I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!
Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”.
If you do that you definitely aren’t, authoritarianism and far-left are mutually exclusive.
Council communists and Anarchists generally qualify for far-left status. (Or, differently put, council communism is methadone therapy for Marxists who don’t yet dare make the jump to syndicalism).
I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.
It’s even worse than horseshoe. Stop trying to assign point values to tyranny.
I award you one tyranny point for telling people what to do.
Exactly. I like to keep things simple and boil things down to authority. I’m the only one allowed to define me, and I don’t have the right to define others. If everyone has absolute freedom to be what they are, then by design no one has the right to define, exploit, marginalize or otherwise or oppress them. if anyone was oppressed, not everyone would have absolute freedom. Then on top of that we put societal contracts. “Here’s a time period of my labor, would you trade it for that thing you have”. "I’d like to give some of my extra things so that more people can have good things [taxation] “Here’s consent, how about you?” “I go by [pronoun].”
Anarchism -> Maximum freedom for all Hierarchism-> Maximum freedom for the one on top.
Smarter people than me have talked about the nuances for ages so as I said, I like to simplify things. Fullyautomatedspacegayluxurycommunism ftw!
What if I want to use my absolute freedom to oppress someone else? What if I use my absolute freedom to build a structure that blocks the view of the mountains from my neighbors, who love the view? Whose freedom should get oppressed to solve that?
Honest question, not trying to be a contrarian.
authoritarianism and far-left are mutually exclusive.
You’re correct, believing that “authoritarian” is a well defined or meaningful term and not just a snarl word created during the cold war to equivocate communists and Nazis is incompatible with being far-left
The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here’s the quote:
1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:
Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.
That’s a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That’s the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there’s an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
"The working class […] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers […] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism […] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.’
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?
I don’t know. People will proudy tell you they are staunch conservative anti socialist, all while collecting a check from the government
To be fair, social programs aren’t Socialism.
Then, what are them? (Legit question)
Social Programs are just functions of government, they don’t necessarily have any direct ties to Mode of Production. There are examples of Socialist social programs, such as Single Payer Healthcare where everyone along the Healthcare chain is a government employee and the Healthcare industry as a whole is owned and run by the Workers via the state, but most single Payer Healthcare programs heavily involve privatized companies that are paid by the state.
the fuck
They reject being labeled by the left, it’s the same how the left doesn’t like “woke” any more.
The problem with the word woke is that it was specifically about racial inequality and then the right made it synonymous with everything they hate about lgbtq people. White Christian Nationalism is the real mind virus.
No, we think woke is hysterical because no right wingers know what it means. I’ll happily call myself woke, but I also use it as a sarcastic pejorative
