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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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 Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
ha ha ha, that's Joe's point: while they might be different ideologies on paper, in practice they are the same. I thought both of us made that clear, but I guess not. Your definition is totally irrelevant for the argument he was making.
And honestly, what is the point in this argument? Both facist and communist gov'ts have been a blight in the political history of mankind; hitler and stalin's USSR were the worst of both. Conversely, Franco and say, communist Hungary, were better of their two respective groups. |
So, the definitions make no difference, and it is correct to go around calling Hitler a communist? I am glad you two agree, but I strongly suggest the term "totalitarianism."
In practice they are not the same. Under Fascism the corporations profited plenty, under communism they were destroyed. The same?
Language has to count for something. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:44 pm Post subject: |
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oh, the corporations profited very well in communism as well since they had no one to compete against. They just happened to be owned by the gov't.
edit: well i looked back at Joe's first post, and he specifically defined communism, so nevermind. I guess people have some cause to insult him.  |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:50 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| desultude wrote: |
| Nowhere Man wrote: |
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| What exactly do you think "Nazi" means? Let me guess... you read on some left-wing website that Hitler was a "right-wing" socialist? Explain to me how the ideologies (slogans) of Hitler and Mao differ. |
Nevertheless, the distinction is quite clear. Nazis were conservatives (turning back) and Mao was liberal (turning forward).
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You are absolutely correct about conservatism. But Mao was no liberal. Liberalism, correctly understood, is related to libertarianism in a quest for human individualism and freedom. |
That's too, "liberal" used to mean somebody on the side of "liberty". I understand "conservative" to mean resistant or cautious about change. According to those definitions somebody could easily be both.
In today's case, I was using the current popular term "liberal" meaning "left-wing" which means a preference for socialism/collectivism over liberty/individualism. Both Hitler's and Mao's movements appealed to the Left.
I wouldn't necessarily say that either man actually believed in his philosophy, though... socialism/communism/marxism was just a very convenient tool for making themselves in to emperors. Desultude, I think you are too focused on what such men say, and not on what they do. Sure Hitler's book was different from Mao's... does that make them two different men? I would say, not really. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| oh, the corporations profited very well in communism as well since they had no one to compete against. They just happened to be owned by the gov't. |
Right. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:00 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| hypnotist wrote: |
| Yes, and the official name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I take it you've read 1984 and understand Newspeak... |
Yes, and calling Hitler "right wing" is a great example of it.
| hypnotist wrote: |
| Right. So where's the social equality that is inherant in, er, socialism? |
Killing the rich and giving their wealth to the poor. Equality.
I laugh whenever people tell me "communism looks good on paper, but doesn't work well in practice". What looks good about it on paper?
| hypnotist wrote: |
| But truthfully the economic side is less important. Nazis weren't Socialists. Who did they kill in the Nacht der langen Messer? Socialists. |
I don't know about that particular Nacht, but I assure you, Stalin and Mao both killed significant numbers of fellow socialists. Remember that the charismatic leader represents The People, and therefore is justified in killing anyone who becomes wealthy or famous enough to be an alternative influence on people. This is a core tenet of socialism... any form of individualism is an attempt to hurt or steal from The People. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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In today's case, I was using the current popular term "liberal" meaning "left-wing" which means a preference for socialism/collectivism over liberty/individualism. Both Hitler's and Mao's movements appealed to the Left.
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'Liberal' and 'left-wing' only mean the same thing on Fox News. Actually that blurring of the difference in meaning has been pushed by the far right for about 20 years. Wasn't it Goering who said that with propaganda you just need to repeat the lie often enough and people will buy it?
Some of my high school students were from John Birch Society families and they always caused confusion in history/government class because they wanted to use an entirely different political spectrum from the traditional one that derives from the French Revolution.
Part of joe's confusion on this is he is confusing political philosophy with tactics. Totalitarians of the Left and Right use the same strategies of revolution and control.
Communists are internationalists and they focus on the working class. They tend to kill people who had significant amounts of private property before the revolution--think Czar Nicholas.
