Totalitarian Communism Was as Right Wing as Hitler or Bush

This issue is of much more than academic interest. Powerful right wing forces in our country have acted as perpetual barriers to progressive social change since the first days of our nationhood – starting with their insistence that slavery be written into our Constitution.

Those right wing forces have been behind the “war against socialism” in the United States since the beginning of the industrial era of the late 19th century. With the rise of totalitarian Communism, especially as manifested under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin beginning in 1924, they received a powerful boon to their cause. Henceforth, by equating totalitarian Communism with “left wing”, they sought to demonize any government that contained a hint of socialism or left wing leaning, or was in any way seen as being contrary to their interests. For 46 years of the Cold War that demonization provided the excuse for our CIA and military to intervene in dozens of sovereign nations anywhere and everywhere in the world, to overthrow the legally elected governments of those nations or to prevent them from being elected in the first place. This gave rise to repressive right wing governments all over the world and resulted in untold misery widely distributed throughout the world. Richard J. Walton, in his book, “Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War”, describes the situation:


Similarly, the excuse of totalitarian Communism was used to demonize the domestic opponents of the right wing elites. That is what McCarthyism was all about. Eventually, they even succeeded in demonizing the word “liberal”, to the extent that few politicians today have the courage to identify themselves with that word.

Today, 18 years after the end of the Cold War, that tactic is still being used. Want to provide universal health insurance to the American people? SOCIALISM! Want to raise income taxes on millionaires by 3% or re-establish the estate tax on millionaires? SOCIALISM!!


The meaning of Right Wing

One of the best definitions of “right wing politics” that I’ve seen is “Positions that focus on adherence and obedience to traditional values and authorities and creating or promoting a form of social hierarchy”.

Let’s analyze that definition. It consists of two parts. One part is the goal and the other part is the strategy for attaining the goal. The goal of the right wing elites is the social hierarchy – with them at the top of that hierarchy. President Franklin Roosevelt had a few words to say about them. He called them “Economic Royalists”. This is what he said of them at his 1936 Democratic Convention speech:


The second part of the definition of right wing is “Adherence and obedience to traditional values and authorities”. The most important words in that phrase are “obedience” and “authorities”. Those words virtually define authoritarian followers. Bob Altemeyer, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on authoritarianism, wrote in his book, the Authoritarians, that the three core characteristics of authoritarian followers are: 1) High degree of submission to authority; 2) Willingness to attack other people in the name of the authority; and, 3) Highly conventional attitudes.

Altemeyer defines two types of authoritarians – leaders and followers. The leaders are the right wing elites whose goal is to promote a social, political, and economic hierarchy, with them at the top – the ones that FDR referred to as “Economic Royalists”. But the leaders can’t do this alone. How could they? They are vastly outnumbered. So they need many millions of right wing followers.

But other than themselves, who would be interested in promoting or fighting for a social hierarchy with the right wing multi-millionaires and billionaires at the top? That’s where the personality of the right wing authoritarian follower comes in. By positioning themselves as the highest of authorities, the right wing authoritarian leaders convince the right wing authoritarian followers that the highest social good is obedience …. to themselves. And then they throw in “traditional values” in order to help their followers feel good about themselves. “Traditional values” is of course a vague enough term that it could be taken to mean just about anything. The authoritarian leaders essentially define it to mean the same thing as maintaining the status quo – with their place at the top.


What about left wing authoritarian followers?

Altemeyer explains that a major source of the authoritarian propensity for conformity is their inability (or refusal) to think for themselves. That personality characteristic provides fertile ground for nationalistic leaders who wish to drive their country into war – or anything else. If a person lacks the ability or inclination to think independently, then what other choice does he have but to accept what he’s told by authority figures?

Altemeyer describes an experiment in his book that sheds light on how authoritarians helped to perpetuate the Cold War, greatly facilitated by their aversion to independent thought. The experiment involved asking citizens of both the United States and the Soviet Union their thoughts about the Cold War, their own country, and the other country:


That experiment raises the question of so-called left wing authoritarians. Altemeyer’s discussion of that issue is a little confusing. First he emphasizes the difference between the psychological and the political. Since the primary characteristic of an authoritarian follower is submission to established authority, that would make American authoritarians almost all right wing authoritarians. But what about the authoritarians of the USSR in Altemeyer’s experiment, who were just as submissive to the Soviet authorities during the Cold War as the American authoritarians were to their country’s authorities? Altemeyer deals with that issue by saying that the Soviet authoritarian followers were right wing authoritarians in the psychological sense but left wing in the political sense. He therefore says that he will refer to all followers of traditional authority, whether Communist or anything else, as right wing authoritarian followers, since they are all right wing in the psychological sense, regardless of their political views. In other words, it is the right wing psychological trait that connects all of these authoritarian followers, regardless of their political views. Altemeyer then confuses the issue a little by noting the existence of left wing authoritarians, saying that “I’m sure one can find left wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America…”

Anyhow, with that as background, let’s consider the issue of whether or not totalitarian Communism is left wing or right wing, even in the political sense.


