Wow, Ryan, the number of just beauty one liners in this thread alone are just amazing. So much so, I can’t even use the normal quote system with any reasonable efficacy. So I’ll try a different system, I hope it is adequate for most if not all. Everything in double quotes are from Ryan, and are from this thread…here goes…
“Probably about the same as the slaves we used to keep around here, or the prison labor that we used to use”
Sooo…why is it OK for you to say that other people should not make superficial comparisons between entirely different nations and cultures when they are making comments on socialism, but it’s just fine for you when you’re talking about a social order of which you apparently don’t approve?
“The point, which you again missed, was that their quality of living is comparable to ours. If a computer costs $1,000 or $200 (or whatever), who really cares?” (in relation to Cuba)
Ah…no. The point is that one could argue that having a toilet paper shortage, irrelevant of dollar income, in and of itself indicates that Cuba does NOT have as good a standard of living as is present in the United States. By the way, I’m curious as to where you get your examples about Cuba. My visits there were marked by meeting a tremendous number of married prostitutes selling their bodies to European tourists to just slightly improve their standard of living…meanwhile I spent one afternoon at a multi-millionaire Italian restauranteur’s mansion. He managed to get that put up with a few large bribes to the right socialist officials, and he was sure to build a very large wall to keep out all those people with such great standards of living. So Cuba is as full of crap as every other country…theory and practice have no relation to one another.
“Newsflash: there was an attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002, in which Washington is strongly suspected to have been involved.”
Heh. ‘is strongly suspected.’ That’s what is often called a ‘nullifier,’ though there are other adequate terms for it as well. It allows you to make a statement that seems definitive, and gives an illusion of being backed by some uncertain, unnamed authority. The best part? All responsibility for personal thought, knowledge, or input is completely off your shoulders if the assertion is later found to be untrue. After all, you never said you knew or thought there was Washington interference, merely some other entity suspected such a thing. Conversely, if something did prove the said involvement, I’m sure you would be happy to take credit for being part of the ‘right’ team. Also, since such an assertion is close to impossible for anyone to really, truly prove, you can hang on to it for your entire life. If the dear reader would notice, nearly all of Mr. Ryan’s ‘serious’ attempts at argument are marked by this repeated behavior. Everything has a reason why Ryan’s world-view is safe, and why everyone else is wrong. Notice I didn’t say every other opinion…if you really notice, Ryan makes an effort to denigrate the very life of anyone who disagrees. You have a different opinion? You’re uneducated. You’re indoctrinated by the capitalist system. Or if you lived in a socialist nation, your experiences are meaningless and your life is insignifigant. If anyone really tries to make serious conversation against his position, he retreats into the infantile/fetal position.
“Did you know that Stalin actually introduced different levels of pay for work at different skill levels? So this statement is not really accurate.”
Oh yeah, I remember that! Ukrainians didn’t want industrialization or Russification of their lands, so Stalin determined that they should not be paid a share of the food products harvested on their own land by their own labor. That killed…what…well I’m sure you could argue about specifics but the figures range from a couple of million to 10 million. Stalin also promoted the idea of people of the same skill level getting entirely different pay levels and access to material goods based on whether or not they were members of the Communist Party.
“No, it’s pretty much because they don’t meet the first criterion for a socialist country.”
Again, using definitions as they fit you, including changing definitions mid-stream (does that count as mixing metaphors?). And dare I point out the repeated arrogance? Everyone who calls themselves socialist is wrong, except those slivers of examples that fit the way you need to see the universe. Everyone is wrong except you. You were mentioning something about this sort of thinking in regards to schizophrenia. Incidentally, no, that’s not the definition of schizophrenia. It’s not infrequently manifested in schizophrenia, but it is not the definition of schizophrenia.
“Haha. Let me ask you question: if I get a dog, and name it “cat,” which is it?” (regarding National Socialism)
You’re not getting it. Even though YOU may only accept an extremely narrow and specific definition of socialism and further narrow it to suit your arguments as you need to, the question remains valid. Why is it that the vast majority of socialist experiments have ended up as dictatorial nightmares with lower standards of living and liberty compared to neighboring countries that tended towards more of a market economy? Also, I think it’s fair that the other poster pointed out that so many of said dictatorial nations came into being by promising wonders, glory, and prosperity to the lowest common denomenator of society…all while proping up some minority or another as the ‘bad guys’ (whether it be capitalists, doctors, Jews, or whatever). They appealed to a socialist dogma even if the reality and end product was far from Marx’s ideal.
“Irrelevant, the Nazis bear no resemblance to socialists. They tried to eliminate communism.”
