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[QUOTE=Nicator;1087872]The true political spectrum identifies totalitarian government (Stalin [I]and[/I] Hitler) on the far left, and the [I]absence of government[/I] on the far right.[/QUOTE]
There's nothing "true" about the above spectrum. It's a slant, like others. And a fairly modern one. My D-Day landing grandfather would've scratched his head at the idea that Hitler was a leftist.
Left and Right started in the French Assembly after the French Revolution. Generally the "left" wanted more liberty, equality, fraternity and the "right" less.
It's generally been understood that the left has been for more popular control and the right for more elite control. Because Communism extends popular control to the means of production, it's seen as leftist. That it ends up in elite-control by party apparatchiks is a cruel irony.
The spectrum you're refering to is a purposeful paradigm shift by polemicist created after WWII to shed the right's association with fascism and Nazism and to further a new phenomenon -- libertarianism. Before WWII libertarianism didn't exist.
There was anarchism and it was widely seen as a left-wing ideology, most of it was Marxist. They defined the State as something different from government. The State was a construct to ensure elite control by safeguarding private property claims, crushing collectivities and forcing workers into the wage-labor system.
The French created this from scratch in Madagascar. They introduced a currency so they could buy food for their occupying soldiers from Malagasy farmers. But the farmers had no use for the script. So the French introduced a tax that had to be paid in the script. Now the farmers needed it and were subsumed into a wage-labor economy where there was none.
States created the conditions of our modern economy. The idea that they're some sort of parasitical growth on a market economy is mostly false.
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[QUOTE=Rojo;1083683]As Marx pointed out Capitalism is a powerful thing. It'll uproot everything that gets in its way. And often that's not a bad thing. Most traditional societies, for example, aren't good to women. And lives can be short, brutish and filled with superstition.
But the idea has taken hold that Capitalism is some sort of self-correcting machine, that any downside, like the housing bubble or Great Depression, MUST be the result of government meddling. This view is no accident, it's promotion is well-funded. And it's found it's most receptive audience among folks with a religious bent, who need infallible icons -- capitalism, Founding Fathers, Consitution. People who need stone tablets.
I'm 44 and grew up with history textbooks that still had a New Deal slant. I was actually taught, believe it or not, that America was great (history texts are always propoganda) because we weren't fully Communist or fully Capitalist, that we had a "mixed economy" and that was the way forward. This, of course, when away in the 80's.[/QUOTE]
The new deal kept the country from recovering from the Great Depression, it was only when all the other world's economic powers were destroyed and America was one of the few left that could produce anything in substantial volume that lead to recovering from the great depression and that was post WW2 ffs. American socialism is quite a nasty thing and very detrimental to the long term growth of the country. This will continue to hurt living standards & liberty just like the New Deal did.
I do find it interesting that when people talk about the New Deal they fail to note Hoover's role in the creation of it.
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[QUOTE=kenn;1088540]The new deal kept the country from recovering from the Great Depression, it was only when all the other world's economic powers were destroyed and America was one of the few left that could produce anything in substantial volume that lead to recovering from the great depression and that was post WW2 ffs. American socialism is quite a nasty thing and very detrimental to the long term growth of the country. This will continue to hurt living standards & liberty just like the New Deal did.
I do find it interesting that when people talk about the New Deal they fail to note Hoover's role in the creation of it.[/QUOTE]
Why socialism so successful in Europe? Is it because people have stronger cultural ties to each other and overall have culturally inherited that mentality?
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I was just wondering that myself :)
[QUOTE=Warmbear;1087852]Good gods what have I started?[/QUOTE]
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[QUOTE=kenn;1088540]The new deal kept the country from recovering from the Great Depression, it was only when all the other world's economic powers were destroyed and America was one of the few left that could produce anything in substantial volume that lead to recovering from the great depression and that was post WW2 ffs. American socialism is quite a nasty thing and very detrimental to the long term growth of the country. This will continue to hurt living standards & liberty just like the New Deal did.[/QUOTE]
Yes, yes, I've heard all this before. It's balderdash.
Government spending as % of GDP continued to grown the salad days post WWII. It meant an unprecedented level of stability, even after our industrial "rivals" (I don't know why they have to be rivals) recovered. We only suffered the recent huge downturn because we deregulated to the point of a banking crisis.
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[QUOTE=sakura_girl;1088543]Why socialism so successful in Europe? [/QUOTE]
We all do better when we all do better.
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[quote]Why socialism so successful in Europe? [/quote]
um its failing...
[quote]Is it because people have stronger cultural ties to each other and overall have culturally inherited that mentality? [/quote]
no. Europeans murdered each other throughout history over the dumbest and most trivial shit, by the hundreds- women, kids, pets, no cultural ties to each other. Modern day revisionist bullshit.
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[QUOTE=Mr.Perfidy;1088616]um its failing...[/QUOTE]
That's because of bank failures. It's not the welfare state that's unsustainable, it's highly-leveraged, ever-compounding loans.
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The welfare state is funded on borrowing, not production, so a looming financial crisis is a property of Socialism. Socialism inefficiently allocates production, therefore there is more scarcity and borrowing is necessary.
Also, fuck welfare- why do people act like it's progress for man that more and more are dependent on hand-outs? Isn't the opposite progress? The whole line of thinking is just for losers.
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[QUOTE=Rojo;1088596]Yes, yes, I've heard all this before. It's balderdash.
Government spending as % of GDP continued to grown the salad days post WWII. It meant an unprecedented level of stability, even after our industrial "rivals" (I don't know why they have to be rivals) recovered. We only suffered the recent huge downturn because we deregulated to the point of a banking crisis.[/QUOTE]
That is a flat out lie.
You have purposely lied and mixed your facts together to misrepresent the truth.
The stability didn't come from the government spending. The government's vietnam war erased all stability.
