Thread: Socialism Works!

Originally Posted by honedright

I would greatly appreciate it if you could find, and then present, for me, and anyone else interested, a non-biased article. It would be interesting to read.

But that is the problem a little, socialism is such a broad term that includes communists, social anarchists, social democrats etc that do not really share many views. It would be better if we would take a look at the specific branch within the broad term 'socialism'. I'm not here to defend communism or any other of the more extreme forms of socialism. But take a look at the history of social democratic countries like Sweden for example and see what it has achieved. It brought Sweden from poverty to having one of the highest living standards in the world. Anyway this gives a better picture of the phenomenon Social democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ps. I'm not a socialist myself..but I do sympathize with some of its policies. I'd like to mix socialism, liberalism and conservatism more and create Rawazism
Anyway my point is: even though I'm no socialist I will speakout when it is being subject to criticism that I do not agree with, the same I do with Islam, Christianity etc.

Anyway I hope this discussion leads to a clearer and more diversified view of what 'socialism' is.

Thank you Rawaz, I will read the article.

Originally Posted by 0livia

Here you can read the
German SPD Programme in english.

And here is the Swedish equivalent http://www.socialdemokraterna.se/upl...am_english.pdf

Oh I just saw this..looks good it is co-written by the former premier minister Ingvar Karlsson http://www.socialdemokraterna.se/upl...lDemocracy.pdf

Well Rawaz, there is a lot to read and digest. And it will take some time for me to ingest it all. But, from what I have read so far, I want to make one point before it escapes me and it is this:

It is a sociological fact that there is a limited amount of resources in the world.

Either everyone will have an equally microscopic share, and therefore be equally impoverished, or some will have more and some will have less. And some will have none.

It seems from what I have read so far that one of the basic principals of democratic socialism is fairness.

One would say that it is unfair for some to have, while others do not. But is it more fair for all to equally have next to nothing?

I'm not done. As I said, there is more to read and comprehend.

Actually some people believe that there is more than enough resources to go around, just because those were all put in place by God for His creation. There's a famous story Jesus tells about the birds and the flowers not worrying for their provision....

I have not seen this quantified, so I don't have an opinion whether it is true or false.

The fact is that currently the number of people living in extreme poverty exceeds the number of those living in excess by orders of magnitude. Some people think this is fair, others think it isn't.

Originally Posted by honedright

It is a sociological fact that there is a limited amount of resources in the world.

That's just it you see. Our current economy is run on debt. It would be just as easy to create abundance, really yes it would, and for everyone to have more than on average they do now! This can be done, but it robs those in positions of power and money of, well, power and money, so the resistance is fierce.

X

Geez, communism being a form of socialism? This discussion is heading south rapidly, like everything related to socialism!

Originally Posted by xman

That's just it you see. Our current economy is run on debt. It would be just as easy to create abundance, really yes it would, and for everyone to have more than on average they do now! This can be done, but it robs those in positions of power and money of, well, power and money, so the resistance is fierce.

X

Good point! And what country has created the most abundance of any other in history?

The United States through a free market capitalist economy.

Name one socialist economy which has produced more and provided more for the world than the U.S. to this point in time.

Originally Posted by gugi

I have not seen this quantified, so I don't have an opinion whether it is true or false

Unless we are importing from another planet I think it's true. And world population is growing. The equal slices of pie are getting smaller and smaller.