I’m trying to work something out in my head about praxeology in general, and to do so I was trying to work out how praxeology shows socialists that their plans are flawed and contrast it to another problem.
However, I immediately hit a speed bump because I can’t work out what the goals of socialists are, and if they have them, why do they think they would work? Would a kind soul please help me?
Thank you.
It seems to be the elimination of class, property, and providing for the population through collective power.
That seems a little too vague and broad to me.
Means:
Abolition of class (what is class? in this scenario it is an irrelevant construct)
Abolition of property
End:
Provide for the population
Taken as above it can be viewed as correct, but it is so vague as to be useless, and it doesn’t spell their goals out at all, in my mind. Do you get me?
Thanks for the reply.
Having been in contact with socialists in the past, there seems to be a trend towards ideological as opposed to practical goals, drawing the desired conclusion first and then coming up with a reason to justify it. Rather universal amongst them is the strict portrayal of becoming successful under the capitalist model as “greed” and labeling it a universal negative, no doubt inspired by the idea of worker exploitation as outlined by the labor theory of value. Egalitarianism is also rampant in the doctrine, with heavy emphasis on all peoples being equal under communism.
Ultimately it appears to me that my socialist acquaintances are every bit as interesting in mitigating negatives as anyone else. They’re simply drawing incorrect conclusions based on faulty premises, which taken to their natural conclusion would reveal the counter-intuitiveness of their ideals. People take offense to their ideas being challenged though, and out of a desire to be right are driven to defend them as far into the corner as they are pushed.
1] First and foremost, to never let their victims have a clear idea of what their goals are.
2] To advance their theocracy, and elevate their religion to a position of dominance, based on the religious belief that "S"ociety is God, and the State is its proper church. Their religion is properly called “Social Scientology”, which has nothing to do with science, but has permeated the world as a religion masked as a ‘soft sceince.’
To understand what a ‘socialist’ is, you must understand what ‘society’ is, and a search to understand that is the beginning of falling into a deliberately going nowhere rabbit hole. When I first started looking for a defintion of ‘society’, I was led to a deliberately circular mess, where ‘society’ referred to ‘social’ referred back to ‘society,’ world without end.
But, eventually, I found the two prevailing definitions. One definition is used by ‘socialists’ – herdists, tribalists, collectivists – and one is the understanding of yet free people. They are irreconcileable definitions of the same word, and in order to understand ‘socialists’, you must understand their definition of the word ‘society.’
To find that definition, you must go back to the turn of the last century, and the works of one of their ‘still seminal’ (love that phrase found in Sociology texts, as if it was possible to lose one’s seminality)-- Emil Durkheim. In the summary of his Elemental Form of Religious Life(his slight of hand), at the end of several hundred pages of ‘science’ catagorizing (other) religions, Emil finally gives the socialists honest defintion of what they mean by "S"ociety:
“Society is not at all the illogical or a-logical, incoherent and fantastic being which has too often been considered. Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, since it is the consciousness of consciousness. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the minds with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them.”
Emile Durkheim*, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life* (New York, The Free Press, 1954), p. 444.
A clearer admission of what the basis for the eyes rolled into the back of their heads religion of Social Scientology – socialism – cannot be found. It is the most honest admission of the religious basis for the socialist movement there is. In Durkheim’s ‘still seminal’ work, his slight of hand, he elevated himslef to ‘scientist’ passing judgement on and classifying what other religions were, and in so doing, leg lifted the religion of sociology over all others.
But his conclusion expose his subterfuge. His conclusion is that ancient man has always mistaken The One True God, and incorrectly totemized The One True God as 'God. In the religion of Sociology/Social Scientology/Scocialism, the True God is "S"ociety, and in defiance of Nietsche’s “God is dead”, Emil Durkheim declares, ‘No, God is reborn in the modern recognition that "S"ociety is God, and the state is its proper church.’ And, by declaring it the proper role of “Sociology” to classify ‘religion’, his slight of hand was to elevate the religion of sociology over all competing religions; a political, leg lifting tactic. “Sociology”, you see, is a ‘science’, – the science of the One True Religion, and by elevating itself as the classifier of all other religions, it places itslef above all competing religions. Slick. And, this scientific statism was sweeping the world at the turn of the last century, and America succumbed to it. A once secular, feee nation has had all of its major institutions of state, by way of its open and free universities, completely over-run by this religion masking itslef as a science.
