The National Socialists as Conservative Revolutionaries

There’s a hilarious scene in Caterina va in città in which the self-elected populist firebrand of a classroom full of 13 year-old bourgeois kids parodies their stodgy left-wing teacher, and their parlor-communist parents. He claims that it’s their social climbing, and their creaky Marxist clichés which represent the new reaction, and that it’s the skinhead generation who are the true radicals. The kid was too young to have heard the thugs of his grandfather’s generation singing Giovinezza, so I suppose you might look at his outburst as a comic take on the return of the repressed.

Anyway, there’s a lot of this sort of ideological inversion going on at the moment — makes you wonder if it isn’t far more common than cognitive categories established-after-the-fact usually take into account. And as it does seem to keep coming around again and again, I’m tempted to look at it as the very stuff of living in interesting times.

Some historical perspective is in order. Nationalism today generally considered a right wing impulse. From the perspective of 1930 though, to say nothing of 1910, this was much less clear. After all, nationalism spent the 19th century as a force on the left. In general, nationalists pushed for national unification of germany and Italy and the abolition of feudal prerogatives in favor of national systems in all countries. In general, they were opposed by aristocrats interested in preserving their traditional rights. Nationalists were often republican, but many found convenient allies in monarchs that wished to establish national systems of law, trade, education, etc. that were under their control not that of the provincial nobles.

Nationalism only starts to become a right wing movement in the interwar period, as what remains of the aristocratic classes abandon monarchism for it in the face of their failure and the success international socialist and communist movements. Essentially, if we accept a basic left right axis that looks like Communist -> Socialist -> Nationalist -> Monarchist/Aristocratic, the european overton window in 1910 looked something like this: Communist -> Socia|list -> Nationalist -> Monarchist/Aristocratic|, where by 1930, it looked more like this Commu|nist -> Socialist -> Nationalist -> Mon|archist/Aristocratic, and in 1950 like this: |Communist -> Socialist -> Nation|alist -> Monarchist/Aristocratic.

This is why we have such trouble defining fascism. If you advocated national socialism in 1910, you looked like a left wing revolutionary. By 1950, you were on the right. But in 1930, when all of this was still unfolding, the picture was a lot less clear.

“It’s also a classic left-wing trope. I’m sure there won’t be any left-right parliamentary politics in Marx’s communist utopia. Communism transcends all that. But I think it’s safe to say it, itself, is still left-wing.”

True, but only after class distinctions have been erased. Marx’s communist world is one in which class conflict is resolved decisively in favour of the working class. The Nazis offered a Volksgemeinschaft in which class conflict was to be resolved by compromise and obedience — and did so in alliance with the establishment. Similar story with Mussolini, I believe.

@15:

Umm… it comes in because it was an actual piece of Nazi ideology, ( a grotesque hodge-podge as it was), involving the mythic-archaic resurrection of the German nation and thus the adoption of the name for the Soviet invasion. Since yesterday was VE day and the Russian celebration was disgracefully boycotted by the neo-cons, (since it was the Red Army wot done it, with 80% of German causalities occurring on the Eastern Front) , I don’t think this exercise in the erasure of historical memory is particularly useful. Obviously, political-ideological categories and cognitions, let alone actual states-of-affairs, are historically variable.But that doesn’t excuse such erasures of historical memory, or at least, accurate scholarship. Nor most-modern “playfulness” and the evacuation of meaning from words.

I think I’ve said this here before: why are you, John Holbo, engaging in actual straw-man arguments? By which I don’t mean that you are making such arguments, but rather that you are engaging and arguing with actual straw-men, “hollow men, head pieces filled with straw”, such as J. Goldberg, as if they would have any credibility or historical knowledge or intellectual acumen. Because this series just belabors the obvious about the thoroughly reactionary character of fascism/Nazism, (though such terms shouldn’t be identified with every version of right or left authoritarianism), which is well-worn in any serious scholarly understanding of the matter. What do you think has changed since, that we would revise such judgments? And what do you think can be gained from arguing with such obviously faulty opponents? Is it because you want to vindicate your (neo?)liberal “reflective equilibrium” and immunize yourself against the possible or actual horrors of this world?

By 1918 the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) — the General Staff of the Imperial German Army — was all but in the hands of General Ludendorff.

Realising that Germany had lost the war (there were mutinies in the Imperial Navy base in Wilhelmshaven, and among frontline troops, plus mass surrender of German army units) Ludendorff did not want to be the one to sue for peace with the Allies. Incapable of convincing the Kaiser, the solution Ludendorff found was to promote a civilian government to replace the Kaiser and to sue for peace.

That’s where Friedrich Ebert and the SPD (plus other parties) enters the stage. Unlike the pacifists Luxemburg and Liebnecht, Ebert and the SPD had remained in Parliament, as reward for their support for the war. They were a good possibility.

When the Army approached them, Ebert accepted their offer.

Ludendorff (and the Kaiser himself) left the country and contributed greatly to create the Stab-in-the-Back Legend which would come back to haunt not only Jews and Communists, but also Social Democrats (and even some conservative politicians who joined the peace negotiations). So, what Liebnecht and Scheidemann did was just to proclaim what was a fait accompli: the monarchy was dead.

I suppose Ebert saw himself as the German Kerensky. But, given Kerensky’s precedent, Ebert was afraid things would get out of hand (after the February Revolution, Kerensky had to confront the October Revolution). So Ebert sent Gustav Noske to pre-emptively suppress not only the communists (who just a few years back had been his friends or at least fellow party members), but also the more radical social democrats. And that Noske did, with gusto too, with the help of the Freikorps.

Was Ebert trying to save the Weimar Republic, or just HIS Weimar Republic?

Perhaps Ebert thought he was gaining some degree of credibility, some leverage, with his new masters. If that was the case, he was in for a disappointment: those people tend to have little in the way of gratitude.

Today the German SPD named a foundation in memory of their hero, the Social Democrat traitor and murderer.

It is also interesting to read Victor Serge’s dispatches when he was in Germany in the early 1920s. He makes clear the fight between the Socialists inside the German government and the Communists of which he was then a member (after having been much more associated before the 1917 Russian Revolution with the Anarchists). Serge’s dispatches reveal the manner in which the Socialists were part of a bourgeois business oriented coalition. Yes, there is a propaganda purpose behind his dispatches for the Red newspaper for which he was writing, but it is classic Serge in many ways and as usual enlightening.

How do other German far-right groups at the time compare? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_National_People%27s_Party

I’d be surprised if there is any significant party in history that hasn’t had a political platform that was ultimately incoherent, and promised different things to different people. In the febrile free-for-all of the Weimar years, this would have been especially true: the many political parties of the era changed names, ideologies, alliances and everything else, all the time. (Even the SPD and the KPD were not always consistent).
I think that, if you take the 1932 elections as a guide, it would be true to say that a majority of Germans opposed the continuation of the Weimar Republic: the battle was really over what kind of system would replace it, and how violent that process would be. It was, after all, a regime which had arrived with bewildering speed, and which implied a total change in society and politics. Its origins coincided with a disastrous defeat and it effectively ended with a disastrous economic collapse. The 50% of the 1932 electorate that voted for the Nazis or the KPD supported parties calling for revolutionary action to overthrow the regime. Several of the traditional right-wing parties would have at least happily connived at a military coup. In that sense, most German political parties at the time can be said to have been “revolutionary”.
A “conservative revolutionary” party is, indeed, not necessarily an oxymoron. Right-wingers of all persuasions felt it was necessary to support and strengthen (“conserve”) things like the family, the Army and the Church, which they saw as the foundations of the country, and to be under threat. Most of them believed that some kind of violent political change (“revolution”) would be necessary to stop and reverse the process of disintegration they saw taking place.
The Nazis were prepared to work with the Army, at least in the short term, and they largely left the Church as an institution alone. They strongly supported the family because of the need to breed lots of soldiers. Conserving German strength, unity and racial purity required revolutionary means. It also required the end of divisive party politics (and Weimar politics were pretty divisive), and a new political system with a visionary leader who could overcome differences of left and right in creating an organic national community. Or something like that, anyway. Obviously the “third way” is a tired modern political trope, but I think the Nazis actually meant it – they saw the creation of a national community as transcending all divisions and making them irrelevant. But you can get lost forever in these distinctions, which is why, perhaps, it’s simplest to say that, at the time, the Nazis were universally considered a right-wing political party, and just leave it at that.

Ack, this whole thing has a humpty-dumpty feel to it, because for some completely unknown reason we are trying to absolutely smash every possible political impulse into a single right-left dimension which barely had coherence in hundreds-of-years-ago France, definitely doesn’t mean the same thing in nation-to-nation comparisons, and doesn’t have nearly as many clear markers over time as people seem to think. The discussion is further confused by the fact that people clearly allow huge amounts of slippage in the terms without giving any hint about which terms are meant at which times and for which reasons.

So we get things like: ”

I agree with Cassander that it’s a bit hard to say when nationalism went from being a generally left-wing force to a generally right-wing force. And that it has to do with moving from the period in which nationalism is about unifying formerly feudal territories into the period in which it is about resisting any sort of internationalism. But I’m not sure this is the central puzzle here. Just one of many. And, for the record, I wasn’t defining fascism.

I think by 1930, if not by 1910, nationalism was a definite marker of right-wing politics.”

I’m not really picking on it because it is wrong (though it clearly is wrong, USSR in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, Vietnam, North Korea at the time of the Korean War, China–to echo what you say at the end of the main post, just because you preached international revolution abroad doesn’t mean you didn’t employ enormous doses of nationalism to scare people/motivate people at home) I want to point out that it strongly suggests that the right/left distinction just isn’t that useful. If you want to get at what animated the Nazis, NATIONALISM would be a great place to look. In fact it might be 5-10x more useful to look at than the allegedly super-important right-left distinction. Nationalism is what allowed the Nazis to effectively deploy huge amounts of their ‘othering’ propaganda. Nationalism is what let them talk about the humiliations of the Weimar government.

I know we like things simple, but honestly there are more than two things in the world of politics. (And yes I’ve seen the study which allegedly puts all of the US political spectrum on a right-left axis. But it does so by defining things Republicans vote for as right wing and things Democrats vote for as left wing. There are all sorts of things for which that method of sorting has no obvious right-left reason behind it. Abortion, climate change, environmentalism, and religion being the most obvious that leap to mind).

I strongly recommend everyone not engaging with someone who is dumb/ malicious enough to call himself Joseph McCarthy.

Unless, of course, that is his real name, in which case I only disagree with him, and apologize for the name thing.

Wait, there’s someone on here using ‘Joseph McCarthy’ as a nym non-ironically!? Good times!

The left-right axis has been mostly about the extent to which one wants change towards greater equality, away from traditional inequality. That’s what it was about in 1789, when right meant absolutism and inherited hierarchy and left meant liberal constitutionalism. When there appeared people who demanded things like the abolishment of monarchy and universal suffrage, it was natural that they were said to be farther on the left than the earlier constitutionalists. When there appeared people who wanted to abolish not only political but also economic inequality, they were naturally identified as being even farther to the left. State control of the means of production was “leftist” inasmuch as it was supposed to achieve greater equality and thus to be a continuation of liberal political egalitarianism.

The Nazis did not want to abolish traditional inequality and hierarchy. Their ideology was based on the claim of inherent inequality between what they called races of humans, partly corresponding to traditional ethnicities. Their goal was to (re-)impose the natural hierarchy between these races, where in some cases the lowest position in the hierarchy was just death and extinction. Their ideal means for this (and their ideal condition in general) was a society structured like an army, with iron discipline, a clear hierarchy of subordination and worship of the leader. It was the *opposite* of what “the left” had stood for since 1789. In many ways, their ideal was an imaginary pre-modern state, with an absolute monarch, a state religion and a clear hierarchy, everything kept coherent by (a somewhat fabricated) tradition; except this time the whole thing was supposed to be somehow more modern, more efficient and even a bit scientific. When you add the fact that there was a clear continuity with various similar ideological currents (nationalist militarism + traditionalist authoritarianism) that had been influential in the actual Wilhelmine monarchy, it’s not surprising that the Nazis were generally identified as right-wing. It’s a separate issue why various leftist movements, most notoriously Communist ones, have occasionally gone back, in various respects, to hierarchies very similar to the ones the left was originally defined ”against”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassander

@John Holbo

>Conservatives would never have done that.

Soldiers have been given booze before battle for centuries, and both the US and Brits handed out “pep pills” like candy, particularly in the Air Forces, who had to fly very long combat missions.

Fantastic series of posts, and John Holbo is to be thanked for some quite painstaking explanation. Since we’re now on the subject, I’ll chime in to recommend Alfred Döblin’s multi-volume November 1918: A German Revolution as a supplementary literary treatment. (My English edition comes in two volumes, A People Betrayed and Karl and Rosa, but I believe the original German came in four parts.) I’m particularly reminded of it by Magpie’s analogy of Ebert to Kerensky, as Döblin’s thesis seems to have wandered between “the German revolution failed because Germany had no Lenin” and “the Revolution never came to Germany because Germany is full of Germans.”

The character of Ebert is fictionalized but seemingly pretty accurate, and the constraints and dilemmas that faced the Weimar governments were convincingly portrayed. (The chapters with Noske and the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg are chilling.)

F. Foundling @34

The left-right axis has been mostly about the extent to which one wants change towards greater equality, away from traditional inequality. That’s what it was about in 1789, when right meant absolutism and inherited hierarchy and left meant liberal constitutionalism. When there appeared people who demanded things like the abolishment of monarchy and universal suffrage, it was natural that they were said to be farther on the left than the earlier constitutionalists. When there appeared people who wanted to abolish not only political but also economic inequality, they were naturally identified as being even farther to the left. State control of the means of production was “leftist” inasmuch as it was supposed to achieve greater equality and thus to be a continuation of liberal political egalitarianism.

The substantive point here is defensible, but (at the risk of being pedantic) the terms “left” and “right” to designate positions on a political or ideological spectrum did not even exist, as far as I’m aware, before the French Revolution. The terms, as I mentioned on a previous thread in a comment that (as best I can recall) was largely ignored, are a result of where different factions chose to sit in the revolutionary assemblies. (I’m sure the details are readily available from Wiki or elsewhere.) I’m actually not sure that that original left/right distinction maps neatly onto F. Foundling’s ‘equality’ axis. As the original context faded, over time the terms took on more general, if always somewhat contested, meanings.

>What about the top 1 percent’s share, and the top .01 percent’s share?

The top 1 and .1 percent are part of the top 20 percent. This means that if the top 20 are paying more, and everyone else less, then, at at worst, any gains the top 1 or .1 are making are coming entirely at the expense of the 19 or 19.9. But in any case, even that does not appear to be happening. the top 1% has seen incomes rise from 9 to 14%, taxes from 14 to 24%, or an income increase of 55% and a tax increase of 71%

cassander
But in any case, even that does not appear to be happening. the top 1% has seen incomes rise from 9 to 14%, taxes from 14 to 24%, or an income increase of 55% and a tax increase of 71%

It’s not the *percentage* in tax increase and *percentage* of income increase that matters, it’s the net result of the inflation-adjusted actual numbers (not percentages) for the overall distribution of income. (Not to mention wealth, which is distinct from income.) Anyway, the rise in inequality in income and wealth distribution since 1980 is well documented/established, so I shdnt have taken the bait.

35: Since 1980, “Social Security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance have all been expanded, sometimes multiple times, and new entitlements have been created.”

This is almost as far from the truth as the claim that the Nazis looked out for workers and opposed the capitalists.

The left/right distinction tells us something, but it’s mostly evident in where the Nazis’ allies came from – the army, the industrialists, the petty bourgeoisie: all firmly “rightist” (much the same for Mussolini and Franco). It’s much less evident in the Nazi program, for this harkened back to an older, magical, style of thought, one where quasi-religious pollution, crusades, organic conceptions of society and similar held sway.

Tangential note: I’m reading Lacey Baldwin Smith on treason in Tudor politics. In a world-view that made little room for chance (everything was either God’s divine order or a result of the devil’s corrupting wiles), when things went wrong, it had to be the result of someone’s doing. When the obvious culprits were too few or weak to produce the wrongs visible, then there had to be hidden culprits. A reasoning that bred a politics of paranoia. There are some parallels with the Weimar/Nazi eras (and with Stalin’s Russia, and maybe the Tea Party?): the times were out of joint, reason was at a loss, the witch-finder re-emerged.

@cassander:

“The top 1 and .1 percent are part of the top 20 percent. This means that if the top 20 are paying more, and everyone else less, then, at at worst, any gains the top 1 or .1 are making are coming entirely at the expense of the 19 or 19.9. But in any case, even that does not appear to be happening. the top 1% has seen incomes rise from 9 to 14%, taxes from 14 to 24%, or an income increase of 55% and a tax increase of 71%”

So, that means a net loss of income for that 1%/ .1%, right?

They are so fucking broke. Boo-hoo.

I love the way you right-wing nut-bags play with numbers to make it appear the 1% are such fucking victims. Inequality is so obviously not a thing.

You are such an idiot.

But pretty smart, unfortunately.

@cassander:

What? What does that have to do with the issue at hand; that there is extreme inequality in the world, and that there are vomit-encrusted homeless people who have more humanity in their little fingers than any POS billionaire (or you, or me) have in their entire beings.

I like the way you avoid what is really at issue:

Are the rich getting richer, or not? Are the poor getting poorer, or not?

Is there something else at issue I’m not aware of? Enlighten me.

What do tax rates have to do with the matter?

Nothing.

Given the issue of gross inequality, nothing you have to say, in defense of libertarian capitalism, is dispositive of anything.

Here’s the thing: If one child is born into poverty and another into wealth (“The Prince and the Pauper”, e.g.), is that, for you, “just the way it is”? If so, why?

I had a rich friend who stood to inherit his father’s 6,000 acre farm here in SE MO. He was pissed about the “death tax”. I wanted to know why I didn’t have the right to inherit his dad’s “property”, or why some share-cropper’s kid didn’t have the right to inherit the property. Why did he have a “right” to it? He didn’t have an answer to that, other than that he was “the son”.

All you fanatical capitalist dip-shits: why are you always the son?

“people like you who’ve never developed an understanding of the world more nuanced than a 6 year old angry that someone has a nicer toy than him.

There is a substantial difference between having a toy and having the quantity of food that allows one to live. That’s what you and your ilk never seem to grasp.

[btw, I just finished listening to the Beatles’ “Oh, Darling”, which is like the greatest song ever, so there!*

Don’t even pretend to have a come-back.

Like Val, on another thread, I have just finished a couple glasses of cabernet, so give it up already.

You are so done!]

*To the CT gang: I just finished putting a piece 0f white melamine (pr0bably made in China; sorry, I can’t help it!) on the back of a white book-shelf type thing that houses an old-fashioned stereo system in my living-room (so you can’t see the wires!). It looks awesome and sounds great (old Yamaha DD 5.1 re-purposed to stereo, with some high-end Klipsch speakers) .

I know Belle is married, but she can come over and listen to music with me any time!

Tonight, besides The Beatles: Emmylou and The Louvin Brothers.

Yes, Satan is Real!

At the risk of returning to the subject, I think it’s instructive to think about Raymond Williams’ concept of the “historical escalator” in his book “The Country and the City.” Things look different depending on what step you are on. The “Left” in France in 1790-1794 has effectively nothing in common with the “Left” today, but there was nonetheless a clear distinction between their ideas and those of the “Right”. This distinction does actually make sense in terms of the logic of the Left/Right distinction today, even if the content has changed. In other words, the distinction is a relative and not an absolute one. Likewise, the Left in Germany in 1933 were not greatly concerned with issues such as gay marriage, whilst the Right were not neoliberal deregulators. But the relative distinction between them was nonetheless clear.
A small vignette: until the 1970s, the official position of the French Communist Party was to be against abortion: this owed much to the very strong opinions of Jeanette Vermeersch, the partner of the legendary Maurice Thorez, as well as to the innate conservatism (ha!) of the PCF’s working-class base. I doubt if such a position would be acceptable today in even a right-wing party, in most western countries.

Cassander #35: “Well, since 1980, the top 20% of tax payer’s share of income has risen from 45 to 50% while their share of all federal taxation has risen from 55 to 70%.”

Misleading. In the US, total taxes are almost flat. a discussion of inequality which uses only federal taxation is misleading. We should use total taxes, federal state and local combined, as well as adding back in after-tax transfers to everybody, to look at the total burden.

As everyone should know by now, the total tax burden in the US has been flat, or nearly flat, for quite some time (with the exception of the bottom quintile). This is because state taxes, local taxes, and federal payroll taxes are more regressive than the federal income taxes, and because the upper quintiles get more transfers than lower.

Let’s take them by quintile. These latest figures are from a more “left” tax advocacy group, but “right” tax advocacy groups have come to the same conclusions.

Percentages of total after-tax income:
Top1/5-61%, 4th1/5-18%, middle1/5-11%, 2nd-1/5-8%, bottom1/5-3%.

Percentage of income taken by total taxes, federal+state+local:
Top1/5-32%, 4th1/5-30%, middle1/5-27%, 2nd1/5-23%, bottom1/5-19%.

This is highly unequal (and it bears more a bit more heavily on the 4th quintile, people who usually call themselves “middle class”). It would be highly unequal even if we used your figure of 50% for the top qunitle, which is after ONLY federal tax and transfer.

It gets worse when we break out parts of the top quintile. Compare, say, the top 1% with the 2nd quintile:

Top 1%: Average income $1.7 million, share of total after-tax&transfer income 22%, share of total taxes 23%, taxes as percentage of income 32.6%.

2nd quintile: Average income $30,500, share of total after-tax&transfer income 7%, share of total taxes 5%, taxes as percentage of income 23%.

So, for each group, the share of total after-tax&transfer income = share of total taxes (or almost equals), while the top 1% pays about 1/3 of $1.7 million in taxes, and the 2nd quintile pays about 1/4 of $30,500 in taxes.

Joseph, as my old science teacher used to say – ‘do not speak of love, DO it!’ If you are right and I am wrong, you should be able to write a fine, revisionist history of the Weimar period, based on your insights into how all the things I say are upside down and backwards. So do it, already. Proof is in the pudding.

I never said I want to write any history, so don’t build a straw-man. Hitler received some supported by industrialists, verbally opposed marxism and communism and wooed masses with national sentiments, that is all correct. What I am trying to present is that political statements (nazis wanted that, commies wanted that) are just a theoretical category which does not necessarily have anything to do with reality. And political alliance is just that: a form of statement.

So Hitler and Stalin were allies, does that make Stalin right-wing? Many communist parties around the world played on or hid behind the mask of national sentiment, does that make them right-wing? Communist ideologues often spoke of the decadent western culture, does that make it traditionalist and right-wing? This author http://bit.ly/1K1p7uL compiled the data about western investment in bolshevik Russia – does this make Soviet Union a right-wing regime?

