“liberal” vs. “leftist”
So I got into an argument with a hard-right conservative via her blog last week… originally it started as a brief reply by me to one of her posts on the virginia tech shootings, but rapidly escalated into one of those bill o’reily style affairs where I wrote one thing and she “rebutted” me by condemning me for saying something totally different then what I’d actually written, followed by me trying to set the record straight, more wild accusations, and so on. I had posted part of that discussion here but after sleeping on it decided to take it down and instead write something new on one of the key points of contention.
It’s become highly fashionable among americans in general to refer to anything and everything to the left of the republican party as “liberal”, a habit that is obviously ridiculous to anyone who knows anything at all about liberalism as a movement going back to the enlightenment via the american and french revolutions. hard-line republicans (of the right-wing American variety, not the left-wing European sort) take this a step further and conflate “liberal” with “marxist”, and insist in defiance of all evidence that the center-right american democrats are actually socialist radicals bent on setting up a soviet-style marxist state in america. Personally, i think it’s hilarious. It’s also kind of sad because it graphically illustrates just how low the level of political awareness has sunk in dumbfuckistan (that part of the united states currently under the sway of the american taliban – the christian right).
The more i thought about it, the more it almost made sense in a bizarre sort of way, the political spectrum i was taught in high school (and which most americans use to conceptualize political reality) is a simple one, stretching from right to left in a straight line. At one end is fascism, at the other extreme is communism, and capitalism is right smack in the middle – never mind that fascism is actually capitalist.
Communism <----------------- Capitalism --------------------------> Fascism
In our public school classrooms our children are taught early and often that extremism of both kinds is dangerous and will inevitably lead to totalitarianism, and that the best place to be is right smack in the middle, the only place where freedom is possible. You’ll notice, of course, that Anarchism is left out of the picture entirely. American conservatism starts at the right side of the capitalist center, and from that vantage point everything to the left of them approaches socialism in some degree. The further to the right the viewer the more socialist their opponents appear, and since the American taliban is borderline fascist it shouldn’t surprise us that they wail on and on about how the democrats are really socialists in disguise.
Now from my earliest inklings of political awareness this spectrum struck me as a bit odd, not least because of the obvious similarities between the political systems of Fascism and (Marxist) communism and the economic similarities between American style capitalism and fascism. When I first stumbled across anarchism it suddenly made sense – if there is authoritarian capitalism, libertarian capitalism, and authoritarian socialism, there must also be libertarian socialism – and libertarian socialism just happens to be one of the many names of Anarchism. I was rather glad to find (a few years later) that I wasn’t the only one who thought this way. In fact, the political spectrum commonly used by political scientists is a four point one, in which anarchism, marxism, fascism, and liberal capitalism are the four extremes, like so:
The first thing this graph should reveal is why it is silly of anarchists to fall for claims by Marxists that we have common enemies and should create a united front against capitalism. We have just as big a difference between left-authoritarians and ourselves as we de between right-libertarians and ourselves. If anything we might be better off making an alliance with the libertarians, they at least have historically been less likely to massacre their erstwhile allies. When it comes down to it, however, we’re pretty much on our own and would do much better to focus our energies on building anarchist institutions which can sustain us through the coming struggles and give shape and definition to our movement. Relying on alliances with people who fundamentally disagree with our ideas on either authority or capitalism is incredibly shortsighted and can only lead to disaster – as it did for our comrades in Russia, Spain, China, and Cuba.
Looking at it this way, I think, shows the relationships of the four to each other rather nicely. You’ll notice I don’t have 2 separate dots on here for democrats and republicans, and that is because – contrary to what the right-wingers think – there really is no difference between the two in terms of their economic positions. They spar a little bit here and there over how many crumbs the state should throw to the poor and compete with each other in their worship of the military-industrial complex, but in real terms the differences are trivial.
