Definition of the Left

[Clarksist]

I heard an interesting interview with Bill Clinton, and he said that he thought being a liberal is breaking down borders which are no longer needed. And being a conservative means keeping needed borders in place.

Now I'm not a big Clinton fan, though I respect him for becoming an elected official beating off two millionaires when he came from almost poverty, but this got me thinking.

Is a liberal or leftist idea truly just breaking down unneeded borders? Part of me agrees, but a smidgen of me feels that its not quite as simple.

Discuss...

[Bolshevist]

Leftist or Rightist are often defined by economic criterias where leftists generally wants a more restricted economy/planned or commando economy and the people on the right tend to favour a more open free market solution.

The more free-market solutions has always and will always be the bourgeiouse's ideology, it originally steaming from the power struggle between the bourgeiouse and the aristocrathy where the aristocrathy usually relied on conservatism so they could justify "to keep things as they were".

Men such as Locke, Smith, Ricardo and such usually were from well-off families, and the ideologies were created to protect that given class's privilegies.

Hope this clears up things for you, and sorry if the post is a bit messy, I just got up.

[RedLenin]

I believe the left/right division is based on relation to the means of production. The right is in favor of privately owned means of production and the left is in favor of collectively owned means of production. That is basically what it comes down to. Since liberals support private enterprize, they are on the right, just less right than the rupublicans because they support some social programs. The furtherst right would have to be "libertarians". They support a completely free market with no social programs what-so-ever and the only job of the government being to defend property rights. Basically most american politics would be on the right. If you support private enterprise, you are on the right, if you support collective ownership, you are on the left. Economics is what determines the left/right division, having to do with prefered relations to the means of production.

[JudeObscure84]

The left/right thing should be based on economics, but then it is also skewered by rhetoric and practice. This is my personal opinon of the spectrum.

Left:
Communism
Marxism
Stalinism
Marxist-Leninism
Anarchism
Syndicalism
Fascism
Maoism
Democratic Socialism

Right:
Libertarianism
Aristrocatic Rule
Conservatism
Liberalism
Market Economy

[Bolshevist]

Fascism

Facism is not on the left, it is on the right. Facism is a product of capitalism in severe crisis (such as the huge unemployment in the 30's, Germany) and often relies on heavy nationalism. It is one of the most reactionary ideologies the property owners have ever managed to come up with, and put to practice.

I found a list illustrating facism, hope this is interesting:

1. Right Wing: Fascists are fervently against: Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, Environmentalism; etc – in essence, they are against the progressive left in total, including moderate lefts (social democrats, etc). Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology, though it can be opportunistic.
2. Nationalism: Fascism places a very strong emphasis on patriotism and nationalism. Criticism of the nation's main ideals, especially war, is lambasted as unpatriotic at best, and treason at worst. State propaganda consistently broadcasts threats of attack, while justifying pre-emptive war. Fascism invariably seeks to instill in its people the warrior mentality: to always be vigilant, wary of strangers and suspicous of foreigners.
3. Hierarchy: Fascist society is ruled by an righteous leader, who is supported by an elite secret vanguard of capitalists. Hierarchy is prevalent throughout all aspects of society – every street, every workplace, every school, will have its local Hitler, part police-informer, part bureaucrat – and society is prepared for war at all times. The absolute power of the social hierarchy prevails over everything, and thus a totalitarian society is formed. Representative government is acceptable only if it can be controlled and regulated, direct democracy (e.g. Communism) is the greatest of all crimes. Any who oppose the social hierarchy of fascism will be imprisoned or executed.
4. Anti-equality: Fascism loathes the principles of economic equality and disdains equality between immigrant and citizen. Some forms of fascism extend the fight against equality into other areas: gender, sexual, minority or religious rights, for example.
5. Religious: Fascism contains a strong amount of reactionary religious beliefs, harking back to times when religion was strict, potent, and pure. Nearly all Fascist societies are Christian, and are supported by Catholic and Protestant churches.
6. Capitalist: Fascism does not require revolution to exist in captialist society: fascists can be elected into office (though their disdain for elections usually means manipulation of the electoral system). They view parliamentary and congressional systems of government to be inefficent and weak, and will do their best to minimize its power over their policy agenda. Fascism exhibits the worst kind of capitalism where corporate power is absolute, and all vestiges of workers' rights are destroyed.
7. War: Fascism is capitalism at the stage of impotent imperialism. War can create markets that would not otherwise exist by wrecking massive devastation on a society, which then requires reconstruction! Fascism can thus "liberate" the survivors, provide huge loans to that society so fascist corporations can begin the process of rebuilding.
8. Voluntarist Ideology: Fascism adopts a certain kind of “voluntarism;” they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. Thus all sorts of ideas about racial inferiority, historical destiny, even physical science, are supported by means of violence, in the belief that they can be made true. It is this sense that Fascism is subjectivist.
9. Anti-Modern: Fascism loathes all kinds of modernism, especially creativity in the arts, whether acting as a mirror for life (where it does not conform to the Fascist ideal), or expressing deviant or innovative points of view. Fascism invariably burns books and victimises artists, and artists which do not promote the fascists ideals are seen as “decadent.” Fascism is hostile to broad learning and interest in other cultures, since such pursuits threaten the dominance of fascist myths. The peddling of conspiracy theories is usually

