While the tea party movement in the US will probably start dieing now the . These morons are the type of ignorant jerk-ass's who think they know things they don't actually know. For example: they think they know what socialism and communism are but in reality they haven't the faintest clue what socialism and communism are and I think its time some one explains the difference to them.
Lets start with socialism: The Tea Partyists and many others often equate socialism with communism, they are not the same thing. While communism is socialist, socialism is not communism. Communism is one variant of socialism. Socialism is not a single system but a wider socio-political and economic concept. It basically boils down to government run and controlled. For example the United States Postal Service is a government agency, it is not an Independent company, the United States Postal Service is a socialized postal service. Another example: Medicare is socialist, it is a government run and owned health insurance program.
It is widely believed that socialism and capitalism is incompatible but thats far from true. You can have systems that are equally socialist and capitalist. I.E. government run and owned programs along side and even in competition with privately owned businesses and corporations.
The most widely known forms of communism are the forms of soviet communism (Leninism, Stalinism, etc) but communism is much wider than just those forms of totalitarian communism.
Communism rages from anarcho-communism to totalitarian-communism with allot of variety in between. Communism is also widely thought of as atheistic. While communist countries during and after the cold war where atheistic communism is not necessarily atheistic. It is possible to have communist system that have complete freedom of religion, it is also possible to have theocratic-communistic systems (Christian-communism, Islamic-communism, etc).
The main difference between communism and other forms of socialism is ownership; while in communism (as said above) all ownership is shared among everyone in some other socialist systems while the government may run all production and distribution, distribute the products "equally" (there will always be those more "equal" than others) and all people may work for said government, you as an individual may still own things (houses, clothes, etc) or individuals could own the means of production and distribution but the businesses could be strictly controlled by the government (you own grocery store but what you sell and the prices of what you sell are determined by the government).
Then there is this picture
This image is an image of Obama with (From the ) makeup. This image is used by Tea Partyists on protest signs.
The stupidity of this is hard to believe. The Heath Ledger Joker was an anarchist, not a socialist and while there is a form of anarcho-socialism The Heath Ledger Joker was not an anarcho-socialist.
This demonstrates the depths of ignorance and stupidity of the type of people the tea Party movement attracts.
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“You might think that the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe would be considered a decisive failure for Marxism, but academic Marxists in America are utterly undaunted. Their paychecks and their tenure are unaffected. Their theories continue to flourish in the classrooms and their journals continue to litter the library shelves.”
– Thomas Sowell
I think it is a mistake for Sowell (an economist) to affiliate the which rose up in academia in the 1960s with those Stalinist-Lennonist-Maoist ideologies which failed so dramatically during the cold war.
The labor movement had little to do with the rise of NM and the NMs themselves were every bit as critical of Communism in practice as they were of Western Imperialism.
Rather than a revolutionary movement calling on the working classes to rise up and seize the means of productions NMs concentrated on race, gender, environmental issues, sexual liberation, et..al … It was sort of a “new proletariat” for them but they were careful to never use phrases like that.
These are the sorts of things that have been derided by conservatives as “political correctness” and, from a classical liberal prospective: “intolerance of the intolerant is inherently intolerant …”
But no, the radical school of political economy has not been seriously pursued at any reputable institution of higher education in generations. The debates over: taxes, government spending, tariffs, etc , predate Marxism by centuries.
The problem with Sowell’s statement is the same problem many have: they think of communism and socialism as a single socio-political and economic theory when communism and socialism are much broader than they realize. People often make the same mistake with capitalism, they assume modern American (or [insert country here])capitalism is the capitalist system when capitalism is much broader than our one system. These systems are not mutually exclusive (as many think they are) and there is allot of gray in between them.
Its really sad when you think about it, people just refuse to even try to learn about things.