If you were a socialist....

If you actually knew anything about communism and socialism, you'd know that most don't place much importance on political activity at all. So no, that's not what they'd do.

If it's entertaining for you though, please continue.

Does a Master's in Russian and East European Studies, and PhD. classes in Marx and Marxism as well as Communist and Post-Communist Politics qualify me to know anything about it?

P.S. Your statement is nonsensical and in no way relates to the article.

thorough and thoughtful. Brilliant! Thank you.

"Nonsensical" and nonsequitur are Ryan's drive-by modus operandi. Rather than respond, it may be wiser to just leave him with the sound of one hand clapping.

I just want Ryan to engage me on an intellectual level, and not argue simply that I do not understand socialism. I understand socialism perfectly fine. I just happen to have concluded after studying socialism and communism, in doctrine and in practice, that it is a hopelessly naive and exceedingly dangerous ideology.

Some people who believe in the abolition of private property and/or capital may have the best of intentions. My advice to them is that they re-examine the views of Rousseau and compare them to say, Bastiat's in "The Laws," for starters (if they haven't read Bastiat). If Bastiat wasn't sufficiently persuasive, one could also read Ludwig von Mises' analysis of socialism in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, or Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

I also don't believe in "the noble lie," as Plato contemplated in The Republic. I prefer Vaclav Havel's argument to "live in truth." Truth is not conjecture, or opinion. It is what it is, and we can approach the truth or reject it. It exists independently of our minds, but it does not "transcend it" as Kant argued.

One anecdote that shows that logic can be verified by experience is the recent photograph of a chain molecule. Chemists have been modeling molecules since at least Mendeleev and Lavoisier. Their minds were able to receive truth, interpret it, and model it in a useful manner. They did not say that those who did not agree with them had a "false consciousness" and had to be forced to believe in it. Chemists and physicists just worked tirelessly to prove it.

Simply stated, if you are a socialist, prove that if you bring the world to material equality then the state will wither away and we will live in eternal bliss and harmony. Provide evidence. There are volumes full of evidence to the contrary; and plenty of victims who bear witness from their graves to the false promises of socialism. It is not that socialism is evil, it is that the system is untrue, and the people who attempt to implement it are fallible.

...on political activity..."

Really? Yo're this friggin' ignorant? You ever find it odd that all, ALL, of the ruling class in the old Soviet were members of "The Party".

They placed high importance on participation in political activity, they made it known which activities would be tolerated. All others were fatal.

Ryan, you're such a wonderful tool. They use you and make you love it. Even a prostitute has to pretend, you honestly enjoy it.

what's wrong is wrong. Fancy words, aside, this post in indistinguishable from one of Hannity's rants. Boy that must make you feel good.

"also don't believe in "the noble lie," as Plato contemplated in The Republic. "

Oh please, you bend over backwards to protect the Republicans as they are constantly caught lying.

"Simply stated, if you are a socialist, prove that if you bring the world to material equality then the state will wither away and we will live in eternal bliss and harmony. Provide evidence. There are volumes full of evidence to the contrary; and plenty of victims who bear witness from their graves to the false promises of socialism. It is not that socialism is evil, it is that the system is untrue, and the people who attempt to implement it are fallible."

It's a shame you learned so little from all of those advanced classes. You cannot even distinguish between "communism," (and I'm going to be generous here and assume that you are using it as a synonym for "socialism"), and "state capitalism." Isn't it the fundamental assumption that the means of production must be brought under collective control? "Collective", as I'm sure you know, does not mean "owned by the Communist party." Heck, look at the word: "socialism." What is social about a bureaucracy controlling things?

I do not feel obliged to prove anything when the capitalists have been unable to prove core tenets of their religion for over 300 years now. The free market does not lead to anything but a quick appropriation by a small few of the resources of a community, and then to an endless series of painful boom-bust cycles, which hurt the poor much more than the ones who caused them, and which furthermore allow them to continue their accumulation on the cheap.

"Provide evidence. There are volumes full of evidence to the contrary; and plenty of victims who bear witness from their graves to the false promises of socialism."

Two things. Actually, more. First of all, there is not even one "socialist" nation that was left alone to develop as it would, but all have been subject to constant harassment and sabotage by capitalist countries from the very beginning (so much for capitalism being peaceful, if you were still deluded enough to think it was). Moreoever, when properly socialist principles have been adhered to, the results are impressive. Look at the accomplishments of the Spanish Anarchists in that country's civil war, before they were defeated. Look at the Mondragon Cooperatives.

Simply adding up deaths due to an economic system (even when you're talking about the right economic system) can't have any merit, as you'd have a very difficult time arguing capitalism's merits if you went down that road.

5-10 Million Native Americans Killed by Capitalist & Expansionist Europeans during the invasion of the Americas,
8 Million Killed by King Leopold with the help of Capitalist Enterprise in the Congo,
15 Million slaughtered in the Capitalist reordering of WWII,
55 Million killed in the Nationalist Imperialist invasion of Europe by Hitler & the resulting WWII,
3 Million killed by the Capitalist U.S. led U.N. “police action” in Korea to stop the North from repatriating their country,
3.5 Million killed by Capitalist U.S. in Vietnam,

Etc. So quit your moralistic posturing.

I knew that socialists were intellectually bankrupt repeaters of obsolete dogma, but I did not expect it to be so blatant from an actual flesh and blood human being like you Ryan.

Why are you so ideologically committed to communism? Is it because you think that communists are some sort of misunderstood intellectual vanguard? They are not, let me assure you.

