The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991) | Hacker News Reader

The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

vmchale.com

37 pointsvmchale130 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20250915141229/http://vmchale.co...

I’m starting to think political definitions only have use as propaganda. Definitions are definite, yet political definitions are anything but.

In the US, much is made about “the left” and “the right”, but we can hardly describe what these things mean. “The left” is simply more liberal than I, while “the right” is more conservative than I. On what issues, no one knows, because we hardly ask.

The point, I think, is simply to label the opposition while hiding any commonality or points of agreement. Useful for propaganda, but useless for substantive political discourse; you know, the kind that underpins a healthy democracy.

the kind that underpins a healthy democracy

To be fair, this kind of presupposes that all actors in a polity actually have as their goal, "healthy democracy".

Pretty sure that's not the goal of most people in power nowadays. (At least in the US it's not the goal of people in power.)

> “The left” is simply more liberal than I

What is "liberal" here? Seems like that term has gone obsolete as well, what Americans call liberal is not what I call liberal, to me they are pretty authoritarian.

“The left” and “the right” are, IMO, useful terms in the sense that they are explicitly meaningless (unless you are in charge of some seating arrangements in France).

“Liberal” and “conservative” are not good words for describing the teams in the US. These words have more conventional meanings. Liberalism is a political philosophy based mostly on personal freedoms. Conservatism describes how fast you are willing to change the system. The US was founded on Liberalism, and most Americans would probably be best described as liberal conservatives.

> These words have more conventional meanings.

Kondylis disputes the typical interpretation of "conservatism." Historically it was a backwards justification of feudalism. Easy to see why someone would talk up "history," "tradition" when they're at the top of the social order and an upstart comes on to stage.

Left and right are useful labels, and while the exact border may be somewhat ambiguous or perhaps arbitrary, they do identify a useful spectrum. Ultimately, left vs. right-wing thought boils down to views on hierarchical power structures. On the extreme right, there's the view that hierarchies are good and natural, and should be reinforced and expanded. On the extreme left, there's the view that hierarchies are evil and unnatural, and should be abolished. In between you have a whole spectrum of views like "some hierarchies are a necessary evil", "some hierarchies are good", etc.

Individual issues sometimes unambiguously map onto this spectrum: Supporting slavery (a pretty obvious hierarchical construct) is further right than wanting to abolish it, for example. Other times, issues occupy some certain space on the spectrum, with opposing viewpoints on both sides of it: a left-leaning individual might oppose free-market Capitalism because it forms a hierarchy of wealth, while a further right-leaning individual might oppose Capitalism because it gives the "wrong" people higher standing than they should (according to some other "better, more natural" hierarchy).

> only have use as propaganda

Propaganda helps you ascend to power and then constrains what you do with that power.

Ultimately if you want to look objectively, you have to look at the concrete, at history. But propaganda matters: history would unfold differently without it!

Definitions are rarely definite if we're even discussing them.

I'm not sure I agree here.

There are "right wing issues" and "left wing issues" and there is friction between them.

What concerns me most is political "slurs" where everyone forgets the meaning of the term but constantly throws it around as if it's just a bad word. Then the conversation just goes off the deep end as soon as they're invoked.

"You're a wokie" or "you're a fascist"; as if either of the people using those terms even knows what they're referring to primarily, they just decided it's bad and because the person they're talking to is bad they must be whatever bad word I have in my vocabulary.

PS: I will say that "woke" has a more concrete definition than fascist to many, but I don't want to be accussed of being for (or against) any particular side when writing this comment, and I can't come up with many off the top of my head that the right wingers use against the left wingers... so, sorry.

"Woke" is perhaps the freaking platonic ideal of what this article criticizes.

I'm black. It once was just a mostly fun little word that meant "Hey man, are you paying attention to the world around you?"

And today it is completely without concrete meaning. For the left, it's kind of whatever, because it's responding to what it is for the so called right -- literally nothing more concrete than "what I don't like right now that might be associated with any group possibly considered a minority."

It has been obvious to me for a long time that the people using the term woke now don't even have a concrete definition of the term, but I was still blown away by the sheer stupidity and obliviousness of one of those right wing people posting about how they are not woke, they are awake [to the world around them].

I use the term to describe the need and moral entitledness of modifying language as a reaction and treatment to injustice and to the intended normalization of every sexual practice existing.

As such I don't see these two examples as contradicting.

One side uses woke (awake) as acting to the world in "ingesting" it in language, while the other side thinks of being awake in seeing that the world doesn't actually work that way. They both think they are "awake", they just disagree how and what "the world" is.

This is either an epic troll or an excellent bit of evidence in favor of my point. :)

> This is either an epic troll

That wasn't my intention. :-) I just wanted to point out that it is not "sheer stupidity and obliviousness", but a useful distinction.

> It once was just a mostly fun little word

I think part of that issue is, that the term didn't exist here when it only meant that. Was it a "in black subgroup" thing? Or was this known to a wider audience?

> excellent bit of evidence in favor of my point

Can you explain this to counteract my obliviousness? So you see ziml77 as an example of left and me of right, or what?

I'm not sure exactly what the question is here, but I'm comfortable saying that the definition I gave isn't a "later" thing. It's the historical/factual origin story of the word. As with many cultural things, Black folks will often invent something, and then it gets appropriated because it's cool (for better or worse).

What you're saying, if sincere, is extremely late stage. I'm very comfortable with:

It was solely "our" thing for a while, I mean I can recall that usage even before the year 2000. Somewhere MUCH after that it gets a little bit more popular (e.g. either due to or more likely downstream of the Childish Gambino song Redbone?) and (perhaps likely to more white liberal folks using it) begins to "feel" more concrete than before, despite not actually much being so.

And perhaps more importantly, IMHO "the right" is always desperate to find codewords they can use to put down minority groups without obvious slurs. "Woke" fits the bill pretty well, especially since it evokes AAVE.

Before your comment I did not know that "woke" means something else then political behaviour of the left. I also didn't had in mind that it comes from the word "awake". I here it exclusively used in the sense I described. We don't have much black subgroups here, as far as I know, and it takes some while before terms cross the Atlantic.

Sorry that we are all misusing your term. But I think that's not a political thing, that's just language. Foreign term introduced in our language almost never mean exactly, what they meant in the origin language.

The "right" I consider myself part of (conservatism, not far right), doesn't have something against minorities. It's more resentment against "minority issues" being used to push orthogonal left ideologies. Whenever "the left" introduces some law to "free the oppressed minorities", the first people crying against it are always the interest groups of the minorities themselves. That's the case from disabled people to people with actual sexual disorders. They never want weird prescription and political flamewars, they want actual help.

Yes, appreciate it -- and I respect the need to get into it about smaller particular annoyances of the left, etc.

But again, it only takes a little poking around outside of ones bubble to see the nebulousness of "Woke". E.g.video clips of literally any right, or perhaps center person confronted with "No, seriously, actually define it" ALWAYS crumble.

Let’s talk about it. What are “left wing issues” and what are “right wing issues”?

We can probably agree on what an issue is. But I’m not sure we have any idea what right wing or left wing are.

How far right is right wing? And right of what, exactly? What about the left? Where is the center point?

Here’s a fun one. To whom belongs the issue of racism? Is that a right wing issue or a left wing one?

