Archive for the ‘Socialism’ Category

What Is Socialism?

Chemical weapons are considered illegal across the globe, but many countries continue to secretly use them in war zones, including the U.S. So what exactly are chemical weapons? And how do we monitor them? Subscribe to NowThis World: http://go.nowth.is/World_Subscribe

Learn More:United Nations Office For Disarmament Affairshttp://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Che..."The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is the first disarmament agreement negotiated within a multilateral framework that provides for the elimination of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction under universally applied international control."

Arms Control Association: Chemical Weapons Convention Signatories and States-Partieshttp://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets...Fact sheets and briefs

The Chemical Weapons Ban Facts and Figureshttp://www.opcw.org/news-publications..."This brief overview of the CWC and of the OPCW provides an understanding of how the States Parties to this disarmament treaty are transforming their solemn pledge to renounce chemical weapons into a verifiable reality."

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: Chemical Weapons and Their Destructionhttp://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/b...

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What Is Socialism?

Democratic Socialism | Socialism | FANDOM powered by Wikia

In general, a label for any person or group who advocates the pursuit of socialism by democratic means. Used especially by parliamentary socialists who put parliamentarism ahead of socialism, and therefore oppose revolutionary action against democratically elected governments. Less ambiguous than social democracy, which has had, historically, the opposite meanings of factions of Marxism, and groupings on the right of socialist parties.

Some early 1800 century radicals such as Thomas Paine influenced early Socialist Democratic works. The term "socialist" was first used in English in the British Cooperative Magazine in 1827 and came to be associated with the followers of Robert Owen, such as the Rochdale Pioneers who founded the co-operative movement. Owen's followers again stressed both participatory democracy and economic socialisation, in the form of consumer co-operatives, credit unions and mutual aid societies. The Chartists similarly combined a working class politics with a call for greater democracy.

Democratic socialism became a prominent movement at the end of the nineteenth century. In the US, Eugene V Debs he is one of the most famous American socialists, and led a movement centered around democratic socialism and made five bids for President.

In Britain, the democratic socialist tradition was represented in particular by the William Morris' Socialist League in the 1880s and by the Independent Labour Party.

Today Democratic Socialists and Social Democrats coexist in the same party in many nations. Democratic Socialists tend to be even more left wing than Social Democrats. The international forum for both is the Socialist International. This seems to be changing however and many Democratic Socialists in the EU Paraliment are in a different group than the Social Democrats, instead they join with reform Communists in the Party of European Left.

Clement Attlee is often described as a Democratic Socialist, along with Eugene Debs. Some Democratic Socialists are now leaving some Social Democratic parties such as the British labour party due to a shift towards the center in the party.

Salvador Allende

Clement Attlee

Eugene Debs

George Orwell

Hugo Chavez although potrayed by right wing corprations as being a fascist chavez is a self proclamied democratic socialist and is helping the poor thorughout venezuela.

Nelson Mandela

Kshama Sawant

Naomi Klein

Olof Palme

Most democratic socialists typically advocate a mixed economy with generous welfare provision, and re-distribution of wealth. People or groups who describe themselves as democratic socialists, are generally further to the left and more radical than the more moderate social democrats.

Many people see Scandinavian countries such as Sweden as a model of democratic socialism.

In contrast, other definitions of democratic socialism sharply distinguish it from social democracy. Peter Hain, for example, classes democratic socialism, along with libertarian socialism, as a form of anti-authoritarian "socialism from below" (using the term popularized by Hal Draper), in contrast to Stalinism and Social Democracy, variants of authoritarian state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide. In this definition, it is the active participation of the population as a whole, and workers in particular, in the management of economy that characterises democratic socialism, while nationalisation and economic planning (whether controlled by an elected government or not) are characteristic of state socialism.

Democratic Socialist Vision

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Democratic Socialism | Socialism | FANDOM powered by Wikia

Socialism Quotes (680 quotes) – Goodreads

It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness. Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

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Socialism Quotes (680 quotes) - Goodreads

You Damn Millennials Dont Get Socialism

Once upon a precious old time, socialism actually meant something, distinct from liberalism. A socialist was somebody who wanted the state to own the means of production. The British Labour Party, say, was genuinely socialist. Its socialism had a specific (and since abandoned) sourceClause IV of the 1918 party constitution, which described the new partys goal thus: To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

Back in those days, when by todays standards most people were poor or close to it, this was actually a pretty popular position. Even the ruling classes tolerated a bit of common ownership. For example, in London between the wars, as in New York, the underground/subway systems were taken public, because what had existed before was a mish-mash of privately owned lines that didnt coordinate schedules and so on.

After World War II, when Labour swept in with a clear mandate, the party really did set about nationalising-with-an-s all the major public services and industries. Can you imagine?! The coal industry was nationalized, just wrenched right out of the scheming hands of several hundred little (and big) Don Blankenships!

The United States never had a major socialist party. If you dont believe me, conservative readers, go back and read some of preacher and Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomass criticisms of Franklin Roosevelt. Aspects of the New Deal were of course quasi-socialistic. But real socialists hated Roosevelt more than they hated the Republicans in a way: Roosevelt saved capitalism. And broadly speaking, socialists also tended to be pacifists (even as they were militant anti-fascists).

