I feel like it’s rather stupid to simplify everyone into 2 big groups. Am I far right?
This isn’t simplifying people into 2 big groups, it’s talking about 2 big groups among many, many, many groups.
Isn’t the image implying that people who says they are not left or right are actually far right?
No, it’s saying that far-right people claim they aren’t right or left, and just care about the truth, as a means to distance their image from their actual views.
Some people genuinely aren’t left or right, those people are generally Social Democrats, ie Capitalism with strong social safety nets and some level of government ownership of some key industries. However, this isn’t perceived as being a centrist view due to the Overton Window, ie in America, Liberalism, a right wing ideology, is the status quo, with a liberal party and a fascist party.
The logic chain is a bit different.
What about people who are just left?
They’re cowards.
Who are preventing you from obliterating your society. Communism always has terrible outcomes. Please someone post about a stone age tribe in the Amazon that disproves this statement.
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What of the purges, staration, and slaughter
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That doesn’t even make any sense.
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You mean like a Market Socialist or something?
Market Socialist
A what?
Someone in favor of a market economy run by worker-owned entities.
Not wholly opposed to that, markets can serve the purpose they’re designed for, and I could see an evolution of cybersyn that helps run the economy using simulated markets.
I certainly think it’s much better than current Capitalism, that’s for sure, though it’s not enough to truly reach the finish line.
There’s also a middle ground between consumer cooperatives which are more on the communal side and worker cooperatives that are more on the libertarian socialist side with Worker Consumer Cooperatives that align both kinds of stakeholders with ownership and management reducing exploitation on both ends.
Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that.
That’s what I would consider left, but not far-left. I suppose Socialism with Liberal Democracy, as opposed to a more direct or decentralized version of democracy, would be left but not far left as well. Capitalism ends where left begins.
It’s not linear. Anarchist or Libertarian Socialist systems like Syndicalism, Mutualism, Georgism, and Distributism are just as Socialist as Marxism in that they prevent the exploitation of capital accumulation, but they favor direct stakeholder ownership of firms in place of a state or other more communal systems that create an inherent hierarchy of power.
Capitalism ends where left begins.
I’m not sure if you’re gatekeeping or just generalizing.
Neither. The left/right divide is Socialism/Capitalism. There are various Overton Windows, ie what is considered left or right when compared to an areas median, like Liberalism being left of the American median despite being a right-wing, Capitalist ideology.
Anarchism, Communism, Marxism, and other forms of Socialism are leftist, while Liberalism, Social Democracy, and fascism are rightist.
But they all say “I speak the truth”
when you’re neither a communist nor a social democrat, but something in between
“I am a left-winger but not particularly interested in aligning myself with a specific ideology” 🧔🏼
“I just want to live in a society that uses some of the value its working class generates to improve the lives of the general population in any meaningful way.”
Ah yeah, I just say “I’m a realist and we are all doomed”.
Easier than saying all that then having to admit it ain’t happening.
“I’m just rational and I don’t like when people suffer”
Just say you’re an anti-tendency leftist.
Both extremes are obnoxious
“I want to eradicate non-whites and install a christo-fascist dictator” is as obnoxious as “all people deserve housing and healthcare and a system based on extracting all excess profit from workers is exploitation”
Still relevant, more so than whatever side you are picking from both shitty choices.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=mVXYH9tRknc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“Ethnonationalism is awesome” and “equality is a good and achievable goal” are not remotely equal in terms of how obnoxious it is, unless you legitimately sit in between those two.
Between Dale and Amelia, the Earnhart family has been through a lot.
I think a lot of the far-right is just fine with people calling them as far-right, a lot self-identify even as such
Surprisingly not their media though which makes a point to complain about politics in everything and then pretends they aren’t being political about everything they say and do. And claims it’s just interacting with reality as the center. They love to claim that they decide where reality is so they can decide where center is.
*In the US
Go to most other Western societies and your version of “far-left” is new, naive, and conservative. In my country, most right-wingers back all the “socialism”—by American definition—that we have.
Y’all got decades of catching up to do. I admire the surge, but you’ve got a lot of examples around the world of how to actually do it. All the while also understanding what you apparently claim to stand for.
Keep enjoying that Us versus Them game though, since that’s more what Americanism is into. Love that division. Good job 👍 /s
How’s your political propaganda out there?
ALL of our major media outlets are for profit corporations and serve as propaganda outlets.
NONE of our major media outlets speak honestly about progressive policies.
