Socialism = communism in the USA

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Socialism = communism in the USA

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1ForrestFamily
elokuu 14, 2007, 7:35 pm

Can some US members clear something up for me - do the majority/average US citizen understand the difference between socialism and communism? It is just that so many references I see they do not seem to be able to distinguish the two, which I find particularly interesting.

If this is the case, does anyone have an explanation?

2geneg
elokuu 15, 2007, 11:37 pm

The answer to your question is no, they do not understand the difference. We have been brainwashed to believe first, that markets are the solution to all problems and secondly that socialists want to take what belongs to me and give it to you. This sounds like communism. The average American gets very little education in science and math and next to nothing in social studies. This country has no idea how to educate our children for the lives they will lead. If you check you will find we are near the bottom in academic achievement in primary and secondary schools.

3Doug1943
elokuu 19, 2007, 5:03 pm

I doubt the average European could give a coherent account of "the difference between socialism and communism" because in fact it is a real semantic tangle, due to the fact that both of these terms have been used in multiple, related-but-different, inter-related ways.

Example: "socialism" in Europe sometimes is used to mean "what the social democratic party wants (or wanted, a few decades ago) to do" -- ie build an extensive welfare state, nationalize heavy industry, regulate all industry. Often this program was accompanied by the claim that eventually it would lead to full socialism -- i.e. no private ownership of any significant section of the economy -- but in practice this goal was postponed to the indefinite future. It is in this sense that people used to call Sweden "socialist".

But "socialism" was also used by many to describe the system in the Communist countries. In fact, Communists talked about "the socialist bloc" or "actually existing socialism".

And Marx and Engels sometimes -- the evidence here is tricky -- talked as if, after the revolution, there would be a stage called "socialism", when people would be paid according to their labor, leading on to a final higher stage called "communism" when we would all work for the sheer joy of it.

So, these terms sometimes are used to refer to existing systems, and sometimes to hypothetical ideals. Of course, "true" socialism, with liberty and prosperty for all, never seems to come into existence.

So mixing these terms up is quite understandable, and not just a result of the poor, stupid, backward United States and its hopeless educational system, so awful that young Americans who know how to read -- there are a few, not many -- try to find university places abroad.

This accounts for all the foreigners at primitive, backward places like UCLA, MIT, Harvard, etc ... they are kindly swapping places with our educationally-stunted youth so that we may at least have a few citizens with proper education.

4LesMiserables
syyskuu 22, 2010, 9:38 pm

The USA is rather something of an enigma: it is in modern times a montage of a multitude of religions, cultures and languages, but yet it has become a distinctly limited and narrow country in socio-political terms.
There is the option of voting for Capitalism or Extreme Capitalism.
Faith in the Market, God, The Lottery and the Military underpin its values.

5aulsmith
syyskuu 23, 2010, 9:33 am

As far as I can tell, many Americans can't distinguish between socialism and liberalism, let alone socialism and communism. Anyone who thinks that it might be a good idea to collectively pay for something (like medical insurance) because it might have some universal benefit (like not having our emergency rooms filled to bursting with uninsured kids with the flu) is automatically labeled a socialist.

6eromsted
Muokkaaja: syyskuu 23, 2010, 10:31 am

There's also the problem of telling apart what people can or can't distinguish from what they choose not to distinguish for the purposes of political rhetoric. Although I don't doubt that many people in the US have little knowledge of the intellectual and political history socialism, I suspect that the politicians and pundits who pander this stuff know enough and not confused, but using calculated hyperbole.

There is a history too, of course. Doug's not wrong above, but for most of the 20th century being a communist meant first and foremost being a partisan of the Soviet Union. Europe had large socialist parties that were not Soviet partisans, the United States did not. There were anti-communist socialists in the US, but both they and the communists were small time compared to Europe. So there was little salience to the distinctions.

7krolik
syyskuu 23, 2010, 4:36 pm

>6 eromsted:
Yes, well put. Partly what people distinguish is by choice, but partly it is by experience.

8LesMiserables
syyskuu 24, 2010, 2:46 am

I think first, people have to understand exactly the terminology of the ideology. Marxism, Communism, Socialism: they are not the same.

