Picking this up from V’s post of a week or two ago, Elizabeth Warren does not understand why people think she’s a socialist.
(Please, I need a moment to stop giggling. It’s as if President Obama were to say he does not understand why people think he’s a liar. Air gasp. OK, I think I can go on.) – Warren said:
I just don’t know where [people] get that [idea of her being a socialist]. You know, look at the issues. I mean really, let’s take a look at minimum wage — I just believe nobody should work full time and live in poverty…Student loans: I don’t think the U.S. government should be making tens of billions of dollars in profits off the backs of our students, which is what the current student loan system is doing…
Never mind that Warren proposes the U.S. government to *lose* tens of billions of dollars on student loans. Let’s go straight to Kevin Williamson, defining socialism:
The current Random House Dictionary definition of “socialism” is serviceable but dated: “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.”…
[Dated, because] It should read “ownership -or- control” rather than “ownership -and- control.” As we have seen in the cases of enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is entirely possible for government economic planners to intervene deeply (and, in this familiar case, catastrophically) in the economy while maintaining private economic forms…
A more complete definition of socialism incorporates two criteria: The first is that socialism entails the public provision of non-public goods. The second is the use of central planning to implement that policy.
And that, Liz, is why you are a socialist.
- You want the public purse to pay for *private* goods (goods that benefit the individual primarily, if not exclusively). For just one example, you want government to fund special young people on a costly, but often low-benefit, multi-year jaunt that we politely call “college”.
- And you believe in a planned economy. For just one example, you want government to dictate the minimum wage at which a worker may offer her work (or else you will not permit any employer to give her work).
For the record: I don’t and I don’t. So, I’m not.
I had this discussion with someone else when I called Obama a socialist. He wanted to know why I did so.
I pointed to the ten planks of socialism in the Communist Manifesto, as written by Karl Marx, and asked them which of these Obama disagrees with, because if he doesn’t disagree with any of them, he is, by definition, a socialist.
How about we give Ms. Warren the same test?
CS – great idea! Can I use that in a future post?
socialism is concentration of all wealth in the hands of the ruling class(in our case the politicians)for the benefit of the ruling class.
My favorite:
Funny, because Lieawatha’s own Obama Party is the one that pushed through government takeover and control of all student loans.
In addition, Lizzie Forked Tongue claims higher prices for everything are due to excessive compensation — but then screams about the price of an education while insisting she and her Hahvad-professor husband deserve every bit of her seven-figure income stream.
Lizzie Warren is a sociopath. She literally does not believe or follow a word of what she screams. Granted, that is not abnormal for a Democrat and Obama supporter, but she is ridiculous even for them.
ILoveCapitalism, Be my guest! It’s how I’ve caught many a socialist who simply did not believe they were socialists, until confronted with the definition.
I think government control, but not ownership, of enterprise is technically fascism, isn’t it?
Which is a variant of socialism anyway.
Karen – Yes and yes. (They weren’t called the National SOCIALISTS for nothing, and only their weird racial-nationalism separates them from today’s Left.)
tommy – I think your definition gets to the question of motive. Williamson’s definition ignores it. Motive-wise, socialism is a trick of the rich/powerful, to keep everyone else poor/powerless – while winning their votes. A deception. Again, refer to all the super-rich people who are key backers of socialism – such as Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, the Kennedys, the Solyndra guys, George Soros and various other billionaires including John Kerry’s wife (husband?), etc.
Fascism is supposedly “neutral” on the issue of economics; what matters to them is national purity and fighting spirit, not number-crunching. Besides, being for neither capitalism nor communism allows them to bring two venerable Jewish stereotypes into play: Shylock, the embodiment of the greedy Jewish businessman, and Trotsky, the embodiment of the intellectual Jewish communist.
In effect, however, fascist principles often result in the economy falling under the guidance of the government: the Leader is the embodiment of the “national will,” and all things in the country must be directed by the order of the Leader, so the economy falls under the purview of the Leader. People who thought that Hitler hated businessmen were amazed to learn about the intricate system of kick-backs and contracts that the Nazis established with business owners. The British National Party, which sits right about there Hitler did, is often called “extreme right-wing,” but their economic policy is actually well to the left of the modern Labour Party.
