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Thread: Is there anything left of The Left?

  1. #81

    Default Re: Another white identitarian mass murder broadcast on the internet.

    Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
    Wut.
    Socialists justify their political ideology by arguing that capitalism destroys individualism. Collectivism/Individualism is a false dichotomy.


    No, I'd argue he's more of a fascist. Also, his governing party is not a successor to the party that used to govern the USSR, so I fail to see the connection. Meanwhile, "die Linke" is the same as the SED (same personnel, including Stasi members/informants, as well as GDR apologism and an unabashedly Marxist socialist agenda), plus a few PKK members and West German loons.
    And here I thought we established that's Socialism.

    Not really, try again. Also, I don't care about the "left/right" dichotomy, it's highly inaccurate.
    You're all so hip. No Left/Right but Nazis are simply racist socialists.

    Well I - unlike some - understand German fairly well. Enough to be able to comprehend the sources, and be able to comprehend the terminology.
    The idea, that because NSDAP's cause was for the welfare for German people, then it is by definition, a form of or related to socialism, is false. Otherwise, so is Napoleon. I'm getting real tired of this whole Nazis were actually socialists diatribe, but this is where we are now. Arguing over well-established political history.

  2. #82

    Default Re: Another white identitarian mass murder broadcast on the internet.

    Quote Originally Posted by Love Mountain View Post
    Because The Road to Serfdom is not a scholarly work. This is about as relevant as quoting Orwell's 1984 in any political debate. It is social commentary published in 1944, before the World War was even over. So yes, I did dismiss it because you did not construct an argument to be refuted. Try again.
    I'm still seeing no attempt to address the substance of Hayek's arguments (not that you've actually read them). This is just more of the usual hand-waving.

    Almost all modern and even ancient political regimes engage in redistribution of wealth, engage in actions, including war, on behalf of their civic polity. Hitler's ideology is meant to benefit of German people in the same way that the Mandate of Heaven is meant to benefit the Chinese. All political ideologies claim to benefit the people they serve for one reason or another. You're not making a great argument here.

    Racism, socialism, and authoritarianism are not incompatible. Just as racism, individualism, and authoritarianism are also not incompatible. Hell, individualism and socialism are also not incompatible. So this doesn't mean anything. What makes Socialism, socialism, and Fascism, fascism, is the context they exist in, the rationale behind the actions they take, and the final outcome they strive towards. Nazi's use of "socialism" as can be gleaned from today's review of literature, primary evidence (such as Hitler's speeches, letters, and actual policy) clearly reveal that "socialism" is whatever the hell they want it to be in order to achieve political power. This does not make their political system related to socialism. Try again.

    "Socialism! What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." - Adolf Hitler

    Though I suppose he describes your understanding of Socialism fairly well.

    This is false. Ideally, most modern western states view the "public good" to be best served depending on the specific good or service needs to be provided. Realistically, modern policy making is dependent on political preferences of various interest groups.

    No. This is a statement that in reality, all political regimes exercise force to achieve a political result. Taxes are taken regardless of how you feel about them. The universal nature of taxation does not mean that the entire world is now a collectivist hellhole, though I suppose I can see where a libertarian might make that argument.

    I have yet to see an argument for why Nazis and Socialists are apparently closely related.
    The fact that all political entities/actors exhibit similar behaviours doesn't mean that those behaviours are expressed in the same way and to the same degree. The logic you're employing to discredit the proposition that the NSDAP were socialist is wholly unspecific and serves only to drown all political categorizations/classifications in a sea of generalizations and conflations. I was going to make a quip about how, according to your own rationale, there would be no meaningful ideological distinction between the Roman Empire and the Drittes Reich but you inadvertently one upped me with your ludicrous comparison between Hitler's doctrine and the Mandate of Heaven.

    The NSDAP's ideological obsession with centrally planned, collectivist solutions which it saw as being part of the "science of dealing with common weal" places it firmly on the socialist spectrum. I'll let Watson put to bed your nonsense claim that recognizing the sozialismus in Nationalsozialismus is an "absurdity".

