The problem with rich socialists - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#14444293
There's a certain elegant simplicity to invoking 'poverty' as a major factor in evaluating a society. The problem here is that it's a sliding scale. Those in the upper portion of the lowest 5th percentile of income in the US might well look at the lives of those in the lower middle classes of the Great Depression era with pity. [Ed.: The writer came from that precise background. He didn't consider himself as poor, nor did his parents. His world was rich with the friendship of neighbors.]

Beyond a certain minimum level [sufficient food, clothing, shelter and access to health services,] other factors take pride of place in determining the 'goodness' of a society for average people living in it. Many of these are social, in the non-governmental sense. The emotional support of one's family and community looms large.

Rich socialists present no problem whatever in such an environment.
#14444361
Torus34 wrote:Beyond a certain minimum level [sufficient food, clothing, shelter and access to health services,] other factors take pride of place in determining the 'goodness' of a society for average people living in it. Many of these are social, in the non-governmental sense. The emotional support of one's family and community looms large.

Rich socialists present no problem whatever in such an environment.


Rich people have no real community support because they don't need it. They have a tiny mafia that monopolizes the resource distribution network by using violence and regulation.

When these same rich provide a society's "socialism" as is the case with most Western countries right now, the "movement" forgets about resource distribution justice (food, water, opportunity) and tends to concentrate on abortions, gay marriage, step cell research, and the drivers licenses of Mexican pool cleaners. Some of these issues might accidentally help equalize a few incomes, but that's not the rich socialist's obsession at all. Why would a rich socialist attack an unfair distribution system that has helped HIM so much?

He just wants to feel like a messiah without losing any of his own gravy train.
#14444566
voxlashi wrote:While Castro might not have been wealthy himself, he likely suffered from upper/middle class predispositions stemming from his background.
He was indeed quite wealthy by American standards, and even more so by Cuban standards. This is reflected in his initial political position, which happened to be for national independence with a strong social component rather than outright socialism.

The extent of his pre-revolutionary wealth and connections are evidenced by the fact that when he married his first wife, Fulgencio Batista gave him a $10,000 marriage gift - quite a large sum in the '50s, and quite an acknowledgement of his status by the country's ruling elite.

It is in his transition to socialism proper that we see he is an extraordinary man: pragmatic, honest and intelligent; he was willing to forgo a life of guaranteed wealth, in pursuit of the best possible socio-economic system for Cuba. Not many people are able to shake the ideological impact of belonging to a wealthy stratum in society as radically as Castro and others in the leadership of the 26 of July movement did.
#14444577
naked_turk wrote:Not many people are able to shake the ideological impact of belonging to a wealthy stratum in society as radically as Castro and others in the leadership of the 26 of July movement did.

Perhaps his being a step-son helped him to distance himself from his father's wealth and affluenza.

Or maybe in the 50s it was impossible for a wealthy person to isolate himself from other people's misery if you lived on the same island.
#14444622
QatzelOk wrote:Perhaps his being a step-son helped him to distance himself from his father's wealth and affluenza.
Yes, that was part of it.

Or maybe in the 50s it was impossible for a wealthy person to isolate himself from other people's misery if you lived on the same island.
Not at all true, QO. Batista and his clique were well capable of this and their policies and practices are evidence of it.

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." So, I don't become a working-class warrior just because I have ethics and for altruistic reasons, blah blah. Rather, I become one because I daily continue to experience first-hand the hardships of being a working-class person. Likewise, it is difficult for a wealthy person to truly fight for the cause of the disenfranchised, because they stand to lose from it - their solutions normally involve reformism which in fact aims to preserve exploitation, but with a more humane face.

So, in general, you're correct in your OP: wealthy people have a difficult time going undergoing the internal revolution necessary for them to work towards the liberation of the working class - their 'socialism' is normally nothing but a disguised left-liberalism: the moment when being part of the movement threatens their social and economic well-being, they abandon it. History is also not short of communist movements that lost steam and veered into the dark pit of liberalism once their memberships became full of middle class malcontents. This doesn't mean it is impossible to shake the bourgeois consciousness; though there is still much difficulty in abandoning all of the ideological indoctrination that comes with living amongst the elite. There are 'natural' aberrations, and there are also people who dedicate a whole lot of time and energy into transforming themselves and developing a truly revolutionary working class consciousness.
#14444836
Karl Marx wasn't exactly a homeless bum. Are you say we should ignore him simply because of his background?
#14444862
Summing up the last few posts in a mixture of metaphor:

It's a rare individual who holds steady to a course when his ox is being gored. [Ed.: It appears the fact that the individual might well get a huge boost to his own view of himself by so doing has been overlooked. See 'The True Believer', Eric Hoffer.]

Also please note that here in the US of A not all that many people get riled up over the issues du jour. [Talk radio call-in enablers to the contrary.] I offer in evidence the intense drive to get people out to vote and the actual recorded turn-outs.

"And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche." Geoffrey Chaucer.
Last edited by Torus34 on 30 Jul 2014 00:39, edited 1 time in total.
#14444946
redcarpet wrote:Karl Marx wasn't exactly a homeless bum. Are you say we should ignore him simply because of his background?
A significant portion of his life was spent in abject poverty-induced misery. His wife writes of the humiliation the family faced when they had to borrow a single pound from a Frenchman in order to be able to bury their infant daughter.

Torus wrote:I offer in evidence the intense drive to get people out to vote and the actual recorded turn-outs.
It's probably because their instincts tell them that the voting system is flawed and ineffective, despite themselves not being able to consciously explain or understand this (likely due to a lack of theoretical education).
#14451403
It's been interesting to look at historical leftists who grew up in a wealthy home (but importantly, in the cases of Marx and Castro ((and Machiavelli!)), didn't live a luxurious life in adulthood).

But what about our current rich socialists?

Many rich American socialists find themselves rooting for the Democratic Party. And though this party is chock full of soulless capitalism, a few prominent mascots always rise to the surface as renegade "extreme socialist" candidates. I'm thinking about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren here.

Of course, this is just a charade to give the party a slightly different flavor - one that working people might actually be tempted to vote for (rather than just banksters and insiders on the gravy train).

Here is an article about Bernie Sanders - avuncular rich socialist, and a Jewish senator representing Vermont. I think he may be from the lower East Side of Vermont.

Anyway, he's an incredibly shallow fraud, in my opinion. In the linked article, he criticizes Hillary for being too "hawkish" (translation: he is suggesting her greed would massacre even more third-world children than his greed would). Since Bernie has been senator of Vermont, he has lobbied mercilessly for defense contracts, and now Vermont is a major war-toy maker.

Here is my comment from the article:

I wrote:The empty posturing of pseudo-98 percenters like Bernie Sanders is even more disheartening than the obvious selfishness of the more blatant agents of the elites.

The fake left media funnels altruism into a corrosive selfishness. When they do this, not only does society lose the positive products of un-manipulated altruism, but it gains a hideous kind of incidental damage which can only be "managed" through the promotion of collective ignorance. Another negative.
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