I also liked “Thoughtleaders are more of a marketing gimmick than a philosophy,” and generally enjoyed this video immensely, in part because I detest the horseshoe theory and think that centrists are just polite fascists with a faint sense of shame.
I did disagree with one comment, though: “Islamists” are a thing. It’s a term used by Muslims and ex-Muslims to describe extremist religious fanaticism; it’s intent is to distinguish general, ordinary, non-fanatical Muslims from the raving loonies who use their religion to excuse violent, abhorrent behavior, so it is a useful word, just as “Christianist” is handy to distinguish, say, Theocrat Mike Pence from the more casual and benign faith of my mother.
A very nice summary:
>and think that centrists are just polite fascists with a faint sense of shame.
Couldn’t disagree more. I believe in centrism, and incrementalism. Moving incrementally with as a wide a reach as you can is how things should change. I believe this for two reasons:
First, when you move too quickly towards some extreme you create a backlash, because whatever side you’re on, there are probably equal amounts of people on your polar opposite who also think they have God and Justice behind them. They will push back as hard as you push forward. Nazis in pre-war Germany did not come to power in a vacuum. Their ascendance preceded 20 years of ugly violence between the browns and the reds. The reds wanted an egalitarian soviet-style communist society. The browns wanted a fascist, nationalistic anti-Semitic society. Society wanted peace and order. The browns won in Germany, in Italy, and in Spain. The reds won in Russia. All of them should have lost. Do you want to risk flipping a coin on whether ANTIFA/progressives win or the White Nationalists?
Second, centrism/incrementalism gives you the flexibility to refine your ideas. As a human you are most assuredly wrong about some of the things you believe. You are assuredly some subtleties and context from some of the things you criticize. You probably can’t see some unintended side-effects of a wholesale acceptance of your ideas in society. Incrementalism means you move slowly so you can adjust. Centrism means you have to convince a mass of people that your way is correct – which will most likely result in your ideas refined in some way. The nice side-effect is that you talk to people and you convince them. The left needs the right to moderate them. The right needs the left to moderate them.
On a separate note, PZ, in the last few days you’ve called Libertarians and Centrists some form fascist. Even if you don’t include evangelicals and the new Atheists and anybody who doesn’t quite subscribe to every belief you hold to, that pretty much covers the majority of Americans. Does the word start to lose meaning at some point?
Danny Husar: No.
Oh, and fuck centrist appeasers who want to consolidate around a right-wing failed state. Fuck ’em all.
Well, the video was a fairly self-serving left wing viewpoint. Of course people on the left like to think that they are working for the good of all and that only their right wing enemies want to attack or discriminate or exclude people, but that is simply not true. I’m sure that plenty of people on the far left are just as driven by blind hatred as people on the far right, it’s just that the objects of their hatred are the religious, or white people, or straight people, or people who happen to have money.
Particularly obnoxious was the video’s absurd claim that communist regimes shouldn’t really be considered communist or left wing. That’s as ridiculous as the claim by some on the right that Nazis were really left wing.
Put simply, I consider myself a centrist because I don’t believe in using violence and intimidation to force my political views on other people. That is the stock-in-trade of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum. Even if the far right and left have nothing else in common, they do have the penchant for violence and desire for absolute control as common features.
The idea that halfway between both sides is inherently reasonable is nonsense. It’s what causes people to give airtime to anti-vaxxers and global warming deniers. I believe Jay Rosen’s term is “a retreat to the false middle”.
https://thenib.com/radical-centrism-101
Centrism works ok when there’s nothing important at stake. Splitting the difference between “oppression is good” and “oppression is bad” is not one of those cases, but unfortunately it seems to be the most common example.
PZ, I disagree wholeheartedly. Centrism and incrementalism is the best path forward.
That’s what all the centrists say. And look where it’s gotten us.
Oops, it should be “regression to a phony mean”.
http://archive.pressthink.org/2010/06/14/ideology_press.html
Fuck the centrists and their #bothsides bullshit.
The anti left narrative is strong.
We have elections this year in Germany. And the left party in Germany, Die Linke, has put out a digital agenda, as did all other major parties. And it is a glorious one, full of “we will provide more broadband”, “we will stop federal data collection”, “end some stupid laws”, etc.
Cue in the tech news site heise.de*. Which has a comment section who, with one voice, wanted all this for YEARS. Really, every article that touched these areas was nearly 100 % on the side of more privacy, more broadband, stop these laws, etc.
BUT this came from the Left Party. And suddenly, this was unfeasible. Empty promises. Yeah, what dare these damn lefties, giving us EVERYTHING WE WANTED FOR YEARS.
If the news site would have omitted the party name, the comment section would have exploded with praise for this agenda. But no, it was from these evil leftists. And this is happening again and again and again, with every topic. If the left was campaigning pro ice creme, we would rather ban it then let the left have their way.