It’s neither of course. It’s a human issue. And you have victims of racism across the entire political spectrum who care deeply about it. Yet discourse would have you assume it’s a “left wing” issue, when it’s anything but.

Right wing issues: deport brown people, remove rights from minorities, cut essential government programs, undo social progress, give tax breaks to the rich, spend government money on military contracts.

Left wing issues: socialized healthcare, tax the wealthy, unionize workers, equity before the law, social progress.

Right wing issue: National Identity, community building, trust and safety (high trust society), belief that governmental power corrupts (though obviously they weigh this against the trust mentioned earlier and put a lot of merit in armed forces and police).

Left wing issues: Equity and fairness, individual identity but mandatory collectivism and the belief that government is likely to be more fair than a charity or company (I am on this end of things, but I can sympathise with the other).

Its sort of ignorant to throw up your hands here, at least in the US the stances are pretty well defined. The abortion debate is a good example where one side believes fully that its murder, and the other side believes fully that forcing people to care for children they don’t want will lead to misery (I am personally on this end of the spectrum so forgive any bias in my wording).

All issues are human issues, thats like talking about COVID and then bringing up Aids because they are both “human conditions”: these points are disperse, and everyone thinks they know whats best for society.

Well spoken.

I consider myself on the other end of things, but I experience, that for people with an active political stance, it's pretty obvious who is who (unless somebody is in propaganda mode).

Unless you are on an extreme side, you can always sympathize with the other side for most issues, which is why we are able to find compromises and vote on laws at all.

As for the example you mention (abortion), this is one where I can't sympathize with your side. To me living is a human right that is never moral to be violated, especially for personal selfish interests. Yes, I do consider being too poor for a child or not wanting a child to be selfish.

This:

> forcing people to care for children they don’t want will lead to misery

to me seams like a strawman. That's why we have baby flaps and foster homes for centuries. Even at the end of the roman empire people have brought babies to monasteries, because they didn't want to care for them. Yes they are more miserable then having good parents, but no amount of misery of the living is worth justifying a kill.

1718627440 says " no amount of misery of the living is worth justifying a kill[i.e., an abortion]."

So abortion is murder for you, and the ban against murder is usually based on the Bible's Old Testament for people in the USA (stemming from the 6th commandment "Thou shalt not kill.").

Assuming so, yet another specific religious belief has been dragged into our politics despite the fact that we have a clause in our constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,...", the First Amendment, allowing freedom of religion.

Seems we have a basic problem here. I disagree with you for a number of reasons:

- I don't believe in any spiritual entities (e.g., a soul, God, Jesus, Satan, St. Peter, angels, djinn, souls, sin, etc.)

- for morality I have the universe and my fellow men as the elements, no more, so saints, souls, angels, devils, gods and heavens fall away from reality for me,

- And so my backstop is the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do to you.").

Man has progressed. Much of what you claim would be fine except we now have

- birth control,

- largely safe (for the mother) abortion, and

- I am unwilling to tell a woman that anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

IOW science has rendered the traditional morality no longer applicable TO A CERTAIN DEGREE. That does NOT mean that science has rendered traditional morality irrelevant b/c evolution still applies and will dominate future generations:

- Humans will still be driven to have offspring,

- it remains safest to avoid unnecessary sex (b/c of disease) and

- it is best to be careful of the partner you choose b/c (s)he will contribute to the offspring's genes and (s)he will likely tend your offspring.

In summary, we got a problem: you have a religious belief (abortion is murder, perhaps based on another religious idea - that of a soul) that I do not accept. For me it's like the song says:

Queen - Fun It Lyrics

"Hey everybody everybody gonna have a good time tonight

Just shakin' the soles of your feet

Everybody gonna have a good time tonight time tonight Time tonight

That's the only soul you'll ever meet."

I don't think most people use religion to define basic rules in the society nowadays. I don't think I have indicated this in my comment.

> we now have

> - birth control,

> - largely safe (for the mother) abortion

What does the fact that we can do something has to do with its morality?

> - Humans will still be driven to have offspring,

Demography in modern countries begs to differ, but that's only tangent to the topic.

> anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

Yes I agree. Everyone can make decisions about anything that is his/her as long as it doesn't affect others. Do you accept DNA to determine boundaries of bodies? Does the body that stops living by the medication have the DNA of the mother?

Would you find it moral, if your mother had killed you?

PS:

> spiritual entities: Jesus, Peter

Yeah I guess the Romans killed some non-physical ghosts.

> What does the fact that we can do something has to do with its morality?

The philosophy (and also practical issues as well) are not always so simple, so sometimes it might have something to do with its morality.

> Would you find it moral, if your mother had killed you?

No, especially after I am born. If it was before I am born, then I am a part of her body and she has the right to do so, although that still does not make it moral.

> Yeah I guess the Romans killed some non-physical ghosts.

They might not mean them as historical real people (which they probably were, although it is not 100% certain). (I cannot think of how to explain it better, but there is a difference.)

1718627440 says >I don't think most people use religion to define basic rules in the society nowadays. I don't think I have indicated this in my comment.<

Then by what right/power/means do you justify any "rights/rules" whatsoever, including justification to speak about the question?

You later mention "boundaries of bodies". Do you think having a "body" grants rights? What about a "dead" body? Should the dead vote? Perhaps you're a Democrat and think "Yes, my dead Democrat grandfather still votes (at least twice) every 4 years."?

1718627440 says >What does the fact that we can do something has to do with its morality?<

There has always been a clash between morality and science. Science always wins.

1718627440 says > Do you accept DNA to determine boundaries of bodies?

For some purposes, e.g., medical, Yes. But for political argumentation no, b/c of twins, triplets,...,clones. Are all clones one "body" (they all have the same DNA)?

1718627440 says >Would you find it moral, if your mother had killed you?<

I would have nothing to say about it!8-))

Without reference to some authority (God, Jesus, DNA, Cthulhu) you justify your arguments based solely on your existence. Nothing is added, nothing gained, no political insight or structures, etc. Of course you can believe what you want, but everyone else can do the same presumably. This is an unconvincing, empty argument and is dangerous b/c if someone wants to delete your authority they can merely delete you.

A nihilistic Hobbesian argument seems awfully close to the truth and, while some of us matter more than others, no one of us matters much.

1718627440 says *>>Yeah I guess the Romans killed some non-physical ghosts.

So you believe the Romans killed Jesus and Peter??**

> You later mention "boundaries of bodies"

You claimed the mother has authority over the life of the baby, because its body is part of her. I don't think that is true, thus I quoted you a definition for body boundaries.

> There has always been a clash between morality and science. Science always wins.

Weird statement. There is a fight between a compiler and a memory model. The compiler always wins.

You claimed, because it is possible to perform abortion now, it should be moral automatically.

> is dangerous b/c if someone wants to delete your authority they can merely delete you.

Exactly the argument why "deleting" someone is immoral without pointing to religion.

> So you believe the Romans killed Jesus and Peter?

Yes? Palestine was a roman province, so only the procurator could order executions. Petrus was a roman citizen so could demand to be judged by the emperor in Rome, which he did, so he got executed in Rome.

1718627440 sez>You claimed the mother has authority over the life of the baby...<

No, I did not. I don't believe in "life" - it's a nonscientific concept.

