These real-socialism-hasn't-been-tried-yet articles basically write themselves. It's like colouring by numbers.
nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opi…
nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opi…
The standard formula is:
1.) Throw everything you can find at capitalism. Even very mundane things that would be true of any system, such as the fact that not every job is super-inspiring & fun.
2.) Say that the Soviet Union wasn't socialist, because it didn't empower The People.
1.) Throw everything you can find at capitalism. Even very mundane things that would be true of any system, such as the fact that not every job is super-inspiring & fun.
2.) Say that the Soviet Union wasn't socialist, because it didn't empower The People.
3.) Then escape into abstraction. Restate the original intentions of socialism in nebulous terms. Throw soundbites around like mad. Talk about the democratisation of economic life, the self-emancipation of the workers, charting new destinations for humanity, blah blah blah.
Only commies get away with this sort of shite. It would never work the other way round. Imagine a commie saying "Capitalism caused the 2008 financial crisis", and a capitalist replying "Lol, you obviously don't understand Adam Smith. He never wanted a financial crisis, you know."
Yet when a commie says "Lol, you obviously don't understand Marxism. Marx never wanted [insert one of the many bad things that happened in all socialist societies], you know", everyone celebrates them as a brilliant intellectual.
"[A]s much as the authors insist that previous examples of socialism were not “really” socialist, none of them can tell us what exactly they would do differently. [...] [T]he authors escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations"
capx.co/you-cant-argue…
capx.co/you-cant-argue…
