Parties of Politics

*confused*

Communists (in theory) believe all men are equal. They drew the conclusion that noone should have more than anyone else - or that all wealth should be shared, in any case. Socialists and Anarchists believe the same thing, but the solutions they come up with are different.

Communists want the state to own all land, factories etc, at least for the time being. The state is then governed by the Communist Party, which acts in the name of the workers and peasants. They're big on control and order, up to the point where they install a police state to protect the Party's hold on power. Anarchists, on the other hand, want no state whatsoever. They want villages to organise themselves, with the villagers working the land together and spontaneously sharing everything according to need. Socialists of various hues and kinds cover the whole spectrum between these two positions.

Fascism is a different beast altogether. Fascists believe people are not equal - that nature has created "better" peoples and "worse" peoples, people who should rule and people who should comply. In moderate versions, the result is the celebration of a strong leader, loyalty to the leader, and corporatism (i.e., workers obey their bosses, who in turn obey the Leader, who takes care of everyone). In its most extreme version - Nazism - Fascism identifies genetically superior peoples (Whites, Aryans, Germans), who should fulfill their historic destiny by ruling the world, and genetically inferior peoples (Slavs, Blacks, Jews), who should be enslaved or exterminated.

(Thats all still the rough & basic version of it all, of course).

Oh i see. Its much complicated than i thought. I think i need to start my homework lol.

Oh, ignore it, thats all just the very fringes of politics, anyway ... :-) Libertarianism is already explained in the map and in LW's mail, in any case.

What I liked about the synonym "anarchocapitalism" is that it describes that Libertarians ultimately want to do away with the state altogether (just like Anarchists), but believe in a capitalist economy. And "anarchocapitalism" sounds a lot more revolutionary than just "libertarianism", which I think is appropriate.

It also shows the contradiction within libertarianism. Libertarians want absolute freedom from the state, but dont mind having to obey their boss at work, apparently ;-).

As you can see on the map, those four ideologies - anarchism, communism, fascism and libertarianism - are like the four extreme corners of politics as we know it.

I'd summarize it like this: anarchists want freedom and equality. Communists equality without freedom. Libertarians freedom but no equality. And fascists neither freedom nor equality. But be warned, I have anarchist leanings :-).

All the main parties in your and my country are somewhere safely in the middle of those four points (kinda like in the map).

Im beginning to understand! Whats a captialist economy ? I'm guessing having a leader of a group of workers coressponding of another leader of a work force?

My two bits.

First: No one has yet said what is a political party.
A political party is a group of people who organize themselves in the search of power.
Most of the times, parties are formed because a group of people want their country or region (or even the world) organized in a certain way. The values and projects that hold those people together are called ideologies.
This thread has been more about ideology than about anything else.
Usually, the rank and file of the parties believe in the ideology the party holds. Often, sadly, leaders of the parties believe in power, and almost only in power. And they use the ideology to gather votes, or to control the masses.

nimh's map is very good. So was his distinction between Communism and Fascism.

AS you may have noticed, the United States is a country where Socialism is scarsely known, even as an ideology. Americans move in the center-right region of the map, and seldom make the distinction between Socialism and Communism. The rest of the world (95% of the human population) knows about socialism (loves it, fears it, yearns for it, lives in it, hates it).
The key difference between Socialism and Communism is the relative level of freedom.
Both Communism and Socialism put restraints on private businesses, who invest capital in order to extract profits (Capitalism). American politics is dominated by private businesses, specially big corporations. So logically, there is little space for anticapitalist politics.

Now, Anarchism is not that rosy stuff nimh depicted. Anarchists historically have been violent and virulent: not happy with other people thinking otherwise.
I know nimh is not really an Anarchist, he's rather a "think" type.

Good stuff from fbaezer.

I have on bone to pick with what he wrote, though. About anarchism.



That is only very partially true.

The rabble-rousing, opportunist, violence-preaching anarchism of Bakunin (a Russian, travelling revolutionary who got imprisoned almost as often as he changed ideological beliefs) is one face of anarchism.

But an equally important part of anarchist history was the avowedly pacifist, individualist, moral anarchism of the likes of Tolstoy's followers, who rejected all violence.

And there was enough in between those opposites of anarchist thought as well. Anarchists were no different from socialists, in that respect, who also ranged from principled pacifists to those preaching violent revolution.

Just to cover the range - and here I'm probably getting much too detailed for you, Tyrius, sorry about that ;-):

- There have been anarchists who celebrated violence and systematic destruction per se, as the way to cleanse the earth of all present, oppressive systems, and clear the way for a new anarchist utopia (usually only rudimentarily defined). Bakunin was the most famous among them.