1718627440 sez> There is a fight between a compiler and a memory model.<

There is no "fight": both are present, one completes it's task, neither "wins".

1718627440 sez>"Petrus was a roman citizen..." <

and other stuff he read in some text written by religious fanatics thousands of years ago (and randomly amended by other fanatics since).<*

"Nothing to see here, move on, move on please,..." - Frank Drebin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjK2Oqrgic

> There is no "fight": both are present

Same for science and morality.

> "life" - it's a nonscientific concept

Somebody needs to tell that to biologists. Biology: the study/teaching of living things.

In my opinion, many people who are pro-abortion or anti-abortion are not very good at it due to various things. They call them "pro-choice" and "pro-life", but often they are not real pro-choice and not real pro-life. (It is better to be a real pro-choice and a real pro-life.)

Sometimes, they attack people for having an abortion or helping someone else to do so, but that is not a real "pro-life". Sometimes, people only care about human birth, not any non-human life or how well the human life is otherwise, and that is not a real "pro-life" either. Sometimes, they will not consider if the life of both the mother and child are at risk if they do not have an abortion, so that is also not a real "pro-life".

Sometimes, people will try to bring someone to abortion clinics to force them to have an abortion even if they do not want to do, and that is not a real "pro-choice". Or, a doctor or government or someone might try to force or coerce an abortion or not abortion, and either way it is also not a real "pro-choice". If the woman wants to take the risk of having problems if it is not an abortion, that is her choice to do or not to do.

(Fortunately, not everyone is that bad at these things. But, these are examples of some of the bad stuff that results from either approach.)

There are also other issues involved when it is involved with legislation, such as: excessive spying, lack of free speech (and protests), etc. But, these can happen whether they are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. There is also the case of encouraging abortion if it is legal, and in my opinion, that would be immoral.

I do consider abortion to generally be immoral, although the alternative might be (and often is) even more immoral; for this and for other significant reasons, it should always be permitted, although should not generally be encouraged. However, people should understand the consequences, and hopefully the doctor might be able to help (if they are unbiased; unfortunately many are biased one way or other way, and I have heard of both situations).

> 6th commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

The ten commandments are not easily divided into ten, so sometimes they are numbered differently. Nevertheless, "thou shalt not kill" is one of them, whether or not it is specifically the sixth (although in my opinion, it should be considered the sixth, since it seems the most reasonable way to me to number them; this is the Orthodox way, and is unlike the Catholic way). Also, it might be better written as "thou shalt not murder".

> I don't believe in any spiritual entities - for morality I have the universe and my fellow men as the elements

I think that the philosophy of the ethics and of abortion does not require belief in spiritual entities, although many people do, I think that it is not necessary to do so. Whether or not you believe in spiritual entities is not the point, but rather, that you should not try to use them to justify things in ways that are not necessary to assert their existence like that in order to do.

> I am unwilling to tell a woman that anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

I agree (until the child is born, it is a part of her body, and she has the right to her own body), although, like any medical decisions, they can be informed by doctors.

> Humans will still be driven to have offspring

Yes, and it should be. However, some people don't want to, which is acceptable, and considering the current situations of the world (with too much human population), I think is good that some humans don't want to.

> it remains safest to avoid unnecessary sex (b/c of disease)

I agree, although not only because of disease (but it is also one possibility). This is better than abortion, if you do not want to have children. (However, situations are not always ideal, for various reasons, and this is one of the significant reasons why I think that abortion should be permitted even if it is not encouraged.)

Of whether or not abortion is murder, in my opinion, abortion can be murder but generally isn't. For example, if someone forcibly kills someone and her unborn child in order to gain an inheritance or something like that, then that would be murder of both the mother and the child, I think. However, something does not necessarily have to be murder to be immoral or unethical.

> Yes, I do consider being too poor for a child or not wanting a child to be selfish.

I think Quran says "do not kill your children for fear of poverty", and I agree with that, too (whether or not it has to do with "selfish" is another question, but I agree with "do not kill your children for fear of poverty" whether it is selfish or not).

> belief that governmental power corrupts

You can't be serious man. Not a single right winger bat an eye when Trump received a $400M plane from Saudi Arabia. They all hate muslims but they hate accountability even more.

> mandatory collectivism

What's that supposed to mean? I don't know of a single left wing politician in the US that advocates for collectivizing anything.

> "woke" has a more concrete definition than fascist

Fascist is a very concrete definition, as it is a comparison to a concrete existing historical movement. It's kind of the same as with Nationalsocialists. It is a term for a very concrete party, but is sometimes used as a slur.

Well, Wikipedia has multiple[0] definitions and argues that it is contested (as does encyclopedia britannica[1]) and people throw it around like candy[2]; so idkwym;

From EB;

> There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. Some scholars, for example, regard it as a socially radical movement with ideological ties to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, whereas others see it as an extreme form of conservatism inspired by a 19th-century backlash against the ideals of the Enlightenment.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[1]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism

[2]: https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1786062622531477707?s=46&t=rr...

This is arguing about the nature of the thing that is described by the word fascism, not arguing about what the word fascism refers to.

Completely irrelevant.

It’s used as a catch-all slur to mean “evil thing I don’t agree with”, they can mean any of the competing definitions or none - I doubt if they could come up with what they actually ascribe if challenged and not in front of a computer to look up one of the definitions to find something objectionable within that.

Which is my entire point really, not really getting what yours is here though. That it has a clear definition? I mean, I don’t think it does but it doesn’t matter. It’s not clear in practical use what people refer to.

It does have a specific meaning referring to a historic entity, when its not used as a slur. That's what I wanted to point out, see the sibling comment for clarification.

I don't see this to be commonly used as a slur except maybe from people, who also use capitalist as a slur. Most times it is used to describe parties or policies that have national and populist agendas, so I think its not a stretch to compare them to fascistic agendas.

> Fascist is a very concrete definition, as it is a comparison to a concrete existing historical movement.

If, by "very concrete definition" you mean "party name invented by Mussolini" [1], then yes. Otherwise, absolutely not. I can't tell from your comment which you're trying to imply.

Using the word in reference to a modern political movement is essentially just a lazy, dumb way of flinging a slur that invokes someone bad in history.

[1] Per Britannica: "[Mussolini] took the name of his party from the Latin word "fasces", which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome."

> party name invented by Mussolini

Yes exactly that's what I meant with "concrete existing historical movement". I thought that would be unambiguous, what else do you thought I've implied?

It is however not exclusively used as a slur. What I hear more often from the mouth of politicians, is calling something fascistic, which means that is compared to it, so saying that X is using something from the playbook of the fascists.

This is why I am glad, that calling someone a Nazi is sue-able in my country. This means that we now have court decisions both for that someone is not a Nazi, it was a slur, and that this was punished, and also that someone is indeed a Nazi and is officially documented as such.

> as a symbol of penal authority

And this is actually a good description of what fascism stands for. I'm often astonished of how good self-labels actually are in defining and arguing against ideologies.

Yeah, calling something "fascistic" is at least more honest that a metaphor is being invoked. I still think it's lazy, because most of the time, the people using the word have no idea what specific thing they're talking about is "fascistic", nor could they name a specific "fascistic" trait if you challenged them to do so. Again, it's mostly a lazy way of saying "I think this person is evil, but I cannot articulate precisely why!"

