Semi-Daily Journal

I wish he would have used the word communism. It's too easy the paint a wise and necessary safty net program as "socialism".

I wish he would have used the word communism. It's too easy the paint a wise and necessary safty net program as "socialism".

America used to value people, not work or wealth. Those value people only as economic units. Even the "liberals" are infected with right-wing market ideology-as-religion.

"America used to value people, not work or wealth. Those value people only as economic units."

There is no group of persons more justly to be feared than those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of socialism.

So it is allright to enslave people to make money. These people are never to be feared, but always to ally with.

The USA fought Hitler, not nazism; Communism, not Stalin.

DSW

"There is no group of persons more justly to be feared than those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of socialism."

As opposed to the higher values of private property, free markets, limited liability, and the freedom of corporate governance (aka one dollar = one vote as opposed to one person = one vote) to invest in any part of the world where workers get their heads pulped if they do not accept their current pay and working conditions. As opposed to the higher value of the freedom of corporations to poison the air and water of whatever community they happen to bless with their production facilities. As opposed to the sacred freedom of lenders to make as much interest income as they please and to use the power of the law to make sure that the entire burden of risk in investment is shifted over to the borrower. As opposed to the higher value of paying politicians (aka bribery) to enact favorable policies through a system of campaign finance and concentrated corporate ownership of the media (i.e., freedom of the press to the owners of the press).

It is because of such higher values (should I be tactless enough to call them by their proper names: cant, bigotry, and apologia for dictatorship?) that a large portion of the world population is in effect enslaved by a much smaller minority. Look around: slavery is all around you, though it goes by different names.

Tsk, tsk! Such overheated rhetoric! I prefer the following excerpt from your monologue myself:

"As opposed to the higher values of private property, free markets, limited liability, and the freedom of corporate governance ... to invest in any part of the world"

Now THAT is a worthy capitulation of what higher values are about! If only you'd left out the rest of your rant ...

"There is no group of persons more justly to be feared than those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of socialism." Except, Abiola, those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of oligarchy.

"Except, Abiola, those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of oligarchy."

How is the fact that I have more money than you in-and-of-itself a form of "enslavement"? In contrast, when I say that socialism is slavery, there are any number of real-life examples available to draw on for which the term "slavery" literally does mean slavery as historically understood. North Korea or Cuba*, anyone?

I have no problem with mainstream liberal economic policy as such; though I may disagree with many left-leaning individuals on matters like what tax rates to set and just how progressive they ought to be, the difference is more a matter of degree than anything. Like those to the left-of-center, I am not a believer in completely flat taxes, in less than universal healthcare provision, or in the abolition of either anti-trust or environmental regulation. It is precisely because we share so much in common that it is possible for us to discuss those issues on which we differ.

With "socialists" and their brethren, on the other hand, there is no shared frame of reference, and as such there can be no meeting of minds. Any system of thought that is predicated on an absolute equality of outcomes, or on the notion that inequalities of wealth are by definition the fruits of wrongdoing, is a prescription for tyranny as far as I am concerned.

*The Cuba reference ought to get a few people's danders up ...

Unless Wesley Clark enters the race or Bob Graham gains in the polls, I'm supporting John Edwards.

"There is no group of persons more justly to be feared than those who, in the name of "higher" values, would enslave their fellow men in the chains of socialism."
Deeply silly line. Abiola, I don't know how good you are, but you're smarter than that, as is any ten year old.
Now if you want to argue that socialists slaughtered millions of their citizens, I might listen. You'd have to find them first.

Good for Edwards. He gets it. I'm going to have to take him much more seriously in the future and advise others to do likewise.

Is John Isbell arguing that it is not proven that socialists murdered tens of millions of people?

And, if socialists don't enslave people why do they need barbed wire, land mines, and machine guns to keep people from fleeing?

Patrick, have you ever heard of a movement called Communism? It was quite big at one point, and is still the official ideology of the PRC. I'm sure you can find books about it.
Just you let me know when you've read about it a bit.

