The fight to go for Socialism/communism is an ongoing battle.What has failed is capitalism. The capitalism will have to be thrown out before it destroys all of us and makes the plane inhabitable. And today US and Bush/Obama are the people who symbolize capitalism.

What everyone is this conversation is forgetting about is that there are two types of socialism. One is real socialism (Socialist Party USA) and fake socialism (Soviet Russia, Leninism, Trotskyism and any that use the rhetoric of former Soviet Russia). What I'm saying is not false. I got it from Noam Chomsky:
"Now as far as socialism is concerned that term has been so evacuated of content over of the last century that's its hard even to use. I mean the Soviet Union for example was called a socialist society. And it was called that by the two major propaganda operations in the world, the U.S., the Western one and the Soviet one. They both called it socialism for opposite reasons. The West called it socialism in order to defame socialism by associating it with this miserable tyranny. The Soviet Union called it socialism in order to gain whatever benefit from the moral appeal that true socialism had among large parts of the general world population. But this was about as remote from socialism as you can imagine. The core notion of at least traditional socialism is that what you mentioned: that working people have to be in control of production and communities have to be in control of their own lives and so on. Its a...This goes...The Soviet Union is the exact opposite of that. Working people had no control over anything. They were virtual slaves. The collapse of the Soviet Union is in fact a small victory for socialism in my opinion. It eliminated one of the major barriers to it and should have been recognized as such. But the term as been as I said so meaningless that its hard even to use. If we use it in the traditional sense which you brought up that goes straight back in American history. You read the working class in the mid 19th century. Press published by artisans and what were called factory girls, young women from the farms, working in the textile mills in eastern Massachusetts which was the beginning of the industrial revolution. Their press was called for a...they said their theme was those who work in the mills ought to own them. Wage labor which was called wage slavery was regarded by most Americans as not any different from slavery. Even the Republican Party regarded wage labor as a preliminary to free labor but intolerable because its a kind of servitude. A large part of the the North population fighting the Civil War was fighting under that banner. This goes straight through the twentieth century. The idea that people should be in control that people should in control of their own destinies and lives including the institutions in which they work, the communities in which they live and so on. Call what name you want, but that's traditional socialism. There are today attempts to describe a kind-of detailed vision of the future based on these notions. The most extensive and detailed one I know is by Michael Albert at ZNet she mentioned. Its part participatory economics. There are other such proposals. But I think this is deeply ingrained in people's understanding and consciousness and barely below the surface. In fact its a call for an extension of democracy to the industrial sphere and to communities as well. We should also bear in mind that the leading American social philosopher John Dewey as mainstream as apple pie. He...His main work was concentrated on democracy. He pointed out over and over again that as long as we have what he called industrial feudalism that is tyrannical control...private power controlling production and commerce democracy will be very limited. We have to move to what he called industrial democracy if we hope to have significant democracy. As for politics he was that until that happened politics will be the shadow cast over society by big business. Whatever the...I think that most of the population recognizes that and accepts it."

Hello, I am from Scandinavia. If throwing gasoline on the bonfire made a huge explosion, than putting out the fire will make you cold.. Developing mature opinions is all about understanding the importance of modern libertarianism, but an ethical one. The complete opposite of fascism and conservatism.

Socialism was almost libertarian during Marx'time at defending individuals against industrial leaders, but ended up as fascism. This because the "marxists"(quasi-marxist) forgot about the individual, and overestimated the government. A similar thing happened with conservatives allegedly adopting "liberalism" which is of course rubbish. Today's capitalists arent liberalists. They are big-corporate idiots or speculative stocktraders. The questions is why? The answer is partially our culture but much more our basic system.

As most others who have NOT studied/discovered the Venus project/Fresco ideas and zeitgeist movement, you focus on the idealism details and miss out the big picture..
Although you succeed in suspecting that "something is wrong".