I personally think the laws against calling someone a "Nazi" are antithetical to free speech -- and invocation of "Nazi" is always useful to quickly illustrate that you're arguing with an idiot -- but lately my eyes are getting sore from rolling so much, so I have sympathy for such a law.

> calling someone a "Nazi" are antithetical to free speech

This seams to be disagreement what free speech is. Here an insult is never free speech, it is simply an infraction on "the personal honor" of someone else (although nobody uses this old-fashioned term). It is however free speech, if the claim is actually true (same for defamation). This is why now courts are arguing whether some "insult" is justified.

I think this is a very good thing. Ultimately laws and judiciary exist to be a formalism for personal fights. This is intended to make violence unneeded, so that we can have trust in the society. This is why the police has a monopoly on violence: Not because they are special and to be trusted, but because less people being violent is always better. If someone is calling you a Nazi, you might be tempted to punch back. This will lead to violence on the streets. If how ever you have a way to settle this legally, then you are much more able to walk away proudly and have satisfaction in calling your lawyer.

> invocation of "Nazi" is always useful to quickly illustrate that you're arguing with an idiot

This is a bit more serious here (Germany), since being a Nazi is punishable, so you're accusing someone of a crime.

This article was a good read but having been written in 1992, it completely misses the 2009 inflection point and subsequent polarization. Which has more recently resulted in becoming extremely violent for politics. Now the definitions are even worse than the article proposes. It's clear that the definitions are being abused intentionally.

This is the death of a political definition, I cant give it a label, see OP. It will become a religion after this; only then will we have the violence end in our politics.

I would say the EU pact from 1997 was brilliant. They had to have known of the human costs; but it's over now. We've seen the end. Mind you, yes, there's stillpain to come; but it's too big.

I'm predicting, since history is repeating for like the 6th time, we're still about 10 years out on the end of political violence.

Try "Obsolescence of all Definitions"

Tom Givon used to say in class: "What true language requires a dictionary?"

Language is decontextualized in the West, it's about attributes of individual objects where simplifying laws are derived, rather than language used as interdependent.

At a certain point arbitrary language dissolves into meaninglessness. That's entropy and arbitrariness. As we accelerate language and primate status spirals the role of language is simply to dominate subjectively. It has no end point except for dissolution.

"Mathematics is what mathematicians study. Mathematicians are those who study mathematics."

Formal description and studying is what I would define what mathematicians do.

This is an interesting read, and it makes me want to read more. But the intro could use some context. I have so many questions now.

> But the intro could use some context.

What do you mean by that?

For example that the author is a conservative marxist writing that treatise at the time of the "August Coup" which is a pretty interesting historical event itself. It toppled Gorbechev, and Yeltsin took over. Kondylis is also more reknowned than I was aware.

I (like GP, most likely) did not live through the events that occurred in Moscow during 1991. The only news media I consumed at the time was Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, which did not cover Soviet politics, and we did not cover any of this in school later in the 90s and early 2000s. Most of what I learned after the fact has been from Fox and MSNBC and Red Alert 2 and Call of Duty - that commies and socialists and Soviets are bad people who want to give kids free school lunches, will disrupt the temporal equilibrium, and give adults universal health care. I can skim the Wikipedia article about the coup [1] and I recognize the names of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, but I cannot even begin to articulate the political philosophies of their platforms or the power dynamics, coalitions, and incentive structures that either used to leverage one position or the other.

The intro paragraph, I think, is trying to use this to its advantage by describing an unfamiliar political landscape with conservatives and parlimentarians and Stalinists and "putschists" (what even is that word?). I barely know what conservativism means as distinct from "whatever the American Republican party does". I clicked on the article because I've observed that liberalism/conservativism/libertarianism/socialism/populism/marxism/fascism/neo___ism/etc. are bandied about more like sports team names to be cheered or derided rather than comprehended, and hoped to understand this phenomenon better.

I'll push through the article eventually, with frequent dictionary lookups for "societas civilis" and "diptych" and "affairs curricula". But it's clearly written for an expert in political philosophy and will take me a long time to do so. I'm an expert in computer engineering and pretty innately talented at understanding that, I'm not an expert in the social sciences and they don't come easily to me. But I still live in a society, and try to participate in its governance as best I can...while neither journalists nor public education have really helped me to get there. I don't observe my peers reading Chomsky, Hayek, Putnam, Piketty, Turchin, and Zinn before they go to the voting booth, but they get one vote each just the same.

I've actually looked it up and found that my local community college offers a "PL230 - Introduction to Political Theory" course, this winter it's held mid-day for full-time students but they're offering it virtually in the evenings next summer so that people who work during the day can participate.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_attempt

While I also neither lived through 1991 nor knew those terms, I found the text fairly understandable. But that might be, because I'm familiar with the political landscape the text describes.

I think this text is touching the basis of what became known of as the story of "the end of history" which we did cover in schools history lessons although not very detailed.

The article describes a trend of both the political right and left to the center, i.e. modern liberalism, which means that these distinction became less extreme. However this trend has now reversed. On the right that trend led to a rising of a new political party (AfD) that poses as the old conservatists to frustrated voters, but are actually more fascistic. On the left the party previously called communistic now calls for more aggressive "actions", accelerated by the split of of the not more conservative, but more aligned with more "bourgeois interests" flavored wing of the former. This also explains while the latter now is also seen favorable by voters who would previously would have been more aligned with the political right.

Thus, the text is neither outdated nor topical. It does not describe the current political landscape, but the origin and causes for it that lay in the previous one. As such it is very topical again.

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true conservatives," for example, apparently with no recollection or recognition of the recent past.

My own view is that the terms don't signify real, stable ideologies but rather just give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.

Modern US mainstream politics have become weirdly like the ancient Roman "Green" versus "Blue" political parties that evolved out of chariot racing fan clubs. No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government, just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...

> No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government

> just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.

These are two different questions.

I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies. Even if they did, it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans. Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests.

On the other hand, loyal partisanship leads to the phenomenon that I described: inventing ideological terms as a kind of personal identity for the partisan, giving the pretense that their loyal partisanship is backed by consistent, stable views, when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

> I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies.

It's something extremely important, along with "underlying theory of government" which you missed to address. If you think boundless inconsistency and shapeshifting are OK, you better say it straight - if you don't, you need a theory of bounds and it better be consistent.

> it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans.

That's upside down, in fact, 99% of Americans adopt a selection from the views offered by politicians and parties as reflected by the media. The "diverse political views" don't fall from the sky, they are products of the political system.

> Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests... [ consistent, stable views are just pretense ] when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

You are conflating "coalitions of interests" with "political views", they are quite different. In order to start a discussion we must separately and clearly define the coalitions, their interests and their political views: if they aren't consistently defined, neither accountability nor even basic security can be achieved.

If interests are a sufficient reason for dishing out pretense pseudo-rationality, then the coalition that is best at pretending and manages to accumulate a critical mass of power will simply enslave those who were gullible to believe them. I shouldn't have to explain this in America but here I am.

I mean, there's very specific reasons either color gets support from their voters. I wouldn't say all of those reasons warrant the same amount of fervor, passion, and loyalty that they do. But "blind support" is a bit reductive when for some people it literally means their rights being stripped away.

