Socialism: the problem and prescription's of Marx

[ICantSpellDawg]

I am not a socialist, but I've always accepted the struggle of the working classes against their elite masters. I've accepted the general dynamic detailed in the manifesto, but I don't believe that it fairly identifies most of the struggle or the mechanisms or life. I do believe that most laws, many customs need to be smashed and that lower classes need to find a better balance between self driven and subservient life. Also importantly I recognize that hard work and intellect will naturally result in more lifestyle priveleges for those who have it, no matter the dogmatic resolution of socialists.

I guess that part of my issue with Socialism is in its aim and solution for the correctly generally diagnosed problem. The ideology actually tends to focus on material wealth and downplay individual and ethical freedoms. The solution effectively turns the problem upside down. Where the elite and talented were the masters, now they are the slaves, encumbered by the infantile and illogical abuses of the masses. Problem solved with another just beginning.

My alternative has always been to harness the greed, excess, talent and skill without encumbering it. To increase the ranks of the elite until we are all capable of self direction and emancipation. By increasing access to top tier education online - allowing a janitor to invest intelligently in the market or for a grocery bagger to successfully build a yoga training business, by lowering the tax burden of small businesses at the expense of the undue privilege known by the monopolistic players; To even the tax playing field. By obliterating racial or gender obstructions to talent without creating a house of cards.

Where do we all stand on the issue of Socialism these days?

EDIT : I'm sorry for the grammatical and usage errors. If I wake up and post something, it has to be crap or I don't have time.

[rvg]

Capitalism -- bad.
Socialism -- worse.

[Greyblades]

Capitalism without socialism is cruel and unfair, socialism without capitalism is dogmatic and untennable. Both are exploitable, and in thier extremes result in suffering, but together they cancel out eachothers flaws, to an extent.

[Fragony]

Capitalism without socialism is cruel and unfair, socialism without capitalism is dogmatic and untennable. Both are exploitable, and in thier extremes result in suffering, but together they cancel out eachothers flaws, to an extent.

Yeah, there just isn't any perfection to be had. While generally leaning to the right I wouldn't call myself rightwing, the left has some excellent arguments as well. Pragmatism should rule

[Lemur]

Honestly, I always get a little guarded when people use the word "socialism." It can mean so many (sometimes contradictory) things, job one is to find out what someone means when they say it.

[InsaneApache]

I always thought that Groucho made more sense TBH.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Socialism means the state owns the means of production.

Capitalism means that an increasingly small number of 'bourgeoisie' own the means of production.

Both systems mean that Joe Blogg is forced to sell his labour for a wage and generally has little prospect of improving his lot in life. For all the talk of capitalism promoting invention and initiative, it in fact stifles these things - because the vast majority of people have little incentive to show these qualities so long as their wage will remain the same. They have no stake in their labour.

What is the solution? I would say a ban on all wage labour in the same way we ban slavery. Because if you enter into a contract where you are effectively granting another person the right to the fruit of your labour, you are selling away your freedom in much the same way as you would were you to become a slave, or abolish democracy. That is what wage labour is - making significant profit off of another's labour, and then giving only a portion of it back to him. That is theft.

We should force companies to redistribute their shares between their employees. This would also have the effect of gradually abolishing the division of labour, as individuals would have less incentive to develop large businesses. And by abolishing the division of labour, you would no longer reduce people to a part of an assembly line - allowing them to actually take pride in their work and have the ability to use their potential.

It would be a world without monolithic corporations or a monolithic state. It would be a world of small-business, of individual enterprise, where every worker is his own boss. This is what capitalists (especially in America it seems) idealise, and yet they support the very system that has for centuries been destroying such a world!

