The political spectrum

[BackAgain]

Too bad you only listen to proven charlatans and nuts...

Zzz. Projection gets led and tiresome. Smarten up and get a new schtick.

 

[BackAgain]

I didn't feel the need to delimit down to leading Thanksgiving Grace.

Well. Good. Incoherent, but still dimwitted.

I called your architect leaders out on being at the Cub Scout level as far as importance.

I’m h. Very clear.

I vote blue in the red state of Texas. Don't worry about my grasp, nor my vote.

I am not worried. Of course you vote blue. You’re retarded.

 

[d0gbreath]

Well. Good. Incoherent, but still dimwitted.

I’m h. Very clear.

I am not worried. Of course you vote blue. You’re retarded.

And you're walking on thin ice.

 

[basquebromance]

Leftists seem to sure hate this OP

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do!

 

[BackAgain]

And you're walking on thin ice.

No. I’m not. You’re very clearly retarded.

Plus, you ain’t too smart.

 

[Oddball]

Your don’t get it. I know what anarchy is supposed to be. My point, and I’m shocked you aren’t grasping it, is relatively straightforward.

You have a great apple tree. You make your living off of the selling of apples. But in an anarchical society, you have no way to enforce your own property rights. So others can (and would) simply march unto your land (as if you could even have a valid claim to ownership of land) and take several bushels of your apples (come now; “your” apples?) denying you the right to use and sell them despite your own sweat and toil in growing them.

Anarchy is a fucking stupid pipe dream. And I do mean opium.

Or I could hire people to secure my apples.

Or I could enter int aggreements with the other farmers in my community to chip in and hire our security.

 

[BackAgain]

Or I could hire people to secure my apples.

Or I could enter int aggreements with the other farmers in my community to chip in and hire our security.

Cool. And if that collective group discerns that it has some actual power, maybe it will gang up on the little guys. What might they do? Form a counter group. Sounds like crips and bloods.

 

[Pellinore]

We need to put this shit to bed.
The extreme left is tyranny, the extreme right is anarchy.

The political spectrum is not from one tyranny to another, it is from tyranny, to total freedom. The very definition of "spectrum" should tell you that.
A spectrum is the scale of 2 opposites. Not two similarities.
Please drop your middle school interpretation of left vs right.
Real liberals are not leftists. How could someone that believes in small govt and liberty be on the side of collectivism and big govt?
Most republicans are not righties. How can people that want to use the govt to shove their version of morality down peoples throats be righties? How can people that want to use the govt to control and bail out the private sector be righties?

Geez, miss a thread about this and three days later I'm 35 pages back. Oh well. I'm going to go into Poli Sci Teacher mode here, so bear with me.

One thing to point out is that political science is a science, and so there are several different theories with different spectrums, and this is one of them, so I would call it A political spectrum, but not THE political spectrum. As for the terms used, there is no definitive rulebook defining each word; their meanings are determined by popular use, and this is not what the majority of the political science community means when they say "left" or "right."

The terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" go back to the French Parliament in around Napoleon's time, and our modern definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" mostly galvanized around the social upheaval that came with the Industrial Revolution a little more than 100 years ago. Liberals (those who seek to change society) were seen as left-wing, and conservatives (those seeking to preserve social institutions the way they are) are seen as right-wing. So far, so good; that aligns with the spectrum shown here.

The problem comes when you examine the extremes. Communism (a flawed Utopian ideal promising equality, but delivering dictatorship) is and always has been seen as an extreme far-left movement. Fascism (and its German version, Nazism), though, have always been placed on the right, due to their core beliefs in a forced hierarchy of society, which the equality-conscious left rejects. I'm attaching clips of two articles from the 20s supporting those terms; Communists forming on the left, Fascists supported by the right. These are not isolated cases; almost every article you'll find back then will align with these, and this basic political spectrum (the orange one here) was in the widest use into and through World War II.

Now, in the 1940s, there emerged an economist and political scientist named Freidrich Hayek. He was from Vienna and part of the libertarian Austrian School of economic thought. In an effort to equate Communism and Fascism, he introduced a political spectrum that looked much like the one here in his book The Road to Serfdom, which was (as one might expect) very popular among right-wing libertarians. In essence, he tried to redefine the political spectrum in a effort to show right-wing libertarianism as the only true path to democracy, while associating early Cold-War Communism together with the widely-despised Fascism on the demonized left. Political scientists read his theories but Fascism and the Nazis were still referred to as being on the political right (another article, this one from 1952).

