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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!
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).
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.
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.
authoritarianism and far-left are mutually exclusive.
You're correct, believing that "authoritarian" is a well defined or meaningful term and not just a snarl word created during the cold war to equivocate communists and Nazis is incompatible with being far-left
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
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
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.
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.
granted authority
authority
?
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 how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know? How is that supposed to work? Who decides the level of authority? Another authority?
a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him
Literally changing the name of "authority" to "granted authority". You only changed the name of things. Engels is making the argument on the materiality of authority. That even if the authority is granted, it's an authority. He is referring to whatever makes the organization happen as authority (even when granted).
And says that without this (authority) organization is impossible. Which makes sense.
b) authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
pls expand
Just now walking in now, and, oh, this is still going on? Christ these memes are a PITA.
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know?
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
That even if the authority is granted, it’s an authority.
One example doesn't even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
If you OTOH now try to pull semantics and say "but by being convinced by other people of a joint plan of action, they have authority over you", or "A delegate has the authority to do as they're told by their council" then you're doing the "holding up a stone thing": You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it. Or, in different words: It's playing dumb. You hear what Anarchists are saying, including their definitions of authority, of distinguishing power-to against power-over, and say "but the stone has authority over you that's silly"!
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious. The delegate enjoys no authority and there's no organization happening as everybody is free to do whatever th fuck they want.
holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it.
Only when you take it in in bad faith, because we're talking about people and not inanimate objects (stones). The definition of anarchists is just another social construct that basically describes authority..
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
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework.
He's not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.
minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Because the "obvious points" are made with strawmen (see comments above)
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
What no theory does to a mf
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.
I just wanted to clarify, I'm not an authoritarian. I'm an anarchist. And the left/right distinction still does matter very much along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. I don't think much of auth-left ideologies but I hold them in much better regard than fascists. There are similarities, but they are no where near the same. And liberalism is a center right authoritarian ideology
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? Whose freedom should get oppressed to solve that?
Honest question, not trying to be a contrarian.
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 to any broader worldview.
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...
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.
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.
Nah, American "left" liberals definitely need to learn that there's a while spectrum of political beliefs to the left of them, and that anti-capitalism exists in general
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Freelancers and self-exploiters are petite-bourgoisie, not bourgeoisie. Class mechanics definitely hold up.
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.
If you believe that “authoritarian” is a well defined or meaningful term and not just a snarl word created during the cold war to equivocate communists and Nazis, I'd say it's questionable whether you're still on the left.