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Now that the election is finally over, the political scene in the United States has changed to either the better or worse. We started the year with protests, Richard Spencer being punched in the face, and a guy being shot at an anti-Milo event . What is "the right" in the United States is seemingly doing okay, and what is "the left" in the United States has gone from the mainstream and into a stream of doomsday prophecies & attacks on "the right".

In this thread, I will try my best to be objective by explaining and defining things, and I know that not everyone will agree with what I'm saying. The main focus would be ideologies that aren't mainstream, because I believe most people are aware of what centre-left and centre-right politics are.

What is "the left", and what is "the right"? Most people can agree what is the mainstream right and left; conservatives, liberals, ones with centrist or left- or right-leaning views. However, to have healthy and good discussions, one must be able to understand definitions, as well as how people on the left and right see themselves. I can't literally analyse how left-wingers or right-wingers think, but I will attempt to take a look at what defines the left and right.

Let us first take a look right-wing thought. Like with left-wing thought, it is a huge mass of different ideas. A few famous right-wing thinkers & leaders. A quick summary of what is right-wing, is "the belief that certain social orders (such as values or customs) and hierarchies are inevitable". That can be close to anything, such as racial supremacy, the nuclear family, and the boss-worker relationship. Not all right-wingers believe in the above, but it is an example, as most right-wingers would agree that hierarchy is good, but it also depends on the hierarchy. A fascist would want a strict hierarchy enforced by the state, while an American libertarian would wish for the hierarchies (and power of the state) to be lessened but still keep the boss-worker hierarchy that usually exists in the traditional workplace. So, who would be the "rightest"? I would describe Fascism or Nazism as the "rightest™", considering Fascism & Nazism would fit the definition of 'right-wing' taken to the absolute extreme.

Now, let us take a look at what is left-wing. Have some left-wing leaders & thinkers. A simple summary for what is left-wing, would be a "support for egalitarianism (gender, race) & social equality", usually in opposition to what is right-wing; social hierarchy and inequality. What is equality and inequality is a main split within left-wing thought. A social-democrat sees merit in Capitalism and the free market, but wants to lessen the ills of it with regulations and a welfare state. A socialist would be against Capitalism, but perhaps not the market, as long as the workplace would be free from what is seen as the boss-worker hierarchy. Some leftists stress social equality, like the centre-left liberals or social-democrats, and some leftists stress economic equality, like communists and anarchists. So, who would be the "leftest"? I would say that the different forms of left-wing Anarchism to be the "leftest™", as it is the complete and full opposition to most if not all hierarchies and inequalities, including what is seen as the state.

I am in no way saying that the left – or the right – is synonymous with any forms of freedom or suffering. Far from it, Marxism-leninist (left-wing) and fascist (right-wing) countries & groups have both caused a large amount of suffering during the 20th century, causing several tens of millions of deaths either directly or indirectly. Every ideology and group has skeletons in the closet, and the ones who wish to change the perceptions of said ideas or groups will and should acknowledge their mistakes or faults instead of defending them to the hilt.

One can use the political compass to define either the authoritarian right or left, and the libertarian right or left, but as I said before, it is difficult to map out who is the rightest or the leftest on a scale. How can one measure whether Nazism is more authoritarian than Fascism, or if Anarcho-capitalism is more libertarian than Mutualism or Anarcho-communism? It is much easier to just say that they are "far-left" or "far-right", and describe their views from there, instead of making everything more complicated than it already is.

I have seen an alternative proposed by some people, which is the "authoritarian vs libertarian" scale. As someone who is interested in ideology, I see a lot of problems with such a scale. The ones who propose it would claim that left vs right creates a divide or "us vs them" mentality, when the same people will ironically always see themselves as being on the libertarian side of the "authoritarian vs libertarian" scale. Also, it is not like marxism-leninists or stalinists would wish to associate themselves with fascists on the authoritarian side, and nor would right-libertarians want to see themselves as on the same side as left-libertarians or anarcho-communists.

So, fellow memers: Are there any ideologies that you believe in? Are there any ideologies that you oppose? How important should ideology be to the average person, and have you thought of reaching out to "the other side" to discuss?

I think both the left right scale and authoritarian libertarian scale can be useful, but ultimately all such scales reduce the ideologies too much so that they cannot be fully understood. Both of these scales also fail at being relevant to certain positions at all. Green parties for example are usually placed on the left side of the political spectrum due to a lot of their ancillary beliefs, and in fact there is quite a strong leftist culture among many Green Parties but their core issue of environmentalism has nothing to do with hierarchy or authoritarianism vs libertarianism. Gun control is another issue that is failed by the left right axis. While US liberals often advocate for gun control, compared to US conservatives who are pro gun, most Marxists believe strongly in arming the proletariat.

