December 11, 2024 - 1:00pm
Which is Britain’s favourite — and least favourite — ideology? To find out, polling company YouGov has asked the public for their opinion on 12 “-isms”, from communism to conservatism.
The results are fascinating. Top of the list is environmentalism, of which 64% of the public had a favourable opinion versus 18% who viewed it unfavourably. By contrast, the most unpopular of the 12 is fascism, to which the public reaction is overwhelmingly negative.
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that socialism is more popular (38% in favour and 36% against) than capitalism (only 30% in favour and 45% against). What’s more, twice as many people (10% of those asked) were very favourable towards the former worldview compared to the latter.
| More Britons have a favourable view of socialism than capitalism |
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So is the UK essentially socialist — or, at least, leaning in that direction? Britons were given a chance to vote for socialism in 2017 and 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party. Both times they declined to do so, by a narrow margin in 2017 and overwhelmingly two years later. It’s also worth noting that YouGov recorded a strongly negative response to both communism and anarchism, which join fascism at the bottom of the ideological league table.
Each of the 12 -isms needs to be understood on at least two levels. There’s the academic meaning of the words, of primary interest to political scientists and ideological obsessives, and then there’s how normal people react to them as labels.
For instance, most Britons naturally associate conservatism with the Conservative Party. That’s why there’s such a huge divergence in opinion between Tory voters (79% of whom are in favour of conservatism) and Labour voters (only 13% of whom have a positive view of conservatism). There may be a philosophical distinction to be drawn between actual conservatism as the 18th-century thinker Edmund Burke would recognise it and the output of today’s Conservative Party, but not in the public mind.
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SubscribeTechnocracy and Utilitarianism weren’t on the list, isn’t that what we’re all currently enojoying.
I realise there’s a limit to how many -isms they could include, but surely asking about lsIamism and liberalism would have been worthwhile given the influence of both. Even more so considering the remainder of the 21st century in Europe could well be characterised by a clash between these two opposing outlooks.
Results would be the same. All those who voted for socialism are the same people whose overriding impulse whenever a disgusting maniac carries out the Jihad imperative ordained by their God and their Prophet and slaughters a load of children in the name of Allah, is rushing to ensure Islam is defended at all costs and anyone who might speak out about the wisdom of importing so many people who hate us suitable chastized and demonized.
You can’t be a Lefty and not have pet minority groups that you can use as vehicle to display your impeccable moral superiority and noble heroism for those less fortunate, and Islam is tied with Palestine as their favourite pet minority victim group to mine for narcissistic supply.
They’d all be singing the praises of Islam. Like the programmed bots they are, as they are so stupid they can’t differentiate between Muslims as people and the violent, divisive, supremacist cult ideology itself. Let alone see them as just human beings with ideas and beliefs and therefore open to the same intellectual and moral scrutiny as everyone else.
What isn’t ‘capitalism’? Systems of informal barter? Free stuff for all, materializing by magic? Capitalism is too broad a term to be meaningful. There are many forms of capitalism, and no forseeable alternatives.
The paradox of capitalism is that it’s an ideology invented by socialists to make their solution seem more attractive by contrast – rather like the Christian invention of Hell. In practice there’s no such thing – just unchanging human nature, acquisitive by default.
I think there’s plenty of Old Testament support for Hell in Daniel and Isaiah. I wouldn’t call it an invention of followers either since the interpretation of Hell actually came from Christ not his followers.
But if one sets up Marx as something like the Antithesis of Christ, I can see how the parallel to Capitalism/Socialism works.
Capitalism is an ideology invented by socialists? I don’t get it. By the same token, is ‘being tall’ an ideology invented by midgets?
If you wish to be pedantic, it is obvious he means “capitalism” is a term used generally to mean the default natural state of people trading goods (my apples for your oranges, or for an hour of your time to help pick my apples) or more technically, the idea of raising money by selling off part of a business rather than having to borrow it. Capitalism was revoltionary in that it allowed folks to take on the risk of improving or expanding their business without fear of going to jail or getting their legs broken if the business failed. Investors traded the guarantee of earning interest on a loan for the possibility of sharing in the rewards of success. This single concept basically unleashed humanity to conquer the sky (No one would have loaned you money to invent flying .. but plenty were willing to lose money on a high return lottery ticket level gamble.
