After reading the discussion on a recent thread, I told Ruby that I would find a political spectrum test and let everyone determine his or her correct "label". She said something along the lines of "that's just what we need (not)!"
I looked at several around the net and liked the OKcupid Politics Test. I liked it because it allowed a range of responses and had lots of questions.
I know that this will be distasteful to some and that others will take the test but prefer to keep the results to themselves.
I don't mind sharing my own score which I know will shock many:
You are a
Social Liberal
(86% permissive)and an...
Economic Liberal
(1% permissive)You are best described as a:
Socialist
You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
Who knew?
One value I found in taking this test was the recognition that I did not have aready answer to every question. Some I had to think about and some might have different responses if I took the test again.
What's your persuasion? Are you "progressive enough" for orangepolitics.org?
Issues:
Comments
My favorite place to buy
My favorite place to buy men's clothing is Townsend Bertram at Carr Mill. I keep an eye out for their sales since normally they have no $3 mansieres (sp?).
Terri--the question on the
Terri--the question on the test was "agree or disagree--it would be better if large corporations disappeared and were replaced by small business" (or something very similar). I am not anti-small business. I just don't think size is everything. Some corporations are non-profit. Some corporations respond to pressure from environmentalists and human rights activists. Some corporations--like Volkswagen and Citgo--are owned in part or wholly by states who use the profits for good things like schools and health care. Some corporations--like Apple--pioneer policies like same-sex-partner health benefits.
Big environmentalist and human rights organizations don't put much effort pressuring small businesses because there isn't enough bang per buck. The way to support the farmworkers in Imochelee is through Taco Bell. How exactly would they rally national support without a recognizable target like that? Similarly, the way to transform sweatshops in East Asia is through Gap and Nike(and ultimately, Walmart is pretty much the grand prize--if US and Canadian unions and other relevant groups could get some power over it, it has the leverage to seriously transform the conditions of the Chinese working class). The growing numbers of small producers of clothing (including at least two I know of based in the Triangle) who use them are too small to get much leverage--if there is going to be clothes and other goods produced under humane conditions by myriad small contractors, the small producers will probably rely on information systems developed by the largest corporations to identify good factories. If some of the many creative people around here got together with some of those unemployed furniture and textile producers in the Western part of the state and created an integrated complex producing nice furniture, clothing, etc., I'd probably start to feel guilty shopping at clothing chains. I like lots of small institutions--especially independent bookstores, and locally owned restaurants (the only chain whose food I actually liked--Big Bowl--promptly went out of business at Southpoint). But big institutions--powerful, centralized states, large corporations-have often provided the context for real improvements in people's lives (and lets not forget EBay and Amazon Marketplace, which confound the categories of big and small, local and multinational, independent and corporate). I call attention to this because the small is better mentality has become a substitute for seriously thinking through these questions among a lot of people on the left. Here is a socialist vision I found compelling:
http://clcr.org/publications/btb/indexBTB.html
worth reading.
Steve, the language of your
Steve, the language of your post seems to fudge the question a bit. Wha does "provided the context for... " mean?
The notion that power condedes nothing without a struggle is a historical verity. The fact that benevolent autocrats ran Apple for a while does not support benevolent autocracy as an organizing principle. In the long term, large-scale economic and political institutions do not serve the needs of "the people" unless the people are organized to insist that it do so. Thus, civil rights for African-Americans were granted at the people's organized demand, the 40 hour week was granted at the organized demand of workers, public broadcasting was just preserved thanks to the organized demand of millions. Even unions, btw, when not held accountable by their rank and file tend to cozy up to management and forget their purpose.
There's also a bit of circuity to your post. We need Taco Bell so they can exploit farmworkers so we can target their exploitation? Not convincing. Consider instead the fact that the system that gives rise to Taco Bell is the same one that has for 400 years been throwing peasants off their land and causing their immiseration as part of the capitalist project. The forces that make life economically untenable for, say, Mexican workers, are the same ones that place a Taco Bell at every corner for either your enjoyment or your protests.
My results: You are Social
My results:
You are Social Liberal (70% permissive)
and an...Economic Liberal (35% permissive)
You are best described as a Democrat
Comment: none of these tools are fully right or wrong I find. They can be interesting. For the most part, I thought the questions in this survey were ok, in that they did force one to take a position, while weighing up two very diverse themes in each question.
i added up all the results
i added up all the results of the people who took the test and of the 19 who reported their results, 10 were socialist, 5 were democrats, 3 were centrists and there was 1 capitalist.
so i guess my question to the socialists is, what now? Isn't believing in a failed economic system a lot like believing in a perpetual motion machine--a great idea that unfortunatly doesn't work?
I wouldn't call socialism a
I wouldn't call socialism a failed economic system. Therefore, I have no qualms believing in it.
