[LMB] OT: People Changing Political Words

[markus baur]

many of them (and often the party forming the government) will say that 
they are social-democrat

and those five letters "social" are enough to damn them in the eyes of many

servus

markus

On 27.09.2021 00:50, Eric Oppen wrote:
> FWIW,  the Scandinavians themselves say they aren't socialist.
> 
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:58 PM Matija Grabnar via Lois-Bujold <
> lois-bujold at lists.herald.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 26/09/2021 05:58, Damien Sullivan wrote:
>>> On Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 05:32:49PM +0100, Bujold list wrote:
>>>> On 18/09/2021 16:36, Pat Mathews wrote:
>>>>> Eric and all - oddly enough, the workers the various Marxist parties
>> tried to represent, had little or no taste for revolution as long as they
>> could get a decent job at a decent wage.
>>>> Decent job at a decent wage is pretty much the definition of socialism.
>> Some
>>> Strong disagree.  I'd say core definitions of socialism are "social
>> control of
>>> the means of production" or "worker control of the means of production",
>>> and a general hostility to wage labor for private employers (and
>>> hostility to landlords).
>>
>> Funny, that's what I would call communism. What would you call
>> communism, then?
>>
>> Uh, unless under "worker control of the means of production" you mean
>> something like giving the workers into stock options and making them
>> shareholders?
>>
>> Because that's something that could be argued either way.
>>
>>>     The least radical form of such sociaism would
>>> be a market society of the self-employed and worker-owned cooperatives,
>>> and laws strongly favoring renting turning into ownership.
>>
>> Surely the least radical form of socialism would be democratic
>> socialism? Like they practice in Germany, and in the Nordic countries?
>>
>> Which means support for workers' rights, unions and collective
>> bargaining? (Unions that work, not like in the US).
>>
>> The only form of socialism that survived the last 70+ years? Which is
>> why I think of it when I speak of socialism?
>>
>>> OTOH words pick up different meanings, and decades of the right labeling
>>> anything government as "socialism" has diluted the meaning in many uses.
>>
>> BTW, since you mention hostility to landlords: Do you know how Adam
>> Smith (the patron saint of capitalism) felt about landlords?
>>
>> I understand he took a rather dim view of them.
>>
>> --
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>> Lois-Bujold at lists.herald.co.uk
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>>


-- 
markus baur                     SCA: markus von brixlegg
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