The beginnings of totalitarian Communism

The Bolsheviks, who eventually became the Communist Party, came to power in Russia in the October Revolution of 1917. Their two most prominent leaders at that time were Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Bolshevism/Communism was considered left wing at the time in large part because the revolution involved an overthrow of the traditional Russian authorities, the Russian monarchy, or Czar (Actually, the October revolution was preceded by a February 1917 Revolution, in which a parliamentary type of government came to power after overthrowing the Czar). The October revolution was followed shortly by the Russian Civil War (1918-21), in which the monarchical forces, known as the White Russians, attempted unsuccessfully to regain power from the Bolsheviks, with some help from the United States and some European powers. Shortly after that, with the melding together of additional territories, Russia morphed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – The Soviet Union for short. In 1922, Lenin suffered some strokes, from which he never recovered, and he died in January 1924.

In 1922 before his health problems began, Lenin appointed Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party. In that post, Stalin moved to consolidate power, so that by the time that Lenin died, Stalin was in pretty good position to move into the vacuum of power created by Lenin’s death. Lenin noted Stalin’s extreme opportunism before he died, and consequently told some of his followers that Stalin was too ruthless to be trusted and should be removed from his position. But it was too late. In short order, Stalin became the leader of the Communist Party, and thereby the leader of the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s most notable talent was ruthless political in-fighting. From the time of Lenin’s death in 1924 until Stalin’s total consolidation of power by the late 1930s, Stalin’s reign was characterized by a massive series of bloody purges – one after the other. Just after he used one ally to wipe out what he considered to be a threat to his power, he would recruit another ally to help him wipe out the former one. Consequently, by the late 1930s, all but a small handful of the original Bolsheviks were gone. Michael H. Hart summarizes the process in his book, “The 100 – A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History”:



The Soviet Union under Stalin as a right wing dictatorship

So, the question we should ask ourselves is: In what sense if any was the Soviet Union under Stalin – under whose leadership the Cold War between the United States and the USSR began – a left wing government? It is true that the ideal of Communism is “a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.”

But what does that definition have in common with the actual Soviet Union as it existed under Stalin (or his successors)? Stalin was a mass murdering tyrant. The idea of “holding of all property in common…” under Stalinism was a sham. Stalin had unitary control over everything. He purposely starved millions of peasants to death just to consolidate his power. How is that consistent with “holding of all property in common”? Hart summarizes the crux of Stalin’s reign:


If Stalin’s USSR was so “left wing”, then the Nazi-Soviet pact of September 1939 becomes a little difficult to explain. True, Hitler turned on Stalin’s USSR and invaded it less than two years later. But that was just a matter of one warlord turning on another. What was the difference between Hitler and Stalin? They were both ruthless mass murdering tyrants.


The similarities between Stalin’s Soviet Union and George W. Bush’s regime

In his book “Ghost Plane”, Stephen Grey, Amnesty International Award-Winning Journalist for Excellence in Human Rights Reporting, meticulously documents the illegal and horrendous system of torture and other human rights abuses that George Bush perpetrated upon the world as part of his so-called “War on Terror”. In his book, copyrighted in 2006, Grey estimated that 11 thousand men and boys fell victim to this evil system since the onset of George Bush’s “War on Terror”. Here are some excerpts from Grey’s book, in which he compared George Bush’s “War on Terror” with the USSR under Stalin:



Conclusions

Let’s return to the crux of the definition of right wing: Promotion of social hierarchy and obedience to authority. What primarily characterized Hitler’s, Stalin’s, and Bush’s regimes if not the promotion of hierarchy – with Hitler, Stalin, and Bush at the top of their respective pyramids? Promotion of hierarchies like that doesn’t come without severe costs. In their grasping for ever more power and wealth, violence is necessarily employed, often with many hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties.

And what enabled those bloodthirsty regimes to exist if not millions of right wing authoritarian followers whose foremost psychological trait was a propensity for obedience to authority?

That is essentially what right wing regimes are – ruthless systems in which the elites at the top of the pyramid make every effort to maintain and increase their wealth and power, at the expense of everyone else. If their nation’s countrymen don’t like it, that’s too bad. Those who get in the way do so at great risk, and they often pay the ultimate price. There are wars, torture, and innumerable casualties.

So, the idea that Stalin’s totalitarian rule was the work of a leftist regime is nothing but a very sad joke. It has been used by the right wing elites of the United States of America for many decades to support their agenda. It is well past time to put that myth to rest.

Thanks again for an excellent read!

I took a course in Russian history as a freshman in college.

I think that its time frame went to about the time of Stalin's death. It was one of the most interesting courses I ever took, and it was a real eye opener. Probably it's what started me thinking about how things like "Communism" get labeled according to peoples' agenda, rather than as an attempt to clarify anything.

Jonah Goldberg now ghostwrites for DU.

Nazi Germany. Trivializes it.

If our government were so bad, President Obama wouldn't be president right now.

Life in Russia still sucks. I've lived there.

May they both rot in hell

I was said that Bush's mode of governing was similar to Hitler and Stalin. It is true that the numbers of tortured and killed were a lot smaller -- Stephen Grey acknowledged that in his comparison. But I don't think that that was because Bush was essentially different than Hitler or Stalin.

