The Socialist Case for Yes

Gregor Gall outlines the socialist case for independence…

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  1. Winghunter says:

    Below are the “Ten Reasons to Reject Socialism” by The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

    1. Socialism and communism are the same ideology

    2. Socialism violates personal freedom

    3. Socialism destroys personal initiative

    4. Socialism violates private property

    5. Socialism opposes traditional marriage

    6. Socialism opposes parental rights in education

    7. Socialism promotes radical equality

    8. Socialism promotes atheism

    9. Socialism promotes relativism

    10. Socialism mocks religion

    “Why we must protect the family, private property and America from the dangers of Socialism.”

    1. Socialism and communism are the same ideology

    Communism is but an extreme form of socialism. From the ideological standpoint, there is no substantial difference between the two.

    2. Socialism violates personal freedom

    Socialism seeks to eliminate “injustice” by transferring rights and responsibilities from individuals and families to the State. In the process, socialism actually creates injustice. It destroys true liberty: the freedom to decide all matters that lie within our own competence and to follow the course shown by our reason, within the laws of morality, including the dictates of justice and charity.

    3. Socialism violates human nature

    Socialism is anti-natural. It destroys personal initiative – a fruit of our intellect and free will – and replaces it with State control. It tends to totalitarianism, with its government and police repression, wherever it is implemented.

    4. Socialism violates private property

    Socialism calls for “redistributing the wealth” by taking from the “rich” to give to the poor. It imposes taxes that punish those who have been able to take greater advantage of their productive talents, capacity to work or thrift. It uses taxation to promote economic and social egalitarianism, a goal that will be fully achieved, according to The Communist Manifesto, with the “abolition of private property.”

    5. Socialism opposes traditional marriage

    Socialism sees no moral reason for people to restrict sex to marriage, that is, to an indissoluble union between a man and a woman. Furthermore, socialism undermines private property, which Friedrich
    Engels, founder of modern socialism and communism along with Karl Marx, saw as the foundation of traditional marriage.

    6. Socialism opposes parental rights in education

    Socialism has the State, and not parents, control the education of children. Almost from birth, children are to be handed over to public institutions, where they will be taught what the State wants, regardless of parental views. Evolution must be taught. School prayer must be forbidden.

    7. Socialism promotes radical equality

    A supposed absolute equality among men is the fundamental assumption of socialism. Therefore, it sees any inequality as unjust in itself. Private employers are quickly portrayed as “exploiters” whose profits really belong to their employees. As a consequence, they rule out the system of wage earning.

    8. Socialism promotes atheism

    Belief in God, who unlike us is infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, clashes head-on with the principle of absolute equality. Socialism therefore rejects the spiritual, claiming that only matter exists. God, the soul, and the next life are illusions according to socialism.

    9. Socialism promotes relativism

    For socialism there are no absolute truths or revealed morals that establish standards of conduct that apply to everyone, everywhere, and always. Everything evolves, including right and wrong, good and evil. There is no place for the Ten Commandments, neither in the private mind nor in the public square.

    10. Socialism mocks religion

    According to Karl Marx, religion is “the opium of the people.” Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, agreed: “Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”

    “May God protect America from Socialism”

    1. JBS says:

      If God exists, then may God protect Scotland from a bunch of rabid nutters like this. If She doesn’t exist, however, we’ll just have to do the job ourselves.

  2. douglas clark says:

    Ré Winghunter’s comment:

    Seems like ten good reasons for being a socialist!

    With bonus points for annoying “The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property”.

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      Yeah, comedy gold

  3. Andrew says:

    America F*ck yea, sorry i watched it at the weekend and thought,” Is this a documentary”.

  4. James Morrisey says:

    Is Religion the Opiate of the Masses?

    This quote is reproduced a great deal and is probably the only Marx quote that most people are familiar with. Unfortunately, if someone is familiar with it they are likely only familiar with a small portion that, taken by itself, tends to give a distorted impression of what Marx had to say about religion.
    Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress.
    Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.

    The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.
    Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

    Usually all one gets from the above is “Religion is the opium of the people“ (with no ellipses to indicate that something has been removed). Sometimes “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature“ is included. If you compare these with the full quotation, it’s clear that a great deal more is being said than what most people are aware of.