[JudeObscure84]

First of all I should begin with the notion that Fascism is of a class on all its own and cannot be confined to left/right, but it appears to be closer to the left than the right. You are just examining the rhetoric, not the doctrine. Lets go throught each of you points.


1. Right Wing: Fascists are fervently against: Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, Environmentalism; etc – in essence, they are against the progressive left in total, including moderate lefts (social democrats, etc). Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology, though it can be opportunistic

It is a Marxist heresy. It began with the disolvement of the First international and grew from the Syndicalist movement. It rejects Marxism as a science and opts for direct action. You are arguing that it was right wing because it was against progressive values? Then how do you explain the Fascist Manifesto?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_manifesto < Like all revolutions the main tenets are forgotten when power is achieved because of rising opposition. But I am arguing the origin and the doctrine which was clearly an offshoot of Marxist revision.


2. Nationalism: Fascism places a very strong emphasis on patriotism and nationalism. Criticism of the nation&#39;s main ideals, especially war, is lambasted as unpatriotic at best, and treason at worst. State propaganda consistently broadcasts threats of attack, while justifying pre-emptive war. Fascism invariably seeks to instill in its people the warrior mentality: to always be vigilant, wary of strangers and suspicous of foreigners.

This strongly misinterprets the nationalistic fervor of the Fascists. The notion of nationalism came from the syndialist philosopher George Sorel, who said that the workers would not rise for simply workers solidarity, but from the myth of a nation. Sorelian syndicalism called for direct action and an immidiate removal of the capitalist class.

http://www.oswaldmosley.com/people/sorel.html < here is Union of British Fascists salute to Sorelian syndicalism.


Syndicalism, as used by the partisans of Georges Sorel, means special revolutionary tactics to be resorted to for the realization of socialism. Labor unions, it implies, should not waste their strength in the task of improving the conditions of wage earners within the frame of capitalism. They should adopt action directe, unflinching violence to destroy all the institutions of capitalism. They should never cease to fight--in the genuine sense of the term--for their ultimate goal, socialism. The proletarians must not let themselves be fooled by the catchwords of the bourgeoisie, such as liberty, democracy, representative government. They must seek their salvation in the class struggle, in bloody revolutionary upheavals and in the pitiless annihilation of the bourgeois.

This doctrine played and still plays an enormous role in modern politics. It has provided essential ideas to Russian Bolshevism, Italian Fascism, and German Nazism.



