I'm not a history professor of world governments, but the information available to the rest of the planet suggests you are incorrect.

Main article: List of current communist states

The following countries are one-party states in which the ruling party declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and in which the institutions of the party and of the state have become intertwined; hence they fall under the definition of Communist states. They are listed here together with the year of their founding and their respective ruling parties.

Countries where institutions of the communist party and state are intertwined:

Current:

* People's Republic of China People's Republic of China (since 1949); Communist Party of China
* Cuba Republic of Cuba (Cuban Revolution in 1959, socialist state declared in 1961); Communist Party of Cuba
* North Korea Democratic People's Republic of Korea (since 1948); Workers' Party of Korea
* Laos Lao People's Democratic Republic (since 1975); Lao People's Revolutionary Party
* Vietnam Socialist Republic of Vietnam (since 1976); Communist Party of Vietnam (ruled the Democratic Republic of Vietnam since 1954)

There is a "Former" list as well, although it is much more lengthy, and includes the old U.S.S.R.
I'm not going to argue technical foreign government theory with you, I'm merely presenting history as we know it. (Straight from the almighty Wikipedia.)

Yes, and no. The extreme end of libertarianism would be anarchy, but I don't get that extreme. It is definitely safe to say that libertarians believe that the government should be VERY strictly limited.

One of the tenets, for example, would be that all criminal laws should be based on the rule that: No one can harm, or steal, another person, or their property. Nothing more than that.

Civil law would rely on the tenet that: You must keep your promises.

If you think carefully about laws, and civil suits, it's easy to see which apply and which do not.

Under those rules, there are tons of laws that would be thrown out, the easiest examples being drug or prostitution laws, which involve telling someone what they can or can't do with their own bodies, or property.



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Yes, a true libertarian is anti-government, anti-statism, because of the violence that's inherent to government.

Minarchists are people who believe in the necessity and possibility of limited government and are very closely related to libertarians and in many cases considered a libertarian subgroup.

A libertarian is a person - any person - who consistently advocates individual freedom and consistently opposes the initiation of the use of coercion by anyone upon the person or property of anyone else for any reason. (Coercion is here defined as any action taken by a human being against the will or without the permission of another human being with respect to his or her body or property. This includes murder, rape, kidnaping, assault, trespassing, burglary, robbery, arson and fraud.) Some libertarians (such as the late Robert LeFevre) not only oppose all forms of initiatory coercion, but also the use of retaliatory coercion (revenge or criminal justice). The vast majority of libertarians, however, maintain that physical force used in self-defense or defense of one's family or property is fully justifiable.
But, all libertarians, by definition, at least oppose the initiatory use of coercion. They support the rational principle of the individual human rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This means that each individual has the right to keep what he earns for himself and his family, and this includes the right to use, trade, sell, give away, or dispose of his property as he sees fit. A person who violates the rights of others by initiating coercion, violence, or fraud against them forfeits his right to be left alone by government and may be arrested, charged, tried, and imprisoned, deported or executed if convicted (depending on the nature of his or her crimes). The basic, proper function of lawful government is therefore limited to protecting these rights of the peaceful individual from criminals and foreign aggression, and in not violating these rights itself, for if government is allowed to go beyond this legitimate function and itself initiates force in violation of the rights of peaceful citizens, it necessarily contradicts the only rational justification for its own existence by acting criminally itself.

Real libertarians take individual rights seriously - seriously enough to consistently uphold them against the initiation of the use of force by anyone (including government) for any reason. This means that government must be bound by the policy of "laissez faire" - which means that government has no business coercively interfering with the lives of peaceful (non-coercive) citizens in their private affairs and voluntary (market) relationships.

Libertarians may or may not approve of some of the things that some people may do in private or in voluntary relations, but whatever their own code of personal moral conduct is, they do not seek to ban any private or voluntary activities by the use of force, including the force of government action. To do so would be to violate the very principle of individual rights of person and property, and thereby undercut any rational argument in favor of freedom or defense of the free-market system. Those exception makers and outright coercive busy-bodies in our midst (referred to as "interventionists" or "statists" by libertarians) who do want to abandon government by principle and instead put Whim in charge of the use of legal coercion are the people who help set the stage for arbitrary and capricious governmental tyranny - leading in the direction of totalitarian dictatorship.

