Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
When I talk about socialism, I mean those who favour some theory of Marxist-Leninist revolution and a blank slate theory of human nature. By believing that people need to be changed in order to transform society, you implicitly acknowledge a group that will not change and must be killed off or forced to change.
I don't include socialist democrats. Actually the NDP represent a key shift in Western European socialism that recognized the implicit violence in Marxist revolutions and decided to let the ballot box decided instead of the pistol bullet.
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I'm not sure that Socialsm believes 'people need to change in order to transform society', any more than Democracy needs people to change to make the system work. Nor does Socialism (in the political definition) advocate killing people to 'force change'. Technically a Socialist ideology would be universal healthcare, stronger centralization of government (ie, reduction of massive Provincial powers), equalised distribution of resource revenues, etc., etc.
Probably just a mis-use of the term 'Socialism'. There are people here who would define themselves as 'Socialists' and might take great offense to the implication they have 'no regard for human life'.
I think you're talking about Stalinist/Maoist Communism, which is really just Oligarchic Dictatorship dressed in Socialist clothing.