myconv: These words have no established meaning for everyone to agree upon. But sure, I will give you mine and the majority of left leaning individuals roughly use. Note though we don't need to use the words in the first place, your seeming demand of my own definitions implying otherwise.
What a surprise, you have a partisan understanding of history and politics. That is also wrong (for this century, anyway).
I was making a philosophical point (which you still haven't addressed, or even acknowledged) and you have made a tirade about politics. This is why politics is banned, since it creates boring screeds of blithering nonsense.
myconv: Socialism is the ideal of society and government that allows people [as in:
the government] to own the product of their work and have the freedom to live as they wish as long as it doesn't harm others, free of want of the necessities of life too. […] Note that socialism is an ideal, not a method to that ideal.
Socialism is an ideal used to excuse the most heinous governments ever created. They seeks to own everybody's stuff. (Who owns property? "We all do!" Really? Who controls it? The political masters who control the society. For our own good, of course. /sarcasm)
Capitalism is the devolution of the ownership of property to those who created it. Y'know, us.
The greatest weakness of capitalism is the same weakness of socialism: concentration of power.
myconv: Libertarian/liberalism is simply pro-capitalism. A economic system of theft pyramid scheme style,and slavery only a little better than the aristocracy systems that came before it, that does not encourage innovation or quality production. Sometimes liberalism also includes social safety nets to compensate for the poison that is pure capitalism. Also these small compensations act as window dressing to keep the masses distracted from their exploitation so they don't rebel.
Propagandist slander and incoherent nonsense.
Perhaps if you read John Locke, you might be able to divorce your political bias from your assessment.
[…]
IX Of the Ends of Political Society & Government
§123:
IF man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others:
for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure.
This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers:
and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.
§124:
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature there are many things wanting.
First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them: for though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.
[…]
XI Of the Extent of Legislative Power
§134:
THE great end of men's entering into society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society; the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. …
This legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its being a law,* the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts:
nor can any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their trust;
nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or farther than they do allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society, which is not the supreme.
(*The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belonging so properly unto the same intire [sic] societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not made so. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.
Of this point therefore we are to note, that such men naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society, whereof we be a part, hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Laws therefore human, of what kind so ever, are available by consent. Ibid.)
[…]
§138:
Thirdly, The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own.
Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are their's, [sic] that no body hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent: without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any commonwealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.
This is not much to be feared in governments where the legislative consists, wholly or in part, in assemblies which are variable, whose members, upon the dissolution of the assembly, are subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest. But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man's property is not at all secure, tho' there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.
John Locke (1690),
Second Treatise on Government, IX §124; XI §§134&138, detailing Property (capitalism).