ALL of our right wing propaganda equates socialism with “the left” and “the left” is portrayed in the absolute worst ways possible. They constantly talk about Venezuela and eating rats (they say we want that). The argument about abortion is almost entirely to be at opposition with “the left” and to paint us as “baby murderers.” Any conversation about taxation is equated to theft from “hard workers” to be given to “lazy slobs who pop out babies to collect free money.” They specifically take opposition to anything “the left” wants so they don’t have to have policies other than “hate the other.”
“Yeah, but if you go to those countries in Europe, you’ll find that almost no one likes the socialized health care they have in their country.” - Every American conservative and libertarian ever trying to defend the freedumb of paying thousands of dollars out of pocket each year for basic medical treatment.
I love the NHS in my country. I’m currently in hospital right now and the staff are fucking amazing but it’s underfunded so I got stuck in an isolation room all of Saturday after being transferred to another hospital. Anyway the staff isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of support and funding that’s killing the quality of the service which everyone i.e patients, staff, even politicians all agree on.
“In polite conversation, one should never mention religion or politics, as it never ends well”
Americans - “Hold my beer”
This meme references the “far-left,” ie Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, etc, not the Social Democrats. If it was referring to the American “left,” it would say “liberals.”
I’m not left or right. I hate you all mutually. 👍
ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM is the best I agree
“Both sides,” says one side.
Pure ideology (liberalism).
Ew. I want the government to keep their grubby little hands out of my freedoms, not pretend like they care while ass fucking us.
This is not agreement:
You are right.
Libertarianism then
Much closer, yes. Have you heard of hackliberty & dividebyzero?
Sorry to say if your views are closer to true libertarianism and the principles favored by those links you would likely be considered distinctly leftist. Dbzer0 is a primarily anarchist community, on the far-left.
Not really. I have views distinctly on both left and right. And actually, hacklibery is a lot more right leaning…
You have views that are independently more left or right, but say if your views were a political party, it would be placed on a spectrum from left to right based on how many of these positions fall on either side of the spectrum. Typically the views that are seen as far left and far right are mutually exclusive, like authoritarian centralized governance versus decentralization, increased immigration vs decreased, but it’s true there is a lot of nuance lost when things are viewed that way.
Liberalism for racists?
AND conservatives who like weed and birth control and whatnot.
The name for that is liberal.
Racists? Omg. 😱 that’s literally most parties in the US. Democrats have a racist history just the same. Welcome to America, all parties are racist in one way or other, because this country breeds extremism. Even liberalism has perpetuated systemic racism despite trying to dismantle it. All the parties in the US are guilty. Corruption runs deep, and corruption is corpo profit margins.
the fuck
They reject being labeled by the left, it’s the same how the left doesn’t like “woke” any more.
The problem with the word woke is that it was specifically about racial inequality and then the right made it synonymous with everything they hate about lgbtq people. White Christian Nationalism is the real mind virus.
No, we think woke is hysterical because no right wingers know what it means. I’ll happily call myself woke, but I also use it as a sarcastic pejorative
I’m not far-left, I’m extreme far-left. Radical far-left if you will. I want everyone to have healthcare and adequate housing. (spooky noises)
Whoaa there. That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? Maybe turn it down a bit. Best we can do is Universal Debt and cardboard boxes.
I just a Mutualist who wants worker consumer cooperatives and housing cooperatives to be the only way to form businesses. Unless someone has a direct stake in the firm, they shouldn’t be able to benefit from it. No rent seeking, no venture capital, no bureaucracy.
Luxury gay space communism or bust
FALGSC Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism
That is because their truth is embarrassing.
I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!
We’re “not allowed” to. The concept of comparing our politics to elsewhere around the world is chastised. “It’s not the same here!” “They have a longer history” “they share a common culture!” (far right for “skin color”)
Any excuse under the sun to keep the right as being viewed as closer to “center” and to misrepresent centrist policies as “far left” so we get no progress and all the arguments.
It’s really interesting how the right has embraced moral relativism on a case-by-case basis. Often it is a strategy to quarantine/localize ideas, so as to avoid the need to reconcile them.
It’s also a strategy for insulating ideas and events from history that they want to shelter from criticism, like criticizing slavery, theocracy, monarchism, etc. I’ve seen real cases in the wild where criticism of slavery was dismissed as “presentism”, as inappropriately imposing present day moral values.
I’ve noticed that too and found it counterintuitive. The other thing is free market economics. I would expect conservatives to embrace moral traditionalism and economic intervention but currently it’s the opposite…
To be “on the left” at minimum you need to be totally opposed to the capitalist system.
From there, there are many ideologies to choose from whether authoritarian (like Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, etc.) or anti-authoritarian: mutualism, communalism, one of the many strains of anarchism, etc.
