaword]

i never said it was. I was referring to the united states revolutionary war. sorry for the confusion

[Lightman]

i never said it was. I was referring to the united states revolutionary war. sorry for the confusion

As was I. In what sense was the United States a true democracy, during or after the Revolutionary War?

[omegaword]

o i see wat u mean. wel the truth is i guess it isn't, but i dont particularly care. i was not trying to advocate true democracy, or that the U.S. is a perfect democracy or country. this is a point i dont really wish to argue. regard the nation in whatever way u wish. i was simply exemplifying a case of violent revolution creating a democracy, if not a true one. the the point put forward by the person i was responding to was that violence cannot spawn democracy. i think that he was wrong, despite its track record of often doing so. but it is not the violence that creates tyranny , it is those who create the violence, and how the victor handles the military and therefore social power his victory leaves him. had George Washington not had so little interest in power our country could have, probably would have either collapsed into independent nation states or had a much sooner civil war. assuming he didn't set himself up as a new king of course, which could have led to the above eventualities anyway. my point is simply, it is not so important to a nations future of how it comes into being, as who brings it in and what their goals are. Lenin for example, was in my belief, a true communist, and it was not he but Stalin who destroyed socialism. as a result of his desecration, socialism is regarded as the tool of tyrants. had Washington been a man of similar character, democracy could have been regarded in a similar way, and used by tyrants to achieve power. it is often anyway. so to conclude no governing system is perfect, and its worth can only be judged by its ability to prevent men of evil intent from taking power.

[Negotiator]

A socialism is any society that does not allow dependency and exploitation.

Naturally, any society that actually implements this ideal will have to be democratic.

The old sowjet union and its allies have never been a socialism.

[omegaword]

i agree.

[Tsipras]

The socialist mode of production is the post-capitalist economic system that emerges when the accumulation of capital is no longer sustainable due to falling rates of profit in (real) production, and social conflict arising from the contradictions between the level of technology and automation in the economy with the capitalist form of social organization. A socialist society would consist of production being carried out, organized in a manner to directly satisfy human needs, with the working-class cooperatively or publicly owning the means of production.

"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms.
The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.
The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.
This form of popular government, featuring revocable election of councilors and maximal public participation in governance, resembles contemporary direct democracy.
In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service.
The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents..."

As you can see Socialism and democracy can be put in pratice at the same time .

Socialism stand for the owning of meanings of production by WORKERS not STATE like the Revisionist of USSR DID

[houndred]

I don't know about Allende 'Lying' what I do know is that Allende broke the agreement he made with the Liberal party in order to gain office after which there was a majority vote of no confidence in him in the Chilean parliament.

He refused to step down as parliament demanded.

Allende was also condemned by the Supreme court of Chile for acting extra-constitutionally. He may be your socialist hero but what he wasn't was a respecter of the democratic process and clearly was attemting to make Chile into another Cuba.

[Tsipras]

Yeah right .

That's why Supreme Court stay with Pinochet and let that brutal dictatoship happen .
And you should know that he won the power by elections and USA after that did everything to put Allende out and they was sucesseful in that .

My Socialist hero is Vasco Gonçalves and not Allende but Allende did a great job in Chile .

[Pants-of-dog]

I don't know about Allende 'Lying' what I do know is that Allende broke the agreement he made with the Liberal party in order to gain office after which there was a majority vote of no confidence in him in the Chilean parliament.

He refused to step down as parliament demanded.

Allende was also condemned by the Supreme court of Chile for acting extra-constitutionally. He may be your socialist hero but what he wasn't was a respecter of the democratic process and clearly was attemting to make Chile into another Cuba.

Please provide evidence for this claim. Thank you.

[Rei Murasame]

And even if he were to somehow provide evidence for the claim, it's not like the liberal party was democratic either, so it's irrelevant.

[Someone5]

o i see wat u mean. wel the truth is i guess it isn't, but i dont particularly care. i was not trying to advocate true democracy, or that the U.S. is a perfect democracy or country.

The post-revolutionary United States was only vaguely democratic; most of the states had little in the way of meaningful democratic mechanisms, and only one half of one branch of the federal government was elected by the people--and by far the weakest portion of that branch. It's taken centuries to bring the US even to the point it's at today. Hell, we didn't even have a real right to free speech (meaning a right to engage in even seditious speech) until 1969, and that was granted by the Supreme Court.

i was simply exemplifying a case of violent revolution creating a democracy, if not a true one. the the point put forward by the person i was responding to was that violence cannot spawn democracy.

