Socialism & Capitalism

"National Socialists" it says socialist in the name, therefore the Nazi's were Left-wing socialists and all left-wing politicians are Nazi's. Furthermore, trickle down works, Public health care has never worked, Bananas are Marsupials, Pizza is a vegetable, fish live in trees and eat pencils, Obamacare caused the Great Depression, Hillary masterminded pearl harbour, Obama caused the Civil War, The world is flat, The Toronto maple leafs have won every stanley cup in the past 30 years, Alaska is a tropical island, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were Obama in disguise, The republican party was founded by Jesus, Poland is in Australia, vaccines cause autism and communism, Africa is a province of japan located in the mountains of Holland.....
 
The political context of countries like the UK and the US is for the practical meaning of the words socialist, social-democratic, social christian sooooo much different than in South America or most west-European countries, especially where like in SA many people were Catholic....
... that these kinds of discussions just go hence and forth
Take for example a country like Belgium where 80% of the wages and salaries are within a bandwidth of minus 33% and plus 50% of the median salary.
So if median is 45,000 credits, 80% is between 30,000 and 67,500 credits.
If that would be implemented in the US it would be a commie-socialist revolution.
The US having somewhere 50% in that bandwidth: 25% below and 25-30% above.
But Belgium never had a socialist revolution. And is not so fond of extremes.
But it had since WW2 mostly RoomsRode coalitions: Rooms meaning the catholic peoples party, Red meaning the Social Democrats.
The same to a bit lesser extent here in the Netherlands up to 2000, when neoliberale got more power... but the core social wellfare structure also from Roman-Red coalitions starting after WW2.
And if I would have the choice between a flip-flop UK between polarised Tories and Labour, Flip-flopping the direction, or the slow but steady build up of a social wellfare state.... that perhaps one day has enough prosperity and control by regulations over outside factor to reduce the rogue tax from big corporate
Without losing the cohesion of the people, my choice is made...

=> politics in South America is different. The word socialist is different. The rogue tax extraction by big corporate and the organised crime is high, etc etc
 
The socialist of the Nazis and Fascists was a bit like the People's or Democratic of various Marxist states post-war.

Google state capitalism, even "The Economist" and "Financial Times" use the term. Unfortunately their articles are behind paywalls.
So, more oxymorons. Granted the term is used but so is the term military intelligence. The irony is there.

Hitler and Mussolini were self-described socialists. It was about as true for them as it was for Stalin and Mao, and Castro. Socialism is not incompatible with militarist and authoritarian.

That's not self-evident. Are you able to elaborate?
An economy ceases to be capitalist to the extent it is government managed. In the case at hand, Stalin's USSR, that extent is near total. He literally made it illegal to be capitalist.

J
 
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So, more oxymorons. Granted the term is used but so is the term military intelligence. The irony is there.

Hitler and Mussolini were self-described socialists. It was about as true for them as it was for Stalin and Mao, and Castro. Socialism is not incompatible with militarist and authoritarian.

Descriptions don't matter, the reality does. Socialism is about worker/community control of the means of production which didn't exist in any of those states

An economy ceases to be capitalist to the extent it is government managed. In the case at hand, Stalin's USSR, that extent is near total. He literally made it illegal to be capitalist.

J

So the UK wasn't capitalist between 1945-79? Most modern "capitalist" states including the US are mixed economies with a degree of government control of the economy.
 
All of these countries committed mass murder and it seems like the key distinction was who paid for the death squads.

Also, Churchill wanted to start WW3. Come to think about it, all the leaders during WW2 were pretty scummy in some way or another. We had our own racially based concentration camps in America, England starving the Indian people, the Western Allies selling out Eastern Europe to Stalin, and Stalin.... doing what Stalin does best. Then Mao and Chiang were fighting with each other to determine who could ruin the country faster than the Japanese.

Dang, sure ruins the Romanticism taught in school, doesn't it?
 
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About 10-15 years ago or so.
Mmm.

