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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (92548)	10/30/2008 12:24:08 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541777

Lane3; Your image of a marxist and socialist differ greatly from mine. I am not afriad of socialism at all - and in fact envy some of its better aspects. Perhaps it is that I have traveled through socialistic countries and see their life as better than ours. The most socialistic of countries have higher earnings and better quality of life than Americans - not so marxist countries. Moves towards Marxism have failed miserably. A map of Marxist States; en.wikipedia.org And from your link; "Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks. So the republicans have pushed the banks to become partially socialistic and will follow that with socialism for the auto companies - all the while telling voters of the evils of Obama's socialism. Palin uses the government ownership of land to make payments to the collective. .....What Obama is proposing is a fair tax - how this story got turned on its head is rather strange. Since the "socialism" argument fails under scrutiny, DeLay moves the hate notch up and calls Obama a "radical marxist". Find me an article proposing marxism for Americans from mainstream politicians and I may buy your argument that most people might fear marxism less than socialism - until then I believe your argument fails. Did you know we have a democratic socialist in the Senate? Not a closest socialist, but a freely elected open socialist. I suspect a marxist running for the senate would be a joke. steve

To: Lane3 who wrote (92548)	10/31/2008 4:37:53 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541777

>>Wiki doesn't seem to think that revolution is essential. Evolution has such inevitability to it that revolution hardly seems necessary.<< Karen - Didn't Marx see the overthrow of the ruling class by the proletariat as an historical inevitability? Or was that Lenin? - Allen

To: Lane3 who wrote (92548)	10/31/2008 1:36:49 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541777

I think Marxist has more stigma. It doesn't get used as often as a slur because it is seen as more extreme and thus less believably in most cases. But your probably technically right that since its not very specific it could apply to more people in terms of the formal definition. OTOH having the government control much of the economy without actually owning it, through taxes and regulations, or through other methods, esp. when performed by one seen as being on the left (not necessarily to be far left), typically gets called socialist. While marxist typically only gets applied to those supporting rather extreme socialism or communism.