Socialism must be based in natural human needs, wants, and human development.

It is natural that parents care for the needs of their children. As children grow, they develop from self centered need gratification to community connection, which is a fundamental human need. Community connection proceeds from the service of the self to the self to the service to others. Service to others may mean at one level, service to the individual’s own children and family or it may extend to working in the community to meet the needs of others.

This developmental process should be the basis of socialist development because it is natural to human beings. Socialist principles should never be based on principles that are alien to the natural inclinations of human beings.

We are born with nothing but needs and if we die of old age, we die with nothing but needs. Through the process of life, we will optimally develop if we proceed through self centered need gratification and expand our perspective to the needs of others. Through self centeredness, children learn to appreciate the wants and needs of human beings. As we grow and if we have children, we learn that their needs are more important than our own. If we don’t have children, we still learn that the needs of other people are more important than our own through other means besides parenting.

Human adult happiness can be achieved through one thing only. It is achieved when we genuinely place the needs, happiness and well being of other people above our own. The human individual that is stuck in selfishness is truly important from a socialist point of view because he is suffering more than more developed human beings. And from the socialist point of view, who suffers most is most important.

One problem with the capitalist stage of social development has been that those same individuals that suffer in the cage of selfishness that deserve our compassion, have taken complete control of our societies. It is as if the children have taken control of the household.

Capitalist societies must be put on notice. Legislation must be pushed through capitalist parliaments that if capitalist control of government does not serve the needs of the people, then socialist control of government will take place. In other words, the adults will take control of the household.

Criteria should be developed with this in mind. That is, criteria that measures human misery. Should human misery fall below a certain level on quantitative and qualitative measures, then socialists will replace capitalistic lawmakers on national and preferably international levels and form a revolutionary new socialist government with the following principles as its foundation.

That society functions on the bases of the needs of the community.

That the needs of the community are assessed with the most needy individual deemed as the highest priority.

The needs of the public are deemed the highest priority.

Production is based on the needs of the community.

Distribution and trade is based on the needs of the community.

Ownership and control of natural resources is in the hands of the community.

Ownership and control of the wealth created by labour rests in the hands of the community.

Ownership and control of the community rests in the hands of all members of the community.

Community leadership is based on service to the needs of the community.

Socialist societies will be fundamentally different in one single fundamental respect at first; that the ownership and control of natural resources rests in the hands of the community.

Socialist societies will evolve through achieving ownership and control of industry placed first in the hands of nation based community control. Control will devolve to the local community as expediently as is practical.

The process of transformation from the private sphere to the public sphere is accomplished through cooperation and agreement wherever possible.

Early socialist societies will maintain the same institutions, businesses, infrastructure, and liberal legal principles as late capitalist societies. The legal principles that are contrary to socialist principles will be abolished.

The institutions created through private ownership be initially maintained and assessed for value to the community.

Where capitalistic incentives are needed for under-developed individuals and communities, the community will hold strict control over production, trade, and the relationship between private bosses and workers.

Where capitalistic incentives are needed for under-developed individuals or communities, the coercive nature and threat posed by those individuals and communities is openly and frankly discussed in public forums.

Practical steps are taken to prevent those same individuals from manipulating wealth and community control for their own benefit.

In all cases where capitalist incentive mechanisms are needed, they will be on a temporary basis.

In all cases where capitalist incentive mechanisms are needed, workers will be organized in democracy based unions outside of the control of the owners.

Control of both natural resources and industry will devolve to the community where industries are located.

That trade between communities is coordinated and based on community needs.

Individuals work is not forced.

Individuals should work in accordance with the needs of the community.

Work direction is based in community needs.

Work initiative is based in crass goal achievement for those in lower stages of psychological development.

Work initiatives are based in self centered needs for youth with the recognition that self centeredness is valuable and necessary for youth to develop.

Control of work is based in the individual’s willingness and ability to take initiative and ownership of the problem of community needs.

Workers that carry out, facilitate and coordinate trade between communities are included and welcomed while they are away from their home community.

Communities will assist other communities where trade or production development is difficult or slow. Trade should focus on the needs of the community but also on the needs of foreign communities.

State control of criminality will evolve toward social and community control.

State control of all institutions will evolve toward community control.

State control will evolve toward community control; community control will evolve toward family control and toward no control. Individual emancipation from state coercion is a fundamental goal of socialism.

Socialist societies will develop toward the abolition of the state.

The socialist state will adhere to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of media, and people will not require payment for information. Information will be free and unfettered.

Repressive state forces will be in formed only in the case where tyranny and oppression must be curtailed. Authority, whether it is the authority of a parent or a teacher or police, will never be abused. If it is abused, the authority will be removed by the state from the individual, the body or organization.