It might seem that this trend has been reversed, but it has not. The Welfare State, New Dealism etc in the USA might have for a time curbed the excesses of the capitalist system, but ultimately it has always been going in the same direction. The vast majority of the population are entirely at the whims of an increasingly tiny elite that controls the means of production and thus all employment. The social breakdown that is resulting from this fact is devastating. Consider the decline of regular, stable career jobs and the instability that that creates. Look at the rise of phenomena such as irregular employment, underemployment and the like. People are reduced to a life of endless adolescence, unable to be independent, to marry, to form the basic family unit that society is built upon. Meanwhile, those who do get the traditional, stable jobs are increasingly abused as the ever increasingly competitive employment system means they must subvert their entire lives to their work life to keep their jobs. What was once 9-5 is now 8-6, the increasingly international nature of business means that extended periods of travel is an expectation, rather than exception. Consider the impact on family life, on community life that that has. As I always say on this issue - look to Japan, that bastion of artificially, politically-imposed turbo-capitalism, to see where we will be in ten years time. We don't need to speculate about what will happen, because it is happening there already!

Another, more unique, development in these present evil times, has been the loss of stability that even class once provided. The vast majority of today's middle-class are not bourgeoisie, but, in fact, just wealth proletarians. Much like the shelf-stacker or the waitress, even the supervisor and the manager is a wage-labourer with no control over his destiny, and can find themselves reduced to destitution as soon as they are no longer needed by their bosses. And indeed, the tendency of capitalism to increasingly reduce the need for the labourer for the purpose of improving profit means that this is happening more and more. Whereas education once maintained the class system, its more equal distribution nowadays means that the sons and daughters of todays 'salariat' (the wage-labour 'middle-classes') are no longer guaranteed the life of their parents, but are instead reduced to the condition of the working-classes. The development of this phenomena within this current generation is going to have a major impact in shaking people out of their complacency. "It's one thing for some white trash on a council estate to live in poverty, quite another for my university-educated child!".

Anyway, for all the above reasons, capitalism should be recognised as fundamentally anti-social, immoral, and detrimental to human life. Anybody who respects the development of Western philosophical/political thought, of those that laid down the principles of modern democracy, ought to abhor it.

I honestly believe that the opening up of the Second and Third World markets has given capitalism something of an artificial extension onto the end of its life, and that when these are saturated, it will come crashing down in spectacular fashion. The very nature of the system means that it must grow to exist, but that can't be sustained forever. And eventually, things will get bad enough that people won't accept it anymore. Material gains will not always placate people in the face of its social devastation.

[Ronin]

Marx forgot the very "small" detail that humans don´t really want to be equal.
most people do not want their neighbor to die of starvation, but they do want to be better off than their neighbor.

given this, it's no coincidence every attempt to implement this model has failed to achieve it's goal, and either was replaced or devolved into a dictatorship (not for the same reason, but related).
this is not caused by errors in the application of the model, the model itself is flawed from conception.

now if we are talking about democratic socialism, that´s another thing, and one I don´t have a problem with.

[Beskar]

Socialism means the state owns the means of production.

Actually, you are misrepresenting it a little there. Ideally, it is 'Social Ownership', such as working collectives, common-ownership, cooperatives and it can include state ownership. Typically, state ownership by a democratic government.

There is also a difference in terminology when applied in the real world too. Socialism is seen as providing minimum wage, higher taxes for higher earners. All in all, trying to rein in the excess of making sure the poor are not completely left out to rot and the rich doesn't simply squander all the money.

So it does come down to what Lemur says. What do you mean by "Socialism" ? Could also even argue with "What do you mean by Capitalism?" I guess the best one-line definitions would be as follows:

Capitalism - Private Ownership of the Means of Production with the goal of producing as much profit as possible.
Socialism - Social Ownership of the Means of Production with the goal of satisfying economic demands and human needs.

[Brenus]

You basically right.