Political and social scientists since then have paraded out lots of two-dimensional political charts since then as ways to more specifically examine the political landscape, most of which still have left-wing on the left and right-wing on the right. Most of the ones embraced by all but the most hard-core political wonks look something like what they call the Nolan Chart, introduced in the late sixties by another libertarian named David Nolan. His Y-axis has libertarian up north and authoritarian at the bottom, a visualization used a lot these days (Google Image 'political chart' if you like, and you'll see a lot that look like his). They aren't labelled on the version I cut-and-pasted here, but left- and right-libertarians fit nicely in the top corners. Authoritarians can be bottom-left Communists, or bottom-right fascists; both anti-democratic, totalitarian dictatorship-ish ideals, but from two radically opposite positions.

And here's the interesting part: If you take the line chart in the OP here and turn it sideways, it fits pretty well with the Y-axis of the Nolan charts and lots of others like it — libertarianism on one side, and authoritarianism on the other. So it's not utterly wrong; a lot of people do think of politics that way.

But the terminology is. The term 'left wing' has been used for centuries now to mean the people who are arguing for social equality; more benefits of society and government for the working class or the outright poor. Consequently, the term 'right wing' has always meant those arguing for a structured society, with greater benefits for those who deserve them; in the case of American conservatives, it is for those who work hard and contribute to society. The idea that equality-conscious liberal beliefs are somehow the pathway to equality-hating fascist ideals is as misguided as the idea that conservatives who support law and order, social structure, and the ideals of a healthy republic are somehow on the road to anarchy.

So the problem is not that you are showing a political spectrum (you are), but that you are portraying it as the absolute unquestionable definition. The end result of believing that it is, is that you will either be confused or repulsed by any political science author who actually knows what they are talking about.

Final note: There is also a difference between 'classical liberalism' and modern American liberalism. It can be confusing at times, but 'classical liberal' is focused on unrestrained individual liberty, an unconstrained free market, and laissez-faire government beliefs. It was the Founding Fathers' idea of liberalism, and is similar to what we would today call libertarianism. In modern America, though (mostly due to the New Deal reforms), what we call 'liberal' is what the rest of world might call 'social liberalism,' focused on civil rights, a mixed economy with corporate regulation, social justice, and the common good. Describing a liberal as "someone that believes in small govt and liberty" sounds more like a classical liberal rather than a modern American social liberal. Just FYI.

 

[francoHFW]

Zzz. Projection gets led and tiresome. Smarten up and get a new

Your hate and misinformation propaganda which is the big story of the last 30 years And my only argument with you brainwashed functional morons

 

[BackAgain]

,, which is the big story of the last 30 yearsics

Ok.

“Which is.”

“Which” is an indefinite pronoun. You’ve failed to make clear what noun it referenced.

In any event, I doubt you can.

 

[two_iron]

A lot of us just want to be LEFT THE FUCK ALONE.

I don't need a sniveling, failed bartender or a stuttering fucktard with a fully loaded diaper to be involved in my life in any way at all. Make your millions with your grifts, but that's where it ends..... LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE.

 

[MinTrut]

No. I’m not. You’re very clearly retarded.

Plus, you ain’t too smart.

Troll or smug dimwit - I can't quite decide...

But yeah, the OP is garbage.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Geez, miss a thread about this and three days later I'm 35 pages back. Oh well. I'm going to go into Poli Sci Teacher mode here, so bear with me.

One thing to point out is that political science is a science, and so there are several different theories with different spectrums, and this is one of them, so I would call it A political spectrum, but not THE political spectrum. As for the terms used, there is no definitive rulebook defining each word; their meanings are determined by popular use, and this is not what the majority of the political science community means when they say "left" or "right."

The terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" go back to the French Parliament in around Napoleon's time, and our modern definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" mostly galvanized around the social upheaval that came with the Industrial Revolution a little more than 100 years ago. Liberals (those who seek to change society) were seen as left-wing, and conservatives (those seeking to preserve social institutions the way they are) are seen as right-wing. So far, so good; that aligns with the spectrum shown here.

The problem comes when you examine the extremes. Communism (a flawed Utopian ideal promising equality, but delivering dictatorship) is and always has been seen as an extreme far-left movement. Fascism (and its German version, Nazism), though, have always been placed on the right, due to their core beliefs in a forced hierarchy of society, which the equality-conscious left rejects. I'm attaching clips of two articles from the 20s supporting those terms; Communists forming on the left, Fascists supported by the right. These are not isolated cases; almost every article you'll find back then will align with these, and this basic political spectrum (the orange one here) was in the widest use into and through World War II.

