From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Nov 10 2002 - 15:51:15 MST
--- Alexander Sheppard <alexandersheppard@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Well, first of all, someone seems to have commented that socialism is
>
> agnostic on matters of authoritarianism. This isn't true at all.
> Socialism is actually fairly anti-authoritarian. There are some
> members of the socialist tradition who do favor some degree of
> authoritarianism, but I
> would say no legitimate idea of socialism favors Stalinism, and the
> ones which do favor even some limited authoritarianism--for
> example, an elected council deciding everything (this would still
> be a very monstrous system in my opinion) are very inconsistent
> and mistaken about what would be the result of such a system.
This is a total lie, as is plain to ANYBODY who has studied the history
of socialism. Of the 19th century 'leaders' of socialism (Marx, Engels,
Bakunin, and Proudhon) only Proudhon was against the use of force and
authoritarianism, and even he was for elected councils of workers
imposing their decisions on the electorate.
> Actually, it seems to me that what might well
> happen in such a system is that the elected representatives would
> ultimately take more and more power for themselves until the
> situation became rather like in the USSR--because such a system
> would just be conductive to that,
> because there's absolutely no legitimate reason why any sort of
> council, including an elected one, should have that much power.
On the contrary, there is. Prices need to be set by some means. If the
free market is not to do it (as you have said free markets are
opressive), then some authority must set prices. Your lack of
appreciation for such a simple economic mechanism illustrates why your
opinions on this matter seem to be less and less those of an informed individual.
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