…and deep down we’re all just stardust. What is your point?
You have to be more specific.
That’s because it’s utterly impossible to be “socialist” or “leftist” in the same way Rand was ideological - being an unhinged bootlicker has decidedly never been the point of leftism.
Do socialism and leftism have definitions, and if so, what are they, and did Pauline Hopkins, or her fiction, fit those definitions?
*Leftism" doesn’t have a hard and fast definition. An idea can be considered leftist if it threatens the status quo - as opposed to an idea that enforces it (which would be considered right-wing).
Socialism does - a condition wherein the working class controls the means of production. An idea that supports this end can be considered socialist (in our current state) whether the holder of such an idea labels it “socialist” or can even spell the word. Therefore, Christ rejecting the idea that people must go hungry by dividing fish and bread - socialist. Hopkins rejecting the tenets of white supremacism - socialist.
1a. Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.
1a. A system of social and economic equality in which there is no private property.
2b. A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.
2b. (Marxism-Leninism) The intermediate phase of social development between capitalism and communism in Marxist theory in which the state has control of the means of production.
3c. Any of a group of later political philosophies such democratic socialism and social democracy which do not envisage the need for full state ownership of the means of production nor transition to full communism, and which are typically based on principles of community decision making, social equality and the avoidance of economic and social exclusion, with economic policy giving first preference to community goals over individual ones.
4d. (chiefly Western, often derogatory, colloquial) Any left-wing ideology, government regulations, or policies promoting a welfare state, nationalisation, etc.
Your definition seems to apply more to syndicalism.
(socialism) Control of government and industry by labor unions, usually achieved through revolutionary direct action.
Your definition of socialism is so general as to be a bit vague.
Christ wasn’t being a socialist as much as philanthropic.
He told the rich man to give everything he had to the poor and follow him, or his remark of the camel through the eye of the needle was anti-rich.
He also had the parable of the 3 people with their talents.
As for rejecting white supremacism, this might be the case of any POC billionaire—presumably Oprah Winfrey rejects the tenants of white supremacism.
FAIK, the US under Jefferson might have been America at its most socialist. Perhaps most of the people were independent farmers and artisans; slaves didn’t but presumably they were a minority. Presumably the Indigenous were socialist too. As for women, they might have had more de facto independence and control over their means than de jure.
Right-wingers don’t threaten the status quo - they enforce it. Milei is a capitalist - and he is making capitalists inside and outside Argentina very happy. So how is he leftist, again?
wt:socialism#English
Here’s your problem…
political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership
…those are already two violently incompatible forms of ownership, a fact the people writing these kind of definitions constantly gloss over. And that’s just the start… these pop definitions only become less and less useful from there on in.
As a purely propagandistic buzzword, socialism served the same purpose in the USSR as the term “democracy” serves in the west - an empty word, with accompanying empty definitions, that purely exists to justify the power and privilege of the people at the top. The majority of the “definitions” you posted can be classified as this.
Your definition of socialism is so general as to be a bit vague.
No. It isn’t. Political ideology doesn’t get less vague than this. It’s very, very easy to see if the working-class actually controls anything in any given society - this is why the Bolsheviks and their descendents scrambled to make sure the term socialism means “whatever we want it to mean.”
But they don’t get to change the basic idea behind it.
Christ wasn’t being a socialist as much as philanthropic.
Christ was never philanthropic - he wasn’t some capitalist laundering his public image, and he never separated himself from the class of people he was born into. What Christ was doing is more accurately described as mutual aid.
this might be the case of any POC billionaire
You’d be surprised how many non-white people embrace the hierarchies that enable and require white supremacism while pretending to reject it - just look at people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.
from an Argentine view (if not quite a Latin American or world POV)
a fact the people writing these kind of definitions constantly gloss over. And that’s just the start… these pop definitions only become less and less useful from there on in.
Yes, and many on the far right and far left don’t like Wikipedia, and presumably wouldn’t its sister Wiktionary, but I tend to defer to the authority of WMF projects more than to those I know even less about.
As a purely propagandistic buzzword, socialism served the same purpose in the USSR as the term “democracy” serves in the west - an empty word, with accompanying empty definitions, that purely exists to justify the power and privilege of the people at the top. The majority of the “definitions” you posted can be classified as this.
I suppose they might say something like that they got things done.
Russia in 1916 was a dying empire with much suffering, while in, say, 1978, all, or nearly all, Russians, and others in the USSR, were fed, clothed, housed, medically cared for, educated, and had higher life expediencies. Ditto China. Ditto Cuba. Ditto Yugoslavia. Maybe even ditto Albania and North Korea. As for Cambodia, Chomsky says it wasn’t 2 million, and they lasted only a few years. What if the Khmer Rouge lasted, say, 20 years? How would Cambodia be in, say, 1996? It’s been run for over 40 years by one who was in the Khmer Rouge.
Meanwhile Western bourgeois supposed-leftists spend much time arguing or doing ineffective things.
Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro were both born around the same time.
Who has accomplished more for leftism and socialism?
But they don’t get to change the basic idea behind it.
