07-08-2016, 01:27 AM
(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.
First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism". I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland. Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power. The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power. By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.
These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals. This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working. The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home. If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Ludwig von Mises
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Ludwig von Mises