JimC wrote:Seth, you would be far better off arguing against specific policies or political decisions that you could demonstrate (or at least attempt to demonstrate) are not in the best interests of the people of a given polity than using the lazy debating tool of claiming it falls within the dreaded "marxist" domain, and therefore is to be shunned.
In at least some situations, you may well have me agreeing with you on a given, specific issue if you can argue pragmatically your case...
As was said earlier, "the best interests of the people" is Newspeak for "tyranny of the majority" or alternatively "despotic dictatorship" in the socialist sphere of political propaganda.
The fundamental difference between Marxism and Libertarianism is that Libertarians respect certain individual rights above the "best interests of the people" because "best interests of the people" is a very vague and flexible term that can mean literally anything someone in charge wants it to mean, whereas a right, such as the right to own private property and the right to contract, are quite specific and have a very narrow meaning that is much more difficult to deliberately misinterpret or twist into a tool for majoritarian or despotic tyranny.
Where the "best interests of the people" might be claimed as justification for taking someone's home, land or business (as happens frequently in China) without so much as a by-your-leave, the right to own private property (like a home, land or business...or any tangible item) carries with it the mandate that the government may not simply take that property because it might be thought to be in the "best interests of the people." The same is true of the right to form a contract, or mutual agreement, between individuals for whatever lawful purpose they choose. Government ability to disrupt such voluntary contracts as being contrary to the "best interests of the people" keeps government from interfering in personal affairs that do not in fact cause an initiation of force or fraud against the people.
Socialism, by its very nature, places the "best interests of the people" above the rights of the individual, which historically had led to all manner of abuses of the individual in favor of the collective even in such essential things as family relations, the raising and education of children, the ability of an individual to contract out his labor and be compensated for it, and the ability to own the house, land and personal property that all persons desire to hold as their own.
While some iterations of socialism may shellac a thin coat of "respect" for private property rights on the culture to make it appear as if it respects individual rights, socialism by it's very definition does not do so and can and will penetrate that thin shell of so-called protection if and when the polity demands it. Take Greece as a prime example. One might think that one's bank deposits are firmly the property of the individual who made the deposit, but when the Greek government was facing imminent bankruptcy, it reached out into the private banking system to simply seize money from those private accounts to attempt to balance its books and keep the socialist system running. The fundamental presumption we see in such acts, as in the acts of China in simply kicking farmers off of land they have worked for generations in favor of some industry or business, is that the individual does NOT have a right to own private property, but rather that everything is the property of the state and is merely on loan to the individual unless and until the government decides it has a better use for that property.
That's one thing that makes socialism, which is the progeny of Marxism, inherently evil.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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