Whatever, Western bourgeois pseudo-anon individualist: the USSR and PRC did great things, while you still live in a shitty capitalist empire. 😁🙂
Christ was never philanthropic - he wasn’t some capitalist laundering his public image, and he never separated himself from the class of people he was born into. What Christ was doing is more accurately described as mutual aid.
philanthropy (countable and uncountable, plural philanthropies)
1a. (chiefly uncountable) Benevolent altruism with the intention of increasing the well-being of humankind.
2b. (uncountable) Charitable giving, charity.
He was supposedly God incarnate performing a miracle.
What he did, no one could do, i.e. feed to their fill 5000 people with only 5 loaves and 2 fish, with 12 baskets of leftovers.
Again, your analogy is a poor one: it doesn’t prove Jesus was a leftist or socialist.
We also don’t know what he did in his later teens or 20s.
Presumably the people he hung out with most were his disciples who saw him as divine.
You’d be surprised how many non-white people embrace the hierarchies that enable and require white supremacism while pretending to reject it - just look at people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.
True, but I don’t think billionaire Winfrey would endorse either.
Do socialism and leftism have definitions, and if so, what are they, and did Pauline Hopkins, or her fiction, fit those definitions?
*Leftism" doesn’t have a hard and fast definition. An idea can be considered leftist if it threatens the status quo - as opposed to an idea that enforces it (which would be considered right-wing).
Socialism does - a condition wherein the working class controls the means of production. An idea that supports this end can be considered socialist (in our current state) whether the holder of such an idea labels it “socialist” or can even spell the word. Therefore, Christ rejecting the idea that people must go hungry by dividing fish and bread - socialist. Hopkins rejecting the tenets of white supremacism - socialist.
So according to your definitions, Javier Milei is a leftist because he threatens the status quo, and those who oppose him are rightists.
I agree: it doesn’t have a hard and fast definition.
wt:socialism#English
(my bold)
Your definition seems to apply more to syndicalism.
wt:syndicalism
Your definition of socialism is so general as to be a bit vague.
Christ wasn’t being a socialist as much as philanthropic.
He told the rich man to give everything he had to the poor and follow him, or his remark of the camel through the eye of the needle was anti-rich.
He also had the parable of the 3 people with their talents.
As for rejecting white supremacism, this might be the case of any POC billionaire—presumably Oprah Winfrey rejects the tenants of white supremacism.
FAIK, the US under Jefferson might have been America at its most socialist. Perhaps most of the people were independent farmers and artisans; slaves didn’t but presumably they were a minority. Presumably the Indigenous were socialist too. As for women, they might have had more de facto independence and control over their means than de jure.
Right-wingers don’t threaten the status quo - they enforce it. Milei is a capitalist - and he is making capitalists inside and outside Argentina very happy. So how is he leftist, again?
Here’s your problem…
…those are already two violently incompatible forms of ownership, a fact the people writing these kind of definitions constantly gloss over. And that’s just the start… these pop definitions only become less and less useful from there on in.
As a purely propagandistic buzzword, socialism served the same purpose in the USSR as the term “democracy” serves in the west - an empty word, with accompanying empty definitions, that purely exists to justify the power and privilege of the people at the top. The majority of the “definitions” you posted can be classified as this.
No. It isn’t. Political ideology doesn’t get less vague than this. It’s very, very easy to see if the working-class actually controls anything in any given society - this is why the Bolsheviks and their descendents scrambled to make sure the term socialism means “whatever we want it to mean.”
But they don’t get to change the basic idea behind it.
Christ was never philanthropic - he wasn’t some capitalist laundering his public image, and he never separated himself from the class of people he was born into. What Christ was doing is more accurately described as mutual aid.
You’d be surprised how many non-white people embrace the hierarchies that enable and require white supremacism while pretending to reject it - just look at people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.
from an Argentine view (if not quite a Latin American or world POV)
Yes, and many on the far right and far left don’t like Wikipedia, and presumably wouldn’t its sister Wiktionary, but I tend to defer to the authority of WMF projects more than to those I know even less about.
I suppose they might say something like that they got things done.
Russia in 1916 was a dying empire with much suffering, while in, say, 1978, all, or nearly all, Russians, and others in the USSR, were fed, clothed, housed, medically cared for, educated, and had higher life expediencies. Ditto China. Ditto Cuba. Ditto Yugoslavia. Maybe even ditto Albania and North Korea. As for Cambodia, Chomsky says it wasn’t 2 million, and they lasted only a few years. What if the Khmer Rouge lasted, say, 20 years? How would Cambodia be in, say, 1996? It’s been run for over 40 years by one who was in the Khmer Rouge.
Meanwhile Western bourgeois supposed-leftists spend much time arguing or doing ineffective things.
Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro were both born around the same time.
Who has accomplished more for leftism and socialism?
Whatever, Western bourgeois pseudo-anon individualist: the USSR and PRC did great things, while you still live in a shitty capitalist empire. 😁🙂
wt:philanthropy#English
He was supposedly God incarnate performing a miracle.
What he did, no one could do, i.e. feed to their fill 5000 people with only 5 loaves and 2 fish, with 12 baskets of leftovers.
Again, your analogy is a poor one: it doesn’t prove Jesus was a leftist or socialist.
We also don’t know what he did in his later teens or 20s.
Presumably the people he hung out with most were his disciples who saw him as divine.
True, but I don’t think billionaire Winfrey would endorse either.