Now, in the 1940s, there emerged an economist and political scientist named Freidrich Hayek. He was from Vienna and part of the libertarian Austrian School of economic thought. In an effort to equate Communism and Fascism, he introduced a political spectrum that looked much like the one here in his book The Road to Serfdom, which was (as one might expect) very popular among right-wing libertarians. In essence, he tried to redefine the political spectrum in a effort to show right-wing libertarianism as the only true path to democracy, while associating early Cold-War Communism together with the widely-despised Fascism on the demonized left. Political scientists read his theories but Fascism and the Nazis were still referred to as being on the political right (another article, this one from 1952).

Political and social scientists since then have paraded out lots of two-dimensional political charts since then as ways to more specifically examine the political landscape, most of which still have left-wing on the left and right-wing on the right. Most of the ones embraced by all but the most hard-core political wonks look something like what they call the Nolan Chart, introduced in the late sixties by another libertarian named David Nolan. His Y-axis has libertarian up north and authoritarian at the bottom, a visualization used a lot these days (Google Image 'political chart' if you like, and you'll see a lot that look like his). They aren't labelled on the version I cut-and-pasted here, but left- and right-libertarians fit nicely in the top corners. Authoritarians can be bottom-left Communists, or bottom-right fascists; both anti-democratic, totalitarian dictatorship-ish ideals, but from two radically opposite positions.

And here's the interesting part: If you take the line chart in the OP here and turn it sideways, it fits pretty well with the Y-axis of the Nolan charts and lots of others like it — libertarianism on one side, and authoritarianism on the other. So it's not utterly wrong; a lot of people do think of politics that way.

But the terminology is. The term 'left wing' has been used for centuries now to mean the people who are arguing for social equality; more benefits of society and government for the working class or the outright poor. Consequently, the term 'right wing' has always meant those arguing for a structured society, with greater benefits for those who deserve them; in the case of American conservatives, it is for those who work hard and contribute to society. The idea that equality-conscious liberal beliefs are somehow the pathway to equality-hating fascist ideals is as misguided as the idea that conservatives who support law and order, social structure, and the ideals of a healthy republic are somehow on the road to anarchy.

So the problem is not that you are showing a political spectrum (you are), but that you are portraying it as the absolute unquestionable definition. The end result of believing that it is, is that you will either be confused or repulsed by any political science author who actually knows what they are talking about.

Final note: There is also a difference between 'classical liberalism' and modern American liberalism. It can be confusing at times, but 'classical liberal' is focused on unrestrained individual liberty, an unconstrained free market, and laissez-faire government beliefs. It was the Founding Fathers' idea of liberalism, and is similar to what we would today call libertarianism. In modern America, though (mostly due to the New Deal reforms), what we call 'liberal' is what the rest of world might call 'social liberalism,' focused on civil rights, a mixed economy with corporate regulation, social justice, and the common good. Describing a liberal as "someone that believes in small govt and liberty" sounds more like a classical liberal rather than a modern American social liberal. Just FYI.


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Firstly, let's talk about the evolution of human society. It’s imperative to acknowledge that before capitalism or even feudalism, there existed primitive communism, as rightly pointed out by Friedrich Engels in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.” These societies had no private property, class distinctions, or state apparatus. Cooperation was essential for survival.

Communism isn’t inherently tyranical as you imply. Marx and Engels envisaged a classless, stateless society where the means of production are owned collectively, as elucidated in “The Communist Manifesto”. The 20th-century instances of “communism” you may refer to are state socialism or state capitalism, where an authoritarian, rather than a democratic state controls the means of production. Capitalism also has its fair share of dictatorships and hegemonic imperialism, so there's no moral high ground upon which the defenders and lovers of capitalism can stand and point their crooked, feculent fingers at communists. Your capitalist mountain of dead, rotting corpses, is just as high and smells just as bad as ours.

We now stand on the precipice of a technological revolution, where automation and AI will, by necessity, force a re-examination of our socio-economic structure. Marx, in “Capital, Volume I”, articulated the tendency of capital to reduce labor costs, including through automation. This leads to the very contradiction of overproduction and unemployment, as workers can't purchase the products they don't help create. The working class today, is able to purchase the goods and services that they consume, with their earned wages but that's not going to be the case in the not-too-distant future as advanced automation and AI eliminate wage-labor.