Facts become irrelevant. Suddenly incrementalism solves problems instead to a death by thousand cuts. Suddenly the left, fighting against the right who wants to kill millions** and the Neo-Nazis who want to kill hundreds of million at least, is just as bad because they are “violent”, while at the same time it is completely fine to explode a wedding into pieces because maybe one guy there said bomb and america in the same sentence.
This looks bleak. This narrativ will not go for a long time to come.
And just as with woman rights, rights for minorities, the fight against slavery, LGBTI+ rights, labor rights and more the only way for progress is to keep fighting the united centrists and right wing and to force progress out of them, piece by piece. While at the same time defend the rights that were already won.
A exhausting but worthwhile fight. Because in the long run, we have always won, and if we keep at it, we will win again and again. And while the fight may get stalled in the US, we win in Uruguay and Ecuador. Here in Germany we got same sex marriage through in a miracle decision of parliament. Again and again the fight for progress wins.
*This article to be precise: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Vor-der-Bundestagswahl-2017-Programm-und-Positionen-der-Linken-3819150.html
**Forgotten about the whole “healthcare reform”, haven’t we?
I don’t know how America can claim to have a center when it does not have a viable left wing. Obama was considered a communist because he wanted to rein in health care costs.
Danny, #1
What an asshole.
I hope we can all agree that not being a nazi is…a dangerously low bar. Sometimes I see people say things and I wonder if they really get that “not a nazi” does not logically equal “ok and fine and does not need to be criticized”.
“Centrists are fascists” is a conclusion I’d need to see reached by evidence and logic though…
Communist regimes are obnoxious indeed. For one, they’re not socially progressive, at least not beyond a very low bar. For societies whose rulers claim they want to abolish class, they sure are well and thoroughly stratified. They may be beautifully left wing on paper, but, in practice, they’re not. Despite all the talk about workers owning the means of production, it’s the state that owns nearly everything, and the state is under the control of a small number of individuals. That is absolutely not left-wing, and it’s not really communism either. The video is spot-on.
It occurs to me that this may be a root cause of the belief in the horseshoe model: people swallow the communist regimes’ propaganda (and/or the Western propaganda about communist regimes), and come to believe the lie that those regimes are indeed what you get if you move far enough left. When one looks at the facts on the ground in such nominally extreme left regimes, one discovers — this much is true — that they’re not actually that far from fascism. Therefore horseshoe!
That’s nice, so long as you’re among the group’s whose rights, safety, and lives aren’t currently at jeopardy. To others for whom such is not the case, it just looks like someone in a far less perilous position asking if it all can wait ’cause there this show on television they wanna watch.
Centrists come in two flavors:
1.) People who are quite comfortable in their lives and, above all, prize keeping things the same so as to avoid any possible inconvenience to themselves. These are the centrists who have TV shows that they use primarily to showcase how moderate and reasonable they can be whilst supporting and minimizing oppression.
2.) People who feel like they have all the trouble they can handle, who have been bullied by people in group 1 into believing any change that discomfits group 1 will heap even more misery on the people in group 2. I believe group 2 makes up the majority of centrists, who generally profess not to care about politics, and vote only out of fear whipped up by group 1.
@Danny Husar
“Incrementalism” is the bullshit that group 1 peddles when they realize change is inevitable. It’s the way the powers that be throw a few crumbs to the hated masses to buy time so that the powerful can position themselves for a crackdown. I actually started to buy into that shit in the last election, and I’m ashamed that I was such a fool, but I’ve learned my lesson.
You know why the right needs the left? Because the right cannot survive without enemies. If they don’t have someone to point to and say “Don’t blame us for robbing you blind and stomping on your face. Those lefties want to make it so that [insert the name of the least powerful group] are treated just the same as you! Get ‘em!” then the masses would wise up and tear them apart.
The left does not need the right. “Stepping on other people” is not some fundamental human need, it’s a sick addiction that will destroy us all if we let it. And stepping on other people is the only thing the right has to offer.
@ springa73
All being a centrist means is that you don’t get your own hands dirty. That you let other people do your violence for you. That’s a position that puts you on the side of the head-crackers in the pay of powerful by default.
Oh, and by the way, no one “happens to have money.” It didn’t fall out of the sky into their bank accounts. That money came from somewhere, and very few people can honestly say that they didn’t step on a whole lot of people to get it and keep it. This includes Old Money; just because the current generation didn’t do the exploiting doesn’t erase the damage done.
@springa73
Progressives don’t hate white people, straight people, the religious, or the rich. We call out racists, and racists decide we hate all white people. We call out homophobes, and homophobes make stuff up about us wanting to turn everyone gay. We condemn religious fundamentalists, and fundamentalists claim that we hate all religious people. We condemn greedy assholes who exploit the system and horde wealth to themselves, and greedy assholes say we hate people for being wealthy. It’s all projection and defensiveness on part of the privileged.