The reason why national and international socialism fit in the same basked is in their practice and not the vague theoretical statements of their proponents, but the practice which was initiated with French Revolution: appeal to masses with superiority feelings just because they are addressed by the ideology (proletariat, Aryan race), baiting them with utopic messages (equality, world domination), inciting hate to the advertised obstacles of achieving utopia and totalitarian state control with politicization of everyday life.

Even George Orwell was not right: national socialism did not appeal (only) to establishment who had something to lose, but to the masses who saw no future in present Weimar Germany; that’s why they subordinated their lives so easily and willingly to the savior in the form of ideology. That’s how also part of german aristocratic establishment felt, most notably Prusian military generals who saw in Hitler an incompetent nuthead and a man of the herd.

That’s why the comments such as:

The Nazis did not want to abolish traditional inequality and hierarchy. Their ideology was based on the claim of inherent inequality between what they called races of humans, partly corresponding to traditional ethnicities. Their goal was to (re-)impose the natural hierarchy between these races, where in some cases the lowest position in the hierarchy was just death and extinction. Their ideal means for this (and their ideal condition in general) was a society structured like an army, with iron discipline, a clear hierarchy of subordination and worship of the leader. It was the *opposite* of what “the left” had stood for since 1789. In many ways, their ideal was an imaginary pre-modern state, with an absolute monarch, a state religion and a clear hierarchy, everything kept coherent by (a somewhat fabricated) tradition; except this time the whole thing was supposed to be somehow more modern, more efficient and even a bit scientific.

can easily be constructed analogically for commies:
they did not treat burgeoise as equal human beings which deserved to stay alive. They tried to establish a hierarchy, where the bottom position was just gulag and execution. Their ideal means for this (and their ideal condition of permanent revolution in general) was a society structured like an revolutionary army, with iron discipline, a clear hierarchy of subordination and worship of the leader. It was NOT the *opposite* of what “the left” had stood for since 1789, just the definition of humans was broader than that of the nazis, which concerned their ideology around single race. In many ways, their ideal was an imaginary pre-modern state, with an absolute monarch, a state religion and a clear hierarchy, everything kept coherent by (a somewhat fabricated) tradition; except this time the whole thing was supposed to be somehow more modern, more efficient and even a bit scientific.

Furthermore, expansionistic wars are also well tied to the birthplace of the Left – the Napoleonic wars of spreading Revolution around the globe with “right-wing” appeal to French national sentiment.

Another quote-play:

As for the question how relevant the Commie’s affiliation is for the present-day – well, I personally think it might be good to know that people who fervently and unquestioningly support the government role in society, are so patriotic as to believe in the exceptionalism of their class and like to advocate the abandonment of basic principles such as private property and the rule of law as conceits of the bleeding hearts just MAY occasionally be up to no good and HAVE sometimes been known to mass execute their fellows. Just a useful piece of information.

So yes, the distinctions between national and international socialism is in practice unrecognizable, which many survivors behind the iron curtain actually experienced, as the survival of national socialist concentration camps was awarded by communist show trials and imprisonment when returning to their home countries.

cassander@23 When I write of crossing borders and exclusion within the borders, I am the one talking about the “context of the environment.” Your supposed rebuttal is inane. Insofar as you say anything sensible, you agree with me. Which makes me reconsider whether I’m wrong. Hmmm…

No, a leftwing nationalist regime does not simply switch policies and begin targeting some domestic group or mobilizing the nation for aggressive war against other nations. There is always some sort of political shift, maybe a drastic one, possibly even a violent one. Parties, personnel, institutions, propaganda undergo a change.

Sebastian H@26 At one point you cite North Korea in the Korean War as an example of nationalism on the part of a supposedly internationalist socialism. I think you’re mistaken in taking this sort of nationalism as somehow the same animal as the Nazi nationalism that justified invading other countries. I think we have to start distinguishing nationalism. And if we do that in any useful sense, we’re back to left/right distinctions.

Joseph McCarthy@27 ” I doubt you will find examples of WW1-time states organizing people’s free time (Kraft durch Freude), reproduction (Lebensborn) and organizing mass rallies, which goes along with politicization of culture as stated above.” Bond sales were mass rallies. Kids were organized to collect scrap metals etc. Most of all of course, laws against contraceptive most certainly organizes reproduction. I know it’s not baseball, but that’s still three strikes.

Sebastian H@43 “I’m not sure you meant to point it out, but it might be clearer to say ‘The left-right axis has been mostly about the extent to which one changes toward greater non-traditional inequality from traditional inequality.’ At least in practice. And I know from the treatment of libertarians that ‘in practice’ trumps in theory. Right?”

Since the acceptance of nouveaux riches and career open to talents are manifestations of non-traditional hierarchies are what you’re talking about, no, I don’t think this is a sound generalization at all. I think it is quite obfuscatory, the kind of thing that celebrates the Whigs of 1689 as the high point of the Left. I suppose that leaves stuff like the Putney debates off the map as inconceivable. But that may be the point.

As for the rich paying a larger part of the tax revenue, this factoid almost certainly ignores sales taxes, and state and local taxes generally. In general of course tax revenue will have to come from the people with the money. So yes, in an increasingly unequal society more and more taxes will have to come from the rich. You can’t get blood from a stone.

The tags “left” and “right” are accidents of the seating arrangements. But whether you want to replace them with reactionary and progressive, or enlightened and counterenlightenment, or egalitarian and hierarchical, or socialist and capitalist, or even internationalist and nationalist, doesn’t matter so much. The rough divide still obtains in modern times. And no, a “nationalism” that repudiates the sovereign right of conquest is not nationalism in any clarifying sense of the word.

F Foundling’s posts are very good I think.

I see you weren’t arguing it was, but really the idea of “traditional hierarchies” runs into the same difficulties as the idea of the decency of wealth.

^^^I agree that exclusion of the nouveaux riches to the seats of power (and the exclusion of the impoverished nobles) and ministries closed to talents and only reserved to names, is an irrational approach to defining the Right versus the Left. That’s what I was objecting to in Sebastian H’s formulation, which I thought fatally ambiguous on this point.

I just wanted to say I appreciate the whole barbarossa discussion, as my muddy level of knowledge up to this point had me thinking it was russian for redbeard (smacks forehead)!

Oh, and William Berry with the wine and Beatles.

I think the two best books to answer this are micro and macro, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, by William Sheridan Allen (revised 1984), and a statistical analysis, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 by Thomas Childers (1983).

These both show without question that the Nazis came in as a center-right party against the workers and the left, playing up economic animosity toward both big business (including Jewish finance) and big government, while leaving the small bourgeois businessmen alone. I believe you can read the conclusion of Childers book on the Amazon page, and it is quite clear.

The small businessmen were left alone, that is, other than needing to pay lip-service to the promise of a transcendent cultural unification, which Goebbels called “socialist”.

Thus it seems to me that the Nazis, certainly Goebbels, used the word “socialist” to mean the same thing as what the Italians were calling “fascism”. If somebody has pointed this out above, sorry to repeat.

Of course, “right” and “left” are directional signposts, going back to the 18th-century transformation into a new, non-aristocratic social order, composed of individuals who are propertied and those who are not. (We are still firmly ensconced in this new era.)

Before that, for millennia, there were haves and have-nots certainly, but what was different was that you were NOT an individual: the social order was static, derived from God descending through aristocracy and so on, and your virtue was partly in keeping your own place in it, whether king or peasant.

This new total-market economy, which started cooking by the 19th century, started to have its own problems immediately of course, quite before government intervention.

I think that it was Karl Polanyi who first pointed out that fascism was in some sense a certain (i.e. perhaps historically evanescent) kind of right-wing response to the failure of the democratic total-market system. The lefty social democrats had become part of Weimar and thus, for the petty bourgeois, were already a part of the economic problem. (Think the British election.)

The fascists cannot obtain a purchase on the electorate unless there is extreme economic discontent; extreme enough, that is, to discomfit the right-wing lower bourgeoisie. The fascists rode in on the Depression and/or inflation, and indeed there are fascist parties burbling again in Europe.

The left, on the other hand, is ALWAYS discontent with the market system, because there are have-nots even when the market is working at its best, and when everybody is trying hard — as we see now. For the left, the problem is base-structural. (As it may well be.)

It’s pretty clear that Goebbels was happy to rail against big capitalism and bankers, perhaps because in pepping-up the small shopkeepers, he might also gather up some of the workers who were thus discontent. The only thing he was really in favor of, was the Cause — and for him, that was Hitler.

This gets us into the “great man” component of the whole mess, which sometimes accompanies the rightwing’s response to turmoil, which originated in some of the first counter-enlightenment thinkers, and which may be one of the many varieties of Romanticism.

The left just doesn’t have this, in the same way. Communism had plenty of dictators of course, including a few who wanted to be worshipped, but they all espoused the program of establishing a new society according to certain intellectual principles.

This was all but lacking with the Nazis and the other fascists, who instead were promoting a return to conservative, age-old principles of the Volk and so on, which the leader was recalling them to engage, in order to attain their rightful status as the chosen ones, and for which a special strongman is needed as model and judge thereof.

We see a partial reworking of this phenomenon in Reaganism. Reagan certainly did not claim himself to be a “great man”; I do not mean that. But he preached a variation on a rhetorical form called the “American jeremiad”, which goes: 1. America’s special destiny as the promised land, it’s covenant with God; 2. America’s failure to live up to that obligation, its retrogression; and 3. If America repents and reforms, the promise can still be fulfilled.

Secondly and significantly, Reagan is now virtually deified by US conservatives.

There is simply nothing like this is on the left. It is peculiar to the right. The left really doesn’t have a figure from any nation which it worships in the same way. Far from it, the left is usually involved in cutting each other down.

I wasn’t suggesting you wanted to write any history. I was pointing out that you needed to, to make your position plausible. It is entirely up to you whether you choose to do so at some point in the future.

That not at all necessary. My position is the exposal of similarities between both socialisms and French Revolution and not historical details of alliances, statements, political campaign appeals – because as I said, all this is thoroughly convoluted in politics due to the pursuit of its main interest: a seizure of power; not philosophical coherence. Relying on alliances is the same type of argument as those being criticized in these 3-part series: “Hitler said he learned a lot from Marx, so he must be Marxist”. Similarly, the driver which wishes to compare the experience of electric and internal combustion car does not need the knowledge of their historical developments.

Joseph McCarthy@27 ” I doubt you will find examples of WW1-time states organizing people’s free time (Kraft durch Freude), reproduction (Lebensborn) and organizing mass rallies, which goes along with politicization of culture as stated above.” Bond sales were mass rallies. Kids were organized to collect scrap metals etc. Most of all of course, laws against contraceptive most certainly organizes reproduction. I know it’s not baseball, but that’s still three strikes.

I will leave the first two “strikes” as they are because it’s just (mildly put) funny to compare mass rallies with bond sales etc… but I would like to remark that banning (or maybe you ment just absence of state financing?) contraception is definitely NOT *organizing* of *reproduction*. The first is the contradiction in the meaning: organizing has a meaning of action, of urging people to do something. Banning has a negative meaning, of absence or prevention of action. Secondly, contraception by itself is a way to avoid reproduction, not to organize one. Comparing state encouraging people to have sex with strangers and fully organizing the mother- and childcare with contraception ban is like comparing gas chambers with state ban of cremation.

And no, a “nationalism” that repudiates the sovereign right of conquest is not nationalism in any clarifying sense of the word.

That is not true.

Forget it, steven, it’s Joe McCarthy.*

Consciously or unconsciously, the ‘nym choice itself represents the embrace of nescience.

*For crying out loud.

@35 cassander 05.11.15 at 1:32 am:

Well, since 1980, the top 20% of tax payer’s share of income has risen from 45 to 50% while their share of all federal taxation has risen from 55 to 70%.

That seems in line with the increase in progressivity of incomes over those years. Those cherry-picked figures from an anti-tax organization keep showing up here on CT, but the deficiencies of that report never seem to be addressed. This is more-precisely worded than previous cassander efforts:

In “Entitlements and expropriation”, cassander 04.25.15 at 1:23 am:

… it’s basic math. in 1979, the richest 20% had 45% of the income and paid 55% of taxes. today, they have 50% of income and pay 70% of taxes. And that is all federal taxes, not just income taxes, the top 20% pay 92% of income taxes, compared to 65% back when the top rate was 70%.

In “Ferguson, disorder, and change”, cassander 08.20.14 at 9:58 pm:

the upper 20% of tax payers have about 50% of income. they pay about 70% of taxes. and that is not income taxes, that is all federal taxes. That number, by the way, is up dramatically in recent decades. in 1979, that same group made about 45% of all income, but only paid 55% of taxes, despite a 70% top rate.

One imprecision in the wording has not yet been eliminated. It’s still not all federal taxes. However, it is a pretty good attempt.

If the deception bears repeating, I suppose the reply can be formed with cut/paste, paraphrase, rewrite and add to the mostly-ignored replies that have already been made. Back in August, I dug into the CBO report, notes, attachments, appendices and supplementary documents.

For taxes, IRS information is used for federal payroll taxes and federal income taxes. Though the report covers households, 75% of Corporate Income Taxes are included in the tax figures, and are apportioned based on self-reported information gathered by US BLS and Census – IIRC, almost all of that Corporate Income Tax is apportioned to the top quintile…and added to the taxes “paid” by those households. Most other Federal taxes are estimated into quintiles based on the Census survey. I did not find with certainty whether gift and estate taxes are included, but most gift and estate taxes are paid by the quintile that can afford to give an individual a gift exceeding $14,000 (in 2014), or leave an estate exceeding US$5.34 millions (in 2014). Note also that taxes are negative numbers for the bottom quintile, as the conservative revolution has turned more social benefits into refundable tax credits over the past 40-ish years.

On income, the CBO report uses IRS data, and this misses some tax-advantaged earnings (which are usually available only to those in the top quintile). Census data is used to capture data that IRS might miss – in particular, transfer payments, most of which are recorded for the lower-income quintiles. That data:

…lacks detailed information on high-income households, it does not report capital gains, it underreports other income from capital, and it lacks information on the deductions and adjustments necessary to compute taxes.

…so this Census-survey data fills in a lot of income the IRS misses for the lower quintile(s), but does not compensate for what the IRS info misses for the upper quintile(s). Though their taxes were apportioned, Corporate Incomes are not included in the income figures. “Income” includes the estimated value of all transfer payments, cash or not, and 24% of the bottom-quintile’s income is the value of medical insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, employer-provided plans, state plans, etc.) From the similar employer- or government-provided medical plans, the top quintile’s income is increased by 0.09%. When that report starts to cover 2012, Obamacare subsidies will show up as income.

Corporate taxes are in the numerator, but corporate income is excluded from the denominator. Estate taxes may be in the numerator, but inheritance is excluded from the denominator.

An observation I have made from the very figures emperor cassander points to is that the top 1% have gone from 7.4% to 13% of all income included in that report (1979 to 2011). cassander’s response to that observation was:

and this is relevent [sic] to tax progressivity how?

Another common retort:

…the figures are straight from the CBO

…which is required to do as directed by Members of Congress – thus, the CBO has produced reports that were required to use the assumptions and methods provided by whomever orders the report.

I try to deal with the world as it is, not how I fantasize it were.

How about when someone cooks up some stats that coincide with that fantasy?

Like a politician, cassander addresses the question that cassander wants to address, and ignores the remaining questions.

cassanders gotta cassand, I guess.

Was just reading Tomas’ ‘On Post-Fascism’ and came across this gem, a quote from Fraenkel’s ‘The Dual State’. Seems germane for the end of the thread.

“The Autonomy of the Normative State (“homogeneous society”) was maintained in Nazi Germany in a limited area, mostly where the protection of private property was concerned (property of so-called Aryans, of course); the Prerogative State held sway in more narrowly political matters, the privileges of the Party, the military and the paramilitary, culture, ideology, and propaganda. The “dual state” was a consequence of the Schmittian decision of the new sovereign as to what was law, and what was not. But there was no rule by decree in the sphere reserved to capitalism proper, the economy. It is not true, therefore, that the whole system of Nazi or fascist governance was wholly arbitrary. The macabre meeting of the Normative and the Prerogative is illustrated by the fact that the German Imperial Railways billed the SS for the horrible transports to Auschwitz at special holiday discount rates, customary for package tours. But they billed them!”

Also, I realise there’s no point engaging with the likes of Senator McCarthy, but this: “Banning contraceptives is still not organizing state sex with strangers or forced collectivist housing with shared bedrooms and bathrooms” is some high-octane, rare-as-hen’s-teeth crankery, logical oddity aside, and ought to be preserved for posterity. I’d thought the old Bureau of Free Love hysteria was long extinct, to be found only in ancient newspaper clippings, but here it is.

Cassander #77: “…the amount taxed from the rich has risen FASTER than their share of income has increased.”

How can this be true? Here are figures from the conservative Tax Foundation for the top and bottom quintiles for combined federal-state-local effective tax rates, for both 2004 and 2015:

Bottom quintile 2004 –> 2015
Combined tax rate: 13% –> 12.8%

Top quintile 2004 –> 2015
Combined tax rate: 34.5% –> 35.5%

If rates have barely changed, yet top quintile incomes have increased enormously, how can it be true that “the amount taxed from the rich has risen FASTER than their share of income has increased”?

2004 (see page 24):
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/wp1.pdf

2015 (see page 5):
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/FF447%20-%20ITEP%20Rebuttal%202015_2.pdf

I might posit this as the core of conservatism, that there are both public and private spheres, and that private, civil, or social life while not necessarily hierarchical or fixed, is not an artifact, not a collective decision or subject for politics. It is natural, Divine, or simply fateful and so it should remain. The distribution of wealth and property being of course at the top of those natural endowments.

I like that statement. It relates to our previous debate with Mr. Holbo about the culture and politics. I would not say that private sphere is divine or fateful, but certainly it is no place for interference of politics. And it is not shaped by politics per se; human cultures were not shaped only by “collective decision”, but also from human nature and environmental factors, which is beautifully explained in Steven Pinkler’s book “Blank Slate”, who is otherwise a convinced liberal. Just to mention his convictions, because I have a slight feeling (did I mention that it is very slight) that some people here are more concerned with nicknames, groupings and parole calling than in actual content. So the Left somehow believes that every human activity falls into the category of politics and is therefore malleable; we just need a will to power to change ourselves and someday, all evils of the world will pass.

Also, I realise there’s no point engaging with the likes of Senator McCarthy, but this: “Banning contraceptives is still not organizing state sex with strangers or forced collectivist housing with shared bedrooms and bathrooms” is some high-octane, rare-as-hen’s-teeth crankery, logical oddity aside, and ought to be preserved for posterity. I’d thought the old Bureau of Free Love hysteria was long extinct, to be found only in ancient newspaper clippings, but here it is.

I don’t understand your problem. Is that the mentioning of the infamous social experiments of the first socialist state which tried to redesign basic human relationships? Or should I understand it in a way that mentioning Lebensborn is no problem to you, but if someone mentions “Bureau of Free Love”, then that’s hysteria?

Well, expose away, I guess. (Which gets us back to ‘do not speak of love, do it!’) Is it all just down to your notion that all totalitarianisms must be on the left. The National Socialists were totalitarians, therefore they are leftists? That’s pretty much it for you?

National socialism clearly was the thing of the crowds, just like the French Revolution. It was not a military coup or monarchial absolutism. After all, Hitler was democratically elected, in which he succeeded by using the methods of the Left (French Revolution): the method of crowds and masses, raging against an enemy, who is depicted as the reason for their misery, and towards the honey-bait of the served utopia. So clearly to me, national socialism is a type of leftist totalitarianism. Not to repeat the social experiments and other similarities which I listed in previous posts.

Well, it seems like you are not really interested in debating left-right, then. Because left-right is, for better or worse, thoroughly tangled up in this stuff.

You picked the criterium of alliances, where there is no clear line of loyalty or philosophical coherence, just as signing a contract does not mean that the parties will abide by it. I picked the methods and functioning of the regimes in reality.

“I would not say that private sphere is divine or fateful, but certainly it is no place for interference of politics.”

Ah, I fear you are out of luck then. And voting conservative won’t make it any better.

Better try to prove the consistency of “everything in human culture is politics” theory as I asked you a few posts before…

“So clearly to me, national socialism is a type of leftist totalitarianism.”

Clearly so. But what is your argument? (I have given you mine. Fair is fair.) Your argument seems to be that Hitler was elected. That is 1) a half-truth at best. Really he seized power extra-judicially after being elected Chancellor. (They didn’t have elections for Führer.) 2) unclearly related to the conclusion that he was a leftist. 3) somewhat at cross-angles with the proposition that he was a totalitarian (which no one denies, but they don’t say it because he was elected.)

“the thing of the crowds”

Democracy = totalitarianism?

Hitler’s leftism is in the way he is similar to French (and any other) Revolutionaries: they both sold utopic entitlements to the crowds (equality, supremacy, …) that belong to them just because they are part of ideology. This combined with popular enemy (aristocracy / Jews) he used to seize and hold power. Furthermore, he did not necessarily need top-down violence to enforce his power: people themselves did that as they were brainwashed enough to harass and ostracize ideological enemies themselves (not only Jews, but also non-compliant Germans), similar to internal strifes during Great Terror.

Bringing up elections is not saying that democracy is per se totalitarian, but another hint that main part of his power did not come from aristocracy, but from mass support.

What I also find remarkable is that both movements started expansionistic wars in the name of ideology: Napoleonic Wars, World War 2 and Stalin’s quest for world socialism also comes to mind…

In Senate hearings, US Senators get to demand answers to their questions – without being obligated to answer questions themselves. Old habits die hard, it appears.

I think it overstates how anti-big business fascist movements are.

I.G. Farben? Volkswagen? Pirelli? These were all big industrial corporations. “Big business” doesn’t only mean banking and commerce (did fascists hate department stores and their owners, on principle?). Anyway, fascists in practice, rather than abolishing big business, concentrated on ensuring they would be managed by “the right sort of people.”

Nazi economic programs appealed more to the lower middle class than to the workers.

This is frequently explained in moral terms, rather than than economic ones. The lower middle class wished for a moral kind of life in which they could live “respectably,” and saw the Nazis as imposing this kind of order. They were barred from aspiring to the kind of bourgeois respectability that would require real money, and therefore defined respectability in terms they could attain, mostly sexual morality and public conformity.

The economic argument is a useful addition to that, but whatever the propaganda, the Nazis were not ever going to disenfranchise the wealthy, who had pleaded them in power precisely to prevent that happening. They therefore needed scapegoats to blame for circumstances they had no intention of changing.

bianca steele@99@100 Sorry for misreading.

David@101 In US context, there is no left which is taboo. Democrats are therefore called left, whereas all major political factions range from moderate conservative to cryptofascist. But calling part of this truncated spectrum “left” fosters an illusion of choice.