3. Hierarchy: Fascist society is ruled by an righteous leader, who is supported by an elite secret vanguard of capitalists. Hierarchy is prevalent throughout all aspects of society – every street, every workplace, every school, will have its local Hitler, part police-informer, part bureaucrat – and society is prepared for war at all times. The absolute power of the social hierarchy prevails over everything, and thus a totalitarian society is formed. Representative government is acceptable only if it can be controlled and regulated, direct democracy (e.g. Communism) is the greatest of all crimes. Any who oppose the social hierarchy of fascism will be imprisoned or executed.

This makes no sense, because if we were to go by this then Castro&#39;s Cuba, North Korea, Maoist China, and Stalin Russia were all "right wing". The notion of a one leader was to be the leader of the union. One massive union to rule them all and nothing could be outside of this union because it was the unity of the workers and the people.


The fascist party had conceived the fascist state. One could not think of a "corporate state" or a "syndicalist state" without thinking of the fascist party. Fascism was inseparable from corporativism or syndicalism. If one removed the one concept, he necessarily removed the others. The fascist party, not the state, was the guardian of the fascist ideals, especially including syndicalism and the corporate organization of the state. The orthodoxy of syndicalist ideas was safeguarded in the fascist party. Hence, the highest value in the fascist state was syndicalism-corporativism."

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p--5_Whisker.html



4. Anti-equality: Fascism loathes the principles of economic equality and disdains equality between immigrant and citizen. Some forms of fascism extend the fight against equality into other areas: gender, sexual, minority or religious rights, for example.
There is no proof for this being a sole issue with Fascism. Stalin killed plenty of Jews, Vietnamese Communists killed plenty of Thais and Buddhists, Robert Mugabe&#39;s socialist Zimbabwe is ethically cleansing the white population.Salvador Allende had personal anti-semtic disregard for the Jewry. Almost all communist countries oppose religous tolerance, or those not sanctioned by the state.
And also it wasnt until Herbert Marcuse and the founding of the New Left that all these other people were included in the mix of the working class. Remember that the Bolshevicks disliked the peasentry. Castro exiled plenty of homosexuals from Cuba.

How do you explain Hitlers animal rights decree, his enviromental record and his creation of the autobahn and other national projects that actually benefited the German people?



5. Religious: Fascism contains a strong amount of reactionary religious beliefs, harking back to times when religion was strict, potent, and pure. Nearly all Fascist societies are Christian, and are supported by Catholic and Protestant churches.

HAHAHA. This had to do with the aspect of nationalism that asked for a return of an old empire. Most likely the Catholic Dogma empire like in Spain Flange Party. Italys Fascists had good connections with the Pope, but thats because the Catholic Church envoked a great amount of corporatvism in its church. But should we excuse this to apologize for the atheist cultural revolution of Mao? Or the persecution of Catholics in Spanish Civil war?


6. Capitalist: Fascism does not require revolution to exist in captialist society: fascists can be elected into office (though their disdain for elections usually means manipulation of the electoral system). They view parliamentary and congressional systems of government to be inefficent and weak, and will do their best to minimize its power over their policy agenda. Fascism exhibits the worst kind of capitalism where corporate power is absolute, and all vestiges of workers&#39; rights are destroyed.


This again is total misconception of corporative syndicalism which Fascism was based upon. they didnt want to eliminate the system entirely. they wanted to eliminate the market economy system of commerce. They opted to give the task to guilds or corporatives that would co-op the businesses. Von Mises explains....


The fundamental idea both of guild socialism and of corporativism is that every branch of business forms a monopolistic body, the guild or corporazione.[2] This entity enjoys full autonomy; it is free to settle all its internal affairs without interference of external factors and of people who are not themselves members of the guild.
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap33sec4.asp


9. Anti-Modern: Fascism loathes all kinds of modernism, especially creativity in the arts, whether acting as a mirror for life (where it does not conform to the Fascist ideal), or expressing deviant or innovative points of view. Fascism invariably burns books and victimises artists, and artists which do not promote the fascists ideals are seen as “decadent.” Fascism is hostile to broad learning and interest in other cultures, since such pursuits threaten the dominance of fascist myths. The peddling of conspiracy theories is usually

It doesnt mean corporate power in the sense of corpotations like Halliburton, but like Federal programs. Two very different meanings.


