Why Socialism never took root in America

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by renault

Socialism never took root because in the old American way, poverty is temporary. It's not supposed to be a way of life.
Immigrants who came here by the millions over several decades knew that it would be tough going in their new homeland at first; but unlike back in their home lands where everybody stays put and there was no way to improve upon their life,, they would be able to work their way up the social and economic ladder in the US and become successful citizens of this great nation. And that's exactly what millions of new Americans did.

Yes, on an individual level, poverty can be temporary. But on the social wide scale poverty is PERMANENT, entire capitalism is built around poverty and desperation (sprinkled with greed of the few), who would work all those jobs unless people are forced by their survival instincts and desperation into less than desirable jobs? Only poor, one step from starvation people can be forced into those "system building" jobs that keep free markets going. It's poor that provides better life (and income) for more successful citizens by getting less for their labor/life on top of their decimated health & life spans.

America managed to build a successful pyramid where fresh off the boat immigrants worked (work) for cheap under deplorable conditions to make the lives of the older transplants more prosperous. Recently, American owning class introduced globalization as a tool to utilize third world desperate people to keep American dream alive with their sweat shop goods. Trouble is in the air though.

Just imagine American poor making $8/hr without colonial goods made by 3rd world poor making $2/day? How long this American dream illusion would last without exploding? Again, sooner or later rag to riches conditioning will stop doing its magic and then you just watch out. "Luckily" police state is already here, major stakeholders are definitely afraid of something.

[Savoir Faire]

Originally Posted by malamute

But it did. We're about as socialist as it can get. Free health care, food stamps, government housing subsidies. It's become cradle to grave socialism in the USA.

Socialism means that everyone gets treated equally.

I don't qualify for free health care, so by definition, we don't have health care.

[steven_h]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Yes, on an individual level, poverty can be temporary. But on the social wide scale poverty is PERMANENT, entire capitalism is built around poverty and desperation (sprinkled with greed of the few), who would work all those jobs unless people are forced by their survival instincts and desperation into less than desirable jobs? Only poor, one step from starvation people can be forced into those "system building" jobs that keep system going. It's poor that provides better life (and income) for more successful citizens by getting less for their labor/life on top of their decimated health & life spans.

America managed to build a successful pyramid where fresh off the boat immigrants worked (work) for cheap under deplorable conditions to make the lives of the older transplants more prosperous. Recently, American owning class introduced globalization as a tool to utilize third world desperate people to keep American dream alive with their sweat shop goods. Trouble is in the air though.

Just imagine American poor making $8/hr without colonial goods made by 3rd world poor making $2/day? How long this American dream illusion would last without exploding? Again, sooner or later rag to riches conditioning will stop doing its magic and then you just watch out. "Luckily" police state is already here, major stakeholders are definitely afraid of something.

You sound like a socialist mailer to be honest. The failure has been human. The framers of the constitution took every aspect into consideration when trying to keep government from doing exactly what it is doing now.

Cream rises to the top, and yes there will always be poverty. This is an absolute no matter what governing framework is in place. But, the idea of climbing the economic ladder isn't a mirage, as you seem to believe.



Imagin a country full of this BS logic. This kid is a University of Wisconsin alumnus - he understands socialism perfectly, and as he explains it, you either root for him or think he's a complete idiot. I lean toward the latter, obviously.

Originally Posted by Savoir Faire

Socialism means that everyone gets treated equally.

In a perfect world, there's plenty of food, water, clean air and it only rains just enough to feed the trees and the birds. Obama said Hope and Change, and implied one thing while doing quite another. Your neighbor wants more stuff than you; you want more than him, or you want what he has without having to work as hard for it. Perfect equality is unattainable, get over it.

[RememberMee]

So what's you specific problems with the guys statements?

1. Most of the resources & jobs are indeed owned by a few. Everybody else is adjusting their wage slaving arses and personalities to get noticed, get a job, get ahead. This imposes huge pressures of uniformity and conformity on the wage slaving masses who cannot stop chanting "Freedom" and "Liberty" on every occasion though. Conformity includes non political items like your personality, appearance and general life attitudes. American people drift towards generic, backstabbing, insincere, sleazy & pliable corporate grunt personality that fits corporate world perfectly. Actually, stereotypical image of 19th century Americans (little bit ignorant, but sincere and straightforward) ceased to exist under corporate pressures, it's Machiavelli land through and through. If self-"help" doesn't help many (MILLIONS) opt out for the psychiatric drugs to make them more "competitive". The "freest" people on the face of Earth cannot afford their natural personalities (if they want to get fed and "move ahead"). That's freaking ironic. More backward totalitarian states didn't mess with personalities of their citizenry. Keep your mouth shut on politics and you'll be Ok, not so in the "freest" country on the face of Earth.

2. Corporations/employers are nothing but private tyrannies in control of 9+ hour of your life (that's directly), since you have to rape yourself into being "competitive" parents start to indoctrinate and torture their kids into religion of success and rat race as early as 2 y.o. Small kids staring at worthless "Baby Einstein" products (a multibillion industry) because of survival & status anxiety that permeates everything. American parents (helped by state and corporate sponsors) effectively destroyed childhood in USA. It's little zombies preparing themselves to become "successful" corporate rats as yearly as 2 y.o (no kidding). Little suckers cannot even play together anymore without being provided with corporate products & paraphernalia, bussed and organized by licensed "professionals" maximizing kid's chances to succeed in market place by robbing them of their childhood and natural humanity.