Bush was operating in a country that had a long history of Democracy behind it -- and that acted as a limiting factor in how far he could go with his right wing plans. Do you not think that he would have gone a lot farther if he thought he could have gotten away with it? Do you not think that he would have used nuclear weapons against Iran if he believed that he wouldn't have been met with a great deal of resistance? His approval ratings were down in the 20s as it was.

I don't see how any of that trivializes what Hitler or Stalin did.

Bush is just as evil as Hitler and Stalin ever were, but he just didn't have the opportunities for mass murder that they did.

Don't think he didn't take advantage of what opportunities he did have - 1.3 million people are dead because of Bush.

If he was in a country that didn't have the democratic traditions the U.S. did, I'm positive he probably would have killed 30 million.

Pure fucking evil.

it's incorrect to ever refer to Russia's former system as communist

the closest thing to communism is what came to pass in Cuba, but even there it wasn't really communism

otherwise....communists were outstanding labor organizers and labor leaders in the U.S.

the U.S. industrial unions own their very existence to the brave communist leaders who worked to organize workers

not sure what your point is with all this

what's the argument, stated succinctly?

My point was just the opposite -- that it wasn't Communist at all. I wouldn't call it capitalism either -- it was simply a pure dictatorship.

This is what I said about the subject:


I guess that by using "Totalitarian Communism" in the title, you thought that I was implying that Russia was a Communist country under Stalin. What I meant to say was that what we call "Totalitarian Communism" was not Communism at all. I guess I should have put the Communism in the title in quotes.

and "authoritarianism." I mush prefer the two axis analysis of liberal-conserative and authoritarian-libertarian used by sites like political compass. Even the Libertarian Party's world's shortest political test is a two axis test.

Stalinism was left and highly authoritarian. If you quit trying to shoehorn everything into a single dimension, it makes more sense.

I can't think of any.

universal free healthcare all come to mind immediately.

If that's what they had, then how did tens of millions of people starve to death? As far as state ownership of of means of production is concerned, it was a small ruling elite that had control over everything. That's not exactly "a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common". It was an iron dictatorship, just like Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, or the government that Bush and Cheney tried to give us. Just because it was labeled "Communism" doesn't mean that it was left wing.

Calling the Soviet Union under Stalin "Communism" is a little like saying that George Bush brought "democracy" to Iraq. If people really believed that, it would give democracy a bad name, wouldn't it? Just like Stalin did for Communism.

reminds me of a funhouse mirror version of jonah goldberg.

authoritarianism and statism are a malady that either leftwingers or rightwingers can fall prey to.

pretending that stalin was a rightwinger is ludicrous and laughable.

It does not matter if they wrap it in a flag, religion, mother earth, etc people who want to control me and others are assholes.

Control is not a rw/lw thing really, rw/lw is just a device people use to get what they want. Sadly folks on both sides will support someone as long as they wear the same label.

If you really mean that, you appear to be on the wrong forum.

And no, I am not on the wrong forum - but I have seen plenty of folks on the left advocate less choice for folks or punishing them for making choices they themselves don't make.

My point is that rw/lw extremists exist only in name in that sense - they use a platform for their own personal desires. Same with religion, someone can claim to be a christian and then use that claim to get others who are to help them achieve power.

When people associate themselves with a group they get a built in loyalty, does not mean people won't criticize them but them give them more of a pass because they believe their intentions are good (because they share core personal beliefs supposedly).

Hitler was not lw or rw, he was a selfish bastard who wanted power and he would use anyone to get it and any means to do so.

Giving people like that labels associating them with a political side seems like an attempt to attack the ideals of the many on one side by the few who claim to be on that side. And it is just not that simple.

I would prefer debating the merits of issues one on one instead of trying to side step them all by claiming that only a certain group produces bad leaders/terrorists/killers/etc.

I don't care what group some crazy leader says they are in, I care about their actions.

I suppose I could ask - how many terrorists have been followers of Islam compared to folks who claim to be Amish and then use that answer to whip up hate and fear of islamic folks. I just don't see how that is going to be productive though.

But my question was why someone considered Stalin to be LW, and you replied that it was because he "controlled people and limited their freedom" -- as if you equated that with left wing. I really don't believe you meant that, but that's what you said. Yes, that made him an extremist, but it certainly didn't make him a LW extremist, which is what my question was.

The nanny state types. I don't want people controlling my life over religious ideals anymore than I do for any other reason they come up with to save me or others from the wrath of whatever it is they are scared of.

But yeah, I worded my initial reply poorly in the headline.

now watch people swill it down.

Bush but Cheney. Bush was just the figurehead.

Anyhow, Bush certainly went along with it eagerly enough. He was just as right wing as the true architect.

nt

That the ruthless and greedy have no ideology save that of thirst for power and control.
And it matters little to them whether it is socialism or capitleism...they latch on to an ideology as a means to power.
Stalin was the most obvious of these sociopaths in history.
And I am convinced that if Cheney had the means and opportunity he would have been just as bad as Stalin for the same reasons.
K&R

becomes totalitarian. Bush tried to, and succeeded in some instances, in removing the checks and balances our founding fathers included in the Constitution.
Remember Bush saying a dictatorship would be easier, especially if he was the dictator. Bush has a long history of looking for the easy way, hence his long string of business failures.

exercising and inflicting great harm. We want to believe that our ideology is pure and doesn't hold seeds of evil. As individuals we want to believe that we wouldn't torture, that we wouldn't kill or harm others due to our ideology or because we were ordered to.

