I thought the left was anyone the Canadian Sentinel disagreed with.

It cuts both ways though. To the hardcore “progressive” types, Elizabeth May isn’t “progressive”.

“Ideally your post should bare at least a vague resemblance to the post you are trying to critisize.”

If Stageleft were responding in a thread on the original poster’s blog, I would agree. In this case, however, Stageleft is developing an entirely different point (the dilution of the concept of “left” into irrelevance), using the original post as an illustration.

“The original article deals with the incident of spitting on a veteran and it would be a reasonably safe assumption that the action was carried out by a “leftie”.”

Nice illustration of Stageleft’s thesis - thanks. Obviously only a “leftie would spit on a veteran”. What’s a “leftie”? Uhhh…the kind of person who would spit on a veteran. Ah. I see.

“You are forgetting to mention communism, which was pretty much the original meaning of the word.”

Don’t forget socialism and anarchism, you bloated plutocratic running dog lackey of the Bourgeoisie.

“You should read Karl Marx.”

I did, to my everlasting regret. When I think of the cheap science fiction I could have been enjoying instead during those weeks, I weep.

I have noted here and chez vous, however, that you are a bit selective in your espousal of Marx’s views. You seem to feel that his economic and political theories were nonsense (a view I share, and one which has considerable empirical verification); but when he kidnaps socialism and brands it the inevitable parent of communism, you accord him the status of prophet. I think my view is bit more consistent; I think he was wrong about pretty much everything. Which leaves room for the evolution of socialism into forms much different from those imagined by the grim Mr. Marx.

“not very long ago every single politician who called him/herself a socialist considered Marx to be the god of socialism.”

Not that very long ago George Bush didn’t believe in climate change, Iraq was bristling with concealed weapons of mass destruction, and the Liberal party was going to govern Canada forever. Remarkable how things change.

“Economic socialism is equivalent to state ownership of the means of production. It is the opposite of free market and competition. Is this what you are so fond of?”

If I were pressed to define socialism, it would probably be a socioeconomic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to some form of social control.

I find that zealots of either the extreme left or the extreme right share two views:
- that the triumph of THEIR extreme - free markets or communal ownership of resources and the means of production - is historically inevitable, or at least the only alternative to the utter collapse of mankind; and,
- that purer and more complete, the better. In other words, if 100% community ownership and control and 100% freedom of markets are viewed as ends of a continuum, the idelogues feel that we should all be trying to move right t0 their end of the continuum.

To which I say, nah. Moderation in all things, sayeth the Buddha. Models are only models: they are by their nature incomplete; attempts to treat an ideological model as though it was a divine blueprint, while providing great mileage for adherents, tend to fail horribly. Canada, by and large, has done a rather good job of assembling a working system using elements of various ideologies; when we lean too far in one direction, reality pulls us the other way. Never far enough for the True Believers, of course: the secret of our success may be that most of us are only a little bit miserable with the system most of the time.

Ideally your post should bare at least a vague resemblance to the post you are trying to critisize.

I am criticizing a concept, the post was an example.

Unfortunately I seem to have unwittingly run afoul of some written or unwritten rule over ar RightVoices, comments (including in this discussion) get submitted and disappear into some block hole in their portion of the blog-o-verse, and email asking ‘what’s up’ goes unanswered, such is life I guess.

“Sorry, but your definition does not make sense. ”

Yeah, it does. I think you’re making the common mistake of assuming that these systems must exist in some kind of platonic pure form, excluding all others. “Pure” “socialism”, like “pure” “capitalism”, is a theoretical point at one end of an imaginary continuum that cannot, has not, and probably will never exist on this planet.

China under Mao, in the worst extremes of the Cultural Revolution, was a “socialist” country. But in and around Canton, and throughougt rural China, there was still a thriving underground economy with all the elements of capitalism.

The US under Ronald Reagan was arguably the most capitalist country in the world. But the US taxes its residents according to income (a form of wealth redistribution), provides public housing (ditto), welfare (ditto)…and so on. You get my drift.

“Every single capitalist country, including the USA would be “socialist”.”

More precisely, every single country that characterizes itself as “capitalist” incorporates socialist elements, and vice versa.

Well, I guess you’ll need to come up with a new label for me. I don’t want to nationalize “as much as possible”, and I don’t believe that all the means of production should be privately owned.

Let me know, and I’ll get some t-shirts printed.

No. I wasn’t sure whether your rhetorical bait and switch (#14) was meant to be taken as a serious argument, and decided to pay you the compliment of assuming you were kidding. Weren’t you? (I’ll respond if, God forbid, you weren’t.)