I didn't say that Norway was a socialist country. You stated, "socialism didn't work anywhere it was tried", and yet we have an example here of a country, within which there are free and fair elections, i.e. democratic contra authoritative, and the government owns the majority of the wealth and controls several key companies which are vital to the economy. This certainly seems to me like a step in the direction of a workable socialism. Regardless, I don't see socialism as a finished end goal, but, pace Eduard Bernstein, a commitment to principles and policies which include a democratic control of the economy and investing capital back into public goods and social services. The Nordic system, along with worker cooperatives, etc. etc. being a step in the right direction.

haha don't take it personally son, Maw is a veteran on these forums and on the previous one. He is an outspoken leftist (not Marxist though, as he leans more towards anarchism/left wing libertarianism), a bit insecure, hence his 'contemptuously dismissive' comments and a bit autistic when it comes to social interaction. Nevertheless, he is incredibly well read and is, so far from what I have seen here, pretty much correct on Marx's work — ritikew

lol who is this?

But I do consider it a little more authoritative than a random person I just met on the internet. — Theologian

I told you that this reading of Marx stems primarily from David Harvey who has been teaching classes on Marx and Capital for around 40 years. Which is more "authoritative" to you: a professor who has been teaching the subject for 40 years or an excerpt from an encyclopedia article written by.....? You can cherry pick statements online all you want, but I'm not even asking you to simply believe me, I'm asking you to read the actual work before crystallizing your judgement on an author you haven't read. Marx is unfortunately a much maligned and misunderstood thinker, so I recommend reading him yourself, and if that is too demanding for you at this time, then I would recommend holding judgement. But given the undeniable prominence of Marxist philosophy within the last 200 years you'll have to grapple with him eventually.

They upset about not getting what they paid for. If I ordered a traditional Vietnamese banh mi and got that I’d demand a refund. You’re maybe confusing bring ripped off with so-called ‘cultural appropriation’? — I like sushi

The students clearly articulated the issue they had with the food and it wasn't because they weren't "getting what they paid for". That's not even how meal plans typically work on college campuses. You're just making shit up.

Still, what we read in the papers is the silliness of certain SJWs — fishfry

But as I point out, many of these stories are actually fairly innocuous. In this example, minority college students from other countries were upset at how their traditional cuisines were presented, and simply wanted to work with their university's food services to better prepare them. That's it. No one was trying to ban food. It's not even a noteworthy of a story. People just raised a hubbub because it's fashionable to get angry at students.

LOL, Well I've had plenty of "New York pizza" on the left coast, but never any actual New York pizza. But you don't actually go into Togo's or Subway and thoughtfully explain to them that the meat product they sell as pastrami is to actual pastrami as cardboard is to steak. Do you? — fishfry

Well New York pizza is a style of pizza, which can be made anywhere, just as Chicago style pizza is simply deep-dish pizza and can also be made anywhere. My point is is that food can be a very vital and proud expression of one's culture, and if someone finds that someone is treating a culturally important cuisine haphazardly or indifferently, people, across cultures and ethnicities, can rightly get upset.

I've only been seriously studying philosophy for a little over a year. There are some hard choices I need to make as to which of the many dense tomes that are ahead of me I invest my time and energy in - and in what order. I always try to be upfront as to the limits of my own knowledge, and one of the reasons why I engage here is that I figure I might actually learn a thing or two from people who are a bit ahead of me. Or at least know more about certain things than I do. If you want to be contemptuously dismissive of that, then fine — Theologian

I've been seriously studying philosophy for nearly a decade. @Bitter Crank, who is over 70 years old, has been studying philosophy and Marxism in particular for much longer than that. What I find "dismissive" is someone who has not read an iota of Marx and yet has already passed judgement on Marxism because of secondary sources, de-contextualized readings from a political pamphlet, and a citation-less online encyclopedia, which while useful is not a substitute for doing the actual readings.

Using the Communist Manifesto as the crux of Marxist thought is problematic for two reasons, 1) it was hastily written propaganda to influence readers during political upheavals of 1848 and 2) it was written during Marx's youth, which is notably different than Marx's mature years. The Communist Manifesto is an interesting text, but it's not vital in understanding Marxism, which is better understood as a critical analysis of Capitalism anyway, as oppose to laying a path towards Communism or Socialism, or what have you.

