Is Western Socialism - Always National Socialism ?

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The_Walrus
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10 Jan 2014, 8:52 am

LoveNotHate wrote:
LKL wrote:
I call myself a socialist, and I generally disapprove of nationalism in whatever guise, political or economic, it appears.


Apologies. Let me rephrase that question. You only want to "share the wealth" from people within your national boundaries? Correct ? So,
your ideology appears to be nationalistic?

If you say no, then your ideology appears inconsistent, because the middle class and poor of the Western world are mega-wealthy compared to most in the world, so it would follow that their wealth should be shared with the world's poor (which is my original question)?

Thanks.

The vast majority of "socialists" (and I bet most people you'd classify as socialists wouldn't identify as such) do want an element of international wealth redistribution. Even conservatives like Cameron and Obama want to protect that.

The problem is, LKL has no real ability to make Senegal (for example) share its wealth equally. It is much easier for her to advance that cause in the USA, though still very hard.

If I say "we should reform our drug laws" rather than "Mongolia should reform their drug laws", that isn't me being nationalistic. A Mongolian politician doesn't care what I say one bit, but a British one has to pay a bit of attention to it because I vote, and I can motivate other people to vote.



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10 Jan 2014, 10:22 am

The single greatest poverty relief - and perhaps the greatest social achievement next to rock music and the Valve Corporation - in the history of mankind (lifting 500 million Chinese citizens out of poverty since the early 1980s according to The World Bank) was achieved through cookie-cutter brutal capitalist measures: Trade liberalization, foreign direct investing and off-shoring (And the 500 million number doesn't include similar achievements through similar means in other countries in the same period).

Surely, any true socialist would embrace such policies given their demonstrated success in improving the quality of life for hundreds of millions of members of the weak, downtrodden and hungry.

Oh, wait... that's not what socialism is about. Silly me.



Last edited by GGPViper on 12 Jan 2014, 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sweetleaf
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10 Jan 2014, 10:32 am

LoveNotHate wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
I think in order for the wealth of the U.S to be adequetely shared with other nations there would have to be a worldwide system of socialism...otherwise it would just be in effect dumping money into other countries that aren't nessisarily doing anything to benefit this nation. Basically the reason a socialist system would work in theory is because people pay taxes, then the taxes fund all the public services which the government then has the responsibility to provide...so unless people of other countries paid into the socialist system it wouldn't really work to just divide the wealth with them.

Not sure what is national socialist about that since national socialism is a form of facism, and as far as I know there haven't been any National Socialist nations since WW2 and I highly doubt the majority of 'socialists' are nazis which is what that would suggest.


National socialism does not have to be "NAZI". "NAZI" is a political party.

Western socialists appear to only promote socialism within their own country, so I call them "national socialists" ??

They do not appear to promote helping poor people in poorer countries. For example, consider a new factory to be built. A socialist in American should say, "Let's build that factory in a poorer country to help out our working brothers and sisters"? I doubt many Western socialist would ever say that, instead, they want that prosperity for themselves. No way are they going to share the wealth with poor people in other countries :)


National Socialism is the name of the Nazi party.....even a basic dictionary will tell you that. The term national socialist does not refer to people who like the idea of socialism in their country.

Also I think helping people in poorer countries is certianly a good idea, but if a nation makes that its main focus everything inside of that nation will go to sh*t and they won't be able to help any other countries anyways. The thing is extending socialist programs in this nation(if it were a socialist nation) to other countries that may even have an entirely different system simply would not work.

Say this is a socialist nation with universal healthcare.....well the citizens of this country pay taxes from their income which funds the universal healthcare amoung other things. Now if we tried providing universal healthcare to the entire world it would obviously fail because one nation does not have enough resources to cover the whole world.......so the next best idea would be to have a budget used for helping the poor of other nations and maybe enocurage socalism as an effective system people in other nations should push for.


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10 Jan 2014, 10:58 am

LoveNotHate wrote:
Almajo88 wrote:
You seem to be asking me the same question again. Global wealth distribution isn't really effective outside of world communism because of the disparities between governments and ideologies. I believe that in a socialist system, the state would take the role that charities currently fill in giving aid according to need, and outside of that would trade favourably with socialist partners (see Latin American socialism) in order to bolster the socialist system and its perceptions. This will arise in developing nations which will see the greatest absolute benefit from socialism.

Anyway, according to your definition, isn't any government inherently nationalistic? Tell me what you mean when you say that.


I see American socialists that want to take money from rich people and give it to themselves. However, these American socialists are very rich compared to people in other countries. Why don't they take their own money and give it to poor people in other countries ?

Wealth redistrubution isn't the root of socialism. It's attacking the system that created the unequal weath distribution in the first place. Socialism isn't a softer version of capitalism. Well at least the socialism I believe in. I am a socialist becuase I have an opposition to privatly owned capital. Higher taxes on the wealthy would be nice, but thats not my end goal.



