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

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

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

Do you think? :-) Of course, that is the least of its problems. It is tests
like these that make a sham of any notions of left-right distinctions or any
other political distinctions or characterizations.  They might as well have
asked if you would rather go to Europe or take your lunch?

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

A reflection of the times and how bad they are when we have to resort to
quoting from Humpty-Dumpty.  On second thought, maybe H-D was the world's
greatest philosopher and social critic who knew when to take a fall and make
his quick exit from the scene rather than sticking around to see the
consequences of his statements and actions.

>(When the Democratic party is spoken of as on the Left, it's gotten pretty
silly.)

I am not sure if this means that the Democratic party has gotten silly or
that the talk has gotten silly when the party is spoken of as on the left.
But either way, I think it is silly to regard the Democratic party as being
on the left or anywhere near it at any time in its history.  It has always
been first and foremost a party of the establishment whose excursions to the
left were merely opportunistic and self-interested temporary detours.  It
certainly has not been a radical party or an ideologically left party.  It
went were the votes and money were and not where the ideologically or
ethically correct premises of leftist action would direct it.

>"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.

I take exception to your wanting to either identify or link the left-right
distinction with or to the authoritarian-democratic distinction since these
have no logically necessary connection or identity.  Even empirically
evidence to support any connection turns on matters of definition and
interpretation as to what constitutes authoritarian, democratic, left, and
right.  

Moreover, you have selected to narrowly define political in terms of
political parties; but political is much broader than specific institutions
and groups or their particular actions and policies.  The distinctions you
speak of (left-right and democratic-authoritarian) also apply to much more
than just political parties or even ideologies; thus your proposed usage is
not only limiting but - in my opinion - much too restrictive to be useful
for more than classifying political parties in very general sorts of ways.
Even with respect to political entities, one can have some positions,
policies, platforms, doctrines, etc. that are left and authoritarian, others
that are right and democratic, and still others that are left and democratic
or right and authoritarian.

In short, the distinctions themselves as applied often are much too gross a
typificiation to be of any real use except for glosses and as slogans.  They
have little real descriptive value when applied to concrete phenomena in a
general sort of way as contrasted to specific reference to individual
features, properties, or factors.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G.
Estabrook
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 9:58 PM
To: E. Wayne Johnson
Cc: 'Brussel Morton K.'; 'Peace-discuss'; LAURIE SOLOMON
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] socializing an industry -- good but also bad

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...
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