It has not yet been demonstrated whether violent revolutions can produce democratic states, because as yet no such democratic state has existed--or,least, has not existed in the European or Industrial contexts.

i think that he was wrong, despite its track record of often doing so. but it is not the violence that creates tyranny , it is those who create the violence, and how the victor handles the military and therefore social power his victory leaves him.

Sure, theoretically. It's difficult to imagine the ruling class ever relinquishing power without a violent revolution, and in as much as that is a requirement, it is true that democracy will only ever be earned through violence. Still, there is at least some hope that perhaps a better route might be found through a dual power approach and simple stubborn resistance to the ruling class. After all, they can only rule by force or by our consent, and they can no longer afford to rule by force in modern industrial states.

had George Washington not had so little interest in power our country could have, probably would have either collapsed into independent nation states or had a much sooner civil war.

The example of the American revolution is, I think, an important one. Not for the reasons you seem to suggest, however. It is an example of how the nobility of old was vanquished by the business-owning class, and the American government after that point has largely led the way in demonstrating the proper methods of social control in modern industrial states. To some degree the British had some importance in this as well, but the American government has always been more effective at ruling through ideological control. Our government learned that lesson very early in its history, before any others did.

Why rule by force when you can make a people want to be ruled, and incapable of conceptualizing alternatives to rulership? That's the route the US government chose, driven primarily by the Federalists--including George Washington.

assuming he didn't set himself up as a new king of course, which could have led to the above eventualities anyway. my point is simply, it is not so important to a nations future of how it comes into being, as who brings it in and what their goals are. Lenin for example, was in my belief, a true communist, and it was not he but Stalin who destroyed socialism.

Lenin was a communist; he did not believe the Soviet Union could be communist. He very explicitly accepted the Marxist view on history and economic development and concluded that a peasant society like Russia could not proceed into communism without first engaging in a capitalist phase; hence the bolshevik embrace of state capitalism and forced industrialization. Lenin himself noted that he had lost all hope that the revolution could continue after it failed to spread to Germany, and thus accepted the state capitalism that would come to define Soviet policy from then on.

Stalin simply made it far more brutal. Not that any of this has much to do with socialism. Bureaucratic control of the means of production is not the same as worker control over the means of production; when the government 'owns' the means of production, its decision-makers have merely become the new ruling class, establishing nothing but a different brand of state capitalism.

as a result of his desecration, socialism is regarded as the tool of tyrants. had Washington been a man of similar character, democracy could have been regarded in a similar way, and used by tyrants to achieve power.

Socialism isn't dead. That's a bit like saying that democracy died when Parliamentary forces won the English Civil War; not really very meaningful, since neither side supported democracy. The fact that one side won and the other lost has only limited bearing on the future prospects of democracy. In the same sense, the failure of the largely state capitalist Soviet Union has no real bearing on the future prospects of socialism--except in as much as it has made clear that socialism cannot be brought into being by a state.

In the end, socialism will win out, it is merely a question of how long it takes for people to realize that they do not need to be ruled by anyone anymore. Until that point, we will have capitalism. No force on Earth can speed that along; only a quiet and lengthy campaign of education and organized dissent against the ruling class can bring that about. You cannot force people to be free; and thus you cannot force them to accept socialism.

When the revolution comes, it will be fought by the people, against the ruling class, to secure the resources of society and the means of production. That won't be any time soon--possibly not in any of our lifetimes. We have to remember that capitalism didn't arise overnight either, it took centuries too. It had its failures and its regressions too.

it is often anyway. so to conclude no governing system is perfect, and its worth can only be judged by its ability to prevent men of evil intent from taking power.

I don't want men of good intent having power either. I'd rather no one have that power.

[Unthinking Majority]

I don't see why there would be any contradiction between socialism and democracy.

[Decky]

I don't see why there would be any contradiction between socialism and democracy.

In fact democracy is impossible without socialism. After all have looked at the "democracies" where the media is privately controlled?

[Social_Critic]

Decky and Unthinking, my observation is that socialism taken to an extreme, as seen in say Cuba or the Soviet Union, requires a dictatorship or very reapidly degenerates into autocracy and eventual dictatorship, even if it's covered up by a veneer of democracy.

Socialism allows a huge concentration of power in the hands of a very small group, this usually leads to the emergence of an hereditary oligarchy which doesn't really practice socialism, it practices what i call savage socialism or fascism - see the evolution of the People's Republic of China into such a monstrosity.

