Socialist Favorite

60-something socialist is Britain's unlikely political star:

Britain's surprising new political star is a rumpled 66-year-old with a set of socialist ideas many thought had faded with the Cold War.

Jeremy Corbyn, the runaway favorite in a contest to lead the opposition Labour Party, opposes NATO and nuclear weapons, plans to apologize for the invasion of Iraq and wants to end austerity, heavily tax the rich and nationalize Britain's railways.

Opponents say the longtime lawmaker is a relic of the past who will drive away moderate voters. But to supporters — many of them young, new to politics and brimming with enthusiasm — his old-fashioned ideas are the future.

"It's a breath of fresh air," said 24-year-old Alex Anthony, holding an "I'm on team Jeremy Corbyn" sign outside a candidates' debate. "I'm sick and tired of the other candidates ignoring the fact that it wasn't ordinary people that created the financial crisis."

Is Bush Actually A Socialist?

Is George W. Bush a socialist? Is George W. Bush a fascist? Did George W. Bush purposely destroy the United States economy so that the government would have to nationalize everything? What does it mean to nationalize a bank?

From The Financial Crisis: Will the U.S. Nationalize the Banks? by Dan La Botz:

The economy is already in a recession. Whatever the ultimate bailout plan, the financial situation could well continue to unravel, curtail credit, and shrink the broader economy, leading to a deep recession or depression. The U.S. Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, might then be forced -- despite their deep aversion to any form of government ownership -- to not only bail out the banks but to buy them. The increasingly popular sentiment that the bankers should be made to pay for the crisis opens the door to the notion of nationalization of the banks. What would it mean to have the government own the banks?

Historically the Populists, various labor parties, and the Socialist and Communist left have raised the slogan of nationalization of the banks as part of a process of bringing about socialism. Their argument has been that if the banks were owned by the government, and the government were controlled by the people, we could democratically plan an economy to meet the needs of all. Nationalization of the banks would form part of a plan of socialization of the economy -- banks and corporations, mines and factories, airlines and railroads -- brought under the control of a combination of citizens, workers, and consumers. We would put our children, the elderly and the infirm first, and organize the economy to provide jobs, housing, health care, education, and retirement benefits for all. Bank nationalizations in reality, however, have usually just been a stage in the boom-bust cycles of modern economies, a period when the state lends its strength to finance to see it through hard times, and once finance has recuperated, the state returns it to its private owners so they can continue to reap the benefits of wealth plus interest.

Read more here.

From U.S. is getting a socialist economy by Gwynne Dyer:

After Comrade George W. Bush nationalized the two giants of the U.S. mortgage market, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, earlier this month, Anatole Kaletsky wrote in the Times of London that "the most capitalist administration ever, in the world's most capitalist country, (has) decided to wipe out the private owners of its biggest and most important financial companies and replace them with state-appointed bureaucrats."

Wikipedia defines "nationalization" as "the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government. It is a central theme of certain brands of estate socialist' policy that the means of production, distribution and exchange, should be owned by the state ... Nationalization may occur with or without compensation to the former owners. If it takes place without compensation it is a case of expropriation."

Read the rest here.

From Yet another wignut pundit claims Bush is a “socialist” by Paul:

Since we socialists can’t seem to agree on even the colour of shit, there are about as many different interpretations of socialism as there are socialists. But the one thing that we have in common (along with some anarchists such as Noam Chomsky) is that we believe that the state can (and should) be used for a time to curtail the power of capitalists, to remove them from their position of ridiculous power and to redress the gross imbalance in wealth that they have accumulated for themselves while 18 million people (3 times 9/11) die globally every year due to poverty.

Fascists on the other hand believe in using the power of the state to preserve and enhance the power of capitalists (see, for instance, the collusion between Nazi Germany and the infamous Krupp family or Mussolini’s Corporatist régime) at the expense of workers.

I know, I know, it’s hard. They both deal with the state AND capitalists! It’s so confusing. But here’s an easy mnemonic device to help remember the difference between the two for next time.

Saying that Bush’s fascist move this week is actually the same thing as “socialism” just because it involves the state and capitalists is a bit like saying that cancer-causing cigarettes are the same thing as chemotherapy because they both involve cancer and its spread.

Are there wignuts out there, or is that just a spelling error? Paul definitely thinks outside of the box. I’m not sure that I agree with him, but I find what he has written about the financial crisis to be interesting. What do you think? Is all of this socialism or fascism? Or neither?

