"I think webDiplomacy's forums have radicalized both of us."
I've been a centrist start to finish.

I don't need to do any research to know I don't want to be a firefighter.

"If there's a weak/deteriorating middle class"

America's middle class is quite strong, although my history teacher, a member of the middle class herself, says she felt a marked decline in her well-being under the Obama administration. Before you call me out on all my teachers being liberal, she supports Hillary, and she's probably one of the most conservative teachers.

"I've been a centrist start to finish."

If you measure yourself by the attitudes of this forum, sure.

I come across much further to the left on this forum than I really am.

"America's middle class is quite strong"
Several economists cited by major candidates and key figures from several positions across the political spectrum would fundamentally disagree. The middle class is shrinking. The likelihood that someone born into poverty manages to escape poverty is the same now as it was 50 years ago, when the War on Poverty began, yet the lowest class is only growing, while wealth stratifies increasingly extremely. Deteriorating is the proper word. Paul Ryan wants a bipartisan fix, but the parties are a little too fundamentally stratified to work something out.

Maybe that says something about the "War on Poverty". The socialistic spending has hurt, not helped, the American economy. Notice the correlation.
http://www.heritage.org/~/media/images/reports/2010/b2427/b2427_chart1.ashx?w=500&h=547&as=1
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/files/2012/01/middle_class.gif

There is, though, a middle class where everyone is equally wealthy under complete communism. The drawback is that that middle class corresponds to poverty in a capitalist society.

Notice how the decline of the middle class was shallowest during the 1980s (Reagan)

"Raises the question in my mind of what will be done (if anything) with people who refuse to work in the socialist society Bernie and his supporters wish to impose. Forced labor camps? Expulsion from the country? Revocation of their EBT card and Section 8 subsidies? Or nothing?"

I really love the connotations the American right attach to the word socialism, it really is very funny, top quality entertainment. This is also a belter:

"Fact of the matter is, there are many people who would rather be, say, a video game tester than an office worker. If they are paid the same, who would choose the latter?"

Can we have some more please?

I'd just like to point out that communism was never meant to give people wealth equality. Its central desire has been moving past a system to create anew. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, none of them gave a damn about wealth equality.

"I really love the connotations the American right attach to the word socialism"

Vladimir Lenin once said, "The goal of socialism is communism." Socialism is just an intermediate step to accustom people from the free world to the fundamentally unfair and unsound economic and political philosophy called communism. And communism certainly does involve forced labor and exile.

"Can we have some more please?"

Sure, who would be willing into work in a sweaty mine deep down under the earth or a dirty factory when they could be in an air-conditioned office?

"Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, none of them gave a damn about wealth equality."

Since their governance have all failed, of course you are quick to disassociate them from your ideology now. However, as I explained above, socialism and communism are intricately tied.

"Since their governance have all failed, of course you are quick to disassociate them from your ideology now."
I'm not about wealth equality either. Again, mild social stratification is fine by me.

Leon1122,

Lenin and every other Marxist-Leninist leader would tell you that the stage of communism has not been achieved, as at that stage there is no longer a need for a dictatorship of the proletariat because world capitalism has been totally defeated. Under communism, the state withers away, so there is no need for "forced labor and exile" under such conditions, as socialist states would not have the problem of capitalist encirclement.

"Since their governance have all failed, of course you are quick to disassociate them from your ideology now."

I certainly don't wish to, but TrPrado is more or less correct. Equalization of wages was never sought. Stalin put this quite clearly:

"Every Leninist knows, if he is a real Leninist, that equalisation in the sphere of requirements and personal, everyday life is a reactionary petty-bourgeois absurdity worthy of some primitive sect of ascetics, but not of a socialist society organised on Marxist lines; for we cannot expect all people to have the same requirements and tastes, and all people to mould their personal, everyday life on the same model."

He further states:

"By equality Marxism means, not equalisation of personal requirements and everyday life, but the abolition of classes, i.e., a) the equal emancipation of all working people from exploitation after the capitalists have been overthrown and expropriated; b) the equal abolition for all of private property in the means of production after they have been converted into the property of the whole of society; c) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to the work performed (socialist society); d) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to their needs (communist society). Moreover, Marxism proceeds from the assumption that people's tastes and requirements are not, and cannot be, identical and equal in regard to quality or quantity, whether in the period of socialism or in the period of communism."

"Vladimir Lenin once said, "The goal of socialism is communism.""
You mean Vladimir "The Bolshevik Communist Party Is Everything" Lenin had an ideal of what socialism meant?? I'm shocked!
Socialism is an economic ideology, communism is a political one. The goal of communism may be socialism in a more overreaching precept, but the goal of socialism doesn't necessitate communism. Even before the turn of the 20th century, socialists were leaving Marxism and communism behind.

" Even before the turn of the 20th century, socialists were leaving Marxism and communism behind."

You are mistaken as to who left whom. The Marxists under the leadership of Lenin broke with the Second International because the non-Marxist socialists endorsed World War I. What the non-Marxist 'socialists' ended up leaving behind is socialism itself, one by one abandoning any commitment to it in their political programs and effectively becoming neoliberal parties. The socialists in France ended any pretense of socialism in the 1980s. The socialists in the UK ended any pretense of socialism with the rise of Tony Blair. The socialists in Germany ended any pretense of socialism with Schroeder's economic reforms.

It's funny how the anti-communist left always claims to be the authentic article when it comes to their political commitment relative to socialism but they always end up in the warm embrace of the political right, not just politically with their terrible politics on foreign policy but economically as well.

"Vladimir Lenin once said, "The goal of socialism is communism." Socialism is just an intermediate step to accustom people from the free world to the fundamentally unfair and unsound economic and political philosophy called communism. And communism certainly does involve forced labor and exile."

"However, as I explained above, socialism and communism are intricately tied."

Brilliant; and you see no irony in you accepting wisdom from Lenin?

"Sure, who would be willing into work in a sweaty mine deep down under the earth or a dirty factory when they could be in an air-conditioned office?"

Hehe, what does this even mean? Is this how you'd summarise the advantages that your advocated system has over your perception of a socialist system; the ability to choose office work or mine work? Might you be wittering?

From what I read and can glean from American media, Americans have no idea what Socialism is and mistakenly believe the USSR and Mao's China to have been Communist. The name does not make it what it is. The USSR and Mao's China had far more in common with the Fascist states of Nazi Germany and Franco's Spain.

As for those insisting they are centralists. I think you need to consider what the extremes are to be able to be in the centre. The more our societies move to the Right the more likely it is for centralists to be considered radical and extreme. If you want to stay in the centre you will have to move to the Right too.

As forces of power work to drive society further in either direction, and as the beliefs of society diverge from each other, embittering positions against each other further against each other, then the center itself becomes an increasingly radical position, and also becomes increasingly necessary for a rational society. The Radical Centrist is the most necessary individual in a place where less and less people occupy the center.

What drugs are you taking, Sunday, to think that society has moved to the right? The world we live in today is further left than any other time in post-Rome history. In what other era were Civil Rights, LGBT rights, welfare, and feminism so widespread and accepted? Never! Anyone who thinks we're moving right as a society is delusional and a perpetuator of the victim culture.