European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1219

On January 11 2019 21:39 maybenexttime wrote:


I just struggle to understand why you use the label, considering that for the entirety of its existence the left has been championing various collectivist causes: self-determination of peoples/nations, class struggle, emancipation of minorities, etc. You could argue that individualist freedom is a major tenet in a subset of what constitutes the left, but to claim that it is what defines leftism is to me hijacking of the term.


@Acrofales

How do you imagine the situation in Zambia will ever improve is the West poaches Zambia's most capable people?

On January 11 2019 21:32 abmhm wrote:

I am not trying to represent leftist politicians as being against immigration. I am trying to find a way for leftist politicians to be able to use anti-immigration rhetoric as a way to get anti-immigration right-wingers to vote for them, rather than the people who would rather revert society. Same sort of thing with my points regarding feminism.

I don't understand why nobody seems to comprehend this.

From my first post, where I opened with that very sentiment:

Then I followed it up in later posts with the notion about brain drain (ammo for leftist politicians to use rhetoric against immigration), and made connections between immigration, feminism and birthrates - some of the major far-right complaints about Western society.

The far-right won't give two shits about building up foreign countries, although I have some ideas about that too (drop patent laws, open up information freely - especially with regards to companies like Monsanto-Bayern). But you can SAY, with legitimacy, that stopping immigration will help build up those countries. And once you say "stop immigration", then the right-winger will perk up and listen to the leftist politician.

On January 11 2019 21:02 Acrofales wrote:


But Randian libertarians also claim they are all about individual freedom and nothing else. They want as small a state as possible (some go so far as to say it should be abolished entirely, in favour of voluntary community organizations that grow from individual needs, as if government is somehow different from that). So if you argue individual freedom is the greatest good, you are very much aligned with those aspects of the (far) right. They just disagree on what "individual freedom" means. So while the rest of your post goes on about the progressive implementation of those individual freedoms, your starting point is very similar to that of right-wing libertarians. Especially of interest is that you reference Ludwig von Mises as an inspiration: he is an inspiration for libertarians too.

Note that I do not believe in the horseshoe of political ideologies, but if you don't either, it doesn't help your point to use Austrian school economics and "individual freedoms" as your starting point. You're better off grounding your progressive philosophy in humanism, which generally appears to be far more aligned with what you actually argue in favour of, although it gives no real pointers as to how the economy should be organized to further humanist goals. But I think you'll find that there is no real way of reconciling far right ideas with humanism.

On January 11 2019 22:09 Acrofales wrote:


Okay, so this is not actually a coherent philosophy. It's something you believe left-wing politicians should campaign on as a pragmatic "middle way" between the far left and the far right that offers an alternative to the current neo-liberalist middle way.

You'd argue in favour of nuclear families, but where a solid social security system allows for either parent to work (or not work) as they please, rather than *need* to work because of exploitative wages.

You'd argue for strong immigration laws, but try to decouple that from the "they stole our jobs" xenophobic undertones, but instead revert to the "noble savage" idea where they should be allowed to develop (or not) far away from here (and we might help if it is convenient).

And so forth, you'd look for common ground between far left and far right anger at the neo-liberal status quo and find a compromise that may not fit either of the underlying philosophies, but serves a pragmatic goal of gathering votes from both sides.

I wish you luck with that endeavour: it sounds rather hollow!

On January 11 2019 21:39 maybenexttime wrote:


I just struggle to understand why you use the label, considering that for the entirety of its existence the left has been championing various collectivist causes: self-determination of peoples/nations, class struggle, emancipation of minorities, etc. You could argue that individualist freedom is a major tenet in a subset of what constitutes the left, but to claim that it is what defines leftism is to me hijacking of the term.

On January 11 2019 22:56 abmhm wrote:
I am merely looking for a route towards a populist alternative to that same sort of compromise because I think that neoliberalism as it was created by those scholars has basically come to serve to the benefit of the very wealthy, especially over the past 30-50 years. The wealthy have distanced themselves from the proletariat more and more over the decades, whereas the various social movements and demographic shifts in that time have resulted in increased difficulty for the people at the bottom.

