What Kind of Socialist Are You? Take the Test

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Mon Jul 9 11:15:47 PDT 2001


----- Original Message ----- From: "Rob Schaap" <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au>
>I'll play, Nathan! Here's my list from best fit to worst - what's yours?

Here was my list:

# 1 Democratic Socialist # 2 Anarchist # 3 Democratic Marxist # 4 Progressive # 5 Shachtmanite # 6 Bookchinite # 7 Libertarian Socialist # 8 DeLeonist # 9 Social Democrat # 10 Leninist-Trotskyist # 11 Christian Socialist # 12 Castroist # 13 Kimist # 14 Stalinist/Maoist

However, I also didn't like the first question on equality, since it's unnuanced, since it assumes absolute equality of results, while there are other degrees of equality- equality based on effort (from and to each according to their means), equality of economic power in setting whatever inequality of incentives is deemed useful, etc. No room for market socialism or really the whole internal debate of democratic socialisms. That I come up anarchist as my second choice shows the poverty of the list- it kind of equates anarchist with democratic and anti-Soviet.

I actually would love to create a more sophisticated set of selection question based note just on the violence-democracy issues that this quiz focused on and more on the real debates on how to structure socialism. Maybe it could be a group LBO project to create the key set of questions that differentiate different forms of socialism.

-- Nathan



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