Science and history demur, but still we seek to reassure ourselves. Thus is born revisionism.

You don't think that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for tens of millions of deaths? You don't believe that Bush was responsible for more than a million deaths? Did you read the post or just the title?

yes, of course Hitler and Stalin were responsible for tens of millions of deaths and untold suffering. I'm pointing out that it's human nature to project evil onto the "other". And that goes for ideology as well as individuals. Your simplistic left wing-eternal good, right wing=evil, is simply denying the realities of human nature. Any system is as good or as bad as the people wielding power within that system.

Which is par for the course with you. I've rarely read a post of yours that addressed the issue that it purported to address. I said nothing about left wing, so your claim that my "simplistic left wing eternal good" has nothing to do with my post.

Do you disagree with the definition I quoted for right wing? If so, what is your definition of it? Right wing politics is characterized largely by support for social hierarchies and obedience to authorities. That's not my opinion, that's a definition. If the purpose of the leaders is to create hierarchies with themselves and their cronies at the top, and the followers have a great propensity to obey authority, no matter who the authority is, what good do you see following from that?

So, if you think that Stalinism was left wing, why don't you explain what you think was left wing about it, rather than simply raving about "revisionism" without even bothering to justify yourself.

"totalitarian communism" is really right wing. It's all about how it can't be leftwing. You use arguments that I find ludicreous- such as Altermyer's. Denying that your post is a refutation of the commonly held belief that Stalin was a left wing figure, etc, is just disingenuous.

I've explained what I believe: Any ideology can lead to horrors being perpetrated. And I do mean any. This is all about human nature, not political systems.

There you go again, making a claim that has no basis in reality. My argument is the refutation of a commonly held belief, and I make that perfectly clear. That commonly held belief was (and is) perpetrated by right wing elites to advance their agenda, including the Cold War.

Your only argument in favor of Stalinism being left wing is that it is a commonly held belief. I've asked you to explain what you think is left wing about it, and that's all you come up with. Apparently that's why you find my argument ludicrous -- because it goes against a commonly held belief.

I think the argument for that is sound. I'm arguing that any ideology is vulnerable to the flaws and frailities of human nature. My argement is simple and unassailable. Stalinism grew out of communism, which is widely recognized as a left wing ideology. Now you can deny that til the cows leap over the moon, but that's simply factual. As Muriel said, you're simply ascribing all things you don't like, into a pile you then label as right wing. That's quite human and quite pathetic.

You call my statement that Stalinism is NOT left wing the worst kind of revisionism, and then you turn arounnd and claim that you're not arguing that it is left wing. Make up your f***ing mind.

So your argument is that Stalinism grew out of communism. I'm not talking about what it grew out of. Have you ever heard of the idea that sometimes tyrants profess adherence to an ideology to gain power, and then once they're in power they adopt a system that has nothing whatsoever to do with that ideology? Have you ever read any history?

Stalin did not preside over a Communist system. So again I ask you, what was left wing about Stalinism? And please don't tell me once again that it is "common knowledge" or some crap like that.

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Consider, for instance, the confusion right at the top of the official power structure: many think that Cheney, although nominally a subordinate, had, in some ways more power (or had more of a say in the basic decisions) than Bush did. But it's a confused and unclear situation - it's not certain that Bush was a puppet, either. Other departments jockeyed for position too.

The Democrats won back majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006; that's not a rigid hierarchy.

Wealth obviously had a large influence on the decisions of the Bush administration (both for gain of their allies or themselves, and in the general "the rich are good" ideology he had); but it didn't always get what it wanted - eg Enron fell.

But wealth wasn't at all influential in the USSR. There was political power gathered by people, but no significant individuals became wealthy from it, and many lost it - and in that sense, it retained its left wing identity. There was also no significant inheritance of power by family in the USSR (unlike, say, North Korea). Again, this is an indication of the left wing, not the right.

You seem to drop the 'traditional' part of the definition you chose like a hot potato - saying that tradition was redefined as whatever the leader said is was is a huge cop-out. Stalin's purges were anything but traditional - he exterminated the power structures in the military and the church, and completely remade the state bureaucracy as he felt like. This was not 'traditional', nor was it conservative - a key word in most definitions of 'right wing'.

I think you've tried too hard with this piece to mirror Goldberg's "Liberal Fasciam' attempt. Just as Goldberg was cherry-picking, so are you.

Not a hierarchy at the level of individuals. Rather, a hierarchy at the level of classes. In other words, a hierarchy consisting of a ruling elite class and a follower class.

Or all the Democratic politicians who got control of Congress in 2006? Did they stop being part of the ruling elite in 2008?

That's what a call a hierarchical system.

