What is "socialism"? what is "mainstream"? What's the point of trying to sound "safe"?

What is "socialism"? 

Socialism is a social and economic system where national income is distributed fairly within a mixed market scheme. Socialism is sometimes defined by distribution of goods and services according to individual effort. It's a progressive phase of social and economic conditions that could evolve into communism, or the distribution of goods and services according to need.

But modern socialism does not require full nationalisation of industries and natural resources only the socialization of revenues,

What's the point of trying to sound "safe"?

To appeal to the large minority of voters doing the choosing. Our obsolete electoral system is basically electoral fraud, and so if we shouldn't lie our way into power as the two mainstream parties have done in Ottawa for the last 140 years in a row non-stop, then we can at least play a few hands tight to the chest and see what happens. But the game is basically rigged before the hands are dealt. There is no point in shooting ourselves in the foot for the sake of mouthing principles within a system that does not reward them. And there are a number of recent examples of this federal phenomenon. Within this new liberal economic reality, there is no way that Marxian socialism could be realized inside one four-year term in power. No way. Not even Sainte Tommy could manage it in five terms is my guess. But we could achieve much in one or two terms in federal government jts. To promise socialism in one term would be lying though, and so there would go into the ether any principles we might have claimed to possess. 

Labels have become substitutes for - not merely symbols, but the entire embodiment of, and socially mandated attitude to - ideas, ideaologies, philosophical and political concepts. People don't have time to think, so just give them signals to feel one of 5 allowable choices. This lack of attention span and bankrupt vocabulary have been engineered over decades of marketing strategy and concentrated control of mass communication and  education.

At this low point in North American public affairs, i don't think sounding "safe" serves a purpose - there is no safety left of McCarthy. I say, stop trying to toe that line (They just keep moving it anyway!) and call the a spade a spade (not a bloody shovel, 'coz that's inaccurate) instead of an implement for putting tax-incentives to work on the ground. Reclaim the real words, the real concepts, the real ideals. A lot of people would it refreshing and encouraging; many more would at least pay attention for a change.

... Not to mention any reference to "what the people really want".

I'd rather just say what I mean rather than use terms that are subject to misinterpretation.

You'll find that, if your communication is effective at all, whatever words you use will be misinterpreted. Misrepresented, sullied, debased, demonized... Language is as precious and vulnerable a resource as water. Must be carefully guarded.

@ Snert

Laziness is the least of the problem. People are always that. It's the deliberate, systemmatic distortion of language that i blame on the right.

Quote:

It's the deliberate, systemmatic distortion of language that i blame on the right.

I can't really join you in laying it solely at their feet (pun not intended).

I think that when the Left does the same, it's just as intentionally. Let's face it, big scary words sound good. They make a much better sound bite than smaller, more moderate words.

Laziness might explain why a person might call Harper a fascist, once. It can't explain them bending logic into pretzels to try to "prove" that it's fact, not laziness.

I actually meant the language does not work.  Fascism and socialism are meaningless terms to anyone living in Canada.  We have never had any MS party advocating either in at least 50 years. They are words to describe political movements that no longer exist as movements but have instead become historic catch phrases. The fascists in my view were tools of the elite not the controlling elite.  Like Pinochet they were tools of the real elite who control the world.

The issues however are a different story.  We need to weave our Canadian history into the narrative of what NATO is doing to other people's countries. Our society has seen genocide and ongoing racist oppression by successive democratically elected governments for nearly 150 years but that is not a left right issue it is imperialist colonial issue.  

The major problems facing our world are not left versu right they are the same ones that faced the Acadians, the FN's and the Metis. How to stop the western elite from murdering indiscriminately to acquire the worlds resources. Once we get past that we can talk about building a better world.

absentia wrote:

@ Snert

Laziness is the least of the problem. People are always that. It's the deliberate, systemmatic distortion of language that i blame on the right.

Ah, but that is true at both extremes of the political spectrum.  The right has no monopoly on deliberate distortion and demagoguery.

Sven wrote:

Ah, but that is true at both extremes of the political spectrum.  The right has no monopoly on deliberate distortion and demagoguery.

But they do have a near monopoly in the MSM. 

So who thinks herr Harper will ram through legislation to scrap the Fairness Act and thereby shit-canning requirements for truth in news reporting this time around?  They give 9/11 truthers a good name.

