by chance, i met someone on the street promoting anti-war and Palestine support when I was doing my weekly stroll in the city. they were having a 2-day seminar during the Easter long weekend. being the supporter of both causes, i felt oblighed to buy a ticket to attend the seminar, to show my support.
There were 3 speakers in the first seminar. one of them was a US veteran from Iraq and he pronounced Iraq as "I-Rack", just like Mr Bush. another speaker was a social activist from South Africa. The last one was a local politician from the Socialist Alternative.
Having no expectations, what these people presented were fresh and new to me. All went well and after the seminar, a guy with a black & white checkered cloth wrapped around his neck came and introduced himself and we started to chat. the checkered cloth reminded me of the late Arafat. it was a warm night and we were indoor, so i guess the cloth was more symbolic for a cause than for keeping him warm.
we started with the weather and yara-yara-yara, it went to politics and current affairs. he was a strong supporter of socialist movements and believed in workers demostration and strikes. talked about the 1917 Russia Revolution etc etc.
being a skeptic all my life and well known for my cynical atitude, naturally i questioned and challeged the workability of a socialist or communist country.
"can you tell me of a good example of a successful socialist country or government?" I asked him, hoping for some fresh views.
"No, there is no real socialist country in this world" he said. "the Russian Revolution was a very successful one".
"But, it didn't last long and the workers didn't even get to form government...." I reminded him.
"Thats because it was surrounded by many Imperialist countries who wanted to bring the socialist country down. They started a civil war in Russia"
From then, I realised that I was talking to someone akin a religion fundamentalist. What he believes in is perfect and the reason this perfect system didn't work was due to "enemies" who always wanted to destroy it. All sound too familiar?
Knowing I an't going anywhere further, I switched the subject slightly and asked him how does the socialist model work, government structure etc.
He paused for a while and said "the workers will take over and make collective decisions"
"HUH??" he lost me there. in my effort of getting better clarity, i gave a real example and asked him "how would the socialists manage a big corporation like TELSTRA (the biggest telecom player in Australia)"
"The working class will make collective decisions and this will benefit all the working class, not just some capitalists"
"thats fair enough, mate, but how would they manage it? who makes the decisions?"
"There wouldn't be no managers or chairman, the workers will have meetings and make collective decisions"
From that point, i knew I was talking to a guy who had no idea how the real world works. I carried on and asked him "there is a need for someone to make decisions on what to do with the network, somebody needs to get the funding to maintain the network etc etc"
He looked puzzled and said "in a socialist country, everyone is equal, even a leader will just get the same salary as a normal worker, and he can be removed anytime if we are not happy with him"
Oh boy, i could shoot this down with a dozen of simple common sense. But, his next arguement really had me speechless.
"thats how the hunter and gatherer societies work. everyone gets an equal share even the leaders"
only then i fully realised i was talking to a guy who apparently went through an alien time machine and came to the 21st century from his hunter & gatherer time.
Let see how far apart we were. counting backwards, we are now in the cyber internet era, before that was the industrial era, earlier was the farming and trading, farming, and finally hunter & gatherer. he strongly believe his socialist model will work because it worked in a hunter & gatherer society.
"what happens if there is different in opinions and no decision can be made?"
"Every sensible socialist will try their best to work out the best for the society, everyone will get equal share"
THATS a huge assumption there dude. Everyone is a sensible and responsible socialist!
what happen if you have free riders, non believers?
what happens to the artists and scientists? what about creativity?
A typical model that promotes "regression towards the mean"
Simply means everyone/everything within the model will progress to become very close to an average value. so everybody will be average Joe and plain Jane. or Ah Beng, Ah Seng, Ah Lian, Ah Hua.
no motivations to become Gandhi, Newton, Picaso etc.
But a huge resource pool to tap into for the likes of Osama, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot.
Do you still carry on the conversation if you were me? I didn't know how to tell him "mate, you are way off" without hurting his feelings. should I bring up the great Pol Pot who was trying to transform the whole of Combodia into a true socialist country by breaking down the cities and urbans and force convert everyone to farmers & workers?
Fortunately, a few of his friends came over and I was quick to sieze the opportunity. After some social yara yara, I told them i had to catch the train to go home and left.
I was sure there's more than that in the socialist idealogy. So, I went back to attend another seminar the next day.
This seminar was about the 1917 Russia revolution. After the young energitic girl read out her presentation in fast pace, there was the Q&A session.
Lots of people raised their hands. Hmm... not bad, I thought, expecting some mind opening questions and answers.
It turned out, the people who stood up to speak didn't ask questions but instead just added on to what the speakers had presented, praising the Russia Revolution was the greatest in human history, telling us how corrupted the novelties were and how the workers were oppressed.
To be fair, most of these were correct but tell me something i didn't know. I could pick up a history book and start to complain about the corruptions in the Tsar Russia.
Finally, I raised my hand and asked the same question "how would a socialist government manage a big corporation like Telstra?"
Again, that "collective decison by workers" came out.
A smart guys added proudly and said "during the Russia Revolution, the railway workers decided how to run the trains and only transported the worker going from city to city for strikes, but refused to let the elites and novelties on board. This is how socialists work"
HUH?? Dude, we are talking about a stable country like Australia, not during revolution!
Another guy jumped in, he was the chair person, and said "I worked for Telstra for more than 15 years and I can tell you, all I did for the last 15 years had nothing to do with improving or helping the lives of the poor people in Australia. It only benefited the capitalists whose main objective is profit and profit and yara yara yara..." and guess what? the whole floor clapped. Except me of course.
then another smart dude jumped in and said "we will provide telephone and internet services to everyone in the rural areas, not like now even the people in the suburbs don't get broadband.... there will be more colaborations between the industries too... in the end, it will be collective decisions from the workers"
"so who is going to fund it?" "Telstra is a public listed company and we have investors all over the world" alas, they didn't bother with my question any more and proceeded with another guy statement on how the worker strike brought down the capitalists in Chile.
U know what, i learnt a lot about socialist and its idealogy.
In a nutshell, it is "collective decisions of the workers"
U wanna join them and work for a just and fair world? not too bad if you are a hunter or gatherer.
Huaaah! Me need some service here. 
Fred likes to snuggle and enjoys a belly rub.