3. Divide and conquer is an ancient labor control tool of employers. Workers are divided into castes and pay grades not by invisible hands alone. Idea is simple - to give a worker an illusion of opportunity to "succeed" in a rat race, deluded workers are much less likely to unite (oh, that's so commie), instead they will be cutting each other throats to get closer to the trough.

4. It's typical American social control trick - to demonize a group of people (of different color, mostly) so that white low wage workers could automatically feel better about their lot by just looking at the designated scapegoats. It doesn't cost ruling class a cent (outside of propaganda budgets). Stirring up the sentiments " we (rich & poor) are of the same blood, we should unite against those savages who are about to undermine Western Civilization" is actually OLDER than USA itself. It worked well for the Southern "elites". It's less obvious now since language of race was substituted with the language of "freeloaders" and "welfare". But the idea is the same - "we (rich & poor) should unite so that those freeloaders (race is assumed) would not destroy our great nation, just look at what they've done to your share of the economic pie". Ingenious scheme. It works well, especially on the white working class conservatives, it's not a secret that racism is fairly common among working whites (North or South), working class is educated by talk radio gurus that Blacks and Mexicans ate their cake and that the conservative rich guys will crack down on government waste once elected. Divide and get elected, again.

[A Common Anomaly]

For a country that prides itself on its democratic institutions to the point where we export democracy at the barrel of the gun, most Americans cannot tolerate a democratic workplace where the means of productions are collectively owned.

Sadly, most Americans prefer rigid hierarchies and severe social stratification. This preference most likely stems from ignorance, propaganda, and misguided wordviews.

[thePR]

Originally Posted by steven_h

Proponents argue the minute differences

Proponents of any ideology argue that opponents simply do not understand it. Welcome to history.

That would be wrong.

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by steven_h

as for rememberMee
Little bits of truth sprinkled into the overall lie is a complete fail. Socialism in theory only works in theory. When you remove iniative and incentive to excell, to be exceptional, you are left with a society of serfs and servants. To actually believe that employees should be able to take over a successful business from the people that built it on sweat equity and risk is insanity. I can agree with some points, but to agree with the overall message would be rediculous.

Let's not use euphemisms, OK? I know what "initiative", "incentive to excel" means, and I believe you know that too. It's just higher status cravings, nothing more, nothing less. Take the promise of higher status away and 95% of the "driven to succeed" folks will desert a field in a heart beat. So, it's not excellence per se, it's the promise of higher social status & consumption patterns the "excellence" might hold.

Hairless monkeys didn't come up with any meaningful purpose of life (especially since liberal capitalism won cold war), all we are "offered" is to derive life satisfaction from our relative status within faceless hairless monkey tribe. Look around you, if you see people below on the "ladder", rejoice your life is a "success", you may take a dump on those who are below to maximize the pleasure. We are taught to derive satisfaction from feeling superior to other people, that's it, that's the mover, that's the shaker of the modern economy of "excellence" and rat race (and nope, it's not Marx, you will not believe it but I just paraphrased Adam Smith himself).

If status games works for ya, more luck to you. However, what if I want to be free of the maniacs "striving to succeed" (on my expense)? ESPECIALLY considering that ingrates don't even acknowledge contribution of the forced labor.

employees should be able to take over a successful business from the people that built it

Automatic assumption - employee are dummies, contributing nothing, just like raw materials to use up and to dispose of. With that kind of (prevailing) attitude, maybe the ones who "strive to succeed" should do it in the space vacuum alone? It would be better for all of us. I repeat myself, #1 problem of the mankind is that it lets status seeking & power hungry sociopaths to dominate all ladders of society (capitalism or socialism). It doesn't make a world a better place to be, let gadgets don't full you. A world driven to "succeed" inflicts more and more suffering (especially psychological) on its anxious wage units that didn't achieve desired status perch yet trashed all meaningful connections with human and natural worlds. Apparent "improvements" are bought on credit of non-renewables, environmental destruction and miseries of the future generations (if any).

Driven by "success" (of a few) hierarchical societies are about to hit very thick wall of reality, unless we "evolve" into something less success & maniac driven, we stand no chance. Simple.

Socialism is gradually getting known/popular because it's much better suited for times of crisis when unmitigated capitalism simply self-destructs. All capitalist countries embrace state capitalism (a.k.a socialism) during major wars & disasters. We are about to hit interesting times. Socialism may help us to live a day, but ultimately it has the very same problem that capitalism does - self-serving psychopaths are filling all the hierarchical positions of power. Comrades Stalin and Mao (major but not materialistic psychopaths themselves) didn't find better solutions than periodic purges. Once Soviets leaders put purges aside, soviet power ladder was filled up with money hungry sociopaths who didn't think twice about destroying the country in order to legalize their power & wealth (now most of them are ruggedly individualistic millionaire$, the lawful owners of mother Russia etc.).

Why capitalist sociopaths are more lasting (unlike their socialist brethren)? I think they indeed are more skillful at exploiting people and nature, since their actions are not limited by the social and other concerns to the same extent. To put it simply soviet bureaucrats could not "externalize" as many costs as capitalist captains of industry can. Why? Because if socialists do "externalizing" in the same way capitalists do it, it's not socialism already , they had nobody to externalize to but themselves (Global capitalism has entire world to trash). For example, Soviets wouldn't have just closed a plant, putting 10,000 people out of work, because they (state) needed to provide for those people. American corporations could just pack it up and go away leaving crime, suicides, broken lives, family, careers, industrial waste, etc. behind. It's not their problem, it's not their money will be spent to mitigate aftermath, that's proverbial capitalist efficiency for ya, take "externalization" into account and numbers will be quite different. Unfortunately, you can externalize the costs onto society (including 3rd world ones) & nature for just that long.