From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Dec 13 2002 - 19:44:38 MST
Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 12/13/2002 10:12:09 AM Central Standard Time,
>charleshixsn@earthlink.net writes: And noone that I consider a true socialist
>would be in favor of any totalitarian government,
>
>Charles,
> I compare socialism to a river. It starts somewhere and it moves.
>Eventually it empties itself into a river, a lake or an ocean.
> If you look at the book Heaven on Earth you can witness a 200 year
>history of socialism. Your movement has had several hundred socialist
>communities and several dozen socialist countries. There is enough history
>for us to form some general rules.
>
My main answer is at the end, but:
Socialism has been around for a lot longer than 200 years. It is a
basic part of tribal humanity, and has existed in all cultures. Most
modern cultures tend to suppress it in the name of central authority.
But calling a political party Socialist doesn't make it socialist.
> One of those rules is that you seem to normally start with bright
>hopes and often with good intentions insofar as an outsider can judge.
>However in every case that I know of the socialist community or nation
>matures into increasing difficulties brought by what many believe is its own
>ineptitude founded in its basic theory.
>
All governments being formed start that way. If they didn't, then they
couldn't be formed. I just deny that socialism is a style of
government, at least for anything larger than a *small* tribe.
> Sometimes you turn to dictatorship under one guise or another. The
>dictators either turn more and more brutal or they are forcefully removed
>from office. Once in a long while one is voted out of office as Daniel
>Ortega was -- those countries seem to be the lucky ones.
>
Dictators are dictators, what ever the story they tell you to get you to
accept them. The story is irrelevant. And they aren't always brutal
and oppressive, though they certainly do have a tendency to be that
way. This is as true of Julius Caesar as of the more recent dictators.
>...But no where do I know of a socialist government that has matured and
>still maintained a high standard of living for its people. Here in Chicago
>it is no problem at all to find Swedes that have voted with their feet. If
>one has the time the ex-Swedes will relate the evils of Sweden....
>
Are you asserting that the US ex-patriots don't find reasons that living
in America was intolerable? Or that nobody is contented with living in
Sweden? Or???
(Not that I consider Sweden a socialist country, merely a Socialist one
(assuming that that *is* the partys name).
> The problem with the concept "true socialist" is that there is no true
>socialist. You are people that have stepped into a river, you have entered
>
There are many true socialist groups. But they don't get large. They
can't. The organization doesn't scale. (To be honest, it depends on
all members being willing to contribute to the success of the endeavor.
If it includes those who are disabled, then they must also be willing,
and obviously attempting, to conribute their "fair" share. And here
"fair" is based on the communal judgement of the group.
>..., this is something I never hear the socialists do. They seem
>
The people that you are talking of are political partisans. And I have
heard them. They do analyse what they are doing. (Ineffectively,
fortunately.) But what they are doing has nothing to do with
socialism. It has to do with politics. It has to do with rhetoric.
Possibly even Rhetoric. (Check out Cicero's rules of rhetoric.)
>always to start with the presumption that they know how to build Heaven on
>Earth. But, an analysis of their 200 year history, their several hundred
>
Check out Cicero on rhetoric.
>socialist communities and their several dozen socialist nations demonstrates
>that they don't know.
>Ron h
>
>
>
There is much truth here. But...
All forms of centralization tend to totalitarianism in one form or
another. The purpose of the constitution was not only to create a
government (replacing a free-er one with a tighter one), but to build
bulwarks against the drift into tyranny. It was successful for a long
time, but each war has caused the centralists to gain more power. And
they don't release it when the war is over. So the US has been drifting
into a totalitarian state. With luck, it will be held off long enough.
Without luck...not. Long enough is until the rate of change is
increasing quickly enough that the govt. can't stop the approach of the
singularity.
I recognize as socialist only certain small groups of freely associating
people, who choose to combine their efforts to mutual gain. I know of
no way to scale this social sturcture. Once money (quantitative
accounting) is introcuded into the group, it rapidly changes into some
other kind of entity. With care, it can transform into, perhaps, a
cooperative, or a closely held private corporation. This takes both
luck and skill, and the laws of the US make it quite unlikely to
succeed. (The social endeavor must usually proceed in a sub-legal
fashion.) (Note: These groups are not theoretical. I have
participated in a few of them. They do, however, have a tendency
towards being temporary. Someone starts sponging, and the group either
fragments, splits into pieces, spits them out, or disintegrates. I'm
never observed the choice "spits them out" being taken, but with the
formal rules as loose as they tend to be, the process would probably be
traumatic enough to damage the group's long term stability.)
N.B.: This is not similar to an owner controlled small business, even
if the owner is considerate of the employees' needs.
The large groups that you consider socialist, I don't. There are
Socialist (note the capital "s") political parties in Scandinavian
countries that might legitimately be considered analogs on a larger
scale of socialist activities. But they aren't the same thing. Neither
the Communists nor the Nazis had any sensible relation to the real
meaning of the word, though I believe that Karl Marx had some idea that
he could scale it up successfully. (It's been many decades since I
bothered to read any Marx, so I may well be totally misstating his
intentions.) Anyway, Marx's relation to communism is mainly PR. Lenin
may have been, or at least started, as a Marxist, but no leader since
then. (And a true believer reads into a work what he wants to see.)
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