On January 11 2019 23:25 Nyxisto wrote:


This is a fiction. Global inequality is falling, Western European inequality has been stable for the last say, thirty years and is at low levels in general. Eastern Europe might have technically gotten more unequal but only because it is ten times better off and has started to generate wealth,

A small gif to illustrate the transformation
+ Show Spoiler +

Maybe Americans can make the case that 'neoliberalism' has affected them particularly negatively, but barely anyone else. The current populism has nothing to do with economics, and in so far as it has (most job losses occur not to globalisation, but to automation) is entirely unaddressed by populist revolt.

On January 11 2019 23:32 abmhm wrote:Neoliberalism replaces jobs lost to automation with jobs such as women whoring themselves out on the internet and men making alt-right conspiratorial YouTube videos to make a living.

On January 11 2019 23:25 Nyxisto wrote:

A small gif to illustrate the transformation
+ Show Spoiler +

On January 11 2019 23:52 Gorsameth wrote:
Wtf, cam girls are the fault of neoliberals now? what?
And because of automation? What side jobs that teenagers used to do to pay for their college education have been replaced by automation?

On January 11 2019 23:57 Big J wrote:


It is a neoconservative propaganda line... Not sure how it exactly goes, but something like this:
"Liberals are OK with 18-year old girls posing nude as long as they get minimum wage."

On January 11 2019 23:59 Gorsameth wrote:
I'm ok with 18-year old girls posing nude because they are legally adults and able to do whatever they feel like.
And I sure prefer them doing it from the safety of their own home behind a cam then out in the alley behind the 7/11.
Also pretty damn sure there are no minimum wage laws governing self employed cam girls.

On January 11 2019 20:01 Big J wrote:


I assume you are asking about my comment on the inexistance on the findamental difference between left and right, the state as a social construct and the inexistance of nations?

I personally view it as the fundamental trait of "leftism" to be about individualist freedom and nothing else. Everything beyond that - states, capitalism, socialism, private property, collective property - may or may not be a social institution to reach for that goal. But they are only means to an end, which is individual freedom. (that argument goes for Mises, Hayek, Friedmann, and Marx, Prodhoun, George alike, so both leftist movements. Those that call themselves liberals, as well as those that call themselves socialists.)

1. Just like any other revolutionary movement the spring of nations was not a uniform movement. In Austria it is mostly viewed as a bourgoise movement against the monarchy for more civil rights, like freedom of the press. Modern conservative parties and media (e.g. "Die Presse") often use the narrative for their purposes.
2. The technical implementations of the nation state were a huge step forward for leftists. It gave a lot of people - those defined as belonging to "the nation" - many more rights to protect them against the rulership of the monarchs, noblemen, churches and their conservative chancellors. Aka, it made them citizens.

Social and political acceptance of broad parts of the population was a step forward from feudal societies. Which eventually led to national democracy of male citizens. Which was eventually overcome by national democracy of male and female citizens.
Which may eventually be overcome by federal, internationalist democracies since the social reality of economics, long-distance movement and information spread creates the necessity for international politics.

On January 12 2019 01:05 stilt wrote:


I know the left has been absorbed by the liberal ideology of the democrat party but this is ridiculous, the core of leftist revendication is equality which largely opposes individual freedom.This freedom being limited by the laws, states which allow a more equal society. But with individual freedom, the right oppose these laws as oppresive and robbery (taxes are their favorites targets but if you take a liberal standpoint, well, the society law are always opposed to the community's ones that the liberals love to instrumentalize in order to once again, limit the state, it is a garantee for individual freedom against equality. Basically, I'd say the left is more about civil freedom, individual is the right. But alas, today, most of the liberal and the democratic party apparatchiks confound their rightist ideology with a leftist one.
Of course, you can point out the anarchist and anarcho syndicalist like Proudhon exists even if one must point out that they generally spent most of their times fighting the left. (Makhovtchina, CNT) but the real left (from Robespierre, Lenin to Leon Blum and Allende) who has been in power has always privelegied equality, that's how you see if someone is truly interested in social struggle or just here to instrumentalize it.

When the world’s two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and moulded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist — surely any serious Marxist — should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the ‘socialist’ dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

On January 11 2019 23:44 Silvanel wrote:

This is Warsaw?

On January 12 2019 02:43 Nyxisto wrote:

I seriously do not understand this sort of thinking at all. I have the feeling that there is some deep seated resentment among the left towards modern liberalism because it has precisely achieved what they never could, producing widespread global prosperity.