What appears to be "blind support" is people desperately clinging onto what tiny bit of representation they have. It's sad for both sides. It's Stockholm syndrome mixed with political pragmatism. It sucks, but the current political landscape in the US has entrenched itself so deeply in a local minima that people feel like they have to work backwards to make progress. Just see how any discussion of a third party is seen as a psyop to get that side to have a spoiler effect.

As someone who typically supports a lot of third parties at the ballot box, I have to say that our problem is actually not people seeing us as a psy-op.

It's people seeing us as, at best, irrelevant; and at worst, a joke.

I've been voting since the late eighties, and have come to realize it is our lack of organization and, at times, our policies. Which in all honesty can be at once, foolish and bizarre.

It's difficult to bring the platforms of any new party in hand precisely because they are attracting people whose ideas are maybe not very popular in the mainstream parties. The mainstream parties have bizarre and foolish policies as well, but they've had 40 years to brainwash their voters. It's hard to have the same effect in, say, 2 or 4 years.

So you have to have a pristine platform and stick to it.

This is where as independents and third party supporters, we've repeatedly failed.

Voting third party in a first-past-the-post electoral system is a coordination problem. If I, as an individual, have some grab-bag of political stances, with varying weights of importance to me, it is likely that some issues will become a matter of "I am willing to cast my vote in any direction that minimizes the chances that someone with the opposing view does not take power". For example, for people who strongly oppose a backslide into Facism in the US, the only real choice in the last presidential election was voting Democrat, because while there might have been third party candidates that would have been better, the Dems were the most likely opposition to that to win. Absent extremely effective widespread coordination, a vote for a third party increases the probability of an unacceptable outcome.

> give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.

I feel like it's very easy to get angry about politics, so speaking clearly is difficult.

I would like to point out that the power dynamics do not always shift randomly, or by the will of the people (be that citizens at large, or party-line voters). The power dynamics have been shifted with intention.

Apart from that intentional push for power, we also have social media dynamics. It feels like online self-critique is always towards the extremes. Once someone becomes energized or activated on a topic, they may start to feel that even trying to understand other viewpoints will cause harm.

People want to belong to a tribe. I think it's often quite a tossup where a young person ends up, depending on friends or whichever online circle accepts them best. It's also not rare for young people to flipflop between nominally widely opposing tribes before setting into one. People gradually learn all the opinions they are supposed to have on the various issues to truly belong to the tribe. It's not unlike learning the dogmas of a religion. It's much much more convenient socially to speak the same language and have the same cultural references and opinions to bond over and feel camaraderie about and curate a bubble of friends following the same opinion-setters, vs. creating one's own grab-bag idiosyncratic set of opinions that doesn't fit neatly into either well known combo-deal. You gotta support either this football team or the other one. People who start to lecture about how they like the goalie of the one team, but the striker of the other are just "not fun at parties", are kind of annoying and hard to relate to, especially online where people decide in a split second whether to upvote or downvote based on a fast pattern matching check to my tribe / enemy tribe.

There's potentially a genetic predisposition as well? [1].

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027161452.h...

Before taking their current conservative role, one of our Supreme Court Justices was briefly associated with the radical left.

In my perception, "true conservative" means "what the label meant in my youth, not what it has mutated to today". I think it is exactly a recognition of the past.

I agree that this is the claim of self-described true conservatives. However, I think the claim is empirically false, and they do not actually follow what the label meant in our youth.

I think some actually do. And some follow what they thought it meant, or what they thought it should have meant.

> I think some actually do.

May I ask who?

> And some follow what they thought it meant, or what they thought it should have meant.

This isn't contrary to my claim.

Me, of course.

(I mean that somewhat ironically - everybody would say that it fits them. But I also mean it somewhat sincerely.)

Well, I was mainly referring to politicians and other prominent persons. I'm not denying that anonymous individuals exist who have remained consistent over the decades, but they don't seem to have much power anymore.

Can't argue with you on that one...

Yeah wow huh! It took me many years of reading HN to figure out that “liberal” means “left” in the US. In my (European) country, the word means nearly the opposite, a belief in individual freedoms, free speech, free markets, small governments and so on. It’s mostly championed by right-of-center parties. I’ve been confused many times reading comments that go like “these liberals who want to ban free speech” which, to me, reads as funky as “these nazis who want to protect minority rights” or “these republicans who want to reinstate the monarchy”.

It’s just, the word did a total 180 in the US and it’s super weird!

Realistically the mainstream Democratic Party is liberal in the sense that you use it; the US is a fundamentally liberal place, a lot of Republicans are as well.

Even the idea of “banning free speech” that you mention is implemented in a liberal fashion in the US. There are rarely calls for the government to actually ban speech via laws. The ground where that’s fought is actually “should private companies broadcast/highlight via algorithm the speech of individuals who say things I don’t like,” it is a formulation that pits the speech rights of the corporation against the self-expression of the individuals using their services.

The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional free-speech consensus.

> The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional liberal consensus.

I disagree, at least a bit. I think "liberal" here is just used as "the bad tribe". It's not saying that they're not living up to their values, it's just saying that they're "them".

I can definitely see how what I wrote was unclear there, sorry. Inside the quotes, “liberal” was used in the sense that skrebble was using it inside their hypothetical quote, so, basically a faction of team-blue. Afterwards my intent was to continue using it in the way that he (outside his hypothetical quote) and I (everywhere) had been using it, related to the philosophy of liberalism. I’ll try to edit it for clarity, sorry…

In the US they call that right-leaning version "libertarian".

Nah the thing we call liberalism is much milder than that. It’s like the watered down, we-do-trust-the-government-but-maybe-tone-it-down-a-little version of libertarianism. I mean the same meaning as eg the Economist gives the term.

I think maybe the term changed meaning in the US because for decades pretty much everyone agreed with it (no social democrats in sight, barring the occasional Bernie). A movement that ~everyone agrees with isn't much of a movement, is it?

It's a movement that won - won so thoroughly that nobody even remembers there was a war. But that means that, since nobody's fighting that war any more, the label (which has "winning" and even "being correct" attached to it in peoples' minds) is now up for grabs for other movements that want to win.

> It's a movement that won - won so thoroughly that nobody even remembers there was a war.

I don't think so. Some things might have been taken more or less for granted, but a lot of policies are now reopening that war again. See for example, the various threads about Chat Control in the EU recently on HN.

> no social democrats in sight

The US already has social security, medicare, medicaid. It is often just plain worse/more brutal than Western European countries but the difference isn't a radical reimagination of the social order.

> barring the occasional Bernie

Western Europe has likewise not imagined any new government welfare since the 1970s.

Which is itself an ugly word because the Libertarian Party proper is mostly a bunch of kooks and cranks. So using it invites comparisons to them even if you only are proposing what the above poster was proposing.

The problem is that these terms do signify real, stable ideologies, but the vast majority of people are superficial trend-chasers who don't actually adhere to any stable ideology, so misuse these terms to refer to whichever tribe they emotionally associate themselves with at the moment.

IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime, but contrived cultural wedge issues seem to have eclipsed actual policy positions in most public discourse, so gets called "conservative" despite its policies being almost the diametric opposite of what was called "conservative" 30 years ago.

> IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime

Can you elaborate?

Tax hikes on American consumers and businesses.

Expansions in federal spending against growing budget deficits.

Government pursuing ownership or de facto control of private industry.