We're now entering an era of technological advancement, where automation can essentially replace most if not all menial, labor-intensive jobs (including many professional, white collar jobs as well), leaving tens of millions of Americans unemployed.

​

As technology advances to a level never seen before in human history, the way we produce all of the goods and services we now use, will eventually involve a high level of automation and artificial intelligence, without much human intervention or participation. This eventually necessitates a post-capitalist, non-profit system of production, also known as democratic socialism. Worker-owned and run cooperatives in collaboration with a democratic government, will supervise the robots and AI, to produce all of the goods and services that we use. The role human beings will play in production will be of planning, directing, supervising, and when necessary, repairing the system, to function properly. These robots:

​

Can work 24/7, producing all of the products and services that we now consume.

Capitalist "democracies" are often oligarchies in disguise (plutocracies, where the wealthy elites rule at the expense of the public good). Wealth accumulates, and the wealthy inevitably wield disproportionate influence over political systems. Read “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty if you wish for an empirical journey through this reality.

Your assertion of American conservatives supporting hard work seems more in line with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, which praises the virtue of selfishness in “Atlas Shrugged”. While that's fine and dandy for those sitting on stacks of capital, it isn't very rosy for the proletariat (the working class) who witness stagnant wages, diminishing rights, and the usurpation of democracy by corporations.

Let us not be reductionist and label communism as dictatorial or capitalism as the herald of prosperity. Both have their shades, heavy, ugly baggage, and virtues.

 

[francoHFW]

Ok.

“Which is.”

“Which” is an indefinite pronoun. You’ve failed to make clear what noun it referenced.

In any event, I doubt you can.

miss the point much? it's the computer.... And the only problem with you GOP base voters is your misinformation, provided by the usual suspects...

 

[basquebromance]

Politics is like fashion. It's never finished​

 

[BackAgain]

miss the point much? it's the computer.... And the only problem with you GOP base voters is your misinformation, provided by the usual suspects...

Write coherently much?

No.

It was a rhetorical question.

 

[Pellinore]

Firstly, let's talk about the evolution of human society. It’s imperative to acknowledge that before capitalism or even feudalism, there existed primitive communism, as rightly pointed out by Friedrich Engels in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.” These societies had no private property, class distinctions, or state apparatus. Cooperation was essential for survival.

View attachment 800362

View attachment 800363

View attachment 800364

View attachment 800365​

Communism isn’t inherently tyranical as you imply. Marx and Engels envisaged a classless, stateless society where the means of production are owned collectively, as elucidated in “The Communist Manifesto”. The 20th-century instances of “communism” you may refer to are state socialism or state capitalism, where an authoritarian, rather than a democratic state controls the means of production. Capitalism also has its fair share of dictatorships and hegemonic imperialism, so there's no moral high ground upon which the defenders and lovers of capitalism can stand and point their crooked, feculent fingers at communists. Your capitalist mountain of dead, rotting corpses, is just as high and smells just as bad as ours.

We now stand on the precipice of a technological revolution, where automation and AI will, by necessity, force a re-examination of our socio-economic structure. Marx, in “Capital, Volume I”, articulated the tendency of capital to reduce labor costs, including through automation. This leads to the very contradiction of overproduction and unemployment, as workers can't purchase the products they don't help create. The working class today, is able to purchase the goods and services that they consume, with their earned wages but that's not going to be the case in the not-too-distant future as advanced automation and AI eliminate wage-labor.

We're now entering an era of technological advancement, where automation can essentially replace most if not all menial, labor-intensive jobs (including many professional, white collar jobs as well), leaving tens of millions of Americans unemployed.

​

As technology advances to a level never seen before in human history, the way we produce all of the goods and services we now use, will eventually involve a high level of automation and artificial intelligence, without much human intervention or participation. This eventually necessitates a post-capitalist, non-profit system of production, also known as democratic socialism. Worker-owned and run cooperatives in collaboration with a democratic government, will supervise the robots and AI, to produce all of the goods and services that we use. The role human beings will play in production will be of planning, directing, supervising, and when necessary, repairing the system, to function properly. These robots:

​

Can work 24/7, producing all of the products and services that we now consume.

Capitalist "democracies" are often oligarchies in disguise (plutocracies, where the wealthy elites rule at the expense of the public good). Wealth accumulates, and the wealthy inevitably wield disproportionate influence over political systems. Read “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty if you wish for an empirical journey through this reality.

