Internet taxation is on the way!

[Graham Todd]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2010 16:20:28 -0400
Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> uttered these words:

> > The wikipedia page is a mine of badly researched drivel, but if you
> > want to read some modern socialism you could do far worse than
> > something like George Monbiot's Age Of Consent.
> >  
> 
> I may check that out.  I admit I find it difficult to understand the
> differences between Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and Stalinism.  I
> think most people here in the US equate Socialist with Evil because of
> old Cold War prejudices.  Which were the result of years of propaganda
> campaigns by the US government.
[snipped]

That's the problem.  Don't be fooled by labels, either: Tony Blair was
never the leader of a "socialist" party.  He became the leader of the
Labour Party in Britain, never a mass socialist party, by expelling
most people who didn't agree with New Labour and by changing the
Party's constitution.

As far as history is concerned, you could do a lot worse than see the
DVD "The Wobblies", produced and directed by Stewart Bird, or read "The
Wobblies: The Story Of Syndicalism In The United States" by Patrick
Renshaw.  This will give you a view of what most Americans believe is
socialism (it isn't: its a type of anarchism called
anarcho-syndicalism) but with a solid grounding in American history.
Finally, if you want a more academic tome, read "One Hundred Years Of
Socialism" by Donald Sassoon published by The New Press, New York

If you want socialism in a short, precis form, look up the *original*
Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World,
written by Joe Hill in 1908 (taking into account this is the
Constitution of a trades union), or the old Clause Four, Part Four of
the Constitution of the Labour Party, which reads:

"To obtain for all workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their
labour and the most equitable distribution thereof."

both of which (in the words of Utah Phillips) sound pretty good to me
(but in the case of the Labour Party, it was deleted). And, of course,
you could look up the website for The Socialist Party USA for an idea of
what they believe in and make up your own mind whether they are
socialist as they claim:

http://socialistparty-usa.org/

If you want a socialist programme to start getting us (and the world)
out of the recession into which capitalism has got us into, you could
do well the look up the documents of Upton Sinclair's EPIC (End Poverty
In California) Programme, which he later described in his books "I,
Governor Of California and How I Ended Poverty" and "I, Governor Of
California and How I Got Licked".  You can also find details of the
plan at:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/epic.html
-- 
Graham Todd