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, sometimes thought so too. The title of National Socialism was not hypocritical. The evidence before 1945 was more private than public, which is perhaps significant in itself. In public Hitler was always anti-Marxist, and in an age in which the Soviet Union was the only socialist state on earth, and with anti-Bolshevism a large part of his popular appeal, he may have been understandably reluctant to speak openly of his sources...

    His private conversations, however, though they do not overturn his reputation as an anti-Communist, qualify it heavily. Hermann Rauschning, for example, a Danzig Nazi who knew Hitler before and after his accession to power in 1933, tells how in private Hitler acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition. ‘I have learnt a great deal from Marxism’, he once remarked, ‘as I do not hesitate to admit’. He was proud of a knowledge of Marxist texts acquired in his student days before the first world war and later in a Bavarian prison in 1924, after the failure of the Munich putsch. The trouble with Weimar Republic politicians, he told Otto Wagener at much the same time, was that ‘they had never even read Marx’, implying that no one who had failed to read so important an author could begin to understand the modern world; in consequence, he went on, they imagined that the October revolution in 1917 had been ‘a private Russian affair’, whereas in fact it had changed the whole course of human history...

    ‘I [Hitler] have put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers [communist intellectuals] have timidly begun’, adding revealingly that ‘the whole of National Socialism’ was based on Marx. That is a devastating remark, and it is blunter than anything in his speeches or in Mein Kampf; though even in the autobiography he observes that his own doctrine was fundamentally distinguished from the Marxist by reason that it recognised the significance of race – implying, perhaps, that it might otherwise easily look like a derivative. Without race, he goes on, National Socialism ‘would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground’. Perhaps that remark is as near as he gets, in any public statement, to acknowledging his Marxian debt. And at all such moments an inner logic and consistency can be perceived through the untidy prose of an untrained mind. He was not arguing to Rauschning or in Mein Kampf that he was, or had ever been, a Marxist. He was arguing that National Socialism was based on Marx.
    As for communists, he [Hitler] opposed them because ‘basically they are not socialistic’; they created mere herds, Soviet-style, without individual life, and his own ideal was ‘the socialism of nations’ rather than the international socialism of Marx and Lenin. The one and only problem of the age, he told Wagener, was to liberate labour and replace the rule of capital over labour with the rule of labour over capital...

    These are highly socialist sentiments, and if Wagener reports his master faithfully they leave no doubt about the conclusion: that Hitler was an unorthodox Marxist who knew his sources and knew how unorthodoxly he handled them. He was a dissident socialist. His programme was at once nostalgic and radical. It proposed to accomplish something that Christians had failed to act on and that communists before him had attempted and bungled. ‘What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish’, he told Wagener, ‘we shall be in a position to achieve’.

    That was the National Socialist vision of history. It was an exciting vision, at once traditional and new. Like all socialist views it was ultimately moral, and its economic and racial policies were seen as founded on universal moral laws.
    By the time such conversations saw the light of print, however, the world had put such matters far behind it, and it was less than ever ready to listen to the sayings of a crank or a clown.


    Watson, George. The Lost Literature of Socialism.
    Last edited by Cope; November 04, 2019 at 08:45 PM.



  3. #83

    Default Re: Another white identitarian mass murder broadcast on the internet.

    Quote Originally Posted by ep1c_fail View Post
    I'm still seeing no attempt to address the substance of Hayek's arguments (not that you've actually read them). This is just more of the usual hand-waving.
    That's not an argument. I have no intention of re-reading the entirety of Hayek's book in order to discuss the minutia of his argument. Actually say something or highlight the relevant section you'd like to discuss. Otherwise, you're simply appealing to authority, an incredibly biased and uninformed one at that.

    The fact that all political entities/actors exhibit similar behaviours doesn't mean that those behaviours are expressed in the same way and to the same degree. The logic you're employing to discredit the proposition that the NSDAP were socialist is wholly unspecific and serves only to drown all political categorizations/classifications in a sea of generalizations and conflations. I was going to make a quip about how, according to your own rationale, there would be no meaningful ideological distinction between the Roman Empire and the Drittes Reich but you inadvertently one upped me with your ludicrous comparison between Hitler's doctrine and the Mandate of Heaven.
    This is precisely the point. Cherry picking NSDAP's behavior when it suits your categorization as "Socialist". Thank you for grasping the point. Though it is puzzling how you are unable to apply this knowledge.