Paul has a link to this video. I assume the wignut/wingnut pundit he refers to is Andrew Sullivan:


Both Sullivan and Naomi Klein bring up some good points. One thing that bothers me about Sullivan’s point about personal responsibility is his denial of outside pressure. The advertising business is based on outside pressure. It wouldn’t be as large of an industry as it is if outside pressure didn’t work. People were inundated with outside pressure to use credit for all kinds of things. And after all the problems that going into too much debt have caused for all of us, the outside pressure still continues. My home loan is with Countrywide. Nearly every month I receive a letter telling me how much available home equity I have, and asking me if I am interested in refinancing. I just received another one the other day.

From Bush Embraces Obama’s Socialism by Cliff Kincaid:

The point was that Obama is a socialist. Biden called the accusation “ridiculous.”

The problem for the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin is that their fellow Republican, President George W. Bush, may do more damage to American-style capitalism during his last months in office than Obama could ever do in a four-year term as president.

In short, we already have a socialist president―and his name is Bush.

The irony is that the same socialist process begun by the Republican president, Bush, could be dramatically expanded under a Democratic President, Obama. This time, the “bailouts” and “rescues” will be global in nature and used to benefit the rest of the world, using U.S. tax dollars.

The inevitable result will be global government financed by global taxes. The last time this was tried in America was when King George attempted to impose taxes on what became the founders of the greatest country in human history, the United States of America.

The cry of “no taxation without representation” led to a revolution.

I find all of this to be very interesting, but it does make my head hurt.

I plead ignorance. I really don’t know what the solution is to the financial crisis. What scares me is that either the people in charge of fixing things know as much, or less, than I do. Or they know what they’re doing, and the only people that will benefit from their solutions are the rich and powerful. Either way, the word “screwed” comes to mind.

I also plead confusion. Is George W. Bush a radical right-wing nut (my definition) or is he, as described by Andrew Sullivan) a left-wing socialist?

Maybe he is simply an immoral, fascist asshole.

Update:
But wait, there’s more! It appears that perhaps “the people in charge of fixing things know as much, or less, than I do.”

Fairy Tales

From McCain’s “Socialism” Charge by Madison Powers:

For many months the McCain campaign has been asking who Barack Obama is. The campaign has been tantalizingly vague, dropping hints along the way, but leaving it to us to connect the dots. Now, thanks to the McCain-Palin campaign, the answer has finally come into focus. He’s a celebrity Muslim socialist who pals around with terrorists at elite Hyde Park gatherings attended by Republican college presidents.

We always knew that Obama would make real history should he win the election for president, but we always thought it would be because he is an African-American. Who knew that the most extraordinary part of his biography is his uncanny ability to combine so many qualities into one persona? No wonder it took months of public education by the McCain camp to bring this to light. Most of us just wouldn’t have figured it out. Thanks for your hard work.

Too bad, however, that the public is not in the mood for fairy tales when the economy is so much at risk and we are fighting two costly wars, neither of which is going all that well. It is hard to understand why so many people are so preoccupied with these issues when the Republican campaign has been doing their best to tell us why we really should be sniffing out socialists amongst us. And while we are at it, maybe we should have Congress investigate which members of Congress are anti-American.

Read the rest here.

George W. Bush Is A Socialist

According to Mr. Practical at Minyanville.com it appears that George W. Bush is a socialist:

By its nature an economy and its markets are tied together: controlling them is socialistic and will always slow growth.

According to Mr. Practical Ben Bernanke is a socialist also:

The Great Moderation that Mr. Bernanke spoke of in 2004, which smacked to me right away by the way of a very socialistic remark, was merely the growing and looming debt fostered by central banks being spent. Now the process of that debt being either paid back or destroyed is revealing the Great Moderation as the Great Debacle.

Mr. Practicals’ article entitled The Great Moderation of Debt is a worthwhile read. Here is another excerpt:

So the Fed being under great pressure collapsed yesterday and gave the economy not medicine but drugs. It gave it just what ails it: the sickness of debt. Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke want banks to lend and people to borrow what they can’t afford to, more debt, to correct the problem. But if successful they will only exacerbate and prolong the inevitable. But I don’t think they will be successful. All the debt they just made cheaper will only go to two places: those that can afford to borrow it and thus don’t need it and directly to banks that can’t lend it. The rich will use it to again speculate or cheapen their debt. Banks will use it as capital to finance their ever declining asset values. Neither use will do any good to the real economy.