- There have been anarchists who rejected all violence. They believed that true anarchism can only emerge by voluntary organisation of people in anarchist communities, one by one, bottom-up. Many anarchists in the 19th / early 20th century tried to live in communes, growing their own food and trying to live without exchanging money, rejecting the system by creating their own world outside it. There was a revival of this kind of thing in the 60s and the 80s.

- There have also been anarchists who thought violence, even when not necessarily a good thing in itself, could be necessary. The Spanish anarchists of the 1930s, for example. Unlike most anarchists, they had systematically organised themselves politically, in trade unions (which is why they were called anarcho-syndicalists). They weren't so much interested in abstract utopias as in governing the part of the country they held for a few years when the civil war broke out.

The Spanish civil war - the most famous bit of anarchist history - had broken out when the fascists tried to overthrow the democratically elected government. The anarchists and the people of the government then fought the fascists together. Where anarchists ruled, they threw out the priests and landowners, and there was enough violence involved in that. And the war with the fascists was bloody. The fascists far outdid them in violence, however, and they lost (there's also a role for the communists there, but I'll skip that).

(Only other time I can think of when anarchists actually held a sizable chunk of a country's territory, was when Makhno's followers ruled a piece of the Ukraine during the Russian civil war.)

Now in Holland, for example, the anarchists of the movement with the greatest staying power (the "free socialists") were so principled in their rejection of violence, that they even refused to aid their Spanish brothers in the civil war. They also refused to take up arms against the Germans when those occupied Holland, practicing "mental resistance" instead. So fbaezer is not entirely right.



Heh. I used to call myself an "anarcho-democrat". After all, out of socialism came social-democracy - people who wanted a socialist society, but rejected violent revolution, striving instead to change society little by little, through democratic elections and social change. Why not be an anarcho-democrat?

I think an "anarchist revolution" is a contradiction in terms. Anarchism, after all, is about no-one being subjected to another man's rule. If you practice revolution - overthrowing regimes, destroying churches, disposessing shop-owners, etc - you are subjecting other people to your rule. That can't be. Its the blind spot of revolutionary anarchists that they dont see that by preaching a violent overthrow of the system, they are imposing their system on other people, invading their life, telling them they should live differently, taking their things. A true anarchist wouldnt want to do that.

I don't think "true anarchism" can be achieved in a modern society, though. Its one thing for villagers to start working the land together, deciding matters in democratic meetings, exchanging their surplus produce against what other villages have to offer. Thats already utopian enough. It already becomes a lot more complicated if the villagers want tobacco, coffee, produced far away, which someone - a salesman, a trader - needs to invest in, bring and trade; or if they want a car, a washing machine - things that can only be made in a factory ... In a world of high-tech, globalised economy, computers, cellphones and DNA tests, "true anarchism" has become impossible.

That's OK though, because unlike a true anarchist, I'm already glad with incremental change - with reform rather than system-change. Nevertheless, I still want this system I live in to become as "anarchist" as can possibly be. Like I said, an anarcho-democrat.

Oh, talking about that - <grins> -

Tyrius, if you have many more questions like the ones you asked thus far (what is capitalism, what is fascism, etc), I can also recommend Wikipedia - the Free Encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).

Compiled in true anarchist spirit, I may say (though few of the contributors would realise that), by people much like fbaezer and me, just helpin' each other out understanding things. <smiles>

I think a nice blend in the middle would be appropriate as there is a nice mixture of centrist republicans and democrats.

Perhaps Holland is too civilized. I forgot the minoritarian "Tolstoy" brnad of Anarchism.

I've met some Italian Anarchists, who sang "Red Flag" with a change in the lyrics: "Il Vaticano brucierà" (The Vatican shall burn), and another. who went "con le budelle dell'ultimo prete, impiccheremo l´ultimo re" (with the tripes of the last priest we shall hang the last king -king meaning, any "master").

Then, I've heard several stories from Spanish Civil War Anarchists who took refuge in Mexico. It was somewhat eerie to listen to these little old men recalling when they captured some priests, put them in the low part of a ship, and opened the gates in the high seas, so the priests sank, or when they entered churches, took the crucifix to the plaza and executed the Christ with a firing squad, or when they roamed the streets of Barcelona, stopped men and ordered them to show their hands. If their hands were manicured, or too tender and well kept, it was a sign they were bourgeoise, and the Anarchists threatened to shoot them.

Finally, Anarchists for all practical reasons, all over Europe you have the okupas, or squatters, and all over the world we have the "globalophobics", happy to destroy everything in sight every time there is a World Bank, OMC or G-7 summit.