@LFC 05.11.15 at 3:06 am

>The substantive point here is defensible, but (at the risk of being pedantic) the terms “left” and “right” to designate positions on a political or ideological spectrum did not even exist, as far as I’m aware, before the French Revolution. The terms, as I mentioned on a previous thread in a comment that (as best I can recall) was largely ignored, are a result of where different factions chose to sit in the revolutionary assemblies. (I’m sure the details are readily available from Wiki or elsewhere.)

Of course, that’s what I was alluding to all along. In 1789, the reactionaries (aristocrats, absolutist royalists) were literally seated on the right. The revolutionaries were seated on the left. The other developments I mentioned generally translated into seat choice as well.

>I’m actually not sure that that original left/right distinction maps neatly onto F. Foundling’s ‘equality’ axis.

I’ve no idea how it could be seen as *not* mapping. The cause of the Third Estate in 1789 was egalitarian. The abolition of feudal privilege was egalitarian. The replacement of absolutism with constitutionalism and then with republicanism was egalitarian. The Montagnards were considered to be more egalitarian than the Girondins. In general, there *is* an actual continuity here, and that’s the point I’m trying to make. I *would* have supported these causes, if I were transported to 1789. And I’m pretty sure that many or most of the present-day right-wingers, if given just a little time to acclimatise, would appreciate the ancien régime Right, too, although most of them will deny it now.

@Cassander 05.11.15 at 2:22 am

>>As for the question how relevant the Nazi’s affiliation is for the present-day – well, I personally think it might be good to know that people who fervently and unquestioningly support their troops, are so patriotic as to believe in the exceptionalism of their nation and like to advocate the abandonment of basic principles of the rule of law as conceits of the bleeding hearts just MAY occasionally be up to no good and HAVE sometimes been known to make soap out of people. Just a useful piece of information

>You mean like these guys?

That’s a parade, not a political platform. But yes, I maintain that if someone’s political platform can be expressed, in a nutshell, as a grand military parade, deep trouble probably lies ahead.

>But hey, if you know of some political movement that doesn’t lionize warriors for the cause, I’m all ears.

“Warriors for the cause” is not the same thing as “your own nation’s military *regardless of the cause*”, which is what the line “Do YOU support the troops?” is about. “Fervently and unquestioningly” was a rather important qualification.

>>Of course it’s all a terrible coincidence. But no, we won’t burn the history books.

>And you’re on the end of the spectrum that spent decades supporting Stalin. And then Mao. And then Castro. And then Ho. And until 18 months ago, Hugo Chavez. I believe your traditional excuse has been “bad luck.”

Sure. But we aren’t the ones trying to rewrite history and say that these people were (generally, 100%, self-evidently) on the opposite side of the spectrum. On the other hand, it can be argued that most of them have, at one point or another, betrayed or compromised their leftism to various extents. I see no reason to be particularly ashamed about Chavez, though (that said, I may have missed some terrible mischief he engaged in 18 months ago, while lying in his grave). Or about opposing the actions of Western governments against Castro and Ho, for that matter.

@Sebastian H 05.11.15 at 2:54 am

>>“The left-right axis has been mostly about the extent to which one wants change towards greater equality, away from traditional inequality. “

>I’m not sure you meant to point it out, but it might be clearer to say “The left-right axis has been mostly about the extent to which one changes toward greater non-traditional inequality from traditional inequality.” At least in practice. And I know from the treatment of libertarians that “in practice” trumps in theory. Right?

Actually, I was more interested precisely in the theory and ideology here: what people officially advocate and promise. As for libertarians and other free-market worshippers, in my experience their position is usually not so much that their policies necessarily *won’t* lead to inequality or preserve it in practice; it’s just that they avoid emphasising that issue, because they claim to have other priorities to think about (certain “freedoms”, “sacred rights”, growth, etc.). Still, some will acknowledge their taste for it directly, whereas you have to dig a bit more deeply with others. Nazis and ancien regime reactionaries also like to stress other aspects of their policies (e.g. efficiency, stability, order, tradition, naturalness, holiness), while not explicitly denying the resulting inequality. In general, the conflict tends to be between a Left explicitly fighting for equality and a Right finding a myriad ever-changing reasons to oppose the Left.

As for the practice, I think left-wing policies have indeed generally decreased inequality compared to the previous condition. For example, I’m pretty satisfied with the abolition of absolute monarchy and hereditary feudal privileges, and I’d totally do it all over again if given the chance. :) I think the introduction of universal suffrage was quite an improvement, too. The welfare state was pretty nice as well. Even in Communist countries such as my own, where the leftist project clearly went catastrophically wrong in more than one way, economic equality did increase, while political equality usually either decreased to a lesser extent or didn’t change perceptibly compared to the previous situation.

@John Holbo 05.14.15 at 1:51 am
> left-right is a post-French Revolution formation, more or less.

The terms – sure. As for the actual opposition between populist and elitist politics, it was present in Ancient Greece and Rome, in Renaissance Italy, to various degrees in Civil War-era England, etc.. I dare say it has always existed and will always exist, for as long as there are humans. On the other hand, I guess that the association of the right with tradition and of the left with progress and rationality, which determine their present-day profiles to a great extent, began in the late 18th century.

@23 So left wing nationalism is peaceful and inclusive but right wing national is evil and aggressive? Is that really your level of analysis? Because it is demonstrably the case that left wing nationalists crossed borders to unify their countries, and nationalism, by definition, defines some group as “the nation” and others as “not the nation”.

For an example of left-wing nationalism see entry on N.S.F. Gruntvig p. 73-74, here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ghah5S3usnsC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=N.+F.+S.+Grundtvig+Nationalism&source=bl&ots=hyggxx1Zdw&sig=8CJaNQ1A8b10HAsuTflk47dIxLc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LC9UVYCrBIX5yQTKmYGABQ&ved=0CE8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=N.%20F.%20S.%20Grundtvig%20Nationalism&f=false

You claim you’ve read Steven Pinker. Then you should know that humans are social animals. How, then, are you proposing to (cleanly!) separate individual life from society? How are you going to (cleanly!) separate society from politics? No one ever has and I say no one ever will. So you are just tripping over anthropological trivialities. I’m not going to give you an argument that humans are social animals. I shouldn’t have to.

You still try to build a straw man and changed your statement here: http://bit.ly/1bS1Qg4 and that of a poster here: http://bit.ly/1H5bIf8 which says that any human activity (or if you prefer, any human social activity) is political. Do you then step back and state that human activities are to some degree political? Still, how do you explain the change from matriarchate to patriarchate in terms of politics?

If by ‘mass support’ you mean that they were a party, then yes. ….

You (and many other posters) concentrate on elections, but ignore the methods of self-advertising which is clearly a mirror of French Revolution, so let’s repeat it:

Hitler’s leftism is in the way he is similar to French (and any other) Revolutionaries: they both sold utopic entitlements to the crowds (equality, supremacy, …) that belong to them just because they are part of ideology. This combined with popular enemy (aristocracy / Jews) he used to seize and hold power. Furthermore, he did not necessarily need top-down violence to enforce his power: people themselves did that as they were brainwashed enough to harass and ostracize ideological enemies themselves (not only Jews, but also non-compliant Germans), similar to internal strifes during Great Terror.

I have no idea how even a McCarthy can ignore military brothels, even the unofficial ones.

Is fucking in a brothel an officer’s duty whose non-obedience is punishable?

As for the Napoleonic wars being somehow an extension of the revolution, need I point out that /.. he killed that one and was killed by this one… etc ../

Still, conflict was motivated by ideology. Ones to safeguard revolution and the others to fight it for the fear of breaking out at their doorstep. Next, the international-socialist expansionistic wars also didn’t have single leader, but myriads of them from Lenin to 1990.

In general, the conflict tends to be between a Left explicitly fighting for equality

I’m just interested: could you describe how your ideal society of equality would look like in practice?

@F. Foundling 05.14.15 at 2:27 am

This was the mirroring of one of the previous posts.

Also, the ex-bourgeoisie were not supposed to be permanently kept at the bottom of some hierarchy or to be killed as subhumans, as in the case of the Jews in the Nazi regime; they would be equal members of the socialist society, as long as they didn’t engage in counter-revolution.

“Didn’t engage in Counter-revolution” – now I am calmed.

Even in practice, despite a lot of terror in the early years and some discrimination, no wholesale slaughter of all ex-bourgeoisie comparable to the Holocaust occurred.

Utterly false.

Are you seriously now objecting that I didn’t say that human beings are partly social/political animals? (Rather than just plain social animals.) When Steven Pinker says man is a social animal, do you object on the ground that he failed to add the ‘partly’?

I am now – and have consistently been – saying that individual life and family life is political, all the way back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, in the following sense. The way people live is always bound up with the forms of society they live in. All human life is political in that sense. Do you deny it?

…and I say that societies are not completely political constructs of an power-holding authority, but are shaped also by natural environment and human biology. I still miss an application of your claim: political categorization of matriarchy and the explanation of its development into patriarchy.

Also, you still have no argument that Hitler was a leftist. Merely re-quoting yourself failing to offer an argument does not transmute the quoted non-argument into an argument.

Your failure and refusal to address it is telling by itself. Look to (revolutionary) practice instead of theoretical claims about causes and that is where we part.

There were no expansionistic international-socialist wars.

Soviet Union then must have been a humanitarian superpower that just ended WW2 and sow roses after that. What a joke.

This is a lie.

No it is not. Communist revolutions purged or expelled every industrialist and pre-revolutionary politicians in most countries. Perfect ethnic cleansing.

And I believe that by falsely equating the victims of purges and famines as well as revolutionary conflit, with the victims of a premeditated genocide like the Holocaust (some like you even claim more victims!) is nothing more than apologetics for fascism.

What on earth is “equating the victims”? Mentioning the communist genocide does not in any way say anything about Holocaust. And yes, there were more victims of communist regimes, if not for anything else then because it took over more countries and lasted more years than Hitler’s national socialism.

So let’s sum up the brilliant theories that Joseph McCarthy has set forth in this comment section: you can recognise leftists, such as the Nazis, by the fact that they sell the masses “an appealing cause”, that they are “selling utopia” and are “inciting belief in masses that they are superior”, and that they are “raging against an enemy, who is depicted as the reason for their misery”. You are seriously trying to suggest that right-wingers don’t do any of that. I suppose the proper thing to do politics, and the way US conservatives win elections, is 1. being non-appealing to the majority of the population; 2. promising dystopia; 3. praising their enemy for having caused happiness and well-being. Never flattering their electorate, never telling them that they are salt of the earth, true working people, “real America”; never blaming the liberals for having ruined everything. That’s pathetic. *Everybody* does that; everybody tries to mobilise the masses (for the original revolution, see the Chouannerie), even more obviously so in democratic politics. The difference between Left and Right is not whether you do it, but how you do it: what the ideology is, who the enemies are, what the promised end-result and the promised means are.

“Utopia”, of course, is so subjective that it has no place in any definition: it means “very good condition that is impossible to achieve” and what is impossible is subjective. I for one think that a capitalism that delivers justice and well-being to people without the need for a welfare state and regulation is one of the most wild-eyed utopias imaginable, excplicable only by how well paid its proponents are. The “good old times” of traditional “conservatism”, actually reaction, are a utopia that never was, where people were happy and lived in harmony, while oppressed in a myriad ways. Even conventionally, far-left movements such as Communism have been associated with alleged utopias, but moderate left ones have not. I don’t see how ordinary social-democratic parties, not to mention the bulk of the relative “left” in the USA, could possibly be said to be more utopian than their right-wing adversaries. If anything, how utopian you seem is a function of how radical you are, how close to the edge of the spectrum you are, not in what direction you are radical.

> You define Left with advocacy of egalitarianism. I define Left with the methods of French Revolution. The first definition is theoretical; it does not say anything about actual actions of the (self-)identified Left. It leaves open the possibility of anyone being a leftist just because of his stated causes.

“Left-wing” and “right-wing” describe, above all, political platforms – official ideologies, platforms and rhetorical strategies for winning support. Discussing practice is much more complicated – if it differs from their promises, then you may say that they are left/right-wing in theory but not in practice, or just that they have failed. But if you do want to talk about action, well – just replace “advocate egalitarianism” with “(deliberately) achieve egalitarianism”! For the practices *you* are trying to equate “Left” with, on the other hand, there are separate terms such as “dictatorship”, “totalitarianism” and “terror”, of all of which there have been plenty of right-wing instances *in practice*. So no, you don’t just get to redefine “left-wing” as “dictatorial”, “totalitarian”, “terrorist”, or as “telling sweet lies” for that matter, as you have been trying to do in all of your posts.

As for the French Revolution, it was not *one* thing with a single set of methods and views and did not consist of terror from start to finish. But it did abolish absolute monarchy, aristocratic privilege, serfdom, slavery, and the secular power of the Church, and that’s a good reason for lovers of traditional/natural hierarchy such as yourself to hate it.

>>Even in practice, despite a lot of terror in the early years and some discrimination, no wholesale slaughter of all ex-bourgeoisie comparable to the Holocaust occurred.

>Utterly false.

This might be news to you, but *huge* numbers of people of so-called “bourgeois” origin lived through the Communist revolutions in Russia and Eastern Europe. They were known as such to the authorities, they were not in hiding, some of them were among the most prominent intellectuals of their time, and remained non-Communists, indeed more or less covertly hostile: Bulgakov, Akhmatova (yes, her relatives were persecuted, but she was never killed), Pasternak. Can you imagine saying the same thing about a Jew in Nazi Germany? I live in a post-Communist country, I know plenty of people of (upper-class) bourgeois origin myself; not to mention the so-called “petty bourgeoisie”, to which most people belonged, including most intellectuals. There were inexcusable persecutions of the former elite, yes; many were killed, which is terrible, yes (as many others had been killed by the previous right-wing regimes). There was no systematic policy of killing all of them, and being killed was *not* the rule. I can’t believe I even have to argue about this.

>No it is not. Communist revolutions purged or expelled every industrialist and pre-revolutionary politicians in most countries. Perfect ethnic cleansing. …communist genocide…

You’re changing definitions and shifting goalposts. In genocide, you systematically kill everyone, men, women and children, just for belonging to a group, not for anything they do. Expelling is not the same thing as “wholesale slaughter”. Industrialists (factory owners) and politicians, who are a very small minority in the population, are not the same thing as “the bourgeoisie”, which is a much broader term. And your claim is not accurate even for them. In some of the countries, many stayed and adapted (obviously, they were at a high risk of persecution and condemnation on trumped-up charges during the terror years). In others, they did leave for various reasons, including avoidance of expropriation and risk of persecution, but I don’t think they were officially expelled. Nope, still not Holocaust.

>I’m just interested: could you describe how your ideal society of equality would look like in practice?

Left-wing politics is about *movement* in a direction towards more equality, not necessarily a defined final *condition*. But in general – yes, you’ve guessed right, Joseph McCarthy: I’m for democracy and for absence of heritable privilege not only in politics, but also in the economy. It’s because I actually like freedom, you see.

@my post at 05.14.15 at 2:48 am

>Climate change and environmentalism: well, if you buy the plutocracy’s propaganda, they might as well sneak some of their special interest lies into the same media. > right-wing

Oops. Obviously, the “right-wing” label was supposed to apply to denialism / anti-environmentalism. Just realised it could be misconstrued as the reverse.

Never flattering their electorate, never telling them that they are salt of the earth, true working people, “real America”; never blaming the liberals for having ruined everything. /../ *Everybody* does that;

Still, flattering is not selling them utopian cause. Which utopian cause is being sold by the Right?

For the practices *you* are trying to equate “Left” with, on the other hand, there are separate terms such as “dictatorship”, “totalitarianism” and “terror”, of all of which there have been plenty of right-wing instances *in practice*.

&

This is a terrible, obviously unworkable definition.

Right-wing dictatorship is top-down. It is not a thing enforced by a self-righteous raging mob as the Leftisms of French Revolution and (inter)national socialisms up to its contemporaries do.

But it did abolish absolute monarchy, aristocratic privilege, serfdom, slavery,

…and ended in another absolute monarchy of Napoleon, and absolute monarchy and serfdom of Stalinism, and established the privilege of ideologic professional revolutionaries.

Expelling is not the same thing as “wholesale slaughter”.

Hitler also did not kill every Jew. Some escaped beforehand, just like the refugees from communism. And the others also happened to survive his regime, so no difference from communism here.

We make such things because we think it will make for healthy politics, not no-politics.

Not only do you take every human mean as a political mean, but you make politics an end in itself. That is telling. That’s saying no social action is influenced from the outside of political reality – an the reason that you can’t explain history on simple example of matriarchy, because this stance is utopian.

I have no opinion about this, starting with having no opinion (but a strong skeptical suspicion) concerning whether the phenomenon to be explained is real. I don’t think we know that ancient matriarchies turned into patriarchies.

Obviously, it is not present today. So it must have sometimes evolved into some other form of organization. Explain this phenomenon using any of your preferable definition of politics. But you cannot do this and try to wriggle out. How come, if culture is always political, this should be an easy task!

I can’t resist. It is a fallacy to assume that something that does not exist today must have existed in the past.

Humans existed in a past and so did human societies, cultures, organizations (whatever you call the collective behaviour). So if some form of culture existed in a past that is not present today, it must have changed itself by whatever process. Or be completely annihilated.

Why should a definition of politics, in itself, be an explanation – let alone an easy explanation – of every particular political event/change?

The desire for explanation comes from a statement that human societies are always shaped by politics.

Political liberalism – say, the constitution of a sphere of autonomy for each individual – is not a non-political arrangement. It is a political arrangement.

What is then a violation of or indifference to such “agreements”? A political act?

Second point, it’s a bit of hen and egg problem. It is constituted? What existed then before its constituting? Full political society with no sphere of autonomy?

If I may summarize?
1. Hitler et al. are commonly acknowledged to be totalitarians who called themselves socialist and had some policies in common with the other kind of socialists.
2. The French Revolution was totalitarian.
3. The French Revolution is commonly acknowledged to have been left wing, the term left itself deriving from the revolution.

The conclusion that Hitler et al. were leftists does follow from the premises.

Also:

A. Genocide is a conclusive demonstration of totalitarianism.
B. Communist regimes carried out more genocide even than the Nazis.
C. Communist regimes are commonly acknowledged to be left.

The conclusion that left is a more appropriate descriptor for Hitler et al. also follows from the premises, justifying the previous conclusion by a different chain of reasoning.

Holbo and McCarthy agree on premises 3&C, as does everyone, these being common knowledge. Holbo and McCarthy also agree on premises 1&A. If Holbo disagrees on premises 2&B, he has not troubled to say so. Holbo does disagree that the conclusions follow from the premises, for reasons that are unclear, to say the least.

Perhaps it is the notion that there is a difference between left and right totalitarianism? Given the undefinability of totalitarianism (as exemplified by the mysterious chatter about politics and private lives,) it is hard to say how this is a compelling distinction.

Perhaps Holbo is content with his observation you can’t write the history ignoring left/right distinctions in details of this kind?B ut, given the mysterious powers of totalitarianism, it is still hard to say whether mere history matters to the final conclusion. Totalitarianism will express its mystic essence, a bit like a satanic opponent to Hegel’s Absolute Ideal. And of course, formally, McCarthy is correct in observing he’s not writing history.

Thus, it matters not a bit to McCarthy that he hasn’t confronted (much less refuted!) a single argument Holbo has made. Holbo hasn’t engaged any of McCarthy’s logic or premises either. I suppose this explains why Holbo has to keep engaging with McCarthy at such length.

By my lights, the flagrant ideological dishonesty of premises 2&B conclusively refute McCarthy. I’ve already commented on premise B, but, for the record, I firmly believe premise 2 is black propaganda as well.

Steven Johnson,

If you really think those conclusions follow from those premises, you don’t know much about logic.

(as I said, I’m not engaging with McCarthy)
@stevenjohnson 05.16.15 at 1:34 pm
While I agree with you in rejecting most of those premisses, it is not *logically* necessary to do so in order to avoid the identification of Nazism as left-wing. It is not *illogical* to say that there can be totalitarianism and genocide at both ends of the right/left spectrum, and that there are consequently both right-wing and left-wing totalitarianism and genocide. This is the mainstream, “reasonable” centrist view, I think, and I assume the one held by Holbo.

Personally, as I’ve already made clear, I think that a regime deviates from being left-wing by the very fact of tending towards either genocide or most of the features commonly identified as “totalitarian” (whereas the “McCarthy” here is promoting, more or less, the diametrically opposite view). I’ve argued that the continuity in the significance of the notion of “left” from 1789 to the present-day supports my view.

I have also argued – which is a separate claim lending support to the first one, but is *not* crucial for it – that, consequently, regimes with left-wing origins have in fact mostly been somewhat less extreme, consistent and noxious with respect to these features than corresponding right-wing regimes. That’s *very* faint praise, of course. In retrospect, it would have been unthinkable fifty to eighty years ago, and it’s a symptom of the tragic catastrophe of socialism in the 20th century, that in 2015 we would be defending originally leftist regimes by saying “well, at least they’re not Hitler”. Still, the fact remains that they are not, and, in view of the McCarthies’ activity and the way the issue is used in contemporary politics, it needs to be pointed out occasionally.

William Burns @130 The argument that a member of a class has the properties of a class is never illogical. Thus, since the French Revolution is totalitarian, leftism is a property of totalitarianism.(First syllogism) The Nazis were totalitarians, therefore they had the property of leftism. (Second syllogism) I think the concept of totalitarianism is an equivocation, and therefore this argument is a deceit. But not “illogical.”

It is those of you who accept the notion of totalitarianism as legitimate who have the burden of proving hidden assumptions that render the conclusion illogical. In this discussion, McCarthy’s other argument forecloses this by the proposition that totalitarianism can be identified by commission of genocide. Neither you nor Holbo have contested this. None of you have even contested the factuality of McCarthy’s other premises that leftist regimes committed genocide, much less that leftist regimes are even more genocidal, which is to say, more totalitarian. (Possibly with the partial exception of F. Foundling.)

The whole notion of totalitarianism is intended to render the distinction between left and right irrelevant, even if it implies that the Good People are an Aristotelian Golden Mean, aka the Center. If anything it is the sudden discovery that no, there is a relevant difference is somewhat illogical. At any rate, in this kind of Platonic realm, Occam’s razor applies: Why posit any more forms than totalitarianism? I think Holbo has had a great deal of trouble explaining this while preserving the essential metaphysical truth that there really is an existent “totalitarianism.”

F. Foundling @133 And elements of the modern revolutionary tradition also trace back even further to the Dutch Revolution, and the Wars of Religion, so intimately bound up with the emergence of bourgeois nations, even as premodern notions of dynastic conquest and rebellion and banditry influenced thinking. It is not entirely accepted that bourgeois revolution is “left,” particularly in any context after the French Revolution, when bourgeois equality and democracy started to reach its limits, with socialism beginning to emerge as a separate class phenomenon. And there are many who accept that social revolutions are totalitarian. McCarthy is just one.