7. War: Fascism is capitalism at the stage of impotent imperialism. War can create markets that would not otherwise exist by wrecking massive devastation on a society, which then requires reconstruction&#33; Fascism can thus "liberate" the survivors, provide huge loans to that society so fascist corporations can begin the process of rebuilding.

Oh this is so wrong on so many levels.


8. Voluntarist Ideology: Fascism adopts a certain kind of “voluntarism;” they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. Thus all sorts of ideas about racial inferiority, historical destiny, even physical science, are supported by means of violence, in the belief that they can be made true. It is this sense that Fascism is subjectivist
Fascism is anti-modern in the sense that it rejects rationalism. It evokes emotion and response rather than classical traits of reason and logic. It was the first post modern revolt. There were dozens of members of the intellectual community that appealed to Fascism, The Futurists, the Dadaists, Poet Ezra Pound, artists like FT Marrenetti. Fascism is arrogant towards anything anti-Fascist, because it views itself as the ideal union of people. To deny that Fascism had no intellectual support from the artistic community is to dent history.

George Sorel carefully explains this. The syndicalist philosophy is about reactionary direct action. Its violent approach is due to the Neitzchean uber-man, that can truimph over the rest.

[JudeObscure84]

IF I MAY ALSO ADD......


No. The National Syndicalist Movement is convinced that it has found the right way out: neither capitalist nor communist. Faced by the individualist economy of the bourgeoisie, the socialist one arose, which handed over the fruits of production to the State, enslaving the individual. Neither of them have resolved the tragedy of the producer. To address this issue let us erect the synicalist economy, which neither absorbs the individual personality into the State, nor turns the worker into a dehumanized cog in the machinery of bourgeois production.

-appeal to Spanish workers, and appeared in the publication Arriba, number 20, November 1935

http://feastofhateandfear.com/archives/falangist.html < Fascist Flange


http://www.e-falange.com/fei/index.html < If you can read Spanish thier platform is against the capitalist class and the right as well.


15.- El Estado se reserva la capacidad de planificar la economía nacional, de manera vinculante y centralizada, siempre que estén amenazados el bienestar social de los españoles y la independencia de la Patria.

Platform 15 on the National Syndicalist plan for the economy would put it in the central planned economy thus making it left wing on the political spectrum based on economics, which is what I am arguing. Not rhetoric.


Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere.

-Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism

Liberalism as in the sense of lassiez faire capitalism. Classical Liberalism, which would be neo-liberalism today.


and then the writer of these pages has already defined Fascism as an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.

-Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism

Again if we&#39;re arguing if Fascism on economic level than it is opposed to the "right".

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/R...y/mussolini.htm (http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm)

[JudeObscure84]

Sorry guys but Fascism is not on the Right at all.

[*Hippie*]

If you look on political compass, it is up on top of the graph. It represents state over individual where Marxism is individual over state, the complete opposite. Fascism can be on the left or right depending on the dictator in power. ;)

[cult.45]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 08:16 PM
Sorry guys but Fascism is not on the Right at all.
What the fuck? of course it is, it&#39;s basically another word for reactionary. It the most far right you can go.

[VukBZ2005]

1
Although this guy is now restricted; I wish to attack his claim that "Fascism
is not on the right at all". First, the basic idea of Fascism to maintain state c
-ontrol within the frameset of capitalism through merging corperate power w
-ith state power to produce a ultra-authoritarian state that will inforce the will
of the capitalist class via the military and the police force while allowing the c
-entralization of natural resources and manufactured resources for the benif
-it of big corperations - capitalist control of industry and for the total disposal
of the state and the capitalist class that controls it to use those manufactured
and natural resources whenever necessary.

