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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Left-Right Political Spectrum Is Bogus
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-left-right-political-spectrum-is-bogus/373139/?n7h68l
The French Estates-General in 1789 (Isidore-Stanislaus Helman via Wikimedia Commons)
***SNIP
The familiar notion is that when you reduce the power of the state, you increase the power of capital, and vice versa. To put it mildly, this claim is non-empirical. The rise of capital, its consolidation into a few hands, and the enduring structures of monopoly or gigantism to which it gives rise are inconceivable without the state.
Michel Beaud, in his History of Capitalism, is one of many historians who have found the state connection criterial: "What one in any case should remember is the importance of the state in the birth, the first beginnings of capitalism .... The primary transforming factor is the state. National unity, currency standardization, juridical coherence, military strength and the beginnings of a national economy: all these were created and developed by the state, or with the state as organizing principle."
Capital accumulations on the vast scales we see today are not possible in the absence of pervasive domestic policing and the ability to project military power. The British colonial economyone capitalist apogeewould have been impossible without a huge state. The American robber-baron period is often held to have been to have led to hyper-concentration of wealth in a few private hands and to have been constrained ultimately by the state. If you look at the actual procedures employed by a Vanderbilt, a Rockefeller, a Carnegie, you see that they depended fundamentally on state sponsorship and state violence, which such men were in a position to command in virtue of their wealth. This underwent various adjustments in the so-called Progressive Era, but though specific cartels and fortunes were compromised, the consolidation in the long run continued, as the government became the central bank (more or less merging with J.P. Morgan) and the modern bureaucratic corporation emerged.
Consider by way of comparison the Soviet system. Nationalizing industry and imposing five-year plans didnt make society more equal; it just made the Communist Party a committee of capitalists. Communist totalitarianism was a particular and particularly extreme form of the merger of state and capital, but that merger is everywhere. If one thought a bit, for example, about the way that government energy policies and private energy concerns are interlocked, one would see less and less sense of distinction. Regulators and corporate lobbyists and congressional staffers are all the same people.
smiley
(1,432 posts)I find it strange the author classifies the Nazi Party as left wing. I've always considered it right-wing
The left pole, meanwhile, could be a stateless society of barter and localism; or a world of equality in which people are not subordinated by race, gender, and sexuality; or a pervasive welfare state; or a Khmer Rouge reeducation regime. The Nazi Party, Catholic Church, hereditary aristocracy, Ayn Rand capitalists, and redneck gun enthusiasts are all on the same side of the left-right spectrum. So are hacktivists, food-stamp officials, anti-globalization activists, anarcho-primitivists, and advocates of a world government. It would be hard to come up with a less coherent or less useful way of thinking about politics.
fishwax
(29,149 posts)I didn't read it that way initially, but I see your point.
2banon
(7,321 posts)daleanime
(17,796 posts)Very interesting....
Snarkoleptic
(5,997 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Right-wing policy is not about eliminating the power of government so much as it is about harnessing it for the benefit of capital. And Soviet centrally-planned economy wasn't "a committee of capitalists", because they were never at any point focused on maximising profit.
struggle4progress
(118,278 posts)to confront both sides with the fact that their positions are incoherent
But a philosophical approach to politics is pointless because, in fact, inconsistent positions are actually impossible to avoid
Politics is a natural consequence of social interaction: different people, and different social subgroups, have different experiences and different material interests, and conflicts therefore naturally arise. In social conflict resolution, the parties might avail themselves of any social persuasive techniques they consider appropriate, including threats, demonization of opponents, appeals to religion or social tradition, philosophical arguments, and so on -- and in this way the conflicts can be resolved (but usually only temporarily) by various methods, which range from murder to negotiated compromise
So philosophical positions taken in social conflicts almost never actually represent the true nature of the conflict: a philosophical position is usually merely a bargaining posture of a party to the conflict, intended to persuade onlookers. For that reason, philosophical arguments seldom sway the major parties involved in a conflict
The only people who insist on coherent philosophical positions in political matters are ideologues -- and they're dangerous because they don't attend to the actual underlying conflicts