I know!! Nobody makes more than he does.
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Do you mean right wing, as in fascist -which is a national socialist-or someone who supports individual rights, most particularly property rights ?
A socialist-left (international socialist) and a socialist-right (national socialists) are almost identical. Both are socialistic and believe that the state should effectively own all property.
Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.
Is that really what you hold as an ideal ? Millions have died in the name of socialism.
No. In 2016 we voted to leave the European Union to regain control of our borders and reign in mass immigration from non-EU nations which had been flowing in through the Schengen zone. It was about race, and was an (impotent) political expression of a people concerned about it, but terrified to speak out about it. In 2019, under a Conservative government (whom we voted for in a general election specifically to finally deliver the Brexit referendum result we had asked for... 3 years prior) the UK received 404,000 non-EU immigrants which was a a record high since records began in 1975, when it was 93,000
I liked some of your Marxist critiques of capitalism, but liberal democracy is clearly fake and gay. I wonder when Marxists will realise they are just the flip-side of the classically liberal Conservative, like your nemesis Rip, that says "The people are healthy because the GDP is so high". It's really the same thing - material condition is what you look to in order to estimate the happiness of the population. There is no "left" and "right". There are two fake and gay controlled oppositions, which are the inverse of each other. Hence, the answer is the Third Position.
If you doubt what I just said about Marxism and conservatism being inverses of one other, just go find some of libertarian Stefan Molyneux's "Free Domain Radio" debates. He's debated many prominent Marxist-Leninist socialists, and all it boils down to is two people arguing "Well, what is the exact economic policy which will totally restore freedom, liberty and human happiness?" They are firmly entrenched in the same world-view.
Can't disagree with this at all. Marxism/Communism and modern Capitalism are merely two sides of the same coin. Both view man as a unit of economic consumption and production. In other words, they are dehumanising doctrines. When i say this, I separate the concept of private enterprise from modern Capitalism, which inevitably results in monopolies and oligarchy (not to mention a corrupt political system that depends on donors).
Economics should be a tool of national governance, not it's lord and master. The problem today is that modern international finance capital has become the ruling entity, holding governments in thrall. This has been the case for a very long time. The Bank of England was founded in 1694, from whence the national debt was established. For any nation to be truly prosperous, the thraldom of financial interest slavery must be broken.
The funny thing is, Communism would never have gotten off the ground minus the support it received from Capitalist financial houses. Warburg of NY, for example, provided a huge chunk of the financing for the murderous October Revolution.
I also agree that Left and Right are obsolete notions, relics of the French Revolution.
I liked your posts about good ol’ Triple H in the libertarianism thread. If you want to clarify what you mean by your first comment and offer a better definition of right-wing, I would be happy to engage.
Well there will always be people who are worth a negative amount of money, so the richest person in my preferred mode of political economy would be >infiniti times wealthier than the least wealthy.
I don’t have a specific value in my head that corresponds to how wealthy the wealthiest people in the world “should” be. I can tell you that it is less than a billion in 2020 US dollars.
You claim that people voting for government-led jobs programs is “not socialism, just trying to survive”. My contention is that they were one and the same for these people. My argument is absolutely validated by the New Deal’s popularity. Alternatively, consider this: why did Norman Thomas perform so much better in the 1932 cycle (the first one since the GD started) compared with others?
If government involvement in the economy doesn’t ever help, then how do you explain that the government bounced back from the GD directly after the gargantuan deficit spending required to fund WWII? Surely you are not contending that this is merely a coincidence?
The Nazi party was actually pretty centrist in terms of economic issues. A huge part of Nazi propaganda was inciting fear of the Bolsheviks. They revived Germany’s economy after the GD by using the only tactics that work: massive deficit spending. Socially, they were very far right, of course, but Rip was asking me about an economic definition of right-wing.
Your last two paragraphs are not right.
Stefan Molyneux has never been allowed within 1000 feet of a “prominent” socialist, and only a tiny, tiny percentage of socialists that are “prominent” by any quantitative metric are Leninists in 2020. Noam Chomsky, Nathan J. Robinson, Adolph Reed, etc are not going to debate him for the same reason Mike Tyson never fought my grandma post-polio.
I’m glad you brought him up, though, because he is a very good recent example of the way that capitalism restricts freedom and is incompatible with western values. Market forces compelled twitter to deplatform him because he was hurting their bottom line by besmirching their platform with what most people regard as repugnant political views. Is this the land of free speech and intellectual tolerance Martin Luther fought for? What about some of our more recent white ancestors? If you believe white/western culture matters, then you have to fight to preserve it. This means you must fight capitalism.
Fascist was Fascist, not Nationalsocialist. Fascism was the doctrine of Musslolini and his comrades. Read Mussolini's autobiography for more information. Nationalsocialism the worldview of the NSDAP and the Third Reich, conceived by Hitler. Read his Mein Kampf if you want to learn about that.
The two are very different. Fascism was based on the corporate state. The German Nationalsocialists were against the corporate state. Your comment that Nationalosocialist Germany believed "that the state should effectively own all property" is total nonsense. Both stridently defended the right to own private property. This is evident in both their own literature and practice. Both Fascism, and more so Nationalsocialism, were fundamentally opposed to Communism/Marxism-Leninism.
Capitalism preaches that the 'individual' is of prime importance.
Communism preaches that the 'community' is the only consideration.
Nationalsocialism and Fascism insisted that both were equally important.
Unfortunately Americans conflate 'socialism' with Communism. The fact is, socialism was initially a healthy reaction to the excesses of the industrial revolution, when 'working class' people were treated like animals in many instances. The difference is that the original socialists - men like R Carlyle, JS Mill, J Bentham etc, were not internationalists; they did not advocate class warfare, as the Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyites did; they did not declare war on the natural role of womankind, as the Marxists did.
I’m asserting that just like with the Obama campaign, empty promises and “free” solutions are peddled to a desperate populace, one that is not happy with the current administration because of the economy, unaware that it had nothing to do with the downturn anymore than the new administration would have to do with the upturn.
As far as Norman Thomas, why did he only garner 2.2% of the popular vote? Must be the popularity of socialism I guess.
I did not say it never helps, but that it is short lived. Government spending can improve the aggregate demand function in the short run, as Keynes discusses. But this is not sustainable as I described above, and - also like I described above - shrouds the effect of the free market simply restoring itself.
I’m not contending it’s coincidence, especially in that very specific, extreme case. I’m saying it can’t be separated from other causes of economic rebound. Like I described above.