‘I could be a socialist. They didn’t have anything much in the thesaurus for Socialist. They just listed social. When you looked that up it listed loads of lovely things like human, humane, friendly, amiable, affable, genial, pleasant, convivial, gregarious and polite. That’s a nice set of words. I think I would like to live in a world where society was based around those words. That sounds tolerant and caring. It sounds friendly and fun. There’d be room for a scruffy little bastard like me. There’d be opportunity to debate and argue without nastiness. I wouldn’t mind working towards that.
I can imagine that if you could get in a socialist’s head you’d find someone with my kind of sensibilities. It might be chaotic but they wouldn’t want to kill you because your skin colour or religion was different or you were demanding equality. I can imagine the argument without the violence and smug superiority.’
Any comments welcome!
My problem with the “popular” definition of socialism and the card-carrying socialists who identify with that badge is that it has become polluted with a sneering middle-class elitism that in reality it is more like fascism as the urge to police & punish those ‘beneath’ comes to the fore… which mean it ain’t socialism!
Yeah – we seem to have moved away from the original concept and philosophy in search of votes and cult status. We love forming tribes.
That doesn’t invalidate the beauty of the idea though. Perhaps it just needs someone to lead it on a global scale?