Throughout Marx's Capital, his most important work, he goes through great pains to avoid any deterministic language, preferring instead to characterizes processes and relations in more ambiguous terms such as "appears" or "seems to" or "tends to", etc. For Marx, the historical process works through dialectics between various factors, including technological advances, the social relations between people, modes of production, mental conceptions of the world and prevailing ideologies etc.. How these interact and play out is not causally circumscribed. Surely, there are those who interpret Marx as a historical determinist who believed that Communism was a historical inevitability, but I think a fair reading of Capital should dismiss that view as an overly simplistic portrayal of Marx's thought, which is otherwise quite complex and rich. This is why I recommended David Harvey as a guide, who persuasively argues for such an interpretation (and he has been teaching Marx for over 40 years).

If you want to better understand how we can transition from Capitalism to Socialism, it is helpful to read critical analyses of Capitalism in order to pinpoint alternatives, and Marx essentially laid the foundation for analyzing Capitalism, so that's a more appropriate place to start. Given Marx's influence in both philosophy and economics, I think he's more than worthy of committed investment.

"I haven't read anything this guy has written, but tell me why my view of him is wrong".

The Communist Manifesto was a political pamphlet written during the political upheavals that spread across Europe in 1848. It was an attempt to both explain the historical relevancy of class struggle and push the working classes towards revolution, with 'inevitability' being an added thrust for expediency.

The SEP also disagrees with you — Theologian

Well besides the fact that the SEP statement doesn't include a citation to an actual Marx quote, the following sentence literally refutes that: 'However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal."

I am disinclined to invest the level of effort necessary to come to a really well informed view of my own. — Theologian

Well if you aren't willing to put in the time to read Marx, maybe stop pretending to know what he says?

Okay, I have to cop to that. But such is my understanding of him. If it's wrong, perhaps you could tell us what he does say, and where. — Theologian

To put it simply, Marx wrote how Capitalism tends, in various ways, towards crises, which of course is historically true. The instability of the system, along with growing inequality that is packaged within it, presents the opportunity to restructure and reorganize the political economy.

I can't recall Popper's exact line off the top of my head, but it was to the effect that when spontaneous revolution, as per Marx's original writings, failed to arrive, his devotees saved the theory at the expense of its falsifyability. — Theologian

anyone who says that Marx claimed Communism was inevitable - as if it can arrive fully formed without human agency - clearly hasn't read Marx.

Socialism didn't work anywhere where it was tried — ssu

Excluding wealth from home-ownership, Norway's government owns over 70% of the nation's entire wealth, which is notably more than the percentage of wealth in China that's owned by it's government. The state owns over 70 companies, including the largest financial company, telecom company, and oil company. That sounds like a successful and workable socialized ownership of capital to me. Additionally, other models that socialize capital such as worker co-operatives are successful alternatives to traditional company models.

Fantastic article summing up the road where a growing faction of right-wingers are heading, and the outright hypocrisy of their concerns and grievances. Some salient paragraphs below also sum up my own thoughts about the ridiculous concerns from moderates and right-wingers on this site (and of course everywhere else) i.e., their overwrought response towards college students, political correctness. and the outright stupid argument that people move farther right, into the arms of fascists and white supremacists because of backlash from political correctness and identity politics, etc.

Yet this faction [the religious right] did not abandon its faith in liberalism’s capacity to solve problems during the decades of Jim Crow. It did not cry, “To hell with the liberal order!” over mass incarceration. It did not erupt in fury over the shattering of Latino families at the border, or the Trump-made aftermath of the catastrophe in Puerto Rico. It did not question whether liberalism had failed after the first, third, fourth or 15th mass shooting at a school, or because it is typical for Americans to beg strangers on the internet for money to cover their health-care costs or after an untimely death. The state of emergency occurred when, and only when, liberal democracy ceased to guarantee victory in the culture war. The indignity of fighting for one’s rights within a democratic framework is fine for others, but it is beneath them.

Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.

