Some Thoughts/Reflections On Socialism - Blum

[Magda Hassan]

This is a great article, thanks Peter. Everything Bill says is eminently reasonable to any one with two neurons or more. People get scared of the label 'dictatorship of the proletariat' while failing to see that they live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The experiences of people I know who have lived socialists states bares no relationship to western propaganda of how it is/was.

A major war can be the supreme test of a nation, a time when it's put under the greatest stress. In World War 2, the US government commandeered the auto manufacturers to make tanks and jeeps instead of private cars. When a pressing need for an atom bomb was seen, Washington did not ask for bids from the private sector; it created the Manhattan Project to do it itself, with no concern for balance sheets or profit and loss statements. Women and blacks were given skilled factory jobs they had been traditionally denied. Hollywood was enlisted to make propaganda films. Indeed, much of the nation's activities, including farming, manufacturing, mining, communications, labor, education, and cultural undertakings were in some fashion brought under new and significant government control, with the war effort coming before private profit. In peacetime, we can think of socialism as putting people before profit, with all the basics guaranteed — health care, all education, decent housing, food, jobs. Those who swear by free enterprise argue that the "socialism" of World War 2 was instituted only because of the exigencies of the war. That's true, but it doesn't alter the key point that it had been immediately recognized by the government that the wasteful and inefficient capitalist system, always in need of proper financial care and feeding, was no way to run a country trying to win a war.

It's also no way to run a society of human beings with human needs. Most Americans agree with this but are not consciously aware that they hold such a belief. In 1987, nearly half of 1,004 Americans surveyed by the Hearst press believed Karl Marx's aphorism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was to be found in the US Constitution.4

And that says it all really. Even in capitalism the economy is too important to be left to capitalism. It is an inefficient useless destructive system and unfit for humans. I think it is had enough chances. Time for a change.