Re: Extropy and Rednecks

Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Tue, 19 Jan 1999 09:59:12 -0500

EvMick@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 1/15/99 12:43:57 PM Central Standard Time, hal@rain.org
> writes:
>
> >
> > But does socialism inherently involve advocating the use of force? Can't
> > it be organized on a voluntary basis?
>
> I don't recall any instance where socialism hasn't involved force, ultimately.
> Have there been actual examples?
>

I would say that with the sole exception of communes and kibbutzes, which still relied on significant amounts of peer pressure, no socialist organization with any political power has worked for very long without force. My opinion for this is that since communalism is so much of an anathema to human nature that force must be used to maintain a population in permanent residency. Note that communes and kibbutzes do have significant turnover levels, mostly of young adults coming and going once they got the socialist bug worked out of their systems. I admit that when I was a teenager that I considered myself a socialist for about two weeks... then I regained my sanity and actually thought things through. I once heard someone say that they would be worried about a person who had not been a socialist for at least 15 minutes in their lives....

Mike Lorrey