Really? The idea that capitalism is inherent evil and exploitative is an idea invented by Marxists and Socialists. In Marx time it was evil and inhumane, brutal and all that. And then society evolved and got rid of those things.
And yet socialists today have invented this false narrative that ‘capitalism is inherently evil. FACT!’ for the exact reason he said. All of it, all 100% of it, is ‘inherently’ evil. Of course that’s bollocks. And invention, just the concept of hell is an invention. All religions/ideologies/cults and all propaganda work on that basis. Fear of bad consquences if you don’t subscribe to their ideology, and rabid demonization/slander/projections of nefariou intent to all opposition in order to emotionally manipulate others.
Muhammad would tell his followers if they didn’t say a prayer before going to the toilet the devil would play with their a**s. If they didn’t say a prayer before sex, the devil would wrap himself around their p***s and penetrate their wife. And all kinds mind-boggling cretinous stuff like that over the many years he had to keep up the pretense of being in touch with God.
Likewise, there is nothing more than variants on that theme in Leftist discourse for the most part. If you disagree or don’t think identically to how they have dictated you can or can’t you’ll be called racist, Islamophobe, misogynist, fascist, far-right, etc, depending on context. If you’re a conservative, then you’re an evil tory who hates the poor. Republicans/Maga are all deplorable. If you’re a capitalist you’re evil and oppressive.
Everything the woke left does is about creating an image of the opposition that makes anyone fearful of admitting they subscribe to those views. They have the most cretinous simplistic mind it’s possible to have.
It’s incredible the contrast here and how easy it to spot Leftists or Leftist sympathizers. They never read or understand for comprehension any post they take umbrage with, and then derisively comment with a put down with zero substance behind it other than to say, in so many words, ‘you’re stupid’ or some variant of that. It’s quite self evidence what he was getting at. Only evangelists of Marxist Socialism make out capitalism is evil in order to inculcate people into their ideology. Tragically effective. There is no faster way to close the minds of young people and militate them against whoever the manipulator/s wants than that tactic. And the Left have been targeting the young forever doing just that.
Yes, I also thought while reading the article that, again and again, the poll results hinge on the way the questions are asked.
People were asked just to indicate what they think (or, rather, feel) about 12 extremely broad and, hence, vague notions, which renders the results rather unconvincing.
You rightly referred to “capitalism”.
Another example could be “Environmentalism” – is it the understanding that we need to use resources efficiently and protect the environment? Or does that mean that we all want to throw soup on masterpieces and glue ourselves to roads and buildings – in order to save the planet, obviously?
Or the last point – the other f-word that has become so widely used and it is becoming more of a personal insult rather than a description of a regime with certain socio-economic characteristics.
Asking a question about it is almost tantamount to asking a question like “Is your attitude to idiocy/bigotry/intolerance [or whatever of this sort] positive or negative?”
That’s why I believe that this poll is absolutely inconclusive and is an example of art for art’s sake.
The wide difference between socialism and fascism shows how right you are. Fascism is merely socialism without state ownership of the means of production, but maintaining state control through other means like production and price controls – they are very similar.
If populism is “gaining ground” (according to the author), that might suggest it’s seen as a minority opinion, which would render the word meaningless.
Isn’t populism the whipping up of public opinion on the basis of feelings and emotions? And isn’t that exactly what modern politics has descended into? Over the last 3 decades (maybe more) I have seen the political sphere descend into clickbait politics where spin is everything, while competent governance has gone out the window.
Business argues that it should be allowed to distance itself from this mess and just be allowed to get on with running the economy. But it has shown repeatedly that it cannot be trusted to regulate itself, with a flurry of bailouts using taxpayers’ money to transfer vast sums from the public to the private sector (from which very little actually ‘trickles down’ nowadays).
Populism is no more than a variant of ‘Fascist’, ‘Islamophobe’, ‘homophobe’, a one-word perjorative used by the kind of people wedded to keeping afloat the current system. The predatory capitalist ”you will own nothing and be happy” one tailored to the super-wealthy at the very top and all their enablers, CEO’s, politicians in their pocket, and the rest of their coterie right down to the middle-class managerial level, beyond which everyone else is non-existent beyond just a worker bee there for their labour.