Fascists are the opposite of internationalists; they are extreme nationalists. They favor CEOs and career military officers (who traditionally were aristocrats in Germany). The little tiny group that Hitler took over in Munich was socialist. Within weeks he was able to turn it into an anti-socialist group. The key reason is that psychologically, the far left and far right want totalitarianism. The brand of totalitarianism is not important to them. (Read Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' for a psychological analysis. Fascinating. Also Eric Hoffer's 'True Believer' for a shorter, easier explanation.)
For most people trapped in either system, life probably isn't much different because the style of government is the same. Secret police. Concentration camps, etc. For some people it makes a huge difference, depending on social class. A factory owner in Berlin was a national hero; a factory owner in Moscow or Shanghai was an enemy of the people.
Again, keep tactics and political philosophy separate if you want to understand the differences. Study the tactics of totalitarianism if you want to understand that part. |
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hypnotist
Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Location: I wish I were a sock
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| joe_doufu wrote: |
| hypnotist wrote: |
| Yes, and the official name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I take it you've read 1984 and understand Newspeak... |
Yes, and calling Hitler "right wing" is a great example of it. |
At the extreme edges, it's hard to tell apart right and left in terms of the lives of ordinary people, as Ya-ta so eloquently explains. However, the societies as a whole are quite different, despite the superficial similarities (due to totalitarianism).
| Quote: |
| hypnotist wrote: |
| Right. So where's the social equality that is inherant in, er, socialism? |
Killing the rich and giving their wealth to the poor. Equality. |
Killing people isn't the pursuit of equality.
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| I laugh whenever people tell me "communism looks good on paper, but doesn't work well in practice". What looks good about it on paper? |
We're discussing socialism (at this point), not communism. Admittedly it's not easy to tell them apart in Marx's writings, but in terms of countries existing today the difference is quite clear. Even if the Nazis were socialists, that wouldn't necessarily make them communists anyway. But they were neither.
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| hypnotist wrote: |
| But truthfully the economic side is less important. Nazis weren't Socialists. Who did they kill in the Nacht der langen Messer? Socialists. |
I don't know about that particular Nacht, but I assure you, Stalin and Mao both killed significant numbers of fellow socialists. Remember that the charismatic leader represents The People, and therefore is justified in killing anyone who becomes wealthy or famous enough to be an alternative influence on people. This is a core tenet of socialism... any form of individualism is an attempt to hurt or steal from The People. |
I don't hold Stalin as a Communist for reasons Des alludes to (but then, I always was a bit of a Trotskyist  . There are certain similarities to what happened that night and what Stalin did to Trotsky, that's fair enough. But Stalin and Hitler were complete ideological enemies nonetheless. Yes, all three made sure political enemies were silenced. But it's interesting that you claim there was no individualism in Germany. The policy of Gleichschaltung was certainly designed to limit the 'harmful' effects of individual thought. But you seem to miss an imporant point here. There was no concept of "the people" in Nazi Germany - in "deutsche Volk" the emphasis was firmly on "deutsche". The nation was everything. Compare that with the Soviets, where the people really were the focus (in ideological terms).
"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize
that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence
of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely
by the interests of the nation as a whole."
You'd never have caught Stalin saying something like that. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:15 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Part of joe's confusion on this is he is confusing political philosophy with tactics. Totalitarians of the Left and Right use the same strategies of revolution and control. |
I think that history doesn't record any political philosophies. Certainly there are people like desultude who philosophize about politics, but they are not the makers of history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, these are political tacticians who probably believed in nothing.
Second, "totalitarians of the Right" is an oxymoron. I agree that politics is more complex than a simple left-right scale, but in our current usage absolute Left means total control from a massive government, and absolute Right means no government at all. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Hmmmm, so the right wing in the US, those in power at the moment would describe themselves as both right and conservative, have no interest whatsoever in social control. Bush and gang are libertarians?
As I said way back when in this "discussion"- if there is no agreement about terms, then there is no debate. We are back to that point.
Bye Bye |
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matthewwoodford
Joined: 01 Oct 2003
Location: Location, location, location.
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:22 am Post subject: |
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| joe-doufu: are you aware that the Nazis killed or imprisoned all communists in Germany (not to mention a whole lot outside Germany too)? |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:43 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| but in our current usage absolute Left means total control from a massive government, and absolute Right means no government at all. |
No, this is not the current usage of left and right. It is the usage of certain extremely conservative Americans. The traditional political spectrum occured from the accidental seating arrangement of members of the French Constituent Assembly in the 1790's.