Fascism, as a political system, has nothing to due with anti-Semitism. It only morphed into that under Nazi Germany. Mussolini, the first true fascist to obtain power, was not a true anti-Semite. He had the standard distrust of Jews that was common at that point in history, but not the outright hatred. (a prejudice that was much stronger in the US at that time). Regardless of the semantics, Fascism/Socialism has, and does not currently, work. Ever.
The Kennedy fortune was made during prohibition. How did Liz make hers? What bothers me me is why the super rich leftists want to distribute he wealth of other rich persons while avariciously keeping theirs. They appear to be plutocrats, while implementing socialism for the masses.
In thinking about fascism, it is easiest and best to simply remember its catchphrase, “National socialism”. Fascists are socialist. They also happen to be racist-nationalist. While Mussolini may not have been an anti-Semite (or not primarily), he was an Italian racist. Today, Greece’s “Golden Dawn” party are Greek racists (they call for expanded Greek terroritory, with ethnic cleansing). And so on.
That distinguishes them from socialists who are internationalist. When you have socialists who are internationalists (at least in official doctrine), then you have communists.
The idea that fascists are somehow right-wing had its origins in Soviet communist propaganda. To them, the fascists’ overt nationalism – and the fascists’ willingness to tolerate the **forms** (never the substance!) of free enterprise – appeared retrograde or “right-wing”. Then, after fascism had plainly caused WW2 and the Holocaust, it became convenient and urgent for leftists of all stripes to try to scapegoat the Right about fascism.
True right-wingers are primarily traditionalists. In Europe and Latin America, it means they’re either for traditional monarchy, or sort of a military-Catholic dictatorship. In the U.S., the American Revolution has caused it to mean something quite different: right-wingers are the people who want to preserve the traditional liberal (pro-liberty) values of the American Revolution. Values also known as “limited government”, with “free enterprise” or “laissez-faire capitalism”.
The European fascists always said that such values were their true and final enemy. In 1924, Hitler stated that “basically, National Socialism and Marxism are the same.” In 1932, Goebbels wrote in his diary that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, “it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism.”
Summary:
Fascists: Socialists who are (1) nationalist, and (2) able to tolerate the *forms* (not the substance) of private enterprise.
Communists: Socialists who are (1) internationalist, and (2) unable to tolerate the forms of private enterprise.
American leftists: A hybrid of the above. Socialists who are (1) internationalist, and (2) able to tolerate the *forms* (not the substance) of private enterprise.
They so often seem like fascists, because they are “fascists without the nationalism”.
They so often seem like communists, because they are “communists who tolerate the outward forms of private enterprise.”
the rich are evil. the meme we get every election season from all the rich multi-millionaire democrats running for public office. if the rich are so bad why should anybody vote for them.
@13.. Rich liberal = Good. Rich conservative = Bad. It is not the position, the social standing or the message. It is the political ideology that matters. Nothing else.
Jeff I guarantee that if you lived in Greece and the nearby hospitals couldn’t treat your boyfriend who was attacked by moslems, because they are full of illegal aliens that the EU forces Greece to treat better than their own citizens and forces the borders open, you would support Golden Dawn kicking illegals out of hospitals. Greece is basically like the US southern border with less control and no funding for the alien burden. That’s why gays marched with the EDL after Lee Rigby’s beheading.
The floodgates to civilized nations are wide open. In 2013 more people moved to Britain than from 1066 to 1960. Pim Fortuyn was a gay politician assassinated for not fitting the leftist open borders narrative. Productive people will reject large scale parasitism, if a Pim Fortuyn can’t fix things a Charles Martel or Vlad Tepes will. After the Bolsheviks killed 60+ million white x-tians by taking away their guns then taking away all the food at gunpoint people worked out plans to deal with a recurrence.
Maybe. We’d have to see. Fair to ask. Telling the EU to go to hell is almost certainly a good cause.
Now, what would that have to do with Golden Dawn’s hopes of expanding Greece’s borders? complete with ethnic cleansing? They didn’t choose fascist-type symbols (echoing the swastika) for no reason. Lovers of individual rights to life, liberty and property under small government – they ain’t.
Fascism has no manifesto, whereas communism does. The term fascism can be applied specifically and generally, as can socialism. Communism is a a much more specific idea.
