The whole "Hitler was a leftie" argument has been around for years and has always been bollocks.

I have also seen more than a few people on the right attempt to shift the BNP to the left. It's laughable of course but like they say repeat a lie long enough and some people will believe it.

And sadly we live in a post truth age.

Don't understand why Hitler couldn't have both far left and far right policies, people are complicated.

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul" - George Bernard Shaw

Socialism in a nutshell. However what tends to happen is eventually Peter has nothing left to take so the support of Paul is "counted on" at the end of a rifle.

Sounds like politics in general to me.

1 Timothy 6:10

So it was a socialist government that brought in the triple lock for pensioners, paying for it by freezing pay and benefits for others.

The one thing you'll consistently find at the root of all evil is people... not socialism (or capitalism for that matter).

This pointless pigeon holing exercise has got to be a wind-up.

The greed of the many outweighs the greed of the few

That really isn't socialism. However, on the subject of wealth distribution, many studies have been done over the years, and they show that countries with a more even wealth distribution are happier, more stable, and have lower crime rates.

Also, entirely the basis of progressive taxation, social security and universal healthcare, so not exactly some sinister, evil idea.

Not many people in the mid 2010s are advocating full on socialism anyway, most self identifying socialists advocate democratic socialism and mixed economies with a combination of state owned key industries, with the rest being privately owned. This isn't exactly controversial, with a decent amount of support for ideas like bringing the railways and energy companies back into public ownership and a basic guaranteed income

Love of money (not money per se, note), is the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6:10

One hates to quote Saint Margaret but socialists seem obsessed with dividing up the cake and hardly think about baking it in the first place.

Was thinking the same myself. It is people who are evil not political systems. The thing about Socialism is that it tends to center power with a relatively small group of people who then (as is the way of people) to work to retain that power. There are also other problems with socialism but calling it evil is a bit over the top.

I worry for the future of the country most of the younger generation are leaning more towards socialism and constantly looking to be offended on someone else's behalf

I'm always amused by the number of people on this site who rely on benefits, never had a job, never will have a job and would be dead within the week without Government handouts.

Yet they hate liberals, lefties and socialists.

I guess the free market should look after their needs and all benefit payments returned to such an evil government.

I have a friend in London who is from Caracas, She is deeply upset about the present state of her country....

"The festive lights are now on in Caracas. The reindeers, the snowmen, the sleds - all look very incongruous amid the city's luxuriant, tropical vegetation. But this will be a difficult Christmas for thousands of impoverished Venezuelan families, some of whom are now facing genuine hunger in what used to be one of the wealthiest countries in South America."
My birth country, right now. That breaks my heart

So, ISIS are in it just for they money are they?

Touché.

Lets see how Socialism has fared over the past 60 years.

Lets take a country, split into 2 on the same day in 1953
Same history, same culture, similar resources and land areas
One chooses socialism, the other capitalism
Socialist Capitalist
Life expectancy 69 79
Income per head $1800 $32,400
GDP growth 0.8% 2.7%
Infant mortality 26.21 4.08
Executions 2007 to 2011 105 0

etc etc

You can check out how your socialist paradise is going here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/da...korea-compared

(I had spaced it out nicely for readability but unfortunately the spaces were all removed. Anyhow I'm sure you get the idea)

With a closed society like N Korea how do we even know the figures are accurate if we rely mainly on what its governments tells. The USSR used to claim it had virtually no crime, alcoholism or prostitution. Cuba claims to have a high standard of health care but I don't think the World Health Org has ever rated it too highly.

The net worth of late socialist leader Hugo Chávez's second-oldest daughter is estimated at $4.2 billion. Ordinary Venezuelans can't even find toilet paper in the shops.

If you categorise political philosophies on a single left-right (or socialism-capitalism) axis I think you're asking for trouble. Arguably a better way of looking at socialism is as an array of left-of-centre philosophies differentiated by a second libertarian-authoritarian axis.

In this way it is possible to argue that the Nazi party for example was officially, amongst other things, a type of socialist party without besmirching socialism in general. In the British context, the so-called 'far right' BNP is more left-wing than the (Blair/Brown era) Labour Party albeit neither are really socialist parties.

Socialism is not the problem, nor is capitalism. It is greed, pure and simple. Capitalism is immensely powerful and focused on one thing only, making as much profit as it can for itself as quickly as it can. The history of the industrial revolution in the UK and the terrible results for ordinary people prove that conclusively. It was only the strenuous efforts of grass-roots socialism that eventually improved things and led to the formation of the NHS and welfare state. These days capitalism is running riot again unfettered and we see the awful consequences, in which the May government is complicit. The lies, deceipt and cruelty of the Tories are unchanged. They have no interest in improving the lives of ordinary people, never did and still don't. Don't believe the Tories and their slippery lies. Treat them with the contempt they deserve.

We have these arguments regularly about how you define socialism, and if you want to take the extreme view that some posters do (socialism = communism) then arguable it has been the cause of a large amount of 'evil' in the last 100 years.

The main reason for this is because Communism is based on a fascist idea that the group is more important than the individual; that one set of people should have dictatorial control over all aspects of society and personal life in order to mould it into the 'utopia' of their choice. Of course this isn't limited to just Communism - it's been used to promote numerous ideas from racial purity to religious zealotry and (of course) national identity. In pretty much every one of these case this form of politics has caused vast amounts of suffering similar to communism.

For those with an open mind, socialism is a much wider concept than just communism though. It's a vast sliding scale of ideologies on how government can act in the interest of the majority of it's citizens rather than the interest of a minority or some other goal (religion, nationalism etc). Arguably large parts of most modern societies are built on socialist principles and we have all benefited from them.

Someone mentioned South and North Korea earlier as examples of capitalism and socialism. Well the reality in South Korea is that the government used vast amounts of foreign aid to deliberately build up it's industries in a very managed way. It is one of the most successful examples of state planning (socialism) in modern history.

I don't really get socialism.. Middle class luvvies bleating on about the working class whereas the WC think they are a bunch of silly arses and are more likely to vote UIKP. You can see it now in places like Stoke which used to be rock solid Labour. The combined Tory - UKIP vote is a lot higher than the Labour vote.