Monarchists sat on the right. You have to recognize that monarchists (absolute monarchists) were 'totalitarians' (actually authoritarians because modern totalitarianism is a 20th Century invention). The delegates who wanted change sat farther away. Basically, the more sympathetic to the old regime you were, the closer you sat to the monarchists. The more you disagreed, the farther away you sat.
For 200 years this has been the political spectrum everyone has used. It was a workable system until the rise of left wing totalitarianism, which brings confusion between political ideology and tactics, as I mentioned before.
The virtue of the spectrum you are using is that it clarifies the difference between individualism and corporatism, but it lumps the varieties of corporatism all together. This makes a big difference to the different targets of totalitarians.
That being said, the new fangled political spectrum is used only by a relatively small number of people. The educated class of the last 200 years has used the one I described. It won't be easy to change terminology because of all the books written with the traditional system.
There is probably a full discussion of this topic in any good encyclopedia. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:56 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| but in our current usage absolute Left means total control from a massive government, and absolute Right means no government at all. |
No, this is not the current usage of left and right. It is the usage of certain extremely conservative Americans. The traditional political spectrum occured from the accidental seating arrangement of members of the French Constituent Assembly in the 1790's.
Monarchists sat on the right. You have to recognize that monarchists (absolute monarchists) were 'totalitarians' (actually authoritarians because modern totalitarianism is a 20th Century invention). The delegates who wanted change sat farther away. Basically, the more sympathetic to the old regime you were, the closer you sat to the monarchists. The more you disagreed, the farther away you sat.
For 200 years this has been the political spectrum everyone has used. It was a workable system until the rise of left wing totalitarianism, which brings confusion between political ideology and tactics, as I mentioned before.
The virtue of the spectrum you are using is that it clarifies the difference between individualism and corporatism, but it lumps the varieties of corporatism all together. This makes a big difference to the different targets of totalitarians.
That being said, the new fangled political spectrum is used only by a relatively small number of people. The educated class of the last 200 years has used the one I described. It won't be easy to change terminology because of all the books written with the traditional system.
There is probably a full discussion of this topic in any good encyclopedia. |
We need a little bowing emoticon. I bow to your excellent explanation. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:11 am Post subject: |
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We need a little bowing emoticon. I bow to your excellent explanation.
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Money would be more welcome.  Just throw your W100 coins my way. As they say in Congress, "A billion here. A billion there. Sooner or later all that adds up to real money." (or something like that) |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:25 am Post subject: |
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| desultude wrote: |
Hmmmm, so the right wing in the US, those in power at the moment would describe themselves as both right and conservative, have no interest whatsoever in social control. Bush and gang are libertarians?
As I said way back when in this "discussion"- if there is no agreement about terms, then there is no debate. We are back to that point.
Bye Bye
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No, I agree that the terms have been muddled. The "left" that I use means a political view that believes in large central government controlling a large part of the economy (high taxes) and making decisions on the behalf of the People, and the "right" that I use means smaller central government, power skewed toward local governments and increasingly toward individuals who control their own earnings (low taxes) and make their own decisions (few mandatory social services). I was not debating that other people have different opinions.
I wouldn't say Bush is a particularly left-wing President. He's cut taxes and favors individual and local government decision making (for instance, the tax cut, and school vouchers). True, Bush has spent too much money, but he's spending on credit, rather than taking control of money away from (today's) citizens. The US is not a strongly libertarian country to begin with, you could call all US presidents socialists. But Einstein taught us about relativity. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:03 am Post subject: |
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| The "left" that I use means a political view that believes in large central government... |
You can use that newer political spectrum definition if you want, but you will always be misunderstood by anyone outside your relatively small group. In fact, you will sound stupid and uneducated because you are using commonly used terms in a highly idiosyncratic way. Sorry, that's just the way it is. My advice is to switch back and forth, depending on who you are talking to. Misunderstanding will be minimized if you do.
I once had a student who didn't like the word 'table'. She thought all words that put 'b' and 'l' together sounded weird. So she called all tables doors. I made the same point to her. She's free to say what she wants, but she will reduce her ability to communicate with anyone who is outside her circle. And sound stupid. |
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