[Peace-discuss] socializing an industry -- good but also bad

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think the quizzes suffer from a good bit of undistributed middle, at least.

And I think Left/Right can be salvaged from the fell clutches of H-D (where I 
admit they presently lodge.  With apologies--

"...It's a commonplace that the distinction between Left and Right is fraught 
with ambiguity. (When the Democratic party is spoken of as on the Left, it's 
gotten pretty silly.) And it's also generally accepted that the terminology 
arose from the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly of 1789.

"But if we want a consistent usage for the Left/Right distinction, we might 
think of political parties ranged along a line according to how authoritarian or 
democratic they are. The further Right one goes, the more authoritarian the 
parties, and the further Left, the more democratic. (At the far Left end are the 
socialists, who want not just a democratic polity but a democratic economy as 
well -- investment decisions made not by corporations but by elections.)

"Lenin's Bolsheviks, then, must be seen as a right-wing Marxist party, as must 
all twentieth century communist parties in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, owing 
to their authoritarianism.   And they were indeed so described by left-wing 
Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek.

"The commitment to democracy and an ever-widening franchise means that it has 
been the Left under this definition that has called attention to marginalized 
groups in the modern West. The historic task of the Left has been to include in 
political and civil society groups formerly excluded on the grounds that their 
full humanity was denied -- e.g., Africans, Amerindians, and women..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook01172003.html

E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 
> ... Left and Right don't seem to cut it except in a HumptyDumpty sort of way 
> (the words mean exactly what I want them to.)  If the notion of words finds 
> its utility in communication then it is reasonable enough to arrive at least
> somewhat standardized definitions of terms.  Left and right implies that
> there is only one factor and that this one factor describes all of the
> philosophic variation in the way we perceive the world.
> 
> So we have left/right, conservative/liberal, conservative/progressive, 
> libertarian-authoritarian. Authoritarian is sometimes called "statist".
> Classical liberal is used as a variant of libertarian.
> 
> The ideologic axis progressive-conservative is likely not the same definition
> as the liberal-conservative one. Then we have such as neo-liberal,
> neo-conservative, paleoconservative, jurassiconservative etc., One has to add
> new axes to pull out such new definitions.
> 
> There are somewhat interesting quizzes that chart the quizzed ones (the 
> quizzees) on a orthogonally biaxial plot.  I would suggest that the
> motivation of such quizzors is to encourage the quizzees to get in touch with
> their inner libertarian.  Big L Libertarians tend to be members of the
> Libertarian party, while little (l) libertarians affirm that they have
> libertarian ideologies but may not be members of the Libertarian Party or any
> other party for that matter.
> 
> A couple of quizzes to help you find your biaxial categorization--- 
> http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php
> 
> http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
> LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
>> 
>>> You forget that one of the tenets of the libertarianism is adherence
>> to the rule of law...