The problem is however not a free market or the opportunity to thrive. Today individual freedom ,small companies and the ethics of the world seem to weaken quite dramatically and gradually faster in several ways. It happened in socialism, and later (now) it happens in capitalism. In Greece, USA, and many other countries. It will eventually happen in the whole world, with only possible consequence: A big war or massive riots. Greece only a beginning..

Whether a local area has most of socialism or capitalism or liberalism etc makes very little difference in the long run. This is more a question of whether you wanna have sex with the daughter or the mother or the neighbour (Though I'd say confucian-taoist liberalism is better for the culture, and I am waiting to see such a combination arise in a society. The closest we get is combining shaolin philosophy with direct-democracy of ancient Greece).

The main challenge for today's society is that everything STILL is governed top-down in corporations and public systems. The pyramid. An ancient heritage from roman-empire ages and later similar regimes.
It is simply not sustainable, because it eventually creates a situation where the growth needed is bigger than what is sensible to create, for the sake of nature/environment and in regards of what is actually possible without enslaving the people completely.

The pyramid model also makes it harder and harder to fund tech development and infrastructure well enough. Most people have no idea on how far science and technology have gotten today. The obstacle for applying this to the benefit of the public, is the pyramide society structure.

Try to eat a thousand beefs at once. You can't although you'd want to. That is the problem of the dictator, and the problem of the modern world government and industrialist corporations. It doesnt matter whether their intentions are good or selfish. They think they can control everything and govern it all for the good of themselves and everyone else.
This is why USSR went down. In the end there were no more values to create relative to the needs. Everyone had a job but everyone was poor... The country was broke. Funny enough,this also eventually happens with capitalism, that is: as long as the system is centralized (the better alternative is cooperatives with libertarian laws).

In order to save money in the short run and keep everything status quo, big companies and socialist/capitalist governments move all burdens over to citizens little by little and increase their own power little by little. It is not different from the priests burning witches in old Europe. They were preaching the "word of Jesus" but probably Jesus would have hated them. They had gotten into the role of keeping status quo whatever the cost.

For every local autonomous conditions to thrive, you have to forget socialism, because socialism requires a pyramid structure and likeness-fanatism that leads to decay of morale, ethics and quality. Of course the same happens with capitalism in the long run. Local areas need to learn how to manage themselves, without anyone above them. If not, mankind will eventually stagnate and become primitive again.

Liberalism is necessary as a basic philosophy. I don't mean selfish versions like from Rand, but real liberalism as "democratic ideology". Where people have rights and duties, not only burdens.
It generates a smarter population than socialism ,that doesnt create enough ambition and development desire because it annihilates individual rights. In norwegian schools the quality today is very low for a western world country, because the school system leaders have always been socialists and christian conservatives. Individual talents and opportunities are held back and people are forced to be similar in every way, something that kills motivation and prevents the development of intelligence.
It also leads to a harsh social climate within classes in school because kids will behave like dogs pecking on everyone who is smart or different. That was also a huge problem in former USSR that they still suffer from today.

Capitalism becomes fascism (as opposed to liberalism) when society-structures are too big and too centralized. Many people don't know that Marx was not a communist. And he was not a social-democrat. Marx was an anarchist.
However, he failed on advising the "temporary" role of the state government. He didnt know that eventually it will become a monster whose only role is to create its own survival while burdening the population.

The problem of increasing problems of all kinds (without saying that there are only problems..) is usually the centralized monetary system and bureacracy. Whether this is governed by politicians or businessmen make little difference as the result is the same.

The problem with socialism AND capitalism in practice is therefore often the same- and we now see this very clearly in Europe because we now have seen both socialism and capitalism fail miserably - and seem to lead into the same problems as the old feudal-religious systems/regimes of the pre-democratic past and what today still rules in Iran, NK etc. : More and more burdens in time and money is pushed onto the public in capitalist societies with a centralized system. This eventually leads to a state where fascism takes over, because the leaders on the top will do anything to stay in power, having forgotten their idealism on making something better. Even Hitler believed that he was doing something "good" - he just had no clue on how and we know the result.

