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Socialist Republic of Montenegro

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On the Watch for the Socialist Way Posters|

@Ah, apologies. Yes, I've been trying to talk to someone about this whole issue, and they essentially wanted to break everything down into labor hours. What's a concise way to explain that all the factors of production cannot be broken down into the single unit of "labor"?|

On September 5, 1917, at the request of President Wilson, the Justice Department conducted a raid on the Industrial Workers of the World. They stormed every one of the 48 IWW headquarters in the country. "By month’s end, a federal grand jury had indicted nearly two hundred IWW leaders on charges of sedition and espionage" under the Espionage Act. Their sentences ranged from a few months to ten years in prison. An ally of the Socialist party had been practically destroyed. However, Wilson did recognize a problem with the state of labor in America. In 1918, working closely with of the , he created the in an attempt to reform labor practices. The Board included an equal number of members from labor and business, and included leaders of the AFL. The War Labor Board was able to “institute the eight-hour day in many industries… to raise wages for transit workers… [and] to demand equal pay for women…" It also required employers to bargain collectively, effectively making unions legal. On January 7, 1920, at the first session of the , Assembly Speaker attacked the Assembly's five Socialist members, declaring they had been "elected on a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the state of New York and the United States." The Socialist Party, Sweet said, was "not truly a political party," but was rather "a membership organization admitting within its ranks aliens, enemy aliens, and minors." It had supported the revolutionaries in , Austria, and , he continued, and consorted with international Socialist parties close to the . The Assembly suspended the five by a vote of 140 to 6, with just one Democrat supporting the Socialists. A trial in the Assembly, lasting from January 20 to March 11, resulted in a recommendation that the five be expelled and on April 1, 1920.|

But in reality they reflect our rulers’ view of the world.|

Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move towards a break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the group around Thomas, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had come to the conclusion that the Trotskyists had joined the SP not to make it stronger, but to capture the organization for their own purposes. The 1,000 or so Trotskyists who entered the SP in 1936 exited in the summer of 1937 with their ranks swelled by another 1,000. On December 31, 1937, representatives of this faction gathered in Chicago to establish a new political organization — the .|

just think about the millions of products over the years that are now extinct. How does a business in a profit and loss system know to stop making a product? They lose money on it, if people arent willing to pay for a product even at cost that means they dont want it over other goods on a market. In a pure socialist system how do you know? You have no clue. There are plenty of dead technologies that continue to produce small amounts of goods even in capitalism. Glass bottles of cokes, we know glass is more expensive to produce because we live in a capitalistic society (so it stands to reason we shouldnt be producing glass bottles), but how would a socialist without prices? Even if they DID know how would they know whether or not even to produce glass bottles for cokes? What incentive is there to produce nonglass bottles? We know glass bottles are wanted because people buy them at a more expensive price.|

For the first half of the 20th century, the Communist Party was a highly influential force in various struggles for democratic rights. It in the U.S. labor movement from the 1920s through the 1940s, having a major hand in founding most of the country's first (which would later use the to expel their Communist members) while also becoming known for and fighting for integration in workplaces and communities during the height of the period of U.S. . Historian concludes that decades of recent scholarship offer "a more nuanced portrayal of the party as a Stalinist sect tied to a vicious regime the most dynamic organization within the American Left during the 1930s and '40s". The during its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. Throughout its history many of the Party's leaders and political thinkers have been African Americans. , , , and , the current executive vice chair of the Party, all ran as presidential or vice presidential candidates on the Party ticket. Others like , , , James Jackson, , , Alphaeus Hunton, Doxey Wilkerson, , and John Pittman contributed in important ways to the Party's approaches to major issues from human and civil rights, peace, women's equality, the national question, working class unity, Socialist thought, cultural struggle and more. African American thinkers, artists, and writers such as , , , , , , , , , , and many more were one-time members or supporters of the Party, and the Communists also had a close alliance with Harlem Congressman A rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the , when the Communist party responded quickly and effectively to support the , nine African-American youth arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape. Du Bois and the NAACP felt that the case would not be beneficial to their cause, so they chose to let the Communist party .|

