Does Socialism lead us to tyranny, communism, or dictatorshi

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btalex1990
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15 Feb 2010, 2:02 am

Source: http://uswgo.com/does-socialism-lead-us-to-tyranny-communism-or-dictatorship-check-your-history.htm

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Archive of reliable evidence is stored as a .Zip .7z (If it shows a page with weird characters then please Save Target As instead) File

Author: Brian D. Hill

Info Library: This article has been nominated for the Info Library because it references reliable mainstream sources and the Wikipedia pages will be archived to protect the knowledge from being erased by pro communists and pro socialists. All archived files will be stored in a Compressed archive since they can’t be altered easily.

Sources: Wikipedia articles: Cuba, North Korea, Peoples Republic of China, Nazi Party, Nazism, Soviet Union, Vietnam, Laos

Does Socialism lead us to the way of tyranny, communism, or dictatorship? Well from my research do your history

First lets bring out about China from Wikipedia

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, is a country in East Asia. It is the most populous state in the world with over 1.3 billion people, about one in five humans. China is ruled by the Communist Party of China under a single-party system
,[10] and has jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two highly autonomous[11] special administrative regions (SARs) (Hong Kong and Macau). The PRC’s capital is Beijing.[12]

Also from Wikipedia on the Peoples Republic of China article it states that China is a socialist state and from another thing I’m quoting from the article it states that China controls their media

Chinese journalist He Qinglian in her 2004 book Media Control in China[81] documents government controls on the Internet and other media in China. The government has a policy of limiting groups, organizations, and beliefs that it considers a potential threat to “social stability” and control,

Well from everything I read in the news China is a communist state and tries to control their people so why even call it a peoples republic. It seems to be the term that fascist dictators, communist regimes, and nutjob crooked politicians use. They all like to make out like socialism is good for the people and that the country will remain or become a peoples republic but then sadly becomes like 1984 by George Orwell.

So first of all China calls themselves the People Republic of China and yet they keep a tight control of their citizens, have the central government monitor all internet access in China, require ID just to access the internet, and much more. China tries to control the media and it’s citizens yet it is known as a peoples republic and socialist. Also China is a single party communist state, a socialist state, and is one of the biggest federal human rights violators in the world.

Also from Wikipedia I have found lines and information that the USSR was a communist and sociaist republic

As the largest and oldest constitutional communist-led socialist state, the Soviet Union became the primary model for a number of ideologically close Marxist-Leninist nations during the Cold War. The government and the political organization of the country were defined by the Bolsheviks and their successor, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Now onto the Soviet Union they are also a single party communist state, a socialist republic, and were once known as a worldwide superpower. Also the Soviet Union was one of the bloody communist countries where millions have died for their communist empire and finding out it os socialist is stunning.

Now I don’t want to talk too much about each regime I am just bringing out the important stuff for those that don’t want to read too much about each communist regime this is just bringing out my research that each communist regime was socialist as well.

So onto North Korea one of the most scariest dictatorship type of countries that had that scary man (I think his name is Kim Jong II) that was said to have concentration camp like places (I saw this on a TV Show or documentary) where Kim Jong II actually stick knifes in pregnant women and made them strip naked, and did all sorts of horrible crimes in North Korea (Tourism is also controlled by the government) and also North Korea is you guessed it a socialist republic,
and has a Single-party system. Also Kim Jong II is known for being apart of the Korea Workers party (hmmm just like the NAZI German Workers Party). Also North Koreas government controls tourism and other ways of society like communism and yet they are a socialist state.

So now onto The Republic of Cuba (yeah right they aren’t a republic they are communist :P ) with that horrible leader Castro that the people are afraid of and hoped he died but then his brother would take over and guess what? It’s a one party communist state, and it’s a Socialist Republic. Why do all these different fascist governments and murderous leaders use the term a republic because Killing dissent, forced labor, government control of everything is NOT a damn republic and ain’t even worth a damn.