Even in Norway as a very rich country from oil industries, we experience that the powerful government and powerful corporations fail completely in their "effort" to make a good welfare system or create good conditions for small businesses. We see that crime increase rapidly in Oslo, drug problems increase, individuals have a larger debt and consumption than before, taxes are getting higher and higher, hospitals are miserable in quality and many people are waiting in long lines for health care (we have a large increase in health insurances) etc. The roads are decaying, the censorship in medias have increased and todays medias in the country are completely governed by the 2 big parties. If you critizise them heavily (but in a serious language) publically, you'll get banned and censored.

And it is almost unnecessary to mention the attempt in many countries to control the internet...

The pyramid-fanatics have an idealism that never works in the long run. Socialism and liberalism will work fine in controlled local conditions where every region has 100% autonomy. The closest candidate in USA to have this opinion seems to be Ron Paul. He isnt less socialist or less capitalist than the other ones, but he is less fascist. And that is very important to understand. Though he should have been younger and thereby smarter.

In this sense, Ron Paul partially seems to be much more radical-liberal than socialists or social-democrats who often end up resembling industrial capitalists.. (Although he has got some consertative weaknesses)

The problem is actually what rightwing libertarians in europe, anarchists and traditional marxists (not communists) all agree about: The french revolution failed. As did the american one.
We still have a pyramid ponzi scheme-like structure in the world politics and economy, and the globalization only makes it more extreme. We are heading right into more and more classic feudalism, the monarchy dictatorship. We will continue to see growth of polluting industries, weakened rights, higher taxes, required consumption etc. ALL only to keep status quo -keep the power and money at the hands of the few..

We have in Europe for a while also like the Soviet union and China (I will get back to them) believed that we have a "good" combination of capitalism and socialism; like Obama now believes he will implement in usa... All wrong.

Check out "resource-based economy" and "cooperative" society. A very fine idea.

If we look at China it is all too obvious. They really don't do anything new. They just combine capitalism and socialism. Of course, it it like combining pig-poo and fertilizers. It still smells like shit.

Deng Xiaoping realized many years ago that socialism would bring the country to decay. So he conducted reforms. The reforms however were just copying the growth of western capitalism..

They benefit SO FAR from a strong seemingly "natural" discipline among the public. This is derived from a combination of taoism and Confucius. A discipline and purpose the western world, Africa and the Middle-east can only show in some aspects from a few individuals.

However, the basic law of the universe applies like this to the world culture and politics that rely on central models: Feudalism ----> Socialism, or conservative industrialism -----> capitalism (or bankrupcy if not capitalism) ---> fascism ----> chaos/wars.

This will also hit China because they eventually will copy the same mistakes as the West and as USSR. They are even now trying to lower the growth to a certain degree, but it will not help them much in the long run as there will be less money pr.citizen and more burdens pr.citizen left in taxes and work effiency. And they already have slave-contracts at a large degree.

So the real question is eventually how much they will try to conquer other areas by force, when the government and their corporations will get more and more desperate in getting enough resources and finding "common motivations" for the public. There is a natural limit to all this, and to nationalism.

Check out www.thevenusproject.com

In lack of a better alternative, vote for Ron Paul.

Ok, I've read a lot of confusion about socialism. and this shouldn't be surprising since socialism has been both betrayed by the developments in the USSR as the current-day European social-democracy parties (like PASOK in Greece, LABOR in the UK etc.), while both these refer to themsleves as being 'socialist'.