Well, to make a long story short, times changed. In America we had deindustrialization, deunionization, Reagan; in Britain, Thatcher won, and a fellow named Arthur Scargill whom you ought to Google if youre interested did some terrible damage.

Then in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed. Through the 1990s, there were still a number of countries in the world that called themselves socialist. But that began to dwindle, and over these past 25 years, the memory of the distinction between liberalism and socialism has dwindled along with it. The evanescence of this memory has of course been accelerated by the roughly 89 kajillion hours of American talk radio in which any mildly left-of-center politician or proposal was reprehended as socialistic.

I say all this of course by way of talking about the popularity of Bernie Sanders, and especially the generational divide thereof. Some observers appear to be a little surprised that Sanders, the crotchety old guy, leads Clinton among young people. A Rock the Vote poll of millennials that came out this month shows Sanders leading Clinton by 11 points among voters under 35. Ive seen others where the spread is higher.

It all makes total sense. If youre my age, you remember a time when the distinction between liberal and socialist mattered. If you were one or the other and lived in a place populated by many of both, you got into lots of beer-spittled arguments about the merits and demerits of each. And incidentally, you also remember a time when Bernie Sanders was this interesting, basically admirable, but only-in-Vermont mayor, and then later, this interesting, basically admirable, but for the most part inconsequential back-benching member of the House of Representatives.

But say youre 28 and a liberal. All you know about socialists is that these eye-bulging racist vampires you see on TV keep calling Barack Obama a socialist. And you think, Hey, I like Obama, so socialist is OK by me! And remember that in his one big speech in which he defined what socialism means to him, Sandersprobably somewhat disingenuously, given that he chose to be a socialist rather than a liberal back when the differences were stark, but also wholly understandablybasically kinda said socialism to him means the stuff that Roosevelt did and free college and so on.

Besides all that, you have no memory of a time when Sanders was a marginal character on the national stage. For all of your adult lifetime, hes been a United States senator! There are important senators and unimportant ones, smart ones and dumb ones, sober ones and drunk ones, but all that doesnt really matter. Once people have to call you Senator, youre a respectable figure.

So differences in perspective on Sanders between young and old is Grand Canyon-ic in scale, and it is both ideological and personal. By the way, Clinton wallops Sanders in their own older cohort. In one recent poll, Clinton was leading Sanders among voters 50 and older by 40 points, 64-24.

Now of course young voters are responding to Sanderss positions and his rhetoric, and theyre responding to his thundering assertions that sweeping change is a matter of political will, which older voters (this one included) tend to disbelieve. My point is just that they arent put off from jump street by the S-word in the way that older voters who knew the original meaning of the word are more likely to be.

So we had this Des Moines Register poll last week showing that 43 percent of Iowa Democrats thought of themselves as socialists. No age breakdown was released, but Id bet the generational divide is clear. Oddly enough, liberal wasnt a listed option on the question; just socialist or capitalist.

Since no ones talking about the state seizing the means of production today, whats the remaining difference, you might ask? Fair question. These days, with socialists having dropped the core thing that made socialism socialism, its probably mostly a mindset, an emotional-psychological sense of how confrontational and disruptive and anti-establishment people want their leaders to be. The only distinctly socialist (as opposed to liberal) thing about Sanderss platform is his call for Medicare-for-all, which directly echoes what the socialist Labour Party did in the U.K. in 1946.

In an ideal world most Democratic voters would prefer that, surely; but how many will see it as preferable to the Clinton position of just slowly, and admittedly much more boringly, building on Obamacare? Art Goldhammer had a terrific column at The American Prospect this week in which he divided us into sausage people and egg peoplethe sausage people, after Bismarcks famous quote, know that making change is hard, slow, and messy. The egg people want to break eggs to make omelets, and they want to break them now.

Hillary is the sausage-maker, and Bernie is the eggman. Egg-breaking is a lot more fun, hence its attraction, especially to younger people. But then you have to make the omelet. Sometimes people forget that that part can be really hard.

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You Damn Millennials Dont Get Socialism

Examples of Socialism – examples.yourdictionary.com

The term socialism refers to any system in which the production and distribution of goods and services is a shared responsibility of a group of people. Socialism is based upon economic and political theories that advocate for collectivism. In a state of socialism, there is no privately owned property.

In theories developed by Karl Marx, socialism is the transitional period between capitalism and communism.

Socialism can exist within countries as an overall economic system or within factions thereof such as corporations, healthcare, public education, and education.

Countries cannot be wholly defined as socialist if they have not declared themselves as such in a constitution or through their national name. Throughout history socialism may have been practiced in many countries but the country itself has not been labeled as socialist.

Socialism within a country's economic systems, healthcare, education, corporations or other factions exist in these examples:

Many people use the term socialism to describe behavior in which a government takes on a larger role in the economy. For example, many opponents claim that President Barack Obama is a socialist because he takes the position that the government should be involved in many aspects of people's lives and because he believes that people have a shared responsibility to each other.

The term is not always used accurately and it is very helpful for people to have some actual examples of socialism in order to get a clear picture of this economic theory.

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Examples of Socialism - examples.yourdictionary.com