Political orthodoxy in American politics

My understanding - which is a bit rusty - is that socialism was originally proposed as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

Capitalism = private ownership of means of production, government not terribly involved in economy
Socialism = government ownership of means of production, government controls economy
Communism = government withers away as it becomes irrelevant, communal ownership of all resources.



Shooey, the information in your post is so incorrect it is difficult to know where to start.

Those goals are not contained in the Communist Manifesto. They were instead lifted wholesale from a conspiracy tract published in the 1950s or 1960s called "The Naked Communist".

Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 - long before the things mentioned in those so-called "45 goals", such as the existence of the USSR, atomic weapons, Communist China or East and West Germany.

Oops, you are right. I made a mistake and should have made reference to the Naked Communist. I honestly don't know why l mentioned the Communist Manifesto. I completely hashed that part of the post, and it makes little sense. I was in dream land.


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O.k, here are some good quotes:

The traditional roles of man and women in maintaining stability in societies. Once these roles become distorted the stability of society crumbles. The women's lib movement has now distorted the traditional roles of man and woman, and many other `modern factors' have also contributed to the distortion of traditional roles. When we distort the yin and the yang we are bound to create problems because it goes away from the blue print of life created by the Gods. See below:


in Eastern traditional culture, men are associated with the yang of yin and yang, which is symbolically connected with the sun and the sky, and which thus demands that they continuously strive to make progress and shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the family through hard times. Women belong to the yin principle, symbolically connected to the earth, which means they bear and nurture everything with great virtue. They should be yielding and considerate of others, and have the duty to support their husbands and educate their children. Only when men and women work well in their own roles can the yin and the yang be harmonized and children grow and develop in a healthy manner.

Traditional families play the role of transmitting beliefs, morality, and maintaining the stability of society. The family is the cradle of belief and the bond for the transmission of values. Parents are the first teachers in children’s lives. If children can learn traditional virtues such as selflessness, humility, gratitude, endurance, and more from their parents’ words and deeds, they will benefit for the rest of their lives.



https://www.theepochtimes.com/chapter-seven-how-the-devil-destroys-the-family-part-i_2589782.html

In the traditional cultures of the East and West, marriage was established by gods and is considered to be arranged by Heaven. Once formed, the marriage bond cannot be broken. Both men and women were created by gods according to their own images, and they are all equal before gods. At the same time, gods also made men and women different physically, and established respective roles for them. In the Western tradition, women are the bone of men’s bones and flesh of their flesh. [5] A man must love his wife as though she were part of his own body, and if necessary, sacrifice himself to protect his wife.

In turn, a woman should cooperate with and help her husband, making the couple an integral whole. Men are responsible for working hard and making a living to support the family, while women suffer in childbirth. All this stems from the different original sins people carry.






the aims of `modern thinking are to cause division so then more laws can be enforced'.

Inciting Hatred and Promoting Struggle Is the Invariable Course of Communist Politics


But the specter of communism uses whatever opportunity it can to sow division. Using labor unions, it magnified conflicts between employees and employers. It used racial divides to rally blacks, Muslims, Asians, and Hispanics to struggle against whites. It fomented struggle between the sexes by promoting the women’s rights movement against the traditional social structure. It created divisions using sexual orientation and the LGBT movement; it even invented new genders to intensify the struggle.

Chapter Nine: The Communist Economic Trap (Part I)

1. Developed Western Countries: Practicing Communism by Another Name
Western countries are using many economic policies that don’t appear to bear any relation to socialism either in name or form, yet they play the roles of restricting, weakening, or depriving people of the right to private property. Methods include high taxation, generous social welfare, and aggressive state interventionism.

High taxation is the forcible nationalization of private assets for redistribution on a large scale. At the same time, it is a hidden path to gradually phasing out the system of private ownership. In the West, production is controlled privately, but the revenue is converted into state assets via taxes and redistribution schemes. Either way, it is equivalent to robbery and plunder of others’ wealth. In Western countries, rather than using killing and violence, this was achieved legally through democracy and legislation.
 
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My understanding - which is a bit rusty - is that socialism was originally proposed as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

Capitalism = private ownership of means of production, government not terribly involved in economy
Socialism = government ownership of means of production, government controls economy
Communism = government withers away as it becomes irrelevant, communal ownership of all resources.
pretty much what i understood as well. although i don't have any political science text books lying around to refer to.
 
Tbh, the terms have been used interchangeably and in so many different ways over the years it is hard to really standardize agreed definitions. I think in common usage, socialism often includes a greater portion of the spectrum to the right (dem-socs, soc-dems, etc). Because of the Leninist legacy, communist is usually the preferred term for those further left and usually more authoritarian (more people refer to themselves as lib-soc than an-com, for example). I just don't find it useful to get too bogged down in some of the nomenclature.
 
Here is another interesting quote which explains why `political correctness' is a tactic used in communist China to restrict speech and thought by using the public as thought police to have low tolerance of anything outside of what mainstream academics, politicians and the mainstream media want.

8. Political Correctness: The Devil’s Thought Police
Communist countries practice strict control over speech and thought. However, since the 1980s, another form of speech and thought control has appeared in the West. These thought police use the banner of “political correctness” to run amok in the media, society, and education system, using slogans and mass criticism to restrain speech and thought. Even though many have already felt the evil power of its control, they have not grasped its ideological origins.

However, the hidden implication behind political correctness is to classify individuals into groups according to their victim status. Those who are the most oppressed should therefore be accorded the most respect and courtesy. Regardless of individual conduct and talent, this judgment is rendered solely on one’s identity, and is thus called “identity politics.”

This style of thinking is extremely popular in the United States and other Western countries. According to such logic, black lesbians, who are oppressed along vectors of both race, sex, and sexual preference, are ranked at the forefront of victimhood. On the contrary, white, heterosexual males are considered the most privileged and, in the logic of victim politics, on the bottom of the totem pole.

This type of classification is identical to what goes on in communist countries, where individuals were classified as the “five classes of red” or “the five classes of black” according to their wealth and class status before the revolution. The Chinese Communist Party eliminated and oppressed landowners and capitalists because of their wrong class status, attacked intellectuals as the “Stinking Old Ninth,” and chanted that “the poor are the smartest, the nobles the dumbest.”

Universities, which should promote a culture of free expression, became prisons of the mind.

Furthermore, some countries have expanded the definition of “hate speech,” implemented this expanded definition in law, and thus used the law to force schools, media, and internet companies to conform. This is a step toward the same strictures on speech as found in communist states.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chapter-eight-politics-how-the-devil-sows-chaos-part-i_2592414.html


To really understand how communism has infiltrated the west one is recommended to read the
Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
http://www.ninecommentaries.com/english/

This is considered by the Chinese and many people to be the most accurate history of the Chinese Communist Party ever written. The tactics used today in the west directly come from the play book of Chinese communism: the public play the moral thought police and hunt down groups that don't go along with the group think, devisions and fight occur and then the big brother government makes laws to restrict freedoms of speech and actions.
 
I hope people don't mind me quoting some of these thought provoking posts and quotes. This type of stuff really gets to the crux of what this leftist ideology is really about. Many pushing the `modern thinking' aren't even aware of what the real goal is, but the communists officials are well aware.

See...it's not really the academics and people making the leftists decisions who are bringing on these modern trends, they are being controlled by other entities. Many of us who meditate and practice the Buddha Fa see these entities.


Communism is neither a trend of thought, nor a doctrine, nor a failed attempt at a new way of ordering human affairs. Instead, it should be understood as a devil—an evil specter forged by hate, degeneracy, and other elemental forces in the universe. It took the form of a serpent, then that of a red dragon, and it keeps company with Satan, who hates God. It exploits low-level beings and demons to wreak havoc on man. The goal of the specter is to ruin humanity, and while the divine offers salvation to humankind, communism tells man not to believe, attacks human morality so as to renounce tradition, and causes man not to heed God’s instruction and, ultimately, to be destroyed.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-specter-of-communism-is-ruling-our-world-forward_2531449.html



Yes, that is what communism really is, it is the red dragon, and this dragon is drawn to people who have thinking that lines up with it's propaganda, and eventually the dragon/serpent controls the person, and soon the leftist ideology spreads like wide fire throughout the communities under the control of the dragon.

Yes, l have seen the red dragon, and so have many.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-specter-of-communism-is-ruling-our-world-forward_2531449.html
 
Disagree with you a bit about black Lesbians standing at the pinnacle of victimhood. My belief is that the ultimate victim would be a black, Lesbian, transgendered dwarf in a wheelchair!
 
Reading that screed is like trying to swallow Ayn Rand or Protocols of Zyon, but if you are trying to tie identity politics with the left then you are mistaken- that is peak liberalism.
 
I occassionally see students walking around campus with an Ayn Rand book or an Ayn Rand t-shirt. I shouldn’t, but I judge them. Never had one in class though. There is a very active libertarian student group, but I’ve never seen the folks manning their booths on campus with any Ayn Rand paraphernalia.

On a tangential note, the number of religious groups on campus is insane. They are by far the most common and most visible of the student groups. Young Life, Chi Alpha, Students for Christ, Footsteps, Lighthouse, etc. There is an atheist student group that occasionally sets up a booth next to one of them, but they don’t do anything but sit there, unfortunately.

Still, all the Christian groups are non-denominational. I have no idea why there needs to be so many different ones. It’s like instead of having a fantasy book club you have completely separate book clubs for high fantasy, low fantasy, literary fantasy, classical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, and non-Western fantasy. And it’s not like this is a religious university. State school in a deep blue city.

Also, at the three universities I’ve been at, I’ve not noticed the whole promoting godlessness thing. I’m the only American atheist in my department. We have a Chinese professor who might be. And Indian professor is a non-practicing Hindu. Everybody else in my department is not only Christian, but with a single exception, practicing (attends church 3-4 times a week). Oh, scratch that, there is an ex-Mormon who’s probably atheist.

While there are outliers (e.g., places like Berkeley I’d guess), schools only marginally shift student ideology leftward, and that might be less from socialization and more from simple exposure to new ideas. College does make both conservative and liberals more ideologically prejudiced though. Until the last decade or so, this effect was most pronounced in conservatives. More recently, the effect is equally pronounced in liberals and conservatives. Liberals and conservatives without college experience are more likely to be able to get along with each other than those with college degrees.
 
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