I found this article to be particularly useful in understanding the nuances of 'cultural appropriation', and I strongly recommend reading it. The author understands cultural appropriation as twofold: "first, an issue of cultural exploitation, and second, an issue of cultural disrespect". It does not mean that a culture "owns" something that cannot be adopted or re-purposed by another culture.

What most of us hear about the subject is college kids who demand that sushi be banned from campus menus, or that parties featuring Mexican sombreros are racist. — fishfry

First, if it's coming from college students who hold very little power or influence, particularly regarding political and social matters, then who cares? Second, in some of these stories, such as the incident at Oberlin and sushi, and Vietnamese banh mi sandwich, the truth is far more banal than the various publications, ranging from The Atlantic, The New York Times, and right-wing publications such as National Review and Breitbart led on. No one was demanding that these food be "banned" from campus. A Vietnamese student was disappointed that a cafeteria dish advertised as a traditional Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwich was made with the wrong type of bread, the wrong type of pork, and the wrong type of other fillings and that it was disrespectful to advertise it as such despite complete lack of authenticity. According to the original article from the Oberlin Review, several students who initially raised complaints wanted to meet and collaborate with the Oberlin dining service and cultural student organizations in order to rework the dishes. The way I think of it for myself, is if my school had 'New York Pastrami Sandwiches' but it was served on potato bread instead of traditional rye bread, I would seek to have it corrected. If someone unfamiliar with your cultural foods were given a very inauthentic version of it, you'd seek to have it corrected, surely. This happens across cultures.

But as typical, everything on the right is fascism according to many people... — ssu

As the late Umberto Eco noted, Fascism is a synecdoche. A "fuzzy totalitarianism" with "no quintessence". This is useful in both theoretical conceptualization, and as a bulwark against an encroaching fascism. Ayn Rand's ideal reification of her Objectivist philosophy would effectively suspend representative democracy, given that the government would be relegated down to a regalian function of maintaining property rights and a military for defense and security (primarily for upholding property rights). Those with the only substantive power in society would be those with who own the means of production, accumulating wealth, and hiring those whose only means of obtaining sustenance would be to sell their labor power, and all without any third party oversight, or interference and no meaningful way to enact change should conditions be subpar at best and hell at worst. Sound fairly adjacent to fascism to me.

Where did that figure come from??? — Bitter Crank

Here, which percentage-wise is roughly the same as 393M civilian-owned guns out of 326M civilians.

According to the various sources I've found, she decided to stop eating, and while she had been force-fed in a previous instance, this time her parents decided not to intervene and "let her go". Western media is simply misreporting it, and probably haven't issued many corrections yet (if ever) because it's perfect click-bait. — VagabondSpectre

Interesting, as I've seen this been passed around that she was granted state-sanctioned euthanasia, but that did seem decidedly questionable given that she was 17.

BTW, how do you get "about 96 privately owned guns per 100 civilians"? — Bitter Crank

There are approximately 120 privately owned guns per citizen, so remove 20% of that yadda yadda

Not surprised re Weiss. The IDW does often "stand not against power but on behalf of it".

Taking a stand on behalf of power is probably the crux of this whole overblown anti-PC BS. — Izat So

Coincidentally, this excellent article on the hypocrisy and myopia around the IDW and 'free-speech' advocates was just published today.

The idea that no-platforming and other efforts to control campus speech are tactics carried out primarily by students on the left is almost undoubtedly the result of outlets like the Times’ opinion section giving such incidents excessive amounts of coverage -- while essentially ignoring the many examples of conservatives trying to shut out speech they don’t like. You’re unlikely to read Bret Stephens’ take on the efforts of conservative students to use the court system to cancel a panel discussion about Palestinian rights at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. David Brooks isn’t likely to weigh in anytime soon on the University of Arizona students who were arrested on campus for criticizing Border Patrol agents. Ross Douthat didn’t churn out an article to condemn the Nebraska GOP for using its political influence to call on Creighton University to rescind its offer to have former-Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) deliver its graduation speech.

