On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 19:20, David B. Shemano <dshem...@pwkllp.com> wrote: > > I think Shane/Jim/Charles are conflating what I consider two separate issues. > My two-axis chart example is indisputably limited to negative liberty and > the formal relationship between the individual and the state, while > Shane/Jim/Charles wants to discuss whether the axis are are meaningful and > important because they omit positive freedom analysis. In my world, two > different things. It is my two-axis chart, so I can define the axis any way > I damn well please, and the point is that the definition of the axis (and > your position on the chart) is neither right nor wrong, good or bad. It is > simply a tool to answer a specific question.
Fair enough: but you were asking if we thought this was a useful grid and they were responding that, no, it isn't because it isn't clear at all what you mean by "personal liberty" in this regard if it can include the "liberation" of people from their means of production. And since this was one of the crucial ideological battles in which the question you've asked would be involved--where right and left fit on these axes---it seems sensible that you'd let the people you're asking provide some input into the tools your proffering. > Raghu writes: > > "That is an interesting idea. But these geometrical pictures can be > misleading if we take them too seriously. Bolshevism and Fascism can > be seen as similar in their authoritarianism, but that would require > you to ignore essentially everything else about the two. Bolshevists > were after a (arguably utopian) vision of egalitarianism, Fascists > were social Darwinists who did not even pretend to care about the > little guy (the non-master races, I mean)." > > I am interested in ideological taxonomy. In my view, all modern ideologies > are reactionary in the sense that they are reactions to modernity (i.e. rapid > technological change since the early 19th century, which in turn causes rapid > and radical social change, thereby upsetting traditional society, etc.). I > believe communism and facism are both reactions to the perceived alienation > caused by modernity and have deep common roots (the right Hegelians vs. the > left Hegelians, and then mutuallly going back to Rousseau). This presumes a certain Hegelian style of Marxism which Lenin was not interested in and which there are deep arguments about whether Marx shared in his later works. Lenin, IIRC, was not concerned about alienation--and in his treatises on the development of Russia was actually quite keen to modernize Russian society as fast as possible. There is a nice section where he's chiding his opponents (the Narodniks) for not wanting Russia to industrialize and he speaks about how industrialization is progressive because it breaks down the patriarchal barriers that existed before. In his statement, he almost sounds like a proponent of Adam Smith (and Marxist economist Meghnad Desai even tries to claim he would have liked neo-liberalism): <quote> http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8vii/vii8xii.htm It is this break with obsolete tradition that is one of the substantial conditions which have created the possibility and evoked the necessity of regulating production and of public control over it. In particular, speaking of the transformation brought about by the factory in the conditions of life of the population, it must be stated that the drawing of women and juveniles into production[12] is, at bottom, progressive. It is indisputable that the capitalist factory places these categories of the working population in particularly hard conditions, and that for them it is particularly necessary to regulate and shorten the working day, to guarantee hygienic conditions of labour, etc.; but endeavours completely to ban the work of women and juveniles in industry, or to maintain the patriarchal manner of life that ruled out such work, would be reactionary and utopian. By destroying the patriarchal isolation of these categories of the population who formerly never emerged from the narrow circle of domestic, family relationships, by drawing them into direct participation in social production, large-scale machine industry stimulates their development and increases their independence, in other words, creates conditions of life that are incomparably superior to the patriarchal immobility of pre-capitalist relations <end quote> This hardly sounds like someone who was opposed to modernity or thought the technological aspect was what was alienating. It is more that he--as Marx--saw that the under the current social circumstances it was "alienating"--because one set of people owned the means of production. Those means of production were only productive because of the socialization of labor--which Lenin referred to as "the Mission of Capitalism." <QUOTE>http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8viii/viii8vi.htm The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour.<snip> Production for oneself is transformed into production for the whole of society; and the greater the development of capitalism, the stronger becomes the contradiction between this collective character of production and the individual character of appropriation. <END> If you are trying to place the Bolsheviks on an axis of liberty alongside the Fascists, it seems imperative that you have a more complex set of axes. I'd also note that many people peg the rise of Hitler to the already intense nationalisms that were a hangover from the nineteenth century, caused the first world war, and were exacerbated by the hyperinflation caused largely be the shakeout of the settlement of Versailles (where the allies basically wanted to make the axis pay for the previous war). If the Bolskeviks were scrambling to carve out a space in their part of the world for a modern Russia, the Fascists were dreaming of making their own empire larger--and make it last forever. They are spawned by two