Right wing leaders don't give a damn about "traditional" values. They simply define them to suit their purposes. Bush made sure that anti-gay measures were on the ballot for the 2004 election because he thought that would help him win. Rampant militarism was another of his "traditional values". Hitler talked about "traditional values", which he defined largely by anti-Semitism. As Stalin remained in power for a quarter of a century the "values" that he advanced became the ones that his followers adopted. The poor didn't fare any better under him than they did under the Czars. He purposely starved millions of them to death. These are all the "traditional values" that are adopted by right wing leaders. Then they are gulped up by their obsequious followers, which of course they need in order to help maintain their power.

It's accumulation of wealth. That shows us nothing about the structure of power, which is what a hierarchy is about. And note your graph shows a completely different situation from Stalin's USSR, where people did not get rich.

You, like the OP, are defining 'right wing' as "anything I don't like". Just like Goldberg defined left wing as anything he didn't like. The mirror of a bad argument doesn't have to be a good one.

As eomer says, it produces a class hierarchy. You don't think that wealth and power are intimately related?

And what about the "unitary executive" theory promoted by the Bush administration, which gave the president virtually unlimited power and destroyed our system of checks and balances? You don't think that that was the promotion of a hierarchy?

To say that I defint "right wing" as "anything I don't like" is the kind of cherry picking that you accused me. I defined it specifically as “Positions that focus on adherence and obedience to traditional values and authorities and creating or promoting a form of social hierarchy”, and I gave a source for it. If you disagree with that definition just say so, but don't accuse me of defining it as "anything I don't like".

And Communist Party members did get rich under Stalinism.

and claimed that only certain parts of that definition you had chosen were important. I already did say I disagree with your use of the definition, and that you'd ignored definitions that include 'conservative' in them.

Your definition source was Wikipedia - hah!

I'll counter with the following definitions of 'right':

Chambers dictionary: "the political party, or a group of people within a party, etc which has the most conservative views "

Merriam-Webster: " a often capitalized : individuals professing support of the established order and favoring traditional attitudes and practices and conservative governmental policies b often capitalized : a conservative position"

Oxford English Dictionary: " Conservative, reactionary; applied spec. to (members or supporters of) that part of a political party or grouping especially noted for its conservatism (see RIGHT n. 17d); right of centre : tending to hold conservative political views. See also RIGHT WING 3."

Yeah, your definition of 'right' is cherry-picking. You said in the OP it was "one of the best definitions I've seen"; you've selected it to try to bolster your article, and then further modified it.

You don't think that wealth and power are intimately related?

Usually, but not always. The USSR being a prime example of when they are not.

The 'unitary executive' was an attempt to gather further power. It was authoritarian; but that is not synonymous with 'right wing'.

I used to use it, but I came to the conclusion that conservatism is not at all the enemy that the "right wing" is. I've talked about that in a previous post, where I note that I myself have many conservative traits:


By the same token, many people have noted that George Bush is not at all a true conservative.

Consequently, I see a big difference between RW and conservative, and any definition of RW that includes conservative I don't believe to be any longer relevant. So I don't use those definitions. Call it cherry picking if you like, but I just don't believe that those definitions make sense these days.

You say that the "unitary executive" theory is not synonamous with RW. Do you think that it has anything to do with hierarchies?

And I did not "throw away" the part about "traditional values". I just said that the term is very ill defined, and RW leaders use it for their own purposes. I don't believe that the term has much intrinsic value other than as a tool for RW leaders. Right wingers would consider throwing women and doctors who participate in abortions into jail as a "traditional value". Liberals would consider giving a woman the right to choose an abortion a "traditional value". Right wingers would consider lynching black people to be a "traditional value", whereas liberals would consider giving those who are suspect of crimes a fair trial to be a "traditional value". I just don't see any intrinsic meaning to the term.

as a lefty, I agree and apreciate somebody here saying this. I too have been caught up in the labeling. Conservative is sometimes a very good and practical means to conserving... the ideology and politics of the GOP and some dems is NOT "conservative" at all. There is a distinction. If we want this country to move ahead, we must make that distinction, it will go a long way to uniting both conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives I know personally agree with my point of view more so than disagree... but when party politics comes into a conversation, things go down hill fast.

PS - when I have used "conservative" in the past, I used it to mock those who call themselves conservatives.... but for now on I will place quotes around that word.

I used to speak of "conservatives" as the opposition. And then it came to dawn on me that the word was confusing, and that there are many well meaning "conservatives" who are very different than what we think of as right wing.

'conservatism is not at all the enemy that the "right wing" is' does seem to back up my contention in reply #28 that you are defining a vital part of 'right wing' as 'something I am against'. It seems to me you have ended up redefining 'right wing' as 'authoritarian'.

Yes, the 'unitary executive' theory is associated with hierarchies; I suppose I was objecting to your rhetorical question in your conclusion: "What primarily characterized Hitler’s, Stalin’s, and Bush’s regimes if not the promotion of hierarchy?" - I could say that an incompetent, aggressive and illegal foreign policy characterised Bush's regime, the Holocaust characterised Hitler's, and so on. I don't think in either of those cases (and probably not for Stalin either, unless you count the killing of his citizens who didn't fall in line as 'promotion of hierarchy') was hierarchy the primary characteristic.

I believe that all dictatorships, including the one that Bush tried with some success to establish, are hierarchical almost by definition.

