>The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
What did he mean by this?
Tyler Cook
Socialism at the time he was writing had become an intellectual accessory, i.e. people believed it to be fashionable without carrying its logical consequences into their everyday lives.
The criticism still holds in the West, for the most part
Jacob Perez
limpwristed snowflakes have always been attracted to weak nu male ideaology
Ayden Brown
but you're strong and masculine, which is why you're posting here in support of the men that dominate you.
Charles Ross
>in support it's a mark of the beta cucks that come here from leftypol and reddit that if you're not with them you're for unbridled capitalism
they often fall into patterns of simplistic dichotomous thinking due to being autistic and stupid.
Eli Sullivan
>the bad weak autistic commies are stupid and dichotomous le example of that which you le criticize face.
Jacob Perez
>this describes all of my twitter "friends" from LA or NYC
Aaron Williams
>The criticism still holds in the West, for the most part might have something to do with everybody in the west belonging to the middle class now
Mason Scott
That's undeniable false. Class still exists. You just have to know how to see it.
Hudson Stewart
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." - George Orwell
What a nu-male cuck, I bet he was prepping the bull inbetween cleaning his rifle and writing Homage to Catalonia
Ryan Sullivan
are you being ironic?
William Baker
What is this from nigga, I wanna go see this guffin shit in context.
Or not I guess I don't need to. I can just read other stuff
Samuel Flores
Hmmmm... I don't know.
William Allen
He was calling out starbucks socialists before starbucks was a thing.
Thomas Torres
I remember when I learned that starbucks socialist are the only type of socialists left. weak cucks who sit in the corner head down in shame while they're humiliated day in and day out by proud black womyn. that day i realized I had to be strong and believe in things like strength, honor, duty. in order to be a man you must give yourself to a man's ideology. that was the day I took the redpill.
Owen Sullivan
"class" doesn't have the same meaning when you can live a better life just being alive in the U.S on government benefits than even the richest 100 years ago. Literature simply moves too slowly to catch up. So does political ideology. The truth is that the banking system and the stuffing of low interest banking monies has overwhelmed all notions of 'freedom', we're merely forced as a society to run up the credit card by the weakest among us forcing us toward an ever more socialist state.
And when we run out of money and have to face 'austerity' measures like the europeans eventually did, all that means is more excuses to keep the system fitted towards being more 'compassionate' and socialist in nature(i.e give poors more money). People who write literature usually don't understand basic economics so they won't understand that capitalism while initially cruel led to better outcomes than any other financial system, forces people to work and compete on a much higher level. It's a lesson that not a lot of people are receptive to because it means discipline, hard work, and sacrifice in both the short and long term but the results are always inarguable.
That's why OP's quote is so prescient. The people who most desire ideas like socialism are the people who already live comfortable lives and want everyone else to be comfortable like them. They don't want to make life better for others, they just want to feel better about their comfortable life right now by using others people money to solve the issue instead of working to help those around them themselves.
I don't think it's a mistake that most people who support conservative monetary policies are in hard working industries like truck driving. They sacrifice everyday to make ends meet and understand that sacrifice is necessary to live, so they want a goal to work towards so they eventually can have an easier time. The eventual goal of comfortable socialist is to feel good about their opinion that a short term, makeshift solution was applied and that they the kind of gentle overseer supported compassion and understanding of others.
Both are incorrect at different times. There's a point where spending too little on social welfare is simply cruel, and spending too much on advancing economics yields less benefit. Who gets to say who's right? Which is the better logical decision, not the emotional one?
John Williams
I think your being glib, but I've really become completly disillusioned with any kind of "compassionate" political ideology.
Cameron Sanchez
How can George Orwell be any more based? He's probably one of the only intellectually honest socialists out there.
Liam Stewart
This just strikes me as trading one incoherent political theory for another. Especially if you base your personal political beliefs, which should be understood as a marriage of moral ends and practical means, on what are essentially emotional or stylistic positions.
Consider that your statement on political virtue is without content in regards to anything but a negation of the moral worth of your opposition.
Adrian Hill
>I have not read any theory and history of socialism and I must post on a thread about a demsoc critiquing his fellow socialists
Parker Lewis
Quality of life is not class.
Cooper Myers
Not so much as "one of the only intellectually honest socialists" as much as "one of the only ones you actually read, and even so, because you thought he wasn't a leftist".