However, as a US citizen I must remind myself that bourgeois democracy is perfectly compatible with genocide and protofascist racial oppression. And in the year of the anniversary of the Armenian genocide, product of the emerging Turkish democracy, it is particularly important not to overlook the sometimes intimate relationship between democracy and “genocide.” The usual form after all was mass death upon the removal or enslavement of an alien racial or ethnic group. From the days when the Spartan Peers declared annual war on the helots to be free to slaughter those whom they wished, or the Athenian democrats expropriated the Euboean lands, forming a nation has often required purifying the land of the other.

> Thus, since the French Revolution is totalitarian, leftism is a property of totalitarianism.

To clarify: it is your belief that the following:

The french revolution was totalitarian
The french revolution was leftist
Therefore, totalitarianism is leftist

is valid in form and premise?

“1. Crowds as tool for power seizure
2. Advertising of utopia
3. Politicization of culture” is merely McCarthy’s specifications for totalitarian.

William Burns, Collin Street and John Holbo didn’t even trouble to read my presentation of the logic in McCarthy’s argument. Looking at Holbo’s revision? Well, let’s say A is 12 and the first premise is that it equals B, 3X4. The second premise is that A equals C, 2X6. The conclusion that 3X4=2X6 most certainly is valid. I suppose Burns might object that “totalitarianism” is not that kind of premise, that “leftism” is not an essential part of “totalitarianism.” This of course assumes the desired conclusion. But, logic abstracts from the content of premises and propositions to focus on the form of the argument. Kinds of premises address the question of whether the reasoning is sound, not logically valid. The concept of totalitarianism is not sound, and anyone who uses it is playing the fool. There is no “logical” reason to declare “leftism” is not as essential an attribute of “totalitarianism” for the simple reason no one knows what “totalitarianism” is.

Nobody is quibbling about me confusing valid and unsound reasoning.

Enough, this nonsense about alleged illogic is due to the desperate wish to cling to the ideological construct of totalitarianism. Holbo and McCarthy are comrades in arms on this, and that’s all to be said on that point.

As to “Soviet Union” and “communist China” committing political mass murder, this is a falsification of the crudest kind of fact: The purges in the Soviet Union and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution would equally have to be labeled political mass suicide, which puts them in a wholly different category than other political mass murders, much less genocides. As for the Khmer Rouge? Skip over whether their claim to be Marxist or socialist is much better than the Nazis. Blaming the Khmer Rouge in this fashion serves an apologetic function, covering up the role of the US war against Cambodia.

“Life is real, life is earnest”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173910

is not quite the same as “Long live death” — cult of violence/ male bonding in the joy of slaughter

Johnson, please google the term “Dunning-Kruger” effect. Then think about how it applies to your proclaimed expertise in logic.

mdc, the real issue is the pious refusal to even wonder whether “totalitarianism” is a sound premise in any sort of logical thinking on these issues. Or, to put it another way, how both Holbo and McCarthy can agree there is something called “totalitarianism,” but Holbo can insist that the essence of totalitarianism does not include leftism, contra McCarthy, without troubling to define totalitarianism or even rejecting this kind of metaphysical approach in the first place.

I know why I think McCarthy is out of his mind, starting with a superstitious and anti-materialist world view, and continuing with a rigid commitment to falsehood to support his religion. But it is not at all clear why Holbo cannot even address his argument, which he doesn’t. To me it seems that fundamentally Holbo shares too many of the McCarthy’s ideological commitments. As is, all of his arguments assume that leftism is an accident or particular (or whatever the technical term is.)

As in, Socrates is not an attribute of humanity, but an example, as in this imaginary syllogism: Socrates is mortal. All men are mortal. Therefore all men are Socrates. This really is a false inference. The properties of a member of a class are not necessarily the properties of the class.

Except McCarthy’s argument is the reverse, that both leftism and totalitarianism are properties of the same class, essential to being a member of the class. His implication is that the different names “leftism” or “totalitarianism” is the accident or particular or example. As in this imaginary syllogism: Socrates was acknowledged to pursue wisdom. Socrates was acknowledged to be the first philosopher. Therefore, philosophers pursue wisdom. (Note that it says nothing about how successful they are.)

It is not immediately obvious that the conclusion is an invalid inference. But this is the kind of logic McCarthy is using, and nothing said by Holbo addresses this.

But evidently the nature of McCarthy’s errors is not a concern for most in this comments. That being the case, just from curiosity, could you try to explain how the conclusion that 3X4=2X6 isn’t validly inferred. I would have thought examination of a number line would show that the conclusion is indeed contained in the premises? (Which seems to be a good indicator of logical validity to me.)

@128: Communist regimes are commonly acknowledged to be left

(WARNING — possible thread derailer): To me (and a long tradition of Populists, anarchosyndicalists, libertarian/democratic socialists, council communists, anti-Bolshevik Marxists, and others), “left” connotes 1) egalitarianism (not absolute but substantial) and 2) popular s0vereignty. On this definition, Communism was anything but “left.” What’s your definition?

you have to admit at least that you are using the concept in a totally different way than, say, political actors in Weimar did

Yes, possibly. I wasn’t really commenting on the thread (hence the warning about a potential derailment). I was commenting on the sentence I quoted — and, of course, on the enormous body of received opinion to which it refers.

Hahaha, that long pile of philosophising and straw-man building is indeed funny.

Nr. 129 was the only one who countered the premises on which I built my argument being:

A (The Birth of Left in French Revolution) is B (crowd politics & the stuff I listed in #145).

C (Nazism) is B.

Therefore C is B. Both have the same properties, although these are not ALL properties.

Well, stevenjohnson and McCarthy are clinging like grim death to an F for the work they have done in elementary logic

Actual biological cognitive problems. Real things, affecting real people.

John @159,

That got me thinking about, well, “tradition.” Which is an invented environment of sorts, as well. So, yes. What I wrote was too truncated. Because the right has long been a proponent of shaping environments along “traditional” lines to breed or provoke a certain kind of individual reaction . . . . and the right, contrary to its current right-libertarian complaints, has always been all about law and order, Big Church, Big State . . . shaping minds, especially the young, etc. etc. . . . so they must also believe in the importance of socialization.

I suppose what I was trying to get at was more in the way of their assertions regarding boot-strapping and (Galtian) self-sufficiency, along with all of that “we built that” stuff. In general, the right doesn’t want to acknowledge the interconnectedness of society, the web of influences, supports and their effects. They want to claim individual success as individually generated. This, of course, contradicts the general desire on the right to shape minds in a conservative fashion/direction through those webs of influence.

We can, perhaps, see the contrasting rationales (and confusions) for this in the form of Existentialist Philosophy, which had its precursors and proponents on the left and the right, from Camus to Dostoevsky, Sartre to Heidegger, etc. A highly individualist philosophy, with primal calls for one to forge their own life-project out of their own sensibilities and give their own meaning to this . . . without recourse to hand-me-down schools of thought, institutions, CW, etc. etc.

Corey Robin has recently dealt with Heidegger here . . . and countless books have been written about Nietzsche’s influence on the Nazis . . . . starting with Walter Kaufmann’s revelations about his sister’s distortions. But it might be interesting to study this also as a problem of left/right politics . . . the contrasts and contradictions on display.

Lee: yes, I know. I was just trying to get someone (you, John, anyone) to actually offer a definition of “left.”

Geo,

I know you’re a “man of the left,” as am I, and that you’ve written extensively about a host of left intellectuals. In a sense, I think you offer up (indirect) definitions via the cumulative effect of your choices, but have shied away from putting forth your own definition. The studies do that for you in a sense. I’d be very interesting in your own, beyond the short one you suggested earlier, and hope that John and others weigh in as well.

I’m still stuck on the general idea that the left to right spectrum is at least mostly about the degree of desired equality, egalitarianism and democracy in any particular society . . . . or, to put it in its photo-negative aspect . . . the degree of acceptance of inequality, social injustice and lack of democracy in any particular society. IMO, American politics are incredibly narrow and severely limited in that, here, “liberal” is all too often seen as the furthest edge of the left . . . . and “liberals,” in my view, willingly accept far, far too much inequality, social injustice and the absence of democracy. For starters, they support an economic system which guarantees the absence of democracy in a place in which we spend a huge portion of our lives, the workplace, and social injustice and a host of inequalities follow from that. In short, I don’t find American liberals as being very much on “the left” at all. Perhaps just slightly left of center and seemingly closer to the center and moving rightward on a daily basis.

I also see American liberalism as a safety valve for the capitalist system. They provide just enough in the way of hope and crumbs to prevent full-scale revolt, but far from enough to actually alleviate real and existing problems. The number one job of “the left” (as I see it) is to do far more than that. It is to actually lift up the so-called “lower orders” and flatten hierarchies to the degree possible. In real terms. In the here and now. It is to flatten pyramids. The right’s goal is to extend them upward. It seems to me that liberals act as protectors of the system that creates the pyramids . . . . mostly by doing just enough to block full implementation of the right’s desires, which would scale up the steepness of those hierarchies to such a severe degree. This prevents collapse and revolution. Just.

As in, if the right actually got their way, it would spell the absolute defeat of the right’s own objectives — because, revolution — at least until fascism or another right-wing totalitarian form replaced the fallen pyramids with new ones.

Traditional social structures v new & experimental structures
Individual rights v group rights
Laissez-faire economics v social insurance
Rule by the few v rule by the many

I think these metrics show that left-right is a multidimensional space that is broadly rational. That is, it is possible to make plausible arguments on either side.

But what seems to characterize Fascism is a fundamentally infantile, solipsistic dream of unity & glory. The acute psychological insecurity of it’s major proponents seems to demonstrate this.

Lee: why “complete”? Why not just “more”?

Plume: I agree with your tentative definition in the second paragraph: egalitarianism and democracy. Not what Walzer in Spheres of Justice calls “simple equality,” ie, numerical equality to the last decimal point, but rough, substantive equality . Everyone should have the necessary minimum for a flourishing life: 2000 calories/day, clean water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, interesting and meaningful work, leisure, quiet (ie, freedom from attention-theft, one of the pillars of contemporary capitalism), and a voice in economic and p0litical decisions that affect them. Anyone who’s dead serious about everyone having this necessary minimum, and has some realistic notions about the institutional and structural obstacles that prevent it, qualifies for preliminary classification as a leftist, I’d say. That would exclude liberals and Leninists alike.

geo: “I agree with your tentative definition in the second paragraph: egalitarianism and democracy.”

If I had to list two things, prescriptively, to define the left, it would be egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism. Democracy can be and often is fairly authoritarian. This is prescriptive rather than descriptive because the left has often historically been rather authoritarian.

geo @174,

That sounds right, especially the distinction between numerical equality and leftist goals.

Perhaps the best way to make that distinction is to talk about access rather than results. For me, personally, I have no wish to live in a land where all results are forced to even up, equal out, etc. etc. Rather, I want every person in society to have full and complete (as well as equal) access to all the tools, all the fruits of society, all the cultural and social horizons possible . . . . as well as real equality under the law. In short, equal chances to fulfill one’s personal potential. In real terms. Not in the abstract. Money — its presence or absence, its quantity — should never, ever be the entrance ticket or the deciding factor for that access, because as long as we have a system with money as the ticket, we can never, ever, not in a million years, get there. We can never come close to “equal opportunity.” As long as the presence, absence or quantity of one’s money is the way we decide who gets in the door, the doors available and what doors are built in the first place, we will always have severe hierarchies, social injustice, massive inequality, etc. etc.

IMO, the real “left” just isn’t willing to accept even the liberal notion of “redistribution” via taxes and social safety nets. A real leftist wants a society that doesn’t require that in the first place, one where there isn’t any need for a welfare state, because the economic system is fully democratic and functions up front as an economic system should function . . . . effective allocation of goods, services, resources, income, access, etc etc. for 100% of society, with no one written off.

Liberalism — at least in America — assumes that a rather large portion of society is doomed to being written off in order to sustain our capitalist system where a few people can make mountains of money and accrue mountains of power beyond everyone else. That’s the trade off. And while they also seek some mitigation of this, via the welfare state and redistributive taxation, it’s not really “leftist.” It’s more like “compassionate conservatism,” in my view. Again, the real left would set the economy up to render redistribution unnecessary from Day One. We’d get the distribution correct and wouldn’t need the bandaid approach after the fact.

But what seems to characterize Fascism is a fundamentally infantile, solipsistic dream of unity & glory.

Right, so what sort of cognitive problems would you need before you might adopt fascist positions?

Geo @181,

One way around that is to establish a constitution, based on human rights, which the majority would create and vote on. I think that when humans are thinking in broad terms, which they’d have to when designing said constitution, they tend to be far more inclusive than on particular case by case issues. So with the constitution in place, those individual cases and their adjudication via the democratic process, would have a different angle to them, as well as foundation.

So a constitution plus full on democracy.

And back for a moment to the access versus results distinction. To me, a great example is education. I think a just society would eliminate all barriers, from cradle to grave, for access to lifelong education, training, etc. etc. The price of admission should be citizenship, only. That said, results would depend entirely on work done once the individual decided to take advantage of that open door. We wouldn’t be giving everyone a doctorate in physics, for instance. One would have to decide to pursue that course (or another), complete the course work, pass, etc. etc. Others would choose difference courses, different paths, and those choices would create different results. But one’s socio-economic status would have no bearing on admission, and in a just society, class divisions would be as non-existent as humanly possible in the first place. All work would be valued. No one’s work would be valued thousands of times more than the next guy’s, etc. etc . . . and we’d arm every citizen with all the tools needed to pursue individual potential and excellence. No one would be left behind. No one.

To me, that’s one large part of the leftist imaginary.

Plume: So a constitution plus full on democracy

Yes, a constitution amendable by a supermajority. (Without, of course, all the procedural problems and financial inequality that make amending the US Constitution such an anti-democratic incubus.)

Collin,

I don’t see the problems of humanity in your hyper-clinical terms. We all suffer from the human condition. I don’t think the emphasis on pathology is much help. … As a practical matter where does pigeon-holing people with uncongenial politics as mentally handicapped actually lead anyway?

The left has real trouble accepting that some unequal outcomes are benign, even virtuous, on the basis of the behaviors which produced them. Just as democratic processes can produce oppressive results, so too can ethical behavior result in unequal outcomes. ISTM this implies there isn’t any ‘ideal’ political structure. There is greater transparency and lesser transparency, and most of the rest is the work we need to do on ourselves.

Mattski @186,

The left has real trouble accepting that some unequal outcomes are benign, even virtuous, on the basis of the behaviors which produced them. Just as democratic processes can produce oppressive results, so too can ethical behavior result in unequal outcomes.

I think the left has real trouble accepting that some unequal outcomes are benign, even virtuous, because we leftists know that people have radically different levels of privilege, advantage, disadvantage and obstacles in their way to begin with. If we all could arrive at the starting line with at least basic equality of means, schooling, training, health care, environment — tools in general, etc. etc. . . . then “behavior” becomes a far more admissible factor. But in our society, there is such a ginormous chasm between the top and the bottom, the top and the middle, the middle and the bottom, and even the super rich and the merely rich, you can’t possibly elevate unequal results based on “behavior” to the virtuous. When someone is born a few inches from home plate and hits a homerun, it’s simply not the same as someone born thousands of miles away from the stadium, with cement blocks on their legs, where the journey itself takes so much out of the person he can’t muster the strength to take a swing.

And:

ISTM this implies there isn’t any ‘ideal’ political structure. There is greater transparency and lesser transparency, and most of the rest is the work we need to do on ourselves.

It’s funny. The people who claim leftists are pushing for utopia typically are the folks who don’t think there is anything better than our existing system, that it should never be changed, that there are no alternatives. Those of us who want to try something else aren’t the ones hung up on “ideal” political structures. We just look around us, note that existing structures and the capitalist system itself produce massive inequality, throw billions of human beings under the bus, and are leading us over the ecological cliff. We just find it all too logical to want to change a system that has been an epic failure — which it has been, for a long, long time, with its endless wars, genocides, environmental ruin and the richest 1% soon to hold 99% of all wealth.

It’s time for radical alternatives.

Per the case in point, the Nazis: they, and everyone else in Weimar, knew they were on the ‘right’. Because they were the enemies of the ‘left’ – the Social Democrats and, especially, the communists.

This might be the case (I don’t know enough to say)-but that seems like a strange definition of “right” and “left”. The Social Democrats and the communists were active enemies, and the Nazis were enemies of “big business” (finance and the multinationals).

On the whole topic of egalitarianism–it seems strange to me to characterize a system of thought that has spent 60 years working to move decision-making from hundreds of thousands of small-town mayors and local pizza parlor owners to a handful of unelected rulers who went to the very best schools as being “egalitarian.”

JCH,

Maybe if I did, I would find he makes some informed sense.

Sounds like it could be worth a try. Unless you think you’re perfect as is.

Plume,

The people who claim leftists are pushing for utopia typically are the folks who don’t think there is anything better than our existing system, that it should never be changed, that there are no alternatives.

As ever, you attribute positions to me that I do not express.

It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is. Everybody who is anybody defines “is” to mean “it is a morally relevant fact that.”

(Just trying to make my contribution to CT’s new identity as a humor site.)

js. @ 195

Q.E.D. (That’s only the exoteric teaching.)

@ 172 I forgot a good one. I should have written:

Traditional social structures v new & experimental structures
Individual rights v group rights
Laissez-faire economics v social insurance
Rule by the few v rule by the many
Aggression (the urge to push away) v libido (the urge to merge together)

Mattski @192,

Was speaking in general terms. Not about you, specifically.

To be honest, I really don’t know what you favor or advocate for, though I have a generalized feeling that you believe capitalism, checked by liberal democracy, is ideal. If I remember correctly, the Scandinavian nations would be the pinnacle for ya. I’d agree, as far as existing examples. The best in relative terms in the here and now. But they still fall waaaay short IMNSHO, and we can do waaay better. We absolutely need to do waaay better, which is where non-capitalist alternatives kick in.

JH@197: Thanks for the Hirschman quote; very useful. So his stages boil down to: first, civil rights (freedom of speech and religion) for everyone; then political power for everyone; finally, social and economic welfare for everyone. Furthering this progression = left-wing; fighting it = right-wing.

Sounds right. I’d just note that this corresponds to what most of us mean by “egalitarianism.”

in the instant case there’s the well-demonstrated utter incapacity to do basic logic

So stevenjohnson is hard right? And if there was no connection between the ‘cognitive problems’ and the politics then why would it be associated mainly with one end of the spectrum? I wrote above that fascism seems to have its roots in severe psychological disturbance. But that is an extreme case.

I don’t think it’s a great idea to imply that liberals and leftists are mentally healthy while conservatives and rightists are not. Even if a small part of me is sympathetic to the argument, it is STILL better not voice every thought in one’s head.

The Reagan Revolution was also a populist appeal to the masses, as noted at the end of comment #76, above. Was Reagan left wing?

It was not a revolution. What were his populist, let alone utopian stances? I already answered that in http://bit.ly/1HuixfC

Oh, fun! It’s like Logic class! McCarthy and Johnson need to distribute their middles!

Distributed middles discusses absolute identities. I did a comparison of traits and stated that some specific Leftist ones are common.

The Nazis and the French Revolution share some properties, ergo they share all properties, ergo they share the property of being leftist.

Mr. Holbo can’t live without misrepresenting opponent’s arguments. I never wrote they share all properties. I listed the remarkable Leftist commonalities between the two and noted that for the one disinterested in philosophical theory (forget phony statements about alliances and philosophy), there is no difference between national and international socialism. Just the target of the crowd is different.

A true Marxian would also attempt to conceptualize the NEXT step, in which everybody realizes that shifting costs onto labor –(and we now must include, onto the petty bourgeoisie and small businesspeeps, who are also in the same boat)– will NOT get far, because everybody finally realizes what is happening, and that it cannot finally work.

Which is just about where we are now — or back to it, after a century of diversionary pursuits such as world wars and massive technological change.

So what happens, as people realize this? Well, look around you:

The plutocracy is badly equipped to defend themselves: They’ve got money but no brains. And without complete control of information media, they are beginning to lose control of the conversation.

There will not be a sudden splash of high-paying jobs: Technology + globalization is bringing the utopia that the 19th Century foresaw and longed for. Though now, most people bizarrely think it’s all a horror, because, having accepted an historical psychology for an eternal one, we think the peeps won’t make exertions, or find reasons to live…

There will be no populist leader’s uprising, no conservative revolution. Again, intellectual inability of individual leaders to even comprehend the outer contours of what’s going on, much less to admit to it. Plus, recent logical failures of popularizations such as Thatcher-Reaganism. Plus now, most people’s suspicions of law-givers and line-drawers.

Oh, someone might try to control all the computers — but to what end, really? You could set off a big bomb, I suppose, or try to siphon off enough cash to go live in an undersea Atlantis like some James Bond villain, but even that won’t change things much.

Egalitarianism is not only on the way: it’s what arrives after people begin to see that the economics justifications for hierarchy were an historical passage that is over when scarcity is overcome. Keynes, Schumpeter, Bookchin all saw this.

Joseph McCarthy #206: “What were [Reagan’s] populist, let alone utopian stances?”

Answer: We see it in Reagan’s “secular apocalyptic”, his own adaptation of an older rhetorical form called the “American jeremiad”. Reagan’s rhetorical students have long-studied his explicit adaptation of the American jeremiad. It goes like this:

“1. The Promise, which stresses America’s special destiny as the promised land–literally, its covenant with God;

2. The Declension, which cites America’s failure to live up to its obligations as the chosen people, its neglect of its mission, its failure to progress sufficiently–its natural sin of retrogression from The Promise; and

3. The Prophecy, which predicts that if Americans will repent and reform, The Promise can still be fulfilled.”

–from: Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator, by Kurt Ritter and David Henry (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992 – Great American Orators series, Number 13).

The likeness to the rhetoric of the Italian fascists and Nazis ought to be evident. That is not to make Reagan a fascist; I do not believe that. (Was Reagan misguided? In several ways.) But the call to solidarity in tradition (whether national or racial) is a distinctly rightwing call, and the Nazis were on the right for this reason, too.

mcmanus@205: the sweeteners used to sell it

Is this sufficiently dialectical? Perhaps the bad is not quite so contingently associated with the good? And what is a Regulationist? (Sorry if I’ve missed previous explanations.)

Lee@208: The plutocracy is badly equipped to defend themselves: They’ve got money but no brains.

With money, you can buy brains.

A true Marxian would also attempt to conceptualize the NEXT step

Absolutely, and am working on it. We are actually, well combined and uneven, in the next step after Fordism, consumerism demand management mass production social democratic society. So over. Looking for the step after this one, not in the sense of imagining or creating, but observing the synthesis already emerging.