Yeah I mean these supposedly zealous advocates for Free Speech(tm) either willfully turn a blind check towards censorship regarding issues they dislike, or condone outright censorship. Bari Weiss attempted to get a Palestinian professor fired for criticizing Israel during her time as a student at Columbia and to this day continues to ignore anti-BDS legislation which is a overt violation of the First Amendment. She has also condoned dis-inviting fellow Jews to speak at Universities because of their sympathy towards Palestinians and criticism towards Israeli policies. Jordan Peterson, who just last year criticized Orban's position re: eliminating gender studies in universities, is now cordially meeting with him, and discussing the dangerous of political correctness. It's an outright sham, anyone who believes that these types of free speech advocates in and around the 'Intellectual Dark Web' authentically value universal free speech is a naive, Brooklyn Bridge-buying fool.

If you are hand-wringing over the procedural elimination of gun rights whilst the GOP is moving forward to overturning Roe v. Wade then I don't know what to tell you other than maybe sit out this conversation.

I mean I don't care much what a comedian says, and "social attitudes" haven't been much of a concern for the GOP who passed massive tax cuts, pushed for a border wall, withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, and are introducing policies to reduce legal immigration and reproductive rights for women, despite lack of public approval for these, and much more. Stricter gun control, however, has wide support, even among GOP voters, so that's a start.

Your proposal is a good idea. I'm in favour. However... — Bitter Crank

The Australian government issued a mandatory buyback program and subsequently destroyed 20% of privately owned guns, which reduced the number of suicides and homicides, so that's certainly a start, which is undeniably better than throwing our hands in the air complaining how difficult the task might be.

That said, 20% reduction of privately owned guns in the US would still be about 96 privately owned guns per 100 civilians, which is still extremely high. I'm sure there are others who have put forward viable solutions that are not necessarily "revolutionary" to greatly reduce the number of guns in America, but I for one am a full proponent of abolishing the 2nd Amendment

It’s not really that apparent. — I like sushi

If you actually bothered to read the New York Times article I provided, you'll find studies/material showing that a comprehensive comparison across 10 countries, US states, and even US towns, correlating that more guns is associated with more to gun violence. It's not apparent because you are being fucking lazy.

Ok I'm not denying that the causes of homicides are multivarient. I'm arguing that more gun ownership corresponds to more gun violence and that less gun ownership corresponds to a decrease in gun violence, coupled with the uniqueness of guns as a weapon, we should greatly limit gun ownership or better yet, just ban them outright.

wow that's all pretty fucking stupid

Having more guns around doesn’t make people more murderous. — I like sushi

I've shown multiple times that research on gun ownership routinely shows that more guns correlates to more gun violence. This analysis is true across countries, states, and even towns, and that legislation that restricts firearms corresponds to a decrease in firearm deaths. If you wanna say that people will find ways to murder one another, then sure people in countries without access to firearms have resorted to knives, but there's no other tool like a gun which can be carried, concealed, and used to attack multiple targets from a distance.

Yes the lavish wealth bestowed upon a select few wondrously strong individuals makes society "leaner and fitter". Opposition to this is anti-life yessir.

I mean Tucker Carlson is an outright white nationalist so yeah he should be fired.

I don't think that's true in the USA. Today the administration announced that all visa applications, including those simply for tourism, will have to include all the applicant's social media accounts for the prior five years. It's difficult to say concerns about PC are overblown any more. — ernestm

Two days ago an op-ed article in the NY Post argued that a "cesspool" of political correctness and "identity politics" have taken over US colleges and universities across the US, and that the only viable solution may be to get rid of universities altogether. Now in America, this will largely be laughed at because it's ludicrous on multiple levels, but if you look at what Bolsonaro is doing in Brazil or what Viktor Orban is doing in Hungary, you can see that the stage is being set to defund key university departments that are not "politically correct" for right-wingers, such as sociology, gender studies, philosophy, and other departments that act as an intellectual bulwark against the far-right.

So while concerns about left-wing political correctness are certainly overblown, right wing censorship certainly is not.

I think the fallacies with objectivism should be taught, especially in the USA, but there are other problems. I returned to community college to do some courses in literature. The first complete book I studied as a child was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, well actually a play, when I was 10 years old. It was not considered unusual at the time.

