You Don't Know Anything About Politics
Politics is, I think, a unique subject in that people can spend hours a day talking about it, consuming radio, TV, papers and even books about it, thinking about it and never really know much about it. If I go on an astronomy forum, I don't think I'll find a lot of people claiming that the sun is a galaxy or that jupiter is one of the moons of the planet big dipper. There probably aren't many auto repair enthusiasts who think that their car won't start because the tires are worn out or that the brakes are those things that wipe water off your windshield.
Yet people will routinely speak of Marxist corporations. And I seriously doubt that the average person who discusses politics for a living could pass the little quiz below. This is especially frustrating because I hold a degree in political science and I assure you its reputation as an easy degree is completely justified. This stuff is mostly quite easy to learn and remember. And, as we live in the future, anybody can look it up and learn it all in maybe a few hours. They just don't. Why? I wonder.
The title is kind of a joke and I welcome additions and corrections.
Having said that, politics isn't science and the terminology is fuzzier. The terms below can have divergent or more complex meanings, or be the names of political parties, or particular movements.
I am going for the most general meanings in political theory. I'm shooting for the simplest definitions possible. Like, in poker "nuts" can mean effective nuts, or you can talk about nutted ranges or you could use it to say that a restaurant has the best fries in town. But as a poker player, you should know that it means: "the best hand possible."
Why use the "real" definitions rather than the "common" ones? Same as anything else. It enables clear and coherent communication. If I say Noam Chomsky is a left wing libertarian and Ron Paul is a right wing libertarian, we both know what is being said and these terms have been thought out to cover all the bases pretty well. It enables us to discuss things in different contexts. "Confucious was conservative" is a ridiculous thing to say if you think 'conservative' means "agrees with US Republicans in 2024." But it makes sense using the term correctly.
So, do you know what these words mean?
Left Wing
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More equality, less hierarchy.
Right Wing
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More hierarchy, less equality.
Reactionary
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Bring back the old ways. For example, bring back strong monarchies.
Conservative
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Keep things as they are.
Liberal
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Change things.
Radical
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Change things! (it's probably fair to say that in these senses, conservatives often allow organic change, liberals often want to actively tinker, and radicals often want sweeping changes, such as replacing old institutions with new ones.)
Authoritarian
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More rules, less personal freedom
Libertarian
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More personal freedom, fewer rules.
Marxist
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Getting tricker, but the clearest def is just that you mostly agree with Karl Marx. Marx was a materialist. He thought that history had an inevitable and rational direction. Capitalism is unsustainable partly because it requires infinite growth and generates booms and busts. Eventually, workers will revolt and seize the means of economic production. This will lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat, but eventually the state will wither away (actually Engles' phrase).
Marx did not invent the idea of siding with the underdog, or socialism or leftism.
Capitalism
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Private ownership of most/all stuff. Free enterprise. Laissez-faire capitalism favors minimal regulation.
Socialism
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Collective ownership of stuff and running of business, often through the government.
Mixed Economies
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A mix of socialism and capitalism, seen in nearly every country. A common view is that when something is fungible and needed by just about everyone, like electricity or roads, socialism is often best, while if only some people want something (bowling balls) or it is differentiated and specialized (shoes) capitalism does better.
Identity Politics
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The most important thing, at least in the relevant context, is political group identities such as race, religion or gender. Many mistakenly believe this is only a left wing phenomenon.
Fascism
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There isn't really a good, widely agreed upon, brief definition. But it is RW authoritarian, for sure. Very often mixed with militarism, nationalism and identity politics.
Critical theory, post modernism, continental philosophy... AKA the things people sometimes seem to be gesturing at when they speak of cultural Marxism or extreme wokeness.
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I know the least about this stuff, though I've read several books on it. It is a huge glob of diverse things, but I do think it's possible to bring some clarity to it.
There is a loose division between analytic philosophy: people like Russle and continental: people like Foucault. Analytic tends to be more popular in the English speaking world. It is more about solving problems with meticulous attention to detail and precision of language. Continental is sometimes said to be more literary and deals with grander ideas, perhaps on the view that you will never really get to the bottom of a subject like epistemology no matter how many nits you pick.
