Conservatives take note: that is a socialist. As opposed to, say, Barack Obama.
No, actually it isn’t. I have no idea why this is a ‘socialist’ party. There’s nothing about socialism that says you cannot have authority figures, or militaries, or politicians, or judges.
This person’s ‘socialism’ is closer to anarchism, except that the whole shebang gets kicked off with a mighty bloodbath as all the people who currently own things have it taken from them by force. Then I guess it’s all just left up for grabs, and the mob gets to divvy it up as best they can. And you just know THAT will be a peaceful process, because whenever governments and the rule of law have broken down in the past, the result has been a pastoral existence marked by a complete lack of scarcity and the automatic fulfilling of everyone’s needs.
That’s not socialism - it’s Fantasy Island.
I guess you would know. Better than the actual socialist party comrade psychonaut belongs to, which has been hopelessly confused for the last century.
Yes to both. There are several reasons why socialists argue against the death penalty and why we work to abolish it now under capitalism and keep it abolished under socialism: [ul]
[li]inconsistent application (disproportionately targeting the poor and minorities)[/li][li]not a deterrent, otherwise Death Row wouldn’t keep increasing[/li][li]too much margin for error to be correctable (you execute an innocent person, you can’t bring them back)[/li][li]a whole heap of evidence that those who are executed suffer horribly because of botched procedures run by untrained, inexperienced, and/or unqualified personnel.[/ul][/li][quote]
No true socialist would ever be in favour of the death penalty?
[/quote]
Take the kilt off your strawman; he looks ridiculous in it. This is not a case of “no true Scotsman” circular reasoning; as I’ve listed above there are definite, logical reasons for opposing the death penalty and someone who rejects those reasons (and, likely, opposition to the death penalty) has no business wearing the label ‘socialist’.
Firstly, self-description does not in any way imply correspondence to reality. I could describe myself as a three-headed purple Martian from the north face of Olympus Mons but there’s too much incontrovertible evidence against that. Similarly any country that describes itself as socialist should not have its statements taken at face value. In fact any country that claims it is socialist today, or did so before 1991, fails several key litmus tests (with one notable but all-too-brief exception). With that in mind, the phrase “outside capitalist countries” becomes more or less moot since no such place exists.
That all having been said, the answer is yes - revolutionary Russia did have, and did use, the death penalty. But there are some very important caveats to this:[ul]
[li]It was considered a policy and instrument of war, and not of criminal prosecution.[/li][li]It was never intended to be a permanent policy - once the war was over and (as was hoped) the revolution had spread to Europe at the least, the need for such a policy would disappear.[/li][li]It was not used against the general Russian prison population, only in circumstances where the action could be viewed as an act of war against the revolutionary government (Fanya Kaplan, for example).[/li][/ul]
Safe, legal, free, and on demand.
Safe, legal, and with programs to help break dependency, for starters.
Hash out the answers with argument and debate now, try to implement the solutions under the current circumstances through political action (and I don’t mean just elections), work to implement the solutions after the revolution.
Not sure I’d agree completely with your phrasing, but that’s the gist of it, yes. Once society has hit on solutions that work, the problems no longer have any relevance.
The fact that a group has been around for a long time, doesn’t mean they can’t be self delusional - or full of shit.
…And which apparently has a platform that does not remotely represent the majority of political parties on this planet that also called themselves Socialist. Why does this particular party get to be the one true Scotsman?
Thank you for taking part in the democratic process and having the courage to stand up and be counted.
Rather than issues of policy, I’ll ask what do you think of the election system?
Anarchist here, and I disagree. It is possible to run smaller collectives on anarchist principles first. Anarchism is kind of like atheism in a religious context - it’s a stance of denial, not an opposing structure.
Having said that, I, too, believe worldwide anarchism will come suddenly, in the future. But a very far future. A post-human future.
Precedent? Ideological purity?
I think it’s pretty evident that the world/your party will never get anywhere near its goal - are you in agreement with that?