As far as equating right wing and authoritarianism, yes, I do that to a large extent. I use Altemeyer's words to do that in the OP. As far as I know, he is the foremost expert on authoritarianism, having devoted a good part of his life to researching it. So I believe that it is legitimate to quote and rely on his assessment of the subject.

Can't you think of anything better than that? Right wingers are wrong about a commonly accepted idea. So left wingers must also be wrong when they disagree with a commonly accepted idea. Is that the best you can come up with?

As you say, one part is the goal and the other part is the strategy for attaining the goal.

So what are the goals of right wing and left wing, respectively?

I think you've summed up right wing well in your conclusion:



Left wing, then must be the opposite: systems that benefit people broadly.

Unfortunately definitions of left and right are too often at the implementation (or strategy) level rather than the goal level and that leads to lots of confusion. For example, the definition of leftist as being in favor of common ownership. I believe that common ownership is a technique and that the proper definition of leftist is more abstract than that.

Here's an interesting article that argues that this confusion between goals and techniques leads to an mistaken belief that economists Smith and Keynes represent opposing schools of thought. He argues that the appearance of a difference is because their techniques were geared to the prevailing conditions of their respective eras when in fact their underlying goals were the same. In other words, they likely would have agreed even on the techniques if they had lived contemporaneously. Here's the article:



Thanks for a great post!

tactics).

Here's a definition of left wing politics: "... a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege".

And here's a definition of egalitarian: "Asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, esp. in political, economic, or social life." That sounds very much like our Declaration of Independence, except that our Declaration speaks more of equality of opportunity rather than absolute equality. I would substitute "fair" for "egalitarian" in the definition of left wing, and that's pretty much what I believe should be our goal -- notwithstanding the fact that people have very different definitions of what fair means.

...marx and lenin advocated a REVERSAL of the hierarchy initially-instead of the minority suppressing the majority, the majority would suppress the minority (the "state" would be used as the instrument of that suppression), until real equality was achieved and the state was no longer necessary. that sounds hierarchical and patently non-traditional.

The right loves to paint the Soviet Union as left-wing authoritarian. It may have started out that way, but wealth and power consolidated in the hands of a few, creating an oligarchy of the politically connected and those that profiteered from the state.

There was an interesting discussion a few weeks ago here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5429614#5430330

creating an oligarchy of the politically connected".

Exactly -- Thank you. :hi:

Where did they hide their Stock Market?

What about militant nationalism and imperialism. Do you not consider that right wing?

Right and Left "wings" have been defined in terms of the property question since well before the French Revolution. The attempt to turn that into quadrants of "authoritarianism" is just bullshit. It makes you spin in place and get dizzy. More importantly, it's a racket. There has never been a "right-wing" state that has not had a Stock Market. It's the property issue, you see? You can try to turn that on its ear if you like... you can claim space aliens if you want to... but that is a simple fact, easily supported.

The questions are simple but impossible to debate in a joint like this... Name an example of a "libertarian" state? (Maybe Pinochet's Chile?); What is "ownership" without "ownership"? What was the net impact of Stalin (including, how many people did he really kill?) and so on. The records exist since the fall of Communism... it is no longer a matter of conjecture.

My guess is that you are some sorta "Socialist" who doesn't want to drag along red-baitin' with the prize. You won't be the first. And you won't escape the baitin', either. It's the nature of the society, you see?

that is a minority view. I've never seen a definition of right wing that limited it to that.

And as far as the property issue is concerned, I think that the distribution of wealth is much more salient than whether a stock market exists. In Bush's America, income distribution reached unprecedented highs. In Stalin's Soviet Union there was a class at the very top -- the highest Communist Party officials -- who had far more wealth than the rest of the empire, much of which Stalin starved to death.

A fine result of decades of Cold War propaganda which was at least partially derived from Nazi propaganda. Every fault magnified, every positive ignored. It wasn't no bed of roses, there were abuses, but the 'worse than Hitler' jive is false, a Boogie Man.

What is never done is comparing the abuses of Capitalism directly to the genuine record of the Soviet Union.

Truth be told, liberalism is more accommodating to fascism.

I'm not blaming that on Communism -- which Stalin did not practice. I'm blaming it on Stalin.

Yes, there was a famine, and yes, the revolution did come down hard on the kuklaks, but those bull headed 'rich peasants' were trying blackmail, withholding their goods from the cities on the verge of starvation. they burnt grain in the fields and slaughtered livestock rather than not get their price. Something had to be done under the circumstances and some of it wasn't pretty, but the famine was not self inflicted. As for Stalin, yes, he was a strongman and was responsible for the unjust death of many thousands, but millions, I think not. Consider the circumstances, the history, and remember that the necessities of history do not give a flip about your or my preferences.

Where do you get your information on that?

Liberalism is more accommoding to fascism than conservatism or capitalism?

for your assumption. Thanks.

In a bit of a hurry today.

It is the righteousness, the insistence that people must become like them in order for politics to advance, that gives me the willies. This leads to the nannyism that many find so objectionable. The conservatives, you know what they're about and are vigilant, but the liberals, so nice and well meaning, will try to slide by with the same crap the conservatives do but in sweet, reasoned, humanitarian drag, but ultimately achieving the same goal as the conservatives. The sorry affair in Yugoslavia is a case in point, it looks like we'll see another round of aggression disguised as humanitarianism, maybe Somalia, soon. The disingenuous nonsense that we hear around here about us being in Afghanistan to save the women is another example of this. Yes, we save them by bombing them, right.

