: Small-scale communes growing organic food (in greenhouses if necessary), using solar and geothermal and wind energy, taking care of the planet, people spending a lot of energy cleaning up the mess this generation has made of it. Naturally, I have only a few clues as to how we are all going to get from here to there.
Well that all sounds nice,but it's your last statement that explains the fear people have(rightly or wrongly) when the word socialism is used.
How would we get there from here?
: The writings of Karl Marx can be found on the Internet, so you don't have to trust me... this question has to be nipped in the bud, though. Marx was NOT a statist, and looked forward to the "withering away of the state" as a necessary prerequisite of socialism. This is why true believers in this stuff repeat over and over again, with tiresome regularity, that the Soviet Union does not count as an example of "socialism." The most dramatic (and contradictory) illustration of Marx's ideas in this regard is his essay "The Civil War in France," which also contains the half-baked concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
I understand that the Soviet Union wasn't the socialistic system that you envison.
Russia's tradition was one of dictatorial rule by the Romanavs. This traditon was carried on by the Bolsheviks with their cruel, totalitarian rule.
Stalin only made it worse.. By focusing on heavy industry , the peoples real needs were ignored. Secondly, the peasants who had hoped to gain control of the farms their ancestors had worked for years, found them instead being now in the hands of the new regime. This resulted in bloody consequences. ( All those dead cows, I wonder if McSpotlight has found a way to lay that on McDonalds, too.)
: As for the all-around development of people, Marx thought that the progress of the human race was being stunted by the obsession with market values that he called "commodity fetishism," that made the working classes who made the world of his day into cheap objects for easy exploitation. Read Volume 1 of CAPITAL for more. Read Volume 1 of CAPITAL anyway, it will make you smarter whether you agree or violently disagree.
I hope you mean that anyone who reads this would become smarter and not just myself. Although I haven't finished reading it, I can tell you that some parts really bother me( like making children less dependant upon their parents)
: My own concern with the all-around development of people, today, is that sleazy attitudes toward the capitalism of our day are being fostered by school systems, public and private, which are boring and joyless and which turn out boring and joyless graduates.
I agree with your description of the type of graduates our schools are producing. They are boring and joyless. But rather than attributing this to capitalism, I find fault with the general attacks on our children's individuality. In our efforts to be politically correct at all costs we are raising a generation of sheep. We don't want to offend a black child so Huck Finn is banned from schools, even though many black children who have read it easily pick up on Twain's message. Our children aren't being taught to think for themselves, but rather to think as a group. Individualism is being slowly stomped out. No wonder they turn out so boring.
: Now "democratic process" is a complex word. What did you have in mind? What would we get to vote on? How would votes be regarded? Would socialism be more likely with a process that used proportional representation, or a "none of the above" ballot option, or with a consensus process, or with straight majoritarianism? Now it's up to you to reveal your ideas about socialism.
I think you know what I have in mind. Yes, what would we get to vote on? How would votes be regarded? Would the majority rule?
And as for my ideas on socialism. I think that it's best not to have either a straight socialistic or capitalistic society. I think a mixed ecomony is probably the one that best benifits society. ( For large nations such as the USA, it's probably the only practical one)