different historical moments--and two different sets of historical circumstances. As Gramsci pointed out, the Bolsheviks were operating in an authoritarian environment where people were also not economically free. Political and economic unfreedom. They promised to bring what they saw as true economic freedom--everyone with a job, everyone with a guaranteed income but in an industrializing state that had not previously had enough goods. The political unfreedom that was supposedly intrinsic in this was supposed to be temporary, until the Russia could be enculturated into this new form of classless society. The Fascists were all operating in settings that were far more industrially developed, at least nominally democratic, and were elected to power--in most cases because the economic and political model of capitalism led democracy (political freedom with basic economic unfreedom for a large portion of the population.) To see this solely as an interplay of ideological details misses the very different circumstances. And whatever their economic arrangements--which were really more like corporatist cooperation with government rather than nationalizing all of the industries--it was the political arrangement that is most striking in that they all eventually suspended elections. Of course Stalin basically did this as well so I don't know where that stands...In any case, it is difficult to see how ideology is the most salient aspect of this moment. In terms of economics, the dominant paradigm was basically that there needed to be some form of intervention (whether to stabilize or modernize). The difference seems to be more in terms of politics, whether and the extent to which a previously existing democracy was suspended and to what economic end. If control of the Reich necessitated (as Jim has insisted several times) outflanking socialist sympathizers within Germany by rhetorically claiming the mantle of redistribution, then so be it. Here I think the continuum of political and economic freedom is very different from the perspective of the left than the right. I think this has to do with the way that property and democracy were linked initially--that is, only property owners could vote, largely because, as in the united states and the English Civil war, the fear was that, if the non-property owners got the vote, they would vote away property (something Marx declares in The Jewish Question). THus the idea of there being an economic and social result in widening the vote is inherent in the leftist push toward greater democratic control: basically, if more people are in charge, their self interest would dictate that they would try to make things better for themselves economically. So for the right wing to support democracy but not redistribution, there has to be a real certainty to the backstop of property. This means making democracy available to more people, but with choices that concern fewer items (Lippmann's recommendation). If the right, however, sees economic freedom as achieved with corporate capitalism with nominal democracy (i.e. democracy that can only be about stuff that doesn't matter--i.e. Mouffe's Democratic Paradox) then it is hard to have an actual conversation about the differences between right and left because the main point of contention--the freedom or unfreedom of the economic system--lacks a clear referent. > If Franco and Mussolini were moderate (i.e. in the middle), and Hitler was > extreme ( a right-wing facist? a fascist fascist?), who > was on the other extreme side of the fascism spectrum? In other words, who > were the the left-wing/liberal/radical fascists? How about FDR? He took control of certain industries, but attempted to retain the system of democracy underneath it--in other words, providing both political and economic freedom. I'm not trying to glamorize the guy, but he was one of the first presidents to make widespread use of statistical polling to track public opinion on minutiae of government. He was also elected several times while Hitler sort of stopped bothering with those. If you have to have a candidate... I could also argue that looking too much at the leaders themselves overlooks the place where the radicalism came from in society. In the US, there was a pretty serious grassroots campaign that pushed FDR to do most of what he did--and had some corporations begging him to. This was one of the moments of the greatest labor activism in US history. But here it was the idea of expanding the space of economic freedom, even if it meant, yes, choosing sides in the battle between labor and capital. > Two reactions. First, I am all in favor of "positve freedom." Where you and > I fundamentally disagree, why I put us on the opposite ends of a spectrum, is > that you believe that the state can and should proactively enlarge positive > freedom by restricting negative freedom, and I do not. I see no empirical > evidence that interventionist state action that restricts personal and/or > economic freedom at the societal level, purportedly motivated by the desire > to increase positive freedom, actually increased positive freedom relative to > not undertaking the state action. >> See comments below on your tedious insistence that "negative freedom" is not a contestable term. What would it mean for the state to restrict negative freedom? You dance around it as if it's just obvious. This is what bugs the hell out of me in Berlin's essay on the topic. It's what makes someone like von Mises so refreshing because at least he has the balls to come right out and say what he means: he's saying capitalist private property is the baseline. Protecting this is negative freedom: anything impeding on this for any reason deserves to be destroyed. In other words, by setting up this framework, there is no way to even discuss freedom as an open concept: freedom only begins with capitalism and no attempt to redistribute its wonderful wares from one class to another is possible. As for seeing no "empirical evidence" that the