Capitalism believe in inequality as you do not born equal by nature as some are small, some are fat, some are and you can details all our differences. Capitalism believes that human have different values (in tem of money), and the “elite” (self-definition) should earn more because they got there first, and they got the ideas etc… The idea is that the Riches create jobs in allowing workers to have a salary. Capitalism believes that if the poor are poor it is their fault (or destiny).
Capitalism doesn’t like taxes as them deprive the Riches from what they earn by the work or ideas. Capitalism believes in Charity.

Socialism (in a very flexible definition) believes in equality and that all men born equal by law. Socialism thinks an enterprise as a community where ah of the individual work and have a decent living for it. Socialism believe that the Riches are rich because the labour of the workers producing the goods. Socialism believes that there are poor because there are Riches, and extreme poverty exist only because extreme greed.
Socialism aims to rebalance the natural inequality in redistributing the wealth.
Socialism believes in Justice

“Marx forgot the very "small" detail that humans don´t really want to be equal.”
Can’t remember this detail. In fact, I don’t remember where Marx did write about humans in such terms. I give you I didn’t read all Marx. Marx analysed a system and describe how it works. Equality is a political value.

[Lemur]

Since historical economic theory has never been my thing, I haven't read Marx. However, I do recall a historian saying that his analysis of capitalism was pretty good, and that very little of his writing had to do with communism. But like I said, I ain't read it myself.

Wealth of Nations, on the other hand, is surprisingly readable, and isn't nearly as radical or one-note monomaniacal as Adam Smith's latter-day idolatrists would have you believe.

[Fragony]

Since historical economic theory has never been my thing, I haven't read Marx. However, I do recall a historian saying that his analysis of capitalism was pretty good, and that very little of his writing had to do with communism. But like I said, I ain't read it myself.

Wealth of Nations, on the other hand, is surprisingly readable, and isn't nearly as radical or one-note monomaniacal as Adam Smith's latter-day idolatrists would have you believe.

For historical theory it doesn't have to do with communism, a marxist theory assumes a logical sequence of developments

[gaelic cowboy]

Socialism means the state owns the means of production.

Capitalism means that an increasingly small number of 'bourgeoisie' own the means of production........

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Both systems mean that Joe Blogg is forced to sell his labour for a wage and generally has little prospect of improving his lot in life. For all the talk of capitalism promoting invention and initiative, it in fact stifles these things - because the vast majority of people have little incentive to show these qualities so long as their wage will remain the same. They have no stake in their labour.

What is the solution? I would say a ban on all wage labour in the same way we ban slavery. Because if you enter into a contract where you are effectively granting another person the right to the fruit of your labour, you are selling away your freedom in much the same way as you would were you to become a slave, or abolish democracy. That is what wage labour is - making significant profit off of another's labour, and then giving only a portion of it back to him. That is theft.

We should force companies to redistribute their shares between their employees. This would also have the effect of gradually abolishing the division of labour, as individuals would have less incentive to develop large businesses. And by abolishing the division of labour, you would no longer reduce people to a part of an assembly line - allowing them to actually take pride in their work and have the ability to use their potential.

It would be a world without monolithic corporations or a monolithic state. It would be a world of small-business, of individual enterprise, where every worker is his own boss. This is what capitalists (especially in America it seems) idealise, and yet they support the very system that has for centuries been destroying such a world!

It might seem that this trend has been reversed, but it has not. The Welfare State, New Dealism etc in the USA might have for a time curbed the excesses of the capitalist system, but ultimately it has always been going in the same direction. The vast majority of the population are entirely at the whims of an increasingly tiny elite that controls the means of production and thus all employment. The social breakdown that is resulting from this fact is devastating. Consider the decline of regular, stable career jobs and the instability that that creates. Look at the rise of phenomena such as irregular employment, underemployment and the like. People are reduced to a life of endless adolescence, unable to be independent, to marry, to form the basic family unit that society is built upon. Meanwhile, those who do get the traditional, stable jobs are increasingly abused as the ever increasingly competitive employment system means they must subvert their entire lives to their work life to keep their jobs. What was once 9-5 is now 8-6, the increasingly international nature of business means that extended periods of travel is an expectation, rather than exception. Consider the impact on family life, on community life that that has. As I always say on this issue - look to Japan, that bastion of artificially, politically-imposed turbo-capitalism, to see where we will be in ten years time. We don't need to speculate about what will happen, because it is happening there already!