Also, right wing extremists have been far, far more responsible for violent attacks over the past 8 years than left wing extremists.
cvoinescu, #15
I don’t think that one can explain away a century of history and tens of millions of deaths just by saying “but those weren’t REAL far leftists”. If they considered themselves of the far left, and were regarded that way by their contemporaries, I think that they qualify.
vucodlak, #17
I think that group #1 actually includes most of the population of most countries. Revolutions of the left and right usually lead to lots of violence that damages the lives of countless people, so most people are better off without them.
Incrementalism is bullshit. Incrementalism means that you are admitting that society is currently unjust, but want to delay righting the wrongs. Drag the troglodytes kicking and screaming if necessary.
springa73 @ 4
Interesting. How did you come to be sure of this?
@20, throwawaygradstudent
I’m curious about your idea. If it was enacted right now, what do you think the next few years would look like, step by step?
While I agree that the video was mostly excellent, my biggest complaint with it was at the 2:22 mark when he said “More and more lately you see people lamenting the fact that expertise is viewed with suspicion. How dare you question the experts! But in the same breath they’ll criticize the New York Times for hiring a climate denier to write about climate change.” A few seconds later he said: “Expertise is specialized knowledge.”
Knowledge implies respect for the truth, as far as it can be determined with the current state of the art. If someone is dedicated to a demonstrably false position, and repeatedly makes bad faith arguments using false, debunked or misleading statements in the service of that position, I do not consider him to be an expert in that field of knowledge, but rather a liar in the service of special interests who care only about their status and/or filthy lucre. I care not how specialized the liar is in his command of lies. I just care that he does lie, because lies are not knowledge, they are the opposite of knowledge.
“How dare you question the experts” is hyperbolic and a straw man. Of course it is OK to question experts. The problem is people not wanting to hear an inconvenient truth to the point they try to discredit a real expert – a person with expertise who operates in good faith and is willing to admit it when he’s proven wrong. It is quite possible to simultaneously acknowledge that the experts’ command of a field is so superior to one’s own that it is reasonable to accept their overwhelming consensus as fact, while still keeping in mind the provisional nature of their (and indeed all) knowledge. As Bertrand Russell said: “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” When the facts change but the “expert” doesn’t change his mind, then he is no longer an expert, if he ever was one. He is a Peter Duesberg, or a Bret Stephens. Thus it is entirely consistent to have a high regard for true expertise AND criticize the NYT for making a climate denying sophist one of their columnists. In fact, having high regard for expertise requires rejecting the NYT’s decision. And BTW, the NYT actually justifies hiring him by citing balance (i.e. the fallacy of the golden mean), the exaltation of which was one of this video’s main complaints.
When I first heard the passage at 2:22, I re-listened to it, thinking I must have misheard it. Nope. Next I thought he must have meant to say the opposite and just messed it up. But the opposite would not have made sense in the context of that section. So I have some questions: a) Does he think climate deniers can be considered experts in climate science? b) Does he agree with the NYT that it’s OK for them to hire as an expert someone who repeatedly lies on a subject? c) Does he think it is not OK to lament the decision to hire a liar, or criticize the decision by citing the real experts who are in command of the real evidence? It won’t do to say his point was merely to decry over-reverence of expertise. The hyperbolic was not his point, it was merely mockery of critics of the NYT decision to hire Bret Stephens. Respect for expertise is not worship of expertise, and does not require respecting a decision to hire a liar.
So the inclusion of the passage at 2:22 undermined his central premise – the need to value truth over centrism – enough for me to lower this video’s grade from an A to A-.
@springa73(#19)
Holy shit, you seem to be actually begging for a dogpile.
Well, far be it from me to deny you.
I can’t speak for what Stalin (for example) truly believed, but his actions were not communism, they were totalitarianism. Marx* (whose ideas of communism Stalin claimed to be following) wrote that totalitarianism would be a necessary step, but to achieve true communism, once the system was stable, the totalitarian authority would hand the reins over to the people and step down. Funny how “Communist” governments always seem to forget that last part.
Maybe don’t accuse people (cvoinescu (#15)) of “No True Scotsman” when it actually doesn’t apply. As for how “their contemporaries” regarded them, emergence(#18) covered that.
*It has been over 20 years since I read Marx, and am working from a known-faulty memory, feel free to correct this if I have it wrong
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Centrism IS walking past.
1. Google “Golden Mean Fallacy.”
2. “The fire needs the fire brigade to moderate it. The fire brigade needs the fire to moderate them.” Sounds kinda stupid, dunnit?
Yep. Once I’d heard a conservative claim that liberalism and fascism are basically the same thing, and a Bolshevik claim that the ultra-left and the bourgeoisie are basically the same, it was pretty obvious that the horseshoe theory is just a visually compelling version of the golden mean fallacy.