They use it against that group that have missed out, been fleeced, had their rights eroded and taken away by all the stealth laws these people have passed, and who want things to change. The ones who are not woke internalists, open-borders lunatics. Or those aspirant types who have rose up the ladder, have their nose in the trough, and are happy to kick the ladder away and keep the gravy train going by keeping others down. I’ve observed it’s only those two groups that are in the ‘remainer’ camp. Lickspittles for the 00.1% regime and too stupid to even know it. ‘Populists’ are those who believe in their nation and the soverienty of the nation-state, in democracy on a national and local level where they have more control than giving it away to a tiny, corrupt, anti-democratic group of privileged puppets of the financial elite, like in the EU. Or, for America, where they have had enough of the Washington swamp of politicians on the take and out for themselves, enriching themselves by embezzling their tax dollars away, and working against the wishes of the majority.
It’s used to be incredible rare for people to have done their own indepth research about this world, who runs it, how they run, how they influence the masses and get a way with. And so compliance was easy, and the elites could set their public on any target group they liked.
Today, more people are able to see right through the propaganda, mass influence, and info-warfare going on and know that words like populist were, and are, attempts to delegitimize opposition, like far-right is, by the manipulative psychopaths that are disproportionately found at the top of society and in positions of power. Thankfully, the power and hegemony of mass media influence these elites have remained intact only for the fools that still follow their every word, who have personality defects and a severe lack of reasoning ability and critical thought. The rest of us have seen through it, and are immune to it, and beyond being spoken down to or manipulated from upon high by the ‘elite’.
So what is the value of this survey exactly? It just shows what kind of associations people have with certain terms. They are generally poorly understood. It would be more interesting to see what people would think about specific policies. Of course this has been done as well and it generally shows people are actually quite ‘social’ and open to sharing.
There is a battle going on between people looking after ‘myself, my family and my mates’ and people wanting a fair world. And the more the world is perceived to be unfair, the greater people’s tendency to join the former group.
And while some of those are selfish people, the majority (I still believe, though my faith is being challenged) are simply trying to ensure their survival in what often seems to be a savage bureaucratic jungle. I will never defend selfishness, but I can understand the enormous pressures driving people to be that way. Hence the urgent need to transform from a competitive to a collaborative society. The notion that quality requires competition is BS – quality is based on people’s values and standards and that can be inculcated without resorting to the threat of poverty. Perfection is an unattainable ideal anyway, you just have to do your best under the prevailing circumstances. That’s what life is all about.
which society used socialism to achieve first-world status? There is a common thread among nations in that orbit and it’s not socialism. That the common thread is being frayed by grifters and hucksters is another matter.
Depends on what you mean by it. Every Western country was heavily influenced by many socialist ideas that resulted in various reforms. Depending on your definition the totalitarian Leninist states can be seen as more or actually less socialist than Western countries, especially during the postwar period. In the end, every industrialized country so far used a form of state capitalism. Actual socialist modes of production as well as true free markets have basically never existed so far.
This is actually true. State Capitalism is virtually identical to Market Socialism so call it what you want…but I agree it is the default. A degree of state interference in large industry is probably unavoidable.
Its a spectrum but the question is to what degree does the system allow a free market to operate with minimal State interference. The US has traditionally allowed far more freedom than most of the industrialized world. There’s a culture of entrepreneurship that’s encouraged in the US.
The funny thing is that if you listen to Socialists they actually agree with that. They just think Socialism is the next step in the Enlightened Evolution of Man. Its a squatter mentality. You build it, they take it over and turn it into rubble and then blame you for not maintaining it. That’s why I propose Socialism be renamed Squatterism.
There is some value in Socialist arguments especially when they highlight the Monopolist, State Capitalism/Market Socialism paradox as RA did. But most forms of Socialist intellectualism are just about reordering with the hierarchy to put themselves in charge of collective planning.
Capitalism implies capital markets – stocks and bonds, as well as business banking – which implies an empowered middle class, owning or working for parts of those businesses.
This is also a free market, in that people can freely buy or sell capital, own or operate businesses, and produce or consume goods and services. No permission is required from the state, or is at least very minimal.
An empowered middle class is needed for democracy, in a real sense of self-rule (and not in “social democracy,” nor “multiracial democracy,” which necessarily means state control). There is no democracy without a bourgoise, in other words, which is of course why Marxists think democracy is foolish.
