Cromwells death heralded monarchical Triumphalism. The lies of so called republicans, who were really nothing more than mob loving democrats were revealed.
When the French Revolution turned bad, the pretensions of radical equality, dissolving the time tested social gradations among the populace, government by citizens rather than the elite class, were all revealed to be disastrous rules for any nation.
The French revolutionaries and Cromwell's Parliamentarian fellow travelers all ended with tyranny, while starting out on the road to a better, more just world.
This was the failure of egalitarianism. The failure of the mobs right to disobey and question their social betters.
Many was the idiot who concluded that the many forms of Republican or representational government advocated in the 17th to 19th centuries were revealed to be nothing more than the lies of men who sought to use the passions of the mob to their own ends.
Now, the idiots proclaim the victory of capitalism over communism.
The Corn Laws were capitalist, but objected to by proponents of free trade. Jefferson set up state banks, which is inconsistent with the truly free market envisioned by Libertarian types.
The East Indian Tea Company, as well as many English colonies in North America, were both private companies and governmental agencies, insofar as they carried out many functions of a state, existed solely on the authority of the state, and existed primarily for their own financial profit through the control of trade.
This was Capitalism, but not what anyone calls free trade.
And just as only an idiot would seek to confuse the prescriptive and descriptive variants of Capitalism, so too would one have to be functioning with a beaten down analytic capacity to make repeated declarations regarding Communism, without acknowledging the fact that the term refers to an entirely obvious and diverse set of doctrines and systems.
The Russian Soviet System failed, as did the British Imperial System, back when it was an Empire. The early American government failed, and it become a modern, militaristic semi-welfare state.
But from the common leap from the collapse of the Soviet System to the ideological bankruptcy of the myriad strands of Socialism, Anarchism and Communism is a non-sequitur that you one obliged to believe solely in the absence of any thought of your own, without any consideration of who you are referring you to, and the context these ideas exist in.
Those in European countries who fought long and hard, losing their lives and their privileges for the cause of the freedom of men (lighter toned men) and then for the right of all people in general to participate in their own government were, at every step, ridiculed and met with indignation by many protectors of grand old tradition.
So too now are those who want the working class to take control of their own destiny, end economic exploitation of anybody-who-can against anybody-who-can't, and continue in the tradition of the political progress that ended entrenched royalty's domination of Europe, bring about a more just society-so too are these sorts now derided as dreamers of the impossible, as dangerous panderers to the easily beguiled masses, and as, above all, secret tyrants.
To fight the clarity of history's next reasonable step, the theological doctrine of Rights is thrown up as a barricade to protect the hierarchies of rich and poor. And rights, in reality, are intentions in our mind, and recognized codes of behavior, which we decide and debate.
So too is our system of economics and government subject to our intent, subject to our will, subject to the power of mind, which both perpetuates it and obstructs it.
Again, our system, founded on Rights, is a left over of Natural Theology, that God has an order that we're obligated to follow.
But as Marx, Bakunin, and all the others who Republicans and other geniuses consider to be close theoretical peers of Barack Obama realized, we make society, by our work, and we are at the same time, boxed in, pushed and pulled by the system we perpetuate without even intending to. We make it, and we can break it.
The history of recent European History (since the start of the common era) shows that progress to ever greater equality, and ever greater beneficial inclusion of more members of society is possible and desirable.
But stupid accusations of Socialism are still made by experts and the educated who themselves have no clear grasp on what they refer to, other than some simplistic categorization made up by those who oppose it (like a Satanist writing the dictionary entry for "Christian".)
Socialism, including Anarchism, Marxism, and Communism, are rich theoretical traditions that offer us new ways to think, and to live.
Socialism brings us to a clear view of our system, explanation for the persistence of poverty, of war, of exploitation, of betrayal of democracy.
Socialism is not some idealistic wishful thinking, it is a series of theoretical perspectives that give us a way to advance into the future, to advance over our present stage of history, and to get past such theological notions as our present understanding of "government," "rights", and "capitalism."
And in contrast, we have another future: The unplanned, the shrugged shoulders of American rulers.
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