Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez drawing massive crowds . . .

@Noflaps said in #10:

With all due respect, I'm puzzled by your #9, @what_game_is_this .

I seldom find myself agreeing with @stockwellpete , but he isn't causing me to hate anybody. Indeed, I don't see how he could cause me to hate anybody.

I don't hate people merely because they disagree with me. Should anybody find hate merely from disagreement? I think not. But we remain free to decide for ourselves. I hope.

I believe you misunderstand. It is Stockwellpete that parrots Russian hate speech. And that doesn't csuse somone else to hate.

If I misunderstand you, sorry.

Well, it’s nice that the election fervor has run its course. Now, Uncle Bernie and aoc can get back to trying to gain the attention they so crave.

Do affluent socialist politicians plan to give up their nice houses to "the people" ? If so, when can I move in?

Should I buy a new backpack soon? No, wait, I won't be able to get all my chess books into one backpack.

@Noflaps said in #13:

Do socialists give up their big houses to "the people" ? If so, when can I move in?

Should I buy a new backpack soon?
I know you already realize this, at least I’m pretty certain about your thoughts. I can’t say with 100% certainty however. The only way this whole “give your big house to the people” thing works is that YOU give YOUR big house back first. Once you’ve become a full card carrying member of the socialist party, you’ll actually volunteer your home or it will be taken from you for the greater good. I don’t think being a Tennessee Vol is what they’re talking about.

Wait, somebody has to have a big house before he or she can be a real-brand (TM) socialist, @HerkyHawkeye?

Well, if I want to fit in with the new wave, I'd better see if I can put that spaniel to work! I wonder if anybody would hire the spaniel to help drag a dog sled!

He doesn't look much like a husky, I'm afraid.

Maybe I can see if the grocery store would hire a beef taster. He and I could BOTH do that!

A parable of Two Brothers

Once upon a time there was a pair of fraternal twins. One orphan brother nothing like the other:
One was weak, stunted and gaunt, the other strong, tall and – by now – morbidly obese. Ever since their mother's death the former had been forced to provide for the latter, working hard to find food in the woods, to lay traps, to collect berries and mushrooms. Meanwhile the bloated twin stayed at home busying himself with the equally demanding task of unequally dividing up the fruits of his brother's labour, only intermittently disrupted by bouts of languor.
Here is your share, he used to say when his brother returned from the woods, may it satiate your appetite!
It never did.

So one day the emaciated brother who had tired of constantly going hungry said unto him, Brother, I have toiled all day, I can hardly stand and I am famished. Allow me to rest my weary body while I ask of you: shall we not share our food like brothers ought to? Divide our daily bread such that the shares received by each of us be in the same proportion?

But when the glutton heard this heretical question he retorted, Insolent hypocrite, you only seek to rob me of my fair share! Why would I give up what is rightfully mine? I should eat less?! Pharisee! You shall not speak to me again until you have given up all of your belongings and forgone your current share of food. Otherwise you cannot legitimately criticise any aspect of the brilliant system I have set up in your absence. A system that is beyond reproach because it clearly benefits both of us!

#16,

If the fat brother in your story is the socialist, then that sounds about right. Central planning is indeed their thing, while hard work is something that only really appeals to capitalists — and, indeed, is only really possible for the latter, since they still have an incentive to work, and their governments still allow them to, not having forbidden all competition. (Selah.)

Likewise, the self-righteous attitude evinced by that character is par for the course for someone on the radical Left today. “So what if it has a 100% failure rate, and has already killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide? Communism has never really been tried yet. I’m so tired of people like you criticizing it based only on historical and numerical facts! What, emotion isn’t good enough for you?”

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

— Anonymous (cf. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same)

Inverted, however, your analogy falls apart at the outset, and I can’t seem to make any sense of it at all. ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄ So I will charitably assume that my take is the one you intended. In which case, on behalf of the majority here, and the working class everywhere (as opposed to those who lyingly claim to speak for them), I thank you for lending your voice to ours, and making our points for us so effectively. :-)

If moral fiction on this subject is your thing, may I recommend Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Faith of the Fallen, by Terry Goodkind; or perhaps Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand? Personally, I prefer historical accounts, such as The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It’s a bit longwinded, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you. ;-) However, if you’d prefer brevity, it’s hard to top the eloquence of the aforenamed Thomas Sowell — who, apropos of this thread, just today gave Sanders the same treatment on his YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vf0bqdLeqU

Some of the responses about socialism in this thread are both hilarious and ludicrous at the same time. Basically, there are two types of genuine socialists and, in addition, there are other types of people who have purported to be socialists but who are actually something else (e.g. Stalinists, Maoists, Castroites and so on). People on the right of the political spectrum often have no clue at all about any of these differences.

Regarding the two types of genuine socialists - usually they are referred to as reformists and revolutionaries, although they can also be characterised as people who espouse "socialism from above" and other people who espouse "socialism from below". Bernie Sanders is a reformist. His approach is to say to working class people, elect enough socialists like me and we will pass legislation in your interest once we get into Parliament/Congress or wherever i.e. this is "socialism from above" that prioritises the electoral cycle where workers are essentially passive and dependent on the activities of the people they have elected. And reformists always argue that social change will occur incrementally within the existing structures of capitalist society. There will be no social revolution and gradually capitalism will be transformed into capitalism. Jeremy Corbyn takes the same view in the UK and Chavez took the same approach in Venezuela.

