This whole kind cares what each other thinks, and they are the majority.
Consider the huge popularity of tabloids and trash magazines.
A phenomenon for you: consider internet forums, including this one. It’s the flawed arguments that attract the most attention and get the most publicity. Further, it’s mainly stupidity that ends them - a stubbornness on the part of the loudest shouter, and the stupidity of others in dealing with such people.
And no, my evaluation of my abilities is little less than summing up the scientific method with regard to a specific subject.
I’m interested in relatively restricting people who are proven to be economically irresponsible, and relatively liberating those who are economically responsible. The current degree of justice in social matters is fine by me for now, though that is not to say it doesn’t need improvement - just that I have little concern for it compared to our massive economic problems.
I do not worship ideals, such as “freedom”, which is meaningless unless qualified and applied to real life.
Marx wasn’t the only anti-Capitalist.
I don’t buy all of Marx’s arguments, and I’ve only even read one of his books fully.
I even have sympathy for ideologies incompatible with his.
If you are trying to crudely summarise of my position as “Problem = Capitalism” and “Belief = Socialism” therefore “Silhouette = Marxist” then you’re guilty of being ignorant, lazy and wrong. A pre-mature eagerness to box people into pre-existing categories for the sake of either dismissing or condoning them will not serve you when it comes to all-important distinctions as well as finer details that can make all the difference.
I’m not a revolutionary, which is essential to Leninist/Trotskyist Socialism. I am concerned with the politics of change to something co-operative, and Marx wrote no concrete political plans. Whether you meant your label as derogatory of not, it doesn’t sufficiently fit. In fact it does more harm towards understanding my position than good.
For indirect democracy, yes.
If you’re only going to consider the past then you’re only as good as a Conservative or any other reactionary. Why would I be interested in repeating something that has failed exactly how it was done before? Learning from it is fine, but expecting the past to be a complete set of possibilities for each broad label so far conceived is just an argument for things staying the same.
“Playing mean” is using deception and abusing power imbalance to take from others more than you give back to the point that so many are so restricted and trapped in their poverty, whilst some are so ridiculously rich that they are more powerful than their government and able to essentially direct the politics of entire countries.
I agree that people who are physically “being the change they want to see in the world” are the most impressive. I do this in the intellectual realm, and as such, my powers are limited compared to those who physically act out their plans. But they need direction and confirmation, which I can provide. My purpose here is to iron out difficult points that are well guarded so as to help others understand them and apply them to their own lives.
Concerning the welfare State - in conjunction with modern Capitalism and neo-liberal values it was always a combination doomed to fail. But the State is a much more obvious target for the failure of such a concoction than an obscured though simple ideology that requires a modicum of intellectual consideration in order to understand it.
Importantly, the welfare-State is not actually Socialist. It’s a very American propaganda move to associate an element of a conflicting ideology to their own failing system, and then blame that. Socialism is distinct from modern Capitalism, there is no overlap. It’s not a sliding scale of “more Capitalist vs. more Socialist”.
Yet another deception for me to clarify for the benefit of others ^