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stella41b -> RE: the new socialism (2/8/2010 3:07:45 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy
So how come so many of our fellow posters clearly have no idea what socialism actually means? Is it a failure of the US education system? Or a reflection of a terminally dishonest political system? Or is it wilful ignorance? Or something else?
I suppose I can come back on this and offer something more. I missed much of the demise of Eastern European '-ism' (whether it be communism, socialism, or state capitalism, debatable which highlights what Needtouseyou says above) but I sure caught the early attempts at capitalism or the free market economy in Eastern Europe, primarily in Poland but also during spells spent in the former Soviet Union.
There's a kind of polarity here which I for one find amusing. Now let's imagine that we are all Russians and Ukrainians and philosophy is asking 'what is capitalism?' and I would put good money on there being just as many misconceptions and misunderstandings as our American friends misunderstand socialism.
This explains the sudden mushrooming of the Russian mafia and the mass exodus of Russian businessmen and the Russian middle-class anywhere but the former Soviet Union. Indeed to a lot of say Russians working in a meat factory who are paid not in money but sausages there's little difference between capitalists and organized criminals. Can you imagine working in a meat factory for equal to your own body weight in sausages every month?
Not being paid money for your work in some industries wasn't the exception, but the rule, and this explains why, in street markets everywhere from India and Pakistan right through to cities in Germany you could normally find plenty of traders from the former Soviet Union selling everything from sausages, towels, clothes, shoes right through to guns, smuggled cigarettes, smuggled alcohol and carpets.
This explains why one of the biggest sports stadiums in Warsaw has never seen any sporting events, but became Jarmark Europa, Europe's biggest street bazaar with literally thousands of stalls where you can buy anything and everything - including guns, fake passports, fake visas, slaves, whatever your heart desired. Similar street markets mushroomed right through Eastern Europe around railway stations, sports stadiums, anywhere where people gathered. Even today all the major railway stations throughout Poland also thrive as shopping malls. You might not be able to buy guns, fake passports, but you can usually buy clothes, shoes, even carpets whilst on your way to catch a train.
This also explains why socialism, and communism for that matter, was never really ever defeated. Not at all. The governments might call themselves post-communist, but in the hearts and minds of millions of ordinary people from Magdeburg in Germany to the eastern shores of Russia and the Kamchatskaya Peninsula communism lives on and will always be to them the better system.
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