Another, more unique, development in these present evil times, has been the loss of stability that even class once provided. The vast majority of today's middle-class are not bourgeoisie, but, in fact, just wealth proletarians. Much like the shelf-stacker or the waitress, even the supervisor and the manager is a wage-labourer with no control over his destiny, and can find themselves reduced to destitution as soon as they are no longer needed by their bosses. And indeed, the tendency of capitalism to increasingly reduce the need for the labourer for the purpose of improving profit means that this is happening more and more. Whereas education once maintained the class system, its more equal distribution nowadays means that the sons and daughters of todays 'salariat' (the wage-labour 'middle-classes') are no longer guaranteed the life of their parents, but are instead reduced to the condition of the working-classes. The development of this phenomena within this current generation is going to have a major impact in shaking people out of their complacency. "It's one thing for some white trash on a council estate to live in poverty, quite another for my university-educated child!".

Anyway, for all the above reasons, capitalism should be recognised as fundamentally anti-social, immoral, and detrimental to human life. Anybody who respects the development of Western philosophical/political thought, of those that laid down the principles of modern democracy, ought to abhor it.

I honestly believe that the opening up of the Second and Third World markets has given capitalism something of an artificial extension onto the end of its life, and that when these are saturated, it will come crashing down in spectacular fashion. The very nature of the system means that it must grow to exist, but that can't be sustained forever. And eventually, things will get bad enough that people won't accept it anymore. Material gains will not always placate people in the face of its social devastation.

A bit too much for me too dissect here but I think your on to something.




If I may be so bold I think you omitted the fact that the one crowd who are not capitalists is the bosses themselves.

We see everyday there interference in politics and even there sacred MARKET.

Also they engage in monopolies and almost never price there products properly to really take account of there impact.

The very financial system itself which benefits from much of our common goods also seeks to dismantle them for our own use.

I could go on but you get the idea

[Rhyfelwyr]

A bit too much for me too dissect here but I think your on to something.

You know considering our different backgrounds it is scary how much we agree with each other!

If I may be so bold I think you omitted the fact that the one crowd who are not capitalists is the bosses themselves.

We see everyday there interference in politics and even there sacred MARKET.

Also they engage in monopolies and almost never price there products properly to really take account of there impact.

The very financial system itself which benefits from much of our common goods also seeks to dismantle them for our own use.

By bosses do you mean the top dogs (actual owners and their surrounding cabal), or more the lower-level bosses?

Certainly, I've heard a couple of different takes on the lower and mid-level bosses, the managerial class. Marx saw them as fairly insignificant, just an auxiliary to the bourgeoisie that existed for practical reasons. Others, like James Burnham, argue that managers have become a class unto themselves. I really must buy the Managerial Revolution to get more insight on that.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Elites own the earth and everything on it. We are merely insects who do their bidding, so they feed us the scraps to keep us working. We are less necessary as technology advances, so they feed us less scraps. As people become unneccesary, they'll stop feeding us at all. Never think for a second that you work for social good in this system, you work for the Lords and Ladys pleasure, as people have always done. The old relationship benefited the insects, but that was an historical blip in the timeline. They've figured out a way to forever eliminate armed resistance, collective rights and individual advancement. The security state doesn't exist for us, it exists for them against us. Terrorism isn't the threat that a free people should fear, but the solution to terrorism.

Nullify, repeal and subvert these laws. Don't buy the line that any developments are for you, your family, region or nation. Developments serve the elite that they can be unshackled from the burden of the lesser men. They actually seem to be close to that realization. I've learned to radically oppose reductions of individual rights and values. I increasingly believe in a more realistic version of this narrative. I don't take armed hedging lightly and I don't think it is a joke. I think that most people are losing relevance and it is reaching a fever pitch.

