Virgo said:
Having a government adopt social policies like universal healthcare payed by social security, has absolutely nothing to do with being a socialist state.
Most of the countries in the world are being run at the moment by Democratic socialists (Portugal is), elected in elections and that adopted some ideas from the original socialism and applied them to capitalist societies.
Note that the Labour party in the UK belongs to Democratic Socialism as well.
You can read more about it here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
If youre trying to imply that i need to draw a distinction between "socialist" and "democratic socialist" in the cases of those two nations, I would hope people would be able to make the intellectual leap that I understand a multi-party, democratic framework exists in both of them, and thus they are democratic, and not exclusively socialist
I did not say they were socialist states. If were working off the definition that I tend to look towards, that of historical socialists, then we would be hard pressed to come up with an example of one. But when you look at the advances and mechanisms that socialists enacted in countless western nations in the last 150 years, liberal democratic nations all over borrow on these elements in many facets of their society, as I mentioned.
RobbieD_PL said:
I dont know if what of anything ive just wrote makes any sense to anyone
Your post made perfect sense dude, and while it was fanciful and im sure will be riddiculed and laughed off, its people like the guy 'moron' whose post was deleted that give these ideas such a bad name. They hijack the principles of socialism and demonize the whole movement.
China, like the former Soviet Union and virtually every "communist" nation that has ever existed is a horrible perversion of what Socialist thinkers, and I would argue, Marx himself envisioned.
Socialism as its pioneering thinkers envisioned is an ideology of humanity, progress, and understanding. That is the antithesis of any communist state I have ever studied. People have the nerve to call this "bourgeois socialism" when its more appropriate to call their forced implementation of these ideas vulgar socialism. The idea is that it is a process that humanity evolves towards as a matter of fellowship and human understanding, not with a pistol pointed at your temple by the henchmen of some thug ideologue.
China is a perversion of everything the movement should be about. To call it socialist or even communist should be insulting to a leftist, because its citizens are not mentally or physically liberated of anything. Just like the old soviet union, they have simply become enslaved by a different, and obviously much more oppressive system that professes to rule in their name and for their betterment, but does neither.
Change should be as european socialists envisioned it in the 19th century. By legal and peaceful means, those who profess these beliefs should take control of the mechanisms of government and harness its power to implement policies that benefeit society, until the time comes that people are so harmonious and self industrious that the need for government evaporates, and I doubt that time will ever come
Again, Im drawing a distinct line between theoretical and applied ideology. If youre trying to counter me based upon the current policies of left leaning/socialist European parties, then I doubt I will have much idea of what youre talking about