212: Is this sufficiently dialectical?

My simple formulation? No. Neither is yours.

Perhaps the bad is not quite so contingently associated with the good?

Dialectic says it is.

Regulation School

Somewhat old and surpassed by now, maybe, and a little neoliberal, but the concept of Fordism was very useful.

Geo, let me go the other way, so we aren’t required to cast aspersions upon named entities.

I was using “brain” as a metonymy, to signify the organ when, and only when, it has: 1. the ability to understand science and commitment to uphold it + 2. the ability to fix upon an object of meditation long enough to enter into consciousness-without-an-object.

I rather doubt that any brain having only #1 (which makes it only a halfwit) has successfully been purchased by a plutocrat. I am rather certain that a full brain (having #2 too) could not be.

Bob @205,

property rights =>
business/bourgeois influence and control over the state =>
business/bourgeois use of influence to offload externalities and social costs onto workers; Fordism

The parts Hirschman/geo/Plume like about this “progress” was mostly the sweeteners used to sell it.

The last sentence is confusing, at least to me. As you describe it, I see nothing at all to “like” about that “progress.” Not the thing itself or the sales pitch.

My own view is that “progress” in the world has been obscenely, agonizingly slow, matched with umpteen setbacks along the way . . . . and I don’t see the shift away from aristocratic ownership of the means of exploitation to another tiny band of exploiters as real progress. It’s basically just a management change, when we need to end exploitation, period.

That, for instance, is pretty much what happened with our own “revolution.” It was a shift from British to home grown masters, with a lot of wonderful rhetoric about democracy and equal rights thrown in to get the populace to kill for that home grown ruling class. One ruling class fighting another, using the usual cannon fodder, the people. If we had actually followed the teachings of a Thomas Paine, it might have been actual “progress.” But that’s not what happened. Slavery, genocide of native peoples, endless worker exploitation, misogyny and exclusion of women and minorities, etc. etc. continued/prevailed instead.

Again, the only way to have real “progress” is to get rid of the capitalist system and institute full democracy in its place, including the economy. That gets rid of the vast majority of the power to block progress too. The major locus for that currently is business interests, combined and alone.

With money, you can buy brains.

And yet so often they don’t. So there must be a reason for that.

[Agree with geo that Manufacturing Consent was a brilliant analysis at the time. It didn’t foresee the internet though.]

Another way that consent is manufactured — which is implied in 221 — is just through an extreme narrowing of allowable discussion. In American mainstream media, political narratives are pretty much, with rare exceptions, limited to the latest Democratic versus Republican dust up . . . . which essentially means a battle between two corporate sponsored entities, working on behalf of corporate/business power, and both right of center — in effect, if not always via rhetoric.

Even the supposedly “liberal” MSNBC does this by pretty much making leftist participation out of bounds. The one time, for example, that Chris Hayes’ old show, UP, had an actual anticapitalist on his show (Richard D. Wolff), the panelists basically scoffed at everything he said . . . . and the good liberal (The Nation, etc) Hayes came close to this. They were all rather patronizing regarding his words, as if he weren’t a highly respected economics prof and scholar, and their senior by more than a generation.

Basically, anticapitalist alternatives are verboten in the MSM. So it’s not at all surprising that they have such a hard time gaining a foothold even among the well-educated, when the ideas themselves have been marginalized to a degree unseen in any other (over)developed nation. This is the plan, of course. Make the furthest possible “left-wing” discussion barely center-left and truncate the vast majority of civic dialogue to center-right and far-right ideologies. This serves the existing power structure brilliantly, and deludes the populace into thinking we have actual “free speech” and a free and open dialogue, politically, socially, etc.

In short, it’s sham/scam.

Mattski @222,

But what has the Internet really changed along those lines? For me, personally, it’s been a goddess-send, as I’ve discovered a host of great leftist writers/websites, etc. etc. like Jacobin, Platypus, the Monthly Review, Climate and Capitalism, Gar Alperovitz, David Harvey, Richard D. Wolff, to name a few. Which has sent me off into new directions I never really imagined before. Most folks, however (I suspect), use it to confirm their own preexisting ideologies, and end up in the same old (very narrow) tribal battles, hurray for our side, etc. etc. This is at least what I gather from posting on most Internet boards with a political focus, and reading mainstream news pubs.

If anything, the Internet has made it easier to manufacture consent, as it is also the greatest medium in history for the dissemination of the official line, and the official counter to that official line . . . . all within preselected boundaries. It has also made it far easier for snake oil salesmen, the Glenn Becks, the Alex Jones, the Rush Limbaughs, to rally their troops and extend their reach.

In short, despite never-before-seen diversity in media, the Internet hasn’t really led to a broadening of horizons for most people. That’s my guess, at least. It’s just reconfirmed tribal affiliations for the vast majority.

If anything, the Internet has made it easier to manufacture consent, as it is also the greatest medium in history for the dissemination of the official line, and the official counter to that official line

Very much agree, and this might also be relevant:

….This survey’s findings produced several major insights: People were less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in social media than they were in person… Facebook and Twitter users were also less likely to share their opinions in many face-to-face settings….

“I have a strong feeling you are not “most people.”

That’s a compliment, btw.”

Ha! Well I will take it. Thank you :-)

engels @228,

Of course, another factor involved in limiting the discussion, especially the one in question (NSA spying). If a person believes corporate/government spying is rampant, they are (probably) less likely to make their own personal views known in the first place. Fear of retaliation, etc.

People have been fired for their posts on Facebook, for instance. So it’s not just fear of government retaliation. And we all take chances conversing this way, with this hanging over our heads. Subconsciously or consciously, I think most of us know we have no control over where our posts end up, who sees them, what is done in reaction to them, etc. etc. I read recently, for instance that Radio Shack, now bankrupt, will be selling off some 450 million customer records.

In short, while the Internet has given us unprecedented reach and connectivity, with this comes an automatic loss of privacy. On the web, our ability to see things means we can be seen, too. No hidden two-way mirror for us.

Sebastion H @231

There is far less confusion if you can differentiate between Political Communism, which had zero to do with leftist theory, and actual leftist theory. As per earlier discussions. Another way to reduce that confusion is by noting that the vast majority of leftists opposed what Political Communism entailed. See Orwell, Camus and every Left-Libertarian or Left-Anarchist on record.

And still yet another way to diminish the confusion is to note that both sides of the aisle have their perversions, their distortions of historical political/social/economic beliefs and missions. Both sides have their totalitarians, their opportunists, their con-artists. Strip them from the discussion for a moment — because both left and right have their share — and it’s a lot easier to get to the actual differences.

Plume, as I said, I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that actual existing communism had little to with ‘leftism’ if you want to define it that way. But then you need to realize that ‘leftism’ didn’t have much to do with actual world politics for most of the 20th century–which strongly suggests that the left/right lens isn’t nearly as important as is normally claimed.

Also, the anticapitalist left was against what Lenin and Stalin did. Always. And they make up the majority of leftists. Lenin installed state capitalism, on purpose, to force Russia into the 20th century, and he used many of the same methods of primitive accumulation first employed in Britain in the 18th century — some might stretch that back to the 17th. Basically, he just substituted the state as capitalist boss, because he believed this was the only way to pull a hopelessly (economically) backward nation into the future.

That’s not socialism at all (much less communism), which also requires full democracy, which he and later Soviet leaders outlawed. Communism is the next step and means the state itself has withered away. You can’t, by definition, have a “communist state.” It’s a classic oxymoron.

Sebastian H @236,

We agree there. Actual leftist thought and its historical (and historically diverse) tradition has had almost no impact on the world as it actually exists today . . . . and IMO this is a great and crippling tragedy.

Well, I need to refine that.

The Civil Rights, Workers’ Rights, Women’s Rights and various Human Rights movements of the 20th century come from decidedly leftist roots. To the extent they ended up forcing change, this is thanks to the leftist tradition and leftist activists. The environmental movement also stems from that same tradition.

Actual leftist thought and its historical (and historically diverse) tradition has had almost no impact on the world as it actually exists today . . . . and IMO this is a great and crippling tragedy.

Leftism qua ‘beautiful soul’

Φ 658. Looking at this submergence and disappearance from within, the inherent and essential substance is, for consciousness,, knowledge in the sense of its knowledge. Being consciousness, it is split up into the opposition between itself and the object, which is, for it, the essentially real. But this very object is what is perfectly transparent, is its self; and its consciousness is merely knowledge of itself. All life and all spiritual truth have returned into this self, and have lost their difference from the ego. The moments of consciousness are therefore these extreme abstractions, of which none holds its ground, but each loses itself in the other and produces it. We have here the process of the “unhappy soul”,(6) in restless change with self; in the present case, however, this is a conscious experience going on inside itself, fully conscious of being the notion of reason, while the “unhappy soul” above spoken of was only reason implicitly. The absolute certainty of self thus finds itself, qua consciousness, converted directly into a dying sound, a mere objectification of its subjectivity or self-existence. But this world so created is the utterance of its own voice, which in like manner it has directly heard, and only the echo of which returns to it. This return does not therefore mean that the self is there in its true reality (an und für sich): for the real is, for it, not an inherent being, is no per se, but its very self. Just as little has consciousness itself existence, for the objective aspect does not succeed in becoming something negative of the actual self, in the same way as this self does not reach complete actuality. It lacks force to externalize itself, the power to make itself a thing, and endure existence. It lives in dread of staining the radiance of its inner being by action and existence. And to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with actuality, and steadfastly perseveres in a state of self-willed impotence to renounce a self which is pared away to the last point of abstraction, and to give itself substantial existence, or, in other words, to transform its thought into being, and commit itself to absolute distinction [that between thought and being]. The hollow object, which it produces, now fills it, therefore, with the feeling of emptiness. Its activity consists in yearning, which merely loses itself in becoming an unsubstantial shadowy object, and, rising above this loss and falling back on itself, finds itself merely as lost. In this transparent purity of its moments it becomes a sorrow-laden “beautiful soul”, as it is called; its light dims and dies within it, and it vanishes as a shapeless vapour dissolving into thin air.(7)

Geo #221: “This whole system of capitalist intellectual hegemony…”

…is in the process of going out of business, because it is having trouble continuing to “manufacture consent”, because it only has control of one-way mass media, and that is becoming ever less important.

It is changing right now. This is my point in #208. They can hire all the knuckleheads they want; it is starting to never be enough, if their arguments don’t make sense. Because, if the arguments don’t make sense, then you need to control the media to prevent access by counter-arguments. Which is what has been happening for just about the last 100 years. But no longer.

I read Herman and Chomsky the year it was first published. Ten years before that, I read their 2-volume Political Economy of Human Rights. I learned about East Timor. Then I watched carefully. There was barely a peep about East Timor in the US news media for the next 20 years. (I think Bill Clinton offered a half-hearted apology for the wrongs, during his administration.) Now you can read about it (although not Kissinger’s disgraceful dismissal of culpability) in the Wikipedia article. Things are changing.

How could I have found an amazing person like you, if not for the fact that things are obviously changing? I’d have been lucky to read about you in a note in the New York Review of Books, if I had gotten to the newsstand that week.

The people they hire are shills and knuckleheads. To repeat, that only works, IF they have control of the main media. But the change is that the main media are so main anymore.

What appears to be happening is that there is a more general conversation, and some newer mainstream columnists are paying quiet attention to it and reflecting it, because they are not wedded to the old cocktail-party ways of gathering information, and they prefer to be intellectually honest.

I give it 20 years, and I never thought I’d write that. I always figured it was about 100 years away.

But I want to make a distinction here. I think the reason that it has not occurred, so far, is not ONLY because the plutocracy was able to manufacture consent.

It is also because the logic of popular economics had been based on 1. a genuine scarcity of resources and the means to accomplish tasks, along with 2. the system’s ability to incorporate much of the middle class into the proceeds. The great majority of people bought into that logic: “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” (TANSTAAFL), but if you work hard, you can get ahead.

All of those things are changing too, and faster than I had imagined. Technology has proceeded to the point where 1. there is no real scarcity of resources and means, yet at the same time, 2. the middle class is losing ground, is slowly being shut out, for over 30 years now! That is an quite a combination, an astonishing turn of events really, and there is no moral justification for it, nor will any justification be acceptable to most people.

As it stands now, people just think we had a housing boom, then a bust. And we may see a brief surge of economic growth in these years as we come out of the Second Great Depression, (although growth should already be a lot better than it is) which could provide a distraction.

But I doubt it. Two recent studies have shown that about 45% of white-collar jobs — white collar! –will be lost to automation in the next 15 to 20 years. When people lost farming jobs, they moved to the city. When people lose white collar jobs, where do they go?

I give it 20 years

Well, maybe I’ll stick around for it, then.

I would rather assemble evidence. The only time I’ve ever gambled was 38 years ago. I lost a quarter in a slot at a diner in Reno.

Sportsman’s bet then?

Btw perhaps someone who hasn’t been banned from the left-leaning-banker-on-why-social-cleansing-of-London-isn’t-as-bad-as-people-are saying-thread, could they please bring this to our host’s attention (from today’s FT)?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18c7d112-fe39-11e4-8efb-00144feabdc0.html

Third of Londoners unable to afford basics
A third of people living in London do not have sufficient income to pay for a decent standard of living because housing, transport and childcare costs are so much higher than in the rest of the UK, according to researchers. …

That rises to 43 per cent of Londoners in families with children, the report by Loughborough University found.

Exactly, Jeff R… Well Engels if people don’t have sufficient income to pay for a decent standard of living, then McManus is wrong, because the plutocracy stills follows the logic of money, and needs the masses to repay their debt obligations. If that doesn’t happen, or happens by debt bubbles followed by crashes in rapid succession, then people tend to notice and it has political ramifications because all are still taxpayers, nominally at least. And at the same time, the plutocracy is losing its own grip on resources into ever tighter spheres of ownership as technology progresses towards the computerized One Ring to Rule Them All, while the older wealth is mostly dissipated as ever, through heirs and family misfortunes. So Plume’s pessimisms are misplaced too.

One thing that’s clear after all this discussion is that there’s not only not a consensus definition of “left”, there’s not even a terribly-coherent one that’s widely accepted.

In my opinion, the following movements/characters are “on the left” in typical discussions:
the Jacobins
Karl Marx
the US “Peoples Party” within the populist movement
Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky
Mao
the various Democratic Socialist parties of 20th-century Europe

Hirschmann’s definition doesn’t seem to work well. Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s definition–focused on the relatively important role of the “interests of all/interests of society” vs particular interests, and on an emphasis on uniformity in private life–seems more descriptive; that’s the definition that I prefer (and is fairly consistent with Corey Robin’s definition, if you remember that the government is a hierarchy too.)

Happy to: I’ve recommended Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn before as a key writer in thinking about “leftism”; he has the great advantage that his terms are carefully defined, so even if you don’t agree with his conclusions, it’s actually possible to figure out where his reasoning diverges. (He’s from the same political tradition and demographic as Hayek and Mises.)

His book Leftism is available in full for free. (It’s the first serious book on politics I ever read; I found it in a dumpster in Altamont TN when I was 14 or 15.)

A quote that gives some feel for the book:

The right stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking,
a readiness to preserve traditional values (provided they are true values),
a balanced view of the nature of man, seeing in him neither beast nor
angel, insisting also on the uniqueness of human beings who cannot
be transformed into or treated as mere numbers or ciphers; but the left
is the advocate of the opposite principles. It is the enemy of diversity
and the fanatical promoter of identity. Uniformity is stressed in all leftist
utopias, a paradise in which everybody should be the “same,” where
envy is dead, where the “enemy” either no longer exists, lives outside
the gates, or is utterly humiliated. Leftism loathes differences, deviation,
stratifications. Any hierarchy it accepts is only “functional.” The
term “one” is the keynote: There should be only one language, one
race, one class, one ideology, one religion, one type of school, one
law for everybody, one flag, one coat of arms and one centralized world
state.

Don’t be so dismissive, John. It may be a historical travesty, but at least it’s clear and coherent, as Sam promised.

“How are you planning to square this with history?”

Well isn’t it about as good as “the left” in which communism doesn’t count?

[To be clear I’m suggesting that right/left isn’t very useful over long periods of time, not that his hyper-slanted definition was particularly useful.]

Well, it is true that utopian schemes, both right and left, as a rule envision a world in which there will be little or no disagreement.

Something that may be helpful here. Take this test. Of course, it’s not the last word on anything, and doesn’t try to be. But it’s interesting in that it goes by four quadrants, instead of a simple left to right spectrum. Your test places you in one of those quadrants, based upon your answers, etc.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Last time I took it — and they change the questions every now and then — my scores were Economic Left/Right: -9.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.77. Comparing scores with every single right-winger who has ever taken the test that I know of, including right-libertarians, I score much, much better in the anti-authoritarian realm. To me, this is no surprise at all.

@267: Fair enough?

No, decidedly not; Communism is a travesty of communism. But we’ve been over this so many times that I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s sick unto death of the question.

@273: Generally agree on v.K-Leddihn, but not with “Monarchism is perhaps the earliest form of totalitarianism.” Contra s.johnson upthread, totalitarianism has a reasonably coherent (or at least accepted) definition, and ‘monarchism’ isn’t part of it. Seventeenth-century ‘absolute’ monarchy a la Louis XIV was not totalitarian, or even proto-totalitarian. As Wallerstein has remarked:

If we compare the real power (ability to get decisions actually carried out) of Louis XIV … with say the prime minister of Sweden in the year 2000, we will see that the latter had more real power in Sweden in 2000 than Louis [XIV] in France in 1715. (World-Systems Analysis, p.43)

For roughly the same reasons, I don’t find persuasive descriptions of the Fr. Rev., even in the phase of the Terror, as totalitarian. Totalitarianism seems to me a 20th-c phenomenon, in which leaders w ambitions toward total control over society have the actual ability to implement at least part of their plans.

They weren’t even remotely socialist, rather.

@geo
I believe you and Holbo have indeed been over this before. He isn’t changing his mind. You aren’t changing yours. (Fwiw, on this particular Communism/communism issue, I have some sympathy w your view.) But, for ex., it would be like trying to persuade you that Rorty isn’t the cat’s meow. Ain’t happenin’.

Plume,
Sincere, serious question: Has it ever perhaps occurred to you that your consistently rather vague encomiums to socialism (“all the people” owning means of production, an economy producing just outcomes with no need for redistribution, an end to evil corporate power, etc.) with no real discussion of how to get there, are not really helping the cause? This is basically declamatory sermonizing. If it makes you feel good, more power to you, I suppose. You’re entitled to write whatever you want. But I don’t find it esp. useful. Others may have different views, of course.

Sebastian H,

You left out:

5. Big C communism is left-wing totalitarianism. The right has its own versions. Those who oppose(d) Big C communism came from, and still come from, both sides of the political spectrum, because both sides have strong beliefs in opposition to any form of totalitarian states. But since Big C communism was a black mark for the left, leftists were and still are more likely to oppose it on more than just those grounds. Added to the mix is the need for the left to make clear to all and sundry that this is not what we stand for, because it’s not. It’s the opposite of what we stand for. Our tradition shouts this opposition from the rooftops, and has for two centuries, and is almost exclusively one of opposition to “the state” and the idea of ruling class domination through history.

I realise most of the comments come from the US. In that framework, the evils of communism loom very large, to the point where The Killing Fields is pretty much taken for granted as typical of communism. The rest of the world has a more nuanced view.

The “left” circa 1890 took as its minimum program universal male suffrage, a welfare state, an end to privilege and a severe diminution of employer power. The right in the UK, France and the US were prepared to concede on suffrage (except for blacks in the US), on some elements of a welfare state and most privilege. So the fight centred on employer power, and the use of the state to back (or reduce) that power. Liberals could mostly go along with the left, so long as the means were limited. And, given the stakes and the alternatives, the means could be limited.

In Germany and Russia, the right was much less accepting of even the minimum program – some welfare was about the most they would concede. So the fight was on all fronts, and the means much less restricted. When these states shattered in 1917/18, it came down to violence. In war, numbers count, but so does commitment. In Germany, the right was more committed, in Russia the Bolsheviks. So you had the freikorps, Weimar, and then the resurgence of the right in Germany. A right committed to privilege, autocracy and employer power.

The Bolsheviks were not just committed to communism, they were also committed to building a strong Soviet Union – one able to resist the depredations of the external world. This meant a great deal of repression (as it usually does), but this end had broad support (even among many of the victims). And the system delivered. By 1940 the average Soviet person was much better educated, more skilled, had more opportunities than the average Russian of 1914. The Party had a lot of power, and used it. But the Party was largely made up of new people, and was open to talent. When the Germans tried to take this and more away, they fought like feral cats. With much more and better weapons, more adequately maintained and supplied, than in 1914. Despite the repression, they were committed to the system. And the Communist Party retains significant support in Russia. The statues of Lenin still stand. Ditto China – Chinese feel Communism put the country back on its feet after a century of chaos, and provided ordinary people a life with much more security and opportunity.

The arguments about which ends of the spectrum lead to more violence or repression miss the mark. Left and right are about who state power is used for, and how the elite is to be constituted. When these things are fought over, liberals judge the means used. Mostly that’s a useful call – the times rarely call for blood. But sometimes there is no way through without bloodshed, and liberals end up standing in the middle of the battle shouting out “hey, someone might get hurt!” and blaming the nearest sword-wielder (briefly).

Thank you, John Holbo, for quoting that wonderful bit of madness from Burnham. It makes this:

http://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/future-as-parable/

seem more plausible.

Peter T @ 288

I just think this deserves to be highlighted:

Left and right are about who state power is used for, and how the elite is to be constituted. When these things are fought over, liberals judge the means used.

I think where left-leaning and right-leaning liberals disagree is on which constitution of the elites will lead to less objectionable means.

Sam @ 294

Fair enough. But all liberals under-estimate the general propensity to resort to violence, and over-estimate the human capacity to control mass violence once unleashed. So there’s a lot of finger-pointing along the lines of “they started it”. The American Revolution, for instance, involved a great deal of violence (proportionately more Americans fled/were forced out of the US after the war than Vietnamese out of Vietnam after 75), even though it had impeccable liberal aims. Victory required acquiescence in slavery – so one can add a century of continuing mass cruelty to the tally. What would it have looked like if, in addition to fighting for independence from Britain, a large faction of the colonists had also fought to end slavery and for greater Indian rights? A lot more bloody, is what, over a lot longer period.

I would not characterize the American Revolution as being right wing, but is one of the few revolutions in history that was basically for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

Peter T @288
The Bolsheviks were not just committed to [C]ommunism, they were also committed to building a strong Soviet Union – one able to resist the depredations of the external world. This meant a great deal of repression (as it usually does)

A question, though, is whether it had to mean the killing of tens of millions of people (I don’t know offhand the exact number of Stalin’s victims but it’s in that vicinity). I agree that the population of the USSR, for the most part, preferred their system to being enslaved and/or exterminated by the Nazis, hence part of the reason the Russians fought so hard and incurred huge casualties in what is still called there The Great Patriotic War.