    The NSDAP's ideological obsession with centrally planned, collectivist solutions which it saw as being part of the "science of dealing with common weal" places it firmly on the socialist spectrum. I'll let Watson put to bed your nonsense claim that recognizing the sozialismus in Nationalsozialismus is an "absurdity".

    Watson, George. The Lost Literature of Socialism.
    It is absurdity, as your increasing reliance on conservative pundits indicates an inability to critically and objectively analyze the NSDAP and the policies they promoted. Though it is instructive and rather comical, that conservatives are seemingly unable to first claim what they believe Socialism to be in order to compare it with actual policies and philosophy of NSDAP. If you want to claim NSDAP was socialist, why don't you first indicate what socialism is and how NSDAP fits or modifies that model. It would an improvement from referencing a 200+ page book in its entirety, or selectively quoting concluding remarks of a conservative text.

  4. #84

    Default Re: Another white identitarian mass murder broadcast on the internet.

    That's not an argument. I have no intention of re-reading the entirety of Hayek's book in order to discuss the minutia of his argument. Actually say something or highlight the relevant section you'd like to discuss. Otherwise, you're simply appealing to authority, an incredibly biased and uninformed one at that.
    Anyone who was familiar with Hayek's work (let's drop the act that you've ever read it) would be aware that Serfdom includes a short and unambiguously titled chapter on the NSDAP's socialist roots. If you'd even bothered to glace over the contents page you'd have spotted it.

    This is precisely the point. Cherry picking NSDAP's behavior when it suits your categorization as "Socialist". Thank you for grasping the point. Though it is puzzling how you are unable to apply this knowledge.
    My observation that your rebuttal necessitates the drowning of "all political categorizations under a sea of generalisations" has nothing to do with so-called behavioural "cherry-picking". When, on the basis of the texts I provided, I offered an analysis of how the Nazi Party's war "was an expression of revolutionary socialism perceived through the lens of ethnonationalism" (an easy conclusion to reach for anyone who's studied the Bolshevik takeover of Russia) you simply shrugged off the entire Second World War and the NSDAP's rationale for waging it as though it were some sort of generic occurrence. "All regimes engage in wars" was how you phrased your non-response.

    It is absurdity, as your increasing reliance on conservative pundits indicates an inability to critically and objectively analyze the NSDAP and the policies they promoted. Though it is instructive and rather comical, that conservatives are seemingly unable to first claim what they believe Socialism to be in order to compare it with actual policies and philosophy of NSDAP. If you want to claim NSDAP was socialist, why don't you first indicate what socialism is and how NSDAP fits or modifies that model. It would an improvement from referencing a 200+ page book in its entirety, or selectively quoting concluding remarks of a conservative text.
    Watson was a liberal academic who taught at Cambridge University; he was not a "conservative pundit". His book is an analysis of fundamental socialist literature; it is not a "conservative text". There is no point in continuing a conversation with someone who expects me to tolerate this degree of intellectually laziness and dishonesty. The flagrant dismissal of sources of which you have no knowledge and which you won't even bother to read is risible.



  5. #85
    Muizer's Avatar member 3519
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Ok to summarize, if you disregard the nationalism, racism, fascism and mysogeny and the like, National Socialism fits 'socialism' perfectly fine, because it's not capitalism and has the word 'Socialism' in it.
    "Lay these words to heart, Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand?" - Lucius Annaeus Seneca -

  6. #86
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    because it's not capitalism and has the word 'Socialism' in it.
    And even the former part of that is quite disputable.
    I tend to edit my posts once or several times after writing and uploading them. Please keep this in mind when reading a recent post of mine. Also, should someone, for some unimaginable reason, wish to rep me, please add your username in the process, so I can at least know whom to be grateful towards.

    My thanks in advance.

