(11-17-2019, 08:53 PM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(11-17-2019, 11:39 AM)mikesez Wrote: I get the line of reasoning and I actually agree with it so long as the American left doesn't automatically get lumped in with communists. 
And so long as it only gets lumped in with socialists if it is trying to have the government own productive enterprises. the closest thing we've had to a socialist president in my lifetime was George W. Bush who bought up AIG, and then Obama bought GM with funds that were appropriated under Bush. But Obama said that these were both temporary moves, and he directed the government to sell both of these assets back to the private market. He was no socialist.

Using the classical definition of socialism as government owned businesses he wasn't. He was more of a Marxist, redistributing wealth to the "needy." "Marxist" is a better description of the current Democrat party presidential field too, rather than "socialist."

Yeah, Obama did try to expand Medicaid in every state.  His efforts to make college more of a free government went nowhere though.
Free help for the poor is at least as old as the Roman grain dole. 
It's probably best not to bring Marx into welfare programs.  The idea that the workers must seize the factories is Marx. 

Marx believed that the worker not owning his tools/machinery was so fundamentally wrong that it was the cause of the cyclical unemployment, bank failures, and urban overcrowding that were so much worse in his time than in ours.  He did not believe that "relief" or "welfare" were anything but a bandaid solution.  He did not believe that legal regulations or government insurance could smooth out the banking and monetary problems he saw.  Only collective ownership by the workers could, so if we could just not waste our time with those other steps and let the workers rise up now rather than later, that'd be best, he would say.
But it turns out he was wrong. Central banking, deposit insurance, unemployment insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, all of these things are now universal in many countries. And they all really do smooth over the problems that Marx saw.

I think these things are more aptly called "welfare state" but I'm open to any suggestions.  Just not Marx.

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