Aggressive use of executive fiat to pursue novel policies without clear legislative basis.

Federal interventions that try to direct or challenge state sovereignty on numerous issues traditionally outside the scope of federal authority.

Hesitant foreign policy that seems overly deferential to traditional US adversaries, especially Russia.

Trump is left of Carter, Obama, etc. ? How are you defining left-wing, exactly?

Yes. Far to the left of Carter, who I'd consider a moderate conservative, and marginally to the left of the more centrist Obama.

I'm construing left-wing as (a) seeing an expansive role for the state -- and in the US especially the federal government -- as being a prime mover in social and especially economic matters, (b) willingness to use political power in novel and unprecedented ways to address perceived social and economic problems without being constrained by established legal and constitutional norms.

You're confusing authoritarian vs libertarian ideology with left-wing vs right-wing ideology. They're two different axes, with debatable degrees of correlation. "We're going to give the government absolute power in order to best benefit everyone" comes from a very different belief system than "We're going to give the government absolute power to benefit the dictator, or my position under him".

Under your model of the world, Anarchists (the communist ideology) and Libertarians (the radical free market ideology) occupy the same place on the left-right spectrum. Which is... definitely not where any serious political theorists would put them.

> You're confusing authoritarian vs libertarian ideology with left-wing vs right-wing ideology.

I'm certainly not. In the US, there is a significant overlap between libertarianism and conservatism, due to American political traditions themselves being rooted in constitutionalism and suspicion of centralized power.

Rather, I believe it is you who is confusing "conservative" vs. "progressive" political philosophies with whatever haphazard accumulation of policy positions have coalesced in the Republican and Democratic parties due to the tactical incentives of the immediate moment.

> "We're going to give the government absolute power in order to best benefit everyone" comes from a very different belief system than "We're going to give the government absolute power to benefit the dictator, or my position under him".

I don't think the latter statement applies to any particular political ideology -- rather, it describes the incentives of a particular type of functionary that exists under all dictatorships; all dictatorships are publicly justified by some doctrinal system aimed at improving "society" in some way, and all institutional systems consist of a mix of people pursuing the outward-facing goal of that ideology and those pursuing their own aggrandizement while paying lip service to that ideology.

And if your starting point is a constitutional system that's designed to avoid concentration of political power, and one that draws clear boundaries around the state and its role in society, then it's impossible to classify any ideology that aims to wear down those boundaries and use the political state to force any kind of social change as any sort of "conservatism".

This is the definition of radicalism; there are many flavors of radicalism, and those may be at odds with each other on account of pursuing different ideological goals, but the lack of regard for the established order them puts them on the same end of the left-right axis, only distinguishing themselves from each other on another, perpendicular axis.

> Under your model of the world, Anarchists (the communist ideology) and Libertarians (the radical free market ideology) occupy the same place on the left-right spectrum.

I don't quite agree with that, on account of the "radical free market ideology" you're attributing to libertarians not actually being a prescriptive ideology at all, but rather a defensive posture against other people's prescriptive ideologies. The communist "anarchists" you're referring to have a detailed vision for how everyone else should live, and aim to impose that vision through force, while the libertarians are fundamentally just opposed to anyone forcefully imposing any particular vision. So that pretty clearly puts the communists on the left and the libertarians on the right.

I've said all I want to say but I wanted to share this to ground future debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

That describes everyone from Hitler and Mussolini to Mao. They all believed in big government, and wielding it internally.

Yes, it describes everyone who aims to use unrestrained political power to reshape society, i.e. the precise opposite of what "conservatism" actually means.

Perhaps conservatism doesn't necessarily fit into a left-right spectrum neatly. I recently saw fascism described as a version of collectivism that caters to the right.

> I recently saw fascism described as a version of collectivism that caters to the right.

Yes, I think that's its definition.

> Perhaps conservatism doesn't necessarily fit into a left-right spectrum neatly.

While conservatism is right, right isn't necessarily conservatism. Conservatism more describes a center-right party, the extreme right often is what is called fascism, with one alternative being fundamentalism. I think conservatism and fascism are pretty much mutual exclusive.

No, not necessarily. Conservatives condone social engineering as long as it agrees with their beliefs; e.g., to promote specific religions, and heteronormativity. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism#Beliefs_and_princ...

I think you are describing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_conservatism

Nothing in Russel Kirk's concept of conservatism implies any of the specific policy positions you're attributing to conservatism per se.

Someone whose political agenda is to force society to confirm to a doctrinal ideology that in opposition to the established broad status-quo norms of that society is by definition not a conservative.

> Someone whose political agenda is to force society to confirm to a doctrinal ideology that in opposition to the established broad status-quo norms of that society is by definition not a conservative.

Conservatives believe that the status quo may violate the transcendent order and that they are duty bound to restore it. Neither conservatives nor liberals believe the status quo is sacred.

Do you think the rolling back of Roe vs. Wade was not a conservative act because it was a "status quo norm" ? They never liked it, so perhaps it was not a norm?

Status quoism is different from conservatism.

> Conservatives believe that the status quo may violate the transcendent order and that they are duty bound to restore it.

No, those aren't conservatives. They're something else.

They are conserving what they think the world has been all along. When you define conservatism as being a status quo a single "leftish" government, makes every conservatist not a non-conservatist and the parties in power conservative. That makes it a useless distinction as it then means the people currently shaping the laws.

> They are conserving what they think the world has been all along.

No, they very clearly aim to change things to conform to what they think it ought to be.

> When you define conservatism as being a status quo a single "leftish" government, makes every conservatist not a non-conservatist and the parties in power conservative.

Well, no, not quite, because the government is still a specific institution in society, not something coterminous with society itself. Those who seek to restrain the government in its attempts to expand its influence into the broader society count as conservatives; those who seek to expand that influence in pursuit of making the broader society conform to doctrinal prescriptions -- regardless of the specific content of their doctrines -- are not.

The left-right spectrum is not a dichotomy between competing dogmas, all of which seek to subjugate society to its rule. If it's anything, it's a dichotomy that celebrates dogmas at one pole and is deeply suspicious of them on the other.

Lumping religious fanatics and nationalists together with genuine conservatives is an error caused by all of these groups having a common arch-enemy during most of the past century. Their alignment is beginning to unravel now.

> IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime

Can you name even a single left-wing policy or rhetorical position of this administration?

> but contrived cultural wedge issues seem to have eclipsed actual policy positions in most public discourse,

“Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

> gets called "conservative" despite its policies being almost the diametric opposite of what was called "conservative" 30 years ago.

30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

(I guess it was also just after a midterm election where the Republican Party, being out of the White House for the first time in a while and having just taken a Congressional majority after mostly being in the minority for a generation was also emphasizing restraining government and elected officials more than the Right normally has before or since, but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.)

I do not live an the USA, but besides clear political goals, the anti-educational spirit is something that used to be common in the political left.

> Can you name even a single left-wing policy or rhetorical position of this administration?

Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement. Hyperpoliticization of social questions. Government ownership/direction of private industry.

> “Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

They've not been about actual policy domains until relatively recently. These issues have been marginal with respect to actual policy considerations for decades.

> 30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

GOP candidates in certain regions invoked various wedge issues on the campaign trail in order to put them over the top in elections for contested seats. Upon election, they then did nothing whatsoever to shift the actual policy needle in relation to these issue, and focused precisely on "neoliberal consensus" economic issues of the exact sort that the current administration is diametrically opposed to.