McG,

In the US there are many centrist Republicans and Democrats but the US is not centrist on a global scale. So what's left to an American is closer to centrist for most of the world.

Hmm i think im going to be a democrat and jsut vote for whoever is prettier jk

Yeh - blends. Fersure. Everything on the map blends into each other! Just wasnt going to ride Photoshop all that far :-)

So what are the goals for the Reform party?

The Reform party is a bit on an anomolly. It is shown on the map pretty closely to where it originated but it was hijacked by Pat Buchanan and his ilk and should now probably be placed in the little white space in between the Republican Party, the Christian-Democrats and the Fascists.

Hm hm hm. Forget Tyrius' questions - I'll take you on, fbaezer :-).

First, the Tolstoyan brand of anarchism was nothing specific to Holland. It wasnt about "civilised" Holland - it was about what anarchism stood for, to many anarchists across the continent.

Second. Yeh, for sure you have a point about the Spanish. They were revolutionaries, and I already pointed out whats wrong with revolutions, period. They come with destruction - and with destructees - who didnt freely choose to be destructed. Nothing the priests and landowners stood for, in terms of the ancien regime's own cruelties and oppression, excuses any of that. Because if you make such excuses, you'll be excusing the communist terror of 1918 with references to the Czarist distatorship next. Or the looting of the Bagdad museums and hospitals with references to "repressed popular fury at Saddam". Its always the thugs who end up looting and killing, not the righteous victims. So, point taken.

Theres some unwarranted idealisation about the Spanish anarchists - they've been lionized, because of how they battled the fascists, who were crueller still, from a total underdog position, and before anyone else yet did. The idealisation was reinforced by the writers, journalists and other idealists who came from all over Europe to help them, in the International Brigades, and returned to write about it. Yet they did write about it, and reading any of it you gotta see that there was more to their cause than the revolutionary thuggery you describe. Even if it is good to point out the thuggery as well, when the stories get too idolatric. (Enzensberger wrote a good book that shows both sides.)

As for the antiglobalists etc you mention. Again, I have to defend a cause not necessarily mine. Again, two points.

First. An anecdote (second-hand). A train carriage, near Amsterdam, in the early eighties. Evening time, there'd been a concert. Rowdy youths flowed in. Beers in hand. Sex Pistols t-shirts, spiky hair, spiky belts. Loud burping, yelling, lurching into people's faces. "Anar-chy!".

An old man, with a beard, in a black coat, stands up, in silent fury. He stares at the punks. "Anarchy? You call yourselves anarchists? You're just louts! Drunk! I have fought for anarchism. I've been an anarchist for fourty years. I believe in anarchism. You believe in nothing."

Second. "you have the [..] squatters, and [..] the "globalophobics", happy to destroy everything in sight". Thats just plain unfair. As unfair as when I would write, "you have the Republicans, happy to vote for Pat Buchanan and his xenophobic rants". Fallacy. Yes, Buchanan ran in the Republican primaries and yes, you had "Republicans, happy to vote for Buchanan". Except, when you dont also point out that only a relatively small minority of them did, you are engaged in dishonest rhetorics.

The squatter movement was huge here in Holland, in Germany huger still, in the eighties. The results? Mixed bag. There were the street riots. They once held a street of Amsterdam for three days, until the tanks (!) had to come in. So much for "civilised Holland". Except, the 1975 riots also stopped city council plans to raze what is now a touristic hotspot chunk of downtown Amsterdam to build a four-lane highway.

The mixed bag included the roots of outright terrorism (RAF). It also included scores of vegetarian do-gooder volunteer-social worker - anarchist - squatter communes. Which of the two had the bigger political impact? The first, in immediate terms in any case. Which of the two were an overwhelming majority in numbers? The second.
I can tell - I've known scores of squatters. "Some of my best friends were squatters" <grins>. Just like my father was in Seattle to demonstrate against WTO policies, on his way to negotiations with a coffee company about labour standards in Costa Rica (or the like). None of them ever joined in the gratuitous looting of Pepsi stores or the like. Instead, they surely did participate in one earnest house meeting too many about whether it was right to boycott the neighbourhood store because of its South African oranges, or whether that would be unwarranted agression towards small commerce, which after all should be encouraged as alternative to big-corporation business ... blahblahblah :-).

Equating "the squatters", period, with the puerile smashing of McDonalds windows alone is like equating "the socialists" with Lenin's misdeeds. Is there a link, somewhere, there, that any socialist, respectively antiglobalist, should reflect on? Yes. Is it a fair equation? No. Duh.