@ Danny Husar
In general, it may be true that the left needs to be moderated by the right and vice-versa- However, the US spent roughly 40 years with the USSR as its most hated outgroup. As a result, the US’ Overton window has been pushed absurdly far to the right, to the point where the political spectrum basically goes from right to far right. Anyone that could ‘moderate’ American politics would be seen by Americans as far-left, even if they were just centre-right to an outside observer.
Well put.
This.
Except I’m not sure whether the USSR is the cause (I’m not saying it isn’t, just that I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion on that). The USSR has been defunct for quite a while now, yet the US has continued to move to the right, in several ways. Is the fear lingering on, like some form of national PTSD?
Let me put it this way – if a devout Christian said that Christianity was always a benevolent religion, and explained away everything terrible ever done by self-professed Christians by simply saying that those weren’t real Christians, because they weren’t following the teachings of Jesus, I seriously doubt that most commenters on this blog would accept that as a valid argument.
Basically, if something is done in the name of your ideology, you own it – or you at least have to come to grips with the fact that your ideology can lead down a very dark road.
just who is it that gets define what constitutes an increment and how much change is enough for now?
It must be our “Lord and Protector” sustainer and preserver of the sacred Status Quo. The anointed of the powerful and councilors to the rich.
uncle frogy
If they knew their own history then Americans should be the last people on earth to espouse this kind of “centrist”, “gradualist” thinking. It is only thanks to billions of dollars and decades of concerted effort poured into the misinformation campaigns by the rich that they are not.
It is telling that when most Americans are invited to imagine radical right-wing and radical left-wing change they think of the Nazis and the Russian Communist Party. They do not think of their own history. Radical change is always something distasteful that someone else does far away. Americans just aren’t into that sort of thing.
Except they are, and always have been. When America had radical left-wing change it entered the most prosperous, most civilizing, most progressive era of its history. Roosevelt’s New Deal emerged thanks entirely to militant agitation by the American Communist Party, two American Socialist parties and a burgeoning American Trade Union movement. At a stroke it ended the Great Depression, created America’s public higher education system, lifted millions out of poverty, created near full employment, kept wages rising in real terms and constrained the excesses of the capitalist system such that there were no major boom-and-bust incidents for twenty odd years. The “Golden Age” of American progress – the 50s and 60s – was founded on radical left-wing change. Which then set the stage for the Civil Rights movement, and eventually the Gay Rights movement in the 60s and the Environmentalist movement in the 70s. That’s what radical left-wing change has brought America.
Of course, the 50s-70s were far from perfect in America. The change was not radical enough, particularly for minorities, and the right always kicked back. But they were hugely better than the 20s, 30s and 40s for ordinary people – the depression-era low that galvanised the organising efforts which made the New Deal possible.
And Right-wing change, both radical and incremental? Well, that brought America the Great Depression in the first place. It brought Reaganomics and out of control military spending and a healthcare system that is the laughing stock of the developed world. It brought wars in Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, and proxy wars throughout Central America. It brought you to banana republic levels of inequality between rich and poor and made everyone else on the planet hate you. Most perniciously, perhaps, it brought you to a place where the majority of Americans think that “centrist” is a position between the far right (Democrats) and the cartoonishly extreme far right (Republicans), and Ayn Rand is anything more than a repulsive joke.
*Guffaw*
That raises the question of what “your ideology” is. Almost all the evil done by self-identified leftists has been done by the proponents of a very specific ideology: Leninism, the key point of which is advocacy of a one-party state. This is not just the logical endpoint of “leftism”, and leftists who reject it are quite entitled to deny that they “own” anything done in the name of Leninism.
It also raises the question of what your ideology of centrism has done. Many of the American-and-allied atrocities of the Cold War – Vietnam, Cambodia, the bloodbath of (real or alleged) Communists in Indonesia, support for apartheid South Africa, and of brutal dictatorships and military coups around the world, and of recent times (drone attacks on civilians, the destruction of the Libyan state, again support for military coups and brutal dictators) – were carried out under Democratic administrations. If those were not “centrist” – which is certainly how they would regard themselves, what does the term mean?
Actually, most of that shift has taken place since the collapse of the USSR. I consider that the existence of the USSR, while bad for many people in many ways, was a great benefit to the mass of the population in “the west”, because it obliged the elite to make considerable concessions, in the face of an “actually existing alternative” to capitalism. As the weakness of the USSR became clear during the 1980s, and even more so once it vanished, the elite was free to begin the process of withdrawing those concessions, which has continued ever since.
Steven Pinker was arguing for centrism on twitter the other day. I honestly don’t get it.
1) by finding the ‘reasonable middle’ you let others define your political belief. Your belief becomes fashion, not something you hold as a result of your own thought.
2) where was the ‘reasonable middle’ in Nazi Germany? Where is the reasonable middle in Saudi Arabia? Do you want to be there? Why would you let these societies define YOUR politics?