> but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

> Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement.

None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

> Government ownership/direction of private industry.

Fascist corporatism is not left-wing (state ownership as a proxy for and in the interest of the working class is a feature of some versions of leftist theory, but this isn’t something that Trump’s industrial intervention even makes a rhetorical appeal to.)

> > [...] the Republican Party, being out of the White House for the first time in a while and having just taken a Congressional majority after mostly being in the minority for a generation was also emphasizing restraining government and elected officials more than the Right normally has before or since, but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

> But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

> In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

You're using circular logic: "You can't describe left wing as doing something the GOP does, because I define them to be right wing."

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

These are quintessentially left-wing in the context of the past century of American politics.

> Fascist corporatism is not left-wing

Of course it is. It was deliberately designed as an alternative means for achieving socialist ends by socialists disillusioned with Marxism. It's always characterized itself as a "third way", but still one that seeks to radical change society through political force, and in opposition to those who want to conserve the status quo and admit change only through gradual development. The former is the traditional definition of "left" and the latter of "right".

> No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

It should be clear that in a US context, I'm referring to specifically Anglo-American conservatism, which does differ from other varieties in its devotion to particular forms of constitutionalism and to economic liberalism, i.e. the Burkean variety, and not to continental forms of conservatism which have had little historical significance in America.

> The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

The problem is that you're presumptively conflating party with political philosophy even in levying this criticism. In terms of US presidents in my lifetime, I'd regard Carter, Reagan, and Clinton as conservatives, both Bushes and Obama as moderates, Biden as being on the center-left, and Trump as being on the far left.

Actual political philosophy cuts across party lines -- the parties themselves are just coalitions of factions that are mainly aligned due to mutual tactical opposition to the other coalition, and not by any shared worldview. The nature of these coalitions has far more influence on what rhetoric they employ on the campaign trail than it does on what actual policy positions they take once in office.

What tends to be more conceptually solid is temperament and personality, rather than ideology. That is, things like conformism, trust in paternalistic authority figures, or instinctual contrarianism and distrust of authority, and openness to new ways of doing things, optimism about tweaking the knobs on society vs a more static view of how people are, etc., making it yourself (individualism and atomisation) vs focus on collectivism / community orientedness / family obligations.

For example, an old man with a conservative mentality in Russia may be nostalgic for Stalin and communism. Or someone who has a contrarian, disagreeable personality in a liberal American college environment may decide to become a monarchist or trad Christian to show the middle finger to the real authority figures in his life. And a conformist person in the US workforce would more likely absorb a corporate-HR-compatible (superficially?) progressive worldview.

This reads to me as a somewhat quaint snapshot of politics from 30 years ago.

What the author is getting at is the overlapping of the bundles of individual policy stances that we give the label of a single ideology, the folding of the left-right political axis through higher dimensional space. People who agree on some things disagree on others and the old categories become less useful.

These days I think JREG is doing good work tracking political categories if you’re interested and don’t mind some irony-poisoned jargon check him out.

Yeah, I think we've all seen the term "socialism" prettymuch destroyed into having no coherent meaning beyond "when government does stuff" for as long as I can remember, for example.

I mean, I've seen people decry market-oriented solutions to problems (eg congestion pricing) as "socialism" which is broadly hilarious.

> "socialism" pretty much destroyed into having no coherent meaning beyond "when government does stuff" for as long as I can remember

This is actually the best definition, for certain values of government. What's bizarre is that a bunch of people gave communists ownership of the definition of socialism. The communists who never even described it specifically, just refer to it as a mythical state that spontaneously occurs after all of the revolution that they do actually describe. Even worse, those people tho give communists total ownership of the concept don't claim to be communists (because it's too strict, and requires too much reading.)

Socialism is when people cooperate to do things as a group to benefit the entire group. Socialism as a governance system is when that cooperation completely subsumes other methods of resource distribution and dispute resolution. To be clear: Socialism is when the (popularly sovereign) government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialister it is.

Markets can also be socialism. Markets are artificial constructs within which transactions are enforced by an overarching power. If that power is popularly sovereign, and the markets are meant to equalize distribution without regard to the power of individuals, of course they're socialist. There has never been a "socialist" society that has not introduced markets. There are still market socialists, maybe look them up.

Markets can be used for any purpose, but a very obvious one is that if people all begin with the same amount of currency, but with a different array of needs, they can use markets to get rid of the things they don't need to get the things that they do, in a fair way.

"Socialism" instead has become popularly defined among a certain class as a society that has infinite wealth and distributes whatever anybody wants to whoever wants it, without requirement or delay, and allows people to contribute in any way that they see fit. It's just rich kid summer camp.

A million kinds of socialists showed up to the First International. Communists bullied them all out (and they would eventually be the "social fascists" who were a bigger danger than even fascists, and needed to be liquidated), and decided that they were the Workingmen now. Now, the children of the most elite classes on the planet dictate that real socialism is their socialism.

It's very hard to find out about a lot of those different socialisms, because how overjoyed they were to see a worker's revolution had happened in Russia, how they flocked to it, and how those people were slaughtered or forced to conform to Stalin's new socialism with classes (S++, maybe? The Fabians couldn't get enough of it.) Whatever Kronstadt hadn't said was said when Stalin explained how some people deserved larger apartments than others, and ruthlessly suppressed those who disagreed.

Read Owen. Learn about labor vouchers. Read anything but Marx and Engels.

Engels was a mill owner who was sleeping with his employees, and Marx was a brilliant economist who relied on Engels entirely for his financial support. Engels served a badly determined mishmash of socialist theories that were already ancient by the time he arrived, wrote a nice thing about the state of the English working class, and needed Marx to lend him intellectual authority.

Marx wrote Capital, which adds almost nothing new to economics and makes the same mistakes that all other economists were making at the time (it's basically Ricardo), but wrote it from the perspective of the individual, as opposed to nations, which was revolutionary. It was not a message to princes, it was a message to wage-laborers.

Engels frankensteined this into his own warmed over cliches, and never allowed Marx to publish a word that he hadn't scribbled all over. Please ignore them when thinking about socialism. We've done the experiments (although we started with peasants instead of a society well prepared by capitalism), and the first output was Stalin.

Maybe give the Left SRs a little attention, or remember Fanny Kaplan. It's a miracle that Bogdanov survived, but even the Bolsheviks couldn't bring themselves to kill the person who came up with the idea of "dialectical materialism" which they hopelessly butchered because Lenin clearly didn't understand what he was reading. Read Bogdanov. Lenin once "refuted" him by basically denying the existence of the material world, and sneering at those who believe in it. Lots of parallels there to today.

Sorry for hijacking your offhand comment. But congestion pricing is socialism.

But by the all-encompassing definition you have here, having a military is socialism. Paying bus fare is socialism. Running elections is socialism.

I'd argue that such a definition of socialism is so expansive as to be worthless.

By the classical definition, a government-paid military and city-run buses are absolutely socialist organizations.

Running elections is not a means of production, so it can't be socialist.

> city-run buses are absolutely socialist organizations

I agree totally.

As for the military, I'm not so sure. As far as I know every military is run by a state. A private army is generally called milita. A military is also not really providing value to the people, but rather providing value to the government, sometimes over the people. Mandatory public military on the other hand might qualify for that term.