The solution, as I see it, is to keep government as weak as possible, and to make sure the public is educated and informed. This means it's important to break up media monopolies and the coordination of media with the government. The US is an example of a country where media monopolies distort democracy, Venezuela is another example, under Chavez the state has emerged as the owner of many media outlets, it forces non-government owned media to air government issued programming, including endless hours of Chavez speeches which distort both history and his record.

My conclusion? Even if modern democracies such as the US are flawed, they do work a lot better than the typical "socialist" nation, which usually turns out to be an emerging fascist state run by a hereditary ruling class.

[Decky]

Socialism allows a huge concentration of power in the hands of a very small group,

As opposed to capitalism where this never ever happens? I live in Britain where all the power in concentrated in the hands of a few parasites who went to Eton/ Harrow and then to Oxford/ Cambridge.

[stsoc]

i am myself a democratic socialist, which roughly combines the idea that one can have people both be free to elect their leaders and still live in a socialist state, somewhat like a welfare state, but more socialist. opinions?

First you need to get straight what socialism means. Socialism means disappearence of capitalists. No boss, whether it's a private capitalist or state. Socialism is self-management of workers. In socialism there are no leaders, workers can only (among themselves) elect delegates, which are under direct control by the collective that delegated to some administrative board.

Also if a welfare state operates in a capitalist economy, it is clear that it can in no way be called socialist.

[Social_Critic]

stsoc, you are defining utopian socialism, which has been shown not to work at all. It's based on a faulty understanding of the way a modern industrial or post-industrial corporation works. This idea of yours

Socialism means disappearence of capitalists. No boss, whether it's a private capitalist or state. Socialism is self-management of workers.

Shows a complete lack of understanding of the way things work. Without a boss, a group of workers doesn't cut it in today's world. I know this hurts, but it's the way it is. And this is why your buddies the socialists who did take over and force their will on people always migrated to what I call fascist socialism, you can call it ruthless socialism, or whatever. It sucks big time, I had to live under it, and never again will allow you to do that to me. This is why I write about the subject. You guys do need to understand that for those of us who suffered horribly under your buddies' claws, there's no return. We will die first, and in the process we will tear your temple down.

[stsoc]

I've definined socialism, which was established in Free Territory, Revolutionary Catalonia and Zapatista Chiapas, and functions within capitalism on smale scale as co-ops, moshavs and communes, always, whether small scale or big scale, more efficiently then capitalism that surrounds it.

Without a boss, a group of workers doesn't cut it in today's world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wo ... operatives

At least do educated trolling, flashing this amount of ignorance makes it obvious.

[Malatant of Shadow]

Not only are socialism and democracy not incompatible, but neither one can work without the other. Socialism is economic democracy. Democracy is political socialism. Where socialism is attempted without democratic government, those who control the government use that power to divert economic resources to their own purposes and privileges, undermining socialism. That's what happened in the Soviet Union. Where democracy is attempted without a socialist economy, the wealthy use their influence to twist government to serving their own interests rather than those of the people. That's what happens in the United States.

The confusion on this question comes about partly because people associate socialism with the Soviet Union, which claimed to be socialist but wasn't, and partly because socialism has often been defined in terms of its means rather than its ends. The means normally used for that definition is state ownership of economic production. But that isn't what socialism is about anymore than auto mechanics is about the use of wrenches and jacks. You can use wrenches and jacks to demolish a car rather than repairing it, and you can use state ownership of economic production to implement economic privilege rather than equality.

Socialism is an economy organized to provide a broad distribution of wealth to benefit everyone living in a community either equally or (more practically) with relatively narrow income gaps. In this it contrasts with capitalism, which is an economy organized to maximize return on capital investment and so to create very wide income gaps -- some people increasingly richer than most. Exactly how a socialist economy is to be achieved is not, or should not be, part of the definition; any method that works well should be used. State ownership of economic production is one way to accomplish this IF the government is democratic and perfectly accountable to the people, which is rare, but even so it's not necessarily the best or most efficient way. An economy that consists entirely of worker-owned cooperatives and self-employed individuals would also be a socialist economy, but much more decentralized than the government-owns-it-all model, and that's the version of socialism that I prefer.

Someone voiced a concern above that socialism leads to communism. It was rightly pointed out that this is true only in Marxian theory; what should be added is that if that were really true it would be a point in socialism's favor rather than something to worry about. Communism, in Marxian theory, is a stateless, classless, perfect-sharing utopia. If that were possible (which I don't believe), it would be ideal, would it not? Note that while the Soviet Union claimed (falsely) to be socialist, it never claimed to be communist (except in the sense of being governed by the Communist Party), because that claim would too obviously have been false.