Frankly, Your Grace, I think this seriously misrepresents the socialist position. The clue lies in the word ‘society’, the collective being the means and the end of revolutionary change. All for one, and one for all. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. No man is an Island, entire of itself.
Socialists work to improve the lot of all, to the very least of our brethren. All those who work, and I have worked hard all my working life, do so in order to build on the achievements of our antecedents and improve society for those who follow on.
The idea that socialists are selfish individualistic drones who take but give nothing back is a scurrilous lie, and I don’t really think you meant to give voice to it.
Ooo[quote=“marijkeh, post:42, topic:19904, full:true”]
My husband says if we all club together can we put you in a home for dirty old pensioners? Get you offline where you can do no more damage
[/quote]
Ooooh yes please, as long as it’s as filthy as in my senile dreams…
Nooo. Peter online brightens my day. He speaks more sense than the rest of us put together. Peter i love your mixture of compassion and humour and so beautifully written too.
Just late night thinking @Peter_Goble. I thought the quote was a good vehicle to help move the search for a definition forward. My inference, though not obvious, was that in theory a balance between the state and the people would be the ideal. Ultimately political parties water down their principles in search of broader appeal to improve their chance of governing. The broader their inclusion the more likely they will experience internal conflict over priorities. I do think there’s an abundance of selfishness, though Socialists do not hold a monopoly
Good question and amazingly difficult to answer precisely. Where does the Right- or Left-wing voter become a Centrist? Let’s not forget the “Political Centrists” who vote both ways!
The notion of Political Thought being hard-and-fixed is old-hat. “Centrists” vary depending upon how they interpret the political-views of the candidates. They can thus vote either way depending upon economic circumstances of the moment.
And, as such, they influence greatly election outcomes …
What an interesting, informative thread this is.
Increasingly I get wound up by the PC / Snowflake brigade, Snowflake is a politicized insult typically used by those on the political right to insult those on the political left.
Does this make me a Righty then
Possibly. I call the group you mentioned The Permanently Offended. They seem to be continually upset on someone else’s behalf by things that don’t affect them in the slightest.
I’m warming to the way that La République just seems to do a decent job of looking after all her citizens most of the time. Was never a fan of Big Government before when I lived in the U.K.
I still consider myself to be conservative with a small “c” and despair of the way that the Tory “D” team are running/ruining the U.K. On SF that either makes me a centrist or on the right if De Gaulle depending on if you read The Telegraph or The Guardian.
It tries hard but does not always succeed. The French problem is that the French themselves think that private-industry cannot run a healthcare-system all by itself, and given what I’ve seen in the US that’s sooooo true.
But, the US problem, unlike Europe, is that a medical degree costs an “arm-and-a-leg” (pun intended): $150K in a state-school and $250K in a private university.
That is one BIG-debt to bring along the 5/7 years it may take to practice medicine and be paid to do so. But most pay it off in 3 to 4 years of their medical career when they are earning somewhere around $240K annually …
“What government has ever feared the rule of law when they can change the law at a drop of a hat?”
That is precisely what the Replicant Party thinks in the US. It started a long-time ago when Ronnie RayGun lowered upper-income taxation from 90% at the time down to 60%. (It has now found its place at 40%.)
This tax-boon was a gift to Replicant-voters. Note however from here by clicking on “25 years” what happened to US debt that has grown at a highly pronounced rate. The Replicants got their megabuck incomes (freed of high taxation) and we-the-sheeple got enhanced debt to pay-off.
Uncle Sam was not balancing-the-books before that tax comedown and even more certainly not nowadays! I frankly do not know where Uncle Sam is going, but neither do I care. I live in France …
I don’t think it’s possible to understand the meaning of political terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ without a broad perspective, historically and geographically.
Their origin was the seating positions of the privileged (nobility and clergy) versus the commoners in the états généraux at the start of the French revolution, and this remains my touchstone:
on the right = the privileged, and defenders of the status quo that privileges them;
on the left = those without privilege, who therefore challenge the status quo
Each side of course at different times and places embraces a range of ideas and beliefs - on the right in developed anglo-saxon societies until recently, for example, the belief in ‘neo-liberalism’ (the marketisation of all aspects of life) was strong; on the left recently ‘identity politics’, pushing aside ‘class struggle’ - but these are mere contingencies, subject to change in different times and places. The underlying values of right (defending a status quo that privileges some people over others) versus left (challenging that status quo) change much more slowly, and hardly at all geographically.
At the risk of generalising; replace the word “privilege” with the phrase “enough money to do whatever they want for as long as they want to”.
Alternatively, replace the phrase “those without privilege” with “those who have no disposable income whatsoever”.
These things aren’t labels, they are situations.