I'm not talking about the city running the bus, I'm talking about the city charging fees for the bus.

Is it more or less socialist to ask users to pay for a government service at point of consumption?

> Socialism is when people cooperate to do things as a group to benefit the entire group.

No, that's altruism: putting the group ahead of the individual.

Socialism is when the means of production are socially owned, instead of privately owned. It implicitly is altruistic by nature, but that's of course not guaranteed.

> just refer to it as a mythical state that spontaneously occurs after all of the revolution

I think you have switched the terms here. Communism is what the mythical state is called. The political agenda leading to, during and after the revolution until that mythical state, is called socialism.

It's true, that socialism used to describe also a liberal way to curing poverty, but that split occurred over 150 years ago. Since then the parties that intend to keep democracy call themselves socialdemocratic and socialism is used exclusively for those calling for councils and revolution.

I'm a bit tired of hearing times and times again, that actually maybe socialdemocrats are also socialists. Socialdemocrats are not against private ownership, they just want it distributed differently. That's not socialist.

Nah. Don't waste your time reading about Owenism and labor vouchers. It's utter tripe, wishful thinking made up by some random guy with no connection to objective reality. The labor theory of value has never and will never work in practice.

I agree with the point this article is trying to make. As political definitions change, we start to lose sight of what these terms actually mean. I believe a more helpful comparison than left vs right, is open vs closed.

https://unherd.com/2018/07/open-vs-closed-rise-fall-left-rig...

Oddly, the article doesn't discuss the terms "open" or "closed" at all, much less what makes them uniquely resistant to be coopted and bastardized.

Edit: apparently that is in "part two" which isn't linked anywhere

Afaik, there are already specific political definitions. It's just that "the common man" isn't very educated in them, and the "language of politics" eschews logic and specificity in favor of generalization (in order to induce rancor and thus party-alignment).

Here is the political classification of the top 50 developed nations (I tried to organize them, but it's hard...):

    Qatar                 Absolute monarchy
    Oman                  Absolute monarchy
    Saudi Arabia          Absolute monarchy
    Brunei Darussalam     Absolute monarchy
    United Arab Emirates  Federal absolute monarchy
    Kuwait                Constitutional monarchy (emirate) with parliamentary elements
    Bahrain               Constitutional monarchy (unitary)
    United Kingdom        Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Netherlands           Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Japan                 Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Denmark               Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Norway                Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Sweden                Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Luxembourg            Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Spain                 Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Australia             Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Belgium               Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Canada                Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Liechtenstein         Hereditary constitutional monarchy with elements of direct democracy
    Croatia               Parliamentary republic
    Czechia               Parliamentary republic
    Estonia               Parliamentary republic
    Greece                Parliamentary republic
    Hungary               Parliamentary republic
    Israel                Parliamentary republic
    Italy                 Parliamentary republic
    Latvia                Parliamentary republic
    Lithuania             Parliamentary republic
    Poland                Parliamentary republic
    Slovakia              Parliamentary republic
    Slovenia              Parliamentary republic
    Finland               Parliamentary republic (semi-presidential features)
    Austria               Federal parliamentary republic
    Germany               Federal parliamentary republic
    Switzerland           Federal directorial republic (collegial executive of seven Federal Councilors)
    Andorra               Parliamentary co-principality (two Co-Princes: French President & Bishop of Urgell)
    Chile                 Presidential republic
    Portugal              Semi-presidential republic
    Argentina             Federal presidential republic
    United States         Federal presidential constitutional republic (representative democracy)
    Cyprus                Unitary presidential republic
    South Korea           Unitary presidential republic
    France                Unitary semi-presidential republic (Fifth Republic)
    Iceland               Unitary parliamentary republic
    Ireland               Unitary parliamentary republic
    Malta                 Unitary parliamentary republic
    Singapore             Unitary parliamentary republic
    New Zealand           Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
    Hong Kong (China SAR) Special Administrative Region of China with “one country, two systems”

Your "top 50 developed nations" list actually omits China, the nation with the most extensive modern rail and nuclear power, one of the top three space-exploring nations. Or do you consider them "not developed"?

I don't know how it is in your country, but here China is still categorized as a developing country. We still pay them development aid. But I do think its miscategorized, if anything China is now the second world power and maybe soon the first. But of course the chinese government has now reason to stop this. The more power they can grab while still posing as a poor country, the better (for them).

Honestly I just asked ChatGPT for the list and didn't notice x.x Interesting omission on its part, haha. I asked ChatGPT what's up, and it replied:

"China is not in the top-50 group of “very high human development” countries. The United Nations Development Programme’s 2024 Human Development Index (HDI) places mainland China around the mid-60s globally (most recent figure is roughly 64th–68th, depending on the exact update). The “top 50 developed countries” list I used earlier is based on that HDI ranking, so China does not qualify as one of the top 50 most-developed nations. Hong Kong, which is a Special Administrative Region of China, does rank in the global top 10 and is why you saw “Hong Kong (China SAR)” in the earlier table—but that is treated separately from mainland China in the UN’s HDI reports."

Not sure, why you are voted down. :-)

Why did you feel the need to specify that the USA are a representative democracy? A lot of other countries on your list are, I think this it is far more common then direct democracy.

It was added by the AI; "[ChatGPT] originally included that extra phrase only because many English-language sources habitually describe the U.S. as a “representative democratic republic”. To keep the wording consistent, you could simply shorten it to “Federal presidential republic”."

I thought we were discussing definitions from a professional source, where every word was carefully weighted for its inclusion and meaning, instead of "the common man".

Nailed it. Many, if not MOST "political debates" you see can probably be deflated by just clearly having each side define their terms.

E.g. Capitalism is often either "people making favorable trades" or "exploitation through decreased liability for big money investors" depending on.

(and please, don't get me started on "woke." Sigh)

"..summon “unsullied” socialism, a game with ever more variations, which long since has become confusing—and boring."

to quote a comment I found, because it puts it better than I could;

"Murray Bookchin's concept of communalism and his follower Abdullah Öcalan's similar concept of democratic confederalism. It can be summed up as "refocusing politics around local government by popular assemblies, while higher levels of government being confederations of these local units". Thus communalism does mean there would still be a state, although far more decentralised. This was one reason why Bookchin stopped calling himself an anarchist, though his disillusionment with the '90s the anarchist scene was another."

libertarian municipalism + communalism, a kind of libertarian socialism

with social ecology as the philosophy framing our situation

Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971);

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post...

some use the meme of "google Murray Bookchin", because once you get into their work, so much of it makes good sense (and their polemic bits are funny too)

a really good podcast on Murray;

https://youtu.be/V0Z2KGudYrA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin

and there's the adapted democratic confederalism of Ocalan, which is actually used in Rojava (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria)

https://nybooks.com/online/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-h...

this is the group that was US aligned until Trump said no, which allowed Turkey to do a land-grab and dispossess folk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_confederalism

http://ocalanbooks.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

The rise of populism, especially in the US, has accelerated the breakdown described here. It's difficult to place political parties or even individual politicians in neat boxes, which would be a benefit in some ways in theory if it wasn't really caused by the political parties (and one in particular) becoming completely unmoored from their historical platform and agenda.

These shifts have happened a few times in the past, and it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

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