interventionist state can increase positive freedom, well then you have swallowed wholesale the thoroughly reactionary understanding of the last century. If you want to say that it is ultimately economically unsustainable, well I guess you can try to do that (although as Doug Henwood pointed out in his radio show in August, Europe is now doing better than the US in terms of posting growth numbers.) But it is obvious that increased intervention--more regulation on workplaces, wages, environmental destruction, food safety, among other things in the US and systems of health care and welfare in other countries--have had the ability to increase people's mobility and the freedom from having to worry about these things directly. In any case, it is arguable whether this should be called "positive freedom" in the binary you set up: in many cases, it is more like a "true cost" form of economics for the so-called negative freedom you'd like to think exists outside of time or history. In fact the very notion that this was the case is what led to Coase's theorem (though with a twisted set of conclusions--some of which you seem to have taken on board.) > Second, I do believe positive freedom is actually more of a psychological > state than substantive power, because positive freedom is entirely relative > to historical circumstance. A lower middle class American living in 2009 > with a TV, car, air conditioning, antibiotics, etc. has immeasurably more > "substantive freedom" than even a very wealthy person pre-1800, but if that > American is a slave to his passions, he does not have true "positive freedom" > compared to many pre-1800 individuals. But then you are using a Hegelian (via Berlin or Marcuse one) understanding of positive freedom which it is pretty obvious the people on this list don't completely agree with. And if you are making up all the terms and rules and refusing to observe that the very terms themselves are what are being contested, it becomes very hard to have a conversation--particularly when you refuse to let us offer any alternative definition. > > Sean Andrews writes: > > "But to all of your above I'd add that there is always a political > element to why these arguments are used--one which you are leaving > out. Again, what you are saying implicitly is that there is some > natural law which says people should be allowed to keep whatever they > have and do with it as they please." > > Wrong, wrong, wrong. I have never and will never make natural law arguments > on this list. I don't care if there is no such thing as free will, if > property originates in theft, if ownership is an arbitrary concept, etc., > because it is not critical or even relevant to my positions. I only make > empirical and instrumental arguments in favor of what I advocate. No you don't because you assume that there is an actual distinction between positive and negative liberty whereas I say they are not empirical concepts: you take positive liberty to be based on circumstances, but I'm saying that the idea of negative liberty is solely based on a set of given conditions and power relations at a given point in time and place in space. Negative liberty, in other words, is also a political creation: you act as if it isn't, as if it is empirical. On what basis can you say that the idea of negative liberty is a transparent, uncontested concept except for making an implicit natural law that divides the protection of one kind of liberty as negative and one kind as positive? Did you read anything i wrote after that phrase? I admit it was too long, but still... I'll also admit, however, that after all of this, I don't find myself any wiser as to why we might call Hitler (or fascism) right wing. Maybe I'm just too tired...There is the emphasis on nationalism, but there were all sorts of leftist and centrist nationalist movements in the post war era; as David points out eugenics and race science was pretty equal opportunity in terms of supporting a variety of regimes--quite big here in the states before the second world war. I would say that normally the right wing is in reaction to the left, though the degree to which it supports both political and economic unfreedom is mixed, depending on the degree to which it is inflected with a liberal emphasis on laissez faire and the classes involved in the reaction. I imagine Hitler had the support of business elites (he certainly had the support of US business elites like Ford), but he wasn't exactly pro-business in this classical sense. On the other hand, as people on this list seem to be saying Hitler wasn't left wing because the essence of this wing is supposed to be democratic control and production. But it seems like the only reason to really call him right wing ideologically is because it isn't left wing. I can see how this would be confusing however, for someone who sees the essence of the left to be totalitarianism (as most pro-capitalist libertarians evidently do). And in their case, as has already been pointed out, it makes it seem like any totalitarian movement automatically maps onto the left. In any case, it seems like there are too many conversations going on--where you are trying to both decide what right and left are, what kind of grid you'd use to map them, etc. but it is all inflected through the place Hitler sits on the grid. More than your grid, it might be more helpful to have something like this: http://www.politicalcompass.org/ which places the right/left axis solely on the issue of redistribution/democracy/"liberty" and the top/bottom axis the means by which you try to achieve that (though they use the idea of a social index, when it is really about how permissive and invasive the state is more generally.) you can take the test here to see where you fall: http://www.politicalcompass.org/test but the analysis http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis is interesting either way (they recommend you take the test first) s _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