Economies in fascist states are usually mixed, usually with a strong military and propaganda apparatus; interest in economics is less than in socialist and communist states because utility and material well-being are not valued as highly. The utilitarian view of man within the state (product of and property of) is from Engels (and before him, Kant). Both fascism and communism view man as similar means but to/for different ends.
There is German Idealism but it’s not limited to German philosophy; even to a lesser extent, John Stuart Mill considered himself a utilitarian socialist. Fascism ranges from very bad (NAZI Germany) to much more stable and insular (Franco) to a mix of all kinds of fascist accoutrements (slavish media, academia and cultural institutions, political elite becoming wealthy via taxation and regulation, favors and cronyism — all very much alive the USA).
Rousseau is generally considered a socialist but I tend to think of him as a fascist (“general will”, i.e. a ‘will’ that is collective within certain ‘types’, i.e. leading to political and social exclusion of the Other).
(ILC does a quick google)
The Fascist Manifesto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Manifesto
The Doctrine of Fascism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctrine_of_Fascism
The 25 Point Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP
Interestingly, they all stress economics, utility and material well-being. But, I will agree with you, they stress national unity and State power the most. Purely BTW, a couple of interesting quotes on State power from The Doctrine of Fascism:
As to Franco: While he started out as a fascist, he found that he couldn’t survive without liberalizing the economy. After he did so in the late 50s, Spain became Europe’s fastest-growing economy (1959-1974, the “Spanish Miracle”). Also, Franco chose that the Spanish monarchy should be restored after his death. For such reasons, some scholars divide the early Franco from the later Franco, and consider the second a non-fascist. More of a weird hybrid of authoritarian, liberal and monarchist.
Fascism is probably an archaic term in its death throes. If it has any useful life left, it is as an imprecise epithet. We have a whole lexicon of these imprecise terms: Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Bolshevism, etc.
And then, without a hint of blushing, we start running them through our own process of rationalism without acknowledging they may reside wholly in the realm of transcendentalism.
“I may not know what fascism is, but I know it when I see it.” Or something.
Yes Heliotrope, I feel that you and I have a running, indirect dialogue about that.
I feel like I say “Fascism is a valid term if you just define it precisely in relation to the other terms, and after thinking about what the fascists were/are after.” And then you say, “Meh” 😉
Agreed.
When Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism came out in 2009, I snapped it up and went prospecting it for its precise definition of the “ism.” Lo, and behold, wise Jonah skated. What he proceeded to show was the shared intellectual roots between the Mussolini/Hitler statist fascism and modern statist progressivism.
Smoking crusades, abortion, gun control, euthanasia, cultural propaganda, the academic control of the narrative of history, culture and constant social engineering are all part and parcel with the nanny state. The general welfare for ourselves and our posterity lies strictly within the implementation of pogroms released by progressives upon the sheeple.
Therefore, fascist by epithet is still a worthy word unless you get caught up in what it actually means. The left believes it is a way to curse the right. The right needs to be secure in the knowledge that it curbs freedom and free will and therefore is the very useful tool of the statist left.
Is Maduro of Venezuela a fascist? Certainly. But, as Margaret Thacker would note: “He is running out of other people’s money.” Eventually, this whole idea of the Utopian nanny state gets short circuited and the real possibility of mass deaths can be seen looming on the horizon.
I suppose one could compare Mussolini’s Italian League to the Communist Manifesto but such a comparison reveals how utterly different the two documents’ intentions are. One could say there is a ‘fascist manifesto’, but that’s like saying there is a Chinese democracy that allows one-party voting.
I wrote: “…interest in economics is less than in socialist and communist states because utility and material well-being are not valued as highly.” Not sure how I could have made that more clear except to use bold tags, so I’ve done so.
As to Franco, it should be remembered that he was fighting communism and domestic instability. Spain was a mess and was being influenced by external forces that wanted to seize the opportunities they saw in the weakened Spanish state (both Hitler and the USSR made no secret of this). I’m not an apologist for statism, temporary or otherwise, but I believe consideration of Franco’s place in history should always be given a healthy dose of context.
By this standard, even Hayek was a socialist.
1. He believed in providing “some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&lpg=PP1&ots=3bhlBdOO_C&dq=road%20to%20serfdom&pg=PA148#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. He also believed in some regulation of private economic activiity.