The high-school educational standards in the state where I teach (disclaimer: I don't teach history, but English, although I was trained in history and have substitute-taught for it) are such that teachers are invariably behind by the time they get to the Second World War, and they can rarely do much other than go through a set of vocabulary and a rudimentary timeline. There frankly isn't much time for romanticizing much of anything. For what it's worth, Japanese internment is on the state standards here, under the rubric of "explaining the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians by the Allied and Axis powers". (That may not be true of other states.)

AP US history also covers Japanese internment as a rule. APUSH teachers usually schedule a thought experiment activity or an argumentation paper over the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (mine did back in 2007). Usually, teachers lack the time to cover the firebombing campaign against either Germany or Japan. Most aren't military historians, either, and prefer to spend their extremely limited class time on other aspects of history.

Korematsu v. US
is on the AP US Government list of cases students need to know before the exam.

Every teacher is different, of course, and no state that I'm aware of mandates what a teacher's opinion should be on any one thing, but in practice, I would say that the current state of education is such that if most American students have a romantic view of the Second World War, they got it from somewhere other than their high-school teachers.

It may very well have been different 10-15 years ago for you, though. :)
 
The high-school educational standards in the state where I teach (disclaimer: I don't teach history, but English, although I was trained in history and have substitute-taught for it) are such that teachers are invariably behind by the time they get to the Second World War, and they can rarely do much other than go through a set of vocabulary and a rudimentary timeline.

Well, I think that leads to the issue. Up til the middle of High School, history books invariably ended up in "The American Century" and quickly talked about how American saved the world in WW2 and cold war, plus the follow up of that Vietnam War makes people easily draw the conclusion that WW2 was the only "just" war.

You have to realize we're talking about children who haven't really developed the nuance of grey yet, and it's too easy to think of good guy vs bad guy (Germans and Japanese). Stuff like Japanese internment was there, but was so glossed over (in a situation where it's rushed to begin with) and it took a long while to sink in what a bad thing that was and to draw the connection between that and concentration camps took a while since only evil Nazis did that.Sure, we would have gathered the US had racist policies but then putting them all together, is quite dang.

And the stuff with Churchill being a dick, well, we just don't really get any details about him beyond the Battle of Britain.

It wasn't until late in High School that they'd be pushing the more insightful things regarding the things done wrong in the country but I was in an AP class by then, so I'm not even if that got much attention outside.

But then again, these things are often not realized by adults either, hence the "If it wasn't for us, you'd still be speaking German" nonsense that gets uttered is definitely an effect of the educational system. Well, maybe they'd be speaking Russian though....
 
I also do not idealise or demonise anybody from WW2 leaders. Much more useful is see what were the motives behind their actions. There was not a good time for idealists. Most idealist player was paradoxically actually Adolf Hitler, he made a lot of unpragmatic staff. Still, he had compromises (like alliance with USSR, collaboration with Croats and Slovaks etc.).
 
History teaching (and teaching in general) has certainly improved since I was at school. In the school I work at for example the year 4s (so 8 year olds) look at Drake from various sources and have to say, giving reasons, if they consider him a hero or villain, or somewhere in between and justify why. The biggest problem is time, too many subjects, too many priorities (haven't governments realised yet that if you make 3 or 4 subjects priorities none of them end up being the priority?).
 
Well, I think that leads to the issue. Up til the middle of High School, history books invariably ended up in "The American Century" and quickly talked about how American saved the world in WW2 and cold war, plus the follow up of that Vietnam War makes people easily draw the conclusion that WW2 was the only "just" war.

You have to realize we're talking about children who haven't really developed the nuance of grey yet, and it's too easy to think of good guy vs bad guy (Germans and Japanese). Stuff like Japanese internment was there, but was so glossed over (in a situation where it's rushed to begin with) and it took a long while to sink in what a bad thing that was and to draw the connection between that and concentration camps took a while since only evil Nazis did that.Sure, we would have gathered the US had racist policies but then putting them all together, is quite dang.

And the stuff with Churchill being a dick, well, we just don't really get any details about him beyond the Battle of Britain.

But then again, these things are often not realized by adults either, hence the "If it wasn't for us, you'd still be speaking German" nonsense that gets uttered is definitely an effect of the educational system. Well, maybe they'd be speaking Russian though....
I'm sorry, this is a long way away from "Romanticism taught in school".