Bad argument. First…one of Lenin’s favorite pet projects after neutralizing the monarchists and anti-socialist forces was to execute or send to the Gulags any and all non-Bolshevik socialists. Ah but I’m sure that was one of the moments that Lenin wasn’t a socialist…he’ll be a socialist again I’m sure when it suits you. More to the point, Nazis ran on a platform of increasing the prosperity of German workers through a socialist agenda. The German workers loved him for it, and like Mussolini’s Italy, or Stalin’s Russia, you will find plenty of old former blue-collar workers who will to this day remark on how well things ran in those days (not during the wars, but when power and popularity were at their peak)
“The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain are a good example”
Why? There were a lot of Cooperatives in a lot of countries that worked for a few months to a few years. Most if not all of them fell apart, either by changing their initial purpose, by people losing interest and chosing to be oppressed in a market economy, or by it just failing economically all around. To make anyone care, you’re going to have to provide an example that isn’t in a bubble and existed for at least a peck beyond a fruit fly’s life span.
“Cuba is a pretty good example.”
Cuba is a horrible example. The government is corrupt, people only get by with a combination of black market economy, western union money from relatives overseas, and plenty of well-placed bribes. The standard of living for anyone who doesn’t belong to the party (or doesn’t know how to participate in the underground free market) is really not that hot. I would put it as a toss-up against Haiti, lower than Dominican Republic, and maybe a peck better than Guinea-Bissau.
“I have read that Venezuela is making significant strides towards this as well, though as I said, I am not as knowledgeable about that country as I should be, so I’ll refrain from saying anything else about them.”
Yeah…you have read…you have heard…some have said…some suspect. More third…fourth…fifth…tenth-hand arguments that are further filtered to make information keep your world view safe. Everything you injest gets filtered to protect the world you have created where nobody’s really a socialist (no matter what they say about themselves…or even what most of the world that calls themselves socialist says about them) unless they fit your precise specifications, specifications that are supported by examples and counter examples that are presented to the outside world in little cushions of nullifiers that make your examples meaningless…then instead of trying to improve your own communication ability, you mock everyone else for not understanding why your insular view of socialism is obviously correct, just as correct as your ham-handed broad brush view of capitalism. Do you realize how arrogant and ludicrously stupid it looks when you actually mock people who have had actual first hand experiences with some of the places and people you hold up as paragons of virtue, when those said experiences even HINT at threatening the delicate architecture of your fantasy world? If you gave one single crap about socialism, you would go the hell out of your way to talk with everyone who has any experience that might counter what you think you know. If nothing else it would give you a tiny shred of an argument better than something about what you read may have supposedly happened given specific definitions of the nature of the word ‘may.’
“Yugoslavia did, to some degree, though worker control was not as complete.”
If by ‘not as complete’ you mean ‘not even close,’ then of course how could I not agree? Otherwise your imprecise language flops onto the forum stage yet again. While you are researching this matter, do kindly check out ‘Marshal Tito.’ Marshal being a title, not his first name. Anyhow, I know he’s ‘less soviet,’ but he was still a brutal little shit who killed off about a quarter million in the first few years of his reign through labor camps and the occasional mass shooting of dissidents. He also very efficiently annihilated any efforts at independent thought or action with immediate military power…oh yeah, and should I mention that Yugoslavia was largely propped up in the 1960’s-1980’s by massive foreign loans including ones from capitalist countries? He was just another authoritarian ass who wanted a country one way, knew how to use propoganda to make himself look like the only answer to the nation’s problems, and built a huge military to guarantee that people who didn’t quite see things his way wouldn’t be around to question him. Just because someone who at one time impressed you bought into his crap doesn’t mean you should deny any evidence that Yugoslavia was no more of a worker’s paradise than any other national-level experiment in socialism. Once again, theory and practice are totally different things, and definitions are of themselves inadequate as arguments. Theory and practice should both come into the argument when debating the reality of, for example in this case, a certain political philosophy/practice. And placing everything against your definitions and denying any other definition is facetious in the extreme. Especially when, while you may have a very specific definition of socialism, it seems that your definition of capitalism is more or less ‘everything else.’
“My definition of socialism is the classic definition of socialism: worker control over the means of production. The Nazis and Soviets did not meet this requirement.”
Ah here we go. Ok, I’d like to say that this is another fallacious argument. Picking one definition and promoting it as ‘the classic definition’ is self-serving but fruitless in any sort of debate. Even when you have a community where everyone uses the same edition of the same dictionary, people will have very different images of the same concept, which is why dictionaries do not define language in and of themselves. If someone asks you how you define socialism, it is incredibly arrogant, self-serving, and presumptuous to say that you use ‘the’ classic definition, because it both denigrates all other people claiming to be socialists and makes people who might be curious about your arguments extremely hostile just because they may be well educated but have slightly different definitions. Which sort of makes me suspect that you’re a troll who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone thinks and are more concerned with sitting around and cusioning your ego. But you couldn’t be doing that, could you? That would seem to go against your anti-elitist rhetoric. Hmmm. Anti-elitist rhetoric that by its own delivery makes you among the most elitist people on the board, especially when you deny the reality or signifigance of the experiences of various individuals in favor of your dogma. Then again, this goes back to the theory vs. practice thing…all socialist would-be powers in the revolutionary phase love the anti-elitist rhetoric but are certain to deny the signifigance of any contrary opinions or life experiences if it interferes with their rhetoric. Every socialist government has done it. You’re just blooming a little early.
