AttackFormation
Master Don Juan
Socialism has never been a singular, monolithic movement.How is Socialsim not a form of State rule?
And Socialists ARE a driving force behind emigration, but you speak as if those brainwashed people are somehow not violently agitating for open borders?
Socialist thought has existed since ancient times but the modern socialism was established with the founding of the International Workingmens' Association, also called the First International, in London 1864. It was conflicted from the start between (1) anarchists, (2) democratic socialists, and what we for historical practicality's sake can call (3) communists. They all had basically the same goal: basing society on social ownership and workers' self-management, with backing theory of things like positive liberty, rentiers, economic rent and surplus value. The differences were in what the strategy should or could be for achieving the goal. Democratic socialists did support labor unions but mainly believed in achieving socialism by reforming the state. Communists wanted to capture the state "temporarily" and impose "socialism from above", and then abolish it. Anarchists could support electoral reform out of pragmatism, but they believed it was necessary to build "socialism from below" through syndicalism to abolish the state and they opposed the imposition of a new "temporary" state structure.
Every society is 'governed', but a government does not require a state, which is a top-down authoritarian hierarchy used to impose the will of a ruling class on the rest of society. Socialists had a vision of a society built on democratic worker and community councils, which when it was needed for socioeconomic organization would elect delegates who were held accountable, overridable and recallable, shared their living conditions and federated into new councils. When the communists got into power in Russia, they shut down this briefly alive bottom-up system from which the name "Council=Soviet Union" came from.
The democratic socialists achieved electoral successes, but in practice the mainstream of them degenerated into social democracy/welfare capitalism, abandoning a socialist vision, and now they are also afflicted with neoliberalism. There are no democratic socialist parties which are in the mainstream. The communists purged and undermined the other socialists wherever they got into power which they of course most notably did in Russia. The anarchists achieved short-lived success first in the Free Territory of Ukraine where Lenin and Trotsky sent in their armies to wipe them out, and then in Revolutionary Spain where Franco, Hitler and Mussolini crushed them.
So there are three basic strands of socialism. Democratic socialism, communism which is and always has been discredited by the other two, and - what I adhere to - libertarian socialism ("libertarian" originates as a loan word from French, a synonym for "anarchist", but right wingers like Rothbard attacked and captured the label in America during the 1960s).
Ok that was that, I left out some details but that's pretty much it... now about the emigration thing, I have no idea who the so-called "socialists" you are referring to are.
And every law is a form of authoritarianism. You can't have any, not even socialist property and laws without claims, acquisitions, access control and threat of punishment, all of which are a kind of force. It's really a moot point. It just matters how you are going to use the property, laws and force. Socialists recognize positive liberty, not negative liberty.
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