  7. #87
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    The politics of the Nazi-regime was antithesis to socialism from the getgo. The core philosophy of socialism is equality of humans (despite what actual so-called real-socialist regimes realised). And thus nationalsocialism is not compatible with socialism. That said, nobody who knows actually history and politology discusses this (except some "experts" from the Right). The pseudo-intellectual and ideology, and even term-related, driven conclusion, that Nationalsozialismus is a form of socialism goes back indeed on Hayek and other such economists, focused on economical impacts on society, which were in no way experts of politology. The idea got some attention back in the eve of the cold war just post WWII, as totalitarianism began to be theme. But even Hayek himself would probably go vomitting, when he could see what Libertarians and Tea-Party'iers made out of his ideas, since Hayek was upped to a kind of Marx of the Right in anglo-saxon conservative and libertarian hemispheres (but also in Europe, i remember F.J. Strauss/CSU, Germany, was a fan). To a good degree, or let's say it has some stock, paved the way for the then occuring neo-liberalism in the 70s ff. (Thatcherism, Reaganomics).
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  8. #88

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    The core philosophy of socialism is equality of humans
    Nope. The core idea of socialism is public/state control over means of production, distribution and exchange.
    Marx himself was a raging racist, who hated Slavs and Russians in particular.

    Ok to summarize, if you disregard the nationalism, racism, fascism and mysogeny and the like, National Socialism fits 'socialism' perfectly fine, because it's not capitalism and has the word 'Socialism' in it.
    Ok, so if you disregard that plenty of socialist regimes had extreme nationalism in their ideology and/or embrace "real socialism has never been tried" nonsense, then you can say National-Socialism wasn't socialism, despite having typically socialist political and economic policies, only because modern self-hating Western socialists don't want to be associated with past of their own ideology.

  9. #89
    Diamat's Avatar VELUTI SI DEUS DARETUR
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Just glancing over the NSDAP 1925 platform, one finds points that can hardly be defined in any other way than "socialist."


    1. The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the whole for the benefit for the general good. We demand therefore:
    2. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
    3. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice of life and property that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment due to a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. Therefore, we demand ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
    4. We demand nationalization of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).
    5. We demand a that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
    6. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.



    1. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
    2. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
    3. We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...ialist_Program

  10. #90
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Summary of the last two posts (aka, what sticks behind it, the associations):

    So according to HH socialism's core philosophy is reduced to a socialist economic model. And equality, as well further probably with this stance, the idea of a just and solidaric society for all humans, as well as internationalism are no things that have to do with the core philosophy of socialism, because socialism is just solely an economic methodic model.

    Furtheron, real-socialist regimes are not distinct, and/or rather it is a non-thing, that these regimes differ from socialist original core ideas. There are solely the one and only socialists and the one and only socialism.

    And at last, economic program points of a Weimar fascist, on its shield workers, party, that contain welfare aspects limited to the "german race", is the same as a socialist party program of Weimar parties.
    Related here, Mussolini's program was as well a socialist agenda, and thus we have established these post WW1 fascist movements were both socialist movements and they belong to the leftist spectrum.

    Far right politics is now (far) left politics.

    And as next, probably, Karl Marx will be the original founder of national socialism and was just the first by history approved public racist.

    Well done, guys.
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  11. #91

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Socialism is first and foremost an economic theory. The whole "socialist philosophy" argument is just a modern leftist rehash of "no true Scotsman" and is intellectually worthless.
    Since NSDAP had de-facto socialist policies as per conventional definition of socialism, which were identical to policies of other conventionally-recognized socialist regimes of that time, Third Reich was a socialist state.

  12. #92

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    delete please
    Last edited by Heathen Hammer; November 09, 2019 at 02:03 PM.

  13. #93
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Quote Originally Posted by Diamat View Post
    Just glancing over the NSDAP 1925 platform, one finds points that can hardly be defined in any other way than "socialist."



    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...ialist_Program
    Same page:

    "Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher summarizes the program by saying that its components were "hardly new" and that "German, Austrian, and Bohemian proponents of anti-capitalist, nationalist-imperialist, anti-Semitic movements were resorted to in its compilation," but that a call to "breaking the shackles of finance capital" was added in deference to the idee fixe of Gottfried Feder, one of the party's founding members, and Hitler provided the militancy of the stance against the Treaty of Versailles, and the insistence that the points could not be changed, and were to be the permanent foundation of the party. Bracher characterizes the points as being "phrased like slogans; they lent themselves to the concise sensational dissemination of the 'anti' position on which the party thrived. ... Ideologically speaking, [the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."[3]

    According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 25-point program "remained the party's official statement of goals, though in later years many points were ignored."[4]"

    "Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that,

    To [Hitler, the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation, for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory, against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents.[12]"
    Really ridiculous to keep hearing that Hitler, nothing but a maniac demagogue, ever had something like a reasonable plan and was a socialist. By the way, can someone tell me what the Nazi scene has to do with the opening post?
    Last edited by mishkin; November 09, 2019 at 02:57 PM.