Snert wrote:

So you figure that the left should be given a special pass to use overblown hyperbole, as some sort of consolation prize for not having as much media influence?

Not at all. Bombast is silly and irrelevant. It wasn't what i was talking about in the first place, even if it's all you consider in political language. I was talking about culture crippling and public mind-bending. But never mind; it's not that important.

speaking of labels, "Libertarians" seem to be playing it safe in choosing that name to describe their philosophy.

American RWers could soon be calling themselves the "Rand Brand" as they embrace the "reward the wealthy and kill the poor" philosophy of Ayn Rand.  Rand Paul is actually named after her!!

With that in mind, I just feel so much more warm and fuzzy being a leftist, or a socialist even if they are dirty words in the minds of some. Nonetheless, a new name for "those who believe in sharing and community" [socialists] might help move the voting public towards the left.

It seems that even many Americans really do believe in sharing the national wealth now that the gap has grown so extreme and so many average people have lost their homes while bank CEOs take $millions back to their mansions. The average person, in America or Canada, probably would support the socialist left philosophy, they just need a new brand to get behind.

Snert wrote:

For every lazy-ass right-winger who calls Obama a "Socialist" and says it like a dirty word, there's someone on the left trying his or her damndest to somehow "prove" that Stephen Harper (or any other leader of the day) is a Fascist. Just like Mussolini!!!

Capitalism is fascism with the mask on. The two isms are compatible since Il Duce and his protege, da fuhrer.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

 And while of course we want to challenge warped and manipulative language when those we oppose use it against us, I think it is far more important to first correct those errors amongst ourselves, and make sure that we use accurate language and understand what we are talking about,

Of course, we want to challenge the warped and manipulative.... but not yet. I've seen an awful lot of 'correcting errors among ourselves' in the past decade. An awful, tiresome, discouraging lot of reprimanding one another on phraseology while ignoring the content of the other's message. Deliberately misunderstanding or incidentally not understanding what the hell we're talking about.

Meanwhile, the right just keeps on marching - and driving tank, ferchrissake! - over us.  (Reg? It's already happened.)

Seems most if not all of our PMs could fall into one category or another as Orwell alluded to.  As for Harper, he appears to personify the italicized segment of the extract below.

George Orwell:  What is Fascism

Quote:

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist' means ‘in sympathy with Hitler', some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist' in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism' they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully' as a synonym for ‘Fascist'. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

I think we devoted an entire thread or two not that long ago to that specific word. 

Want to call him authoritarian? amti-democratic? There is evidence of that. 

I think you could even call him a proto-fascist and be able to make a case for it. 

But if you look at the book definition "fascism" is a pretty specific brand of authoritarian government - a single party state without free elections, enforcing its will through widespread violence and terror, and promoting a policy of total devotion to the state through indoctrination.

The way "fascist" is tossed around, not only does it no longer have its original meaning (like "third world") it no longer has any meaning at all.

Of course, artists have poked fun at the misuse of these words for years (watch for it around the 3:30 mark):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-eqnw_DXE

(edit)

and @ Slumberjack, I don't think Orwell was offering a definition as much as pointing out the fact the word is commonly used without any understanding of its real meaning. As he said, it is nothing more tnan a synonym for "bully".

Not only does it render the word meaningless, when I hear it tossed off the first impression I have is that the person using it does not really know what he or she is talking about.

The word is already defined.  The only problem is that people don't like that definition.

Nazi is also defined.  The fact that people want to use it to describe a guy who makes you line up a special way or you get no soup doesn't really (and shouldn't really) change that.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

But if you look at the book definition "fascism" is a pretty specific brand of authoritarian government - a single party state without free elections, enforcing its will through widespread violence and terror, and promoting a policy of total devotion to the state through indoctrination.

Free elections.  Are elections free if they are bought and paid for by the richest people in society.  Are elections free when the outcome is rigged using FPTP?

Widespread violence and terror.  Does the violence and terror have to be only directed at political actors?  Does having the highest incarceration rates in the world rank as state violence and terror?  Does disproportionally incarcerating the people who still claim the state stole their birth right count as violence and terror. By allowing the ongoing rape and murder of FN's women without the same resources available for trying to solve the rape and murder of upperclass white women.  Is that a type of state violence?

And of course we already know you believe in what I think is a fallacy in NOrth America and that is the myth of a free media.  The state ideology we live under is called capitalism.  Last time I looked there seemed to be a over arching devotion to indoctrinating our citizens into that political and economic ideology.  

