From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 11:05:09 MDT
On Sat, Oct 26, 2002 at 11:11:48AM -0400, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/26/2002 9:33:39 AM Central Standard Time,
> charlie@antipope.org writes: Your definition is broken. Go away, and don't
> come back until you've done some reading.
>
> Charles,
> I am truly sorry if I have hurt your feelings. But, what am I to read,
> the infinity of beautiful words describing what socialism should be or the
> monstrous 200 year record of what it always turn out to be? I have read the
> record and it is enough to gag a cat.
It's not a matter of hurting my feelings; it's a matter of using
terms in accordance with dictionary definitions so that we can agree
on their meaning.
Saying that "socialism is any form of government that asserts that the
state has control over the individual's life" is actively damaging to
any attempt to discuss government -- or liberty -- effectively, because
it so distorts the meaning of the term "socialism" as to render it
meaningless. The more common definitions include "a state wherein the
workers own the means of production" -- what, in your comment about
the power of arbitrary life or death, bears on the ownership of the
means of production?
> It is truly a monstrous theology.
No, it's a utopian idealistic one.
Whether utopian idealism is ever justifiable is, however, another matter.
You also need to bear in mind the divergence between theory and practice.
In theory, the free market should be the most equitable and ideal way of
reconciling the production of wealth and the requirements of individual
liberty. In practice, the "free market" system we've got today kills
thousands of children each day by starvation and disease. It's as big a
split as the split between the theories of socialism and its implementation
in, say, the Soviet Union under Stalin.
> Surely as educated men and women in the 21st century we can aspire to
> something more than that.
What we can aspire to is a very interesting question, and one that deserves
consideration. But I don't think we can discuss it effectively if we can't
agree to use the language and terminology so that words mean the same things
each time we use them. "Words mean what I want them to mean" may have been
fine for Humpty-Dumpty, but it's a lousy foundation for scholarship.
-- Charlie
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