“Socialism is Evil”

[alanjjohnstone]

They have been in the game for nearly 1,900 years more than we have, perhaps they’ve picked up a few tricks.

Yup, like The Inquisition ;-p

I recall James Connolly writing somewhere that he rather a child attended a Catholic school where the priest would rail against the British and their atrocities against the Irish than the secular school where the Empire would be praised.

But seriously, is there really a place for us going door-to-door like Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, proselytizing?

I have yet to hear of any SPGBer who has attended right-wing rallies to leaflet them.

I have been in a few American right-wing forums and found that our differing views on the world are not conducive to any productive exchanges.

There is no common ground despite the initial promise of anti-government libertarian opinions…delve deeper and there are far many more ideological obstacles. It is a fruitless, sterile and barren exercise, in my opinion. Their mind-set is too fixed.

ALB can perhaps offer the history of certain members from the right who joined the Party and how it eventually panned out…(see the two ex-comrade topic).

Are we any better with a liberal, left, trade-unionist slanted person? So far that has not been very successful either and they are equally close-minded.

Hasn’t there been some sort of survey done in the past by the Party on who is more receptive to our literature and message?

[robbo203]

Alan

I think there is value in debating with these people, not because there is much prospect of us changing their minds but because these debates are likely to be viewed by many more people than just them and their immediate supporters. The stoppingsocialism site has its own tv channels and some of the clips have attracted quite big audiences (“what is socialism”, for example, attracted 112K visitors). The other site I mentioned Humanprogress.org also seems to attract very large audiences. It includes people like Steven Pinker and Angus Deaton on its board. I came across it on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HumanProgress.org/posts/5585672258116183?notif_id=1642892426980095&notif_t=comment_mention&ref=notif

[ZJW]

I’m not sure which thread to post the following to. There are two others that seem as appropriate (or not) as this one.

On June 28 MovimientoSocialista wrote ‘I do not know why Richard Wolf call himself a Marxist […]’, Well, Michael Rechtenwald anyway takes Wolff to be one, and challenged him to debate: https://twitter.com/TheAntiPCProf/status/1411060098429079553 . (Unrequited it seems, as I could never find later news about it.)

If the name is not familiar, Michael Rechtenwald is another renegade, cf Watkins … Harrison etc. An ex-left-communist (well, a short-term and rather screwed-up one, it seems) and comrade of Loren Golder. Here you can read his ‘How a Marxist of Twenty-Five Years Became a Misesian Libertarian’: https://mises.org/wire/how-marxist-twenty-five-years-became-misesian-libertarian

It contains a passage beginning ‘Of course, Mises’s treatment of the calculation problem proved devastating to socialism. He showed [ …]’.

During all his 25-years of ‘marxism’ had he never even heard of the economic calculation argument? If so, quite an accomplishment.

[Wez]

Of course, from the ruling class point of view, socialism is ‘evil’ since it would destroy their wealth and power.

[Author]

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