He said: "Bertie pronouncing himself as a
socialist wasn't a surprise to me because I believe he's one of the few
socialists in the Dail."
The Liberals viewed this with concern, but here too they decided not to oppose the
socialists but to increase their collaboration with them, to intensify their social activities among the lower strata of society and show them that the local liberals could look after their interests better than the
socialists.
His comments come at a time when the Spanish bishops are embroiled in a battle with the policies of the Spanish
Socialist government which has introduced legislation allowing same-sex "marriage" and has plans to relax abortion laws.
Almost all major policy aims and legislative proposals put forward by Republicans these days are unabashedly
socialist. In fact, the
socialist nature of Republican efforts can be detected in nearly any Bush administration proposal.
What's more, the Soviet Union "totally distorted the intellectual and political development of
socialists in the West." He's right about this, of course, as was Oscar Wilde, whom Weinstein quotes: "If Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first."
He said that he could not understand how those who claimed to be
socialists and were members of the Labour Party could pursue policies in the Assembly that were against what generations of
socialists had fought for.
While not wishing to reignite an old debate, Spin Doctor would like to muse on the variety of
socialists that exist today:
Activists' sophisticated understanding of the economics of commercial agriculture in Oklahoma and their ability to translate radical demands for economic justice into the languages of Jeffersonian democracy and evangelical Christianity were additional key elements in the achievements of Oklahoma
socialists. A final factor in the Party's success in Oklahoma was that local activists were deeply devoted to defending their democratic principles; as they often rejected national Party strategy and doctrine, they opened lines of communication between local leadership and the
socialist rank-and-file, thereby fostering a sense of empowerment among the Party faithful.
Indeed, the dead
socialists, radicals, and labor leaders who inhabit this book--Big Bill Haywood and Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Upton Sinclair, William Z.
The "national question" has, of course, always been a thorny subject for
socialists and a major bone of contention among leading Marxist theorists.
With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the
socialists took control of a city that was no longer the capital of an empire but simply the largest concentration of population in a small and generally impoverished country with a predominantly rural economy.
This should be an eye-opening work for contemporary
socialists who view a Marxist/pragmatist synthesis as the philosophical basis for renewing democratic socialism, since most adherents of a pragmatic socialism are completely unaware of their historical continuity with this tradition.