I agree we need better names and words because the old ones are tired. I do not believe that calling the USA a fascist state is inaccurate.  I think that in Canada we are still a couple of baby steps away from fitting the definition.  But if we see a repeat or two of the G8 police riots I and Harper does start building prisons and fighter jets I think we will have crossed the line.

You see an election every four years as washing away all the sins of our government.  I merely see a rigged election where the rich elite either own or intimidate any party that gets close to power. I've seen the capital strike in BC to defeat the will of the "democratically" elected government.  Its hard to see democracy when if people strike and protest they are arrested and if capital strikes the government cowers. 

Judging from what NS has outlined here, there are so many elements of our capitalist society continuously applying in earnest to one definition or another, that narrowing any attempt at similarity down to what the world witnessed of Fascism during the earlier half of the last century does seem to make sense, lest its original reference points and meaning completely escape us.  Which is all the more reason why we needn't shrink from applying the more widely understood definitions of the past to circumstances which warrant such descriptions.  The erasing of lines between state and corporate power with its inherent and systemic unaccountability.  For convenience sake, we have the use of, and complicity with, extrajudicial methods such as torture, (Arar) ignoring international treaties that one has signed on with (Khadr), the taking of any inch of legitimacy conferred by international arrangements to extract a mile as with the case of the Libyan regime change affair, the destruction of collective bargaining rights, an inordinate priority extended toward the funding of military adventures, brutality and destruction whereever it suits the purpose of power and profit.  There was a time when people of conscience needed to travel all the way to Spain in order to confront the disease of Fascism.  Nowadays its right outside the door.  No amount of wishing it away or ignoring the apt descriptions hereabouts can obscure what it actually is.  I'm afraid you can't help but to come off as sounding strident given what we're attempting to narrow down.  The phrase, 'it isn't all that bad' is just a matter of ones perspective.

What makes you think democratic governments are incapable of intimidation, violence, authoritarian acts, and even atrocities? There are enough cases when they do just that, with the backing of the majority or a plurality of the people. Or where they do it in someone else's country, so people don't pay attention as much.

Even if I accepted part of your argument - which seems to be that Canada is a plutocracy - that still doesn't meet the definition of fascism. 

And the whole point of this thread is not whether something is good or bad, but rather the words used to describe it.

We don't need new words; there are enough perfectly good old ones to describe our political situation. But it would help to look them up and learn what they mean.

Oh this guy Adrien Arcand... (from Wikipedia)

Arcand was always a staunch federalist and an anglophile. He received secret funds from Lord Sydenham of Combe, former governor of Bombay and a prominent fascist sympathizer in the British Conservative Party. He also maintained correspondence with Arnold Spencer Leese, chief of The Imperial Fascist League. Arcand's party statutes called for the following oath to be taken at the beginning of every party meeting:

"Moved by the unshakable faith in God, a profound love for Canada, ardent sentiments of patriotism and nationalism, a complete loyalty and devotion toward our Gracious Sovereign who forms the recognized principle of active authority, a complete respect for the British North America Act, for the maintenance of order, for national prosperity, for national unity, for national honour, for the progress and the happiness of a greater Canada, I pledge solemnly and explicitly to serve my party. I pledge myself to propagate the principles of its program. I pledge myself to follow its regulation. I pledge myself to obey my leaders. Hail the party! Hail our Leader!"

Arcand always was steadfastly opposed to Quebec nationalism. He wanted to build a powerful centralized Canadian Fascist state within the British Commonwealth.

"... Arcand insists that his organisation has no sympathy with the extreme French nationalist movement represented by the group which split from Premier Duplessis after he was returned to power because he would not go all the way they wished. "We were the first in Quebec to fight Separatism," Arcand declared, "and we are carrying on that fight very satisfactorily, swallowing many ex-members of that failing movement." Frankly, the National Social Christian Party was aiming for Dominion power, Arcand admitted, describing Dominion power as the real key to the vital problems of this country."

On May 30, 1940, he was arrested in Montreal for "plotting to overthrow the state" and interned for the duration of the war as a security threat. His party, then called the National Unity Party, was banned.

Sounds pretty Liberal to me!

Snert wrote:

Orwell seems to be giving in to the lazy folk who want to shreik "FASCIST" instead of just saying "bully".

Try again.

Quote:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."

"Politics and the English Language"