Libertarians are for individual freedom - and this includes the freedom of people to do some things that we and other people may disapprove of. A person should be free (from coercive interference) to do what he pleases with his own life and property, as long as he does not violate (through coercive interference) the same right of other peaceful persons to do what they want with their lives and properties. (The second clause is logically implied in the first.) Libertarians do not oppose non-coercive persuasion, educational efforts, private advertising campaigns, organized boycotts, or even social ostracism as means of trying to effect changes in the private behavior of others. (Many people have stopped smoking tobacco in recent years partly as a result of education and persuasion by friends and family members.) What libertarians do oppose is the attempt by anyone (individuals or government officials) to impose their own views of "fairness" or personal morality on others through the initiation of the use of coercion, by either personal violence or political legislation and governmental action. This principled position sets libertarians apart from conservatives as well as other non-libertarians.

Libertarians are not to be confused with the so-called "civil libertarians" which typify the membership and leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union. It is true that the ACLU has come to the defense of freedom of speech for certain minorities (e.g., nazis, communists, and anarchists) and this is commendable - but the podium has often been at taxpayers' expense, which is a "no-no" from the real libertarian perspective. Many "civil libertarians" believe that some people have a "right" to violate the rights of others; they claim there is a "right to a job" or a "right" to welfare payments or a "right" to "free education" or a "right" to free child care - all at the expense of the people (usually the taxpayers) who are forced to pay for these so-called "rights." Real libertarians are for true freedom, not "freedom" at the forced expense of others. The only obligation that true rights impose on persons is of a negative kind: not to interfere with the rights of other people - i.e., to refrain from the initiation of the use of coercion. This is the core principle of libertarianism and is sometimes called the 'Non-Aggression Axiom'.

Welfare-state "liberals" and "civil libertarians" speak of "rights" of people as members of specially privileged groups, such as "women's rights" or "gay rights" or "rights of the handicapped" or even so-called "animal rights"! Real libertarians know that there are only individual rights, not group rights. There is no such thing as "gay rights" or "black rights" or "white rights" or left-handed Martian rights. Government must not be used to dish out special privileges to any group for any reason, since government cannot give anyone anything unless it takes it away from others by force, thereby violating their rights. There can be no such thing as a "right" to violate the rights of others.

No doubt there are some well-intentioned ACLU members who do promote true civil liberties and uphold human rights; however, the ACLU has not come to the defense of the rights of school children whose freedom is being violated daily by compulsory attendance laws and the tyranny of Federally-ordered forced busing. Nor do I know of any case in which the ACLU has defended the constitutional rights of businessmen who are being harassed by OSHA agents and other bureaucrats, or hounded by such arbitrary and subjective laws as the antitrust acts. Indeed, many "civil libertarians" seem callously insensitive to the victims of crime and legal plunder - while they defend known criminals from justice.

Libertarians are not anarchists. While it is true that some individuals favor a political system of competing vigilante committees, and refer to this position as "anarcho-capitalism" (a view formerly held by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard), this is a confusing misnomer based on an apparent failure to clearly distinguish between the nature of market institutions (which do not involve the use of coercion at all, either initiatory or retaliatory) and the nature of coercive entities (criminal or legal). Actually, libertarianism rests on the concepts of individualism, self-ownership, private property, & voluntary (market) exchange. Classical anarchism not only opposed the political state, but also some voluntary organizations of which it disapproved. Most importantly, true anarchists opposed private property - without which no voluntary relationships are possible. Today's libertarians are in the classical liberal tradition of Algernon Sidney, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Edmund Burke, Herbert Spencer, and Frederic Bastiat - not the anarchist tradition of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Bakunin.

Libertarians do not advocate freedom or the free-market economy merely because "it works" (which it does better than any other system); they support it as the only non-coercive and just system - the system in which people are free to deal with one another on a voluntary basis as traders (exchangers of goods and services) instead of as masters and slaves - or as privileged class and exploited host. Others advocate government by whim. Libertarians adhere to certain principles, and without the guidance of principles and standards, all that is left is pragmatic expediency and the tyranny of government by whim. One might say that libertarians are "idealists" in the popular sense of that word; after all, libertarians stand for certain ideals - goals to strive for (e.g., less government intervention, more individual freedom and moral responsibility, free markets, etc.). Because libertarianism is based on man's nature and the nature of reality, it is the most practicable social system. Libertarians are practical idealists.


