Socialist Progressives
Related: About this forumOscar Wilde, the soul of a man under socialism
Actually the whole article is worth your time. Here's a portion I selected.
They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than mans intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.
Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life educated men who live in the East End coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar Wilde, the soul of a man under socialism
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)So many people expect socialism to constrain individuality, and Oscar Wilde makes a compelling case of how capitalism crushes the human spirit and socialism would free it!
Very good!
redruddyred
(1,615 posts)but then again I've become quite picky about the people who I hang about.
I've noticed that a lot of people who are "successful" are rather narcissistic as it's easier to be this way. it's an easy way to live; it feels good. but, then, by the same token, only certain people can get away with it; usually men, as women are judged harshly should they choose to live for themselves.
I don't like Rand much but some have mentioned that her objectivist philosophy may have been a covert feminist one (except for the rapey bits). there might be something to that tho.
TBF
(32,085 posts)redruddyred
(1,615 posts)instead she popped out mediocre novels.
TBF
(32,085 posts)Phyllis Schlafly has been flying around the country for decades arguing for oppression of all women (except herself evidently). Does that make her a feminist?
redruddyred
(1,615 posts)tho she'd be the last to recognize her own hypocrisy.