Socialism and the Great Reset

[Peter1469]

The Great Reset is bad, but calling it socialism distracts from combatting it. The Great Reset is technocratic authoritarianism. This article is from a soon to be published book: Against the Great Reset.

Socialism and the Great Reset

It has become increasingly common to hear those on what we may call the conventional Right claim that the main threat facing the historic American nation and the American way of life is “socialism.” These warnings have grown with the rise of the so-called “Great Reset,” ostensibly a broad effort to reduce inequality, cool the planet (i.e., “address climate change”), and cure various social ills, all by decreasing alleged “overconsumption.” In other words, its mission is to persuade people, at least in the developed West, to accept lower standards of living in order to create a more just and “equitable” world. Since the conservative mind, not unreasonably, associates lower standards of living with “socialism,” many conservatives naturally intuit that the Great Reset must somehow be “socialist.”


I believe this fear is at least partly misplaced and that the warnings it gives rise to, however well-meaning, are counterproductive because they deflect attention from the truer, greater threat: specifically, the cabal of bankers, techies, corporate executives, politicians, senior bureaucrats, academics, and pundits who coalesce around the World Economic Forum and seek to change, reduce, restrict, and homogenize the Western way of life—but only for ordinary people. Their own way of life, along with the wealth and power that define it, they seek to entrench, augment, deepen, and extend.


This is why a strict or literal definition of “socialism”—public or government ownership and control of the means of production in order to equalize incomes and wealth across the population—is inapt to our situation. The Great Reset quietly but unmistakably redefines “socialism” to allow and even promote wealth and power concentration in certain hands. In the decisive sense, then, the West’s present economic system—really, its overarching regime—is the opposite of socialistic.


Yet there are ways in which this regime might still be tentatively described as “socialist,” at least as it operates for those not members in good standing of the Davoisie. If the Great Reset is allowed to proceed as planned, wealth for all but the global overclass will be equalized, or at least reduced for the middle and increased for the bottom. Many of the means used to accomplish this goal will be “socialistic,” broadly understood. But to understand both the similarities and the differences, we must go back to socialism’s source, which is the thought of Karl Marx and his colleague, financial backer, and junior partner, Friedrich Engels.


That thought is most accessible in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the jointly authored Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), and Engels’s pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (1880). Marxism’s detailed account of economics is fully developed in the monumental Capital (Das Kapital), published in three volumes between 1867 and 1894. Marx and Engels do not claim to be innovators. They insist rather that they merely discovered and explicate the “scientific” theory of socialism, whose true roots are to be found in the unfolding development of “history.”

[Chris]

I would assign this instead to progressivism and its postmodern critical theories, though even that has Marxist roots.

[RMNIXON]

America has been subjected to Socialism since early in the last century. It has been incremental on purpose to get the population use to the idea that Government exists not to protect your rights, but to do things for you or on your behalf as part of a collective identity or group.

Post WWII the process lost a lot of ground but continued..................

[Peter1469]

America has been subjected to Socialism since early in the last century. It has been incremental on purpose to get the population use to the idea that Government exists not to protect your rights, but to do things for you or on your behalf as part of a collective identity or group.

Post WWII the process lost a lot of ground but continued..................

He is using the technical definition of socialism.

[Chris]

America has been subjected to Socialism since early in the last century. It has been incremental on purpose to get the population use to the idea that Government exists not to protect your rights, but to do things for you or on your behalf as part of a collective identity or group.

Post WWII the process lost a lot of ground but continued..................

But socialism never got a foothold here beyond Eugene V. Debs getting 3% of the vote in 1919.

Per Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States, it was because politicians and business gave the workers enough concessions to undermine the purists.

Per Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, which I just started reading, it was because, unlike Europe, the US never experienced feudalism.

I think postmodern critical theory has had more impact, and more resistance from the people.

[donttread]

The Great Reset is bad, but calling it socialism distracts from combatting it. The Great Reset is technocratic authoritarianism. This article is from a soon to be published book: Against the Great Reset.

Socialism and the Great Reset

It has become increasingly common to hear those on what we may call the conventional Right claim that the main threat facing the historic American nation and the American way of life is “socialism.” These warnings have grown with the rise of the so-called “Great Reset,” ostensibly a broad effort to reduce inequality, cool the planet (i.e., “address climate change”), and cure various social ills, all by decreasing alleged “overconsumption.” In other words, its mission is to persuade people, at least in the developed West, to accept lower standards of living in order to create a more just and “equitable” world. Since the conservative mind, not unreasonably, associates lower standards of living with “socialism,” many conservatives naturally intuit that the Great Reset must somehow be “socialist.”


I believe this fear is at least partly misplaced and that the warnings it gives rise to, however well-meaning, are counterproductive because they deflect attention from the truer, greater threat: specifically, the cabal of bankers, techies, corporate executives, politicians, senior bureaucrats, academics, and pundits who coalesce around the World Economic Forum and seek to change, reduce, restrict, and homogenize the Western way of life—but only for ordinary people. Their own way of life, along with the wealth and power that define it, they seek to entrench, augment, deepen, and extend.


This is why a strict or literal definition of “socialism”—public or government ownership and control of the means of production in order to equalize incomes and wealth across the population—is inapt to our situation. The Great Reset quietly but unmistakably redefines “socialism” to allow and even promote wealth and power concentration in certain hands. In the decisive sense, then, the West’s present economic system—really, its overarching regime—is the opposite of socialistic.