Being taught that the war happened, and being instructed in several things that happened during the war, and covering specific instances of things that happened during the war to nuance one's view of the combatants, is really not the same thing as getting an unvarnished rah-rah patriotism story.

I mean, here's an anecdote that may or may not be useful to you. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a book that is taught in many American high schools in English classes. I didn't read it in school, but I taught it last year. Many of the materials that teachers provide for other teachers to teach LotF have to do with one of the central themes of the book, which is that there is evil inside every person, and that when the bonds of society break down, that evil comes out. Golding specifically got that idea in his head from serving in the Royal Navy during the war. The theme drips from practically every page of the book. When my classes read the story, we repeated it like a mantra. And to introduce that theme for the kids, I gave a quick presentation on the reasons Golding would have thought that was the case, based on the Second World War, covering the same things mentioned before: the Holocaust and the "Three Alls", sure, but also strategic bombing, nuclear weapons, internment, and so on. Students who were paying attention thus got "the Second World War was not great for anybody" from not just history class, but English as well. And, to reiterate, this isn't just a Dachs thing, this is a thing that is extremely common for teachers to cover when they teach the topic.

Again, I'm aware that my educational history, and my work in education, may not necessarily be the most typical one, but I feel pretty confident in saying that most American history teachers do not teach a "romantic" view of the Second World War. And I feel absolutely certain that most people in America who do have a "romantic" view of the war don't get it from their high-school history teachers.
History teaching (and teaching in general) has certainly improved since I was at school. In the school I work at for example the year 4s (so 8 year olds) look at Drake from various sources and have to say, giving reasons, if they consider him a hero or villain, or somewhere in between and justify why. The biggest problem is time, too many subjects, too many priorities (haven't governments realised yet that if you make 3 or 4 subjects priorities none of them end up being the priority?).
It all depends on what the government thinks is a necessary baseline history education for a functioning adult in society.
 
You have to realize we're talking about children who haven't really developed the nuance of grey yet, and it's too easy to think of good guy vs bad guy (Germans and Japanese). Stuff like Japanese internment was there, but was so glossed over (in a situation where it's rushed to begin with) and it took a long while to sink in what a bad thing that was
Definitely regional. Where I am from they taught us about Japanese internment at least once or twice before getting to high school's US history course, and during that course they zeroed in on that element.
 
I'm sorry, this is a long way away from "Romanticism taught in school".

Being taught that the war happened, and being instructed in several things that happened during the war, and covering specific instances of things that happened during the war to nuance one's view of the combatants, is really not the same thing as getting an unvarnished rah-rah patriotism story.

Yea well, it's also about what they don't say as well. Such as in the Japanese textbook controversies.

Now obviously, I don't think it's up to that level , and if you think that word is too exaggerated of a word, then whatever.

But uhh, my main point, is that people like FDR and Churchill were taught as heroes to a certain degree. Certainly not to a propagandist point of view, but there certainly was a degree of (Anglo-)America-centeredness and nationalism going on, however subtle, and that I would associate with Romanticism.

And hey, I'm glad to here schools are doing much better to educate children than they were back then. I didn't really learn about critical thinking until college, for the most part.
 
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So the UK wasn't capitalist between 1945-79? Most modern "capitalist" states including the US are mixed economies with a degree of government control of the economy.
It depends on definitions. The UK economy was much more capitalist than socialist, so you could call it capitalist. As you say, every nation has some form of intervention, so all can be called mixed. Regardless, calling Stalin's economy any sort of capitalist is a joke in poor taste.

Next we're going to find out that fascism doesn't exist and never has existed.
Why? Of course, fascists exist. They just call themselves anti-fascist. It's another oxymoron.

Still, nice poster. I'm glad you see how ridiculous putting the words in Marx's mouth is. He was a better sociologist than an economist.

J
 
An economy ceases to be capitalist to the extent it is government managed. In the case at hand, Stalin's USSR, that extent is near total. He literally made it illegal to be capitalist.
Why is that? It's not self-evident that a state-owned firm should operate in a fundamentally different way than a privately-owned one, let alone than an economy with a high number of state-owned firms should operate in a fundamentally different way than an economy with a low number of state-owned firms.
 
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