Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society.

Also, I don’t think that anyone is crowing about capitalism’s demise, since it is manifestly not dead or dying. What people might be crowing about is the death of a certain form of fundamentalist capitalism, and the return to more sensible and socialist policies.

Cleese no longer thinks Michael is the funniest Palin…

http://www.asylum.co.uk/2008/10/14/its-official-michael-palin-is-no-longer-the-funniest-palin/

Have you got a line ready to explain the Rupert Murdoch shift, when that comes?

Congratulations on “dhimmirat” for Democrats, though; that’s witty. Can I suggest that you put it on a placard, over the words, WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!! OBAMA’s A MARXIST MUSLIM!!!!! Then, take it to a Palin rally, and do try to get yourself in front of a camera.

Thank you.

The question remains when the dhimmirat machine can animate enough corpses to give the election to the Obama. My guess is there aren’t enough undead in the world to elect the Obama. Maybe in Illinois but not in the rest of the country with the exception of Massachusetts.

Oh really, what a shocker. I’ll have to vote McCain then.

You know Jim, Vietnam is still there if you want to invade it again. You’re not a quitter are you?

In practical terms, the only people who think the USSR wasn’t communist are Western communists and those strongly influenced by them.

Socialism had 100 years and two-thirds of the planet to try out its experiment and make it work. What more do self-identified socialists need to prove their case, a thousand years and the rest of the solar system?

Nationalisation measures, as the Engels quote I unearthed, preceded the rise of socialism and remain a weapon in the government’s arsenal long after socialism has died and been buried. Anyone crowing about about capitalism’s demise in this day and age is literally an unreconstructed Stalinist, whatever they may think of themselves, and should be shunned in just the same way as other moronic bigots like the BNP.

In any case, you seem to regard socialism as akin to Newton’s laws of motion, whereas a political theory is probably best not to regard as so set in stone, so quoting a 19th century source for a definition in a contemporary political debate is perhaps not particularly useful.

Would Engels think Obama or Bush are socialists? Would he think the USSR was socialist? Do you think they are?

Nationalisation is not socialism, according to a principal founder of the latter.

Or perhaps it is? Gene seems to think so. I thought after the horrors of Bolshevik Russia, the Western Left used to insist that only workers’ control, not a change in property relations, defined socialism? Wasn’t that the key excuse Western socialists made to try to avoid the opprobrium heaped on their theories by the consequences of Lenin’s and Stalin’s experiment? It seems to me that if nationalisation is socialism, then the USSR and Mao’s PRC were socialist, and the Cold War Right were entirely correct in describing the Western Left as fellow-travellers of totalitarianism.

But Gene is sure that Obama does not favor defeat now. And Gene believes this because . . . . ?

(If Obama were a Republican, Gene and almost every other Obama supporter would find the fact that Obama has hidden so much of his past, and told so many tales about it that turn out not to be exactly true, highly suspicious. Instead, the more Obama conceals and prevaricates, the more they trust him.)