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Anthony Hamline's avatar

Excellent summary! I had a friend that I went over the differences between "communism", "socialism" as well as the differences between "social democrat" and "democratic socialist" for at least a dozen years. It took most of those years to even dissuade him from even calling himself a "libertarian". I finally gave up on him. We are no longer "friends" but rather distant "acquaintances".

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ken taylor's avatar

I might take exception with the idea Athens was "democratic". It did give democracy to citizens. But citizens were only a small percentage (and even as citizenship expanded, the percentage of citizens dropped. They did have slaves, but seldom for labor, and as Aristotle himself wrote, "A man who needs to use his hands for labor is not only unfit to be a citizen...but it is questionable that such a man even can be considered to be a man." That's not too democratic, but not necessarily undifferent from many of our own founders. What determines a man? Is it is his property, his entitlement to others' labor, or simply because he is alive? Is it a question America has continually struggled with.

On the issue of socialism, I do not consider myself socialist, although many think of me thusly.. but I really don't care how much "wealth" has, but if the wealth is used to obtain power. The biggest problem I find with unadulterated socialism (everyone is entitled to exactly the same) is that denotes individuals into automatons who contribute exactly the same to the community. I think each community, each factory, or larger system of a corporation, even each teacher in a school know or should be allowed to determine who they believe contribute the most to the functioning of whatever the org. and thus determine who, if any, are the most deserving of the percentage of wealth. I suppose it is a variation of socialism, but I think of it as a different, undefined "ism", that leaves all delegations of wealth and authority to those involved.

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