But then, even if I did think that it was a "failed system," that's not going to change mys answers to any of the questions which that poll contained. All of the questions, individually, could be answered in the most "liberal" possible way and still be completely valid answers towards setting policy in a restricted capitalistic society like ours.
can you give me an example
can you give me an example of a socialism success story?
Bill, I can... Sweden.
Bill, I can...
Sweden.
What's your definition of
What's your definition of success Bill? Can you give us an example of a successful nation that taxes its poor at a higher rate than it taxes its wealthy?
Historically, there have
Historically, there have been varying degrees of social democracy in Western Europe, often with a great deal of success as pointed out by KR.
I am not aware of an actual socialist nation-state having existed. Socialism--that is, control of the economy by the people--is ipso facto democratic (control by the people = democracy).
There have been a number of cases that have been incorrectly labelled socialist over the years. In fact, the only way these so-called socialist nations have been able to resist the inevitable attack from US-based capital has been through authoritarian (non-socialist) leadership that could direct the resources of the nation toward effective resistance. Of course this was true only for larger nations like USSR and China. Nicaragua never had a chance. We'll see how things play out in Venezuela.
"California taxpayers are
"California taxpayers are spending $86 million a year providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state's 44,000 Wal-Mart employees, according to this study. The average Wal-Mart worker requires $730 in taxpayer-funded healthcare and $1,222 in other forms of assistance, such as food stamps and subsidized housing. Even compared to other retailers, Wal-Mart imposes an especially large burden on taxpayers. Wal-Mart workers earn 31 percent less than the average for workers at large retail companies and require 39 percent more in public assistance. The study estimates that if competing supermarkets and other large retailers adopt Wal-Mart's wage and benefit levels, it will cost California's taxpayers an additional $410 million a year in public assistance."
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/lowwage/
Of course, since the Walmart in question will be in Chatham, Orange County won't have to pay...Chatham will just have to build more developments to handle the burden.
Whoops Terri, new
Whoops Terri, new development in Chatham won't help if it requires the same largesse that county tax payers are bestowing upon Briar Chapel. The net loss to the tax payers yields an amazing windfall to the developer .
It's strange the Bunky still claims that developments like Briar Chapel will stimulate local economic activity since the bulk of the profits, given that Newland Communities "ain't from around here", mainly benefits CALpers, Hunt Oil and their out-of-state holding company.
Stranger yet is that so many Chatham citizens are accepting of this wealth transfer scheme.
Dan--If those of us on the
Dan--If those of us on the left want to say--pay a living wage! Transform sweatshops into decent workplaces! End corporate personhood! We are implicitly acknowledging the role of large economic enterprises in our world. It is bad faith to then declare--I want you all to disappear, and will never purchase from you, no matter what you do (if that's what you want, demand the revocation of all corporate charters)! An analogy would be someone who goes on about how they want to strengthen more moderate versions of Islam, but hopes they all convert to Christianity lest they go to hell. Joining the conversation about how large corporations are regulated, what their business practices are, rules about their boards, etc means granting them some right to exist.
The Soviet Union and Maoist China were socialist. period. The strategy they adopted--central planning of state owned enterprises--was the strategy advocated (and still advocated) by most (virtually all in an earlier time) people who called themselves socialist. Many of the authoritarian features of these societies derive from the limits of planning, which concentrates power in the hands of bureaucrats at the center, although some people are still deluded that it could be otherwise. Gorbachev tried to fix things, and the Soviet Union collapsed. On the other hand, China transformed its economy. Its mixture of state owned, private, foreign invested, township owned entreprises all competing through the market, is not what's usually meant by capitalism in today's world, nor is the role of the state in spending tons of money on infrastructure and retaining a certain arbritrary power to intervene in the economy. I would describe this as a new form of socialist development, although I'd also add that since capitalism is a worldwide system, a socialist economy would also have to be worldwide. There is no law that says the first effort to create socialism (i.e. the Soviet model) has to be the last. China is also the major economic success story of our time, leading to a dramatic rise in living standards for a very substantial population, and a major increase in China's power worldwide. A central question of the next two or three decades is whether, as this systems matures and hits various economic speedbumps, it will become more socialist (in terms of broadening economic participation and using profits for social good, not a return to planning) or more capitalist (facilitating private control of enterprises and profits). Will it use its power to move the world economy towards a socialist world system, or towards total chaos? these are crucial questions.
In the US, a form of socialism based on the economic power of public pension funds, redistribution of wealth, socialization of knowledge for economic development, public control of land use, constraints on corporations as economic entities, promotion of cooperatives (some of which can be quite a bit larger than Weaver Street Market--look at Ocean Spray) and municipality-owned enterprises to me seems plausible. This would not necessarilly lead to an economy based on small businesses, to return to the point originally being debated.
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