Same point/question, btw, to David @295. Some violence was going to occur, but was mass terror required?

LFC @300,

What the Soviets did was despicable and can’t be excused. That said, how many of their deaths were due to a reaction to Western attempts to crush the nascent revolution from 1917 on? How much was due to the civil wars which the West provoked? How much was do to the immediate and permanent embargo and the coordinated isolation of Russia? Is the Soviet Union the same if the West had actually rallied to the defense of the ouster of the Czars? Is it the same if the West had actually attempted to work with the Soviets instead of immediately seeking to crush them?

Again, no excuses, but the atrocities had more than just Russian fathers. The West was/is complicit, too, both via its actions and inaction.

The numbers of Stalin’s victims are still contested, but likely amount to millions upon millions. One of the best articles on the subject I’ve found is from the New York Review of Books:

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who was worse?

@301,

There is a huge different between a call for solidarity based upon oppression, exploitation, marginalization, etc, and a call for solidarity among oppressors. It’s not rocket science.

In America, this is often pointedly on display when right-wingers complain that if blacks can call for racial solidarity, why can’t whites? Along these same lines, one of the salient dividing lines between left and right is the general perception of victimhood/degrees of oppression. The left is, with exceptions, pretty much in sync with reality there, and sees oppression and oppressors as they actually exist in society and throughout history. The right, OTOH, with exceptions, pretty much turns this on its head. Billionaires are the victims and the oppressed. White Christian males are the victims and the oppressed. The dominant establishment is the victim and oppressed, suffering from an onslaught from the “lower orders” at every turn.

The Nazis were obviously right-wing and show that with their use of the above — among a host of other telltale signs. Turn history and present-day reality on its head. They were brilliant at this, as is the current right. Rally oppressors together by deluding them into thinking they’re all victims. Make the powerful, the dominant, the owners of society feel like they are powerless in the face of those who are truly powerless, etc.

It is also the case that the Nazis’ hate list is nearly identical to that of every right-wing organization/movement in the last several generations, with, perhaps, one exception today: the Jews. But even there, the European right, Neo-Nazi and Neo-Fascist groups are stridently anti-Semitic. In America, there is a temporary alliance, based primarily on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” via Israel and Islamic nations . . . . and the backstory of Christian Apocalypse.

Engels @303 and other recent comments appeared while I was writing 305, so I haven’t addressed them.

As I think I said earlier (or possibly in another thread, I’m getting confused) the number of “victims” of Soviet state repression from the end of the Civil War to the death of Stalin was probably of the order of a million, based on official files, either directly executed or dying in prison. The majority of these victims date from the 1937-8 purges. During the Cold War there was an entire cottage industry devoted to producing higher and higher figures for “victims”, some going so far as to blame the 25 million Soviet dead of the Second World War on Stalin, as well as the deaths of the earlier Civil War (a highly debated figure). But most of the “victims” of Stalinism, on examination, turn out to be calculated from overall population figures. In times of war ( 1917-21 and 1941-5) deaths tend to go up, for obvious reasons, but births tend to come down, because men are separated from their families, don’t get married etc. The unprecedented slaughter of the war years (up to 50% of some age-groups died and many of the rest were wounded) meant that fewer children were born long after the war was over. To this, of course, must be added deaths resulting indirectly from forced collectivization and industrialization, which, depending how you calculate them, are probably in the millions in the interwar years.
How much of this was avoidable? Clearly Stalin (though highly intelligent) was also paranoid, and determined to kill anyone he thought might be a threat. In the world of post-1917 Russia, there were bitter struggles for power (and people who would have killed Stalin if they could) but we can assume that if another leader had triumphed, the purges would have been much less extensive. For the rest, it’s hard to know. Violent resistance to agrarian reform, and violence to enforce those reforms, are common in many countries, and agrarian reform was essential for modernization. Likewise, famines were not unknown in Russia, or indeed elsewhere. Stalin’s deliberate use of terror as a motivating force for modernization was not inevitable: other methods may, or may not have worked as well.
But that implies there was another figure who could have replaced Stalin, and produced a nicer, kinder Soviet Union, or even a non-Soviet state. (Kotkin has a rather wistful chapter on this in his new biography of Stalin). It’s not clear that this was so, and in any event, a different leader might not have been able to drag Russia towards the modernization that saved the country in 1941-2, nor for that matter proved to be the outstanding war leader that Stalin was. That’s the trouble with counter-factuals.

LFC @305,

Good post. When I was growing up, I simply can’t remember any attempt to make the Nazis “left-wing.” Even conservatives didn’t try to do that. It was just accepted that the left’s cross to bear was Stalin, Mao, etc. etc. and the right’s was Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, et al. I just don’t remember there being any debate about this, much less “serious” debate.

It’s only really been in the last couple of decades that the right has decided to turn history on its head along these lines. Or, perhaps, to refine that a bit . . . . it’s only been in the last couple of decades that earlier attempts have moved from the far, far fringe into some relationship with the mainstream. Prior to this, I doubt you’d find one in a thousand scholars, history professors, poli-sci folks trying to peddle Nazism as left-wing. Even now, I’d be very surprised if a visit to any credible university worldwide would yield more than two out of a hundred.

There is just too much contemporary evidence going against them, too many letters, newspaper accounts, memoirs, political minutes from right and left parties themselves. And we know that the vast majority of resistance movements (at the time) throughout Europe were dominated by leftists — mostly communists and socialists. One would think if the Nazis were “left-wing,” this wouldn’t have happened. One would also think that if the Nazis were left-wing, the European right wouldn’t have been so onboard with them (Nazis and Fascists), which they were.

And today? Self-identified neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist groups ID as right-wing. White supremacist groups and movements, especially in America, ID as right-wing. They don’t call themselves “leftists.” They violently rail against the left, endlessly.

To me, that we’re even debating this is a sad indication of the overall effectiveness of right-wing propaganda and mainstreaming of right-wing extremism.

Peter T. @288, I think your points are well-taken with one caveat. I think it goes one step deeper. It seems to me that underneath, left vs. right is not primarily about the use of power. It is an argument about the instrumentality of meritocracy, justifying a material hierarchy.

The right always upholds a meritocracy of some sort, whether it is divinity/monarchism/aristocracy (de Maistre, Spengler, Kuehnelt-Leddin), market deserts (Hayek), or even the greater merit of some race or nation.

The stated motive is NOT the hierarchy as pure power-play, it is the fact that the hierarchy reflects some sort of merit.

What is common to them all is not the type of the meritocracy, it is the psychological necessity of the gradation of merit. Necessity, for reasons which are always expressly forwarded: avoidance of decadence and disorder, mental health, excellence in the arts and culture, the most efficient use of resources and the fastest likelihood of innovation to raise all boats, etc. etc. Meritocracy calls upon people to aspire, to pay tribute to virtues, and to occupy their relative place in the scheme of things.

The left always rejects this necessity of gradation for social psychology, and rejects the need for a material meritocracy, especially when it is rewarded by large advantages in property, profits, etc. They are levelers (as Kuehnelt-Leddin and the rest of the Counter-Enlightenment continuously complained): the left believes that all people are the same; so, at bare minimum, they deserve not only equal opportunity but deserve some basic guarantee of final outcome. And worse, they will vote themselves into it, which is why the Counter-Enlightenment tends to loathe democracy.

To elaborate this opposing psychology a little, the left believes that all people start out basically the same, and it is the outer material differences which cause much of their inner differences — a view which was held in different degrees by Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, book I, chap. 2, paragraph 4) and by Karl Marx in the theory of alienation, extended by later Marxists and psychoanalysts such as Lacan into the realms of self-image creation and so on.

Neoliberalism (the economic doctrine) split the left-right difference for a while, by instituting a democratic meritocracy of market-capitalist wealth creation that happened to forward technological innovation, and a rising standard of living for almost everybody, with a welfare safety-net for the rest, after economic development starts. Thus, equality + meritocratic liberty.

Three things immediately fall out of this, for me: 1. Both sides have justified the use of strong men and dictators, to get to their own ends. 2. How you feel about all of this, depends on your own psychological profile, because that’s what it’s about, to begin with. But–

3. Psychological profiles are changing. Inexorable technological advance is accelerating toward the end of any need or justification for material hierarchy. This has been foreseen for two centuries, on the left and on the right (e.g. on the right, Schumpeter, an honest observer and analyst) and now it is coming to pass. What’s been sustaining the system is not the power of plutocrats (the typical villains in these comments threads on Crooked Timber), it’s the fact that most everybody else had been buying into the system, as the necessary meritocratic scheme of things. And that psychology is no longer being sustained.

Some commenters, such as engels @293, don’t like the direction the thread has taken. But J. Holbo chose to wrote a series of posts centered on the question ‘were the Nazis right-wing or left-wing [or which is the more accurate characterization]?’

Engels likes to present himself as a hard-headed, realistic Marxist, disdainful of head-in-the-clouds people who don’t understand that in order to make an omelet you have to break eggs and who don’t understand that debates about ‘the left is evil’ vs. ‘the left is a beautiful thing which has never existed’ are fruitless. But what engels doesn’t seem to realize is that that debate was virtually guaranteed to occur given the nature of the OPs.

I think that some of my comments above were overly snarky and unhelpful – sorry – but I honestly have no idea why you think I think any of this. I have no opinion on whether the thread could have gone any other way. I haven’t said anything about conseuentialist justifications for revolutionary violence (omelettes, eggs, etc).

I disagree with Holbo’s ongoing project of Taking Goldberg Seriously, I disagree with the Geo / Plume line on the crimes of state socialism (briefly: ‘nothing to do with us, guv!) and I disagree with the many (typically American libertarian leftists) who find nothing to praise in the history of the USSR.

The ‘left is a beautiful thing which has never existed’ was mainly aimed at Plume’s comments, particularly the one which said he thought that left had had no effect on the world and this was a tragedy, which seems very odd as an interpretation of history and self-defeating as politics (from your earlier comment thought you agreed with this).

Engels,

Plume’s comments, particularly the one which said he thought that left had had no effect on the world and this was a tragedy

I followed that comment with a clarification (242). Pretty much immediately I realized I had spoken too soon, and that, yes, the left had positively impacted the world in many ways. I suppose I was thinking in terms of state power, which the left rarely holds throughout history in relative terms . . . . and that when the left does take power, it seems to leave its principles and values far, far behind . . . . far enough behind, in fact, to make those supposedly left-wing governments appear as direct enemies of left-wing tradition/thought/philosophy, etc. etc. I don’t see the same dynamic with the right when it holds power . . . . and, historically, it’s been dominant through the centuries.

In short, the left works outside of state power, for the most part. It works on that state power from the outside. The right holds it, almost invariably. And in the capitalist era, it remains no matter which party takes power. It is always there . . . one might call it the deep state . . . and worldwide, at the moment, neoliberalism, which is right-wing, seems to run the show even when supposed “socialists” win the top prize. Hollande in France, for example . . . and even Syriza in Greece, which may be the furthest left ruling party in Europe in thirty years . . . seems at the mercy of the dominant hierarchies and ideologies, which, again, are decidedly right wing.

Lee Arnold,

the left believes that all people start out basically the same, and it is the outer material differences which cause much of their inner differences

But this is clearly not supported by evidence and one of the pitfalls of leftward thinking, imo. People have innate differences which we don’t really understand the origins of aside from general statements like ‘genetics.’ Nevertheless, the statement, ‘all men/women are created equal’ does have a meaning which is the insistence that all people are equally entitled to respect and dignity. That is an equality of rights rather than capacity.

I believe I’m in agreement with you that there is an inexorable trend towards greater and greater material leveling due in large part to technological progress. I think you are saying that our psychology needs to catch up to our technical abilities which I also believe is true. IOW, I don’t think our psychology today will support a non-market economy, but someday it probably will.

Oh and in case you don’t get, saying that Tim Snyder’s East European killing ground is more important than one rape too many on Game of Thrones is precisely an example of attempting to capture the other’s desire in a hierarchy of your personal making. Or those you serve.

Mattski @318,

But, as Yeats said, h0w do you tell the dancer from the dance? How do you determine those “innate” differences when there are such ghastly differences in external variables? How do you ever get to quantify those “capabilities” when people in modern societies have such vastly different opportunities to develop what they carry with them, internally? Until we can level those externalities enough, there is no real way to ever get to what is “innate,” at least not enough to base effective policy upon.

Again, you have folks who are born a few inches away from home plate, and others who are born thousands of miles away from the stadium, with cement blocks on their legs. One’s “innate” ability to hit home runs is never clear under those circumstances.

As mentioned upthread, I, personally, do not ever want to see a society that forces “equal results.” But I long for the day when society gives every citizen the tools, the education, the environment, the training to develop their own innate “capabilities to the fullest extent possible. To boil it all down, a just society gives equal access to all, regardless of one’s birth lottery. It helps prepare the road for everyone to get to the stadium and take their swing, as it levels out all pre-existing advantages and disadvantages. From that point, the hard work and inner capabilities get their time in the sun. But it’s delusion to think, in our present dynamic, that the folks who do the best on the field of play are necessarily “innately” superior. It’s a delusion and dangerously naive, because those external variables are vastly unequal.

Mattski #318: “But this is clearly not supported by evidence… I don’t think our psychology today will support a non-market economy…”

What is the evidence? Yes there are a few unfortunates, and at the top end there is the occasional rare Mozart, and a few more than that who are great at maths, or can bend it like Beckham, but pretty much everybody else is within range of each other:

“The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference…”

Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.2.4.

By the way, this is another thing that technological change is going to alter. Deficits in intellectual and physical ability are likely to be as treatable as differences in plumbing systems; we will just go in enable the neurons much as we fix the pipes. It doesn’t make scientific sense that this area is somehow beyond improvement, for much longer.

Thus, it is another enormous wrench that will be thrown into the theory that meritocracy is a necessity.

I agree that “our psychology today will [not] support a non-market economy”. What I was trying to point out is the reverse statement: that our market economy today is not supporting the psychology of “just deserts” that allows it to exist. And this is the most important requirement for continuance of the system, by far — not the power of the plutocrats.

Nobody but nobody believes that the bankers deserve what they get (except maybe some of the bankers) and everybody is coming to see that you can work your ass off and get no where.

This has not been news to the discerning types through the last few hundred years, but as it becomes a mass change in the social psychology of the developed capitalist countries, it will become very BIG news indeed. It will be far more important than the power of plutocrats, or the metaphysical venality of capitalism, or the idea that differences will always cause power hierarchies, or a misunderstanding of the law of entropy, or some mystical notion of the cyclical necessity of the return of evil — i.e. the things which seem to animate the pessimism on the left.

@ John Holbo 05.17.15 at 12:47 am and 05.17.15 at 4:10 am

You have suggested that genocide does not just mean sytematically exterminating an ethnic group, but just any mass killing of anyone. I’m sorry, but that’s a ridiculously broad use of the term and it make it hard to find non-genocidal conflicts and regimes. A crucially important point about actual genocide is that you kill innocent people *by definition*. This is not true of political repression. You can conscionably, under certain circumstances, support the death penalty for those who plot a coup. You can’t conscionably support the death penalty for everyone who belongs to a certain ethnic group.

@John Holbo 05.17.15 at 12:36 am

Predictably, you are suggesting that I am engaging in a “no true Scotsman” fallacy on leftism – but the whole point of that fallacy is that, to achieve one’s desired conclusion, one creates a definition of “Scotsman” that really has *nothing* to do with the original and generally accepted meaning of the term. That’s not what I have done with respect to the left – I have justified my definitions by actual facts, and have not replaced another generally accepted and meaningful definition of the term. I do refuse to treat “left” as a proper noun like “Scotsman”, having no inherent meaning besides designating a specific group of individuals (or “tribe”) that happen to call themselves that.

Lee,

Thanks for that quote. Very wise.

On the future: There is of course a great danger when it comes to genetic tinkering, which I think is inevitable. Both that it will happen and the radical new injustice it will promote. Given that capitalism, especially America’s turbo-charged form, puts a price tag on virtually everything, with virtually nothing left out of the monetization realm . . . . the folks with the money will be greatly advantaged when it comes to applying new genetic technologies. They will be able to afford to fix existing issues in themselves, and design their progeny for what once was thought of as pure fantasy. That old Star Trek episode with Khan is more than doable, eventually . . . . as in, we will soon have humans capable of massive improvements in physical strength, longevity, speed, agility, endurance, etc. etc. . . . . while at the same time radically increasing mental capabilities. Supermen and superwomen, etc.. Boiled down, it is very likely we will one day see people with IQs of 250, able to run the 100 meters in 8 seconds, while standing 6’7″ and weighing 275. Gattaca meets Ricardo Montalban. And more. And beyond that. Not to mention how robotics will impact this, with the rich, again, being able to take advantage of new technologies that will make the bionic man look like a piker in comparison.

As long as we have that “market based” economy, as long as we have capitalism in place, new technologies will only accelerate differences, because the rich will be able to afford what others can’t . . . and this will work exponentially on the chasms between classes. I honestly don’t see anyway around this with the present economic relations in place.

@ John Holbo 05.20.15 at 2:40 am, Hirshman and Marshall:
Nice citation, and the idea is not particularly different from what I and others on the thread have been saying, although the key word seems to be “citizenship” instead of equality (equal rights of citizenship, whatever). But I suppose that if one were to force Hirshman and Marshall to tackle the “Stalin” problem, they would be accused of “No true Scotsman” just as I’ve been.

Plume, you aren’t really arguing with me because I haven’t asserted anything like,

the folks who do the best on the field of play are necessarily “innately” superior.

Lee, I am in broad agreement with you. I’m trying to point to the aspects of hierarchy that are actually beneficial. As you say, some humans have extraordinary skills and they stand out for that reason. It doesn’t really matter exactly what percentage it is- we agree, it’s a fairly small minority. But those are the people we correctly look to for guidance. It is far more efficient that way! How lavishly–or not–such people are rewarded is of minor importance. In fact, that is dependent as you suggest, on the prevailing psychology of the day. What matters is that we go for guidance to the people who stand out. That’s natural and rational and benefits everyone.

Lee A Arnold@312 “The left always rejects this necessity of gradation for social psychology, and rejects the need for a material meritocracy:”

Compare this to JH’s quote from James Burnham: ““Stalin proves himself a ‘great man’, in the grand style. The accounts of the banquets, staged in Moscow for the visiting dignitaries, set the symbolic tone. With their enormous menus of sturgeon, and roasts, and fowl, and sweets; their streams of liquor; the scores of toasts with which they end; the silent, unmoving secret police behind each guest; all against the winter background of the starving multitudes of besieged Leningrad; the dying millions at the front; the jammed concentration camps; the city crowds kept by their minute rations just at the edge of life”.

Two possible conclusions: Burnham was completely inaccurate OR Stalin was not a left-winger.

Or you could join with me and several others in concluding that the left/right distinction is not particularly useful or meaningful.

Lee A Arnold@312: “The right always upholds a meritocracy of some sort’.

Compare Peter T@288: “the Party [in Stalin’s Russia] was largely made up of new people, and was open to talent”.

No contradiction here, comrades?

Plume: I don’t want to self-provide! I want to be taken care of! If all you think needs to be done is to make sure workers get to keep what they earn, then that leaves people who don’t work (or don’t want to work) in the dust. The idea that a welfare state which gives everyone what they need is less left-wing than workers controlling the means of production so that workers can earn what they need seems totally backwards.

Reacting to a number of posts by H Sebastian and others (Geo and Plume agreeing), arguing that real Communism may not have been “truly leftist”, but since real-world politics was about real Communism, that means true leftism has no significance:

That’s wrong. In the real world, most of those sympathising or siding, temporarily or permanently, with real Communism were, in fact, motivated by the ideals of true leftism (that’s what the sincere ones were thinking and the hypocrites were claiming). Similarly, the ones most actively opposing real Communism were motivated by their opposition to *true* leftism (with the same caveat). This is easily established when you see what other causes the same people sympathised with and promoted (political, racial, gender, ethnic, religious equality). They did fit in the egalitarianism vs traditional inequality axis. Pace anarchists, council communists etc., many people in the Russian civil war and later did choose the Bolshevik side because it seemed to be the side that: A. was promising a left-wing policy, and B: actually had a chance of succeeding.

So Sebastian’s suggestions that “anti-communists didn’t care about how pretty communism should be in theory, they were reacting to how ugly it was in practice” are ridiculous – apparently we’re supposed to believe that the various Pinochets and Suhartos that fought Communism all over the world during the 20th century (dictatorial, militaristic, theocratic, nationalistic, plutocratic, and yes, also mass-murdering) were motivated by their principal aversion to potential or real Communist mass murders. There are very few countries in the world where a major or, in most cases, predominant part of the anti-Communist forces were *not* more or less people of the ancien-regime style, traditional-hierarchy Right. Check their rhetoric – it’s precisely the (alleged) equality they are reacting to; the equality and the stated goal of destroying (the) hierarchy.

The related claim, argued by Geo and Plume, that real Communism had nothing to do with leftist causes, is also wrong. Yes, some things, specifically related to political repression and democracy, went “wrong” from the very start – and yet, due to its roots and to the groups it targetted for support, real Communism did continue to advance many truly leftist goals and values throughout its history (see Peter T’s post). Some egalitarian outcomes are still in the process of being destroyed by the post-Communist regimes. Of course, as time went by, few of these goals and values have been left unbetrayed by at least *some* self-described Communist regime in history at *some* point, which only goes to show that “real-world Communism” is not so much a model in itself as a mixed bag with a tendency back towards old-regime-style right.

Examples from “social issues” particularly dear to the hearts of American liberals: homosexuality was decriminalised by the October Revolution and recriminalised by Stalin in the 1930s; abortion was decriminalised by the October Revolution and recriminalised by Stalin in the 1930s; minority languages such as Ukranian were promoted by the October Revolution and then (unofficially) restricted by Stalin; the attitude towards Jews went from having a Jewish leader to the (unofficial) anti-Semitic tendencies of the “Doctors’ Plot” and the campaign against “rootless Cosmopolitanism” in the later Stalin years. Similar trajectories (with varying initial and final points) have been followed elsewhere: as late as the 1960s, Swedish women would travel to Poland to get abortions (contrast the situation with post-communist Poland). The Stalinist reaction was itself reversed to varying extent in many cases.

(repost after misspelling my signature)

@ John Holbo 05.17.15 at 12:47 am and 05.17.15 at 4:10 am

You have suggested that genocide does not just mean sytematically exterminating an ethnic group, but just any mass killing of anyone. I’m sorry, but that’s a ridiculously broad use of the term and it make it hard to find non-genocidal conflicts and regimes. A crucially important point about actual genocide is that you kill innocent people *by definition*. This is not true of political repression. You can conscionably, under certain circumstances, support the death penalty for those who plot a coup. You can’t conscionably support the death penalty for everyone who belongs to a certain ethnic group.