Now onto another (This time not communist but close, A Dictatorship!) country using socialism and I’ll tell you more after this
Image
Aww isn’t that sweet a Nazi man that kills Jews and wants racial cleansing and control of the world wants the Nazis to control all facets of human activity and call it socialism. The NAZIs started out before it was known as a racial cleansing psycho group of people they were actually a political party known as The Nazi Party and they were socialists known as the The National Socialist German Workers Party or the German Workers’ Party (DAP) before the name was changed in the year of 1920. So the NAZIs that were racists (sounds like Obama because his book and scary ex-preacher tells a different story) used to be known as the socialist workers party (hmmm very interesting!).


This is very scary stuff. Why is it many communist countries are socialist as well :(


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Sand
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15 Feb 2010, 2:17 am

Misuse of a label does not make it legitimate. Republicans are terming government health plans socialism. Therefore Medicare is a socialist program. I wonder how many people using Medicare feel oppressed.



Last edited by Sand on 15 Feb 2010, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

TitusLucretiusCarus
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15 Feb 2010, 4:05 am

wikipedia is not a source, it is a sauce - a bad one at that

North Korea was established by UN fiat so go to them for that

you should also look much more into the (actual) history of Russia - the vast majority of the Bolsheviks were exterminated by Stalin in the purges, the character of the Soviet state fundamentally changed after the death of Lenin and expulsion of Trotsky (with the Left Opposition)



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15 Feb 2010, 4:22 am

Socialism generally implies a shared allocation of resources. There are many forms of socialism. Communism is the most extreme form, and it too is divided into many types, such as Marxism, Maoism, Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyism, etc.

There are many other forms of socialism, such Democratic Socialism, Religious Socialism, Social Anarchism, etc.

The Nazi use of the name 'Socialism' is controversial. The Nazis rejected Marxism and Communism, calling them 'Jewish ideologies', and that they represented true Socialism. However, this was used mainly to attract votes. Nazi Germany was more or less a true capitalist society, with private companies mass manufacturing their war material. Take BMW, for example, which manufactured the Lutwaffe's engines.

That article you have pasted... the author is horribly ignorant. He can't differentiate between Socialism, Communism, and Fascism. He uses Wikipedia as his reliable source of information. He imagines every republic to be a democracy. But a republic merely implies a state with a non-monarch head of state (de facto or de jure). What form of government is practiced is irrelevant.

Socialism is also used in many developed countries, such as Sweden & Portugal. Generally, this implies Social democracy.



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15 Feb 2010, 4:35 am

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They all like to make out like socialism is good for the people and that the country will remain or become a peoples republic but then sadly becomes like 1984 by George Orwell.

George Orwell was a Democratic Socialist.


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15 Feb 2010, 9:34 am

The article is obviously polemics rather than a serious discussion. In Marxist theory, socialism leads to communism, which is a stateless (i.e., anarchical) society where people share and cooperate voluntarily; socialism was to be a transitory state between capitalism and communism where a proletarian dictatorship removes class distinction and enforces extreme social equality. In theory, socialism was to be a democratic society under which the means of production (e.g., factories, farms, businesses, equipment, the government) were owned collectively and responsible to the people at large. In practice, socialism as practiced under Marxism-Leninism and its variants was anti-democratic ("democratic centralism") and heavily statist/authoritarian in nature (the one-party state and a heavily top-down, bureaucratic planned economy). The totalitarian trend was taken further under Joseph Stalin's leadership of the USSR, and most other communist regimes followed suit (Mao broke with Khrushchev over "revisionism").

Non-Marxist–based socialism has had a better run in Western and Northern Europe, where socialism has not led to the sorts of nightmares that happened in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. China, by the way, has clearly abandoned any goal of attaining a stateless communism or even a socialist society: They are embracing capitalism more and more, creating the sort of bourgeois class that Marx decried, while maintaining the authoritarian control of the Communist Party. North Korea has veered off on its own peculiar direction called Juche.

Nazi Germany of course was National Socialist, which is not socialism as it's usually known. Nazism is a form of fascism. Any actual socialist elements Nazism had in its early days were gone by the time Hitler asserted control and emphasized anti-Semitism, belligerent nationalism, and making alliances with traditional authorities (gaining the silence of religious authorities and coopting the industrialist class).



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15 Feb 2010, 12:53 pm

NeantHumain wrote:
The article is obviously polemics rather than a serious discussion.

