Socialism works every time it's tried.

You are the one injecting "helping people" into it. So it's all up to you to advocate it and explain it or admit it's your own fantasy.

That's not true Rod. I've explained it to you and everyone here by quoting from Marx.

Look at my post to One Mind, #200 right above.

 

Karl Marx, IMO, had a philosophy that was deeply flawed, and involved far too much idealism, that is not possible, given man is driven not by intellect, rationality, reason, but human nature, which is averse to Marx created, as ideas.

IMO, the only way socialism will ever challenge capitalism, on its merits, would require a psychological revolution in our species. And we are not seemingly capable of that.

 

Fine. You have an opinion. But that is irrelevant because all efforts at socialism were driven by Marx's writings.

Again, your opinion. But we were not talking about your own opinion. At least I wasn't. So when you address what I said you might keep that in mind.

 

Marxism and socialism are not the same thing (even though Marx used "socialism" freely). It is correct that no country has had Marxism to date, which the main distinction with socialism is, as you say, working class dictating and no wage slavery. Lenin first made the break from Marxism to (mostly) socialism -- though he called it communism. Lenin's view was that Marx was deficient in explaining how to actually get to Marx's "socialism. (I know, it gets confusing.....)

 

HUH? Everyone else is injecting "helping" into socialism. I said it's not in "socialism".

I made an attempt in my post #204

 

Can you show that any significant effort to establish a socialist socioeconomic system (think Russia and China) was ever led and guided by something OTHER THAN Marx's writings? If not, then your objection here is irrelevant and meaningless.

And yet all such efforts and movements after Lenin have all been identified by their label "Marxist-Leninist".

Clearly you continue to have no actual response to what I've said without deflecting and diverting with some irrelevancy like this.

 

Yes, you raised the idea as I showed.

And BTW Rod, Lenin didn't call socialism "communism". They're two different systems but socialism LEADS TO communism as both Marx and Lenin agreed and said.

 

The idea that socialism must necessarily be derived from Marx is complete tosh. A Christian Socialist will, for example, detail socialism without any Marxist political economy. Market socialists would also refer to Schumpeterian creative destruction (and refer to analysis that evolved independently of Marx).

Marx is important in helping understand success and failings in capitalism. But lets not go Citizen Smith and play student politics!