And of course democracy itself must be tempered by civil rights and liberties, or it collapses into mob rule and legalized theft.
The only alternative to free market capitalism is some sort of command economy, where the state controls the means of production, either outright, or through heavy regulations and restrictions on economic activity, and therefore controls consumption as well.
A social welfare state will tend towards this over time, as increasingly large classes of patrons and dependents gather more and more influence. The middle class vanishes, as they are forced to either work for the state or become dependent on it, private property dwindles as the state consumes increasingly more resources, and a two tier society emerges of party members and proles.
Hard to argue with any of that!
Fundamentally capitalism is often defined as a system where capital is privately owned as opposed to publically. The latter is of course more associated with socialism. However, in practice you will always find some mix. And those things can also be pretty obscure, in our ‘capitalist’ world of trade agreements and fine tuned monetary policy the free market is actually centrally planned and regulated to a much higher degree than many people realize. For big capital anyway.
Stocks and bonds have not always existed under capitalism and I wouldn’t call it central to capitalism, they are just financial instruments. In fact, you could easily imagine a public ownership system managed using stocks. Actually we more or less do this with pension funds.
Also for much of our capitalist history there was no middle class. Only, perhaps, a petty bourgeoisie of small business owners. The middle class as we know it today only really appears after the 50s as a result of postwar reforms. And of course it is disappearing again.
The flaw in all that is that capitalism puts all the power in the hands of the holders of capital – defined as money and property – which is clearly geared to preserve power in the hands of the wealthy, not to promote a healthy middle class. Marx’s one positive contribution was to argue for labour to be included as a form of capital.But that was largely undermined by the abuses of the trade union movement, with their insatiable demands to reduce the amount of work while increasing the payment for it and politicise business to the point that they almost brought the UK and US economies to their knees (wrecking entire industries in the process).
The modern solution is the Stakeholder Principle, whereby all the parties with a vested interest in a business are able to participate in the decisions of that business and share the rewards. So it includes not only shareholders and senior management, but all employees, service providers, the supplier chain and the local communities that depend on the business for their health. With all minds focused on the long term sustainability of the business – rather than short term profits – the results are likely to be very positive, with little or no need for government regulation (the stakeholders will be holding everybody to account).
This should be the direction of the 21st Century economy – not the growing disparity in power and rewards that is sliding us back into a primitive feudal system.
Great post. The wealth disparity and the 45 degree upward trend over 70 years of wealth transfer from working and middle-class going to the 0000.1% Global Cabal is something that would reel me into the socialist cause at least to hear them out. But for some reason they can’t just focus on facts like and pragmatically solutions to real issues of corruption, injustice and malpractice. It’s always has be an extreme reaction to the whole idea of anyone making more money than anyone else, as if there is an almost 1-1 correlation between leftism and mental disorder. They invariably go the way of the trade unions you mentioned at best, or just kill or imprison hundreds of millions at worse with lunatic over-reactions.
The disparity between an office worker on 50k a year and a CEO of the company on 20 million is corrupt as f**k, and things like that need sorting out. It’s a grotesque situation.
As much as I value free enterprise and deplore the idea of taking from rich people because they’re rich and giving it away to others just for being poor, you’d have no complaints from me to grave inbalances like that being corrected by government regulation with schemes like you mentioned. Compassionate capitalism, rather than the predatory one where all our politicians are paid off and working for the interest of the WEF and all these other psychopathic leeches where siphoning off money has no limit for them. They can never get enough.
We have too many power and money-hungry psychopaths at the top of the pyramid. The EU was a gravy train for every corporate lobby group. Like Washington, they never had an audit signed off for years. Billions were siphoned off in corruption and greed.
That’s why they reacted like they did to Brexit. The EU, like the WEF, and all these others are just political fronts for the elite to network and smooze with regulators to get contracts and deals and sow up their monopolies.
The Trump presidency is actually mindblowing. Who would have imagined Elon Musk coming in to oversee a department that is going to start sorting out all the criminal waste, fraud, and corruption, and yet also bring tax down from 42% to 15% if you come back to the USA and operate there. I’d love to see the EU do what Doge are doing. And see lower taxing while clawing revenues back by getting rid of the parasites bleeding off billions and getting massively rich. We’ve been sold out by politicians for so long. And now Starmer, who’d choose Davos over Westminster, is continuing the economic malfeasance. Politics is a business and a vehicle for knobs to become prominent and rich today.