It was also very poorly written and ill-informed drivel.


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15 Feb 2010, 1:02 pm

Yup.



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15 Feb 2010, 1:31 pm

It probably leads us to all of these things.


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15 Feb 2010, 2:26 pm

NeantHumain wrote:
Non-Marxist–based socialism has had a better run in Western and Northern Europe, where socialism has not led to the sorts of nightmares that happened in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.


One problem: There is no economy in Northern or Western Europe that is now or ever has been socialist. The economies may have socialist elements to them, but even a country like Sweden has its Volvos, Saabs and Ericcsons. All private companies, in fact private companies that are all now subsidiaries of companies based outside Sweden, though Volvo and Saab are probably on their way to independence again. Stockholm also has a fairly active stock exchange, which I can't see as a feature of a socialist economy.

I pick on Sweden because for some odd reason they seem to get cited as being socialist more than any other country in Europe, at least by US right-wing talk radio. I've actually tried to call a few shows and argue the point, but they never let me through. :(

Every country in the so-called First World actually has a "mixed economy," perhaps tilted a bit more toward capitalism than socialism or vice versa, but there is not one that can be credibly called either capitalist or socialist, however carelessly the terms are tossed around by the media. And, personally, I don't think the spread between the most mixed-tilting socialist country and mixed-tilting capitalist country is all that great, at least if we confine ourselves to the First World...but this veers off-topic, so I won't say any more.

As to the main topic, I wish I had time to respond, as I do think it is possible to make a credible case for Nazi Germany as a socialist state. Not an air-tight case, certainly, but one that's far from ridiculous. And is probably less ridiculous than calling the Sweden of today socialist. Unfortunately, the centerpiece of the argument relies on trying to show that although capitalists in Nazi Germany retained de jure control of their business, de facto they ultimately became nothing but "mere cogs in a war machine*" as Shirer put it in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

In other words, if I "own" a business where I do not have the independent right to decide what to make, when to make it, who to hire, who to fire, who to sell to or what to make things out of, all of which was the case in Nazi Germany, what exactly does my ownership right convey? I'm speaking of the period 1936 and later, though most of it applied before then as well. To my mind, whatever legalities there are in place that say I own the business, I'm certainly no capitalist, and an economy organized along such lines is anything but capitalism. And it doesn't matter if I call myself a capitalist or take money from the business as something I call dividends, etc.

* - And the fact that there's at least some evidence that large firms happily went along with at least some of this makes it no less true. As in, Goering shut down every business he considered "undercapitalized" simply by issuing an order, in 1937. With this order small business effectively ceased to exist in Germany, and about 20% of the businesses in the country ceased operations. Hmm, why'd he do that? :roll:


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15 Feb 2010, 4:17 pm

WorldsEdge wrote:
One problem: There is no economy in Northern or Western Europe that is now or ever has been socialist. The economies may have socialist elements to them, but even a country like Sweden has its Volvos, Saabs and Ericcsons. All private companies, in fact private companies that are all now subsidiaries of companies based outside Sweden, though Volvo and Saab are probably on their way to independence again. Stockholm also has a fairly active stock exchange, which I can't see as a feature of a socialist economy.

By socialist, it sounds like you mean planned economy or mere state control, correct? This would defer from my understanding of the term. Most contemporary parliamentary socialist parties in Europe are not absolutely opposed to some private capital or market economics. Most seem to be focused on broader outcomes of social justice and a minimum standard of living than specifics like nationalizing all industry.
WorldsEdge wrote:
Every country in the so-called First World actually has a "mixed economy," perhaps tilted a bit more toward capitalism than socialism or vice versa, but there is not one that can be credibly called either capitalist or socialist, however carelessly the terms are tossed around by the media. And, personally, I don't think the spread between the most mixed-tilting socialist country and mixed-tilting capitalist country is all that great, at least if we confine ourselves to the First World...but this veers off-topic, so I won't say any more.