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Libertarianism is indeed about the non-aggression principle: People are free to use their body and property in any way they see fit as long as they don't cause damage to another person's body or property. So you are not allowed to initiate force (let's say break in to someone's house) but you are allowed to use force to defend yourself or your property (let's say shoot a burglar).

The difference between an anarcho-capitalist and a minarchist is that a minarchist for some strange reason reason does allow 1 company (the government in a certain area) to violate the non-aggression principle by giving it a monopoly on violence in a certain area.

All of these countries practice Socialism...but the Western Governments and their news media mislabeled them to be Communist Governments and the countries...in some cases...label themselves to be Communists thus they have commonly been called Communist countries. There has never been a been a country that actually practiced Communism just as there has never been a country that actually practiced Democracy.

Yay for Libertarian thread save and good definition in my absence :)

I am also a Libertarian... To me it is the penultimate system of government as I value individual freedom and property above all else. Far from anarchism; a government is required to make sure everyone's freedoms and property are protected and to protect the nation as a whole from foreign threats. Obviously I'm over simplifying here but... you get the point :P

Anyway....

This seems to be the root cause of most of the paranoia (that I've witnessed) displayed by extreme right "Socialism!" finger pointers. They seem to think that providing affordable health care to everyone is somehow going to cause Stalin to rise up from the grave and put us all in forced labor camps, and it's simply ludicrous. And then the conversation usually devolves into blaming illegal immigrants for everything and goes to hell from there.

Forcing people to buy security services from a certain company (the government) instead of letting them decide for themselves if they want to buy protection and from which company they want to buy protection and at what price they want to buy those services (free market) is a violation of the fundamental libertarian non-aggression principle.

Yet in other definitions :

Dumbshit :

1. A practitioner of shit that is dumb
2. Shit that is normal shit since shit has no intellect
3. a personal manifestation of actually becoming shit because of being dumb


So now that we have cleared all the definitions up by using the definition itself to define
the fucking shit, everything is fine now.

:1orglaugh

That is the general gist of it...and it is indeed ludicrous...but understandable since the conservatives want to demonize the current Congress and Administration in the hopes that it will help them to regain power.

hah, i spent the day yesterday at a 420 gathering and a couple peeps there did this very line of thinking.

Come on, a tax payer can take advantage of tax payer funded programs and still be against socialism.

Liberals should stop crying about big business and the church and give up all their income for the greater good and all become atheists.
So be against it. Denounce everything that has right wing leanings.... not just the ones you decide to cherry pick.

Or get over yourselves, shut up, and move the fuck on with your lives.

probably should figure out if the definition of socialism is the same

The opposite... If a socialist believes in the STATE providing everything, then the opposite would be someone who doesn't want a state. I would guess an ANARCHIST?

To me socialism in gov and libertarianism are vastly different in nature - if you have one you must have the other. You could have a major socialist gov and still have mostly libertarian values towards the people as they are the ones in control over the social agendas.

Every successful gov in the world has had social agendas. But the most simple idea of libertarianism has proven to already fail, time and time again - without control, the places rip itself apart and open the door for dictators.

Sorry doc, but I'm going to have to disagree here.... Libertarianism has NEVER been tried. The closest we have come on a large scale, was the earliest days of the USA.... and that has quickly evolved far away from it, but not resulting in dictatorship.

It has never been tried in Europe. All European governments evolved from dictatorships, sometimes called monarchies.

As for people being "involved in social agenda's", there is no room in Libertarianism for people to have the right to tell someone else ANYTHING regarding "social agenda's" without the persons voluntary co-operation. As soon as you legistlate the use of force to control a "social agenda", you go away from actual Libertarianism.


:2 cents:

It's tried in every city, neighborhood, block, group of people in the world, every day, all day... it fails every day, all day.

People aren't just going to leave people alone - even in the most respectable countries people wise. And as soon as you can vote you will have rules that others don't agree with, the entire thing breaks down... it's impossible to have a libertarian system but you can have the values.

A true libertarian world is incompatible with democracy. So even if a majority voted one way, they wouldn't have the right to impose their will on the rest.

well, it doesn't seem then that in the real world librarians are the opposite of socialism eh?

from my view, i am trying to see these peeps that are calling people socialists. who are these guys buying the socialist propaganda?

while it does seems for the sake of arguing, that libertarians are the opposite.

follow the misses.org link I posted :)

thank you for the link, good info.

my question is more specific though-

who are these people?

http://sfcmac.files.wordpress.com/20...ty-picture.jpg

http://anonymouspond.com/wp-content/..._tea_party.jpg

http://www.bythedrop.com/gallery2/d/...-+No+Socialism

http://www.jlcauvin.com/wordpress/wp...aparty-lr1.jpg

http://www.utahstories.com/graphics/tea1.jpg

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2...-socialist.jpg

did you try it out in your basement?