There are flaws with this graph, of course. In particular I don’t think it does justice to the differences in ownership structures among the four – Marxism has state ownership, mercantilism and fascism use corporate ownership, classical liberalism was based on individual ownership, and anarchism is based on community or worker ownership. That ownership structure is why the USA and Japan are in the fascist / mercantilist square, though obviously at the more “free” end, and why social democracy is in the Marxist square. In American and Japanese capitalist models corporations dominate the economy – the free and open competition between small businesses that supplies the mythology of capitalism is a thing of the past, if indeed it ever existed at all. Likewise, in European social democracy the role of the state and state-owned corporations in the economy looms large, even though “independent” corporations populate the majority of the marketplace. Frankly, I’m inclined to locate it on the right side of the line, but I’ve left it on the left out of deference to all the social-democrats who self-identify as the moderate wing of the socialist movement.
The graph is also useful for charting the “reforms” in China and other “post-communist” states. Many American political analysts have hailed the move towards privatization as a necessary step towards “democracy”, as though there was some sort of magical linkage between democracy and capitalism! In fact, the Chinese government is moving from left to right from Marxism to Fascism – nothing could be further from the minds of the corrupt ruling clique then democratization. State-owned and State-controlled corporations still control the “commanding heights” of the economy so they’re still on the Marxist side, but only just barely.
The final thing that this graph should clarify is that Liberalism is a fundamentally right wing ideology. It is anti-authoritarian when considered in relation to the feudalism that preceded it and the fascist and mercantilist competitors it has faced, but no love is lost between liberals and genuine leftists. At its birth and in the French and American Revolutions it was a radical ideal but nowadays that radicalism is little more then a distant memory. It is not now – and never has been – an anti-capitalist ideology and anyone who attempts to conflate the two is just plain silly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
oh! and please feel free to steal and re-use this image as much as you like, just please store it on your own servers if you do rather then linking to my copy of it and eating my bandwidth. thanks.
Posted: May 15th, 2007 under politrix.
Comments: 6
Comments
Comment from lynx
Time: July 3, 2007, 4:03 am
I found an online political affiliation quiz that uses a similar spectrum to the one i’ve posted here. check it out: http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
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Time: July 23, 2007, 5:09 am
[...] left and reactionaries on the right, but it’s also true for people in the so-called “center“. You can see this playing out in message boards and forums all over the internet wherever [...]
Comment from Joshua
Time: February 23, 2009, 1:13 am
Look at you, the high and mighty democrat defender. Perhaps your article, though thought out and well written, would have a more positive impact if you didn’t classify all of us “dumbfuckistan” christians and republicans in the same chapter of political awareness. Don’t you find it ironic that you chastise a political party in its entirety as ignorant for stereotyping everyone to the left of them as socialists (perhaps read Matthew 7:3, Christian or not, it’s good advice). That is the epitome of an ignorant fool my friend. Congratulations on your political intellect, but perhaps next time don’t let your desperation for intellectual validation cloud your vision of what the unbiased viewer might be thinking when they dive into your article.
Comment from lynx
Time: February 23, 2009, 9:41 am
Joshua,
I’m hardly defending democrats, I’m saying there’s a huge difference between them and me. get it straight.
If you believe in creationism and want it taught in schools you’re an idiot. if you seriously believe it’s a good idea to continue spending more then 50% of federal taxes on war then you’re an idiot. if you think invading other countries and massacring civilians to spread “democracy” is a good plan – you guessed it – you’re an idiot. I could keep listing. the platform of the christian hard-right is completely outside the bounds of any reasonable debate because it’s willfully ignorant of the facts and refuses to deal with reality. Accordingly it deserves no respect AT ALL from me or anyone else so no respect is exactly what I give it. If you’re down with the american taliban you’re a dumbfuck. deal with it. oh, and quoting scripture on an atheists’ blog? yeah, that doesn’t say much for your intellect either.
and if the shoe doesn’t fit and you’re not on some hard-right christian supremacist ‘bomb the world for god’ ish then take it off already and quit bitching about how it doesn’t fit because I’m not talking about you.
Comment from Illego
Time: February 23, 2009, 4:34 pm
Totally agree with you, Lynx. And I’m glad there are some Americans with their political eyes open. I used to think of myself as Liberal Marxist, but over time the nagging doubts I had about such repulsive theories as the dictatorship of the proletariat and democratic centralism made me see the error of my ways… So to conflate Libertarian Communism, Marxism-Leninism, Social Democracy.. I can’t believe there are people so myopic or so machiavellian as to do it, by accident or design !
