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Students hear ‘Case for Socialism’

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by Jessi Polsky

Thursday, September 13, 2007

The International Socialist Organization's launch event Wednesday night on the University of Wisconsin campus centered on Sherry Wolf's discussion "The Case for Socialism."

About 75 students gathered in the Humanities building to learn about and discuss the negative effects capitalism has on modern-day society.

Wolf's lecture informed students how they can evoke change and, eventually, a revolution resulting in equality throughout the world.

"There is something profoundly wrong about the system we live in [and] the society we live in," Wolf said. "Racism, the wars, the vast inequality … that is what unites us all."

The extreme disparity in wealth around the world, Wolf added, proves the capitalistic system oppresses the majority of people for the benefit of a few.

"We now live in a world in which the top three billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 600 million people on the planet,” Wolf said. “More than a third of the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day."

Wolf said the inequality in wealth directly results from the capitalist system, adding while there is enough food to feed everybody in the world, the bourgeois only sells goods to those who can pay for them — regardless of need.

"There are ships in this world [that] are created with holds that open up in the middle of the ocean to dump food as a way to keep the prices high," Wolf said.

Wolf added the extreme poverty and hunger in the world could be remedied by overthrowing the capitalist system — a difficult feat introduced by Karl Marx.

Wolf's discussion then turned to Marx's teachings, as she highlighted the need for people to come together to rise up against the wealthy, ruling minority.

"Socialism or Marxism, as you know, explains why capitalism determines prices," Wolf said. "Capitalism is founded on unplanned competitive production for profit, [and] the incessant chase for profits leads to overproduction … leading to bankruptcy [and] unemployment."

The event ended with a communal discussion followed by a question-and-answer session.

UW graduate student Paul Heideman said the event was successful and shows the growing interest in socialism on campus.

"There are clearly a lot of people on this campus who are really fundamentally rethinking the way society runs right now and are looking for ways to change that," Heideman said.

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Anonymous (September 13, 2007 @ 8:28am):

Just why should I think that Marxism would work now, when it never has before?

Read "Animal Farm"

Anonymous (September 13, 2007 @ 9:46am):

1. Marxism has a foregone conclusion, laborers are uniformly exploited unjustly by the owners of capital, most of Marxism is oriented to making this point. Any benefits generated by owners of capital are roundly ignored.

2. Many terms and catchphrases have emotional connotations, eg, "exploitation", "fatal contradictions of capitalism", "dictatorship of the proletariat". A rational school of thought avoids emotional connotation.

3. Marxism has developed an elabortate social structure, "class" to describe human societies and shoehorns all cultures into this structure.

4. Many concepts in Marxism are obselete. For example, the fundamental division of society into proletarians and bourgeoisie, is based on outdated 19th century French society. Anyone can become an owner of capital now. Labor unions no longer automatically improve the well-being of workers. Marxism never predicted the "middle class", namely that most people would be neither rich nor poor.

5. Marxism uses a variety of complex jargon and irrelevant detail to obscure flaws in the theory. In addition to what has already been mentioned, there is a mythological history which consists of simplified bits of European history mixed with an adulation of "revolution".

6. Marxism has built in excuses for failure and error. There is no way to falsify the theory since even "setbacks" are an expected part of the theory.

7. Marxism, as practiced, is cult-like. The works by Marx and Engels form the core "bibles" of the cult. These books have the consistency and bulk of a religious text. And there's a long history of Marxists testing each other's lore (and command of jargon and Marxist reasoning) just like cult members commonly do.

8. Finally, Marxism has been given considerable opportunity to prove itself in the real world. The theory has utterly failed to the point it is probably the worst collection of ideas as measured by loss of human life in the history of the human race.

Anonymous (September 13, 2007 @ 11:34am):

What utter stupidity to suggest that as immensely broad an idea as socialism can never work because some people who claimed its mantle developed hideous societies. By this logic, Blacks would have every reason to give up on democracy by their experience in America for the vast majority of its history. Thank heavens scientists don't use such asinine logic to test theories. Think if the first attempts at human flight had resulted in all humanity saying "well, that idea is dead."

Anonymous (September 13, 2007 @ 12:13pm):

Marxism didn't kill people in the USSR. Stalin and his paranoia did. Remember that.

Anonymous (September 13, 2007 @ 3:28pm):

So, Stalin is the only person to kill under the banner of Marx? Lets look at the numbers...http://www.scottmanning.com/archives/communistbodycount.php

People's Republic of China
Body Count: 73,237,000
1949-Present (57+ years and counting)

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Body Count: 58,627,000
1922-1991 (69 years)

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
Body Count: 3,284,000
1918-1922 (4 years)

Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Body Count: 3,163,000
1948-Present (58+ years and counting)

Cambodia
Body Count: 2,627,000
1975-1987 (12 years)

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Body Count: 1,750,000
1978-1992 (14 years)

Vietnam
Body Count: 1,670,000
1975-Present (30+ years and counting)

People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Body Count: 1,343,610
1974-1991 (17 years)

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Body Count: 1,072,000
1945-1992 (47 years)

Chinese Soviet Republic
Body Count: 700,000
1931-1934 (3 years)

People's Republic of Mozambique
Body Count: 700,000
1975-1990 (15 years)

Socialist Republic of Romania
Body Count: 435,000
1947-1989 (42 years)

People's Republic of Bulgaria
Body Count: 222,000
1946-1990 (44 years)

The estimates represent citizens killed or starved to death by their own Communist governments since 1918. These numbers don't include war dead, and there are still 10 other Marxist regimes to consider.

Oh, but it's stupidity to criticize a philosophy with such a fantastic track record. I forgot...

Anonymous (September 14, 2007 @ 4:26am):

The best economic system is probably a combination of capitalism and socialism. Everyone should be entitled to a minimum wage job. They should be entitled to a minimum standard of living. They should only be paid if the show up for work and are productive. The minimum wage should be less than what McDonalds pay so that there is an incentive to work in the private sector. Increasing unemployment should not be the method used to fight inflation. Inflation should be fought by taxing businesses according to the rate of inflation. Businesses would then have an incentive to fight inflation. A tax should be implemented according to the size of the work force without a private sector job. Businesses would have an incentive to create jobs in order to keep their taxes low. The levels of the minimum wage and taxes would have to be adjustable depending on if the country is in a recession or not.

A system similar to this would be a better system than a system that is based purely on greed.

Anonymous (September 14, 2007 @ 9:55am):

there is a difference between socialism and marxism folks. not the same thing.

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