Fascism is against the establishment of a liberated, classless, stateless
society because it threatens the existence of the capitalist class - Fascism
is the ultra-authoritarian "last response" of the capitalist class to silence all
opposition. Thus - to say that fascism in not on the right at all is totally a deni
-al of facts and of history.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 07:00 PM
Is a liberal or leftist idea truly just breaking down unneeded borders?
Clinton talks in the context of capitalism. His "liberalism" is so in order to maintain the neo-liberalist agenda of globalisation. Any talk of "leftism" on Clinton&#39;s part is just a joke. He&#39;s no more left than Tony Blair.

To answer your question. Leftism varies to such a degree that you really need to be specific. Revolutionary leftism is not about breaking down "unneeded borders", which is rather an abstract euphemism, it&#39;s about destroying these "borders" altoghether and creating something completely new and untested.

[RevolutionaryLeftist]

Fascism is totally on the right. its basically the exact opposite of marxism. you also got to remember hitler hated the communists, as did stalin with the nazis.

[DoomedOne]

I believe the differences between left and right are based on the following:

Left: Freedom an Equality of all

Right: Freedom and Equality of me

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 07:19 AM
I believe the differences between left and right are based on the following:

Left: Freedom an Equality of all

Right: Freedom and Equality of me
I like that DoomedOne. That does sum up quite a lot, if vaguely. That is what right/left is. All the way up until university people here get taught the right left diagram as a circle. Personally I believe this is bollocks but I get the point. I saw a lot of posts (although I did skim read a little bit) that said facism wasn&#39;t left because it hated the left. From my memory of what things were like when I was posting more frequently the left does hate the left. Yes Fascists probably do hate the ideas of:Maoism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Anarchism, Communism, democratic socialism...well pretty much most the isms that are tollerated and are non-restricted on the board, but so do most of the guys who claim to be left (whether or not they see individual branches as left at all).

The Idea of the circle (communism and fascism meeting at the extremes) I think is what happens when people try and measure a socio-economic issue of great complexinty using a single line. Forgetting about compasses and other fancy methods, the way I see best to measure using this left/right division is purely in economics. So therefore controlled economies would constitute a place on the left of the scale, regardless of ideology, claim or otherwise. If fascism fits there so what? Perhaps instead of trying to keep the already tarnished "left side" clean (after Pol Pot, Stalin etc) Why pay attention to it at all.

Using the simple left/right scale I would say that Stalin&#39;s Russia was left wing but not communist, and I can see how JudeObscure84 placed fascism on the left. I see this as how things are, but I do not agree with either at all, in any way, shape, or form.

I know deep down I want an ecconomy carefully controlled, yet perfect...oh and pretty much no rules, just everyone getting along, some people say more rules, whatever you think is practical or right. But those are issues to do with the role of the state (if any) and social control.

There are problems defining the left, fuck knows I cauldn&#39;t and have no interest in it. Theleft means something to most of us, but often it is alternative, different, not what we have now. The change is supposed to be better, or worse, depends who you ask. If you define the left, then surely it will be either to simple, and just another nice dream. Or complicated and the more ideas you put into it the more likely some are to disagree with.

I believe that the "left" today has two real meanings: Firstly the left viewed from the (what can only be called) the left. This is the group looking for change along the lines of things that tend to unite us; environmentalism, freedom, better worker rights, fairer distribution of wealth and many others.

Secondly the left viewed from the "right" (that is the powers that be) To which it IS exactly Stalin&#39;s Russia and a nice but impossible idea that is dangerous (to them) and to be avoided at all costs.

These two definitions explain why I personally believe we should not worry about triviallities of fascism and communism (viewed from the right) being close together. Education and media are generally held by people on the right, so they can say what they want. By not clinging to outdated scalesthis power is more or less taken away from them. No one can define the current left movement today which is a collision of ideas, good intentions, creativity anger and lust for change. We have tried making everyone agree...look what happened. Why bother define a movement that now defies definition. We can&#39;t put our finger on it, but these different deas come together at protests against wars, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, unfairly elected leaders, ad infintium. Even the press can&#39;t define these people. Or if they can it is poorly and all but the daftest can see through it.

Anyway I think that puts me on the road to horribly off topic, sorry about the reply its been a while.