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Myth: Liberalism is socialism, and socialism is big government.
Fact: Liberals believe in private ownership of the means of production; socialists, public.
Summary
Modern American liberals are democratic capitalists. That is, they believe that private capitalist individuals should own and control the means of production, as long as they operate within the democratic law. By contrast, socialists believe that everyone should own and control the means of production. Socialism has been proposed in many forms. Perhaps the most popular form is social democracy, in which workers vote for their supervisors, company policy, and industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another form of socialism is anarcho-socialism, in which employee-owned firms would compete or cooperate on the free market, absent any centralized government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is not a necessary feature of socialism; only worker ownership of production is. Dictatorships can never be socialist, because workers do not own or control anything when a ruling elite is telling them what to do. For this reason, socialists reject the claim (made by the Soviet Union itself) that the Soviet Union was a socialist country. It was instead a brutal dictatorship over workers.
Originally posted by DINSTAAR
Agreed.
Socialism is not government control. In fact, socialism would be very difficult and prone to perversion with a government.
It is also possible to be wealthy in a socialist society. Socialism is not against prosperity.
The 'socialism' we are seeing today is actually the expansion of government and the destruction of freedom. Expansion of government and destruction of freedom are the same thing, so my saying both is redundant.
Labor unions are not socialist. They are greedy control freaks that unleash the destructive power of government on the lives of others.
As I mentioned before, socialism must be voluntary, otherwise you just have tyrannical control over the means of production.
Originally posted by centurion1211
Originally posted by drwizardphd
Liberalism is a belief in the importance of personal freedom. Nothing more.
Couldn't be more false .
Liberalism is about getting the government to take care of your every need - which by definition leads to a major loss of personal freedoms.
Originally posted by centurion1211
Political Correctness is an invention of the media. It is not limited to the left or the right. All political parties, media outlets, and public figureheads are guilty of propagating it.
Also couldn't be more false except maybe that it is an invention of the liberal media.
I challenge you to come forward with a conservative that believes political correctness is a good thing.
Originally posted by ANOK
Not really true. There are many peoples incorrect definition of socialism, based on other peoples agenda to confuse. Then there are peoples differing idea on how socialism should be implemented. There are also the high-school definitions, as in anything bad is socialism, or fascism.
Originally posted by ANOK
You can't argue an economic system like socialism without a rock solid simple basic definition of the term. For that definition you have to go to the original meaning of the term, not what other people have interpreted it to mean years down the line.
Originally posted by ANOK
Myth: Liberalism is socialism, and socialism is big government.
Fact: Liberals believe in private ownership of the means of production; socialists, public.
Originally posted by ANOK
Socialism is simply 'the workers ownership of the means of production and distribution'. Any other definition or implementation, such as Marx, is simply the idea of that person not socialists in general.
Originally posted by ANOK
People, and governments, can call themselves what they want, it doesn't mean they are what they claim.
Originally posted by ANOK
Hitler, as you mentioned, is a good example. Yes they used the term socialist in their name, but obviously socialist they were not.
Originally posted by ANOK
He was a classic fascist based on the fascism of Mussolini.
Originally posted by ANOK
How about China and Russia calling themselves communist, when they are obviously dictatorships? Did any of those countries turn the means of production over to the workers?
Originally posted by PC equals Newspeak
Who else has the right to define socialism but self-proclaimed socialists
Originally posted by krzyspmac
"Socialist" belongs to the invertors of socialism. Not the self proclaimed socialists.
Originally posted by PC equals Newspeak
Who else has the right to define socialism but self-proclaimed socialists?
Originally posted by ANOK
The only true definition of socialism is 'The workers ownership of the means of production and distribution'
Originally posted by rizla
I didn't know Mark disagreed with the Communist Manifesto. Also, I'm not sure I'd call him a charlatan. Can you expand on that?
Originally posted by rizla
Says who? And isn't that also a definition of Communism. A lot of people would say Norway is socialist.
In the 1960's over 60% of the UK belonged to unions. Was that approaching socialism? Britain could have taken a very different path. Really, I can't see how it could have turned at worse than what the "free-market" capitalism of Thatcher and Blair have left the UK with.
Really, I think Britain was sold down the river when they privatized North Sea Oil. And that was under a labour govt.
Look it up.
SOCIALISM: a social system in which the producers [workers] possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.
Myth: Liberalism is socialism, and socialism is big government.
Fact: Liberals believe in private ownership of the means of production; socialists, public.
Socialism refers to a set of related socio-economic systems and ideologies that seek to transfer ownership of the means of production and distribution to the working class...
from 1918
To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best attainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.
o Clause IV (4) of the new Labour Party constitution adopted this year; written by Sydney Webb
Originally posted by drwizardphd
Political Correctness is an invention of the media. It is not limited to the left or the right. All political parties, media outlets, and public figureheads are guilty of propagating it.
Originally posted by blueorder
Originally posted by drwizardphd
Political Correctness is an invention of the media. It is not limited to the left or the right. All political parties, media outlets, and public figureheads are guilty of propagating it.
That point makes no sense- first it is an invention by the media, then you admit it does exist?
There is no doubt that the emergence of political correctness and multi culturalism is a result of (at least to a large degree), extreme left wing thinking and the belief that western society was horrific and needed to be changed (this was the trojan horse agenda as opposed to outside invasion)- the left wingers who held this view disgust me, spoilt brats, living in a society most people on earth could only dream of
Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism. . . . What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism — by levelling the charge of “political correctness” against its exponents — they could discredit the whole political project. Hutton