Socialism Doesn't Work?

"all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.'

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

“Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.”

“they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
- George Orwell, Animal Farm

How soon we forget the lessons we learn

 

George Orwell was a lifelong socialist. He LOVED socialism. LOL

 

And he hated communism. Few Americans understand the difference. His critique is always pertinent in a discussion centered on this subject. He's an advocate for socialism that truly understood its dangers.

 

You have it completely wrong. He loved socialism. He fought for the socialists in Spain. You don't even know what animal farm and 1984 was about!

 

Look it up. Its about a totalitarian communist state based off of the soviet union. What do you THINK its about- in other words, how are you going to skew the mans words to fit your agenda?

 

You are getting there. He HATED the soviet union because they destroyed true socialism but he LOVED socialism. LOL

 

The Communists had good reason to detest Orwell for exposing their treachery in Spain, during the civil war, with the publication of Homage to Catalonia in 1938 in which he stated:

“ . . . among the parties on the Government side the Communists stood not upon the extreme Left, but upon the extreme Right . . . In particular, the USSR is in alliance with France, a capitalist-imperialist country. The alliance is of little use to Russia unless French capitalism is strong, therefore Communist policy in France has got to be anti-revolutionary.”

In 1940 Orwell wrote, in his long essay Inside the Whale:

“The more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian publicity agent posing as an international socialist. It is a pose that is easily kept up at normal times, but becomes difficult in moments of crisis, because of the fact that the USSR is no more scrupulous in its foreign policy than the rest of the great powers.”

As a result, the Communists tried to portray Orwell either as a traitor who played into the hands of the right-wing or as the work of a disillusioned and desperately ill man. Brian Rubin quotes Llew Gardner of the Daily Worker: “When he wrote 1984, the anti-socialist work that shocked the nation on television, George Orwell was sick in mind and body, a fast dying man” (18 December 1954.) Although Orwell had been seriously ill with tuberculosis since 1947 and his health had not been good before that – he acknowledged in a letter to George Woodcock that the book was gloomy because he had been feeling so ill when he wrote it – it is a gross distortion to suggest that he was mentally ill. Orwell had been making plans for a further novel and arranging for treatment in a Swiss clinic when he had his fatal lung haemorrhage. Certainly, he was expecting to live a little longer. Apart from the obvious political tactic of trying to denigrate Orwell, to see Nineteen Eighty Four in psychological terms is to ignore the fact that the book draws together ideas that Orwell had been expressing for more than ten years.

Orwell had some harsh words to say about political careerists: “. . . the type who becomes a Labour MP or a high-up trade union official. This last type is one of the most desolating spectacles the world contains. He has been picked out to fight for his mates, and all it means to him is a soft job and the chance of bettering himself” (The Road to Wigan Pier). He also referred to “Labour Party back-stairs crawlers”, and Bolshevik commissars as “half gangster, half gramophone”. In the same book, Orwell criticised elitism: “The truth is that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders”.

The anarchists tend to hold Orwell in high regard, appreciating his criticism of totalitarian regimes of both the right and left and his understanding of imperialism and capitalist values which can be seen in his earliest books, In 1933 he wrote: “Why are beggars despised? – for they are despised universally, I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living, In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic, the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable . . . Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised”, and one of Orwell's characters, Bozo, the Parisian tramp tapped his forehead and said: “I'm a free man in here” (Down and Out in Paris and London}.

Despite having strong words to say against authoritarianism, Orwell had an acute awareness of the dangers that could arise from the apparent renunciation of power and the nature of moral coercion and the force of public opinion. In 1946, in an essay entitled Politics vs. literature he wrote:

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/...86-october-1986/political-ideas-george-orwell

 

You are talking about soviet communism which he hated....He LOVED SOCIALISM

 

This is my favorite quote of Orwell written near the end of his life

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”

 

"Socialism Doesn't Work?"

no one system works, the best system is the system that uses the best of ALL systems, use what works and ditch the rest

limiting yourself to one system is not the best option

 

Oh, you're quite right; the issue of what causes or does not cause economic growth in a country is indeed a topic I won't touch with a barge pole.

