The "intellectuals" are always undertaking mental gymnastics to defend socialism. I think their latest gig is changing socialism's name to "reinvented capitalism" and trying to sell it under that.
EU hacks call it "social democracy." Blair called it "the Third Way." Keep capitalism but add social justice, i.e., the welfare state. Bill Clinton: "Triangulation." I.e., appeal to Center-Left Democrats, Center-Right Republicans, and Centrists of both parties. That's how today's Uniparty was built up, by offering Republicans the chance to become RINOs and join the Dems at the Great Trough.
And here we are, ruled by an oligarchy of Social-Welfare Republicans and Leftist Billionaires. And everybody's happy--oh, except for those 2-out-of-every-3 voters who voted for Trump.
It's also always people who never lived under quasi-communism and socialism.I've seen people who escaped the USSR light up snot nosed liberals about how hard socialism sucked, and giving up everything to escape it was worth it. But it doesn't penetrate their brainwashing.
Besides, most snot nosed liberals don't know what socialism means, anyway. They just think it means "free stuffs". They don't have a single clue that socialism means their iPhone isn't theirs. And that under socialism, there are no iPhones, unless you're Party elite.
It's because socialism and communism appeals on an intellectual level. It's utopianism, and utopia is appealing because it's an ideal world where everything is perfect. The problem is that these same intellectuals forget that utopia by definition is impossible. They are more concerned with pie in the sky idealism than down to earth practicality, because the idea of utopia is more appealing to them than the drudgery of real life. And because they have the benefit of more education (not necessarily GOOD education mind you, just more of it) they falsely believe that that gives them sole discretionary power to determine what ideas are good and what are bad, and so they dismiss out of hand any idea that does not come from them or their contemporaries as being the product of an uneducated mind.
Worse, they continue to think this even when the things they speak of are entirely outside their area of education. As a current day example a man or woman with a degree in gender studies will happily lecture on the environmental "dangers" of fracking and oil drilling while ignoring the experience and counter arguments of a less educated blue-collar worker that has actually done the job of of fracking and oil drilling.
Point blank, they're not interested in practical reality, they want their idealist paradise, and socialism/communism is the utopian ideal that appeals most strongly to them. The problem is that utopia is both impractical and impossible and they don't care, because in their minds it's their "job" to make the impossible possible. And as long as the people paying the consequences for their hubris happen out of their sight, they won't give a damn, and they'll brush off all historical examples of failure of socialism and communism as if those things "weren't real communism". Which is technically true, because real communism is utopianism, which is literally impossible. The problem that they ignore isn't that all those deaths happened because "that wasn't real communism", it's that all those deaths happened because people were faithfully trying to implement "real communism". And real communism cannot work, ever, and they refuse to acknowledge it.
Like I said in another thread, Marx was writing nonsense with his theories, you'd need a model of human being that never existed for it to work. He theorized that communism will 'evolve" from abuse of capitalism, which has never actually happened, socialist and communist states have all been forced upon people, usually violently. Marx was utterly full of shit, as was Engels.
The "intellectuals" are always undertaking mental gymnastics to defend socialism. I think their latest gig is changing socialism's name to "reinvented capitalism" and trying to sell it under that.
Democratic communism
EU hacks call it "social democracy." Blair called it "the Third Way." Keep capitalism but add social justice, i.e., the welfare state. Bill Clinton: "Triangulation." I.e., appeal to Center-Left Democrats, Center-Right Republicans, and Centrists of both parties. That's how today's Uniparty was built up, by offering Republicans the chance to become RINOs and join the Dems at the Great Trough. And here we are, ruled by an oligarchy of Social-Welfare Republicans and Leftist Billionaires. And everybody's happy--oh, except for those 2-out-of-every-3 voters who voted for Trump.
It's also always people who never lived under quasi-communism and socialism.I've seen people who escaped the USSR light up snot nosed liberals about how hard socialism sucked, and giving up everything to escape it was worth it. But it doesn't penetrate their brainwashing.
Besides, most snot nosed liberals don't know what socialism means, anyway. They just think it means "free stuffs". They don't have a single clue that socialism means their iPhone isn't theirs. And that under socialism, there are no iPhones, unless you're Party elite.
It's because socialism and communism appeals on an intellectual level. It's utopianism, and utopia is appealing because it's an ideal world where everything is perfect. The problem is that these same intellectuals forget that utopia by definition is impossible. They are more concerned with pie in the sky idealism than down to earth practicality, because the idea of utopia is more appealing to them than the drudgery of real life. And because they have the benefit of more education (not necessarily GOOD education mind you, just more of it) they falsely believe that that gives them sole discretionary power to determine what ideas are good and what are bad, and so they dismiss out of hand any idea that does not come from them or their contemporaries as being the product of an uneducated mind.
Worse, they continue to think this even when the things they speak of are entirely outside their area of education. As a current day example a man or woman with a degree in gender studies will happily lecture on the environmental "dangers" of fracking and oil drilling while ignoring the experience and counter arguments of a less educated blue-collar worker that has actually done the job of of fracking and oil drilling.
Point blank, they're not interested in practical reality, they want their idealist paradise, and socialism/communism is the utopian ideal that appeals most strongly to them. The problem is that utopia is both impractical and impossible and they don't care, because in their minds it's their "job" to make the impossible possible. And as long as the people paying the consequences for their hubris happen out of their sight, they won't give a damn, and they'll brush off all historical examples of failure of socialism and communism as if those things "weren't real communism". Which is technically true, because real communism is utopianism, which is literally impossible. The problem that they ignore isn't that all those deaths happened because "that wasn't real communism", it's that all those deaths happened because people were faithfully trying to implement "real communism". And real communism cannot work, ever, and they refuse to acknowledge it.
Like I said in another thread, Marx was writing nonsense with his theories, you'd need a model of human being that never existed for it to work. He theorized that communism will 'evolve" from abuse of capitalism, which has never actually happened, socialist and communist states have all been forced upon people, usually violently. Marx was utterly full of shit, as was Engels.