And for the record neither has pure capitalism. Not that I am a proponent of either.

pure capitalism = laissez-faire capitalism = anarcho-capitalism.

And it has never been tried. The only thing that came close was the Icelandic Free State from 930 to 1262.

Never seen a better post on this forum, looks like you'll offend a lot of these queers.

Are you braindead? The USSR was purely communist.

The idea is great though. How I miss the Austrian School of Economics' influence.

Libertarian is a social aspect of the people.. (yes I know they have a political party, but...). it's not a way you can manage how the gov provides or doesn't provide for the people.

I don't know if people are buying the socialist idea, more than they are to stupid to realize we are already and have been a socialist republic for a long time.

The opposite would be a 3rd world country, no gov/providing.. or maybe a dictatorship.

No. You cannot be against socialism as long as your hand is still in the social cookie jar reaping the benefits.


I've actually done just that. I gave up everything for the greater good. Donated all I had to the vets programs. I am an atheist. I have, and continue to denounce everything right-wing leaning.

People who want to cram the whole world into one word philosophies are being overly simplistic and intellectually lazy. Different social tools work better for different problems. If you want the best television, you need capitalism. If you want the best fire service, you need socialism. Every country experiments with which tools work best for which job, and eventually the optimal balance becomes obvious; America becomes more socialist, China becomes more capitalist. Absolutists who try to turn one tool into a religion always end up defending unrealistic positions to the point of absurdity.

Congrats hope its working out for you. Extreme left sounds like a great place to be. Let us know when you give up your computer for the greater good.

http://mises.org/about/3249

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard-lib.html

:)

I've donated several computers as well over the last ten years. No point in them sitting in a closet collecting dust, and why sell them when I can give them to someone who needs one and is unable to buy one. I donate stuff constantly throughout the year. Food, clothing, furniture, computers, printers, my time, my help.... If that's not 'giving it up to the greater good' then I don't know what is.

I have 13 bags of clothing that's being picked up today for donation.

I also do not claim a tax credit for my donations.

What have you done lately for 'the greater good'?

smarts
bye

a realist person?

Not that long ago I was driving though down town Havana, I passed by thousands of people walking, riding bikes or pushing carts made from various things.. we happened to stop in front of a building. I looked at it and realized that at one time it had been a department store but it was now chained up and empty of anything that would make it so. I then looked a little higher and could see the outline of the letters that had once formed the store name.

Sadly this store would have been able to sell the people on the streets the bikes that they need. The tools to fix them and not have to tie them with rope or rubber.

But that store was taken when Castro took over. He " Spread the Wealth ". I also happened to notice that the people that work in government have nice clothes, Not uniforms like most employees but VERY nice clothes. Armani etc..

The schools are GREAT and no one goes without an education. Medical is great. when they have the tools to treat you. Wonderful thing this socialism

By the way. I was able to read that the store had once been a Sears.

And yet here... the Sears stores remain open so you can get bike parts & tools.
But our education is nearly flat lined, and millions can't afford health care.
So at least we have functioning bicycles to ride while we look for minimum wage jobs because our education system failed us and we can't afford a functioning car.

The Socialist or "socializer" or "socialite" is a very social person, otherwise described as a "people person".

Thus the opposite of socialist would be antisocialist, as in one who is anti-social.

One described as a loner. AKA: hermit.

"Look at that house. Does that guy that lives there ever come out of it? What an anti-socialist. Something's not right with a guy like that. We should round up the neighbors, light some torches and go burn him out."


Class dismissed.

Medicaid and Medicare. sounds like socialized medicine to me.

Pay the teachers the money they deserve and kids will get a better education and turn off the fucking idiot box.

But wait....

Why should I have to pay for teacher's salaries? Why should my tax dollars be used to pay for education? I'm not going to those schools. I don't have kids in those schools.
Isn't that socialism? You expect ME to pay for teacher's salaries so YOUR kids can get a better education?

Fuck that. That's socialism. Every man for himself. The strong will survive and the weak will just fucking lose.

See how retarded that sounds?