Communists are paranoiacs and totalitarians by nature. They take any evidence of imperfection in a world of imperfect human beings as an excuse for the state, which is, by definition, a necessarily coercive and ultimately violent institution, to seize control of the means of production, all in the supposed name of the proletariat (I am speaking here only of Marxist-Leninism, since this is the basic model for socialist revolutions effecting polities that last more than a few months historically; actual socialist revolutions such as that of the Paris Commune that Marx drew inspiration from collapsed in ignominy and dysfunction within weeks); and then after seizing control, surprise! surprise! the state never relinquishes control and instead uses the means of production for enhanced police powers; an elaborate propaganda organ; and a war machine.

There is a reason that communism never is what it even purports to be. I can argue consistently that socialism, communism, STATE CAPITALISM, and fascism are all in the same spectrum of state-led collectivism, employing only different tactics on how to control society. Socialism of any lasting kind, has never existed. Communism, of any kind, has never existed. This is not because of some nebulous saboteurs; even perfectly isolated socialist (or "property-less" - Marx's most succinct definition of socialism was the "abolition of property") communities like Winthrop's Plymouth Plantation deteriorated into social conflict and starvation within months. Private property was instituted and viola! problem solved. The people were able to produce and flourish.

There is something missing in your analysis of the last several hundred years. Since the Enlightenment, the state has wanted to regain control over the economy that it lost with the rising of capitalism. Capitalism broke people free from feudal bondage, and allowed them to travel the world in search of wealth; to trade labor for the means to live and eat; ultimately, it provided opportunity given hard work and ingenuity. The state uses communists to foment opposition to private property and capital, and then the state seizes property and capital to build clientelistic networks of dependecy on the state. [Continued]

The state then is back in business. The limits of its powers are unchecked by any notion of "rights" as distinct from the collective; the public good being what the leaders define; this is the perfect paradise of a self-sustaining oligarchy. [...]

As for the track record of genocide and mass murder concerning capitalist and state-led collectivist models such as the Stalinist, the Maoist, National Socialist (who were not free market capitalists and in no wise respected private property or other individual rights), Khmer, or otherwise, it is amazing you would even bring up this point. Even if I allowed you your quite specious numbers that you levy against capitalist regimes, you will find it is dwarfed by the state-led collectivist regimes of the world by at least a factor of ten, if not more.

In addition, it is a sign of economic illiteracy and incomprehension of market principles to pin every atrocity of the last five thousand years on capitalism. Capitalism is simply a means of facilitating the exchange of goods. It is not a political system, an ideology, and certainly it is not the bogeyman for everything around you. Simply put, capitalism is not a system at all in the strictest sense; and in fact, this is what statists hate about it.

Capitalism relies on an infinite number of fairly unpredictable individual decisions. What is referred to as "capitalism" is really a coinage of Marx, an empty vessel if you will, to pour in all sorts of sociological musings, such as "alienation." It is ironic that the most alienated societies in the world, by nearly every social science measure, are those of former Soviet republics.

The "dirty hands" argument that we have been living in a capitalist world for 300 years simply does not hold water.

Firstly, "capitalism" (even to grant you the paranoia-inducing Marxist term) assumes a number of prerequisites, including: private property rights, which are not only inviolable by the state, but also actively protected by the state; the individual right to be secure in one's person and also with respect to one's non-coercive actions; and the ability of a person to actually own his own capital (as opposed to it being owned by the state, which is an aspect of state capitalism properly speaking).

If you examine the historical record, an argument that the majority of even European states even approximate this capitalist ideal is risible at best. On the contrary, the history of the world is marked by encroaching statism at every turn, and the subversion of free market capitalism that is fascism.

When you are chanting your "hope and change" slogans at your next anti-capitalist rally, consider if the current administration, who are commonly argued to be socialist or Marxist (including by me, according to my own independent research, which you completely failed to engage; incidentally, I loathe the vapid social conservative Sean Hannity and do not listen to him), is actually FASCIST. You may learn unexpectedly that I agree with the uber-liberal NPR, which called Obama a "fascist," and I detest it every much as they do but for different reasons. The difference is that I see the threat of fascism as an encroachment of liberty and freedom for each to live in the real world; socialists view fascism as a threat to their fantasies of perfect leisure, perfect equality, perfect harmony, in perfect perpetual sustenance forever and ever. Amen.

The current administration is socialist in packaging, fascist in form.

Socialism is a veneer for fascism. It really is that simple. If you are not able to examine the track record and test this hypothesis, then question if you are actually an intellectual or a regurgitator of pre-digested opinions. This is an original hypothesis, incidentally, as far as I am aware. I have never heard anyone in any college argue it, nor any capitalist stick it into my head using their "false consciousness" machines.

Well ok then....Go Kyle!!! You said it best.
I don't have a Phd., masters, or any of that jazz, but what I DO know is it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that anything other than capitalism offers true freedom to any society. But as you point out, it only works in a society that understands we ALL are in it together, or frankly put, we HAVE to pull our own weight. Now remember Acorn and all these others groups who were diviservely placed there to specifically crash the system and overthrow the govt.? Well wouldn't you say it was there clever but evil scam that is making this countrycrumble? Not Capitalism persay. Again, people see the outcome but don't pick up on the reasons that are so plainly told to them why. The socialist people in there right now are telling you they did it and why. Capitalism didn't fail. The people did. Sorry Kyle....just using laymans terms. lol Common Sense Rules!!! That's what's missing in our country today, good ole' common sense.

Oops!! I meant anything OTHER than capitalism...

Oops...I did it again, What I MEANT TO SAY IS. ONLY CAPITALISM OFFERS TRUE FREEDOM!!!! THERE....I think I got it now...sorry....it's late.

Common Sense is sorely needed. I am with you all the way on that. Take care, Kyle