@John Holbo 05.17.15 at 12:36 am

Predictably, you are suggesting that I am engaging in a “no true Scotsman” fallacy on leftism – but the whole point of that fallacy is that, to achieve one’s desired conclusion, one creates a definition of “Scotsman” that really has *nothing* to do with the original and generally accepted meaning of the term. That’s not what I have done with respect to the left – I have justified my definitions by actual facts, and have not replaced another generally accepted and meaningful definition of the term. I do refuse to treat “left” as a proper noun like “Scotsman”, having no inherent meaning besides designating a specific group of individuals (or “tribe”) that happen to call themslves that.

(repost after…, etc.)

@ John Holbo 05.20.15 at 2:40 am, Hirshman and Marshall:
Nice citation, and the idea is not particularly different from what I and others on the thread have been saying, although the key word chosen here seems to be “citizenship” instead of equality (equal rights of citizenship, whatever). But I suppose that if one were to force Hirshman and Marshall to tackle the “Stalin” problem, they would end up being accused of “No true Scotsman” just as I’ve been.

I think I’ll just retweet 336 (F Foundling) alongside Peter t (288) and disappear (and hope I’ve myself clearer to LFC). It seems this debate has happened here about half dozen times in the last few months and each time it’s made for frustrating reading, but apologies for the excess of snark.

F. Foundling@336: the ideals of true leftism … truly leftist goals and values

Would you — or anyone, anyone at all — care to propose a definition of “the ideals of true leftism” or of “truly leftist goals and values,” so that we might intelligently discuss whether Communists, Nazis, or Eskimos are leftists, and in what sense? I gave it a try @174 and 175, with (so far) very little effect on the conversation. Fair enough, but we need to agree on some definition, or we may as well each be commenting in a different language.

Geo: I meant 245. Butterfingers.

F.Foundling@338: “A crucially important point about actual genocide is that you kill innocent people”.

So you think that most, or all, of Lenin’s and Stalin’s victims were guilty?

I’d strongly prefer a definition of “left” that included something about actual humans, who might not all want the same or compatible things, and which could be observed in some actual existing or recent society. Plume/Foundling seem to have a “great plan, wrong species” problem with their definition.

As far as I can tell and IMO, the problem with talking about ‘left and right’ is the lack of analytical clarity it provides. Of course left and right (or ideological/ideational) divisions matter, but how much do they matter ? And do they matter as a consequence of some other factor, or are they a cause in their own right ?
I can’t really speak to the Weimar situation, but thinking broadly from some other cases what might matter more ? Material interests ? Power ? Class ? Regional identity ?Micro level social/political dynamics? Race ? Gender ? The opportunity opened, dysfunction created, by societal breakdown ? So on and so forth….
Also afaik, what we do know about people (how they think and reason, what attachments they value etc) is that they dont think in coherent ideological terms, and they (generally) dont attach themselves to ideas, but social relationships developed in certain contexts. So, for the majority(mostly all, I would say), what does left-right matter ? Primarily, I would guess as a tribal attachment.
If that’s true then why not go a step down from the macro level and see how people conceptualise and become attached to these divisons, what they actually think theyre fighting/voting over. Why in some cases it will be fascism vs socialism, others nationalism vs imperialism, others religion vs secularity, and so on. (but more realistically various sub groups within these broad coalitions fighting over different a variety of causes, many of them not articulated)
The main contemporary comparison (I think) is religion, specifically Islam. A lot of people like to claim (which I think is a little barmy) that Islam *doesnt* matter in the various conflicts in Muslim countries. Of course it does, but only in certain ways; as an ingroup attachment or means of legitimation. As the main ideology that exists in the context these political struggles are developing in.
But as a main cause it doesnt really work because as an idea it’s so fluid and open to contention, and inspires in people and contexts so many different reponses (from charity to violence) So if we can agree that Islam works primarily as a background factor in political struggles in the Middle East, why do we imagine ideological factors matter so much in between the wars Europe ?

These are just my general thoughts though, not having read all the thread *closely* (and only vaguely remembering some of the OPs)

“I’d strongly prefer a definition of “left” that included something about actual humans, who might not all want the same or compatible things”

The bourgeoisie wants to maintain its property; the proletariat wants – incompatibly- to satisfy its needs. Where shall I mail your Party membership card, Sam?

@Rich Puchalsky 05.21.15 at 7:59 pm
>yes,, Stalin was “on the left” by any measure

Stalin as of which particular year? He even flirted with the Russian Orthodox Church at one point. I suspect the only reason the man didn’t try neoliberalism was that he didn’t live long enough.

Stephen #330: “Or you could join with me and several others in concluding that the left/right distinction is not particularly useful or meaningful.”

That would depend upon whether you can separate the issues. Do you mean that:

1. The left/right distinction is not particularly useful or meaningful when applied to Stalin? (or, for that matter, Hitler?) — I think almost everybody here agrees with that. JH wrote it in the comment with the Burnham quote.

2. The left/right distinction is not particularly useful or meaningful when applied to the party movements that those two rode in on? — But that would be historically untrue. Soviet communism and Nazism were birthed from the Marxist left and the German right, respectively.

3. The left/right distinction is not particularly useful or meaningful, in general? — But most people appear to think that left and right have discernible attributes that remain constant throughout their different historical and national instances. So, what are they, exactly? When they are not being dishonest? That’s what I was trying to zero in on, and dictators have nothing to do with it.

That said, the logic of your own argument is not impeccable… I wrote, “The right always upholds a meritocracy of some sort” (which you quoted at your #332). But that does NOT logically imply that every meritocracy is approved by the right. As we all know, they dislike government bureaucracies as much as anyone.

I also wrote, “The left always rejects this necessity of gradation for social psychology, and rejects the need for a material meritocracy” (which you quoted at your #33o). But that is NOT logically contradicted by the fact that a dictator threw lavish parties while people starved. I already agreed that neither the left or right, (as honest political positions) necessitate the rise of dictators. We should not blame the left for Stalin, nor blame the right for Hitler. (I think that’s what sticks in Joseph McCarthy’s craw.) Dictators go off on their own, they take advantage by any handle they can grab, in pursuit of personal power (#311).

One further point. It is true that the “great man” theory does seem to come originally from the right. It seems to be a follow-on to the Counter-Enlightenment’s wish to return to monarchism and to avoid democracy, because, well, if it looks like you can’t do that, then the next best thing is to complain that we’re going to need a “great man” to keep everybody in line. It also feels like part of the fallout of the 18th-century psychological changes too, a dark bit of Romanticism really, somewhat in the same neck of the psychological woods that produced Nietzsche’s call for the superman, and Mary Shelley’s response with Frankenstein.

HOWEVER it is quite obvious that various communisms have inculcated virtual worship of the leader as avatar, from Mao to present-day North Korea. And the right would certainly have none of that.

So let’s suppose that “great-manning it” is not a clue to right or left. There have been enough horrors to go around.

@geo 05.21.15 at 8:09 pm
>So you think that Communism was dedicated to (using my definition) the pursuit of “egalitarianism and democracy” and committed to providing all citizens with “a voice in economic and p0litical decisions that affect them”? Of course you don’t; you know as well as I do that Leninism was an explicitly anti-democratic ideology, arrogating all state power to a vanguard party, and that even economically, the USSR and China were among the most rigid class societies in history. Your agreement with my definition must have been awfully broad.

This conversation would get too long. Very briefly: First, the restrictions on democracy were supposed to be temporary, due to the ongoing class struggle etc. Second, state power was officially supposed to be subject to elections and other means (e.g. Rabkrin). In many countries, there were even several parties – *in theory*. Varying degrees of workers’ control over the workplace was also introduced – probably mostly on paper. The Party itself was also supposed to be a democratic organisation controlled by its own members, not an autocracy or oligarchy as it actually became. “Leninism” was an uncear concept; Lenin’s own views were highly variable and approached council communism in The State and Revolution (1917). In the early stages of the Russian revolution, there were even significant “anarcho-syndicalist” tendencies within the Party. In general, it was never uncontroversial among Communists precisely what a proper Communist regime was going to be like.

As for real-life Communist societies being particularly unequal economically, you’re wrong – in spite of the catastrophes that occurred in many places, millions of lower-class people did see great improvements in their living standards, with free healthcare and education becoming available for the first time. Neither Russia nor China can seriously be claimed to have been more economically equal before their respective revolutions. And the fall of Communism led to increased economic inequality wherever it happened.

In general, when people have supported Communism, they haven’t done so because they have been dreaming of a one-party dictatorship, they have done so because they have wanted to do away with the economic inequality and plutocracy of capitalism and Communism has seemed the only known and viable alternative. Yes, it might seem stupid to you. Yes, they were closing their eyes for things they didn’t want to see. Yes, many were terribly disappointed afterwards. But it was, in fact, the only hope for a humane and just society that millions of people all over the world had, and many of them even sacrificed their lives for it. It’s a fact. Ignoring it is … among other things, not productive.

Something forgotten in the mix of whether or not like discussions like these are “useful.” If you have suffered through dialogue with hard-core conservatives, movement conservatives, right-libertarians (as I have) who rigidly adhere to a certain belief system that says Hitler was a leftist . . . . this actually does impact current politics, current political engagement, current political narratives and current boundaries of the possible, at least in the background. It informs all too much of the debate when it comes to any push for new “progressive” legislation or programs. Because it will all supposedly lead to Hitler, Fascism and Nazism yet again, according to these righties . . . . and some of them are senators and congress critters.

Outside the theoretical, and deep into the weeds of the practical, it actually does matter. In several ways. I think, in fact, one of the underlying supports for a far more aggressive movement conservatism and the ascension of the right in general (since roughly 1980) — at least in America — was the casting off of the cloud of Nazism and Hitler, by going with Opposite Day memes and pinning it all on the left. This, combined with the ongoing attacks on the left via what happened in Russia, China and North Korea is a serious PR coup for the right. They can basically hang any and all “totalitarian” or “dictatorial” regimes on the neck of the left, and absolve themselves and their own ideology of their own atrocities. This also makes it easier for them to proclaim their supposed status as freedom fighters.

IMO, the left kicks itself in the face when it so easily accepts this and says none of it matters. Yes, it actually does. In the real world, it makes a huge difference if people think of the left as the home of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin and pretty much every political psychopath, evah. Consciously or unconsciously, this hurts left-wing efforts to effect change now, and I find this to be more than obvious. Shout from the rooftops obvious.

In short, we should be fighting this historical distortion/revisionism and Opposite Day pleading, not only because it’s absolutely false, wrong, wildly inaccurate and completely absurd . . . . but because not fighting it aids and abets right-wing dominance and expansion. We help them tremendously when we just let them have their way with lumping all political villains on our side of the aisle.

F. Foundling @327

Aims are in part determined by what is possible at the time. Louis XIV didn’t want total control over French society partly because he didn’t see it as a possibility, for the very good reason that it wasn’t a possibility. That’s why I find it hard to completely separate technique or technical feasibility from aims. This is apparently a minority view, at least on this thread.

@engels
Thank you for the response to my comment upthread. You did make your position clearer. (On the matters where we continue to differ (and there prob. are some) we can agree to disagree.)

In othernews, and while liberal academics in America are debating whether the Nazis were actually left-wing and whether Communism was as bad as Nazism, this is happening in Ukraine:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.657381

Lfc, sure.

Ronan 356
I wd note a difference between thinking in ‘coherent’ ideological terms and thinking in ideological terms. Coherence is not a requirement for ideology to matter.

But as a main cause it [Islam] doesnt really work because as an idea it’s so fluid and open to contention, and inspires in people and contexts so many different reponses (from charity to violence) So if we can agree that Islam works primarily as a background factor in political struggles in the Middle East, why do we imagine ideological factors matter so much in between-the-wars Europe?

Not always easy to separate identity, ‘tribe’, ideology, as FF suggests above. Also, aren’t we seeing a sort of ideological struggle *within* Islam? Its very ‘fluidity’ means that ISIS can claim (however tenuously) to speak in its name and so can advocates of something entirely different. ‘Radical’ Islamism, however thin or tenuous its warrant may (or may not) be in the basic Islamic texts, is an ideological movement. An ideology to me suggests, among other things, a worldview, a rough or elaborated system that purports to explain various phenomena or (at the extremes) everything. ‘Radical’ Islamism is certainly an ideology in that sense. You seem (?) to think ideology must connote intellectualism, scholarly debate, whatever. Not necessarily at all. There were street battles in Weimar between Nazis and Communists. What was more useful in those encounters, ability to be a street fighter or skill in dialectics?

Re totalitarianism/monarchism: disagreements noted. I’ll think about it.

F Foundling – “Ideas reflect social strategies, lifestyles and conscious or subconscious attitudes towards life. These differ between humans.”

LFC – ” You seem (?) to think ideology must connote intellectualism, scholarly debate, whatever. Not necessarily at all. There were street battles in Weimar between Nazis and Communists. ”

I don’t think it has to connote intellectualism (or be coherent ) , in fact Id say the opposite. That ideologies are always fluid and vague and can be adopted and adapted by people in all sorts of different ways. Im just wondering how far that gets us ? If they are so vague and contingent then what do they really explain ?
Ideas (or perhaps ideology) can work for co-ordination, or to build solidarity in certain contexts. They can inspire individuals. But do they really drive these moments of mass disruption, or are they consequences of it ? I’d assume the later.

Stephen #359: “I think that trying to arrange people or politics on a one-dimensional left-right axis is far too limited… is not useful either…”

Well I agree about “people”, but not “politics”. And there are better axes for either; Douglas’ Grid-Group theory for example. But I think that we clearly have to distinguish people as individuals (and especially the leaders) from politics as party movements, because in every era in the modern period (so far as I know) political parties as groups have had no trouble stating which end of left-right they leant toward. And this is true however much their leaders may have distorted the principles.

So how does that happen? What is the proper characterization of the phenomenon of left and right? And why is it useful?

As to the characterization, I still can’t think of any meritocratic hierarchy that was or is approved as a necessary principle by the left. The important word is “necessary”. Stalin’s bureaucracy is not a counterexample. Again, I wrote that my argument is that “the left always rejects the NECESSITY of gradation for social psychology and the NEED for meritocracy”.

This is far different from the right, which is never without a meritocracy as a necessary principle. It appears to be the foundation of their social psychology. On the other hand, the left’s main principle of social psychology goes something like, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Which drives the right crazy.)

(I imagine that many of the Soviet leftists who were in favor of the revolution disapproved of Stalin and his bureaucracy and his lavish parties, upon the left’s principle — except perhaps as a temporary bridge to get to their perfect future — but under Stalin, you observed what happened to Trotsky, and kept your mouth shut. Whether the Western left-wingers of the time thought that Stalin was left or right is beside the point.)

And how is this useful, now? Well for one thing, the current response to the post-financial crash depression has damaged lives by promoting austerity, which is based finally on the meritocratic market principle. And what we hear further is denial of the growing reality that the market is less and less able to reward merit, going forward into the future. So it might help to rehearse the underlying framework of the previous left/right disputes in order to understand where this can go, and to be on the lookout for psychological signals both good and bad.

On the “great man” point, I can’t find the statement wherein Robespierre claimed himself to be a civilization-changing great man, nor any general statement by the revolutionists claiming that he was one; certainly he had supporters (for a while). But in any case, the great man idea was kept alive through the 19th century by monarchists, Nietzscheans, and hero-worshippers, certainly not every conservative, but I am not aware of it showing up in leftist or socialist thought. So perhaps you can provide a few more examples to help me understand this.

373/383

totalitarianism as an attempt to exert the kind of control over society that the monarch exerts over the court.

This seems right to me.

I really think that absolute monarchy is not much like totalitarianism, because it’s intended span of control is so much smaller. For example, it isn’t that technology changed dramatically between 1785 and 1795–but it’s Henri Gregoire, not any figure from the monarchy, who proposes “annihilating” the local languages of France.

And I’m in no way arguing that people don’t have ideologies–I’m arguing that imaginations of a society that doesn’t have the issue that every house with multiple adults has, of “how quiet should it be at 11 PM”, and so can without any conflict pursue agreed-upon ends–might work for ants, but has never been observed among humans.

@geo 05.21.15 at 11:03 pm
>You’re arguing that on my definition of leftism, which you accept — viz, a commitment to egalitarianism and democracy, with all those in the society affected by a decision having some ability to influence it — the democratic and egalitarian pretensions of the early Soviet Union … qualify them as leftists. Which is equivalent to saying that anyone who claims to be an egalitarian and a democrat is therefore a leftist, even if she is in fact a dictator.

We are talking about ideology here. “Pretensions” (democratic and egalitarian or otherwise) are very much relevant when discussing ideology. An extreme degree of divorce between ideology and practice was a defining feature of Communism, but the ideology was still crucial in recruiting and maintaining supporters. The various deviations in the practice, as I said, were supposed to be a temporary characteristic before true socialism or communism was achieved. You can say it was all a lie if you will – but if so, it was a left-wing lie. It was a lie you could only be tempted to buy if you had left-wing aspirations, not the reverse. And people were. Please, please believe me that they were. Or just read some history and biographies. If you just wanted a dictatorship, you went elsewhere. And yes, by left-wing aspirations I mean things along the line of those you sketched in 174 (which, besides “having a say in … decisions”, included “egalitarianism … Everyone should have the necessary minimum for a flourishing life: 2000 calories/day, clean water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, interesting and meaningful work, leisure” etc.).

@there were were no meaningful elections or workers’ control or internal party democracy, and whatever individual Communists may have thought, there was very little public discussion of “what a proper Communist regime was going to be like” —

Before the Stalinist turn, internal party democracy was not obviously dysfunctional, and discussions about what a proper socialist or Communist regime should be like and what “the Communist thing to do” was were taking place. Lenin in particular was changing his ideas of socialism all the time, from Paris Commune-style direct democracy, through militarised German Empire-style state control, through “Soviet Power + electrification”, to “a system of civilised cooperatives”. There was the famed () of 1919-1920, for instance, where a major faction of the party turned out to have held basically “anarcho-syndicalist” views all along, to Lenin’s “dismay”. “Workers’ control” was supposed to be real, though nobody seemed to be sure how.

Yes, the party elite was privileged, but since the difference between this elite and the rest of the population were still smaller than under capitalism – precisely because the living standards of the mass of the population were raised to a degree that wasn’t offset by an increase in the luxuries of the elite. As for “ideological standing” – yes, active political dissent meant trouble, which could entail worse housing – such as a prison, for that matter! However, this means mixing the issue of political freedom with economic equality. For the mass of the population who stayed out of such “trouble”, there were benefits that they hadn’t had under the pre-Communist regimes and that they have been losing under the post-Communist regimes (regardless of whether they stay out of trouble or not). And the actual progressive achievements that Communism, for all its moral and practical failures, had produced, have been and are being destroyed with Western right-wing guidance, while Western leftists with “perfectly pure souls” have preferred to ignore the issue, assuming that anything associated with evil Stalinism deserves destruction.

Sam,

Again, there is absolutely zero evidence to support the assertion that monarchies in general intended a smaller sphere of control or influence than modern day dictatorships. None. Not in the writings of relevant, contemporary theorists. Not in the words of the despots themselves. And not in their practices — again, if one accounts for the radical change in the means of control.

None. Nada. Zilch.

Now, of course, one could theoretically be a “benign monarch,” but the historical incidences of that are close to zero as well . . . . and it is quite possible for the same thing to occur among the class modern “totalitarians.” It is conceivable, for instance, that a despot’s own idea of control is to basically protect his own backside, live in absolute luxury, safety and enjoy hedonistic pursuits, while letting his sheeple do whatever they please, as long as they don’t try to topple him.

Both things, however — the benign monarch and the benign modern day totalitarian — are basically unicorns. What we’re left with is the same animal with vastly different means at their disposal to enact whatever level of control desired. It’s sophistry to try to make of the monarch and the modern despot two different species.

js,

That’s an interesting guess.

I’m in my late 50s, and moved further to the left as I grew older and wiser. :>)

Grew up in a “liberal” household, but migrated leftward from there, sometimes provoked by various regimes from Reagan on, from life, and from an expanding reading list. Obama, back in 2009, basically shut the door for me on the two-party system for good. I gave up pretty much as soon as he assembled his neoliberal economic team, etc. etc. Have been a “green” leftist roughly since Clinton’s time.

These “balloons” still have air for me in the sense that I really can’t stand mischaracterization of political beliefs, especially when they’re upside down . . . and as mentioned upthread, I think the distortions give aid and comfort to the enemy. At least my enemy: the political right, movement conservatism, propertarianism, etc. etc.

Ronan:

Ideas (or perhaps ideology) can work for co-ordination, or to build solidarity in certain contexts. They can inspire individuals. But do they really drive these moments of mass disruption, or are they consequences of it ? I’d assume the latter.

I think ideas can have, in certain cases, independent causal power, and at any rate can and do interact (reciprocally) with other forces.

This is probably a dead horse at this time, but wanted to add something more to the monarchism thingy.

Monarchies tended to have strong networks between nations. Alliances often buttressed via marriage between royal houses, etc. etc. Modern day dictators tend to be on their own. There really isn’t any sort of generational or spacial bond, tradition, recourse to the heavens, etc. etc. for them. Their control begins and ends with their own lives, typically, and is nothing without guns, etc. Even though in 20/20 hindsight the entire edifice of the aristocracy looks absurd, it still held for centuries at a time, at least between various revolutions and counter-revolutions. I would say the totality of aristocratic controls, psychologically, religiously, habitually, and on and on, was greater than any inevitably short-lived modern “totalitarian” regime. It wasn’t just within the walls of that particular nation that a king or a sultan or a pasha held sway. This ancient absurdity was networked. Big time. The capitalist powers that be must have learned their lesson from the ancient regimes . . . globalization is power, etc.

Perhaps the modern, single despot flares up like a volcano, runs hotter, brighter in his or her insanity/infamy for a time. But in the long-run, the ancient monarchies, pharaohs, sultanships, caesarian and other imperial forms were in the aggregate more powerful and totalizing, directly and indirectly. They became a way of life, a part of the woodwork, the sun, the moon, the stars. That’s not something modern despots ever managed.

FF

Unless these “outstanding” people happen not to be morally outstanding as well. In other words, unless they happen to be using their position as sources of guidance to further their own interests and at the expense of those guided. Human nature being what it is, I’m afraid they will generally try to do precisely that, which is why things like democracy and a high level of political egalitarianism are needed.

Democracy is no guarantee of a “free & equal” society! As Rich P suggested, we’ve been over this quite a bit. I mean, I’m all for democracy. But if you think that democracy has some particular ideal form and all we need to do is finally achieve this form….

