Many socialist make their money from capitalism and then adopt a new conscience which insist others don't follow their own hypocrisy. They then try and legislate for others not to reach their own living standards achieved by capitalist made money.

The USSR and other "communist" countries were nothing more than state capitalism. Instead of bosses and investors owning the factories etc the government did. People were certainly no better off than people in capitalist countries. Not much different to a dictatorship actually.

Socialism is generally against the private ownership of the means of production. A quote I like about socialism (cant remember where from)
"the watch on your arm belongs to you: the watch factory belongs to the people.

Capitalism is failing because of its inherent exploitative and unfair nature and will always revert to the rich getting richer and more and more monopoly corporations with total power over their employees and many times their customers.

Socialists are also divided and subject to infighting. Certain groups of socialists sadly seem to hate other socialists more than they hate capitalists. Some say we should keep the current system minus some of the excesses. The Scandinavians like this kind of socialism. Other groups want revolution and headchopping. Others still believe in a slow and steady progression towards socialism sometimes with "direct action" but not rebellion.

Socialism is a confused and discredited (in the minds of the public) system that needs a new name and a modern update. More talk about equality of opportunity, the benefits of socialised medicine, education and community welfare and less talk of workers, factories and class struggle. All rather irrelevant in the modern age.

davidf,

"Tribal societies have been on earth as long as we have and have developed customs and rituals that it is reasonable to assume are as different from their ancestors as ours are from our ancestors."

I would have thought that our own ancestors were actually tribal societies.

Wobbles wrote: "I would have thought that our own ancestors were actually tribal societies."

Dear Wobbles,

That was the point of my remark. We cannot make judgments about our tribal ancestors by examining the tribal societies of today. Modern tribal societies and ourselves both have tribal ancestors. They are different from their tribal ancestors, and we cannot assume they are like our tribal ancestors.

Socialism is like fascism. It is where a small group - the intellectual elite - think they know whats best for the masses. They ignore evolutionary processes and human behavior. Free markets, as opposed to our present corrupt system, allows groups to develop and evolve resulting in ideas that can never be conjured up by one so called elite group.

Thus socialism/fascism is a cancer and it must be defeated at all costs

In my view, socialism is a broader issue, it is not just about economics, it is about defining what is the "unit of life".

Bees and ants have no life of their own - they live for their hive. So are the cells of our body: each contributes the maximum they can for the larger whole, while the larger body makes every effort to give them what they need, materially.

In between one can finds the nuclear family, the extended family, the tribe, the club, etc.

So, socialism is the belief (and its enforcement) that our life as individual humans is undeserving unless it is combined and coordinated with a very large number of people (called "society"), or in one extreme, even all of them.

Although often the case, socialism is not necessarily concerned with distribution of wealth: the Nazis for example called themselves "national-socialist", and so were the Japanese very coordinated and controlled, and so are the Chinese today, even while they are allowed to become very rich (and very poor) and pay very little taxes.

The link between socialism and poverty is due to the fact that coordination on a large scale, while perfect for bees, ants and the cells of our body, is unnatural for humans and therefore consumes so much energy that not much is left. This is besides the feeling of helplessness apathy and despair for anyone who believes that they deserve to have a life of their own. Even when material poverty is not evident, emotional and spiritual poverty are common.