Maybe this can be the plot to 100k books written since forever. The more I think about it, the more realistic it seems.

[gaelic cowboy]

You know considering our different backgrounds it is scary how much we agree with each other!



By bosses do you mean the top dogs (actual owners and their surrounding cabal), or more the lower-level bosses?

Certainly, I've heard a couple of different takes on the lower and mid-level bosses, the managerial class. Marx saw them as fairly insignificant, just an auxiliary to the bourgeoisie that existed for practical reasons. Others, like James Burnham, argue that managers have become a class unto themselves. I really must buy the Managerial Revolution to get more insight on that.

Oh I am on about the masters of the universe of course the bucks who really run an own things.


You know I read once in the shrumpeter coloum I think in the economist that suposedly we cannot properly explain why we actually have companies.

Most suscribe to the idea that it is a modern version of industrial/economic feudalism, I give my service and in return am protected from full market forces by my leige lord ( CEO/Manager )

Otherwise I might have to be self employed which is apparently what there fancy economic models tell them we should be doing.

[Beskar]

So, ignore all the -isms. Those are problems that require specific fixes, not recommendations from a 19th Century philosopher. Reigning in the excesses of the Rich and Powerful in the 21st Century will require new thinking.

Being honest, the conditions required as demonstrated by History is for things to get so bad, it ends up embroiled in a bloody revolution/war, then there is a high-chance any spirit for goodwill and change will end up corrupted and perverted by ambitious power hungry individuals. Many people are simply 'content' in the apathetic sense until something knocks the tea cup over. Any major structural reform will hit massive opposition from the status quo or those landed with special interests. Even talk about very minor arrangements such as the Robinhood Tax then you have people screaming till blue in the face about how it might hurt our status with the 'economical elite'.

[Rhyfelwyr]

You know I read once in the shrumpeter coloum I think in the economist that suposedly we cannot properly explain why we actually have companies.

Most suscribe to the idea that it is a modern version of industrial/economic feudalism, I give my service and in return am protected from full market forces by my leige lord ( CEO/Manager )

Otherwise I might have to be self employed which is apparently what there fancy economic models tell them we should be doing.

Well, from a historical perspective, companies have come about through various processes - monopolization, the division of labour, the fact that only a select few had the wealth required to set up industries to begin with.

They may well be in some sense a form of modern feudalism, but I don't think that is why they continue to exist. I think they continue to exist simply because they have able to propagate their existence - they don't actually offer anything to society or the world of employment. Indeed, as I said earlier, I think they are very destructive in that regard.

Now, we just need to figure out how to get rid of them, even when so much of our economic organisation is based around them.

There's something pretty innate about the idea of creating a social hierarchy. I also don't think there's anything inherently bad about that, as long as all parts of the whole respect the needs of the others. I don't think its a stretch to say that a medieval Manor Lord probably cared more about the peasants tending the fields than a modern CEO of a blue chip company cares about his entry-level workers, though.

Yes and no. It depends on how interdependent they are on each other. Just look at how Highland Clearances, when hordes of peasants were chucked off their land and replaced with sheep.

So, ignore all the -isms. Those are problems that require specific fixes, not recommendations from a 19th Century philosopher. Reigning in the excesses of the Rich and Powerful in the 21st Century will require new thinking.

Isms are what give perspective to our decision making process. The economy and how it relates to politics and society is a very complicated business - to treat issues in isolation without a larger framework would cause rather chaotic and disjointed policy making. The old "down with isms" approach always gets some popular support because people are fed up with the stalemate and stagnation of opposing ideologies.

Which is fair enough, but the solution isn't to abandon political or economic theory altogether. Instead, we should challenge it, and why we support it. Do we believe something because our human nature means we want to understand the bigger picture, even if it means being careless and smoothing over any and all cracks? Are we doing it out of partisan commitment?