Democracy a) has no precise definition and b) can be as brutal and ugly as most other forms of government.

Geo,

Well said, especially here:

Not only did the crimes of state socialism have nothing to do with democratic socialists, social democrats, council communists, anarchosyndicalists, and other weirdos of the Geo/Plume Tendency, but the latter have invariably been targets of severe repression by the state soc’s. But of course that’s irrelevant because both groups called themselves leftists and were all called leftists by lots of other people, many of whom couldn’t tell Rosa Luxemburg from Leonid Brezhnev. As I keep saying, I don’t care what you call them, as long as what you call them doesn’t lead people who are new to the subject to assume that the monsters and their victims were just peas in a pod, really, and there’s no need to make discriminations or pay attention to the weirdos. Which is, of course, what most Americans have done since the Red Scare of the 1920s.

Exactly. And this is how we get, in America, conversations (and the occasional president) calling Medicare “Stalinist,” or saying the Occupy movement wants the Gulag reborn, or a Noam Chomsky being compared with Stalin . . . . and now, thanks to right-wing revisionism, we have Hitler and Stalin supposedly on the same side of the aisle.

Of course, it’s to be expected from the right. They spend the bulk of their time in Opposite Day. But what is truly bizarre is when supposed liberals join in the reindeer games.

Tailgunner @397,

I think you have your wires crossed. Looks like you’ve confused several different posters while thinking you’re arguing with just one. Take a deep breath, step back, and try again.

“But of course that’s irrelevant because both groups called themselves leftists and were all called leftists by lots of other people… As I keep saying, I don’t care what you call them, as long as what you call them doesn’t lead people who are new to the subject to assume that the monsters and their victims were just peas in a pod”

1. No one (except poss. right-wing trolls) said it was ‘irrelevant’. 2. No-one said it’s because they ‘called themselves leftists,’ but because they *were* leftists. 3. Surely your interpretation does exactly this with eg. Stalin v. Trotsky?

Sartre: ‘the great merit of Soviet Marxism is that it actually exists’. I don’t think you have to be a Stalinist or a Republican to feel that a form of ‘Marxism’ which fails to acknowledge the force of this insight is a bit hard to take seriously.

I understand Billington erroneously attributes the origin of the concept of “brotherhood” to the illuminati and masons, when in fact the term was popularized in the late 17th and early 18th c.s by Bishop Fénélon, the Roman Catholic bishop who was easily the best-selling and most influential author of the era and a favorite of Rousseau, Jefferson, and Kant.

If I were interested in the relationship of religion and revolution I would read instead Norman Cohn’s classic The Pursuit of the Millenium (1957) and also brush up on Pelagianism and the cargo cults of WW2.

However, anyone who is interested in Billington can find him on Archive.org.

@mattski 05.22.15 at 4:41 am

>>Unless these “outstanding” people happen not to be morally outstanding as well. In other words, unless they happen to be using their position as sources of guidance to further their own interests and at the expense of those guided. Human nature being what it is, I’m afraid they will generally try to do precisely that, which is why things like democracy and a high level of political egalitarianism are needed.

>Democracy is no guarantee of a “free & equal” society! As Rich P suggested, we’ve been over this quite a bit. I mean, I’m all for democracy. But if you think that democracy has some particular ideal form and all we need to do is finally achieve this form….

>Democracy a) has no precise definition and b) can be as brutal and ugly as most other forms of government.

I’ve said nothing about a guarantee, but democracy is indispensable for keeping the (alleged/self-described) elite / “outstanding people whom we ought to look for guidance” in check. Personally I’m in favour of democracy, because I can’t see any other egalitarian way for a group of people to make whatever decisions it needs to make collectively. And some decisions do need to be made collectively, no matter how much of the free-market right is trying to minimise or ignore that aspect of human existence. When the decision is collective, someone will have something imposed on them. The point of democracy is that everyone should have an *equal* say in what that something is, as opposed to some self-appointed superiors having more of a say than the rest.

Yes, I know many intellectuals are terrified that “the rabble” will vote for stupid and nasty stuff. Well, then you’ll have to *convince* them not to – instead of forcing them (or else you can always emigrate). It is the right of an individual to make mistakes until he learns, and the same applies to a group of people. The alternative to this is benign dictatorship, partial or complete, and I don’t believe in that particular utopia; unaccountable power over others will be abused. On the other hand, the manipulation of liberal and democratic institutions by the plutocracy does need to be eliminated, and one should solve that particular problem before generalising from stupidities they see. People aren’t *that* stupid if not actively stupefied and stupidified.

@Ronan
Have you ever read Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith by James H. Billington, btw ? I havent, wondering what you think of it if you have

Aware of the book, might have flipped through it on some occasion, but no, I have not read it. Bracketing the criticism of Singer (which may be valid) quoted above by Harold, the Billington book presumably does connect (if not in a rigorous causal way) ideas and revolution.

But to be fair to your original point, there definitely are serious works of modern social science that take a ‘structural’ view of revolution, seeing ideas and ideology not as causal but as basically epiphenomenal (I think that’s a fair characterization). I’m thinking primarily of T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions. Her teacher B. Moore’s earlier Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy is somewhat different, but not on that particular point. Some of Skocpol’s critics, e.g. W. Sewell, took her to task for, among other things, slighting culture and ideology; they had an exchange that’s reprinted in an essay collection of hers.

I’m sure there are comparably serious books on revolution that give ideas more of their due, so to speak, but offhand I’m not sure which titles to recommend there. J. Israel’s recent book on the French Revolution does, as I understand it (haven’t read it), stress ‘radical Enlightenment’ ideology, but it was the subject of what I thought was a pretty persuasive critique by David Bell in NYRB some months ago. (Obviously Israel did not think the critique of his bk was compelling, and the two of them had a subsequent exchange of letters.)

I really didn’t *want* to contribute to pulling this thread further off-topic, but hey… at over 400 comments, I doubt many people are still reading.

Well, come to think of it, Walzer’s Revolution of the Saints is basically about Puritanism as a revolutionary ideology. So you could throw that onto the list.

Joseph McCarthy #397: “It does not matter what they wanted. Realistic outcomes are what matters… What sort of meritocracy or excellence were the Nazi’s holding the Germans’ up to?”

There are two points here:

1. The “realistic outcome” of Nazism was a top-down dictatorship, which you told us at #124 is right-wing: “Right-wing dictatorship is top-down. It is not a thing enforced by a self-righteous raging mob as the Leftisms of French Revolution and (inter)national socialisms up to its contemporaries do.” And of course, once Hitler was in power, he didn’t need the attentions, or the powers of enforcement, of a self-righteous raging mob.

2. The excellence the Nazis were holding the Germans up to, was German culture and race. They acted to dominate the others, to kill them or enslave them. By contrast, Soviet communists did not act in the real world to uphold ANY tradition or traditional meritocracy, at all. It is neither in their statements, nor their acts. They were against tradition. They acted to level everybody, to get them out of being capitalists, and to get them into the same system where everybody was “equals”. Anybody who didn’t join, was killed.

The Soviets promoted similar revolutions in other countries, to join this international cause, and in the postwar period they even brought them into their own international congresses for various meetings on how to divide the gov’t cheese. Didn’t matter what race or color, as long as not capitalist. In fact leftists have usually been pretty explicitly internationalists, from the get-go.

Far different than enslaving or killing anybody because they are not, what they CANNOT be.

Thus, at least Soviet communism offered a choice in the matter!

Now I agree, this is a distinction without a difference. Because they were both dictatorships, killing people.

But it is you who are hoping to prove that all totalitarianism is somehow left-wing, your reason here apparently being, that the French Revolution was leftist. But it isn’t a logical or a real-world consequence that therefore all left-wing ideology must lead to dictatorship.

@403 https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-YHOmDIO3JKK_dE3M/Fire%20in%20the%20Minds%20of%20Men_djvu.txt

PLume@394: “Modern day dictators tend to be on their own. There really isn’t any sort of generational or spacial bond, tradition, recourse to the heavens, etc. etc. for them”.

Not sure about recourse to the heavens, but in other respects North Korea might seem to be an exception. And what will become of theChinese Communist princelings’ offspring?

LFC @410:

Hey, I’m still reading. With great interest.

Solid with geo and Plume, fwiw.

Tailgunner Joe is a deadening bore. He takes an endless recitation of far right-wing cliches expressed as unsupported assertions to be a form of argument.

[Aside, to F. Foundling: Are you aware that geo is George Scialabba, a longtime Marxist scholar and published author (What Are Intellectuals Good For, q.v.) who, I am sure, knows at least as much about the relevant historiography here as you do. And, given that he is right in the argument, it is likely that he knows substantially more of the subject.*

*With apologies to geo for any embarrassment I might have caused him!

What has happened to the rule of law in all this? As I understand it, under Fascism the leader is above the law, as are those who follow and even anticipate the spirit of the leader’s wishes. In a left democracy the law is above the ruler.

The rightists’ primary operational principle: We know we are bastards, so we assume that everyone else is as well.

Plume @ 425

Personal autonomy.
we refuse to disperse power to everyone
We’re going to have to actually do this ourselves, together. All of us.

Right there, though, you get to what I see as the core reason that leftism/socialism tends to become a bloody tyranny.

The first thing that you need, for personal autonomy, is to be able to say “no, I don’t want to X with you.” The left is devoted to “everyone does this together,” so it has no real space for “no, I don’t want to do this.” (The ongoing campaign to require goodthink about sexuality is only the latest manifestation of this pervasive pattern.)

So is the leftist’s primary operational principle: We know that there are just a few bad apples who have made a bad system. So if we get rid of the bad apples our new system will be fine?

No.

There are a lot of bad apples. But really, speaking for myself, at least, I don’t wish them any fate worse than being out-voted.

Sebatian H,

Nawww. It has absolutely nothing to do with “getting rid of a few bad apples.” It has everything to do with full democracy, solidarity and critical mass so there isn’t any issue of a few bad apples running things into the ground. When we’re all in it together, working on our own behalf together, logic tells us we’re going to do what is right for all of us, together. For the vast majority. Logic tells us that as long as we have the capitalist system with its tiny percentage of rulers, they’re going to do what is best for them, which is just about always rotten for the rest of us.

Again, it’s not rocket science. Take the class of the widest possible interest group. Whose interests are they likely to work toward? Contrast that with tiny groups working to increase the wealth and power of those tiny groups, etc. etc.

Another difference between left and right: Contrary to the right’s idea that the left, only, seeks a “collectivist” society, the right does as well — at least if they support capitalism. Capitalism can’t function without collectivism. It collectivizes labor and consumers, etc. It’s just a different, warped sort of collectivism. It’s a collectivism that functions to make a tiny few rich, the few ruling over the many. That’s right-collectivism. Left-collectivism, OTOH, does the obviously logical thing: The collective works on behalf of the collective, not for a tiny handful of bosses or just one.

Who benefits is key. In complex, modern societies, we can’t escape from collectivist economics. So, then it comes down to who reaps the rewards from the given. With capitalism, a tiny, tiny fraction of society does. With the leftist alternative, EVERYONE does. Even, ironically, the super-rich. They just won’t be able to live like kings and queens as they once did under the economic apartheid system that is capitalism.

Rich @431,

Not following you on much of that. When I read your posts, I still can’t figure out where you stand on the issues. It appears you ID as an anarchist, but I’ve never met an anarchist who wanted to cling to capitalist modes of production before, and if I remember correctly, that’s you. And now it sounds like you don’t want democracy, either, which is far more in the right-libertarian camp, not the anarchist, etc.

And this?

Propaganda be damned: if people in general agreed with the left, the left would have been voted in.

In reality, Americans are typically exposed to little more than an A to B conversation on politics. We get to hear roughly center-right to hard right, and that’s basically it. The furthest left the MSM will go is slightly left of center, and even that seems to happen less and less, and with more and more angst, apology and so on. In reality, Americans simply aren’t exposed to leftist ideas, with pretty much all of leftist history hidden from school kids until they reach college — if they’re lucky. It’s not just incredibly successful propaganda. It’s very close to radio silence.

Kids in America, and adults, have to go waaaaay out of their way to find out about leftists, and all too often the way they do find out about them is from ax-grinding right-wing sources. Check out a search in Itunes, for examples, for Marx. You get the mises.org’s version.

Until our political narrative actually includes real leftists, it’s absurd to say Americans have rejected them. It’s like saying Americans reject an exotic kind of icecream they’ve never even seen in stores.

Rich @433,

As I said, we have to go waaaay out of our way to discover leftist thinkers, history, philosophy, etc. etc. I never said it was an insuperable barrier. But there is security (for the establishment) in obscurity (for their enemies’ views). Borrowed that little ditty from IT, of course.

If you actually do believe that it’s readily available to all and sundry, that the mainstream talks about it, that leftists aren’t horrifically marginalized, that we teach it in our schools, etc. etc. you really, truly have no clue about American society.

js: “it’s also harmful because it distorts history and prevents us from seeing how, if a Marxist left ever came to power again somewhere—impossible as it seems—how it could avoid some of the past mistakes and do better.”

I think that you’re writing a version of what you criticize. China is Marxist: a Marxist left is in power in what is probably the second most powerful nation-state in the world. You don’t get to declare the vast number of Chinese Marxists to be not Marxists because your idea of what a Marxist is differs from theirs. Or, if you do, I don’t see why geo doesn’t get to as well.

As for the dark, bloody chapters of every tradition’s history, people don’t get to have it both ways. I fully agree that liberalism has had and currently has its dark, bloody chapters. But I still see things like this, from Peter T’s #288:

“But sometimes there is no way through without bloodshed, and liberals end up standing in the middle of the battle shouting out “hey, someone might get hurt!” and blaming the nearest sword-wielder (briefly).”

Liberalism can’t simultaneously be responsible for mass deaths and also be the province of ineffectual peaceniks. Or if you prefer what’s generally considered to be positive uses of violence, FDR’s New Deal was left-liberal if anything was, and liberals didn’t shrink from world war against fascism. People are having it both ways throughout the latter part of this thread.

Rich @436

I had in mind people like Kerensky, Lord Grey, Mehdi Bazargan. To be clear, admirable figures, but unable to bring themselves to act as the times required. No doubt many similar others perished.

China is Marxist: a Marxist left is in power in what is probably the second most powerful nation-state in the world.

Also though, this is ridiculous. Mao’s China is a dark, horrible stain on the history of the Marxist left. But give me one fucking reason why the post-Deng China is Marxist left anymore than the Nazis were socialist because they called themselves the National Socialist etc etc.

js: “But give me one fucking reason why the post-Deng China is Marxist left anymore than the Nazis were socialist because they called themselves the National Socialist etc etc.”

This seems to me to be exactly like geo’s argument about the Bolsheviks. Post-Deng China is officially Marxist: I could dig through any number of official governmental documents on the Web to show evidence for this. It’s not like the mere use of “Socialism” in a name: it has a whole lot to do with the goals and practices of the ruling party. For convenience you could start with the wiki page here.

So I don’t see why a real-existing-leftism person wouldn’t say, as people have done for the USSR, “look at the rising standards of living and the partial advances made” along with the obvious things you don’t like. I think that post-Deng China is quite a representative Marxist state, with great similarities to almost every other Marxist state that has actually existed, and a kind of natural outgrowth of Marxist ideas.

…while the other involved the seizure of state power, violently if necessary, by an elite acting (or claiming to act) in the name of the working class.

Lenin didn’t just come up with the idea from thin air, the label “communist” of course comes from the Paris Commune as a model.

And during the period 1870-1930+, the “Paris Commune” represented many things, not just a vanguard seizing state power, for that they had “Blanquist,” but also the events and circumstances surrounding the Commune: the Franco-Prussian war (and the causes, social conditions, global situation, specific actions surrounding the F-P war; the brutal reaction in the aftermath of the Commune) the other wars and imperialist adventures and the acceleration of bourgeois madness that eventually, but far from finally, exploded in the Guns of August. Imperialism and liberalism’s wars were absolutely critical to Lenin’s analysis.

Too many here speak as if the alternatives are either vanguardist Marxist-Leninism or the inevitable peaceful transition to dem-sosh utopia. To the Marxist-Leninist history since 1870 says that the inescapable alternatives are vanguardist revolution or barbarism, war, (neo-) imperialism and eventual apocalypse by fire.

Whence comes the optimism of the reformist or evolutionist Marxists? Or is it just irresponsibility and the comfort of being at least tolerated by liberal elites?

I may be more Trotskyist than M-L, or maybe something different, but I absolutely decided that it isn’t on me to justify violent revolution.

After the election of 2000 and the Iraq war, I decided that it was up to the liberals and reformist Marxists and nice anarchists to show me they could get and keep the jackals and troglodytes under control. I was “disappointed by someone new,” to use hilarious understatement.

Lots of good comments still in this thread . . . . Geo’s 441, LFC’s quite balanced 437, JS’s riff on that at 439. Though I would take issue with the idea that “anarchism” is necessarily left-wing. I think both sides of the aisle have their version. Rothbard is a likely examplar of the right’s. I have strong left-anarchist leanings, etc, in the Chomskyian sense.

I also agree that “leftists” are, generally speaking — with exceptions — anticapitalist, and to the earlier point about the supposed American rejection of this . . . again, our media simply do not give voice to anticapitalists. The overwhelming message throughout the land is that capitalism is amazing and the only possible way, and that it’s completely absurd to even suggest alternatives . . . . so absurd that no one even needs to say it’s absurd. So, no. Americans haven’t rejected it. The vast majority haven’t heard of alternatives . . . and a majority of those who have hear only the demonization of those alternatives — which Geo also points to.

(Chomsky also points to this in his manufactured consent studies, though he doesn’t focus entirely on the economic issues, dealing also with war crimes, surveillance, etc. etc. )

And why is this the case? Because leftists have been swept up, even by otherwise well-meaning liberals, and accorded the blame for what happened in Soviet Russia, China, NK, etc. etc. Even though we stand in greater opposition than pretty much anyone else on the political spectrum to the complete absence there of democracy, egalitarian structures, the presence of an all too powerful ruling class, etc. etc. . . . we (and our precursors) are condemned along with them.

That’s basically why it matters. Because the confusion of opposed forces within the left makes it all too easy for the entire left to be shut out of the political debate. This, strangely enough, hasn’t happened to conservatives, who sit on the same side of the aisle as the Nazis and Fascists, in both their original versions and “neo.” They haven’t been made to pay for the sins of their cousins . . . . even though key conservative Germans actually put Hitler into power and the German Left was his only opposition . . . until he wiped them out, etc. etc.

geo: “Likewise, the US is entirely exceptional, history’s only example of a state with a purely idealist foreign policy, aiming only to spread freedom, democracy, and material welfare to all the world’s people.”

That’s how the US sees itself, yes. It doesn’t mean that these things are true. In particular, large-scale Marxist projects have often seen themselves an embodying all sorts of ideals: in practice they lead to state capitalism.

As for who is a Marxist, I think that the very numerous Marxists in China outvote the few remnants left in the west.

Well, Paris had a population of two million, and I wasn’t aware that over a million were active participants in the Commune. And Blanqui was elected in three districts.

But again, absolutely missing the point.

Lenin: “20,000 killed in the streets…Lessons: bourgeoisie will stop at nothing.”

I am going to read the Ross, but we are too many generations from close cataclysm for me to trust contemporary analysts.

Short of paranoid kremlinology, I think we have to accept that China is a regular capitalist state. Whatever long game the Chinese party may or may not be playing, I doubt it will withstand the bourgeoisie it has unleashed/become.

Oops — “posting China” above was supposed to be “post-Deng China”, but spellchecker intervened.

JOSEPH McCARTHY #457: “You messed the time sequence. Hitler first mobilized masses and then seized power. So no, it was not coup or any type of top-down dictatorship. Enough active raging mobs supported him.”

This is incorrect in two very different ways.

1. First, there were NO “active raging mobs”. It was organized, the opposite of “mob”. The whole thing was well-engineered from the beginning by a small group following Hitler’s command. His active support was small and tightly organized by his top group from the beginning, and the big rallies were tightly ordered, well-orchestrated by this same top group. The Hitler youth were organized. The Nuremberg rallies were annually scheduled Party propaganda events. There were NO spontaneous mob outbursts of support that amounted to any political significance, either tactically or strategically. It was nothing like the assembly politics of the French Revolution, which had no single leader pushing it, and had plenty of disorganized street mobs.

2. Second, you moved your own goalpost. Your own criterion was, “realistic outcomes are what matters.” (#397). The outcome in Germany was a top-down dictatorship, with nobody calling the shots but Hitler, and with organized show rallies no different than under any right-wing dictator.

JOSEPH McCARTHY #457: “Incredible wishful thinking and arrogance. What kind of a “choice” is it to choose between either joining something or being killed?”

This is unfair. As I wrote in the very next sentence, which you omitted, “Now I agree, this is a distinction without a difference. Because they were both dictatorships, killing people.” In other words, of course it’s not much of a choice! You are creating a straw man of my comment if you omit this sentence. It seems intellectually dishonest.

JOSEPH McCARTHY #457: “Secondly, if you were born in non-proletarian family (you cannot chose your parents) or just being above average, you were class enemy eligible for at least suspicion and at most execution. They did not spare any family member, regardless of age.”

“Eligible for at least suspicion” is far different than certainly being killed for being a Jew, or being enslaved for being a Slav. In contrast to the Nazis, many in the earliest communist party were in fact sons of the bourgeoisie (non-proletarians) and it gathered many more non-proles as it went along. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels came from wealthy capitalist families.

JOSEPH McCARTHY #457: “I am not trying to prove that all totalitarianisms are leftist. I am exposing the leftist (French Revolution) traits of national socialism – mass politics and raging crowds demanding utopian “justice” as useful idiot agent for power seizure. Why utopian justice? Because equality and supremacy of collective do not exist in reality.”

Again, you’re moving your own goalpost, since at #397 you wrote, “It does not matter what they wanted. Realistic outcomes are what matters.” Well, by any definition of words, “propaganda” coming from the Nazi Party is “what they wanted”, not the “realistic outcome”. The realistic outcome was not mass-politics. The realistic outcome was engineered rallies under a top-down dictatorship, with nobody calling the shots but Hitler.

JOSEPH McCARTHY #457: “Furthermore, supremacy being outright aggressive and very short-lived strategy because of its tendency to quickly find enemies, is equality much more efficient slogan.”

It doesn’t matter here what is more efficient. The Nazis wanted supremacy and didn’t want equality, they wanted supremacy of the German race and culture over others.

But, I’m not even sure why you are continuously putting up this fallacious argument about what the Nazis wanted, since you write in #397 that to distinguish between left and right, “IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THEY WANTED. Realistic outcomes are what matters.” And the realistic outcome was nobody calling the shots but Hitler, which is a top-down dictatorship, which is a rightwing dictatorship as you defined in #124.