Rab said:
steven787 said:
Rab said:
Democratic Communism: Democratic communism is a socio-economic system with communism as the economic basis and democracy as the governing principle. This entails that the means of production would be controlled and owned by the entire population and that political power would be in the hands of the people, whether through democracy that is representative or direct. We often think Communism as always run like the Soviet totalitarian government, but in fact it can be a democracy, these have occurred particularly in South America but in recent times the US has stamped them out
The US government and other western governments and Corporate business would find Democratic Communism to be a real threat and challenge as it's a stable fair system of government that works outside the capitalist system of ownership which all western governments have based their societies on, such a challenge is not easily tolerated by the wealthy of the world, it would undermine their power over us the people This video is kind of related to the topic. The Worlds Rich controlling all the worlds population and resources through our own greed and fears, this will result eventually where a few will rule the many for ever http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBo4E77ZXo&feature=related |
Socialism in the US is unpopular for several reasons. 1. People who live here choose to, and choose to because they believe they can do better in a profit motivated system. 2. US citizens may not have the highest median income world-wide but they have the highest 2nd quartile. This means that the 2nd quartile lives better than in any other country, while the 1st quartile is poorer in some respects they still are pretty split (see #1). 3. People above the median income (the 3rd and 4th quartiles) are the ones who run the country. The US gov't, the States, and municipalities are very big, pretty much anyone from the top half can get a position in gov't if they wanted to. They don't want to because of the profit motivator. The poorer half can get jobs in government pretty easily; actually Police, Military, Education, Public Health are all desparate for workers. Revolutions (peaceful or violent) only happen when the richer half of society is still opressed by a separate political class. In Russia and China, the only major Communist revolutionary instances, happened with considerable outside influence and world war in countries with almost no middle class. |
If you are socialist in the US you could be branded a "pinko" or communist, openly saying you have socialist leanings could lead you into trouble in the US unlike any other democracy in the western world |
Socialism in the US is linked to Communism because Americans think Revolutionary Socialism and generally don't like Socialist ideology. The US is a two party country; being Socialist, Libertarian, Green, Nazi, Communist or any other party gets you a cockeyed glance from most people. Independents or undecided voter are usually somewhere between Republican or Democrat, only a small portion consider themselves on the fringe. The far left and right wing of each respective party tend to represent the more socialist/libertarian views anyway.
Pinko was last used in 1963, by a republican who had missed the whole end of Mccarthyism. He was out of touch and didn't have an understanding of US politics. :)