Also if you’re authoritarian I’d say it’s questionable whether you’re still on the left.
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At least online, it seems like the only Americans who call themselves far left agree those are all centrist positions. It’s only “centrists/progressives*” (moderately far right Americans) and other flavors of far right who still often dont generally call themselves far right (trump enthusiasts, alex jones types, proud boy types) who label basic things like universal health care a far left idea or just call it impractical atm.
*I feel like 10 years ago, people who were at least moderately left were the main people using this term, but in the last few years, people right of center have been using the label to try limit progress by pretending they’re just trying to be practical/realists about what can actually be done.
Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”.
If you do that you definitely aren’t, authoritarianism and far-left are mutually exclusive.
Council communists and Anarchists generally qualify for far-left status. (Or, differently put, council communism is methadone therapy for Marxists who don’t yet dare make the jump to syndicalism).
While I would say that graph is more correct than the two-dimensional ones, many of us are fed in the west. (As a social libertarian/anarcho communist) I make the point that I don’t believe authoritarians actually qualify significantly for any form of left or right. They are all about their authority primarily and doing what they wish to do. They will resort to any rhetoric or means to achieve their goals they think will serve them. Whether it is left or right.
Case in point Hitler, who is closely associated with fascism which is considered nominally right-wing. Absolutely aped the terminology and rhetoric of early 20th century socialism. Till it didn’t serve him anymore. China who is more or less The Golden child of ml activists is more state capitalist than they are State communist. Because it suits those in power.
The graph more accurately might look like a deformed Dorito. Authoritarians being fluid and centrist. Not committed to being left or right. On the right side gradually sloping down through libertarians into capitalists/liberals on the far right. Somewhere neutral between authoritarian and actual libertarian. But the more true libertarian you trend the more left you absolutely trend. That’s for sure.
Exactly. I like to keep things simple and boil things down to authority. I’m the only one allowed to define me, and I don’t have the right to define others. If everyone has absolute freedom to be what they are, then by design no one has the right to define, exploit, marginalize or otherwise or oppress them. if anyone was oppressed, not everyone would have absolute freedom. Then on top of that we put societal contracts. “Here’s a time period of my labor, would you trade it for that thing you have”. "I’d like to give some of my extra things so that more people can have good things [taxation] “Here’s consent, how about you?” “I go by [pronoun].”
Anarchism -> Maximum freedom for all Hierarchism-> Maximum freedom for the one on top.
Smarter people than me have talked about the nuances for ages so as I said, I like to simplify things. Fullyautomatedspacegayluxurycommunism ftw!
What if I want to use my absolute freedom to oppress someone else? What if I use my absolute freedom to build a structure that blocks the view of the mountains from my neighbors, who love the view? Who’s freedom should get oppressed to solve that?
Honest question, not trying to be a contrarian.
I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.
It’s even worse than horseshoe. Stop trying to assign point values to tyranny.
I award you one tyranny point for telling people what to do.
That’s it, you’re going to the reeducation camp.
I just need to trade in some of my Good Boy Points, good thing I’ve been saving up.
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The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here’s the quote:
1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:
Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.
That’s a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That’s the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there’s an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
"The working class […] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers […] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism […] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.’
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?
Is it possible to have organisation without authority?
On Authority - F. Engels, 1872
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois. “Oh, you Anarchists”, quoth Engels, “All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Maybe, Friedrich, your workers don’t mind dealing with the necessities and physical processes of yarn and cloth manufacture, what they mind is not being able to fire your ass for saying excessively over-reductive shit like that.
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois
Are you really saying “Engels was bourgeois, therefore the argument he’s making is bourgeois”? lol
“All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Tell me how you haven’t read it even more. Because he’s actually concluding:
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
Read the paragraphs directly before: Engels refers to “arguments as these”, so we can safely assume that the example he gives there is representative. What’s his example? Safety in railway operations.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good. The railway safety commissioner would be choosen by the railway workers. Someone they trust to be a stickler to details and procedure.
Both, btw, are recallable on the spot should they abuse their positions, or turn out to not be suitable for other reasons.
This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.
So, yes, Engels concludes that he’s right. And thereby proves that he either a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him or b) didn’t care, as authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
As to “labour cannot be organised without hierarchy” in general: It’s long been proven false. There’s a gazillion of examples in which it has done. There are, right now, armies out there operating without hierarchy that are fighting both Cartels and ISIS, very successfully so. If armies can be organised like that, surely it does work for ice cream factories. Stick to materialism, please, your idealist claim doesn’t become true by repeating it.