The genuine socialists of the second type are the revolutionaries who believe in "socialism from below", reject the analysis of the reformists and emphasise the self-activity and resistance to capitalism (at work, in their community, where electoral activity is not prioriised so much), which they regard as a system of exploitation and oppression. Marxism is the theory of working class self-emancipation. For workers to be truly liberated and free the current system has to be destroyed and a new type of society built from scratch. Trying to reform the system from within is inevitably bound to lead to compromise and eventual failure. Reformists and revolutionaries do often work together in campaigns (e.g. Palestinian solidarity at the moment), but there are also very sharp differences between them.

The third type of people presenting themselves as socialist are those who are really neither reformists or revolutionaries. Their numbers are dwindling now (thankfully) but they can still have an organised presence in politics. These are people who think that Stalin was a good chap (he was a monster who led a counter-revolution in Russia in the 1920s), that China is a communist country (it isn't, but it is ruled by an authoritarian "communist" party that has no communists in it and hasn't done since 1927) or that Cuba is run by communists (it isn't, Castro/Guevara only retrospectively called their society "communist" after overthrowing Batista in 1959 because Stalinist Russia offered them support). There are many other examples I could give e.g. Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea). All these are totalitarian societies with state-directed economies where working class people are exploited just as they are in the USA and Europe.

So all of this is very complex - and it is also very contested among the three basic types of socialists I have briefly described here. And as I say, right wingers are virtually clueless about any of it. As regards a posters comments about socialist housing policy, the main focus would be to build enough good quality housing and communal facilities (canteens, laundries, leisure centres etc) to raise the living standards of all working class people as society transitioned towards socialism. The emphasis would not be on confiscation, although exceptions could be made if certain posters on here insisted on being victims.

@pawnedge said in #17:

If the fat brother in your story is the socialist, then that sounds about right. Central planning is indeed their thing, while hard work is something that only really appeals to capitalists (...)
Inverted, however, your analogy falls apart at the outset, and I can’t seem to make any sense of it at all. (...)

Well that's because you entirely missed the point. Apparently I should have been clearer, my apologies.

Neither brother is a socialist, let alone a communist (terms you seem to use interchangeably for some reason).
How can we tell?
For starters, neither of them calls for the social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. Therefore by definition neither of them can adequately be considered a socialist. Indeed the concept of (private) ownership is not mentioned, let alone questioned or criticised at all.
The starving twin merely asks to fairly share the fruits of his (!) labour. There undeniably is more than enough food for both of them. But dividing it up as before has produced exceedingly harmful inequality (as evidenced by one twin's evident malnutrition). If it had been stated as a demand it would have been far from an unreasonable one. But not even that. It is stated as a question or plea. And yet it is not received well.

Any suggestion that calls overconsumption or harmful inequality into question is perceived by some as a direct attack on their personhood and character. Even if it isn't. The gaunt brother doesn't attack the glutton's character, he doesn't accuse him of greed or callous neglect. Yet the reaction he receives is the same as if he had. It's a defence mechanism:

Never honestly engage with the criticism. Misrepresent it instead to make it appear unreasonable. Use a specious tu quoque argument to discredit the person who dared criticise you and to expose their supposed hypocrisy. Implicitly predicate your acceptance of the criticism on them meeting an entirely unreasonable (better yet, an impossible) standard. Imply that one cannot legitimately criticise X when one is in some inconsequential way still (technically) involved in X. Shift the goalpost whenever necessary.

This tactic is not at all uncommon. It can be observed in all sorts of contexts. To stifle public discourse on an irreproachable dogma some people love to demand that those criticising or questioning it be literal (ascetic) saints. And since nobody is they can dismiss all dissenters as hypocrites without ever having to consider their arguments.
That was the point. To take notice of this bad-faith technique and to illustrate its inherent ridiculousness (despite its effectiveness) by way of an exaggerated and highly simplified scenario.

@Thalassokrator said in #19:

Well that's because you entirely missed the point. Apparently I should have been clearer, my apologies.

Neither brother is a socialist, let alone a communist (terms you seem to use interchangeably for some reason).
How can we tell?
For starters, neither of them calls for the social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. Therefore by definition neither of them can adequately be considered a socialist. Indeed the concept of (private) ownership is not mentioned, let alone questioned or criticised at all.
The starving twin merely asks to fairly share the fruits of his (!) labour. There undeniably is more than enough food for both of them. But dividing it up as before has produced exceedingly harmful inequality (as evidenced by one twin's evident malnutrition). If it had been stated as a demand it would have been far from an unreasonable one. But not even that. It is stated as a question or plea. And yet it is not received well.

Any suggestion that calls overconsumption or harmful inequality into question is perceived by some as a direct attack on their personhood and character. Even if it isn't. The gaunt brother doesn't attack the glutton's character, he doesn't accuse him of greed or callous neglect. Yet the reaction he receives is the same as if he had. It's a defence mechanism:

Never honestly engage with the criticism. Misrepresent it instead to make it appear unreasonable. Use a specious tu quoque argument to discredit the person who dared criticise you and to expose their supposed hypocrisy. Implicitly predicate your acceptance of the criticism on them meeting an entirely unreasonable (better yet, an impossible) standard. Imply that one cannot legitimately criticise X when one is in some inconsequential way still (technically) involved in X. Shift the goalpost whenever necessary.

This tactic is not at all uncommon. It can be observed in all sorts of contexts. To stifle public discourse on an irreproachable dogma some people love to demand that those criticising or questioning it be literal (ascetic) saints. And since nobody is they can dismiss all dissenters as hypocrites without ever having to consider their arguments.
That was the point. To take notice of this bad-faith technique and to illustrate its inherent ridiculousness (despite its effectiveness) by way of an exaggerated and highly simplified scenario.

sniff sniff looks like y'all have OIL! seems like you need some FREEDOM, 'merica yee haw