A big part of critical theory is the belief that oppression is widespread through every facet of our culture, that many if not most relationships are oppressive due to imbalances in power and that we should constantly be challenging it. One might compare it to religious fundamentalism in its scrutiny and demands of our behavior. For example, a critical theorist is likely to find many movies and a lot of music objectionable, as might a devoutly religious person.
Post modernism often challenges our ideas of truth and reality, arguably favoring forms of hard relativism. It challenges big narratives that explain everything (including Marxism). At its extremes, it might do things like question the validity of science. If someone says something like "science is a racist social construct," they are drawing on these traditions.
In US universities these schools of thought have influence more in literature departments and obviously stuff like womens' studies, and to a limited degree things like law (critical race theory came from law profs). They aren't very popular in philosophy, political science, or economics.
Noam Chomsky, for example, hates this stuff pretty much across the board. But others are more sympathetic like Richard Rorty, who saw parallels between American pragmatism, Wittgenstein and some people like Derrida.
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due to the large bailouts + QE, we have socialism in the US
Strong disagree with Marxism definition, as it inherently includes siding with the "oppressed". He didn't invent the idea that some group of people are sometimes oppressed in society.
But he invented the idea that some groups are *always* oppressed, and that outcome gaps between groups are *always* explained by that oppression.
Agreed that marxism is orthogonal to welfare (in theory you could have the poors die of hunger in marxism), and that in theory under marxism you could have extremely unequal wages. All profit goes to workers but not necessarily to ALL workers. Think a society of co-ops, apple employees get a million per year each, the cleaning ladies co op that clean their offices gets 30k per year each.
Strong disagree about the "infinite growth", that's not marx take that comes far far later. For basically a century, up to the 50s, marxism was actually about "we can grow more if workers own the companies".
For fascism use Eco definition
Disappointed this thread flopped. Oh well. Whatever you think of the OP, here is a little treasure trove I found. There's an interesting discussion to be had just about how horribly we've squandered the potential of things like TV. But anyway, these are all heavy hitters discussing some of the ideas that drive politics.
Peter Singer is one of the architects of the animal liberation movement. And while I just ate a steak burrito, I admire him for being a contemporary, analytic philosopher who writes things that matter. Here, he discusses Hegel and Marx.
Above, Dworken, who I guess is like a classical liberal/centrist discusses Nozick and Rawls, a great RW Libertarian and more lefty/liberal Christian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U23Ho0m_...
Marcuse himself on critical theory. Even as someone who is critical of critical theory, it's fascinating to listen to the real, very intelligent, hard working, well-intentioned person.
I think the thread is good, just don't have anything to add to it myself.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handboo...
This has been a good read so far. Havent finished it yet
More equality, less hierarchy.
Since when did left mean this, what year?
Around the time of the French revolution. People on the right side of the aisle favored monarchy and church: hierarchical institutions. People on the left favored a relatively egalitarian republic. It's been used that way sense, loosly. (By people who use the terms correctly).
E.g. rw libertarians (Libertarian party, Ron Paul)don't mind wealth and power in few hands. Lw libertarians (most "anarchists") want it to be equal.
If purple people make more than green people that's ok for the right, the left might take issue.
Around the time of the French revolution. People on the right side of the aisle favored monarchy and church: hierarchical institutions. People on the left favored a relatively egalitarian republic. It's been used that way sense, loosly. (By people who use the terms correctly).
E.g. rw libertarians (Libertarian party, Ron Paul)don't mind wealth and power in few hands. Lw libertarians (most "anarchists") want it to be equal.
If purple people make more than green people that's ok for the right, the
[QUOTE=Left–right political spectrum
]The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Régime to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left.[[/QUOTE]
The right, if i understand correctly, supported the monarchy. The left, the new reform/revolution, a democratic based hierarchy.
The right, if i understand correctly, supported the monarchy. The left, the new reform/revolution, a democratic based hierarchy.
yes equality is another current of (what we currently call) leftism, while the hierarchy part never existed.
The equality leftism has it's roots in the Gracchi brothers basically, and for a loooong time (up until the industrial revolution) it was (as for the Gracchi) about land-ownership equality.