Yes, those are broad summaries, but I feel they are honest. Talking about socialism in terms of political power does a disservice to socialism. I'm not trying to be a stickler for definitions, but if we want to have a discussion on this, the definitions need to be clear. Otherwise we throw around concepts inappropriately and end up with profound words like "socialism" and "theory" losing all meaning.|

So the question is: how can labour hours be compared with labour hours? If certain capital goods were considered to save an amount of labour, they could be considered labour hours saved. For example if an item that saves 4 labour hours takes 8 to make, it would pay for itself in labour hours after 2 uses. Therefore two production processes could be compared to find that which uses the least amount of labour hours in producing a certain good over a particular time horizon.|

The Second Red Scare is a period lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened fears of influence on American institutions and by agents. During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would be declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or , or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute. The most famous examples of McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Senator McCarthy himself; the , associated with hearings conducted by the (HUAC); and the various anti-communist activities of the (FBI) under Director . It is difficult to estimate the number of victims of McCarthyism. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired. Many of those who were imprisoned, lost their jobs or were questioned by committees did in fact have a past or present connection of some kind with the . But for the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. Even the prominent African American intellectual and activist was affected by these policies and he became incensed in 1961 when the the 1950 , a key piece of McCarthyism legislation which required communists to register with the government. To demonstrate his outrage, he joined the Communist party in October 1961, at the age of 93. Around that time, he wrote: "I believe in communism. I mean by communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part." In 1950 Du Bois had already from New York on the socialist ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total.|

But here’s the kicker: Obama’s detractors do consider major Wall Street indexes a reliable metric when it comes to measuring the health of the economy.|

Reunification with the was long a goal of Norman Thomas and his associates remaining in the Socialist Party. As early as 1938, Thomas had acknowledged that a number of issues had been involved in the split which led to the formation of the rival Social Democratic Federation, including "organizational policy, the effort to make the party inclusive of all socialist elements not bound by communist discipline; a feeling of dissatisfaction with social democratic tactics which had failed in Germany" as well as "the socialist estimate of Russia; and the possibility of cooperation with communists on certain specific matters." Still, he held that "those of us who believe that an inclusive socialist party is desirable, and ought to be possible, hope that the growing friendliness of socialist groups will bring about not only joint action but ultimately a satisfactory reunion on the basis of sufficient agreement for harmonious support of a socialist program." Following directions from the Soviet Union, the (CPUSA) and its members were active in the for African Americans. Following Stalin's "theory of nationalism", the CPUSA once favored the creation of a separate "nation" for negroes, to be located in the American Southeast. In 1941, after Germany invaded the , ordered the CPUSA to abandon civil rights work and focus supporting U.S. entry into . Disillusioned, began working with members of the of , particularly, , the head of the . The Socialist Party and the SDF merged to form the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SP-SDF) in 1957. A small group of holdouts refused to reunify, establishing a new organization called the . When the Soviet Union led an invasion of Hungary in 1956, half of the members of Communist Parties around the world quit; in the U.S., half did, and many joined the Socialist Party. was an and of , serving three terms from April 20, 1948 to April 18, 1960. He was the most recent mayor of any major American city. Zeidler was Milwaukee's third Socialist mayor (after [1910-12] and [1916-40]), making Milwaukee the largest American city to elect three Socialists to its highest office. In 1958 the welcomed former members of the , which before its 1956 dissolution had been led by . Shachtman had developed a critique of as "", a new form of class society that was more oppressive than any form of capitalism. Shachtman's theory was similar to that of many dissidents and refugees from Communism, such as the theory of the "" proposed by Yugoslavian dissident (Djilas). Shachtman's ISL had attracted youth like , , , and Rachelle Horowitz. The YPSL was dissolved, but the party formed a new youth group under the same name.|

There's a fusion of socialism and capitalism called market-socialism where coops compete in a market economy.|

The only way socialism survives for an extended period of time is because there are other markets that have a pricing system that they can leech onto. The only way socialist programs survive is leeching onto profitable business.|

But the socialist bogey-mantra has made a full-scale return after a long stretch of relative dormancy.|

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