avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-10-13 08:51 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-10-13 08:51 am
(no subject)
So the latest thing going the rounds is "OMG they're using socialism on us!" The idea has permeated the web and become one of those things that nobody questions.
Newsflash, guys. Okay, the government may have bought some assets, but calling that socialism is like calling it Christian worship when a man stubs his toe and shouts "JESUS!!!" Socialism is when the government owns and administers the means of production and distribution for the benefit of the people and as the normal state of affairs. Buying up a bunch of dodgy loans to save your venture-capitalist friends from having to face the consequences of their greed may be many things, including but not limited to unconstitutional, impractical, hypocritical, desperate and just plain stupid, but socialism in any meaningful sense it ain't, and calling it such is simple scaremongering, because for some reason Americans are more terrified of socialism than of, oh say, theocratic despotism.
To be fair, I'm sure Bush and his friends would much rather have simply handed over the original $700bn to the bankers with no strings attached (it's the American way), but something prevented them. I don't know what.
Newsflash, guys. Okay, the government may have bought some assets, but calling that socialism is like calling it Christian worship when a man stubs his toe and shouts "JESUS!!!" Socialism is when the government owns and administers the means of production and distribution for the benefit of the people and as the normal state of affairs. Buying up a bunch of dodgy loans to save your venture-capitalist friends from having to face the consequences of their greed may be many things, including but not limited to unconstitutional, impractical, hypocritical, desperate and just plain stupid, but socialism in any meaningful sense it ain't, and calling it such is simple scaremongering, because for some reason Americans are more terrified of socialism than of, oh say, theocratic despotism.
To be fair, I'm sure Bush and his friends would much rather have simply handed over the original $700bn to the bankers with no strings attached (it's the American way), but something prevented them. I don't know what.
no subject
But what this does mean is that, according to their views, the founders of socialism should not be taken to be Owen, Proudhon, Marx, Morris or Lenin - but Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria.