I had an interesting question for you guys re:democratic socialism. If it is a democracy, surely a pro-capitalist party could run and win just like a socialist one could in theory in our parliament? How would you prevent this and how does it work?
Sorry i didn't respond to your response earlier -i've been back in work - not much time now either. Too many points since then to take in all at once, but a few stick out - mainly as mentioned above, your insistence that nazism was socialist (again) -
one problem i think is your equation of the state with socialism which leads to that linking. I don't pretend to know the only universal definition of socialism or anything (or even to have got my own definition "right"), and i tend to adapt my conception of it to circumstance; so there isn't a great thinker's definition i can refer you to as the "truth" (except maybe chomsky in general). But i consider the state as anathema to my idea of socialism (i guess that makes me an anarchist). Plenty of other socialists will disagree, whether marxist-leninists who want to use the state to aim towards socialism, or social-democrats (who are really capitalists anyway).
Even the marxist-leninists in theory want to keep the state for now with an aim to eliminate it eventually (however it ends up in practice). So there is one definite difference to fascism (or our current corporate capitalism), which would want to keep the state forever to be protector of the glorious nation (or in our case the corporate/banking power).
Also, mussolini defined facsism (sp whatever) as a corporatist state (or something along those lines), and while hilter wanted to control the corporations overall, the top corporations largely thought the same as him, so there wasn't much restriction for them in practice to be nudged towards directions they liked anyway (not to mention that the large german corporations interlocked with western corporates brought him to power and funded his army and arguably directed most of his policies anyway). This economic view of fascism isn't far from our current setup - the major corporations under the umbrella of the state when it suits them (and with the state doing their bidding)
You can't forget the context either - hitler used a populist message and a 'socialist'-sounding name to win votes from the then massively-growing left in germany (similar to how the EDL try to get ex-labours by trying to sound more lefty). They made the right noises to the workers to get in, but once they got power pretence of progressiveness evaporated; eg early on they created their own union to replace all unions which made it very clear that the only right the worker had was to further the aims of the (corporate) state - a very obvious difference to socialism (alongside all the other obvious differences).
It's fairly well-established that the corporate and establishment power of the west were happy with a right wing counterbalance to the growing (as they saw it) threat from left parties in europe, and put their money or support where their mouth was (ford, coca cola, standard oil, ibm, the royal family, daily mail etc). Do you really think that this section of people would be happy to fund anything socialist? The growth of the fascists was (and still is) used to stop proper democracy (or socialism) (another variation of this is the empire-old british strategy of using fundamentalists (eg muslim brotherhood or saudi wahabis/salafists) as a counter balance to progressive elements (eg nasser or mossadeq) in the middle east - read mark curtis for this).
I mean apart from all the finer details, what do you think left wing actually means? It doesn't mean have a state doing everything for you (necessarily) - it's based on core principles of equality freedom and democracy before all else. Do you really think this was hitler's bag? (or stalin's?). I honestly thought british people were generally too well-informed about wwII to think that hitler was left wing like some of the right-wing american sites i've read...(but that's only my judgment of well-informed of course)
And as for the state; capitalists need the state - first for a central legal system to protect property (the main function); as a welfare system when they cause economic crises; or as a welfare/immigration system to put downward pressure on wages to keep profits high at other times - to provide many (if not most) of the innovations that capitalism seems to claim for itself (many of which were developed by the military using keynseian spending before the "private" (read mates of the current government) firms got to exploit them (eg gps, internet, computer chips, ai, etc) (you could count this as capitalism if you accept keynesian economics as part of capitalism, but this is out of fashion for most of the right these days (even though it provided the consumer boom that some capitalists also claim as their own))
Also for clarity, while i don't particularly like the state, i don't necesarrily want to get rid of it now (like many right wingers) as it actually provides some protection from the elites/capitalists that we've won over years of opression (not for long it seems though) - while i've got socialist/anarchist views, i'll try to judge a situation on it's merits rather than use ideology to decide what's going to cause harm. My main problem with some marxists is their belief in marxism as a scientific theory which can be applied to real life simplistically; the same criticism can be made of the neo-liberals belief that markets could replace government and work better (despite nearly every example of them trying their theories ending in disaster for most people (you must know the examples...) (a less generous (but more accurate) view of neo-liberals is that they know full well it won't work, but by the time we work it out, they've made a killing (literally))
It is a bit draining to put effort into talking about this when none of it seems to make a difference in the listener (don't worry about it - i'm sure you think exactly the same about us lefties though). On a personal level i wouldn't ever want politics to trump actual social interaction - i'd rather bite my tongue with someone than cause aggro for the sake of my views (i'll usually have a go at tailoring it to an audience though, or focus on something that everyone can agree on) - so peace and love man
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//oh and the point quoted in this post - you couldn't prevent anything in a democracy if the people want it (that's sort of the point); but my conception of democracy wouldn't sit comfortably with parties (which often represent specific minority interests) - i would prefer direct democracy where everyone gets a direct say, and you can continue arguing until everyone's happy or don't do it (it would also work in units small enough for everyone to have a say) - this does actually work as a process (with teething problems), as shown in syntagma square and occupy (not to mention the communards (no not jimmy and the boys...)).
This is actually similar to the worker soviets idea of lenin (as discussed before); it's also similar on paper to ghaddafi's old system of assemblies (can't remember the arab word - jhal-somthing) it may have been intended honestly, but in practice the central government couldn't give away most of the important powers when it came to it - this is a common criticism from the left of what i'm talking about (the remnants of the state are needed to defend the revolution etc) but it doesn't disprove the principle of direct democracy imo and just needs to worked out on the ground (by direct democracy...) - some would say utopian, i would say realistically not thinking there's an ideological plan that i just have to implement right...
//and if you think a properly socialist party could win in our parliament, look into what the initial backer of thatcher got up to (funny irish name neeve or something - ex sas, was assasinated by ira) - in the 70s he was going to set up a network of ex sas men who would cache arms ready in case any socialists got in; also the story of harold wilson saying the tanks were sent to the end of downing street as a warning to not go too lefty at one point (written off as him going loopy at the time, but evidence came out later i think);
similar thing in US - look up the business plot against fdr - the corporates apparently were trying to organise a coup against fdr's new deal (in 33 i think about the same time as hitler got in) - the plan was specifically a hitler style takeover (this again shows that these corporates and hitler's fascist were fellow travellers)
our establishment dates back before there was democracy and it's core values are from there (eg the corporation of london where most of this power lives is immune in important ways to our parliament and dates back to the 12th century (there's a representative of the corporation of london that sits behind the speaker's chair in the commons (called the remembrancer) just incase their interests are messed with)
sorry if any of the above waffle sounds didactic, i don't know the "truth" - it's my opinions (and other people's ideas), and i'm no expert
//edit (for jancrow): Tl;dr - nazis bad, lefties good
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
