Nathan Newman : -The word "communist" is lost. It was used in the service of mass murder and -death this century, so why try to save it? Socialism has a much more -varied history and when I call myself a socialist, I can always add, "you -know, like the present government of Spain" or other broad examples. It -still can shock people butit's a shock that can be used to educate on the -narrowness of language in the US. "Communism" overwhelmingly has meant -alliance with the Soviet Union, so why make a fetish of it?
>You never hear anybody say, "Thomas Jefferson and his posse owned slaves
and
>committed genocide against the indigenous peoples. Or the U.S. slaughtered
>millions in Indo-China for "democracy". Maybe the term "democrat" has been
>besmirched and we should get a different name."
>"(d)emocrats" were involved in mass murder, death, slavery, fascism from
the
>18th century and into the 21st. At this very moment, mass murder is being
>done in the name of "democracy" in Iraq. Would you give up the term
>"democrat" ?
Sure people say Jefferson and the founding fathers were racists and classists. And if democracy just meant allowing rich white men to vote as in 1789, I wouldn't use the term either. As for the US murdering people in Vietnam or Iraq, again, the US is not the only example of a country using the word "democracy."
A country like Sweden can be called both democratic and socialist, so both terms are salvagable since both mean more than either just the US corporate system or the Soviet Stalinist one.
Words are useful if they are flexible enough to mean more than one depressing prominent example. The reality is that "communism" is so totally identified with the Soviet Union and its barbarisms that I don't find it that useful as a term. On the other hand, I'll happily say that the US is not "democratic" in many ways, yet the term has meaning given the diversity of countries that claim to be democratic in various ways. Similarly, "socialism" is useful since it means a diversity of different approachs striving towards a similar goal of greater equality and economic justice.
Terms like the "free market" are an embarassment given their identification with the US corporate control of the world, but I'm not promiting the use of that term.
Nathan Newman