  14. #94
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Well, according to HH with his convincing approaches (probably a reknown politology scholar of anglo-saxon hemisphere), the following seems to be valid:
    Ideas and values (or core philosophy) which belong to the evolution of human societal development are a non-thing.

    The reality is but:
    The according thoughts, that have to do with 'socialism' go back to fe. Greek philosophers, early christians, diverse single thinkers of the middleage and then the philosophers of the Renaissance,
    culminating in the age of Enlightment ff. and its philosophers.
    Altogether resulted into the French Revolution with its motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
    Marx, to mention him here as a remarkable philosopher of the 19th c., took all that together and provided its writings for the at the time valid points due to there present Age of Industrialisation.
    Prior, parallel and later, and partially also motivated by Marx and Engels' agitations, different socialist streams were identified:
    Utopic socialism (early socialism), social-democracy (democratic socialism), marxism (scientific socialism) and orthodox marxism/communism.
    Everybody with a tad of knowledge about the political history is aware of, that like liberalism, conservatism and nationalism, socialism belongs to the ideologies of the 19th century, which made it into the 20th and 21st century.
    All of them are big themes of political science to the day and thus the political discurs, what differences are there and how and why these ideologies occured and what they mean for the human society on earth.
    But well, along our political expert HH, socialism is solely, or as he says, "first and foremost an economic theory" and other thoughts can be ignored "as intellectually worthless".

    Under the line, I think it is fair to say, that one can dismiss his "expertise" as trolling in the Academy section of TWC forum.
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  15. #95

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Really ridiculous to keep hearing that Hitler, nothing but a maniac demagogue, ever had something like a reasonable plan and was a socialist. By the way, can someone tell me what the Nazi scene has to do with the opening post?
    Plenty of socialist dictators were maniacal demagogues, Lenin being a good example of such. Lenin's policies were almost identical to those of Hitler.
    The according thoughts, that have to do with 'socialism' go back to fe. ...
    Socialism is a failed economic theory from 1800s that postulates public/state ownership, management and distribution of means of production. NSDAP's economic policy falls under that definition. Also referring to someone in third person and attempting to sneak in ad hominem attacks only shows that you got emotional due to being proven wrong, and that doesn't add up your argument, "comrade".

  16. #96
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    Ok to summarize, if you disregard the nationalism, racism, fascism and mysogeny and the like, National Socialism fits 'socialism' perfectly fine, because it's not capitalism and has the word 'Socialism' in it.
    Ok. So by that reasoning Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Vietnam etc. were all not socialist because they also had elements of nationalism, racism, fascism, misogyny.
    I don't think those aspects of a society can be legitimate reasons to disqualify a state from being socialist (assuming one takes the broadest definition of "fascism"). To the contrary they seem practically essential. Unless one wishes to go down the no-true-scotsman-fallacy rabbit hole. In which case all discussion is ended, replaced by disconnected rants in mutual incomprehensibility.
    The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
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  17. #97
    mishkin's Avatar Dux Limitis
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    So everything is national socialism except countries with wild liberal economies. Or maybe that either.

  18. #98

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    I think active and intended negation of capitalism is socialism, according to Engels. Whether the government is nationalist or not is largely irrelevant.
    I find it quite amusing how socialist apologists have "evil" right-wingers educate them on basics of their own socialist ideology.

  19. #99
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    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    So only a few coutries in the world are socialist, none of them european? Thanks for the lesson.

  20. #100

    Default Re: Is there anything left of The Left?

    Quote Originally Posted by mishkin View Post
    So only a few coutries in the world are socialist, none of them european? Thanks for the lesson.
    Who/where said that?

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