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/343599/hayek-vs-friedman-reihan-salam
If your definition of socialism is so broad that it includes Hayek as a socialist, your definition is probably inadequate.
rtm – I think it would be most accurate to say that, although Hayek’s work in price theory and other areas strongly supports the small-government viewpoint, Hayek himself was (indeed) not free of socialist tendencies. Consider this, from your first link:
But, Mr. Hayek, it does endanger the general freedom. Because “Who pays?” It means a government that redistributes income by force. In addition to that being a wrong in itself, it gets the camel’s nose under the tent for the greater socialism that, elsewhere, you decry.
rtm, the larger point: suggesting that we can’t call it a socialist quote Because Hayek, is inadequate. In fact, it is a thought that reflects underlying socialist ideas – such as, for example, viewing wealth as a product or collective resource of “society” (rather than as a product/resource of the individual who earns/creates it). Given that Hayek said it, we must recognize as a simple fact that, despite his other work and his great anti-totalitarian insights, he retained some socialist tendencies from the European milieu in which he was steeped.
Your NR link makes clear that Hayek was not a friend of laissez-faire – and would have disagreed with Milton Friedman. Fine. “That’s Hayek.” I disagree with Friedman myself, in some areas (like monetary policy). So maybe Hayek didn’t understand all the implications of his own work; he wouldn’t be the first. Was he Lenin incarnate? No, of course not. There are degrees, here. Elizabeth Warren wants a menu of private goods (provided by government) and economic planning that is probably more extensive than what Hayek advocated.
That’s obvious. Two different eras/audiences, for example. I suppose mentioning it is how you admit (by the back door, as it were) that your earlier and different statement, “Fascism has no manifesto, whereas communism does”, was too sweeping (or not quite accurate).
And I stated how I agreed. Not sure how I could have made that more clear.
Well, I’m glad you consider clarity to consist of repeating what I wrote. 🙂
The “ethnic cleansing” Golden Dawn wants is more like Operation Wetback, and less Vlad Tepes. I have followed them for a while and the only “land grab” I have ever seen listed is for islands that had been Greek in not just living memory but since moslems where repelled during the crusades. You do know the crusades where a response to moslem invasion of Europe right.
Why say “ethnic cleansing” when if you look at the UN convention on genocide its actually the Greeks that are being targeted for genocide by the EU. In fact Britain had more people move to it in 2013 than from 1066-1960. If trends continue there will be no majority white homelands in Europe. Look at NumbersUSA videos to see why. When Tibet was full of Chinese people called it genocide, when white countries get full of the 3rd world its called die verse city
Long experience, Iggy, has taught me that the best chance of getting you to comprehend is to use your words. With my (or others’) original words, your reading comprehension becomes unreliable. Distinctly unreliable.
Steve:
Of course. Muslims (for example, Mediterranean pirates) had felt free to pillage Europe and enslave Europeans for centuries. The Crusades were at least partly a response to that; moving the Muslims’ war back to their lands, away from European lands. It’s forgotten nowadays, because the Left finds it too inconvenient.
I’m going by descriptions in Wiki:
Bold has been added by me. The various numbers are, of course, Wiki’s references to media articles or other materials to support what is being claimed. I suppose someone could have faked all that material, but I don’t really think so.
The talk of taking back Istanbul and expelling non-Greek minorities is why I say “ethnic cleansing” – because that’s what it is. “The mass expulsion -or- killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.”
As to GD’s economic program: Wiki says nothing, so you must go elsewhere – for example, to Golden Dawn’s web site – and the material there advocates conventional National Socialist concepts such as Autarky, nationalizing resources, nationalizing banks and cleaning “Zionists” (their word) from the financial system, redistributing wealth toward greater social equality, and so forth.
Let’s be explicit: I don’t support Golden Dawn, and neither should you. I condemn much, or perhaps most, of what they stand for. (They are right about one thing only, that Greece would do better in the long run if it left the Euro.)
Herein lies a wonderful opportunity for clarification:
There is no equilibrium and period of stability attached to either Mussolini’s Italian League or the Communist Manifesto. Therefore, comparing them is futile. This is not because they have “utterly different intentions” but because they were conveniently applied and ignored depending upon how the flying by the seat of the pants was going.
The handy thing about the principles and documents of a dictatorship is that they don’t mean squat. Yet, Obama insists that he can “negotiate” with Iran and North Korea. You get that talent from shoveling smoke and shoving chains up hill.