First, how does that make you feel? Your ideology is utterly unrealistic, so why bother with it - why not work with something that could possibly have a pragmatic effect?
Secondly, if you are completely behind the goals of the organisation, why are you aiming to participate in a parliament that is anathema to those goals?
Thirdly, do you actually think a) anyone from your party could ever be elected, and b) your party could influence anything at all in the European parliament? Or would you be aiming to work with other similar parties to influence the parliament towards minor ‘reforms’? (If the latter, surely that’s your party being pragmatic in the face of an utterly unrealistic goal - so I ask again, why not work with a party that could possibly have a pragmatic effect?)
You speak about “power” as if it’s some sort of physical object just lying there waiting for someone to take it. Political power doesn’t work that way; you need people willing to enforce it. You can’t just one day proclaim yourself emperor of the world and expect anyone to take you seriously and support you. This is just as true today as it would be in socialism. In socialism, however, there would be no incentive for anyone to seek dictatorial power in the first place. In a post-scarcity economy (which, incidentally, the technological developments of capitalism have made possible) with free access to goods and services, there is simply no benefit of consuming more than you need. What would this hypothetical usurper do with her power that she couldn’t already do in socialism? She certainly wouldn’t be any better off materially.
A socialist MEP would be sent as a delegate of the Party, not as one of its leaders. That is, it would be the Party membership, not the MEPs, which set policy and decide how the MEP should act and vote. Because we do not believe it is possible to reform capitalism into socialism, and because our sole object is the establishment of socialism, a socialist MEP would not propose or help draft legislation. They could, however, vote for or against bills if the Party membership determined them to be particularly advantageous or disadvantageous to the working class in general. For example, if some MEP introduced some bill raising the minimum wage, it would be rather ridiculous for socialist MEPs not to vote in favour of them.
Apart from that, a socialist MEP’s time would be spent using whatever resources are available to them to propagate the case for socialism, and for observing and passing on to the Party and the public at large what the government is doing to the working class.
The second half of a recent article in our journal, the Socialist Standard, discusses the role of a socialist MP: “A so-called socialist in Parliament”.
If your objectives require a post-scarcity economy, what do we need you for? The benefits you require come from having a post-scarcity economy, not from having a socialist at the helm.
See, I read this post and immediately think “sunshine fairyland” because people just do not work this way. Period. In small groups, yes. But if you get more than 100 people together and try to implement anything like this without some sort of government to enforce individual rights, your experiment will end with one “boss” and 99 subjects. Or one boss (with a ruthless political will), 10 “nobles” (with an unusually stout and muscular body type) and 89+ subjects.
Normally, I’m directly across the aisle from Sam Stone, but on the subject of political utopias where scarcity magically disappears and economics is a dirty word, I’m foursquare behind him…it just doesn’t work. It won’t work without a major seachange in human nature. And I think your prediction of 100 years or so is WAY optimistic on that one.
There are, broadly speaking, there types of crimes: property crime (burglary, theft, insurance fraud, etc.), violent crime (assault, murder, etc.), and “victimless” social crimes (drug use, prostitution, etc.). The vast majority of the criminal law system is concerned with the first type, which, in a post-scarcity world of free access would simply cease to exist. That leaves the comparatively smaller second and third categories. Among these, people tend to break the law for reasons directly or indirectly related to their economic situation. For instance, assaults commonly occur incidentally to robberies and other property crimes; much of the drug and prostitution industries employs and caters to impoverished addicts. These would likewise be eliminated in socialism. I so no reason why some people would not continue to use less personally and socially dangerous recreational drugs in socialism, though; likewise that minority of people who engage in prostitution because they genuinely enjoy the activity rather than out of economic necessity could continue to render their services as sex workers.
So what does that leave for crime? Mostly a very few offences in the violent crime category not tied to economics—crimes of passion, perhaps, and crimes committed by deranged individuals. Obviously a socialist society will have to think up some way of dealing with this cases. Exactly what form that may take will be up to the people around at the time. I suppose it could involve the death penalty, though I think it unlikely. Crimes of passion and crimes by the insane cannot be deterred by example, so a death penalty would have no effect on reducing their number.
