Anti-Anti-Communism?

[Bomb#20]

Right wingers have won the argument by defining any type of government safety net as socialism.

Where are you getting that? In the first place, what makes you perceive right wingers to have won the argument? The government safety net grows and grows. We have a Republican president, House, Senate, and SCOTUS, and they were unable to even "repeal and replace" the ACA, let alone repeal and not replace it. Judging by concrete results they appear to have lost the argument.

And in the second place, what makes you perceive primarily right wingers to be the ones who defined any type of government safety net as socialism? Left wingers do that constantly. The leftists who wrote the OP article wrote "labour supporters and social liberals who desire an expanded role for the state hope to save the democratic socialist baby from the authoritarian bathwater", calling a safety net a socialist baby. Sanders and Corbyn proudly call themselves socialists; right wingers didn't make them do that. And left wingers have a clearer motive for fudging the definition than right wingers have. They know how popular a safety net is. The ones who actually want collective ownership of the means of production stand to get their wish if by using the same name for both they can get the public to equate the two. Right wingers who call Social Security and Medicare "socialism" are shooting themselves in the foot. It doesn't make Social Security and Medicare less popular; it makes socialism more popular.

How can anyone claim that the right hasn't won? They control every branch of government without having a majority. In a democracy, that's an incredible feat.

No it isn't. In the first place, the Democrats had three branches as recently as 2011 (and it's not as though the SCOTUS has been in the business of declaring safety nets unconstitutional.) Control naturally goes back and forth as the electorate gets fed up with whoever is in power. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

In the second place, this is a normal country, not Australia. We don't make people vote. Republicans turn out more.

And in the third place, just like most democracies, we have antiquated geographical districts, based on the deranged theory that you have to be represented by the same guy as your neighbor, a notion derived from 18th-century communication technology and the fact that most of the legislators it would take to fix the idiocy benefited from it, so we're stuck with it, which means voter distribution matters. Democrats self-segregate with their own party more than Republicans do.

All these phenomena are currently helping Republicans; none of them have anything to do with winning arguments.

Sure the people are moving left in some areas: gay rights, health care, and etc. But we are moving right in others: the environment, trade, business, and etc.

But those aren't the government safety net. The right winning an argument against the environment because people would rather have jobs than be green doesn't mean you're winning an argument against a safety net -- to most people a job is a safety net. (And trade shouldn't even be on your list, because it doesn't have a direction that's moving right or moving left. Protectionism isn't a right-left issue; it's a which-lobby-are-legislators-selling-us-out-for-this-week issue.)

To be honest, I don't know why Bernie conflates socialism with increasing safety net. But clearly the right starting calling anything government related (welfare, food stamps, environmental protection, and etc.) as socialism.

But just as clearly the left is doing the same thing. If you can find reliable statistics on which side does it more, share. Around here I see it a heck of a lot more from the left than from the right, but of course TFT is a leftist bubble so that's pretty much inevitable.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Bernie and right wingers do it for exactly the same reason: because it's rhetoric that goes over well when you're preaching to the choir, and wingnuts on both sides mostly surround themselves with a choir of the like-minded.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

The primary difference between Socialism and Capitalism is who owns the means of production. In a socialistic system, the means of production (commerce and industry) are controlled either by the local collective or the government. In a capitalist system, they are owned by the private sector. I would define safety net as welfare, SSN, government regulation, headstart, housing assistance, and etc. There is no reason why a capitalist system can't have a robust safety net (ie: Canada and Europe).

The thing is the leftists want to offload the safety net onto the business world in the illusion that that makes the costs go away. In reality, this actually increases the costs because they aren't properly accounted for and because it's a less efficient means of determining who needs the help.

I am not opposed to a social safety net but I'm very opposed to the leftist way of doing it. When you have off-the-books accounting the costs are higher than if you actually pay attention to them.

We don't do a good job of it, either, with a gazilllion different welfare programs.

There should be one welfare program that provides various types of help. One approval process, one place to check for fraud, not a bunch of hands that don't know what each other is doing.

Yes, and they should stop forcing and relying on individual companies to do stuff for employees that have nothing to do with work.

Universal Single Player Healthcare should be in, not Obama care that lines the pockets of insurance companies and forces employers to fund them.

Universal Basic Income should exist, and not a minimum wage forcing employers to fund welfare.

The free market does work and is a good ideology to have, so long as it is free competition without monopoly and so long as the parts of society that need help get help, from the society at large. Taxes, as unpopular as they may be, are a better answer. Tax the rich companies rather than forcing them to fund health care and minimum wage. Same goes for those cases Derec has pointed out where random guy who shares rent and housing with single mom gets saddled with having to pay child support despite never stating his intention to do so. They do that to avoid the rest of us paying our fair share into the system to help those who need it. It is unjust.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The brutal minority in a system of compulsorily employee-owned companies is the guys compelling employee-ownership. Socialism may well start out without a brutal minority, because a majority like the idea of their rich boss's company being taken away from him and handed over to them. But, as noted, that changes them from workers into capitalists. And when the socialist rulers of the new society figure this out -- when they realize the workers at the prosperous companies are selfishly enriching themselves while workers at marginal companies are worse off than before the confiscations -- the rulers begin a new round of confiscations, and appoint representatives of "the workers" to go to the prosperous companies and give orders to the workers. That doesn't go over too well with the majority who were told they were going to be rid of bosses and find they have them again. So the ruling minority resort to brutality to get their way.

Yeah, "socialism" is really just changing bosses, not getting rid of them. Furthermore, it's changing bosses who were picked for their ability to run companies for bosses picked due to popularity. It should be obvious that this makes things worse.