3) I always considered myself a left leaning liberal when I lived in Australia. Now in the US, Pinker and others would call me pretty strongly left and ‘unreasonable’. No. US politics is so far right it is unreasonable – and out of step with the rest of the democratized world.
@KG (#33), I am very doubtful of that argument. For one thing, the US spent inordinate amounts of money and got many of their own people killed, while also making the world a worse place for a whole lot of people, by engaging in an arms race with the “actually existing alternative” and fighting wars with its proxies. You’re positing the general population has access to a “they’re doing this and it seems to be working, why can’t we?” lever, useful to curb excesses; I believe the “you must endure this or the evil enemy wins” lever of the ruling faction trumps that.
When people talk about the horseshoe theory in general, they talk about the historical extremes, and when they talk about the application, they talk about the current state of politics in a nation. This creates a false narrative designed to advantage one extreme over the other, specifically the more powerful extreme. In the US the right wing is more powerful and therefore the horseshoe theory narrative stands to advantage the bigots and fear mongers of our society.
Horseshoe theory would be valid in the US if the US had an equal distribution between the far left and far right. The problem is the horseshoe theory is not universal and we do not have an equal distribution of far left and far right in the US. If we take the extremes of history, the US far left is centrist, and therefore a proper application of horse shoe theory would have its true proponents be quite left of democrats.
If you think the horseshoe theory is valid, why are you supporting right wing extremism with your false narrative?
Brian Pansky @22
It doesn’t matter. If you move slow, they scream that you’re moving too fast. Look at the history of the gay marriage fight. Or gun control. Politicians who were for civil unions rather than outright marriage were still decried as putting the nation on a slippery slope towards pedophilia. Or even the racist backlash over a mixed race moderate president with impeccable credentials. It doesn’t fucking matter.
And, ultimately, it’s still saying that you have to suffer because your neighbor is a shithead. You have to wear these chains and I can only remove one of them per year. Why? Because even though they’re fucking up your back your neighbor will yell and scream if I take off too many at once. Just conveniently ignore that said neighbor does the same thing whether I remove one link or the whole damn thing.
cvoinescu@35,
I see your point, but the timing of the rightward shift in western politics argues that you’re wrong about the relative strengths of the forces concerned. During the period 1945-1980 (approximately), working and middle class incomes rose in the west, and working conditions improved, and trades unions were treated as respectable bodies legitimately representing their members’ interests. Since then, that has halted, and in the case of working conditions and the treatment of trades unions, reversed. The effect was probably most marked in western Europe, where Communist and “Social Democratic” parties were strong (the latter at that stage really did offer an alternative and to some degree represent working class interests, unlike now). But the US elite could hardly let it be obvious that workers and their families in western Europe were a lot better off than their American counterparts. The elites did not say ““you must endure this or the evil enemy wins,” – with, I admit, the notable exception of the Vietnam War – and look how much trouble that gave them. Mostly they said – to quote the British Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1957, the mass of the population had: “never had it so good.” And he was right.
So, the fact that the “center” is about 50 miles to the left, and neither of the two “ruling parties” comes remotely close to even being able to see it anymore, and that the only “incremental” thing going on here for decades has been the Democrats throwing out their ideals in an attempt to find “middle ground” with a party that couldn’t, at this point, become more fanatical, and oppressive, without full on marching troops down the street, doesn’t bother you are all then? Good to know. So WTF are you doing here, where people who want to make things better, not just let them slide further into the sewer, congregate?
Oh, not to say that I don’t believe that its “safer” to “incrementally” get ourselves out of this mess, but its not going to happen by letting the right keep dragging us into madness, the Democrats allowing it, and everyone claiming that the “center” is some place in between these two parties. Nope.. In the short term, dragging us back, incrementally or not, from the edge means making “massive” changes to the way things work, to keep us from falling farther while we stumble around trying to figure out what to do *after* the political system is no longer actively stabbing everyone, other than the politicians, and their sponsors, in the back, while pretending to care.
I mean, how many f-ing times, for example, do I have to see a “poll” which ignores 99% of the problems we face, and instead least 6-7 vague things we “need to fix”, and “find important”, only to watch everyone from dear Hillary, to the carbon copy twins they run in local elections, pander to those, and **only** those things, while all but ignoring what the public has to say about both a) other problems, and/or b) how to fix *anything at all*? And, this is the “Democrats” running these campaigns. Where did they find this strategy exactly, by watching Trump?
@ 28 cvoinescu
The USSR has been defunct for quite a while now, yet the US has continued to move to the right, in several ways. Is the fear lingering on, like some form of national PTSD?
Yes.
From outside the USA, it often appears from politicians’ rhetoric, the babbling of fundamentalist christians, and US government policies and actions that the USA has not realized that the breakup of the USSR the dreaded bogyman of international communism is no longer an existentialist threat.
This is not to say that the USA would not have moved to the right in any case but the refusal to realize that modern Russia is not the USSR has helped. I have sometimes thought that the USA needs to have an enemy with which to scare themselves.