I agree with initiatives like you said, that don’t rely on useless fools in government. Like the media has become driven by the people via social media, I hope areas like business are revolutionized by people relying on themselves. But certainly, early 20th century ideas of capitalism v socialism need to go. Both are required and can work together.
I’ve often believed we live in the perfect hybrid. The perfect compromise. And that they don’t really need to be distinct and only the minds of people create artificial division that assume they do, due to be prone ideologies. I don’t believe one or the other is required, exclusive of the other personally, but I’m not exactly an economist or clued up on all the terminolgy on the subject. You sound more authoritative on this and like you do, so I’d be curious to hear why you think the only alternative to free market capitalism is a command economy where the state controls the means of production. I’m confused as that sounds like all out socialism how I thought of it to be.
Am I wrong in thinking we already have a mix of the two, not totally free market, and not totally socialist. What do mean by ‘command economy’ and also ‘the means of production’? That the state comes in and own any enterprise that is producing any capital goods?
Also, I’ve genuinely never heard of ‘multiracial democracy’ and don’t what a ‘social democracy’ means. Would you care to elaborate, so I can understand the full extent of what you mean? I could google them, but I’d rather hear what you mean so I make proper sense of your post.
Socialism needs to be redefined – as a system geared to the well-being of society. That way most people would get behind it and actually endeavour to fulfill the aims. Putting it into practise would consider the needs of society, not the failed communist ideology.
Oh bless your heart. You’ve bought into the myth that Public-Private Partnerships IE ESG create a “collaborative well-being economy.”
America was founded on motions of limited government. That the government was necessary to preserve order and resolve disputes but little else. I cede that there are emergencies which render public-private Partnerships necessary like after a devastating storm. But in most cases, the market produces the best possible outcome because it produces abundance and options.
Its only once the State initiates command of the economy that large scale monopolies develop to aid the State’s “target goals.” Charity can solve far more problems than government and unlike government it’s genuine and not an imposed unselfishness.
If you looked at the reality of the situation where are in. The transfer of wealth upward to fewer and fewer people, and then looked at the prices we are paying, double or triple what they were, then to still be a free market capitalist and pretend that market will always do the best when left alone, is almost about as a socialist.
What is wrong with balance. There are many markets in the US highly regulated by the government.
80% of psychopaths working at executive or CEO level, the WEF plan telling us we’d own nothing and be happy, Washington not being able to sign off on audits, same with the EU, Kamala blowing a bil and being in 20 mil in debt being an indicator of the kind of criminal financial irresponsibility, profligacy, and malfeasance of all these turds we’re having to put into power due a dearth of competent people, the Tory contract scandal, all of this shows that the system is broken.
Who’s not fed up of having their spending power halved on the same wage and going into a shop and being asked to pay double or triple price for things?
We need police for a reason. And we need D.O.G.E rolled out in every country, as well as non-ideologically driven regulators who’s job it is to put and end to the endless corruption and abuses of the financial system and inequities of the corporate world. f**k them. And f**k letting them off the hook due a romantized and false notion of free market capitalism. No such thing even exists.
Like the legendary Donald Trump just outlined. Tariffs are a mightly tool. They prevented wars according to DT. That is regulation. Trump is a capitalist though. But he’s not a fool that is going to let the monstrously corrupt free-for-all of the elite-class, that they have been desperate to carry on with, as seen with how the ‘metropolitan elite’ who all work for the big financial players and have their nose to the trough and are doing alright at the expense of other responded to Brexit threatening their good thing, continue to get away with it.
I understand the impulse to react like that at any hint of the word socialism, but it’s a mistake. Not everyone is a Marxist nutter seeking a complete overthrow of capitalism and replace it with government that steals from the rich and gives away.
I’m willing to bet a large part of the trillions of debt had been gained by elicit and corrupt abuse of us system by criminals. We can’t let them get a way and pretend we’re all getting wealthy at the same time. Most of us are not. Only the few at the top are. It’s grotesque actually. I don’t advocate going and robbing rich people. But the system that leads to the situation below needs transforming and balancing. And there are moral ways to do that to prevent this kind of thing. It’s not right.
”The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty.
“If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet,” said Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher. “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity
Or by what is all too often referred to as ‘human nature’.
