This phenomena is not new! And socialism has had its fair share of converts straight from the ranks of privilege!

Unfortunately few have made a successful transition, Given they are usually idealists with their heads in the clouds and chock full of unworkable impractical ideas?

For mine, these folk need to learn by walking a mile in the other blokes shoes, rather than fantasizing about it, and coming to the rescue as some kind of white knight mounted on a proverbial white charger?

And when given their head, usually do more harm than good?

Me, I'd recommend a five year stretch of military service and learn how to follow before wanting to lead?

Ours are all too often in the front line in disaster relief? And a really good place for an on the road to Damascus, blinded by the light of truth, conversion?
Alan B.

Thank you, Nicholas, and good luck with your lifelong learning. You are in for many surprises ! We certainly need more thoughtful young people, they're pretty thin on the ground these days.

Hi Alan,

I think you overlook the clear fact that, although Marxian socialism has never worked in practice, it works perfectly well in theory, more or less. This is why it is still a valid Utopian Blueprint, never to be changed by socialists in one word, after 170 years.

But just because of this, don't confuse it with a religion like Islam, since all religions are false while socialist theory is true.

The problem is not socialism but dissidents' objections to it, which have to be rooted out in order to keep the Blueprint secure. The leadership may modify small parts of the Blueprint temporarily, for reasons which may be far too complex for ordinary people, the workers and peasants in whose name they rule, to understand, but this is merely to strengthen the validity of the Blueprint.

Only dissidents would disagree, which is why they regrettably may need to be transferred. In any case, they're probably foreign agents, bent on inflicting fascism on the masses, and the protection of the masses is a socialist's first priority.

I hope this clears that up :)

Cheers,

Joe

No it doesn't Joe. Moreover, I've never been an advocate of marxist socialism!

Albeit, I'm a fan of successful democratic socialism. With examples that include Singapore to Scandinavia. Even communism, a failed ideology, absolutely needed gulags and the unpaid slave labor they created to survive.

Even dirt poor communist China needed to embrace free market economic paradigms to lift billions of folk out of endemic generational poverty! But had the sense to retain their banks and most energy delivery in pragmatic public ownership?

Why extreme exploitive capitalism needed slave wages and quite massive exploitation to move wealth directly up to the top, to support an equally disgraced trickle down greed is good theology and its God mannon!

And underpinned as failed economic theory by the basic wage remaining unchanged for around thirty years, all while the infrastructure created by the application of keynesianism, with its reported post war period of unprecedented prosperity, was allowed to degrade for the fifty odd years that were marked by the roll back of keynesianism! With the reapplication of the trickle down theory and concentration of finite wealth into fewer and fewer hands; that created the great depression and the latter great recession.

I was noting in my misunderstood and misrepresented remarks just how often the kids that grow up in comparative wealth and privilege are attracted to socialism as phenomena?

And therefore, why not extend that to kids growing up in repressive authoritative households being attracted to kindness? I mean every boy and his dog knows that we get the best results from our domestic animals or in child raising by the application of kindness and reward!

So why bother with any of the other stuff, particularly that that just hasn't stood the test of time?
Alan B.

Sorry, Alan, I'll give up satire, irony and sarcasm from now on: I'm risking severe fines.

Pretty much everything you say here is spot-on. I'm not even so sure about democratic socialism, if that's not an oxymoron. Fully-developed democracy maybe ?

Having knocked around Indigenous affairs for fifty-odd years, I've learnt some of the lessons of 'sharing' - you do the work, others share in the product. No, never again. I'm just re-Indexing the journals of the missionary who set up my wife's community, and he records how one bloke (my wife's great-grandfather actually), a really hard worker, took out a lease of land, cleared it, ploughed it, sowed it, etc., reaped it, sold the crop and was cleaned out three years in a row within days each time by relatives he didn't know existed. He gave it up after that. That's how 'sharing' goes.

Everybody who can, should do their 'share' of work, nobody should bot on anybody else. To me, that's full democracy in the workplace, and that's as far as it should go. Everybody should be a lifter, nobody should be a leaner. If that's some form of socialism, then I'll cautiously vote for it, but no more than that: no special class of people who know how to implement the Grand Plan better - they're usually a just a smart version of leaners, utterly superfluous.

Cheers,

Joe

The single greatest source of welfare payments in history is the US government, which collectively hands over more than a trillion dollars per year. It's able to do so because it has access to that kind of money, and it has access to that kind of money because it fosters and maintains a capitalist system which is, generally speaking, very good at getting things that people want into the hands of the people who want them most.

Australia's annual welfare bill is 'only' $100 billion or so; but, again, this is made possible by providing a way in which people can become so affluent that some of us can part with hundreds of dollars in taxes every week and barely miss it.

The point that socialism misses is a very simple one; provide people with abundance, and most of them will be willing to give some of it away. Provide them with nothing, and they will have nothing to give.

The trouble with most systems of running societies, is that you cant take the human
perchant for "Snouts In the aTrough", out of those that have the key to the economic treasure box.

Be they communist,capitalist,dictatorship or religious dictatorship.
They all end up feathering their own nest at the expense of the people

Hi Cherful,

170 years ago, the French political commentator de Tocqueville wrote something along the lines that 'democracy is a system in which people vote themselves the keys to the Treasury'.

Given the lavish promises of all major parties in the lead-up to our election, one suspects that party leaders know this in their bones. My vote may well go to the party which resists this self-serving most and promises least. The Coalition's promises are up around $ 4 billion, but the Greens' promises are up around $ 53 billion already. Bye bye.

Cheers,

Joe

I certainly agree with you about the Greens Joe

They are dangerous zealots to my way of thinking

Hi Cherful,

The power of powerlessness ? The Greens will never form government in their own right, so they can promise the earth, and sink the boot into all and sundry for their callousness etc.

On socialism, you may remember Norman Lindsay's Magic Pudding - not just for the pudding but for an illustration right at the back of the book, of Benjamin Brandysnap toiling away down in the garden, growing the vegetables to accompany the pudding, while Bunyip Bluegum and Sam Sawnoff et al. were up in the tree-house having a good time. Maybe that was Lindsay's take on socialism, but it's just as likely, unintentionally, to depict the division of labour in all elite societies - some rule, some labour.

Elitism and socialism - who would have thought they had so much in common ?

Cheers,

Joe