The Nazis benefited German–born Anglo-Saxons? What?
From where does the presenter get the idea that Venezuela is a “communist” country similar to the USSR under Stalin or China under Mao? Is the US media that bad?
@37, throwawaygradstudent
Well I’m not asking you to justify the motivations behind your solution, I’m trying to get a clearer idea of what that solution even is. In concrete literal terms, what would taking your advice look like, what actions would be taken?
A few examples. And these are not necessarily things that I have the power to do (and I know that). And they’re not all the things that I want. But, you wanted a list.
-Universal health care for all.
-Fire racist cops who kill black people.
-Convict racist cops who kill black people of murder.
-Eliminate the military transgender ban.
-While we’re at it, that universal health care needs to pay for transgender health care.
-Set up a task force to route out the white supremacists that have been infiltrating law enforcement agencies.
-Raise the minimum wage to a livable wage and index it to inflation.
-Repeal all “right-to-work” legislation.
@25, Azkyroth
Sorry, it isn’t clear who you are saying is doing what, or what makes you believe they are doing that. Here’s what I think you should be doing here if you want to convince me:
http://brianpansky.wikia.com/wiki/Changing_Minds
@31
I would add that it was a side effect (maybe even a direct effect) of the policies of the New Deal had had on the population that led to the enthusiastic response to eventually entering into WWII. The working class would not have been so eager to fight to protect the existing government and society if the policies that were in place under the previous administration would have still been in effect. I may have this a little bit off but it was not the conservatives who thought Germany was a problem nor Japan either.
There were not boat loads of conservative young men who volunteered to fight in Spain against the Nazi supported fascists of Franco.
The conservatives became “enthusiastic” only when the enemy was “godless communism”
No. 24 John Marley
“I can’t speak for what Stalin (for example) truly believed, but his actions were not communism, they were totalitarianism. Marx* (whose ideas of communism Stalin claimed to be following) wrote that totalitarianism would be a necessary step, but to achieve true communism, once the system was stable, the totalitarian authority would hand the reins over to the people and step down. Funny how “Communist” governments always seem to forget that last part.”
Marx never wrote that Totalitarianism of any kind was a necessity for the establishment of Communism. What I believe you are talking about is Marx’s description of the transition period in which there would be Socialism but not Communism. Marx was never an advocate of one party rule much less a Totalitarian regime. People have been mislead by propaganda that Marx was a Totalitarian.
Perhaps the source of the notion that Marx believed in Totalitarian, at least for the transition period from Capitalism too Communism is that Marx used the phrase “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” twice or three times in his writings. Aside from the fact he used the phrase very infrequently and it became a common cliché phrase used to justify, excuse Leninist / Stalinist tyranny; Marx did not mean by the phrase a one party Totalitarian tyranny. In much of the 19th century the term Dictatorship was used to mean rule by a class. (by the late 19th century the term “Dictatorship” had also acquired the meaning of authoritarian rule.) Thus Marx meant rule by the Proletariat has a class not rule by a one party Dictatorship. Thus the term Dictatorship had a class meaning. And as I said Marx only used the phrase a couple of times in his writings and letters.
In fact Marx’s writings indicate that he believed in the free exchange of ideas, in democracy within the Workers movement etc., and did not believe in the rule of a single authoritarian party implementing policies in an authoritarian manner. Sadly Marx’s infrequent use of the term “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” became very useful when authoritarians like Lenin seeking to justify authoritarian rule by a single party began to use it. (Even though has I said Marx used the phrase only about 2-3 times in all his writings). Lenin used the definition of the term Dictatorship that ignored it’s class content has rule by a class. (Here it is interesting that Marx on occasion referred to late Capitalism has a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, indicating Marx’s belief in the class content of the term Dictatorship. Lenin and Stalin turned the term “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” into a justification for first brutal authoritarian rule and then into a justification of Totalitarianism ignoring what Marx actually meant.
Interestingly several Marxists in the late 19th and early 20th century continued to back Marx’s original understanding of the term Dictatorship. For example Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky. Lenin who was the target of their critiques basically ignored their criticisms on this matter.
Both Lenin and Stalin were Authoritarians who were using Marx to justify their desire to impose brutal Authoritarian rule in Russia. Their use of Marx’s, very occasional, use of the term “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was an outstanding example of their polemical techniques and of course it was also very useful to Western Cold Warriors in terms of demonizing Marx.
Marx himself didn’t say a whole lot about the transition period, (Socialism), but he said enough to indicate that the characteristic political feature of such a period would NOT be Totalitarianism, in fact Marx seems to have believed it would be more democratic than “Bourgeois” Democracy.