9LesMiserables
lokakuu 15, 2010, 6:09 pm

is automatically labelled a socialist.

I would be humbled to be called a Socialist and would thank the person who named me so :-)

10Doug1943
lokakuu 16, 2010, 8:43 am

I think it is fair to say that Americans have, in general, been more skeptical about the explicit expansion/intrusion of the state into the economy, with the aim of achieving social equality, than most other peoples.

I think the history of the 20th Century shows that this skepticism, however accompanied by lack of political sophistication, has been justified.

Until the 1970s, there was a widespread belief among the chattering classes that central government planning -- either in the Soviet form, or in the more permissive European social-democratic form -- was the way to achieve economic growth and the good society in general. Many newly-independent nations in the Third World tried to follow this general model. Many intellectuals believed it implicitly.

Hard experience destroyed this belief. India and China have begun to throw off the chains of poverty by dismantling much of the socialist apparatus they began with. Many European countries have also gotten rid of many nationalized industries and are beginning to look again at their generous social welfare provisions.

Of course, recent events have also destroyed illusions in free market fundamentalism, too. Capitalism gives you growth, but also instability and inequality.

However, on balance, it seems to me that those parochial Iowa small businessmen had and have a better grasp of social and economic reality than the European intelligentsia.

11LesMiserables
lokakuu 16, 2010, 8:54 am

Capitalism gives you growth, but also instability and inequality.

....and capitalism depends, indeed thrives on, unemployment.

12LesMiserables
lokakuu 16, 2010, 5:51 pm

It seems that America, more than any MEDC, trumpets the 'Patriot' card more than most. I support Connolly's view that it is an ideology disseminated from the elite power brokers who hold the wealth, means of production and most importantly control the media.

That until the epoch of revolution arrives the interests of the class who hold the dominant machinery of production will colour and mould the entire thought and institutions of society at large; making whatever serves such interests appear as ‘patriotic’, ‘native’ and thoroughly ‘Irish’ or ‘American’ or whatever the nationality of the possessing class may be. And in like manner stamping as ‘foreign’, ‘unpatriotic’, ‘un-Irish’ or ‘un-American’ everything that savours of danger to that possessing class. In other words the possessing class always and everywhere arrogates to itself an exclusive right to be considered the Nation, and basing itself upon that right to insist that the laws of the land should be in its hands to frame and administer in its own interests, which, it pleasantly informs us, are the highest interests of the nation.

James Connolly

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/connolly/1903/05/unpat.htm

13Doug1943
lokakuu 21, 2010, 4:45 pm

Would that be the Connolly who praised the German Empire and called the German and Austro-Hungarian Imperial Armies his "gallant allies in Europe"?

14LesMiserables
lokakuu 21, 2010, 4:59 pm

> 13

Yes. And your point is?

15Doug1943
lokakuu 22, 2010, 5:33 pm

My point is this: Marxists denounce patriotism, or at least that patriotism which has the effect of erasing what they see as the real differences in society, which are not along national, but rather class, lines. They see patriotism, especially during war time, as whitewashing the crimes necessarily committed by imperialist armies in conflict.

Thus, during WWI, revolutionary Marxists like Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky, denounced both sides as imperialist, and broke with those socialists who supported one side or another.

But James Connolly supported one side in the inter-imperialist war, no doubt motivated by Irish Catholic patriotism.

Please don't get me wrong: Connolly was an admirable man, and a hero. He put nation above class, and was right to do so. The efforts of Connolly and of other Irish Catholic patriots meant that at least 26 counties of Ireland broke free from the influence of Britain, and thus the people of Ireland were able to continue for much longer than they would have, under the rule of the priesthood, rather than taking part in the cultural liberalization that swept over Britain after the war (divorce, birth control, tolerance of homosexuality, abortion, etc). Of course that is now gone.

16modalursine
huhtikuu 3, 2011, 12:40 pm

Oh dear. I'm afraid any question that begins

Do the majority/average US citizen understand ...

Is bound to generate disappointing results.

17LesMiserables
heinäkuu 30, 2011, 8:44 pm

> 15
I do not see any issue with using the forces of Capitalism to defeat Capitalism. Using borrowed German guns against British guns that are pointed against you is absolutely fine in my book. (and vice versa)