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Socialism… Seriously

A Brief Guide to Human Liberation

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Socialism… Seriously

By: Danny Katch
Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg
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Opinion polls show that many people in the US prefer socialism to capitalism. But after being declared dead and buried for decades, socialism has come to mean little more than something vaguely less cruel and stupid than what we have now. That's not exactly going to inspire millions to storm the barricades.

Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics, and the potential of human beings to be something more than bomb-dropping, planet-destroying, racist fools.

©2015 Danny Katch (P)2016 Audible, Inc. Political Science Politics & Government Socialism Capitalism Soviet Union Tradition
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Really great balance of information and humour, feel like I’ve retained everything that was in it which is pretty rare!

Perfect introduction to socialism

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A 'mostly' thoughtful and pragmatic introduction that has helped me massively make a bit more sense of the complex ideas, values and role socialism has. I will be referring back to this, it's given me much to think about, and soothed alot of uncertainty I had about my own vague beliefs, I feel much more comfortable calling myself a socialist after reading this, after years of struggling with doing so due to the complexity and vagueness of the term.

This helped me alot.

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The funnyiest book I have ever sisten to on such a serious topic. Easy to understand even for a political illitterate

The funnyiest book

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I'm interested in socialism, fairly liberal and have plenty of criticisms of capitalism as we see it today. however this book is not really convincing at all. the book seems to be written for people who have already decided that socialism is correct and just need arguments. it's not written to convince people who are genuinely on the fence. In first chapter the author strangely argues everything is getting worse, despite it being well established that war, terrorism, poverty, disease, hunger and prejudice and discrimination are literally the lowest they've ever been in human history. from there it was all downhill.

heavy on stories & jokes, thin on data & evidence

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1 hr in and I want to die.....
I really wanted an intelligent arguement and for my silly optimism I get slapped in the face by a strawman in the first chapter.
Yet again we have a Socialist who understands Capitalism as "but you have more than meeeee! That's soo meeaann!" and takes no notice of the Absolute gain in wealth and material comfort Capitalism has brought the world. Anyone notice we aren't living in freezing, drafty stone castles anymore?

The arguments for Socialism are wildly idealistic, unrealistic and historically ignorant and the counter arguments against the 'right wing', which in this book means everyone who's not a socialist, boil down to "So you want everyone to starve? You love evil don't you, you xxxist and xxxism!". And annoyingly, that's not a strawman.

For the sake of the Author:
Capitalism works because if I'm great at making chairs and you aren't, but have money. And I want money more than I want the chairs I can very easily replace. And you want a chair more than the money you have. Good news! We can exchange my chair for your money and both of us walk away having gained from the exchange (In our own opinions).
The free market is this mechanism scaled up, which is why, for the most part, it works great for assigning an agreed upon value to labour or products, which is why I assume I got this book for free.....

......because your opinion on politics is worthless

Alt title: Strawman: What is Capitalism Anyway?

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