{"id":919,"date":"2009-03-09T11:16:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T16:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iomaire.com\/?p=919"},"modified":"2009-03-09T11:47:49","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T16:47:49","slug":"the-dreaded-s-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/09\/the-dreaded-s-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dreaded ‘S’ Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since before President Obama was elected, the word \u201csocialism\u201d has been tossed about with great carelessness. Sarah Palin used it without acknowledging that the State of Alaska is, itself, socialist because it takes from the oil companies and re-distributes income to each and every citizen of the State. She also accused Bill Ayers of being a socialist, which, while being true, did not exactly educate the electorate, since he was also cast as a terrorist. And of course, she carried on about ACORN<\/a> without once acknowledging what it was that ACORN actually did. Once President Obama was elected, the use of the \u2019s\u2019 word increased dramatically and the electorate dutifully cowered in fear of the evil socialists. Now, with the financial crisis in full bore, there is even more fear being spread by the right wing populists<\/a> (Limbaugh, Hannity, O\u2019Reilly, Malkin, Beck, Coulter, et. al.), and not a single one of them has the slightest idea of what they are talking about. Jonah Goldberg, for instance, has even written Liberal Fascists<\/em><\/a>, a book in which he calls the Nazis socialists, apparently because the full name of the party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. I get it – if the word \u201csocialist\u201d is part of the name, then that makes them socialist. Yes. Absolutely. But a disquisition on the logical fallacies of the right wing populists is the subject of a future post, perhaps.<\/p>\n

Really. What is Socialism? Watch this video and see if you don\u2019t have a better understanding of socialism after you finish. Note that this lecture was given on October 7, 2008. It is 38 minutes long, so grab a soft drink and find a comfortable chair before starting. If you don\u2019t have a better understanding after watching the video, perhaps you might be sufficiently motivated to do some research into the subject. Clicking on the link to Monthly Review under the category Magazines in the sidebar will provide a starting point for you.<\/p>\n

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Capitalism Hits the Fan: A Marxian View<\/a> from UVC-TV 19<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lecture by Professor Rick Wolff, Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst on October 7, 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since before President Obama was elected, the word \u201csocialism\u201d has been tossed about with great carelessness. Sarah Palin used it without acknowledging that the State of Alaska is, itself, socialist because it takes from the oil companies and re-distributes income …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}