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11 Jan 2014, 3:03 am

GGPViper wrote:
The single greatest poverty relief - and perhaps the greatest social achievement next to rock music and the Valve Corporation - in the history of mankind (lifting 500 million Chinese citizens out of poverty since the early 1980s according to The World Bank) was achieved through cookie-cutter brutal capitalist measures: Trade liberalization, foreign direct investing and off-shoring (And the 500 million number doesn't similar achievements through similar means in other countries in the same period).

Surely, any true socialist would embrace such policies given their demonstrated success in improving the quality of life for hundreds of millions of members of the weak, downtrodden and hungry.

Oh, wait... that's not what socialism is about. Silly me.


I actually agree with this, to an extent (I'm not as pure of a socialist as RushKing); where my agreement ends is that the progress in China has come at the expense of horrific environmental degradation that will take decades to recover from, if it can every be recovered from at all. The air pollution in the cities is the most obvious example - air like that literally kills people, and then it doesn't matter how rich they are. One of the more tragic examples from an environmentalist's standpoint is that China just stood back and let the Yangtze river dolphin - one of two river dolphin species in the world - go extinct, without even program of captive breeding or any other nominal effort to save the species.

Wrt. sharing the wealth internationally: joining garment workers' unions in China, Bangladesh, and the US would necessarily do just that, in effect. American workers would, at first, be making less to make parity with foreign workers; the union, though, would ensure that they didn't have to drop as far, and it would prevent the jobs from vanishing altogether in the US. Eventually standards of living would equalize. Likewise, I'd like to see some sort of international sanctioning of tax havens - something that would benefit most of the taxpayers all over the world, not just the tax-haven countries and the few wealthy individuals from wealthy nations that use them.



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12 Jan 2014, 4:13 am

Most socialist / far left organisations in Britain are internationalist as they follow the ideology of Karl Marx despite globalisation and offshoring being detrimental to the employment prospects and living standards of the poor and lower classes.

LKL wrote:
Likewise, I'd like to see some sort of international sanctioning of tax havens - something that would benefit most of the taxpayers all over the world, not just the tax-haven countries and the few wealthy individuals from wealthy nations that use them.


You make a valid point and tax havens are something that the British left still fail to adequately address. What should be done about the obscenely rich gulf states like Qatar? Should they have their sovereignty smashed and forced to share their wealth with the rest of the world and their citizens made to pay taxes?



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12 Jan 2014, 5:47 am

Sweetleaf wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
I think in order for the wealth of the U.S to be adequetely shared with other nations there would have to be a worldwide system of socialism...otherwise it would just be in effect dumping money into other countries that aren't nessisarily doing anything to benefit this nation. Basically the reason a socialist system would work in theory is because people pay taxes, then the taxes fund all the public services which the government then has the responsibility to provide...so unless people of other countries paid into the socialist system it wouldn't really work to just divide the wealth with them.

Not sure what is national socialist about that since national socialism is a form of facism, and as far as I know there haven't been any National Socialist nations since WW2 and I highly doubt the majority of 'socialists' are nazis which is what that would suggest.


National socialism does not have to be "NAZI". "NAZI" is a political party.

Western socialists appear to only promote socialism within their own country, so I call them "national socialists" ??

They do not appear to promote helping poor people in poorer countries. For example, consider a new factory to be built. A socialist in American should say, "Let's build that factory in a poorer country to help out our working brothers and sisters"? I doubt many Western socialist would ever say that, instead, they want that prosperity for themselves. No way are they going to share the wealth with poor people in other countries :)


National Socialism is the name of the Nazi party.....even a basic dictionary will tell you that. The term national socialist does not refer to people who like the idea of socialism in their country.



I understand that NAZI people put a blackmark on the history of socialism. However, I am just labeling things as I see them. The Western socialist ideology is nationalistic it appears - as your explain below.


Quote:
Also I think helping people in poorer countries is certianly a good idea, but if a nation makes that its main focus everything inside of that nation will go to sh*t and they won't be able to help any other countries anyways. The thing is extending socialist programs in this nation(if it were a socialist nation) to other countries that may even have an entirely different system simply would not work.


Right. Those are reasons why the Western socialist ideology is nationalistic.

Quote:
Say this is a socialist nation with universal healthcare.....well the citizens of this country pay taxes from their income which funds the universal healthcare amoung other things. Now if we tried providing universal healthcare to the entire world it would obviously fail because one nation does not have enough resources to cover the whole world.......so the next best idea would be to have a budget used for helping the poor of other nations and maybe enocurage socalism as an effective system people in other nations should push for.


Right. Those are reasons why the Western socialist ideology is nationalistic.



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12 Jan 2014, 6:06 am

Arran wrote:
What should be done about the obscenely rich gulf states like Qatar? Should they have their sovereignty smashed and forced to share their wealth with the rest of the world and their citizens made to pay taxes?

The Gulf States are obscenely wealthy because they cater to the rest of the world's addiction to oil. That's going to end one way or another; oil is a limited resource, and even if it weren't we need to get off of it.

As for taxation of wealthier nations, the world isn't anywhere near ready for that sort of centralization and coordination. Maybe in a few centuries.



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12 Jan 2014, 7:17 am

The problem is that natural resources aren't worth a damn if politicans aren't competent enough to run the country. The USSR had a lot of natural resources, but ultimately caved in because of it's flawed economy. Venezuela has a lot of oil, but for the past years, the development has stalled--because the economy is too centralized to produce a sustainable growth.