None of this means that Marx’s doctrines and ideas are innocent in terms of contributing to the Leninist / Stalinist abomination that disfigured much of the 20th century with its horrors, but the influence was a good deal more subtle and indirect rather than an open approval of and advocacy of Totalitarian rule. I frankly think Marx would probably have viewed 20th century Marxist / Leninist states with horror. And I doubt Marx would have viewed the many Western Communist parties that in the 30s, 40s and early 50s that worshipped the most holy and divine Stalin has anything but sordid cults.
No doubt all here have read Orwell who championed social democracies such what we now have in Scandinavian countries. They are arguably left of center. On the happiness index, Denmark ranks number one. Sweden is the most feminist country on this planet. Could someone explain to me why the far left ideology is superior to the Scandinavian model? Thus far, the societies that have adopted far left ideologies have not yielded utopias. Indeed all seem to spiral down the Animal Farm rabbit hole.
Oops, I stand corrected. Norway ranks number one on the happiness index. And it’s not exactly the far left Marxist dream. If the left end of the horseshoe is advocating Bernie Sanders a la Scandinavia, then I’m on that train. But are they?
@ragdish 47
That is indeed the cleaned up version of Orwell that many (including me) have always been taught. But that’s not really what he was about, he was in fact “far left” (using your terminology).
He was a left-libertarian and championed democratic socialism (i.e. democracy + worker control of the means of production), not social democracy (i.e. the scandinavian model, i.e. capitalism with band aids). It’s easy to confuse the two, but they are fundamentally different things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
He fought in Spanish Civil War, on the side of the anarchists. Describing the society created by them in almost utopian terms. A view of the situation that many others seems to have shared with him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936#Orwell.27s_account
Why did anarchist Catalonia fail? Not because it spiraled down into something Animal Farm-eque. No, since they refused exactly that and wanted actual freedom and equality, they made enemies of the fascists, “the west” and Soviet and were destroyed by military force.
When trying to read up on anarchist and libertarian socialist history, this seems to be the common trend. There have been plenty of societal experiments that have seemed very promising (significantly better than contemporary alternatives), but then get violently attacked by outside forces who want to crush anything that challenge existing power structures. I have not studied all examples in detail, but common ones include The Paris Commune, Revolutionary Catalonia, Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, EZLN and Rojava. And spiraling into Animal Farm never seems to be the problem, but the problem is instead outside forces that try to destroy them. Which seems to be all the more reason to support such attempts.
So as someone from Sweden, why have I ended up on the “far left”?
One important thing to understand is that “being relatively good” in a world that looks like this isn’t good enough, not even by a long shot. Just speaking from personal experience: we have tons of poverty, homelessness, lack of access to medical care, horrendously bad psychological treatment, people I know who risk being sent to their deaths in war zones, mind-shattering levels of economic inequality, a school system that doesn’t work for lots of people, police brutality, nazis on the streets, utterly dehumanizing bureaucracy designed to humiliate people who are unemployed and so on and so on. The situation is really terrible, in so many ways. It might seem [i]relatively good[/i] compared to the horror show currently on display in the US. But a situation being [i]relatively good[/i] isn’t exactly something to strive for.
Secondly, we have a capitalist system. So all social democratic programs are dependent on the economic situation. Given that Sweden is incredibly rich by global standards, I don’t see how it could work as a model to be applied globally
My understanding is that it’s our riches come from historical factors. After WW2, Sweden was almost unscathed and went through an economic boom. This created an economy big enough to build infrastructure and have some social democratic programs enacted. But the rate of progress has continuously slowed down since then, and many things have been moving backwards wrt medical care, schools, social programs etc. since the early 90s.
Since the post WW2-boom, we have (just as the rest of the west) relied on capitalist imperialism. Where our wealth depends on massive exploitation of the poor in other countries. Allowing us to have a relatively high standard for most of our population, but at the expense of others globally. Mainly by exporting most manual labor to (in many cases) slave-like conditions (sweatshops etc.). But also our massive weapon exports (we’re one of the world’s biggest arms dealers per capita). So it’s not really a sustainable situation if you look at it from a global perspective.
Since social democratic reforms depend on capitalism, we get almost all of the problems associated with capitalism and neo-liberalism. When there is an economic crash (as there always is in capitalism, I’m told) we get cuts in programs, attacks on our rights, more people ending up in poverty and so on. While the rich remain extremely rich, of course. It’s not a stable situation and things have gotten progressively worse in Sweden over the last few decades, in lots of different areas.
And that’s just some of the problems that we specifically have in Sweden. If we make a basic critique of capitalism in general, there are all the standard things that show that the current status quo isn’t working: the environment is being destroyed, people are being exploited, inequality is rapidly rising. Most people have to work for the rich (and let them keep the profits generated by the work) or beg for work from the rich. And the rich get richer. And all social democracy does is to take some of the surplus and use it to try to cover some of our basic needs, while the rich still get to keep most of it.