In 2005, I learned in community college I would have to study for three years before I could read Shakespeare again, and I was first required to read Harry Potter for four months with people who could hardly utter more than four words in a row without immense effort. That is the reality of the USA now, and the diminishing number of people here who remember more educated days are slowly dieing off. — ernestm

I'll take 'Things That Never Happened' for 1000, Alex

Nice. So what's your problem with that? — ssu

Pinker's modus operandi is take a typically a downward long term trend, and presenting the current state of this trend as acceptable, or that solutions to these problems would be a mistake etc. In this example, a downward trend of terrorist attacks from the 70's to the present is used as an argument to downplay the increase of right wing terrorism (despite, as I've shown deaths have remained fairly consistent)

So why then the ferocious attempt to link terrorism and political correctness? What's the link? So the basic argument is that the topic is somehow wrong, because ...there's right-wing terrorism. — ssu

Well I'm not making Izat So's argument, I'm saying that the context offered in the graph you provided is irrelevant to the concern of rising right wing terrorism. But to Izat's point, the concern over political correctness is largely overblown as I've shown multiple times in a handful of threads.

Germany has four times as many guns per 100 people than the UK (20+ compared to 5 per 100), yet homicide rats in the UK are 44% greater. — I like sushi

It's fairly deceitful to supply a percentage difference without simultaneously supplying the numbers you are comparing. The homicide rate is 0.81 in the UK and 1.17 in Germany, which is a difference of 44% but in real terms is hardly distinguishable. As you point out, Germany has many more guns than UK. There are nearly 20 civilian-owned guns per 100 people in Germany and nearly 5 civilian-owned guns per 100 people in England. But this is very much in line with gun deaths: in 2015 there were 269 homicides committed with a firearm vs. only 14 in England (19x more). Per 1 million people, there are 3.26 murders committed by a firearm in Germany vs. 0.236 in England (14x more). This is not surprising when there are four times as many guns per people in one country than another, there are much more gun-attributed deaths, which is precisely my point, not that there is some vague cultural aspect involced which no one can seem to actually articulate.

In America, there are 120 civilian firearms per 100 people, or 5 times more than Germany, so it's unsurprising the USA has 32 gun-attributed murders per one million people vs. Germany's 3.26 (10x more) and 9,369 murders in 2015 compared to Germany's 269 (35x times more). More guns more gun-related murders, and to @StreetlightX's point, none of this even takes suicide via firearm into account.

Gotta hand it to Peterson for convincing a bunch of knuckle-dragging dipshits that he's a fierce proponent of free-speech when he's now hanging out with Viktor Orban

The cultures are inherently different. — I like sushi

Yes, the America has a deeply ingrained gun culture, exactly.

The mantras of ‘making it in America’ or ‘the land of hopes and dreams’ perhaps plays into people feeling falls harder than they should and abandonment when they see such inclusivity preached? — I like sushi

What you are attempting to describe here is more pointedly a mental healthcare issue, and as the Times article I linked to points out, mental health issues don't correlate as a factor.

See this is exactly what's I'm talking about. The responses here are so tortuously awful it's difficult to tell if this is just outright stupidity or sheer nihilism.

And your comment above just adds to my point that here you do have to put into context the present with a historical comparison. — ssu

This is such a Steven Pinker-esque argument. The discussion is around the increase in right wing terrorism, and the charts provided clearly show this to be the case. This is an important societal problem to concern ourselves with, and not something to shrug at simply because there are less overall terrorist attacks compared to 40+ years ago.

The main use of vehicles and knives is obviously not to kill, and guns are flexible in ways that cars are not, and deadlier in ways that knives are not, so the comparison is absurd. As the NYT pointed out, the singular explanation for US mass shooting are the abundance of available guns. Hand-waving deaths caused by guns whether homicide, mass shootings, suicide, etc. because there are alternative tools that can kill, are displays a nihilistic callousness; buffoonery dressed as intelligence.

It was pretty clear since Sandy that nothing will change for many years

Listen, I firmly believe everyone should be given a platform regardless of the content of their beliefs, so this means of course that, in addition to neo-nazis and white supremists, pedophiles, Islamists, eugenicists and people who enjoy Kid Rock also deserve platforms to advocate their views I don't make the rules for this, this is what is demanded for free speech