Once you let them define socialism as anything --

then you'll be the "socialist" bogeyman for life.

Check out this piece from Thursday:

Editor’s note: President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Jr., addressed his father’s campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, on Monday night, instructing young conservatives “to keep up that fight, bring it to your schools. You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”

Because nothing is as scary as public control over the means of production, right?

Actually, I'm sure that Donald Junior's definition has little to do with public control over the means of production, unless he's scared he's going to lose his inheritance or something like that. My point is this: once you let them define "socialism" as anything, you become the socialist bogeyman, and you have a bunch of fools screaming "socialism" while defining it as anything they don't like. Maybe Donald Junior and his thug friends think they can create a bunch of prison camps for the "socialists" or something like that.

That's what I was saying in this diary, too.

^^^^^

In response to Trump Junior's slam on "socialist" teachers, Kristin Karnitz, the author of this PBS-reproduced opinion, offers an elaborate defense of teachers. I'm saying this to make Karnitz' job easier, to offer a defense of the socialists.

Socialism is the ideal society of the socialists, that once-numerous tribe of 19th-century idealists who thought that the public could take control of the means of production some day. Karl Marx became the most famous of this bunch because he wrote a book called Das Kapital, or "Capital," in which he showed in precise terms how it was that the capitalists could get rich off of the labor of the workers. Marx's influence on the academies of Germany, the intellectual leading nation of the 19th-century world, was profound, and negative. As Kees van der Pijl showed in his textbook on global political economy, the disciplinary divisions in the social sciences of the academy were largely created to deny the Marxists and other socialists an audience. It didn't work, of course.

The winners of the October Revolution in Russia in the year 1917, Lenin and his friends, once they had solidified their control over the Russian Empire and renamed it the Soviet Union, hijacked the term "socialism" to mean that which they were striving for. In response to Lenin's attempt to control Europe's socialist parties, many of said European socialist parties became social-democratic parties. And that's the point in history when the confusion initially set in. "Socialism" became either social democracy or omigod Russia.

At any rate, the nitwits of the Right have taken to calling "socialism" anything they don't like. Let's call them on it! The word "socialism" has a definition. Let's use it!

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Cassiodorus's picture

was laid out in detail in Volume 2 of Julius Braunthal's "History of the International."

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

The Aspie Corner's picture

So-called leftists also are under the notion that 'socialism' is when the government simply does something. They'll ask something like "Do you use public roads? Do you go to public school?" and then say you use socialism. I'll admit I was in that camp for a while before I learned more about it.

The fallacy there is that our government overwhelmingly serves the interests of capital. Always has, even in the post-WW2 era. A capitalist society can still have a strong public sector. Venezuela's economy, for example, is 70 percent private (but don't tell Dipshit, his goons or his propagandists on and offline that), and in fact, capitalism can't survive without one for long, as we're seeing here in the US.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

to a particular relative of mine, every bad policy is the doing of "liberals". no matter what it is, no matter its true genesis or true purpose, if it's something that's just inarguably wrong, she can somehow contrive to demonstrate that it's really the doing of stupid liberals.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Deja's picture

@UntimelyRippd
I felt the same way about "conservatives" during my years at dkos.

We both know it's groupthink and brainwashing.

Thankfully, the lapdog showed up, and inadvertently let me see behind the curtain. There's only one team, and we're not on it. Others still haven't figured out who the wizard is. They still think there are two teams, and one is evil, while the other is good.

It irks me that I was so easily hoodwinked. Live and learn.

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Lookout's picture

At least "tiny hands" framed it that way in the SOTU address. Bolton has declared war on any country in our hemisphere claiming to be socialist...the troika of evil.

They are running scared that young folks are open minded about it. It has always puzzled me that we attack, out right or secretly, any country working for its people instead of our corporations. They want to make sure it fails so that it doesn't become a force in the US.

My 2 cents anyway.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

"Democratic Socialism".

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

Cassiodorus's picture

@chuckutzman I think we ought to reclaim the word "socialism" from Bernie, too.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Are busy making a soup of socialism, Russia, Islam and anything else standing in the way of US empire. Being spoon fed by the media to justify ever more war. It's poisoning the minds of too many. The food critics we hired to test the stew (congress) would have us believe it's a tasty treat.
Sheesh

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socialism = government.
But not when it comes to the military, police, and prisons. Only when it helps poor people.

I've looked around at various dictionaries.
Half of the dictionary definitions don't even mention "government" (such as Oxford).
Merrian-Webster's definition has the most conservative-friendly definition.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@gjohnsit

socialism = government.
But not when it comes to the military, police, and prisons.

This needs to be in the dictionary too, of course. To oppose a definition, it needs to be made public.

A world without "socialism," then, the utopia of the conservatives, would be a world in which the only government functions were the military, the police, and prisons. The economy would collapse, of course. But that's okay, because a functioning economy would be "socialist," and thus evil.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus like to have governments that redistribute to them the wealth of the people.

(rich liberals are that way, too)

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dfarrah

Remember how they called Obama a “socalist” when he never in a million years would have used that word? (Not to mention he was nowhere near socialism.)
I do agree with this post and think you make a very good point. I think the waters here have been awfully muddied though and unfortunately those who could add clarity aren’t given a platform to do so.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

socialism_0.png

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@gjohnsit
when the chips were down in a serious way, namely WWII, the federal government abandoned all pretense that a free market economy was the most efficient and/or effective way to get things done. instead, we switched to a command economy in which the government set wages and prices, rationed consumer goods, and told various corporations what they would produce, how they would produce it, and what they'd be paid. and guess what? we kicked serious ass. i mean ... not as serious as the Soviet command economy did, producing such extraordinary weapons as the Katyusha rockets and the T-34 tank (indisputably superior to anything the US had), in quantities sufficient to overwhelm the Wehrmacht, but we did okay: Liberty Ships, B17s, P-51s, the Norden bombsight, etc.

Somewhere in my house is a box of WWII era newspapers. One of them is a copy of the Chicago Tribune (i think) showing the chairman of Montgomery Ward being carried, in his executive chair, down the front steps of the company's HQ. I think he's being carried by federal marshals. He had declined to do what the hell he was told, and he was dealt with.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Cassiodorus's picture

@UntimelyRippd After the next big ecodisaster.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

The USA is doomed too.

Chris Stewart (R is creating a bill that keeps the country from being a socialist one. The Big Bad socialism will destroy the country. And here I thought that it's capitalism that is doing this.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg
You are not mistaken by thinking that socialism is not the cause of the US falling behind the rest of the world in domestic infra-stucture development. Remember when BMW made a commercial to show how tough their cars were built. Filmed on NYC streets. The billionaires just laugh. All the way to the bank.
Sheesh

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Hawkfish's picture

That the trouble with socialism is that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The irony is that after observing how Amazon works, you could say the same thing about capitalism...

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg