The Glasgow & Edinburgh Branches Blog. Towards a better understanding of the world, in order to change it.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
ONE BILLION REASONS FOR SOCIALISM
"One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the figure was a record high. Persistently high food prices have also contributed to the hunger crisis. The director general of the FAO said the level of hunger, one-sixth of the world's population, posed a "serious risk" to world peace and security. The UN said almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries, with the most, some 642 million people, living in the Asia-Pacific region." (BBC News, 20 June) RD
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I encourage you to study history. Wealth and high standards of living for its citizens have never been produced by socialist countries. If you truly care about the poor you should advocate for capitalism. Please read books like "The 5000 year leap". The poorest in America would be considered wealthy in most socialist countries. That will change as USA follows the socialist path we are on.
I think you must be American.
It would help you to read what socialism is
http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/what_is_socialism.php
and what it is not.
Some more introductory articles.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/introductory_articles.php
There are NOT any and NEVER have been, any socialist countries.
Common ownership of the means of production and distribution is not state ownership.
State ownership,is capitalism.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/overview/state.pdf
State ownership,serves the needs of the already rich and powerful,however well intentioned some of them may be.
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The main logical reason for adopting a socialist economy over a Capitalist one is that the mission of socialism is to meet the needs of people, the mission of Capitalism is to make profits.
Capitalism did not invent human wealth. Military/slave and feudal systems exhibited much wealth. You can see it in the ancient buildings and ruins all over the planet.
Capitalism had the good fortune of evolving into the dominant culture (it was just a variation of the feudal system) about the time of the industrial revolution and the discovery of "new worlds" which opened up a wealth of natural resources to an advanced technolgical culture. The fact that the economic system was predominantly Capitalist was largely irrelevant to the wealth that was generated. So-called Socialist countries, really variations of attempting and/or just professing to institute a type of socialism, did not inherit the riches of colonial domination that the "Capitalist" countries did...
Capitalism, because it allocates resources irrationally has squandered that wealth and left us fastly approaching the resource limits of the planet, with a population that will soon be approaching 100% living in poverty unless we fundamentally change the way we live and the way we allocate and distribute resources.
Most, I discuss this with, think that we will exhaust our resources long before we have the time to make the fundamental cultural and evolutionary changes necessary to plan and implement an equitable, inclusive, humane, quality of life oriented socialism.
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