Anarcissie, September 25 at 8:37 am Link to this comment

If I misunderstood your point I apologize. But I think I responded correctly. In the absence of any seeming desire on your part to clarify or instruct me in what I misread I can only assume I was accurate.

ardee—I don’t think you read what I wrote very carefully.  Or maybe I wrote it badly.  I wonder if I should write it all over again.  Maybe not.

However, when I say ‘socialist’ I mean that the actual ordinary worker has actual ownership and control of the actual means of production in some way.

Of course, Anarcissie, this is a precise definition of a socialist state, one which has yet to manifest itself. Other than adopting certain principles of socialism in some nations there is yet to be a true socialist or communist nation as defined by Marx and Engels, the attempts so far ending up as rule by an elite, the antithesis of what is defined as socialism or communism.

Yet you seemingly continue to offer proof of your position by mistakenly defining socialism by the presence of governments claiming to be such but which are bastardized versions.

I find this a bit disingenuous and more than a bit of a stretch.

Raylan—As I see it, the Left is the party of peace, freedom, and equality.  I seldom see governments promoting peace, freedom and equality.  In my analysis, that is because government is based on the ‘monopoly of violence’, that is, total coercive power.  Democracy is one of several strategies to limit that power, but, in the United States for example, it doesn’t seem to work on a national scale; a favorite theme of the people who write on this web site is that the rich are actually in control of the system.  Hence, instead of defining a ‘public sector’ as socialism, I prefer to see socialism as the actual ownership and control of the actual means of production by the actual workers.  You can call this an ‘anti-Left’ bias if you like, or an ‘anti-calico-cat bias’,  but it makes no sense to me.  From my point of view, you’re being suckered by a political shell game.

@Anarcissie
Your anti-left bias is showing. The definition of socialism does not contain the word ‘government’ - it does contain the word ‘public’ and in a democracy , the public sector is the government. That’s the difference between communism which depends on totalitarian control and socialism in which ownership (and therefore power) is in the hands of the public collective which can be the government.

If we define ‘socialism’ as any instance of government control of production, then of course there are lots and lots of socialist countries and always have been going back to the pharaohs.  However, when I say ‘socialist’ I mean that the actual ordinary worker has actual ownership and control of the actual means of production in some way.  If you don’t see a difference between that and having the means of production governed by a centralized authority with total coercive powers I think we’re stuck.  But at least you can be happy with all that socialism!

Correction
@Anarcissie
“I think it’s highly debatable whether actual socialism can be established through government”
What debate? Socialism isn’t libertarianism - there are several European examples also in South America

http://www.soundsandcolours.com/articles/ecuador/socialism-is-alive-and-kicking-in-south-america/

You can debate the facts - but you know what that’s called.

@Anarcissie
“I think it’s highly debatable whether actual socialism can be established through government”
What debate? Socialism isn’t libertarisnm - there are several European examples also in South Africa

http://www.soundsandcolours.com/articles/ecuador/socialism-is-alive-and-kicking-in-south-america/

You can debate the facts - but you know what that’s called.

I think it’s highly debatable whether actual socialism can be established through government.  There don’t seem to be any historical examples.  The fundamental contradiction is that socialism is supposed to be effectively classless, whereas governments, at least those of any size, create at least two classes, the governors and the governed, and of course the governors, being dominant, arrogate more and more power to themselves.  This is what happened, for instance, in the early days of the Soviet Union.  So in effect one replicates one of the problems of capitalism, its class structure, in one’s supposedly socialist state.  That is, if you think class is a problem, as I do.

@ cyndiw,
Go back to school or at least open up a dictionary.

For a true perspective and actual reporting on the Current UAW screwing of the auto worker please see
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/auto-s21.shtml
And
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/auto-s23.shtml
Maybe Mr. Scheer should get an actual Socialist Journalist to balance out, with all due respect, the garbage produced by Dionne, Jr.
Better would be to just leave what he purports to be journalism on the pages of the WP and then used for what it is best suited for, fish wrap.

@Anarcissie
which means public ownership of capital (means of production) So when the government buys out a private company, that is, when it is possible to do that, it is a socialist program. When the corporation however is still privately owned, it is is a compromised sort of capitalism, what Noam Chomsky calls “Nanny capitalism’ - pseudo-capitalism - pseudo-socialism.

RayLan, September 23 at 1:55 pm:

@Anarcissie
“Dionne doesn’t know what socialism is.  No surprise there”
Please enlighten us.

Socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the workers.

Socialism means shared ownership of the workplace.

There is nothing controversial, unreasonable or radical about it until it is packaged as recycled cold war propaganda and shoved down your throat in the media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ

Pea Tardy response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu4DtlZTMdU

Noam Chomsky calls big corporate bails outs ‘Nannty Capitalism’.
The small business and individual must deal with the ‘discipline of the market place’ but if one the big piggies gets hungry, the Nanny government throws it a boat load of pig feed.

Obama’s cabinte is well stocked with big corporate capitalists. He so far from being socialist it’s scary.

@Anarcissie
“Dionne doesn’t know what socialism is.  No surprise there”
Please enlighten us.

Dionne doesn’t know what socialism is.  No surprise there.

The middle and working classes as well as the poor exist solely to be exploited by America’s aristocracy of wealth. Any notion of shared prosperity or sacrifice is discarded as foolish nonsense unworthy of greedy thieves running businesses that only move around money and skim some off the top but never actually produce anything of value to the society as a whole.

We should stop thinking of businesses as job creators.  They are profit creators.  If they must create a job to make a profit, they will.  If they can improve their profitability by eliminating jobs, they will. 

The New Republic - Brooks Brothers Bolshevism 09/14/2011
Michael Cembalest, the chief investment officer of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in July of this year (in a clients-only newsletter obtained by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson) that “profit margins have reached levels not seen in decades,” and “reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement.” (Cembalest printed the latter quote in boldfaced lettering.) “US labor compensation,” he explained, “is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP.”

In the same time period, Corporations have greatly increased their political influence, devastated the unions and weakened the labor laws.  They are in business to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else and if we dare to complain, they accuse us of waging class warfare.

What the writer and the posters fail to notice in this article is that GM is making profits from sales overseas not in North America - we bailed them out but they have been posting profits from foreigners (who didn’t bail them out). Get it!

Whether prospering or desperate, the American sheeple always prefer to live with lies, rather than truths.

The primary product of the corporate-state is to provide lies. All its crimes rely upon them.

http://www.chenangogreens.org

BeReal,

It is amazing what one can believe when one’s well being depends on it.

What I simply do not understand is how anyone can still believe that tax cuts for the rich (the ‘job creators’ - who have created NO/ZERO/ZILCH jobs in this extremely abundant year for corporations) and cutting spending that will simply put MORE people out of work, can POSSIBLY save the economy! They do not seem to understand the simplest arithmatic, let alone higher math!

so·cial·ism/?s?SH??liz?m/
Noun: A political and economic theory that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. 

Sounds like it to me….