Thank you Comrade Green, for directing me to the World Socialism Movement (On a quick semantic note: If I call you Comrade, does that imply I am a Comrade?). I read through the FAQs and I feel that I have learned something. My understanding of Socialism is now as follows:*It sees money as causing more harm than good, and thus if you could construct a global society without it, that would be preferable. This society would involve no ownership, people use what they need and produce as much as they can for everyone else.
*It can't work on just a national scale because no single country is totally self sufficient and if they try for socialism by themselves they can be exploited by other countries.
*There has been no global precedent.
*The 'government'/'state'/'powers that be' act as administration and are lead rather than lead the people. Laws are mutually decided.
*The WSM in particular is trying to change things by communicating it's beliefs in the hope that people will eventually agree. Not by political action.
*Socialism would de-emphasize the idea of countries.
The vision of the world suggested by this definition would, in my opinion, be preferable to our world at the moment. Things I love about the idea include the de-emphasising of countries and abolishion of materialism creating false needs. But the obvious question which you absolutely have to take into account is "Would it work?"
I suppose you can't answer for definate without a crystal ball, but you can ask more questions. Most of the ones I formed while reading were predicted in the FAQs, and most of the answers were compelling to some degree.
These were; (in my own words, from memory, greatly interpreted and summarised,)
Q)Why will people work if they don't have the motivation of money? A lot of people today seek to avoid as much work as possible, surely lazy people would exploit the free everything system?
A)People's behaviour is as much a part of their environment as anything else. It is therefore possible that the reason why people's behaviour TODAY, includes large ammounts of selfishness, is because of the Capitalist environment they live in. In a Socialist world, how can you say that people wouldn't change with social pressure to become more selfless?
Q)If laws are decided by the people, then what stops one person deciding that mass murder is lawful?
A)Laws are decided by communites as for what is tolerable and does not infringe on others rights.
Q)What stops Capitalism from re-emerging?
A)Nothing, it's still a free society.
Apologies to WSM if I have misrepresented their argument, but bear in mind that all this was written by someone who didn't know what 'Socialism' meant half an hour ago.
I know that overall this posting supports Socialism, but I am aware that I would be a fool if I went straight from A) Not knowing much about politics, to B) Reading one single view, written by people who are very practiced at arguing their case, to C) Becoming a 100% Socialist and denouncing anything else. So I am not going to do C), instead I will look out for more info. I know the basic pro's and con's of Capitalism, and I know the pro's of Socialism, so now if anyone could direct me to the con's of socialism and the pro's and con's of Communism and other political 'isms', then I would be very grateful.
Thank you,
Stu.