While oil will play a less significant role in the west in 20 years, people seem to be forgetting that it's demand will increase in Brazil, India, China, Botswana and other emerging markets. While more and more Americans and Europeans can afford a streak of lightning electric car--and have enough time to ride their bike to the workplace, the dream of your average Chinese guy is to buy his own gasoline powered car, that will conveniently take him anywhere, keep him sheltered from the rain and make his commute far less stressful--just like the Europeans and the Americans he reads about in the newspapers.



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12 Jan 2014, 12:30 pm

There is always the option of military force to overthrow the governments of Gulf states then take their land and oil reserves as spoils of war.



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12 Jan 2014, 12:34 pm

Arran wrote:
There is always the option of military force to overthrow the governments of Gulf states then take their land and oil reserves as spoils of war.


While the Gulf states are authoritarian, they're not led by sociopaths like the Ayatollah or Saddam Hussein.



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12 Jan 2014, 12:38 pm

LKL wrote:
Arran wrote:
What should be done about the obscenely rich gulf states like Qatar? Should they have their sovereignty smashed and forced to share their wealth with the rest of the world and their citizens made to pay taxes?

The Gulf States are obscenely wealthy because they cater to the rest of the world's addiction to oil. That's going to end one way or another; oil is a limited resource, and even if it weren't we need to get off of it.

As for taxation of wealthier nations, the world isn't anywhere near ready for that sort of centralization and coordination. Maybe in a few centuries.


People in the U.S. are in effect saying Frak you by substituting natural gas for oil.

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12 Jan 2014, 3:06 pm

Yes, nations should share their wealth, but it's a bit more complicated than that because of national sovereignty, socialism on the national level is just more feasible.


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12 Jan 2014, 5:26 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
I think in order for the wealth of the U.S to be adequetely shared with other nations there would have to be a worldwide system of socialism...otherwise it would just be in effect dumping money into other countries that aren't nessisarily doing anything to benefit this nation. Basically the reason a socialist system would work in theory is because people pay taxes, then the taxes fund all the public services which the government then has the responsibility to provide...so unless people of other countries paid into the socialist system it wouldn't really work to just divide the wealth with them.

Not sure what is national socialist about that since national socialism is a form of facism, and as far as I know there haven't been any National Socialist nations since WW2 and I highly doubt the majority of 'socialists' are nazis which is what that would suggest.


National socialism does not have to be "NAZI". "NAZI" is a political party.

Western socialists appear to only promote socialism within their own country, so I call them "national socialists" ??

They do not appear to promote helping poor people in poorer countries. For example, consider a new factory to be built. A socialist in American should say, "Let's build that factory in a poorer country to help out our working brothers and sisters"? I doubt many Western socialist would ever say that, instead, they want that prosperity for themselves. No way are they going to share the wealth with poor people in other countries :)


National Socialism is the name of the Nazi party.....even a basic dictionary will tell you that. The term national socialist does not refer to people who like the idea of socialism in their country.



I understand that NAZI people put a blackmark on the history of socialism. However, I am just labeling things as I see them. The Western socialist ideology is nationalistic it appears - as your explain below.


Quote:
Also I think helping people in poorer countries is certianly a good idea, but if a nation makes that its main focus everything inside of that nation will go to sh*t and they won't be able to help any other countries anyways. The thing is extending socialist programs in this nation(if it were a socialist nation) to other countries that may even have an entirely different system simply would not work.


Right. Those are reasons why the Western socialist ideology is nationalistic.

Quote:
Say this is a socialist nation with universal healthcare.....well the citizens of this country pay taxes from their income which funds the universal healthcare amoung other things. Now if we tried providing universal healthcare to the entire world it would obviously fail because one nation does not have enough resources to cover the whole world.......so the next best idea would be to have a budget used for helping the poor of other nations and maybe enocurage socalism as an effective system people in other nations should push for.


Right. Those are reasons why the Western socialist ideology is nationalistic.


The Nazi people have nothing to do with socialism....National Socialism was not actually a form of socialism, so it didn't give socialism a bad name it just was never socialism to begin with. It was a system of facism.

Also I don't see how its particularly nationalistic just to be aware that they way you propose socialists help the poor in other countries doesn't quite work. Its not nationalistic to be aware that a universal healthcare system in one country for instance cannot be used to provide free healthcare to people living in other countries with an entirely different system. That to me just seems like kind of common sense not a super nationalistic belief.

But maybe I am being unclear in what I am trying to explain.


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12 Jan 2014, 10:59 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:

Would the room go silent ? Do Western socialist really want to share their wealth with poorer people in poorer non-Western nations ?

)


If the worlds wealth was truly redistributed (in the way that Marx advocated) everyone except the international ruling class would be better off.


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13 Jan 2014, 6:30 pm

The manifestos of these parties are somewhat irrelevant on the issue of internationalism vs. nationalism.

There reality is there is a mix of views. Especially during an economic recession, you are going to get more insular views, regardless of party affiliation.