It's obvious to me there is no difference between the state system owning the corporations (far left) or the corporate system owning the state (far right), when the same people own both systems the only difference is branding.

edit: that's why fascism makes left/right distinctions irrelevant. The power spectrum (two-color that it is) really should be defined as owner/owned.

authoritarians need certainty (finality, absolutism, over simplification) more than liberals

the more they need certainty, the more uncertainty is their enemy, to be feared (nature, complexity, open endedness, creativity)

and the more the absolute certainty of the supreme leader attracts them

and according to this theory, physiology

sexonthewrongbrain.org

nice distraction right wing elite. Now it comes back to bite you in your collective asses.

rec'ed

Describing the big picture in an easy to understand and succinct form is tremendously difficult indeed, and you are obviously quite good at it Dr. Dale...

But for some people the truth goes too far beyond what they’ve learned to comprehend, it is simply too critical of their comfortable “authoritarian” premises, as many of the replies in this thread are showing; hence their ganging up on you. In short the evidence you present doesn’t match the subjective conclusions of their in-group paradigm and they have no objective facts to counter or disprove what your revealing, not to mention most of them probably didn’t even read the OP, so they resort to slinging the visceral mud and attempt to change the subject to counting dead bodies in the aftermath of tyrants that lost in war as a measure of how evil the character, while at the same time avoiding to discuss with an open mind the character itself. This of course could make the argument of willful ignorance and how blind and psychologically impoverished the authoritarian follower is; and how they help would be tyrants ascend the ladders of power…

Not all people want to wake up and hear the truth, but hopefully and eventually those that do, will do so because of people of like you and essays like this. So thanks for the hard work and perseverance.

K&R for a another great OP…

There has indeed been a lot of hostility to this OP.

And thank you again for recommending -- and providing -- Altemeyer's book for me. It's very educational and a great read. I'm still reading it.

One thing for sure, there is an endless supply of authoritarian followers, and thus the book becomes an invaluable tool in many ways… I also find it to be the perfect companion to Lobaczewski’s book “Ponerology” as psychopaths it seems; inevitably become the preferred leaders of authoritarian followers…

I think your OP is if nothing else food for thought. As General Clark's son pointed out recently we are all the victims of 'marketing' be that which burger to buy or what the reality of the world is. Your OP points out, in it's own way, we should not be so accepting of what is being 'sold to us' and that we should be willing to examine the ideas and definitions we have been fed for their validity. Of course, as you indicate in your piece when you try discuss things 'outside the box' with right wing followers you may be fighting a lost cause. Be it acquiescence to a political authority or a religious authority these followers do not willing accept alternative ideas or even exploring the idea of reinterpreting information with new 'definitions' to see what light that shines on the subject. Good OP.

'sold to us' -- given the fact that our RW corporate media tries to sell us everything under the sun.

I shudder at the cruelty and deception perpetrated on humanity throughout the 20th Century. There is always the hope of breaking through but even today these same forces are working at holding onto their power and increasing their wealth at any expense. If there were only one source for all this misery that we could point to, it would be easier to combat. But it seems a common strand of psychology that happens to those who partake in political power and are willing to do what is required to become wealthy within the economic structures of today.

Their greatest weapon against the rise of freedom and economic prosperity for the mass of humanity is the assassination of our grass-root organizers and the people who can articulate the honest truth about the disparity. But to be clear, I don't think that repression and keeping people in poverty are their motivations. It's simply greed. Whatever would cost them power or diminish their wealth, they work against in a multitude of small ways and the collective end result is repression and poverty.

Rather it is, as you say "simply greed. Whatever would cost them power or diminish their wealth, they work against in a multitude of small ways and the collective end result is repression and poverty."

Exactly

You can have a totalitarian left wing nation and a free right wing nation, and vice versa. Stalin's USSR may not have been "liberal", but it certainly was left wing.

As the presenter of this OP has asked a couple of other posters could you flesh out how exactly you believe Stalins USSR was left-wing. Not saying your wrong but would just like to see your explanation a la the original post in this thread.

There are some features having to do with religion and monarchy involved also, but I generally agree with you.

The most thoughtful provocative DU post that I've read in a long time.

The terms "left" and "right" can be defined and twisted in any number of ways to make it appear that all the tyrants of the world have been on the other side.

Leftists will say that Stalin was a rightist because Stalin limited personal freedoms.
Rightists will say Hitler was a leftist because he favored a strong national government.

This is stupid and childish.

Edit: The American right had nothing to do with Stalin; some American leftists supported Stalin.

You start off basically saying that the terms 'left wing' and 'right wing' are useless and then you proceed to tell us that the 'communists' in the USSR where absolutely 'left wing'. I agree with your original idea that the 'marketers of ideas' can twist these terms to their own needs. As I asked a previous poster can you flesh out your ideas on what exactly makes Stalin and those that followed him 'left wing' by your definition? As the original poster pointed out adherence to 'communism' may have just been the tool the Stalin used to fool the public and that in the end what was created had nothing to do with true communism and everything to do with authoritarianism and control.