John, you're the one who seems to not have a clue what Communism is or what social horrors were produced when countries attempted to practice it. Unless you are trying to make the point that socialism and communism are two different things, which they aren't. In any case, your point is murky.

If this is the level of discourse about Democratic Presidential candidates, the Republicans are going to mop up, and the Dems are - as usual - not going to know what hit them.

I find it odd that there is so much ignorant commentary about economics on the blog of an economist.

"Unless you are trying to make the point that socialism and communism are two different things, which they aren't. In any case, your point is murky"

So you recognise that nazism (as any other fascism) and capitalism are the same thing?

DSW

"So you recognise that nazism (as any other fascism) and capitalism are the same thing?"

Complete BS. Both nazism and fascism are totalitarian ideologies, wherein the State has complete control over all individuals. (As Mussolini so chillingly put it, "Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.)

Capitalism, on the other hand, could exist without any government at all. That's why there are anarcho-capitalists:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

"If this is the level of discourse about Democratic Presidential candidates, the Republicans are going to mop up, and the Dems are - as usual - not going to know what hit them."

It matters not what the level is of discourse about Democratic candidates. What matters is the discourse of the candidates themselves.

One can see from this piece alone that John Edwards can really sling the BS; if he gets the Democrat nomination, he'll be a formidible candidate against Bush.

Notice how he praises Kennedy AND Reagan...while in the very same speech criticizing Reagan (without naming him).

He praises Reagan's tax cuts, but also criticizes the tax cuts of the "previous 12 years" before Clinton, without actually mentioning Reagan's name as the proponent of those tax cuts.

So for people who like either Reagan or Kennedy (a large fraction of the population), Edwards is making it seem like he's on their side. But for those who don't like federal deficits (and who does), he's criticizing deficits. In short, John Edwards is one slick, silver-tongued lawyer. Just like a recent two-term Democratic president.

Hey, Mark Bahner and I agree! Yes indeed, Edwards is extremely good at this sort of thing.
Yehudit, you'll have to tell me more about all the barbed wire and prison camps in Western Europe under decades of post-war socialist governments. I lived there, and I must have missed them. I rather thought Israel had socialist governments too. Or maybe you need to explain to all those people that they were actually communists. Do it quick, because the moron boat is leaving.

Hey, Mark Bahner and I agree on something! Yes, Edwards is extremely good at this stuff. He's also brilliant at sticking the knife in with a smile.
Yehudit, you'll have to bring me up to date on the barbed wire and prison camps in Western Europe's post-war socialist governments. I think Israel had some too. Perhaps you should let them all know they were commmunists, it will open their eyes. Maybe they caused millions of deaths without noticing. In Sweden, for instance.
As you see, equate communism and socialism around me and you'll get some facts headed your way. Facts are good, even better than rumor.

You see I tried to remove the insult in my reposting. It was gratuitous and I apologize, Yehudit. Communists killed tens of millions, socialists did not, and equating the two strikes me as hateful right-wing propaganda which abuses the dead. We should know their killers. Plenty of rightists do this these days, and as you see it makes me angry. Dishonest, hateful, indifferent to the dead. Not good.

John,

I think what you and I understand as "socialism" are two very different animals. "Socialism", as I understand it, is defined as follows:

" 1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved."*

What you seem to be talking about is "social democracy", which, as I have already mentioned, is in fact the consensus around which all Western societies (including, to a lesser degree, the United States) have converged. Western Europe has indeed experienced many a "socialist" led government, but not a single Western European country has experienced "socialism" as ordinarily understood, not even Sweden.

Why you insist on appropriating the word "socialism" for your viewpoint, when there is a much more palatable term at hand, is beyond me.

*Source: The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition.

Thank you for that interesting comment, Abiola. The term I "insist on appropriating" is that used by, to name one, France's Parti Socialiste, led most recently by Mitterrand. They, and others, insisted on appropriating it before me. Perhaps you could have a word with the millions of people in Europe and elsewhere who use this term. You might show them the American Heritage Dictionary.
But I do appreciate your review of the term's use as an intermediate stage in communist theory, which I've never seen before.