In such instances, the ideology will be corrupted - but that doesn't mean that ideology (or rather, having a wider take on things) is inherently bad for decision making. IMO, it is essential to it.

[PanzerJaeger]

I think they continue to exist simply because they have able to propagate their existence - they don't actually offer anything to society or the world of employment. Indeed, as I said earlier, I think they are very destructive in that regard.

Now, we just need to figure out how to get rid of them, even when so much of our economic organisation is based around them.

Companies exist because organizational hierarchy is essential to productivity.

[HopAlongBunny]

Marx's concern with alienation.

Under capitalist production the worker must alienate her labour for an abstract wage; the real product of human labour is traded for an abstraction and the person is removed from the most basic and human of endeavours-producing his/her existence.

Socialism intervenes to quibble about the surplus, but leaves the means/relations of production intact. A socialist PoV acknowledges the context where production takes place and appropriates a portion of the surplus to reflect costs which corporate accounting ignores. Pollution is a social cost, poverty, health, safety and regulation. Capitalism is a mode of production; Socialism a debate on the surplus. Neither goes to the heart of solving alienation. Socialism account the costs the capitalist enterprise ignores; costs the corporation inflicts on society, therefore the capitalist enterprise must surrender compensation.

Alienation is preserved.

[Empire*Of*Media]

Capitalism without socialism is cruel and unfair, socialism without capitalism is dogmatic and untennable. Both are exploitable, and in thier extremes result in suffering, but together they cancel out eachothers flaws, to an extent.

Capitalism with Socialism ?!!! hahaha !! how that can match ?!! you know, i dont like A COMMUNIST Socialism, but Capitalism means, and its only, to higher your wealth and take it from poor public whatever it costs for the Rich and Elite people!! i mean by reality, not what they tell you how are they!!!!


and, TRUE & REAL PURE socialism is best, great and for the people, but i havnt saw any government or party claiming Socialist, have taken its TRUE & PURE way!! only what can benefit for them and else is not important. like communists and Social democrats.!!

[gaelic cowboy]

Companies exist because organizational hierarchy is essential to productivity.

Theory of the firm

This is the best explanation for why companies exist and it's essentially about transaction costs.

Except modern economics views the world through perfection and so it has a hard time reconciling companies with it's theories.

[Greyblades]

Capitalism with Socialism ?!!! hahaha !! how that can match ?!! you know, i dont like A COMMUNIST Socialism, but Capitalism means, and its only, to higher your wealth and take it from poor public whatever it costs for the Rich and Elite people!! i mean by reality, not what they tell you how are they!!!!


and, TRUE & REAL PURE socialism is best, great and for the people, but i havnt saw any government or party claiming Socialist, have taken its TRUE & PURE way!! only what can benefit for them and else is not important. like communists and Social democrats.!!

...:sigh: can we just skip the long spiral of self delusion and constant rage inducing obliviousness and go straight to the part where you either: stop being stupid, or lose interest in this forum and go bother someone else.

[gaelic cowboy]

...:sigh: can we just skip the long spiral of self delusion and constant rage inducing obliviousness and go straight to the part where you either: stop being stupid, or lose interest in this forum and go bother someone else.

I just ignore it to be honest

[Empire*Of*Media]

...:sigh: can we just skip the long spiral of self delusion and constant rage inducing obliviousness and go straight to the part where you either: stop being stupid, or lose interest in this forum and go bother someone else.

what have i said ?!! you stupid or me ?!! why instead of discuss you only know how to offense what ideas you dont like ?!!!!

[LittleGrizzly]

Empire some of the guys here are quite knowledgeable so of course feel free to put your own views or take on the situation but also try and listen to what other people are saying and try to keep an open mind on matters. Maybe sometimes accept that your views on some issues are not fully developed yet and take on board what other people say and respond to it...