Ultimately I think rather than organizing ideologies along a spectrum, we should look at the individual positions of each ideology and compare them base on each issue.

Ohh man I hope this makes sense. I wrote this over like 3 hours with 500 distractions.

I like the moral foundations theory created by Jonathan Haidt. Essentially, there are certain "foundations" that underpin what we see as moral. The ones Haidt established as likely foundations are care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. He also posited that liberty/oppression may be a valid foundation.

Your definitions of right and left wing seem to coincide wonderfully well with what Haidt noticed: Authority, Sanctity, and Loyalty tend to be valued way more by conservatives than liberals. (There's a case to be made that Sanctity is valued by liberals too, just differently – but that's a different discussion.) Specifically the part about hierarchy – the "conservatives" (right wing) hold to the moral foundation of authority more than liberals (left wing) do.

Now, about a compass – a compass cannot capture everything. However, like labels ("left wing" "right wing" "conservative" "anarchist") it provides a great way to communicate and clarify your values to others (if used properly). I think a good political compass should have at least 3 axes – free/d vs command, socialist vs capitalist, and social authoritarian vs social libertarian. That's my take on the "ideal" compass.

Now, as to your questions…

Are there any ideologies that you believe in?

My current pet ideology I believe is named mutualism.

Basically, I believe in common ownership of the "means of production" – say, factories – as opposed to the situation we have now in most countries where some people own the "means of production" and effectively rent it out to others in return for money (this is basically what happens in many cases when you hire someone – they are given things to work that are owned by the boss, and then are paid some money for that work). There are a couple reasons for this, but honestly if some hardcore capitalist or socialist pushed me on it I'd probably crumple as I have yet to get a full theory of politics and economics. I really haven't even read any mutualist works – I just know about it some.

As part of this ideology, I also believe in markets. So, as a really rough measure of what it'd look like, imagine our current society except all companies are democratically run, with everyone's vote equal. This would not preclude hierarchy. A democratically run company could vote in a leader – however, this leader would be subject to recall votes at nearly any given time, so they can't act just as a dictator, where whatever they do they can get away with it (at least until the next election).

The basic reasoning for this is – capitalism sucks for like, a ton of people, and wealth gathers up among a few people when I really don't think they deserve it, even if they have made incredible contributions to mankind. I also don't think "It's just crony capitalism!" really works, because in any society where such a system exists the people at the top will nearly inevitably try to influence the government in their favor – capitalism begets crony capitalism. The only possible work around is there being no government as we know it (anarcho-capitalism), and I held to this for a while, but then I came to the conclusion that it nearly certainly would result in another government that would only enforce the will of the richest, unlike the government right now which marginally helps the people.

Now, don't get me wrong – capitalism has done some great things. However, I think this system – "market socialism" – has potential to be greater. Capitalism has a lot of pushing people's natural creativity – the driver of innovation – because people are being made to work on very specific projects, with bosses that tell them exactly what to do – no innovation. I'd imagine this problem would be lessened among the economic system I've already elaborated on, and it'd still be a market system, so no issues with command economies.

Are there any ideologies that you oppose?

Really I only oppose ideologies such as fascism, nazism, and other really heavily oppressive and authoritarian ideologies. When you begin to doubt the peoplehood of people, I begin to oppose it. And as such, there are people of other ideologies that I oppose – but not necessarily the ideology.

Really, it often comes down to the reasons why people have reached their ideology. If you're a conservative because you believe that the fact that people in the past were smart people too and they came to those positions, and thus we should carefully consider anything disagreeing with longstanding tradition, sure. If you're a conservative because fuck gays and women, well, fuck you.

How important should ideology be to the average person

I believe ideology is extremely important, and we should all carefully consider what we believe – at least, to some degree. I don't expect everyone to go full Descartes and question everything, but if your views are heavily based on BS then you should take some time out to reconsider related things.

have you thought of reaching out to “the other side” to discuss?

I love relaxed disagreements. I tend to get into them with Astatine and Sandors, as well as a close friend of mine who isn't here. They all have rather different views on things, and I like discussing things with them. It gives new perspectives, and I like to try to give mine too. Also, to wrap back around to the beginning – I like to try to apply the moral foundations theory every now and then to get across to people who I disagree with better. It's an interesting thing to try.

the original idea of fascism is incredibly interesting to me, but thanks to butthurt extreme liberals and 2 digit IQ neo-nazis fascism as a word equals white supremacy.