I've edited my post accordingly.

They used him and his government as the primary bogeyman to fuel the Cold War -- even for almost four decades after he died.

And yes, some American leftists supported Stalin. They were fooled -- like my grandfather, who denied until the day he died all the atrocities that Stalin perpetrated. The fact that some American leftists supported him does not in any way show that he was leftist.

First of all, RIGHT/LEFT is not a cultural term, it is an economic term. Right means pure capitalism, left means pure socialism. Either can be "democratic" although it can be easily argued that capitalism has no hope of being democratic for long as the wealthy will inevitably buy government control through secret organizations.

The word "totalitarian" is a cold war ideological weapon used to link fascism with socialism when they have nothing to do with one another. There is nothing more "totalitarian" than capitalism. No? Try to be anything other than capitalist and see what happens: assassination, death squads, US soldiers on your soil. What is a US president? A commander-in-chief who dresses in suits instead of berets and camo. What is a US election? An argument between two far right

FACT: Kabul was a thriving "liberal" city under socialism with women's rights, the arts, and freedom for gay people.
REALITY: The US sided with the anti-democratic religious extremists to destroy Afghanistan directly empowering those we are fighting today.

FACT: The US assassinated the democratically elected democratic-socialist Mossadeq in Iran for corporate oil.
FACT: The US assassinated the democratically elected democratic-socialist Arbenz in Guatemala for corporate fruit.
FACT: The US and various banks support death squads in Mexico against the Zapatistas, indigneous peoples who are only fighting to keep their land from multinationals.
FACT: The US staged a coup against Chavez, a democratically elected leftist in Venezuela.
FACT: The US staged a coup against Evo Morales, a democratically elected leftist in Bolivia.
FACT: The US government, Ford, ITT assassinated a democratically elected moderate socialist in Chile and put in a fascist dictator.
FACT: The US government used the American people as guinea pigs, dropping glass bulbs of bacteria in the NY subway system in the 1960s
FACT: I could go on and on with examples--from declassified US government files.

QUESTION: IS THERE ANYTHING MORE "TOTALITARIAN" THAN THE US GOVERNMENT AND THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IT REPRESENTS? Why is it "democratic"? Do you have a right to vote out the current regime? Or do you just get to vote in a new face for the Capitalist Party?

FACT: Stalin was an unfortunately historical turn of events. He was the GWB of the USSR who came to power during a time of concern over dealing with fascism.
FACT: The Soviet Union under Lenin was a DEMOCRATIC CENTRALIST government. Lenin was often in the minority of votes.

Yep. That pretty much makes my point, as noted in the title of my OP -- which you call "Total nonsense".

Doesn't make any difference! People don't know how economic systems work within varying systems of government, and we're probably not teaching much about this, either. MORE dumbing-down.

And whats fascism, anyhow?

If it's not defined as Communism or (according to the righties anyway) something approaching Communism, then what exactly is it?

I agree with the OP that "right wing" should be redefined as totalitarianism or authoritarianism. That would make "left wing" the equivalent of anti-authoritarianism, which is probably a pretty good working definition. I consider myself an anti-authoritarian, and that's how I'd describe the mindset on DU also. Of course there are individual exceptions, but the general anti-authoritarian atmosphere is why I can't stay away from this place for more than a few days.

and should have been said a long time ago. Like all Baby Boomers, I lived and breathed the Cold War during my growing-up years. I drank in Cold War rhetoric and propaganda with my mother's milk...and yet I STILL somehow always knew how bogus it was. But I don't think even now I could have articulated what I knew as well as you just did.

And they're still using socialism/Communism as the great bogeyman even now -- 18 years after the end of the Cold War. They think that all they have to do to discredit anything that they don't like is attach the word socialism to it -- End of story.

If one wants to define right vs. left in terms of authoritarianism then this is just an exercise in making up what words mean, and should be about two sentences long.

"Authoritarian = right-wing. Stalin was as authoritarian as anyone could want, so Stalin = right-wing."

But "authoritarian" does not equal "right-wing," as much as I might wish it did.

And if you think that there's much difference between RW and authoritarianism, you should read Bob Altemeyer's book, which I quoted and linked to in the OP. Altermeyer is probably the foremost expert in the world on authoritarianism.

How many Republican Congresspersons can you name who aren't authoritarians?

Stalin--implemented new economic policy to save Russia from collapse
Obama--implements new economic policies to save America from collapse

Stalin--Subsidized agriculture
Obama--supports Farm Bills and Monsanto shills

Stalin--Gulag
Obama--FEMA camps

Stalin--Believed marriage is between man and woman
Obama--Believes marraige is between man and woman

I am being facetious, but I do find that trying to paint Stalinism with Bush is just as absurd as painting Fascism with Liberalism. The political compass is a bit screwed up and the right/left dichotomy is not completely accurate. There have been left and right authoritative government along with people on both the right and left espousing individual liberty and minimal or no government.

The left tends to be more communal, especially regarding natural resources and means of production and the involvement of the state could be next to nothing or completely authoritative.