IT'S SOCIALISM STUPID
Socialism
by Robert Heilbroner
From CEE article: Socialism, by Robert Heilbroner
Socialism—defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production—was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty. Yet the idea and the ideal of socialism linger on. Whether socialism in some form will eventually return as a major organizing force in human affairs is unknown, but no one can accurately appraise its prospects who has not taken into account the dramatic story of its rise and fall.
It is often thought that the idea of socialism derives from the work of Karl Marx. In fact, Marx wrote only a few pages about socialism, as either a moral or a practical blueprint for society. The true architect of a socialist order was Lenin, who first faced the practical difficulties of organizing an economic system without the driving incentives of profit seeking or the self-generating constraints of competition. Lenin began from the long-standing delusion that economic organization would become less complex once the profit drive and the market mechanism had been dispensed with—"as self-evident," he wrote, as "the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording, and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic."
In fact, economic life pursued under these first four rules rapidly became so disorganized that within four years of the 1917 revolution, Soviet production had fallen to 14 percent of its prerevolutionary level. By 1921 Lenin was forced to institute the New Economic Policy (NEP), a partial return to the market incentives of capitalism. This brief mixture of socialism and capitalism came to an end in 1927 after Stalin instituted the process of forced collectivization that was to mobilize Russian resources for its leap into industrial power.
Socialism
Socialism aims to establish a fundamentally different society from the one that currently exists in most countries. While there are different schools of socialism, which often tend to have differing views of the ideal socialist society, some general examples of socialist concepts are: The desire to abolish capitalism, to place the means of production under the collective ownership of the people, and to achieve a very high degree of economic and political equality.
Socialists argue that capitalism exploits the working class, and they desire for workers to play a vital role in moving society from capitalism to socialism (either by rising up in a revolution or general strike, or by voting en masse for socialist political parties).
The Socialist Party USA
Platform and principles-
The Socialist Party USA describes itself as a democratic socialist party. It is opposed to both capitalism and authoritarian Communism.[1] The Party's principles and platform call for the elimination of the power of big business through public ownership and workers' control, production for use instead of profit, and the establishment of a classless society. The party is also strongly committed to internationalism and the struggle against racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and homophobia.[3] The party calls for the abolition of the death penalty and for the replacement of the prison-industrial system with restorative justice.
And unfortunately, in order to win this election we need:
American progressives tend to support interventionist economics: they advocate income redistribution.
Obama states he wants:
Each one on their own, sounds good, until you truly understand the cost & effect of these policies. Add it all up and you have SOCIALISM
Capitalism
by Robert Hessen
From CEE article: Capitalism, by Robert Hessen
Capitalism, a term of disparagement coined by socialists in the midnineteenth century, is a misnomer for "economic individualism," which Adam Smith earlier called "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty." Economic individualism's basic premise is that the pursuit of self-interest and the right to own private property are morally defensible and legally legitimate. Its major corollary is that the state exists to protect individual rights. Subject to certain restrictions, individuals (alone or with others) are free to decide where to invest, what to produce or sell, and what prices to charge, and there is no natural limit to the range of their efforts in terms of assets, sales and profits, or the number of customers, employees, and investors, or whether they operate in local, regional, national, or international markets.