Ronald R. Cherry
What is Socialism?
By Ronald R. Cherry
Socialism is excessive and oppressive government power over the individual, derived via excessive collectivization of the people's property, reducing the people to cogs in the machinery of government. A small degree of Socialism (collective government power) is necessary, such as our Federal and Interstate Highways, Post Office, National Parks, the CDC, NASA and the U.S. Military, but Federal control of banking, healthcare, education, retirement, intra-state commerce, the internet, and ultimately every aspect of American life, is the very thing our Founders were seeking to avoid, because that degree of Socialism is in fact Totalitarianism.
"By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State [via excessive collectivization of the people's property], Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it... It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of." George Orwell
"It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called "abolition of private property" [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before... In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization... It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow, and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them, and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent." George Orwell – 1984
"The usual understanding of "equality," when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these [Socialist] cases is the equalization of external conditions [social and economic outcome] which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality." Igor Shafarevich
"As for Marxism [Marxist Socialism], one thinks of an analogy with another physical theory. This is the kinetic theory of gases, according to which a gas is the aggregate of molecules that come into collision, with the result of each collision determined by the laws of mechanics. A very great number of molecules transform the statistical laws of their collision into the general laws of the physics of gases. "The only form of social contact of the producers of goods in capitalist society is exchange [Marx]." (just as for gas molecules the only form of interaction is collision)... It is evident that such a conception makes sense only on the assumption that separate "molecules" (producers) are identical... Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism." Igor Shafarevich
"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them – all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct – also laid bare by Shafarevich – these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice... And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity... It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been "Socialist." But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The term "Democratic Socialism" is a euphemism, Orwellian Newspeak for Socialist Socialism, because it doesn't matter if this unjust and self-serving scourge is put into place through anarchy, violence, brutal conquest, or by democratic vote of confused and addled people; the end result is still Socialist tyranny. Democratic Socialism is where this disgusting and ultimately suicidal system of economics, social engineering and government is voted in by a majority of brainwashed fools, as if birds voted for having a snake in the nest. The fly in the Socialist ointment is precisely the fact that fallible, greedy, self-serving, violent people, not angels, inevitably make their way to the top of the Socialist dung heap.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of Kings [or Socialists] to govern him?" Thomas Jefferson
"All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
Let no American say they weren't warned, that failure to conserve the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution, the essence of our American Revolution, will result in a dark age of American tyranny, for our children and grandchildren, for millions of Americans, possibly for a thousand years.
© Ronald R. Cherry
September 24, 2018
Socialism is excessive and oppressive government power over the individual, derived via excessive collectivization of the people's property, reducing the people to cogs in the machinery of government. A small degree of Socialism (collective government power) is necessary, such as our Federal and Interstate Highways, Post Office, National Parks, the CDC, NASA and the U.S. Military, but Federal control of banking, healthcare, education, retirement, intra-state commerce, the internet, and ultimately every aspect of American life, is the very thing our Founders were seeking to avoid, because that degree of Socialism is in fact Totalitarianism.
"By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State [via excessive collectivization of the people's property], Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it... It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of." George Orwell
"It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called "abolition of private property" [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before... In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization... It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow, and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them, and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent." George Orwell – 1984
"The usual understanding of "equality," when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these [Socialist] cases is the equalization of external conditions [social and economic outcome] which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality." Igor Shafarevich
"As for Marxism [Marxist Socialism], one thinks of an analogy with another physical theory. This is the kinetic theory of gases, according to which a gas is the aggregate of molecules that come into collision, with the result of each collision determined by the laws of mechanics. A very great number of molecules transform the statistical laws of their collision into the general laws of the physics of gases. "The only form of social contact of the producers of goods in capitalist society is exchange [Marx]." (just as for gas molecules the only form of interaction is collision)... It is evident that such a conception makes sense only on the assumption that separate "molecules" (producers) are identical... Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism." Igor Shafarevich
"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them – all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct – also laid bare by Shafarevich – these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice... And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity... It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been "Socialist." But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The term "Democratic Socialism" is a euphemism, Orwellian Newspeak for Socialist Socialism, because it doesn't matter if this unjust and self-serving scourge is put into place through anarchy, violence, brutal conquest, or by democratic vote of confused and addled people; the end result is still Socialist tyranny. Democratic Socialism is where this disgusting and ultimately suicidal system of economics, social engineering and government is voted in by a majority of brainwashed fools, as if birds voted for having a snake in the nest. The fly in the Socialist ointment is precisely the fact that fallible, greedy, self-serving, violent people, not angels, inevitably make their way to the top of the Socialist dung heap.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of Kings [or Socialists] to govern him?" Thomas Jefferson
"All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
Let no American say they weren't warned, that failure to conserve the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution, the essence of our American Revolution, will result in a dark age of American tyranny, for our children and grandchildren, for millions of Americans, possibly for a thousand years.
© Ronald R. Cherry
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