First of all, I would say it is not socialism that has failed, but stalinism. With stalinism I mean the bureaucratic, dictatorial, no-freedom-for-the-individual type of society that developpend in Russia since the early 20ies and was later copied by Maoist China, Kim's North Korea, Castro's Cuba etc.
But first in Russia, in 1917, you had the "soviets". SOVIET is a Russian word that TRANSLATES TO to English as 'COUNCIL'. Basicly what happened in the Russian 1917 februari revolution is that in many places insurrectionary workers and soldiers erected 'councils' aka soviets, in which they came together, discussed political matters, sometimes made decicions, very similarly to how last years occupy (USA) and Indigdando's (Spain, later also Greece) square occupations worked. The Occupy square occupations also had their discussions, their decissions, making these in a democratic way. This all seems like there are all totally news developments - which they are in way - but they are not that new at all. The Paris Commune of 1971, the soviets in Russia 1917 and few years later, Bejing 1989 (Tien-an-Men) and now the Occupy/Indignados square occupations had all of them this character of sponatenous organisations and democratic debate and decission-making. With the difference that the Paris Commune of 1971 effectively took power and was swept away only by the third army France bourgeoisie sent to them (the first two armies were persuaded not to attack). The Russian 'council-soviets' in 1917 at firist co-existed with the new provisional goovernement, but since the provisional governement wasn't answaring to the people's demands (much like the new Egypt rulelrs aren't really listening to the Egyptian's people's demands) a movement grew in favor for the council-soviets to take the entire power. Since the Bolsjewiks were more or less the only party that supported the idea for the soviets to take all the power, the bolsjewiks succeeded in an enormous membership growth and succeeded in becoming 'the leaders' of the movement. The octobre revolution was nothing more than the soviets taking power, under the guidance and direction of the bolsjewiks. Very quickly Bolsjewik Russia bailed out of the first world war, which was ruining Russia and all of Europa to the very bottom. The main Bolsjewik leaders of that time - among which Lenin and Trotksi - realised that Russia was economically too underdevelopped to be able to produce real 'traditional' socialism. Their game was that a Russian 'communist' revolution (back than communism stood for 'traditional socialism' socialactivist calls it) could - and hopefully would - inspire a likekwise communist revolution in Europe itself, which is economically more developped and could coöp with Russia in building 'traditional socialism'. But what happened is that the november revolution in Germany (the Kaiser had to flee) in 1918 was 'hijacked' by the conservative Germany social-democracy SPD, which saved capitalism in Germany, took Germany out of the war and ended WW1 (yes folks the first world war was in essence ended by revolutioinary movements). But Russia was left isolated and plunged into a very devesating civil war - with anti-bolsjewist forces financialy and military supported by German, France and the UK. The civil war produced vast famines and other shortages, which enabled the creation of corrupt and bureaucrtic layer. This bureaucratic layer would in years to come strenthgen its position, seek out Stalin as a figurehead and hijack the revolution. That's what happened. No one in the central bolsjewik cparty leadership comite of 1918 was still in it by 1923, when the hijack was completed. Trotski became the leader of the 'left opposition', was at last forced out ot the USA and later murdered by an agent of Stalin. Trotksi at the time was the banner of 'traditional socialism'.

Ok, I need to go now, so I'm finishing off. PS Marx DO was a 'tradional socialist', called a 'communist' in his time, and most definatively NOT and anarchist. But traditional socialism at the time contained a lot of todays 'ethic liberalism' of 'libertarianism', without off course the concept of 'economic liberalism' which is today represented by Wall Street.

Don't confuse central power with socialism. Socialism is the means of production being owned by the people NOT the state. Communism is when the means of production is owned by the state. Socialism is decentralized by default while communism could be centralized (power by country or nation) or decentralized (power by region or state).

The best book I've read on Socialism is How Marxism Works by Chris Harman which is available on the internet.

This question makes many assumptions. That:
1) That socialism is a proven economic failure (ie, it does not work) and
2) That Obama is trying to implement socialism.

For the first assumption, I would argue that this is not the case at all. If anything has been proven by the recent economic crisis, it is the problem of the excessive power of capital, rather than labor. Labor is at a historic low in the US particularly, and I can assure you that its lack of strength is a part of the problem. People are not being paid enough to make ends meet, not because we are in hard times, but because those higher up on the corporate ladder are increasing their personal fortunes. In other words, those who do not produce are getting more, and those who produce are being given less. We need to seriously reconsider the ideas of socialism.

For the second assumption, this would imply that either in act or speech Obama has advocated for socialism. He has not vocally nor in action advocated for worker ownership and management of the means of production.

In other words, the two assumptions are false.