Wasn’t sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I’ll leave this video. It’s an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure
05:22 Acknowledges that argument that Engels is making is that “anything is authoritarian”
05:28 Acknowledges that Engels has a very broad definition of “authority”
06:20 Builds a strawman by giving a context “Engels existed around the time of the industrial revolution”, reading the paragraph about steam boats, etc. and is 0740 using it to suddenly drastically narrows the definition of Engels down to mean “technological development is authoritarian”.
10:15 At 10:45 correctly explains the point that Engels is making and copes hard with the fact that Engels indeed questions the entire political theoretical understanding of authority lol
12:00 correctly understands that the point is that “Anti-Authoritarians want to change society” and if Engels can prove that organization without authority is impossible, it will mean that he will be able to show this deep contradiction
13:55 He builds another strawman by claiming that Engel’s argument is “Steam is an authority” and not the actual argument that the organization of labour inheretly requires authority and in a society without capitalism the production process would take authorties place (i.e Steam)
14:50 Another strawman where he claims that “hunger would be authority” in an ancient hunting times, instead of the organization of how the hunt would take place
This is so dumb i don’t want to continue and its so long wtf Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you’re going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
Thank you for sharing this….I really enjoyed it.
First time I read it I couldn’t believe how short and easy read it is, and what a powerful argument Engels is making
Thank you for the detailed background on that. People often resort to No True Scotsman claims to disavow bad elements from the group they support, or better yet toss them to their rivals. But honestly the more an entity is pulled away from center along the authoritarian/liberal axis, the less meaningful any left/right distinction becomes.
Those terms are so vague and have so different meanings to a lot of people that I often avoid using them… I recently read the idea that egalitarian=left // strong hierarchy=right and it kinda makes sense, but it’s still quite debatable
Generally it’s better to separate views by who supports them, and who they benefit. Leftists tend to support the Proletariat, whereas rightists tend to support the bourgeoisie.
I’m not sure its that easy nowadays, when lots of freelancers and self-exploiters struggle while being considered bourgeoisie. Or at least, not “proletariat”. The lines are not as clear as they used to be.
Freelancers and self-exploiters are petite-bourgoisie, not bourgeoisie. Class mechanics definitely hold up.
If you’re working five days a week for a living, you’re not really a part of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the business owners, not the business managers and assistants. At best, a freelancer with no employees under them would be petite-bourgeoisie. You wouldn’t graduate to the bourgeoisie until you have a few employees under yourself, who take care of the day-to-day operations.
A lone freelancer is just a step away from an employee, with none of the legal protections. Hire a manager to run the day-to-day op, and employees to do the grunt work, thus freeing yourself up to sit back and collect profits. Then you would start to be the bourgeoisie, because you only need to check in to ensure everything is running smoothly and occasionally sign some new contracts. The majority of your time isn’t being spent at work for someone else.
Except there are a ton of right wing positions that don’t benefit anyone except the politicians who use them to keep their supporters angry and afraid. I’d go so far as to say left wing policies are primarily about helping people and right wing policies are primarily about hurting people.
Reactionary proletarians are victims of bourgeois culture wars, it’s the fascist anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT rhetoric that serves as a distraction. That doesn’t make the GOP a Worker party even if some workers vote for the GOP.
Left vs Right isn’t about Democrat vs Republican, but class interests and dynamics.
You’re half right. Americans as a whole don’t need to absorb context, but American conservatives do.
The rest of us are well aware of what’s going on. There are democrats in our government that are pretending to be against “socialism”, but they are old and these clearly dated policies aren’t going to last.
I get the feeling most of that nonsense was just fear mongering to force Biden into office instead of Bernie four years ago.
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There are quite a few actual leftists on Lemmy. I don’t think they’re confused and as the meme suggests, they’re rather vocal.
Meanwhile Trump and other far right people have tried to brand liberals as “radical left” which is just silly, but a lot of news sources seem content to parrot alt-right rhetoric. One thing the Republican Party has always been good at is poisoning the well.
Middle-of-the-road person: “You are not in a culture war or an ideology war. You are both in a CLASS war, run by billionaires who are the REAL source of your pain. They use the six corporations that control all the news to distract you and keep you fighting with each other so that they . . . the rich . . . can run off with all the f*cking money.”
Welcome to being a leftist who’s so fucking stupid they think they’re a centrist.
I think that the key difference here that would make two people who agree with this statement a centerist or a leftist is whether or not they feel visceral hatred for the right or if they treat them like human beings.
I think that NutWrench is making a joke.
The economic left/right scale is and has always been a measure of which side of the class war you support.
The “class war” used to oppose nobility to the rest of the population. Nobility has been mostly replaced with capitalists. Same opposition.