    In the above quotation Marx is saying that religion’s purpose is to create illusory fantasies for the poor. Economic realities prevent them from finding true happiness in this life, so religion tells them that this is OK because they will find true happiness in the next life. Although this is a criticism of religion, Marx is not without sympathy: people are in distress and religion provides solace, just as people who are physically injured receive relief from opiate-based drugs.

    The quote is not, then, as negative as most portray (at least about religion). In some ways, even the slightly extended quote which people might see is a bit dishonest because saying “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature…” deliberately leaves out the additional statement that it is also the “heart of a heartless world.”

    What we have is a critique of society that has become heartless rather than of religion which tries to provide a bit of solace. One can argue that Marx offers a partial validation of religion in that it tries to become the heart of a heartless world. For all its problems, religion doesn’t matter so much — it is not the real problem. Religion is a set of ideas, and ideas are expressions of material realities.

    Religion is a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself.

    Still, it would be a mistake to think that Marx is uncritical towards religion — it may try to provide heart, but it fails. For Marx, the problem lies in the obvious fact that an opiate drug fails to fix a physical injury — it merely helps you forget pain and suffering. This may be fine up to a point, but only as long as you are also trying to solve the underlying problems causing the pain.

    Similarly, religion does not fix the underlying causes of people’s pain and suffering — instead, it helps them forget why they are suffering and gets them to look forward to an imaginary future when the pain will cease.

    Even worse, this “drug” is administered by the same oppressors who are responsible for the pain and suffering in the first place. Religion is an expression of more fundamental unhappiness and symptom of more fundamental and oppressive economic realities. Hopefully, humans will create a society in which the economic conditions causing so much pain and suffering would be eradicated and, therefore, the need for soothing drugs like religion will cease.

    Of course, for Marx such a turn of events isn’t to be “hoped for” because human history was leading inevitably towards it.

    So, in spite of his obvious dislike of and anger towards religion, Marx did not make religion the primary enemy of workers and communists, regardless of what might have been done by 20th century communists. Had Marx regarded religion as a more serious enemy, he would have devoted more time to it in his writings. Instead, he focused on economic and political structures that in his mind served to oppress people.

    For this reason, some Marxists could be sympathetic to religion. Karl Kautsky, in his Foundations of Christianity, wrote that early Christianity was, in some respects, a proletarian revolution against privileged Roman oppressors. In Latin America, some Catholic theologians have used Marxist categories to frame their critique of economic injustice, resulting in “liberation theology.”

    Marx’s relationship with and ideas about religion are more complex than most realize. Marx’s analysis of religion is worth taking seriously. Specifically, he argues that religion is not so much an independent “thing” in society but, rather, a reflection or creation of other, more fundamental “things” like economic relationships.

    That’s not the only way of looking at religion, but it can provide some interesting illumination on the social roles that religion plays.

    Winghunter is just expressing [parroting] the right wingnut views of a section of American society that is stuck in Mc Carthy’s 50s if not the first Red witchhunts of 1917. They tend to be rednecks from the poorest states in america and without the basic necessities of life that we take for granted like healthcare and education [to be healthy and educated is communism you see]

    They tend to be anti- womens choice about women controlling their own bodies in terms of fertility and abortion yet are enthusiastic advocates of the use of the death penalty and killing abortion clinic doctors in the name of god

    . Most are “gun nuts ” with the more extreme ones running around in paranoid nazi militias even going to the extent of blowing up the Federal building in Oklahoma in the belief they are fighting against NWO [new world order] run by ZOG [zionist organised govt] to stop OWG [one world govt] although there are varients of this they share one thing in common in that they are paranoid extreme right wingers somtimes referred to in the U.S a the conservitive Taliban.
    The above post by winghammer is further proof of two things.

    1 Political Science is just two strange words to them [ and in there minds most likely code for communism]

    2 How right the American founding fathers [many who like Jefferson and Washington were not religious and certainly not christians] to separate church and state

  5. Wullie says:

    Scottish Labour, more Groucho than Karl.

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