Yet there are ways in which this regime might still be tentatively described as “socialist,” at least as it operates for those not members in good standing of the Davoisie. If the Great Reset is allowed to proceed as planned, wealth for all but the global overclass will be equalized, or at least reduced for the middle and increased for the bottom. Many of the means used to accomplish this goal will be “socialistic,” broadly understood. But to understand both the similarities and the differences, we must go back to socialism’s source, which is the thought of Karl Marx and his colleague, financial backer, and junior partner, Friedrich Engels.


That thought is most accessible in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the jointly authored Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), and Engels’s pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (1880). Marxism’s detailed account of economics is fully developed in the monumental Capital (Das Kapital), published in three volumes between 1867 and 1894. Marx and Engels do not claim to be innovators. They insist rather that they merely discovered and explicate the “scientific” theory of socialism, whose true roots are to be found in the unfolding development of “history.”

Bingo. Truer words were never spoken. Socialism is merely the means to make a two class society palatable to the people. The leaders, be they politicians, bankers of self proclaimed socialist never intend to lower their SOL
I believe this fear is at least partly misplaced and that the warnings it gives rise to, however well-meaning, are counterproductive because they deflect attention from the truer, greater threat: specifically, the cabal of bankers, techies, corporate executives, politicians, senior bureaucrats, academics, and pundits who coalesce around the World Economic Forum and seek to change, reduce, restrict, and homogenize the Western way of life—but only for ordinary people. Their own way of life, along with the wealth and power that define it, they seek to entrench, augment, deepen, and extend.

[carolina73]

I prefer to not over analyze it.

There has never been a Socialist country, or a Communist country, a Democracy or any other pure form of government. So all terms don't really apply anyways.
There are two directions. Anarchy or total enslavement. Then there are infinite combinations on the dial in between.

I actually do not know why Marx is so important in history. He is essentially a sci-fiction author who writes of utopia promise for the fat, dumb and lazy. Communal living is attractive to drop outs not performers.

Marx's workers party are made up of those fat, dumb, lazy or adverse to the risk required to build something.
If you group them together then you have a fat, dumb, lazy company that is adverse to risk.

So the fat, dumb, lazy and risk adverse are easy prey for someone that promises them wealth for doing what they are already doing. Sitting in a factory putting tab A in slot B. They would never start a business and they will destroy it if they inherit it, as fast as a kid that inherits it from daddy.
That explains the temptation of Socialism.

What Socialism really promises is slavery and poverty for all. It never tells the supporters that as the leaders they will be their masters and become the few rich.

Nothing says this better than College Professors, who claim they are so brilliant, yet they are incapable of getting a job that requires they compete. So they hide and hope one of their students develops something that they can ride to riches.

In terms of the Great Reset, they do not want Socialism. They are not the fat dumb and lazy, so they know that Socialism is a society that has no hope. So it does not invent, it fights to make less not more, it only grows economically by growing in population. Consumerism dies, improvement has no reward. The corporate world want to shift money from producer countries to non-producers to create new markets for themselves. This is why they continue to bloody their own noses in China where they know China is stealing their technology. Their greed only see 1.4 billion consumers. If the can only drain the USA and Western Europe of their "extra money" then they can have 1.4 billion new customers.

[Carl Young]

I prefer to not over analyze it.

There has never been a Socialist country, or a Communist country, a Democracy or any other pure form of government. So all terms don't really apply anyways.
There are two directions. Anarchy or total enslavement. Then there are infinite combinations on the dial in between.

I actually do not know why Marx is so important in history. He is essentially a sci-fiction author who writes of utopia promise for the fat, dumb and lazy. Communal living is attractive to drop outs not performers.

Marx's workers party are made up of those fat, dumb, lazy or adverse to the risk required to build something.
If you group them together then you have a fat, dumb, lazy company that is adverse to risk.

So the fat, dumb, lazy and risk adverse are easy prey for someone that promises them wealth for doing what they are already doing. Sitting in a factory putting tab A in slot B. They would never start a business and they will destroy it if they inherit it, as fast as a kid that inherits it from daddy.
That explains the temptation of Socialism.

What Socialism really promises is slavery and poverty for all. It never tells the supporters that as the leaders they will be their masters and become the few rich.

Nothing says this better than College Professors, who claim they are so brilliant, yet they are incapable of getting a job that requires they compete. So they hide and hope one of their students develops something that they can ride to riches.

In terms of the Great Reset, they do not want Socialism. They are not the fat dumb and lazy, so they know that Socialism is a society that has no hope. So it does not invent, it fights to make less not more, it only grows economically by growing in population. Consumerism dies, improvement has no reward. The corporate world want to shift money from producer countries to non-producers to create new markets for themselves. This is why they continue to bloody their own noses in China where they know China is stealing their technology. Their greed only see 1.4 billion consumers. If the can only drain the USA and Western Europe of their "extra money" then they can have 1.4 billion new customers.

The problem is that the 'fat dumb and lazy' get to vote, and they'll vote for anything they feel they can get for free. They can also be led in several directions simultaneously, which leads to further confusion and discomfort. That's when a group like the WEF, or any despot of the past or present, steps in to promise a better, brighter future under their new system..

We're seeing that play out now.

[Peter1469]

The problem is that the 'fat dumb and lazy' get to vote, and they'll vote for anything they feel they can get for free. They can also be led in several directions simultaneously, which leads to further confusion and discomfort. That's when a group like the WEF, or any despot of the past or present, steps in to promise a better, brighter future under their new system..

We're seeing that play out now.

Maybe we will evolve into a more serious democracy (and I use that term in its general sense)- allow only those with "skin in the game" the franchise.

[DGUtley]

democraticsocialists.jpg Future of Party.jpg