In the United States, the capitalist class has considerable power at all levels of government and in both major parties, so the U.S. certainly qualifies as a capitalist society despite having some comparatively small amount of social welfare. In comparison, a country like Sweden or even the United Kingdom puts a greater emphasis on social justice. Culturally, there are sizable differences between the two. The typical American is a consumerist: They are a product of the brands they wear, the shows they watch, etc. Comparatively, Europe has greater support for culture, the sciences, and the humanities (yes, some of it endowed by the state): art, literature, theater, philosophy, and science. From this perspective, the typical American can be seen as more ignorant, more robotic, more materialistic, and less human.
WorldsEdge wrote:
As to the main topic, I wish I had time to respond, as I do think it is possible to make a credible case for Nazi Germany as a socialist state. Not an air-tight case, certainly, but one that's far from ridiculous. And is probably less ridiculous than calling the Sweden of today socialist. Unfortunately, the centerpiece of the argument relies on trying to show that although capitalists in Nazi Germany retained de jure control of their business, de facto they ultimately became nothing but "mere cogs in a war machine*" as Shirer put it in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

A totalitarian state is not necessarily socialist. The Nazi regime dedicated private industry to fascist rather than socialist ends.
WorldsEdge wrote:
In other words, if I "own" a business where I do not have the independent right to decide what to make, when to make it, who to hire, who to fire, who to sell to or what to make things out of, all of which was the case in Nazi Germany, what exactly does my ownership right convey? I'm speaking of the period 1936 and later, though most of it applied before then as well. To my mind, whatever legalities there are in place that say I own the business, I'm certainly no capitalist, and an economy organized along such lines is anything but capitalism. And it doesn't matter if I call myself a capitalist or take money from the business as something I call dividends, etc.

* - And the fact that there's at least some evidence that large firms happily went along with at least some of this makes it no less true. As in, Goering shut down every business he considered "undercapitalized" simply by issuing an order, in 1937. With this order small business effectively ceased to exist in Germany, and about 20% of the businesses in the country ceased operations. Hmm, why'd he do that? :roll:

Capitalism and free-market economics are not exact synonyms. The capitalist is often quite in favor of government regulation that gives them an advantage over the competition at the expense of the greater good. The capitalist usually decries socialism! only when the regulation is unfavorable to their profit margins. Businesses that collaborated with the Nazi regime made off like bandits; even some U.S. corporations like IBM got in on the action.



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15 Feb 2010, 4:24 pm

Communism, as first coined, is euphoria as much as I know.
It doesn't mean dicatotrship - that dictatorship is a step towards the "real" Communism, which some people (Nestor Makhnu, for example) rejected in the first place. Communism is anarchy.



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15 Feb 2010, 4:33 pm

NeantHumain wrote:
By socialist, it sounds like you mean planned economy or mere state control, correct? This would defer from my understanding of the term. Most contemporary parliamentary socialist parties in Europe are not absolutely opposed to some private capital or market economics. Most seem to be focused on broader outcomes of social justice and a minimum standard of living than specifics like nationalizing all industry.

I consider this interpretation of the term a less valid and less useful reinterpretation of the term. I know "socialists" have started moving this direction, but I don't consider it socialism as socialism has traditionally referred to an alternative way of making an economy function, rather than only some directives governing policy.

I mean, you are basically saying that socialism is egalitarianism, even though egalitarianism is not a synonym for socialism, and I see that as more of a problem.

Quote:
In the United States, the capitalist class has considerable power at all levels of government and in both major parties, so the U.S. certainly qualifies as a capitalist society despite having some comparatively small amount of social welfare. In comparison, a country like Sweden or even the United Kingdom puts a greater emphasis on social justice. Culturally, there are sizable differences between the two. The typical American is a consumerist: They are a product of the brands they wear, the shows they watch, etc. Comparatively, Europe has greater support for culture, the sciences, and the humanities (yes, some of it endowed by the state): art, literature, theater, philosophy, and science. From this perspective, the typical American can be seen as more ignorant, more robotic, more materialistic, and less human.

But the issue isn't a "capitalist class" but rather a set of institutions governing society. Capitalism doesn't refer to anything involving the democracy but rather with issues in how the economy functions.