I think abortion is an issue that could and will be mitigated by education and social pressure rather than regulations. One thing I can say is that with free access to contraceptives and greatly reduced religious opposition to their use, unwanted pregnancies will be much less of a problem that they are currently.
[quote=“psychonaut, post:1, topic:498252”]
Greetings, fellow Dopers.
I am standing as a candidate in the London constituency for the European Parliamentary Election on 4 June. I haven’t heard much talk of the
Having read through this thread I think I can safely say you’ve lost your deposit matey.
Nice try though
Hey, I’m a professional linguist, so I’m keenly aware that words mean whatever people want them to mean, and no definition is necessarily more “correct” than the others. If you don’t consider me to be “socialist”, fine—all I ask is that we agree on some terminology for the purposes of this discussion, or else we won’t be able to understand each other when we communicate. I realize that the word “socialist” has a number of meanings, which is why I am always careful to explain precisely how I am using the term.
As for why our socialism doesn’t remotely resemble the socialism advocated by the majority of current political parties on this planet calling themselves socialist, that’s largely a result of us having been around for so long. A hundred years ago, before Leninism and Social Democracy, using the word “socialist” to describe our views wouldn’t have been too out of place; the term has broadened in meaning since then. We could change our name (and indeed, the subject has come up from time to time at Party conferences), but what would we change it to? There’s no other word in the English language, or any other, which fits any better. And if we coined a new word to describe our views, that raises a bunch more problems: for instance, what do we do about our 100+ years of accumulated literature, most of which is still relevant, which uses the old terminology? And what do we do if the new word gets coopted in the same manner?
No, we got our money’s worth. The franking privileges more than make up for it—we were able to reach far more people in this election than in any previous one.
If I agreed with that, I wouldn’t be working towards the goal. I am in agreement that we’re not anywhere near our goal at the moment, and am under no illusions that the 4 June election is going to be the one in which world socialism is established.
It makes me feel that there is a long road ahead, but that it is better to start somewhere than to give up.
Because I don’t want to settle for mere concessions which could be reversed at any time by those in power.
We’re not aiming to participate in Parliament, except for using it as a platform to propagate the case for socialism, and to vote. See Post #72. Elections also give us a way of gauging support for socialism which is widely regarded as legitimate.
In this election? I have no idea. Certainly many members are optimistic, especially given the current distaste for the major parties arising from the ongoing MPs’ expenses scandal. The franking priveleges afforded to candidates in this election have also allowed us to reach a sizeable proportion of the constituency.
No, we do not wish to influence anything at all in the European Parliament, except to vote yea or nay (or abstain) as instructed by our membership on various bills. We would not cooperate in the drafting or proposals of reforms. Our only goal is the establishment of socialism, and see reformism as misguided and ultimately ineffectual. And it will not be our MEPs who establish socialism, but the people in general who support socialism. The MEPs are just there to act as their mouthpieces in Parliament, and (when the time comes) to officially abolish it.
Thank you.
Well, that’s a pretty broad question. Do you mean the election system in general or the one for the European Parliament in particular? If the former, then we’re pleased that they’ve achieved widespread adoption in countries of the world. At least in the stable Western democracies, they truly do empower the population. However, as a socialist I believe that democracy should mean more than simply marking a tick on a ballot once every four or five years. People should have a much greater say and ability to actively participate in the socio-economic decisions that affect them and their communities.
The current European Parliamentary elections are pretty unremarkable. I’m not sure if the system varies among the various countries of the EU, but in Britain it’s done according to a party list. That is, instead of voting for individual candidates, you vote for a list of candidates from a single party. The number of votes that party receives determines how many of the seats it can take in that constituency. There are eight seats for London. Unfortunately, ranked voting is not being used, which may encourage some people to vote for parties they don’t truly support in favour of “strategic voting”. All voting systems are inherently unfair (see Paul Hoffman’s Archimedes’ Revenge for an excellent explanation of this), but some are less fair than others.