Discrimination against human beings will be eliminated through education and in severe cases of organized hate, through legal sanctions that are aimed against tyranny.

The education of educators and medical professionals will be a priority in all communities. These skills and resources will be shared and developed according to need.

Vital needs shall never require a charge of money. This includes and is not restricted to housing, food, medicine, medical care, or anything else where its absence may result in the death of an individual.

Technological development will be enhanced through the development of community awards and grants and through the development of incentives to individuals and communities.

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The great sweep of history, from the communism of hunter gatherer societies to early tribal societies and all its developments to late tribal societies to early feudal societies and its developments to late feudal societies to early capitalist societies and through those developments we now emerge, seated within the historical context of late capitalism; aware of the sweep of history.

It has become increasingly obvious that capitalism has developed and has become not capitalism but monopolism. The state and private business are married and stand over and above of societies. These powers have control of the lives of societies and the individuals in them and together, they form an oppressive and alienating force.

The time is coming where we, the individuals that are members of various societies, must take the initiative to move from late capitalism to early socialism. Early socialism should and will look like late capitalism but at that point, we will have switched tracks. Our trajectory will have changed and we will be on the road to the abolition of the state, the complete abolition of capitalism, and the abolition of barbarism.

Every socialist has a "need" to ignore three critical flaws in their rationality.

1) "Community" rule is communism. Start out in a room with 10 people given "equal" authority and by the end of the day, one person will have more power than the rest. Also, whomever is put in charge, he nature of authority correctly predicts the increasing abuse their power, including providing jobs to cronies and trading laws for favors. In other words, the flaws of capitalism are still within socialism, only there they are the Rule and not the exception.

2) Capitalism has generated more revenue for charities than any socialist system. Though giving voluntarily is a selfless act, the need to feel good about giving is tied to personal ego and satisfaction. Saying, "The State thanks you" will always be too abstract for the human mind.

3) When government is placed above private citizens, it becomes more and more expedient to simply kill off individuals that don't fit the mold of the latest 5-year plan. For more details, read up on the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam.

It depends upon brutality and force. Check out the examples of Chile under Pinochet or El Salvador and and Guatemala under the death squads. Or check out the record of US capitalism - genocide against the Indians, the slave trade, the bloody conquest of the Filipinos, the use of Blacks as a super-exploited caste of low-wage workers after the abolition of slavery, and the bloody interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere, whose main purpose was to keep the US economy afloat by allowing it to feed as a parasite on the rest of the world.

As for Stalin and his state, and others that resemble it, that is not socialism since socialism cannot exist without democracy and workers control. In the case of the USSR you are talking about a hopeless attemt to abolish capitalism by bureaucratic decree and brutal regimentation in a nation with a backward economy. The result, as many socialists predicted at the time, was a fiasco.

And yet for all it's sins, most everyone around the world would risk death to be an American.

Though knowledable, you're missing a vital piece of the puzzle, Meyer.

Mostly the people fleeing to the US are enconomic refugies from reppressive client states that our corporations control with their death squads or, like Cuba, have been squeezed by reppressive sactions.

Hardly a good thing.

Or check out the record of US capitalism - genocide against the Indians, the slave trade, the bloody conquest of the Filipinos, the use of Blacks as a super-exploited caste of low-wage workers after the abolition of slavery, and the bloody interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere,

>>> Do you have any clue what happened in Vietnam once we pulled out? If you want to compare track records, the vile, evil system known as communism and its communist lite cousin "socialism" have been far worse. yes, socialism is virtually the same, they're just more polite with their authotitarianism.

>>>> All this blather about U.S. corporations and yet other countries WANT U.S. dollars and investments.



>>> You hardcore leftists have the sole advantage of living in theories, not the real world. No sense arguing against self-seling, invincible ignorance.

Just your blather.

Of course they want our dollars after the hit men of corporate rape have done their resource and labor extraction/explotation.

They're starving.

What was the U.S. doing in Vietnam in the first place? The Vietnamese were trying to fight against colonial French control and the U.S. took over France's fight and killed 2-3 million in the process. Why couldn't we have just left them alone. Americans supposedly believe in self-determination right? We weren't trying to help the Vietnamese people. Have you ever heard of My Lai? Yep, that's right, American boys did that.

The CIA overthrew popular nationalist governments so that the economies of these nations could be dominated by US oil companies and the United Fruit Comany, respectively. The result in Iran was rule by the bloody Shah and his vicious SAVAK secret police, the destruction of secular opposition to his rule, and the coming to power of the reactionary mullahs when the people had no one else to turn to as an alternative to the Shah. In Guatemala the ultimate result was rule by death squads that raped, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people. Ask citizens of these countries how many of them love the United States.

