In an ideal socialist society we would treat each other like “royalty” (L. Rex = king, which has the same root as “kin“).
There is nothing wrong, it seems to me, with “socialist” ideas or ideals, which are a necessary and healthy response to (consumer) capitalism which treats people not as “kin” or even as human beings, but primarily as a “human resource” and market.
The problems arise – which have given socialism such a bad name – when the STATE, i.e. politicians, attempt to implement socialist ideas in a population they see as “clients” (a “market“, to be served for personal advantage and profit) rather than as kin (to be served forkinsake). It’s a view greatly facilitated by the creation of a multi-ethnic society . . .
On right-wing websites the words “socialist” and “socialism” are mainly used as terms of abuse, dismissal or belittlement, much as the words “capitalist” and “capitalism” are on left-wing sites.
Having evolved, long before the advent of civilisation, as a tribal animal, our brains are obviously hard-wired to see things in terms of “them and us” (my tribe and other tribes!). We often speak of “tribal behaviour” in respect to politics, but again, only to disparage it; never, that I’ve noticed, in a serious, non-judgemental, attempt to understand it.
You’d think that academics – evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists – would attempt to understand human society in the light of man’s deeply tribal nature, but they don’t, prevented, it seems, by the same taboos which cause politicians and the rest of us to trivialise or demonise it (especially as “racism“).
