07-08-2016, 04:47 PM
(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote:(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.
You have it backwards. Lenin spoke of his form of socialism, to wit Marxism-Leninism. Other socialists may see socialism as the fulfillment of liberal democracy, a way to economic justice. Lenin was a very flawed ruler, as shown by the failure of his style of socialism within a couple of years.
The Left is no monolith. Some on the Left more competitive, participatory democracy with solid checks and balances against despotism and autocracy -- and believe that socialism is necessary for democracy at its fullest. Some have no problem with the Gulag or the killing fields should such accelerate socialism.
...So what is Communism as Marx saw it? The final stage of human progress, the end of history, the time in which ease supplants need. The State withers because Humanity no longer needs inequity and repression to enforce class privilege and bureaucratic power. Such results from productivity that makes poverty no longer a control over people.
Quote: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.
I do not trust the Right to eschew the lash, the concentration camp, or the torture chamber. Its ideal of freedom is often the ability of elites to exploit and humiliate their lessers at every chance. The Right concept of freedom is the freedom of the lord of the manor or the plantation to treat his serfs or slaves brutally.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.