"....nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."




http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

...in "unfriending" people who you will never ever get through to. I have had similar experiences with former "friends" and I am amazed how they turned out when they seemed so reasonable in college. To be honest...it is kind of sad. The people I thought I knew...I knew nothing about them.

absolutely no idea what the term means. They can't use the 'N' word any longer, so any proxy apparently will do. Look at it this way, FB allowed you to flush out their lunacy and hatred before you spent any more time with them. I think that's a positive on balance.

N.B. I weeded out a lot of 'friends' during the run-up to Operation Shocking and Awful, back when all we had was email and ICQ. After listening to these friends tell me we would have to break eggs if we wanted to make omelets (the standard euphemism for the deaths of civilians), I'd cut them off quicker than you could press the 'Like' button And I'm no worse for it, other than missing out on some professional networking opportunities maybe.

the running around with her hair on fire screaming "socialism". It's obvious that these types of people have no clue what it means.

I decided I didn't care enough about having these people on my friend list to bite my tongue anymore or to read these idiotic posts anymore, so before I simply and quietly unfriend her, I was going to maybe make her head explode a bit. Sort of like how she has done to me with all of her insanity posts.

It's a good one!

My best outspoken liberal friends on FB are males, and the most outspoken right-wingers are females. I don't get it.