Well they are getting a good dose of it now. Hopefully it will cure them for life.
This is a pretty silly poll as I suspect that most ordinary people don’t consider the ‘-isms’ they live by – merely which bunch of politicians upsets them the most.
So a poll to delight the nerds and wonks and to provide some column inches of copy for the ever voracious journalists.
It has relevance in a world that has turned certain ‘isms’ into religious creeds.
Yes, but also quite a depressing one as the majority of people seem to be ignorant of the fact that if you start with socialism you pretty quickly end up either at communism or fascism; ‘two cheeks of the same arse’ as George Galloway would put it. And they also seem ignorant of the fact that the last 120 years of prosperity, growth, living standards, life expectancy and technological advances are all due to free market capitalism; prior to 1900 90% of the world’s population were poor and lived miserable lives. How quickly people forget.
The terms used in this survey are so broad to make it virtually meaningless. Waste of time and effort.
I’m not sure why YouGov is considered the voice of the people?
I suspect any survey about -isms is likely to be of little real value to social scientists. Most people have rather extreme Pavlovian reactions to-isms. In reality, the winning -ism in UK is probably consumerism, but I doubt whether many would agree to this in a survey that named it thus.
Yes it’s yet another case where you should judge by what people do, rather than say.
The constant left-wing propaganda emanating from the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour Party and the NHS blob have won then. No wonder we’re deep in the brown stuff. Vote Reform.
Almost without exception my friends and acquaintances describe themselves as socialists – until you suggest that, in that case, maybe they should return some of the £hundreds of thousands or £millions they’ve accumulated in unearned property wealth during the past twenty years. ‘That’s different’, they’ll say.
Given our ever plummeting state of “Ejjer cay shun” the vast majority of voters even nodding acquaintace of either, let alone the differences, God forbid the overlap, is the same sort of wishful thinking that I would employ in hoping for the winners enclosure as the rider of the 1867 Derby….
I suspect that by capitalism most people mean the unbridled kind which allows the rich to get much richer, the rest to struggle and the poor to go to the wall, while services like health fail to deliver and asset inflation and an out of control housing market leave people effectively working for the benefit of their landlord.
By socialism they mean a bridled form in which the system is judged by its ability to deliver goods to the public as a whole, and the general welfare is prioritised over that of the rich. A system in which government is un afraid to take bold action when the free market fails to deliver or proves disfunctional.
I doubt anybody is thinking USSR when they think socialism. They are probably thinking Scandinavia.
What they are looking for is a system which serves the interests of the many, not one which just fills the pockets of the few. Nobody really believes any more that capitalist is a tide that raises all boats.
Here we go with the Myth of Scandinavian Socialism again. There are no minimum wage floors in Scandinavia. Sweden has Universal school choice containing many For-Profit Schools. Norway and even Denmark are loaded with oil revenue. They all participate in large scale trade and have all kinds of business friendly laws and support for property rights.
These are small homogenous countries with tiny populations. They can manage debt and share a range of social services because the people’s values are aligned. They are societies with high levels of trust unlike Britain and certainly America.
Socialist policies can work on a small scale when everybody buys in. When everybody doesn’t buy in it has to be imposed by force by people that know what’s best for you.
I don’t want to be completely unfair to Socialists though, they are exceptionally good at spending other people’s money.
We are talking about perceptions here.
We are talking about perceptions, and as I pointed out above it is depressing that so many people do not realise that if you start with socialism you pretty soon end up with communism or fascism. Free market capitalism gave us the world as it is today (mostly) with prosperity, longer life expectancy, higher living standards and greater personal freedoms – compared with the world in 1900 where nearly everyone was poor, underfed and lived hard lives.
Socialism fails because highly centralised systems with huge spending power inevitably attract parasites and you wind up, for example, with a government of suburban graduates bankrupting farmers to raise a few billions while its own supporters acquire trillions in unearned property wealth thanks to its policies.
Virtue signalism
Many of these rather vague notions are not mutually exclusive, so the whole exercise is pretty meaningless.
China is the best example. A communist state populated by the best capitalists in the world. I wonder which one they’d vote for?
Many young people think it’s ‘capitalism’ that makes it impossible for them to become capitalists by buying a home. But I guess that ‘capitalism’ is probably taken to mean what is better called ‘corporatism’, in which free markets are compromised by monopoly, especially government.