No offence but some of your posts can come across a little bit like ranting as well.

EDIT: Sorry for the off topic post was enjoying the conversation although I am not sure I have a particularly intelligent contribution to make at this point.

[Empire*Of*Media]

Empire some of the guys here are quite knowledgeable so of course feel free to put your own views or take on the situation but also try and listen to what other people are saying and try to keep an open mind on matters. Maybe sometimes accept that your views on some issues are not fully developed yet and take on board what other people say and respond to it...

No offence but some of your posts can come across a little bit like ranting as well.

EDIT: Sorry for the off topic post was enjoying the conversation although I am not sure I have a particularly intelligent contribution to make at this point.

your right brother! but i have never had started an offensive post, i Alwayse said somethings, that i know with my bad English, it will cause some confusions, for things i know and they dont and do not want to.
but this can not be a good reason to attack and insult!! even despite their insult i Alwayse encourage them to discuss, but they even dont want to discuss, they think i must say things what THEY think its right and good!! i can not be like them!! at all in here some are agree with me and even in here there are some that dont agree but do not offence or insult!!
im surprised how they dictate what is to be said and they still claim they are wise and reasonable !!!

[ICantSpellDawg]

I like the idea that you must invest only in a company that you work for or do business with. At first this seems unworkable, but it has an allure. Something is horribly broken with publicly traded companies. The current trend is a nihilistic, zero sum game where people will work 24/7 for decreasing pay. Capitalism doesn't work with the number of privileges to large corporations built into the system and Socialism rewards those who fail to engage in productivity. The western middle classes and the global working poor are being consumed by this broken system. Something must be done.

[Husar]

...:sigh: can we just skip the long spiral of self delusion and constant rage inducing obliviousness and go straight to the part where you either: stop being stupid, or lose interest in this forum and go bother someone else.

So much about showing how social cooperation works and demonstrating why our rich only care about their own concerns.
You don't even have the patience to discuss with someone you perceive to be below your level, mark him as not worthy, insult him as stupid and then tell him to leave. And then you expect me to believe anything you say about the selfish evils of capitalism and the benefits of socialism?

I just ignore it to be honest

Another way to improve the world, just fantasize with your elitist friends about what works best and ignore the 95% of the population who have no idea what you're talking about. That's surely going to work.

[Greyblades]

So much about showing how social cooperation works and demonstrating why our rich only care about their own concerns.

I'm upset that you think I still think that way. I went pro-moderation afew days ago, if you remember, socialism is needed to keep the capitalists from running roughshod over the little man, and capitalism is needed to get things done, niether is superior as one cant/shouldnt work without the other. I find socialism better intentioned but that doesnt blind me to its flaws (anymore at any rate).

You don't even have the patience to discuss with someone you perceive to be below your level, mark him as not worthy, insult him as stupid and then tell him to leave

If I didnt have the patience to discuss with him I'd put him on ignore.
I find him obnoxious, his english is confusing, simply; I dont know what he's saying half the time and the other half seems to be either self satisfied reaffirmations of his political agenda or non sequiturs. Frankly I dont know if he's a troll in the vein of total relism or simply churlish in the vein of avg. If the former: he most certainly is "not worthy" and should leave.

If the latter he should try to improve his english and lighten up on the attitude.(didnt work with avg but I'm an optimist) I'm hoping for the latter, I'm willing to put up with a lot if the end result is another decent poster, but I have no patience or sympathy should he prove to be another Troll.

Could I have said it better? Alot better? Yup. Half the story of my life is cringing at the other half.

. And then you expect me to believe anything you say about the selfish evils of capitalism and the benefits of socialism?

You're German arent you? Why do you need me to explain the benefits of socialism? Your NHS is older than mine by half a century!

Another way to improve the world, just fantasize with your elitist friends about what works best and ignore the 95% of the population who have no idea what you're talking about. That's surely going to work.

...You mean... that's not what we all came here for?