Your assertion of American conservatives supporting hard work seems more in line with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, which praises the virtue of selfishness in “Atlas Shrugged”. While that's fine and dandy for those sitting on stacks of capital, it isn't very rosy for the proletariat (the working class) who witness stagnant wages, diminishing rights, and the usurpation of democracy by corporations.

Let us not be reductionist and label communism as dictatorial or capitalism as the herald of prosperity. Both have their shades, heavy, ugly baggage, and virtues.

Okay, we're focusing on Communism, then. All right. The thing is, I agree with much of what you state, at least conceptually. You probably know this but for those who might not, Marx and Engels' argument was that capitalistic systems would inevitably break down into revolution as the working class could no longer afford the items they themselves created. This would just as inevitably lead to being replaced by socialism, in which the people (administered by the government) owned the industry and the products were delivered according to need. The ultimate state of socialism, they argued, was what they called Communism, in which all people together owned everything together, and with no private property, there was no longer need for money, and therefore no more social classes, and eventually no need for government at all, as everyone's needs were met in one big social (if not global) commune.
Communism was very popular, as one might expect, because it told the bottom-rungers that they could be on an equal level with the elites, but over time it became clear that its main problem was that it didn't work. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems, not governmental ones, and in order to put a society on the path to Marx and Engels' Utopian ideal, it required a government with the will to pursue it, wide-reaching powers, and openness to revolution if needed. The governments that responded were brutal dictatorships, for which the promise of Communism was a strong argument to ensure the loyalty of millions of Soviet factory workers, Chinese farm laborers, Cuban nut-pickers, and on and on and on.
This is how the promise of a happy worldwide commune became the carrot waved by brutal autocrats, and why I called it 'inherently tyrannical.' Many of you reading this are probably already shouting the Achilles heel of this system; the brutal dictators who gained immense power by promising eventual equality with hordes of working-class followers were not anxious to give up their mansions and harems and seats on the Politburo to become an assembly-line sheet metal riveter, or to guide a donkey-powered plow through a muddy field in Irkutsk. What the world learned over the last 150-ish years is that the promised commune can never be delivered, and the dictatorships propped up by its promise soon showed all of the expected flaws in the system, including corruption, centralization of power, lack of personal freedom, and the absence of motivation to innovate.
A working definition of modern Communism, therefore, is that it is hard-core socialism in the context of an authoritarian government; the dictator forces the socialist systems upon their people; by contrast, in a democratic socialist model, the socialism is governed by democratic ideals. It is pretty easy, therefore, to plop Communism in the bottom left corner of the Nolan model which I linked above. Note also that far-left Communism is not the sole occupant of the Authoritarian level, as fascism is prominently fixed in the bottom right (but that's a different topic).
So yeah, Communism doesn't work. Being an authoritarian system, it is explicitly anti-democratic and (if you're one who focuses on the distinction) anti-republican. It is poison to human rights, any kind of justice, and human achievement — which, by the way, is a big reason we also don't live around campfires any more. When everyone had the same job and it took one person one day to create one day's worth of food, nothing ever got better, but once we learned to grow food, store grain, bang copper into plow blades, and befriend the local animals, people started focusing on administration, philosophy, invention, art, and so on.
If we had never moved on from the communes, we'd all still be squatting on the forest floor, living ignorant, dirty, superstitious, vulnerable, repetitive, short, pointless lives. Personally, I find the temptation to return to that lifestyle unconvincing.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Wha?

Netrix Echo-Chamber

^^^"I haven't heard that from any professional source, so it must be stupid and not even worth answering."

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Definition of OXYMORON

a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness); broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

The Corruption of All Civilizing Institutions

Webster has been taken over by the Illiterate Liberal Language Lords, submitting to their ignorant, dysfunctional, and pushy fads. A permissive dictionary is a contradiction in terms, which, by the way, is not what "oxymoron" means.

That grossly babbled word actually means the opposite, a clever play on words that would be contradictory if used with other meanings of the words, such as "boneless ribs (rib meat)," or "less (clutter) is more (clarity)."

The media have no standards and they want to make sure that we don't, either.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Most people want to be slaves. They don't acknowledge that, of course, but that's the role they willingly fill. They like living in captivity, letting someone else call the shots for them.

We Are Born in the Dugout and Made to Believe We've Been Benched

That's what power-hungry control freaks tell themselves in order to justify their dictatorship. They make sure it's useless or even dangerous for people not to act like they want to be slaves.