There are two potential reasons why human societies face difficulties. One is natural calamity. The other is bad government. There isn’t a third.
‘Capitalism’ is a straw man.
I would love to know the history of the dude carrying the F Capitalism sign. Employed, unemployed, form, on the dole, family, etc. His would be an interesting story of what is really, as opposed to conjecture, on the protestor’s mind and why. I have told many millennials including my daughters, that if I was in my late 20’s or early 30’s I certainly would be at the barricades and more due to the Boomers and Xer’s hosing not only their countries but the following generations with their greed. I can see why these folks would think that socialism might be the answer to wealth distribution that the Xer’s and Boomers benefited from and then pulled out the rug. However, socialism never would have generated the wealth that capitalism can and did during the last Century. I would love to talk to the guy with the sign about that and that is exactly what should happen.
However, it seems to this American that England has a fascist government (the ones that create and enforce the rules), not a socialist one so the folks who replied to the survey seem to want to take a step back and regroup. It is happening the the US, and I imagine that it will happen in England. If not, your country will be wracked with insurrections, violence, and disruptions. A perfect excuse for the Fascists to turn up the control and “Save England”! Good luck.
Socialists are invariably mental. Not because socialist ideas are mental. We have many in the UK, and I support them while also supporting free enterprise and capitalism. But because they don’t have the sanity needed to see they are just tools that can be used pragamatically when needed to redress the balance of capitalist monopolies or corruption.
Why do they have to go full bore into Marxist good v evil thinking, dye their hair or make themselves look repulsive in some way, become borderline retarded and unable to tolerate anything but their own BS, be so extreme and think in either/or or absolutist terms? Why are they willing to think 150 million people or more killed due to that extremism is OK, or that somehow the full on socialism they desire, the brazen robbing the rich to give to the poor to make things all nice and equal for everyone, is somehow different from Marxism and can be achieved without turning one group against another as sworn enemies and necessitates violence and bloodshed.
The propensity for stupidity in humanity is mindblowing. Why can’t the average preening ‘Socialist’ who lives and breathes Left-wing militancy, and loves to inform everyone they are one as they think it makes them superior to everyone understand balance or practically? How come they’re all like that? Grade-A twats, completely insufferable, who believe fully that socialism is only possible once they eradicate ‘capitalism’?
I’m thinking it may have something to do with the way Leftists indoctrinate people. They demonize anyone with opposing ways of thinking and position their ideology as a battle of good over evil, like someone said below about how socialists invented the narrative that ‘capitalism is evil’ to scare people to their side. And some people’s make up is particularly succeptible to such manipulation, I guess.
Humanity is sure ugly at times.It’s why Trump’s return is such a fresh air. He looks at things like a businessman, not an ideologue belonging to one rigid wing of the political spectrum. What’s working? What’s not. What should we keep. What needs to go.
Our whole politics is F-ed up. We have people that join one team of another, and try to do things to appease the idiots who think joining one tribe or another is the only option, with the Left believing it’s a case of joining good or evil, jesus wept.
We really need to get beyond Left-V-Right. This-V-That. We need competent people that have the authenticity to come right in of the bat telling people what they think are wrong, for their judgement to be correct, and for them to have the competence and skills a to lead the right people to creating the right solutions where they are needed.
This idea that free market capitalism has helped everyone and can’t be improved, or the even worse, all capitalism must go and we need blanket socialism for the good of everyone so everyone can be rich and do well as we can have the government take from the people that have money and give it to those that don’t, are just unecessary and outdated narratives.
There are far better, more balanced ways. Correct corruption, inbalances, injusticed, redressed the rigged system that has allowed 100 or so people to pilfer and the world’s wealth, and just fix things where they have been indentified needs fixing.
Amazing how backwards we still are on a lot of things, thinking wise.
Just to prove how nonsensical these labels now are, a quote from the BBC today on the French constitutional crisis:
“Three centre-left parties – the Socialists, Greens and Communists – broke ranks with the more radical left LFI by taking part in talks with Macron.”
So the summary of that survey is
People are not very well educated or knowledgeable regarding economics and politics and if you ask a stupid question you will get a stupid answer
Question (possibly stupid) Should a paid subscriber see add from Temu and other nonsense on here??