What is the rational definition of society? Society, from the Latin, socius: ally, companion, known “associate.” Do youknow everybody? Neither do I. In a free nation, societies, plural, are the result of free associations, plural. An example of ‘a’ society is a group of people who meet once a month to discuss bird migration. PETA is society. The ASME is a society. The 82nd airborne is a society. The folks who freely associate to give us the Outback Steakhouses are a society, though few might also be members of PETA. The sum of all such possible societies has no political meaning in a free state, except to defend their right to be free from each other. Only in a Totalitarian state does the term 'S’ociety – as in, ‘the’ singular society – have any political meaning.
Socialism is a religion attempting to implement a totalitarian theocracy based on their religious belief that "S"ociety is God and the state is its proper church. It is a variant of totalitarianism, as is fascism and communism, the meat eating inevitable variants of this gateway drug to totalitariansim.
I think you would need to ask socialists, which I don’t think you will find many of here.
Let me give you a concrete example of how thoroughly this totalitarian religion has dominated once secular American thought, and has long turned America into a de facto theocracy–even if it is claimed to be a ‘civil’ theocracy by way of a ‘civil’ religion.
In America, we are free to make any econonomic political argument we want, as long as it is couched in terms of religions statist art, using the curiously totalitarian statist term ‘The Economy.’
As if it had been long concluded that in our nation, there is just one, a totalitarian ‘it.’
No longer ‘the economies’ – a once common phrase in American political debate.
No, for generations – we can’t even see it any more – we have all been inculcated from birth, endlessly, day after day, bombarded with the totalitarian reality of ‘THE’ Economy. It’s all we can see. We are so thoroughly inculcated to the ‘fact’ of ‘THE’ Economy, we can’t even blink it away when we try.
And yet, it is a total political myth. But, it is all our politicians talk about, and we go along with the complete charade of there being a choice between two groups of politicians that refer only to a totalitarian ‘THE ECONOMY’
As if 400,000 Americans died fighting totalitarianism for nothing in WWII.
As if the Berlin Wall went up in 1989, declaring the genius of centrally planned, command/control ‘THE ECONOMY’ running.
To borrow a term of theatric art, The Matrix is real, because that is all we’ve heard about since the moment we were born.
RE: I think you would need to ask socialists, which I don’t think you will find many of here.
HA!
Here are three. In January 2008, at the GOP CA Primary debates at Reagan’s Library, ANderson Cooper asked each of the GOP frontrunners the following question:
“Tell us why YOU are best suited to RUN THE ECONOMY.”
And, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee all sat up like trained dogs and actually answered the question, in context, and explained – 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – why they, as POTUS, were best suited to R-U-N T-H-E E-C-O-N-O-M-Y.
Hello? Anybody home? Nobody heard Reagan spinning in his grave? In front of his widow, no less.
Poor hapless Ron Paul finally got his chance, and spelled it all out with a giant crayon for the folks. He did what the supposed GOP frontrunners should have done, and totally disavowed the premise of the question. We are not a centrally planned command-control ‘THE ECONOMY’ and it is not the proper function of the POTUS to run ‘it.’ That is a totalitarian state function.
No socialists here maybe, But America is loaded with them, including the GOP.
I don’t think socialism is goal-driven. I think it’s simply a consequence of universal democracy that people think they can take anything from anyone, but they can’t justifiably take to keep for themselves, so they have to whitewash it as taking “for the common good”.
The goal of socialism is profit.
There are usually common goals to modern socialism. Now on must remember that there are about a million different kinds of socialism, they are by no means a single entity, many different kinds of socialism have different goals, but they all go through the same means in order to be socialist in the first place. However this being said most socialists today have a set of fairly simaler goals.
Creating a more equal society in terms of wealth through government intervention. Usually the socialist will contend that making the pieces of the pie a more simaler size is prefferable to making the size difference even larger but also enlarging the pie, although usually they believe that making the pieces more equal will somhow enlarge the pie as well
Provide more essential services to everyone through means of government intervention such as welfare, healthcare, housing, ECT.
Increase the wages of everyone who isn’t in the upper class through means of government intervention. Usually a way to achieve 1 of course.
Increase the strength of the nation in question through means of government intervention.
Protect the environment through means of government intervention.
Provide more services through means of government intervention.
Decrease profit margins through means of government intervention.
Decrease prices through means of government intervention.
Increase the amount of education individuals get through government intervention.
Create a more docial, cultured, and civil population through means of government intervention.
That’s about all I can think of but that covers most areas of the socialist’s goals.