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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

After '89, there were some who said, "Communism didn't fail because this wasn't /really/ Communism." I answered, sorry, but that's how Communism is rendered.

There are those now who are saying, "American Socialism didn't fail because it wasn't /really/ Socialism." I'm answering, sorry, you had your chance. You can argue on blogs all you want. The experiment has failed miserably.

Point being, simply asserting a preferred definition is not a compelling argument. Whatever it was that was going on, it hasn't been working. Making one or another particular economic philosophy the bogeyman isn't going to help, however good it makes people feel to be able to say, "I told you so."

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Anyone else find it curious (almost) no one argues that "National Socialism didn't fail because the Third Reich wasn't /really/ National Socialism"?

It's interesting to contrast the utter repudiation of National Socialism after its defeat in 1945 compared to the ongoing romance with Communism after its collapse in 1989...

E.g. On a university campus today, it's acceptable to call oneself a socialist, but utterly unacceptable to call oneself a National Socialist (a Nazi). Considering the horrors of both, the difference in their treatment in American academia today is somewhat surprising.

Yes, strange. The communists had more appeal to the intellectuals.

Of course, the fact that there are socialist countries out there which arguably treat their citizens better than America does has nothing to do with it. [Note: I overstate here for effect, the "in many ways, for many citizens" caveats are left as an exercise for the reader.]

But "National Socialism" was the name because that's what sold at the time; the ideology was Facism.

> Considering the horrors of both...

The horrors of both?

The Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Germany, etc., are all horror-ible places to live?

No, you don't get to play with "preferred definitions". here.

In 1989, the companies came in and put an extreme back into balance.

In 2009, the government came in to put an extreme back into balance.

In fact, it has been the government that has been saving a complete collapse of Capitalism by bailing it out. I think no one knows if it will work, but they key indicator here is that Wall St. turned to the government for help.

And look at health care: Americans spend much more than other countries yet the indicators show much poorer performance than those other countries. Socialized medicine has been shown, in the hard numbers, to simply work better.

If it was really "American Socialism" that was failing, you wouldn't be seeing government stepping in everywhere. So, no, it's not about picking a definition; it's about trying (finally) to find a balance.

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