Then it was all a grand accident that the Vietnamese WERE aided by the US. (It's a shame that democrat presidents ran the show then). Same for those Iraqi free elections no one on the left wants to be reminded of. Saddam's capture has 'accidentally' freed 25 million Iraqis.

Have you ever heard of My Lai? Yep, that's right, American boys did that.

My Lai was an isolated incident. And considering the number of American anti-war "journalists" in country by then, it was the ONLY incident.

But if it's easier top pretend the communists didn't sweep in and commit genocide after we left, good for you!

The Soviet Union or its allies invaded 8 countries in the 1970s, but the misguided beret-wearers around this site see only the US as evil. It would be funny if this type of denial didn't cause so much harm to the easily impressionable.

Be sure to add your theory that the CIA attacked the Twin Towers, Meyer.

People need to see what bin you're shouting from.

First, we had Allen Dulles, instituting a strategy of tention in North Vietnam by terrorizing the catholic sectors of the population with created incidents of terror against catholics; propotably perpatrated by the Buddhist

In addition to My Lai there was also the CIA Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Check links below for details.

The only way we can actually make this world a better place is to honestly look at the facts and come to grips with what our country has really done.

Let's not pretend Vietnam was honorable.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/operation_phoenix.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~peace/pubeng/inter/arcnw1.html

Well Damn. I'll try that again.

First, we had Allen Dulles, instituting a strategy of tention in North Vietnam by terrorizing the catholic sectors of the population with created incidents of terror against catholics; propotably perpatrated by the Buddhist

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Bastards.

1 more time.

First, we had Allen Dulles, instituting a strategy of tention in North Vietnam by terrorizing the catholic sectors of the population with created incidents of terror against catholics; propotably perpatrated by the Buddhist

one more time

Dear Mr. Pinguino

First, we had Allen Dulles, instituting a strategy of tention in North Vietnam by terrorizing the catholic sectors of the population with created incidents of terror against catholics; propotably perpatrated by the Buddhist [??] majority [ insert OSS CIA operatives ] which caused a mass exidous to the 'safe' south. 1+ million new neighbors who were given proprietary status as they seized land from the villages who had been there growing rice since the Pyramids were being built. Remember how we all were shooting Charlie up in the southern delta? Actually, the robed and evicted farmers etc. who had always lived there became the dreaded VIET CONG.

Aint being evil fun?

This was the final destruction of the ancient culture ( but please give the Chinese, Japanese and surely the French their due credit as the people had been fighting in their own turf for THOUSANDS of years against bastards who came in to enslave these small,beautiful and frighteningly clever people. But I digress and you already have forgotten what I was writing but, that's too bad) and the beginning of the slaughter for profit that began in 1954 to end ( almost, except for artillery duels with the Chinese Army) after they kicked our unwelcome ass out. And the 1945 resolution of an independent country was fulfilled, if however warped we forced it to become in order to do so.



Any question(s)?

Why is it every time I state the obvious: the horrors of communism destroyed those countries more thoroughly than anything America did to prevent that destruction, some footnote of little relevance about the CIA is brought up?

We won every single battle in Nam, even with Johnson and Kennedy not fighting the war the way it's supposed to be fought. The war was only truly lost when the American neo-marxist left (aka the Worst Generation, with Walter Kronkite leading) turned against America in the 60s.

Ironically, the new communist government killed off the viet cong once they assumed power.

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My idealogical opponents never give ground, so I don't put too much time into defending what should be obvious.

What can be hope to be explained to those who have decided America is evil and then work backwards to to find "evidence" for their opinion?

Here's what's obvious.

We lost the war because we were not in there for any particular justified reason except to rake in corporate profits. 58,000 of my brothers and sisters in arms died for that.

So I guess they won and we lost.

Perringa: "We won every single battle in Nam, even with Johnson and Kennedy not fighting the war the way it's supposed to be fought. "

Gee...if they won every battle, how was it supposed to be fought...lose every battle?

...and what's this "Nam" shit. That term has not been used since way before you first latched to your mama's tit.

...fuckin' Cheeto-addled idiot.

My Lai was not an isolated incident, any more than the Rodney King incident was isolated in Los Angeles. In both cases the press found out about it by a fluke; in the sixties we actually had a press that was willing to take on the US Army and it blockheaded fans in the US. Soldiers told Seymour Hersh about it and, to his everlasting credit, he exposed the whole thing. Wiping out villages was standard procedure in Vietnam; General Westmorland used to tell his lower ranking flunky officers that he wanted to see a high count of "bodies" and he seemed to go out of his way to omit saying that they had to be the bodies of enemy soldiers or gurerillas. That the US murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in Vietnam is hardly a crazed conspiracy theory; ask some of the homeless men in their fifties and sixties hanging around inside and outside any public library what they were forced to do in Vietnam and what that in turn did to them.