There are plenty of critiques of sovietic totalitarianism, a lot of them actually contemporary to said totalitarianism, you just avoid them because you're such a meme loving fuck that you can only acquire your knowledge from infographics at this point
Luis White
bernouts are the easiest triggers lmoa
Adam Ross
A buffet of meaningless nonsense
Orwell was a socialist btw
Ethan Cox
Ah it makes sense if that post was meant to trigger and not a sincere opinion
Jackson Harris
So were Adolf Hitler and Bernie Sanders. 'Socialist' is a meaningless word at this point.
Zachary Adams
>TWO unprompted mentions of Sanders
Someone's triggered.
Isaiah Fisher
Socialist reform when? Why are all socialist groups dominated by these people?
Carson Hernandez
I didn't even see the other guy. I was just reaching for a well known socalist figure in contemperary politics to illustrate my point about 'socalist' being vague to the point of meaninglessness.
Kayden Bell
I don't see how Bernie makes the word meaningless when he is an actual one running on a social democracy platform
Charles Johnson
Because Orwell, Sanders, and Hitler are triameterically opposed in ideology. Orwell was a compsaionate individualist, Sanders a welfare nanny, and Hitler was Hitler.
Asher Harris
Any definition of "socialism" that doesn't include the abolition of private property is a meaningless definition that needs to be thrown under the bus. Socialism = social ownership of the means of production.
Welfare state capitalism is simply the last temporary bandaid of the "Social Democrats" before they gave up reformism altogether in favor of deregulated capitalism, or "Third-Way Social Democracy" (is there a worse political position than this, my god?)
Mason Collins
booty blasted everyone has fun reading orwell
Oliver Martin
I think it's useless to talk about this failed form of socialism when a post-scarcity economy is coming straight at us and we need to find out how we're going to deal with it now.
Josiah Cox
And the dumbest post in the thread award goes to....
....this fucking guy.
Carson Bennett
don't see an argument there buddy
Aaron Diaz
He doesn't mean anything except what the person paying him wants to say.
Andrew Green
We're heading towards a Malthusian crisis, not a post-scarcity utopia.
Ian Roberts
As I already said Orwell and Bernie don't differ much in their ideology, only the details.
>welfare nanny Like I said, another facet of social democracy that Bernie is trying to implement. It is still compatible with his socialist tendencies
Tyler Stewart
Orwell fought for the anarchists in Spain, Bernie is a career politician who fears violence. I'd say those are fairly large differences.
Joseph Smith
Hitler really wasn't a socialist in any sense of the word. He conceived of international organization along racial, rather than economic lines.
Be honest user, did you only think that because 'national socialism' has socialism in the name? I promise I wont judge.
Jaxon Morgan
Strongly agree
Benjamin Nelson
If you count "robbing the jews and seizing thier homes and buisnesses to benefit the germans" as an implimenation of "abloshing private property to benefit the prole" he's a fucking socialist hero.
Jacob Sanders
kek
but you get the point, he intended to purge or enslave the jews and slavs at all levels of the economy for the benefit of the 'Ayrians', who he figured would exist in a stratified, semi-traditionalist society. The world would be inherently classed on race, and even within the 'best race', society would look pretty similar to what we see today, with a mass of workers and a smaller, more affluent elite.
Sebastian Allen
bump
Jack Peterson
I don't get it, I know Orwell was a socialist but it seems like all he ever wrote about was how shitty socialism is.
Nathan Williams
Wow it is almost as if different people can take the same ideology and do different things based on it. Democratic socialism doesn't insist everyone do stuff like Orwell or Bernie
Hudson Bennett
Is Road to Wigan Pier his best work on socialism?
Benjamin Gray
Are you joking? Are you not familiar with the intellectual climate of the 1930s-1950s? Virtually every leftist was in bed with the Soviet Union until reports of Stalin's gulags became widespread throughout the West. Don't project.
Joshua Perry
There was nothing wrong with that, the USSR was an authentic hope for a world socialist revolution, I would have supported it too. However, it was doomed from the moment any European revolutions failed to take hold, and the Soviets had to redefine themselves from "strategically holding on until developed western countries led the way" to the vacuous idea of a single socialist state, which had no possible way to affect the global capitalist mode of production.
Ian Wood
Eh Strasserism was an influential wing of the Nazism (before they were purged by Hitler). Strasserists were most definitely socialists. The Nazis also came to power partly by winning over converts from the Far Left. Your dichotomy between race and economics doesn't quite work either. The Nazis saw identity as the only way to overcome the death struggle between labor and capital. The "socialism" in National Socialism is not arbitrary.