I’m “far left” because I envision a society which:
– ensures freedom for individuals from oppressive hierarchies (state, corporations, or otherwise)
– constantly strives for equality, both social and economical
– does so in a sustainable way
I don’t believe any of these things can even be approached within capitalism. And as a Swede, I can tell you that the Scandinavian model certainly won’t get you there.
Danny Husar @1,
This actually isn’t true. If you look at the findings of Pew and other political survey organizations, most Americans are not centrists; their opinions on any particular issue are highly polarized. It’s just that when you look at all the issues together, the majority of Americans hold combinations of opinions which don’t match either the far left or the far right of our political spectrum.
In other words, we’re scattered across the surface of a hypersphere of political beliefs. Most of us may not reside in the two spots on that surface that the ruling parties have staked out, but we’re not at the center, either.
ragdish, #47
The way I see it the biggest problem with the kind of socialism that one finds in continental Europe is that it exists within a political system that also gives great power to those who would seek to dismantle and undermine it. The capitalist class is still permitted to hold the means of production, to amass huge wealth from corporate profits and to pursue its own class interests at the expense of everyone else. They can pour money into the media to misinform and propagandise. They can buy politicians and lobbyists to promote their own interests. When this is the case it doesn’t matter how progressive and enlightened the measures taken by government are – eventually the capitalist class will try to dissolve them.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened in the US in the second half of the 20th century. The New Deal was a fantastic boon for the US, but the industrialists, bankers and Republican party absolutely hated it. They were working to wear it away as soon as the ink had dried. First they smeared the Communist party as Russian spies, then they smeared the Socialist parties as much the same, then they dismantled the trade unions. They compromised the Bretton-Woods system of bank regulations, repealed the Glass-Steagall act, reduced the highest rates of corporate tax from 90% to 35%. Then they did everything they could to undermine universities as centres of radical thought (including raising tuition fees to astronomical levels and forcing generations of students into debt). In Britain it was much the same story, albeit less severe.
Relying on socialist governments to rein in the destructive side of capitalism is a risky business. Yes, they can do great good, and the sorts of measures they can pass are a necessary part of the solution. But in order to make these measures stick you need to disarm the capitalists and prevent them from organising against you. To do that you have to reorganise the basic economic structures of society – replace feudalistic, tyrannical structures of governance such as the corporation with truly democratic ones like the worker co-operative.
I heard a an interview with the author of a biography of Mao who made the argument that Mao was not a communist, he just saw the Communist Party as the best vehicle for achieving absolute power His only ideology was achieving power over other people for the sake of having power over people.
No. 51 Caretomancer:
“First they smeared the Communist party as Russian spies…”
If your referring to the Communist party of the USA which grovelled in idolatrous ecstasy at the feet of Stalin; no atrocity or absurdity so long has it was done by the infallible leader was not too absurd for them to defend / excuse. Including such things as the Moscow show trials and the Nazi / Soviet Pact.
As for being smeared has spies. Well there are things like the Venona decrypts and recent scholarly research that indicates that some USA Communist party members with the knowledge of the party leadership, spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and into the 1940s. All of which indicated their heartfelt devotion to Stalin. We also know that the Soviets had spy handlers working for various Soviet intelligence agencies co-ordinating and collecting data from their sources.
The bottom line is that there was some, at least, truth in the accusation that some members of the Communist party USA were spies. But regardless of the involvement of some USA Communist party members in spying it is also true that the Communist Party USA was subordinate and subservient to Moscow, bending with every wind from the Kremlin, and treated by Moscow much if not the great majority of the time as a instrument of Soviet foreign policy.
Thanks for the post, PZ. I wanted to quickly clarify something: my point isn’t “fascism can’t come from Islam,” it’s “if something acts as fascism, it’s fascism regardless of what it calls itself or where it came from.” The minute it acts like fascism, the origin doesn’t really matter, it’s fascism. At least that is how I see it.
Thanks again!
pacal@46,
It seems possible (I don’t know if it’s the case) that Marx was influenced by the meaning “dictator” originally had, which was not pejorative. Under the Roman Republic, a “dictator” could be appointed for a fixed period, during an emergency, taking precedence over the annually-elected consuls. The system was however liable to misuse – Julius Caesar had himself appointed dictator for life, in a key step towards destroying the Republic.
However, more broadly, I think Marx and Marxism did have considerable authoritarian potential, warned about at the time by his anarchist opponents in the socialist movement and specifically, the First International.
Daniel Dunér@49,
What you say of Orwell is true, but incomplete. He went to Spain intending to fight with the (Communist Party dominated) International Brigades, but ended up fighting with the Marxist (not anarchist) POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification). The POUM sided with the much larger anarchist movement during the “civil war within a civil war” which pitted them both against Stalinism.
It’s also not clear that Orwell remained “far left”. He later came to doubt that the Spanish anarchists had been right in thinking the war could have been won by pressing ahead with the revolution; and after WWII was willing to give the names of people he suspected of being Soviet stooges to the British security services.