Socialism – Conservapedia
From Conservapedia
Socialism has its roots in visions of imaginary ideal societies, from thinkers who drew up elaborated designs and concepts for creating what they considered a more equal society, along collectivist lines or abolished private property; the primarily ideas came from British and French thinkers like Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Robert Owen preceded by Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, and Jean Meslier. One of Karl Marx's titles was the father of socialism. Currently it is considered a leftist economic system which advocates state ownership or direct control of the major means of production and distribution of goods and services.[4] Socialism is the economic system imposed by Communism, but another one of the most well known political parties of the 20th century that was socialistic was the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi), headed by the fascist, but anti-communist[5]Adolf Hitler. Often socialism is a matter of degree and numerous economies in the world are very socialistic such as European countries (many of which are facing financial difficulties due to over taxation and excessive spending).[6]
The Ludwig von Mises Institute declares:
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.
Because many businesses still are privately owned, ipso facto, the United States is not a socialistic government. "That definition is confuted by the earliest theoretical writings on socialism. In France, Henri de Saint-Simon, in the first decades of the 1800s, and his pupil and colleague Auguste Comte, in the 1820s and 30s, along with Robert Owen contemporaneously in England, stated that the essential feature of what Owen called socialism is government regulation of the means of production and distribution." [7] When the government controls the volume of money and its economic applications, it has the economy in a stranglehold. When government controls education so that nothing other than secular socialism may be taught, as Saint-Simon advocated, it controls the future destiny of a nation.
In April of 2010, American political consultant Dick Morris wrote:
If our government is to continue spending 40 percent of our GDP, we will morph into the European model of a socialist democracy. But if we can roll the spending back to 30 percent, while holding taxes level, we will retain our free market system.[9]
Anita Dunn, the political strategist and former White House Communications Director, admitted that one of favorite political philosophers, one that she turns to the most, is Mao Zedong, the communist dictator responsible for the starvation, torture, and killing of 70 million Chinese.[10] Critics of the Obama administration have coined the word "Obamunism" to describe Barack Obama's socialistic and "fascism light" economic planning policies (Benito Mussolini defined fascism as the wedding of state and corporate powers. Accordingly, trend forecaster Gerald Celente labels Obama's corporate bailouts as being "fascism light" in nature).[11][12] Obamunism can also allude to Obama's ruinous fiscal policies and reckless monetary policies.[13][14][15]
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Socialism - Conservapedia