of course purging of enemies has happened before - but never on the industrial scale of the soviets or china. and monarchies, democracies, plutocracies, whatever, do not require the purges. it can happen, but it doesn’t have to happen. pure socialism requires it.

it’s been attempted plenty of times, but has failed every time and necessarily morphed into something else- for the reasons Rusty and I have pointed out. you have to kill everyone who don’t want to go along with the plan, so it is required that you become a totalitarian state.

perhaps you’d like to clarify your terms? marxist philosophy encompasses the whole spectrum - capitalism falls to socialism and socialism dissolves into communism. there are almost as many definitions of socialism as there are advocates.

look at the list of the richest people in the US. very few of them come from money. they’re all self made, not because they’re white, but because they innovated, had better ideas and/or were first to the market. capitalist societies are the most successful form to generate wealth from nothing. capitalism is the…

so which sins I supposedly attribute to socialism happened before socialism was created? the stalinist purges or the maoist cultural revolution?

“Also, since no one has been advocating Marxist philosophy”

actually (despite the exceedingly small difference between the two) my claims were about marxism. In fact, I rarely said the word socialism unless it was specifically brought to my attention. but even socialism proper requires the collective ownership of all means of production. what most people refer to today as…

when exactly do you think socialism was “created”

but that’s the conversation you joined. we’re not talking about a little more socialism in our capitalism, the author speaks of upending evil capitalism. in all of your replies, you appear to agree. now you don’t?

what sort of regulations do you use to take everything away from someone who worked all their lives to obtain it?

I will dig up sources if you give me one example of where marxism was tried without resulting in the misery and/or death of millions.

again, those are not socialist notions. they are the right and proper duty of a democratic government - to keep the people from killing themselves, destroying property and yes, enforce contracts. the contract is “don’t destroy my lake or my stream or the land around my property or the air I breath”. That’s not…

I said ‘few are hungry’ . we do a pretty good job of feeding the masses. and like I said, your cultural revolution ain’t happening because of that simple fact.

“Christ you are dumb”

Almost any history book will do. well, any one not written by Zinn, Chomsky or Oliver Stone.

do you know where the vast majority of industrial environmental damage on the planet is found? the former soviet union and china. you’re not advocating ‘socialism lite’ like in scandinavian countries, those states are only nominally socialist - their economies are still mostly capitalist. What you’re really talking…

no one wants unregulated capitalism. it is, by it’s very nature the theory of contracts. you agree to do something for someone and they agree to recompense in return - that’s all capitalism is - negotiating what my service is worth to you and visa versa. But contacts need to be enforced. that’s regulation. Does it…

then where are all the deaths by starvation? 1930s soviet union had millions die of starvation. Venezuelans are starving to death as we speak. yet, there is none of that here. Is it perfect here? of course not. but it’s not bad enough to start a marxist revolution, which is my original point - economic marxism isn’t a…

As I said prior, Marxist theory is a fantasy and unworkable without the point of a gun and the gulag. Marxism in practice is as we’ve seen throughout its history. As you become more successful - at least more successful than the mean - the more an enemy to the state you become. innovation and competence for personal…

Flint was assaulted by terrible government, not the free market, but I’ll give you environmental damage by corporations is violence, but no more than breaking any contractual agreement. Capitalism and the free market is nothing more than that - making a contract and abiding to it. By doing business in the US,…