The main idea of fascism that mussolini invented didint even involve race as a main issue, it was the revival of old cultural values (family, honor, worker-boss relationship) under a new economy (Capitalism with socialism wherever the former fails). I'm sure in today's age you could bring fascism back under a new name if you remove everything related to race except for the part where hitler said all races deserve a homeland to live in, you could easily reel in moderate liberals with socialism and conservatives with old values, Maybe even SJW would join in considering how authoritarian they are

Also, coming from a country who was victim of a red uprising, i will never love commies or communism, they are the only ideology i truly think should be destroyed and forgotten because their followers are too busy being edgy protesting trump to actually think of a good way to make communism fit in today's economy and society, and socialists need to update their ideology or they are basically just low energy pinkos. This is why Slavoj Zizek is one of the only commies i truly have respect for, he realizes how useless old marxism is in today's world.

The original left/right divide was between city merchants+commoners on the left vs. the monarchy+clergy on the right. After industrialization, it became the working class on the left vs. the ownership class on the right. Then it got further twisted over the next century and a half as the movements that identified as "left" and "right" changed stances on issues, and as people tried to hammer new political movements into the simple left/right model.

Attempting to apply "left" and "right" to today's politics is even more meaningless than it was a few years ago. Examples:

Left-wing stances:

• Guns for everyone, they're for revolution not for hunting
• Blaspheme against Islam at every opportunity
• Resist the political influence of billionaires like Soros
• Question everything. Transgenderism? Question it!

Right-wing stances:

• Teach religious values like social justice in public education
• Centralize education and health care under the government
• Protect women by banning booth babes and obscene art showing midriffs
• Suppress all other points of view through denunciation or violence

"Left" and "Right" have been reduced to marketing terms for the major political parties or slurs against their opposition. There is no consistent ideological meaning to the terms anymore, if there ever was.

I will add to Captain Murphy's commentary on the original idea of fascism with a link to Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" which is a good read for anyone who wants to understand the subject.

If one chooses to throw out everything Mussolini said and reduce fascism to the basic ideas of standing together + threatening outsiders, the fasces and the axeblade, then any grouping of people could grow a fascist element. This is a redefinition of the term on my part, simplifying the lazy common usage, but it is something to consider.

Israel had the right idea about communism: Let the communists have their communes, provide a minimal amount of assistance to make them viable, and let them experiment with an alternative economic model. The communes all failed after a few generations because the most productive workers would leave for better opportunities in the cities, and whoever was left didn't care enough about the place to keep it going as their fathers did.

Communism in theory should not have required any of the atrocities that Lenin and Stalin did. After Lenin it stopped being about workers' rights and started being about seizing and holding power by any means. Why most communist movements went that way is a question for the ages. Possibly, it was because the ones that didn't go that way failed.

reading marx's communist books one can notice he states that communism must strive even if violence had to be used (ends justify the means etc.), the problem is that that became a justification for all marxist guerrillas to basically do a bunch of inhuman shit for the revolution to work, and that ended up in shit.

My views on this are best summed up by Team America.

I don't subscribe to the left/right paradigm of classifying political ideologies, I prefer Wikipedia's list of political ideologies, though it's far from perfect. The closest I come to is Individualist Anarchist, my beliefs are a mix of Ralph Waldo Emerson with a dash of Max Stirner, but mostly I read a lot of Jiddu Krsihnamurti and Alan Watts.

You are in serious debate – keep it serious. Thank you.

WarriorTang posted:

Attempting to apply “left” and “right” to today’s politics is even more meaningless than it was a few years ago. Examples:

I'm sorry dude but I understand none of your examples.

MrBTheAdventurer posted:

The closest I come to is Individualist Anarchist, my beliefs are a mix of Ralph Waldo Emerson with a dash of Max Stirner, but mostly I read a lot of Jiddu Krsihnamurti and Alan Watts.

>Knowing about and liking Stirner

I would have some fun discussions with you. Stirner is an influence with his concept of "spooks". Plus it's the most fun philosopher meme, so, y'know.

One of the hardest things to communicate to people is the sheer diversity of leftist thought, especially the fact that marxist-leninist socialism and its derivatives (basically what every communist country during the cold war practiced) and libertarian socialist models like mutualism/market socialism are incredibly dissimilar in terms of how to manage resources (central planning vs markets) and politically (absolute government power vs democratic/republican organization or no government).

Just as frustrating is making it clear that social democracy (welfare state i.e. what Bernie Sanders actually is) is still a form of capitalism. There's nothing more frustrating than meeting people who call themselves socialists only for it to turn out that they just want capitalism with a "human face".

On another note, does anyone else roll their eyes when someone brings up horseshoe theory? I used to think there was something to it before I began actually reading books and now I see how completely different the far right and far left actually are. I personally think horseshoe theory only makes sense in the context of psychological and behavioral analysis of radical politics. I'll be the first to admit I have many psychological similarities with far rightists, and that the far right and far left have the same history of thuggish behavior and use of intimidation tactics.