From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 04:09:52 MST
On Sun, Oct 27, 2002 at 11:05:10AM -0500, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> Charlie,
> Modern day socialism seems to have its origins in the French
> Revolution.
Not as far as I know. Reading up on the Levellers and Diggers of the
early 17th century, in the run-up to the English civil war, shows up
a lot of the same ideas. That those ideas then hybridized with the
philosophical themes of the enlightenment and, in some cases, surfaced
during the French Revolution is inarguable. But there was a continuous
strain of development that didn't stop there.
Incidentally, the ideas those groups were pushing _also_ included:
freedom of religion, a universal franchise, votes for all adults (not
just male landowners), abolition of slavery, and equality before the
law. It's chastening to think just how long it's taken for that radical
17th century platform to become the political orthodoxy.
> By the late 19th Century it had enough of a track record for
> failure and human repression, per von Hayek, that it was necessary to rework
> its image. For that reason they began adopting the term liberal.
Er, I don't think so. Liberals existed in the UK as a distinct political
tradition going back to the restoration. Nor was there a history of
socialist repression in the 19th century ... other than the bloody-
handed suppression *of* socialism. Remember, until 1917 no government
anywhere had adopted a clear socialist platform; the nearest were probably
the revolutions of 1848 (bloodily put down by the monarchist absolutists
of the old regimes) and the Paris Commune of 1871 (bloodily put down
by the etcetera). The French Directorate wasn't really a socialist
regime: it was a prototype for the modern nationalist system, but that's
an entirely different kettle of fish.
> Even today you will note their tendency to use every means possible to
> disguise their true nature. In addition there is a constant effort to move
> from the concrete of their past records to the abstraction of theory in
> advancing their ideas.
> Guys, in the end socialism is only an attempt to restore the old
> absolute monarchs and usurp the power of the total dictator. It really seems
> to appeal to the inadequate to have the power to terrorize their fellow man.
> As Ayn Rand said they don't want your obedience they want you to
> crawl.
I'm going to let this stand for itself because it's so wonderfully wrong-
headed it exemplifies everything I find funny and frightening about the
propaganda that passes for political enlightenment in the USA.
Luckily, it's an extreme instance.
-- Charlie
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