After the industrial revolution you have the Paris commune as the first proto-marxist attempt at governing.
The "left" in the french revolution was the (hated-by-marx) capitalist bourgioise (mechants, enterpreneurs, and so on). Theoretically the "third estate" was everyone who wasn't noble nor clergy BUT at the end it was only what we would call the rich, and some upper-middle class people.
The french revolution was originally an attempt to substitute an improductive elite living off rents with a productive elite of oligarchs , not with anything resembling what we would call socialism today. It was the rich for inheritance vs the rich for merit. The poors were never part of any picture.
In fact later attempts to depic what the marxist left was supposedly to care about coined "the fourth estate", exemplified in this historical masterpiece (called "the fourth estate")
Which tellingly was first called "ambassadors of hunger" in early drafts
yes equality is another current of (what we currently call) leftism, while the hierarchy part never existed.
The equality leftism has it's roots in the Gracchi brothers basically, and for a loooong time (up until the industrial revolution) it was (as for the Gracchi) about land-ownership equality.
After the industrial revolution you have the Paris commune as the first proto-marxist attempt at governing.
The "left" in the french revolution was the (hated-by-marx) capitalist bourgioise (mechants, ent
Hated by marx. And so I think that the left can't possibly have the same meaning, if we have replaced the framework of state with a democratic constitution.
Hated by marx. And so I think that the left can't possibly have the same meaning, if we have replaced the framework of state with a democratic constitution.
I explained, it starts with the left being made up of the actually most useful people in society, those who carried society, the most succesful because of merit, the most productive, the innovators: the capitalists.
Then what is now the left hijacked the term and warped it beyond recognition because they liked the idea of an historical event in which many rich people were assassinated by the masses.
Left became a label for "anyone in society who wants radical violent change", which is what they wanted and needed to try to install marxism/socialism.
Then in some places it became "those who want change vs those who want the status quo", more broadly.
And the equality nonsense comes from the french revolution (and the gracchi brothers legacy), but again warped beyond recognition. "egalitè" in the original sense by the Jacobin left just meant "equal rights under the law" (nobles and clergy had actual legal privileges before), and taxes proportional to income (ie: flat tax; nobles and clergy didn't pay taxes at all). Under "egalitè", in the original sense, someone making a million per year would pay 100k, someone making 50k would pay 5k.
That was already a RADICAL idea lol. How times change (the left has NEVER enough, that's the rule of history)
I explained, it starts with the left being made up of the actually most useful people in society, those who carried society, the most succesful because of merit, the most productive, the innovators: the capitalists.
Then what is now the left hijacked the term and warped it beyond recognition because they liked the idea of an historical event in which many rich people were assassinated by the masses.
Left became a label for "anyone in society who wants radical violent change", which is what they wa
And it seems to relate to different things in different countries sometimes and/or depending on the slant of whoever is using the term.
It's problematic.
And it seems to relate to different things in different countries sometimes and/or depending on the slant of whoever is using the term.
It's problematic.
You are right that when people subordinate the terms to their ideologies or narratives or use them based on vibes, communication becomes much harder
This the advantage of using the terms correctly and consistantly as well as you can, though they are imperfect.
Nassim Taleb once declared himself a left wing conservative. Since he is the type to use the terms as in the OP i instantly had a pretty good idea what he meant.
You are right that when people subordinate the terms to their ideologies or narratives or use them based on vibes, communication becomes much harder
This the advantage of using the terms correctly and consistantly as well as you can, though they are imperfect.
Nassim Taleb once declared himself a left wing conservative. Since he is the type to use the terms as in the OP i instantly had a pretty good idea what he meant.
if he means socially conservative, economically progressive (in the American sense), this is the proper label
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal...
which in Italian is actually called "social right" (destra sociale), which btw properly describes Le Pen party.
is that what Taleb meant about his position?
I can't say 100% as he didn't elaborate.
I'm somewhat familiar with his conservative side. He is wary of major changes because they can bring unforseen consequences, which could be calamities. For this reason he says he is an "extreme conservative" on the environment. Meaning, he is very worried about change/damage to the environment. He was very apprehensive about GMOs.
He discusses the left a bit here.