Social justice is irrelevant to economic function though, it is an outcome issue, and whether outcomes are socially just, while related to the institutions in real ways, isn't the same as the institutions. Socialism has traditionally referred to the institutions in society, with some issue of the goals. The term USSR, for instance, didn't just have its name due to a concern for "social justice".

That being said, I don't know how you can say that Americans are "more robotic and less human", there is no metric for this, and generally speaking we wouldn't describe many people as "less human" or "more robotic" unless we were trying to slur them or call them cyborgs and Americans are not cyborgs despite how awesome that may be.

Quote:
A totalitarian state is not necessarily socialist. The Nazi regime dedicated private industry to fascist rather than socialist ends.

Arguably yes, the real issue is that socialist ends do have something to do with common interests. If one argued that the Nazi regime had concern for social equality or general welfare then one could make this argument.

Quote:
Capitalism and free-market economics are not exact synonyms. The capitalist is often quite in favor of government regulation that gives them an advantage over the competition at the expense of the greater good. The capitalist usually decries socialism! only when the regulation is unfavorable to their profit margins. Businesses that collaborated with the Nazi regime made off like bandits; even some U.S. corporations like IBM got in on the action.

Well, I can accept your notion as true about the two things being separate. Non-capitalist free market economics are part of individualist anarchist ideas. However, your example doesn't seem to be a good one. Capitalism isn't about what capitalists want, it is about a system that can be called a capitalist system. This means a focus on capital markets and prices and profits and so on and so forth, not appeasing any business. One can argue that business owners actually will push for things that undermine capitalism.

In general discourse, given that most people ignore non-capitalist free market economics, capitalism is usually considered relatively synonymous. And a lot of talk is based upon this, as proponents of free-markets usually call them "capitalist" without even thinking much about it, and this can be seen with anarcho-capitalists, Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom book, and so on, which promote ideas that you would likely call to only be "free market" but which they avowedly call "capitalism".



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15 Feb 2010, 4:52 pm

The neoliberal march to feudalism is far worse than anything bad coming out of socialism. Latvia and Ireland are examples of that. Latvians will become extinct if this continues.



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15 Feb 2010, 5:09 pm

@NeantHumain -

Quote:
In practice, socialism as practiced under Marxism-Leninism and its variants was anti-democratic ("democratic centralism") and heavily statist/authoritarian in nature (the one-party state and a heavily top-down, bureaucratic planned economy). The totalitarian trend was taken further under Joseph Stalin's leadership of the USSR, and most other communist regimes followed suit (Mao broke with Khrushchev over "revisionism").


I have to object to the characterisation of "Democratic Centralism" as anti-democratic - trade unions are built on this principle (before their relatively recent bureaucratisation of course) and is (arguably) about the only way you can reasonably organise a political party/grouping.

The 'totalitarian trend' you refer to must have a very broad (almost meaningless) definition here - the nature of the soviet state was fundamentally different before and after the Stalinists secured power. Now, I would contend the 'top-down' characterisation in the pre-Stalin period (and not during the civil war), the economy was organised on the basis of workers control and organisation through the Supreme council of National Economy (comprised of elected representatives subject to recall), though there were fairly significant bureacratic layers in this from which Stalin drew his support they would not have been a significant factor in the case of a successfully consolidated revolution in Germany, thus ending the isolation of the Russian SFSR.
Furthermore the reason the Bolsheviks had emerged form the civil war into the mid-twenties as the only political party in the Russian SFSR was because every other had mounted some kind of military adventure against them - if I remember rightly the Mensheviks fought for the White Army, along with the Social Revolutionaries, while the Left Social Revolutionaries were a party in the soviets up to the point they attempted to throw out the Bolsheviks and restart the war with Germany.



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15 Feb 2010, 7:28 pm

xenon13 wrote:
The neoliberal march to feudalism is far worse than anything bad coming out of socialism. Latvia and Ireland are examples of that. Latvians will become extinct if this continues.

It really depends on how we define the terms, and what we accept as the logical outcomes of those terms and so on.

As it stands, I see a lot that really seems good in Ireland, so I am not sure what negative things you are seeing. It might be that my statistics are dated, but in 2007, Ireland had a low unemployment rate and high levels of happiness and satisfaction compared to other first world nations.