Cultural Experience: Britain and Socialism

Something I noticed during my time here in London is the fact that unlike in the U.S., “socialist” isn’t a dirty word. While I haven’t spoken to any native Brits about their opinions on the matter (politics is a tricky subject to discuss with anyone, especially strangers) I’ve seen numerous adverts on the streets for things like Marxism 2019– “a festival of socialist ideas,” a Karl Marx walking tour, other socialist events being held by universities in Bloomsbury, and a socialist newspaper stand on the day we went to Westminster Abbey as we walked by the Trump protests.

I found this so interesting because while there are more progressive politicians now who are using the term in some way (typically as “Democratic-socialist” rather than full-blown “socialist”), it is still very much a word of controversy in the United States, one that brings back images of the Second Red Scare, of the Hollywood 10, of Russian spies, of extreme fear that our democracy in the states could somehow collapse if citizens were given rights to things like free healthcare. I had heard before that the United States was the only country in which the idea of socialism had immediately abhorrent connotations, but nonetheless, the sheer normalcy of socialism as a political ideology is very interesting to me and was not something I expected or intended to observe, but just kept seeing again and again on the streets of London. I likely won’t speak to anyone about their political ideologies while here as it was recommended we avoid doing so, but still, based on sheer observation, the political climate here differs quite a bit in this way from the United States.

“…The terms "Capitalism” and “Capitalistic Production” are political catchwords. They were invented by socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to condemn. Today, they have only to be uttered to conjure up a picture of the relentless exploitation of wage-slaves by the pitiless rich. They are scarcely ever used save to imply a disease in the body-politic.

From a scientific point of view, they are so obscure and ambiguous that they have no value whatever. Their users agree only in this, that they indicate the characteristics of the modern economic system. But wherein these characteristics consist is always a matter of dispute.

Their use, therefore, is entirely pernicious, and the proposal to extrude them altogether from economic terminology, and to leave them to the matadors of popular agitation, deserves serious consideration…“

— Ludwig von Mises, Socialism

Cook Priebus Fifty

Your brothers can be irresistibly
sympathetic, that’s the collateral
of life. The life of othering is guerre
and shame is the rest—I down a chablis.
Chaos is math—We pop an Adderall—
justice is not. If you try to compare

constantly, there will be no time left for
the upkeep of society: in food
nophilos. As hereafter and before
C-4, when in doubt; kindness to distill
removing Faith from succor. To be lewd,
empathy is a sinew or a skill.
Sometimes spite is love and so deservèd;
grace inside a famine is how we’re fed.

18 March, 2022

guerrillatech:

My guilty pleasure as a leftist is watching Hamilton. So much liberalism, ouch. But the music slaps so hard.

emphasisonthehomo:

Imho the idea of ‘cruelty free’ products or food shouldn’t mean that nothing died to create it, but rather that anything and anyone involved in the creation process hasn’t been exploited or harmed.

Leather is good actually. Veganism isn’t the end all be all to morality and consumption. The issue isn’t that a chicken died for those nuggets, but that while the chicken was alive, it’s life fucking sucked. Vegan chocolate means little if the cocoa that made it was gathered by child slave labor.

Factory farms, abuses of the people who pick the fruit and vegetables we eat, the focus profit and productivity over all else - that’s the fucking issue here. It’s capitalism folks.

Oops, someone dropped the truth.

It’s only when flirting with another leftist that I suddenly wish there was a guillotine emoji, but alas there is none.

femoids:

femoids:

I saw a “we need more women in the top 1%” ad and SCREAM liberals will really praise an exploiting class whenever it seems progressive.

the top 1% shouldn’t even exist.

bonus: ad sponsored by google, unsurprisingly, LMAO

“imagine a world with more female ceos” imagine a world with NO ceos

Being a leftist feminist in liberal circles can be so exhausting sometimes.