But you must admit that, with the US economy in the state it is in, it's rather a case of throwing stones in glass houses to accuse other countries of having poor economies.

 

Christianity doesn't concern itself with governance.

13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

And voting for the government to take some one else's money to provide for the poor, doesn't seem to be what Jesus had in mind.

 

Prior to 1913 it was done with tariffs and user fees. No personal income taxes.

Would you care to tell us why every time personal income taxes are raised that
the economy weakens? Then tell us why every time personal income taxes are cut
the economy flourishes.

 

where do poor people sign up for these free government phones, have a link to the signup page

 

http://www.obamaphone.com/

 

State ownership of the means of production is not the only criteria for socialism.

Any redistribution of wealth through taxation is socialism.

 

Yes it is ... Since when is "universal healthcare" not referred to as "Socialist" policy ?

Wealth redistribution via taxation is Socialism.

 

Your argument makes no sense.

Universal healthcare takes care of sick people. That taxation was used to fund the program does not change this fact

Roads transport people - regardless of how it was paid for.

The sewage system stops disease from spreading - regardless of who paid for it.

The criminal justice system punishes people - regardless of who pays for it.

 

LOL Standing on a soapbox crying "wrong wrong wrong" does not make it so.

I did not claim the teachings of Jesus supported a socialist form of Gov't. Jesus did not talk about Gov't except when he said (Give to Caesar what is Caesar's = separation of Church and State)

What Jesus did talk about was helping the poor and tending to the sick - and this is what some socialist programs such as welfare and universal healthcare do.

So - although Jesus did not talk about Gov't, he did talk about "YOU" - and he suggested that YOU would do well to take care of the poor and the sick - which is why YOU, if you claim to care about the teachings of Jesus should be for programs that do these things.

It amazes me how desperate you are to avoid the meaning of the teachings of Jesus and yet you call yourself a follower of the teachings of Jesus.

 

Your report indicates that Scandinavian countries are socialist. In point of fact they are not. Socialism is a terrible idea that has been even more terribly executed in history. Leave bad ideas where they belong, in the past.

 

My, how your claims wander all over as each one gets eviscerated.

 

Those are not examples of socialism. Many forms of governments had those services. You clearly don't understand what socialism actually is

 

You would have to give me a little more to back up your claim. That said - in general I agree with you.

The main thing taxation did was to create big Gov't which has the overall effect of draining. So it is not the taxation so much but the creation of big Gov't.

One of the main functions of Gov't (within their legitimate purview) is protecting "Life Liberty and pursuit of happiness".

One of the problems today that we have Oligarchs/Oligopolies that own most resources and means of production. The reason this is the case is that the Gov't has failed in doing the one thing that it is supposed to do by allowing this form of monopolism.

Extreme Socialism (communism) and extreme capitalism (monopolies/oligopolies) end up at the same place on the political spectrum. In both cases you have a few elite owning all resources and means of production. This is what happened during Feudalism for example in the middle ages. This was the reason for the Russian Revolution.

When the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other it is not good.

Our System has somehow managed to take the worst of both extremes and combine them into what I call the "Oligopoly Bureaucracy Fusion Monster".

What we have is Blue supporting one head of this beast and Red supporting the other but, at the end of the day it is the same beast.

Both Red and Blue Establishment hate individual rights and freedoms, the constitution - the principles on which this nation was founded (individual rights and freedoms/Liberty "Above" the legitimate authority of Gov't). Both are working towards a quazi totalitarian police state.

Both support the Monster through tax law and regulations which skew the playing field - bastardize the free market economy- and ignore price fixing and anti competitive practices towards a system of indentured slavery.

I should amend the word "towards" as we are already there.

 

Each of those services is the confiscation of private resources by the government to be used for the common good.

But, please, educate me...

 

The question was "what it is" not "what it isn't". You don't know, do you?