And already, years ago ago, I already wondered why in the US ‘Liberal’ meant everything left of Conservatism – Liberalism, the philosophy of unashamedly keeping social peace, and keeping capitalism in place with the minimum of social disturbance, by buying off discontent with mild reforms. All I could come up with is that it’s a Right-Wing country, where Unions are smashed, a myth of free-trade and extreme individualism reigns (a myth, in that there’s free trade when it disadvantages the poor, yet massive State intervention when it benefits business – and not only under Obama!), and where, at the end of the day, there’s an ideological bias to wipe all socialistic and humanistic inclinations from the communal psyche – Correct me if I’m wrong, but I see two Right-wing, pro-business parties, defined by little more than secularism versus religious traditionalism… That’s European politics – in 1800 !
And I thought *our* political parties are excessively moderate ! (incidentally, I’d personally say you put Social democratic parties too much to the left ; the majority — New Labour, PSF, PSOE etc etc — are barely distinguishable, economically, from our Right, and only slightly more liberal. And where would we place the ultra-moderae Stalinism of the 1930s, based on nothing more than how its mass of militants judged it to be..? )
Also, while I think of it, about your positioning of Mussolini’s Italy… He started out as a Socialist (his dad was Anarchist 
), as did all the various fascisms (De Man in Belgium, Doriot in France, Mosley in the UK, Hitler the National-SOCIALIST !), and his social policy reflected, to some minor degree, his intellectual origins… I think the way we’re told Fascism is on the Right, and evil, is just as simplistic as saying Anarchism is chaotic and evil. It’s a way of controling people through fear – Anarchism, Communism, Socialism and Fascism are evil, so stick with Liberal-democratic capitalism (What else is there left ? ) – Which is equally totalitarian, in its own way: I cant do the idea justice, so please please read what the Frankfurt School have to say about this- ‘Eclipse of Reason’ or ‘Dialectic of the Enlightenment’; I highly recommend them for an incisive look beyond the facade of Hyperdemocracy and Reason which we’ve been brought up to accept as natural, and whose logical end is Authoritarianism, passivity of the individual, and manipulation of the masses into pogroms, whether against Jews in Germany, ‘Reds’ in the ’50s, or Muslims nowadays…
Well, I think I got a bit off track there ! But I hope I made my points . Great music Lynx, great insight, and peace from a Comrade in Ireland
Viva el Comunismo libertario
Comment from Random guy in the US
Time: June 14, 2011, 9:43 am
The State as the owner and boss isn’t socialist. When Karl Marx hailed the Paris Commune as example in embryo of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class, it wasn’t because the Communards were calling for state ownership of production but because they were taking power into their own hands and creating a direct democracy for workers with the aim of excluding those in power from this democracy. In societies with the highest degrees of state ownership, the former USSR, China and Israel, workers are, or were, still paid in wages. Capitalism in classical marxism is presupposed by the existence of wage labor, therefore wherever workers are exploited and made to be wage slaves so that they may subsist, there you have a capitalist society. Ergo, state ownership of capital changes nothing in the equation of exploitation. Private ownership of capital changes nothing in the equation of oppression. Fundamentally profits in a state-owned economy are absorbed by the state itself, not necessarily taking the direct form of monetary profits but the true function of the accumulation of profit is there as is the inherent problem of falling rates of profit accumulation.
The social democrats, trotskyists, and stalinists generally don’t pay much attention to Marx’s third volume of capital. Nevertheless capitalism eats itself and becomes a barrier to its own expansion. The world economic crisis today is a testament that the state cannot forever put off outbreaks of the capitalist crisis.
It is worth noting that most of the Frankfurt School weren’t “libertarian” in any sense of the word, mostly they were disillusioned ex-stalinoids of the sort that were very popular among the sixties left and left academics who like quoting Marcuse or Gramsci. They weren’t faced with the situation workers are faced with today, which I would define as a live or die, kill or be killed type of situation. The class struggle of the future will be a struggle of survival. Survival trumps false philosophical dichotomies of authoritarian or libertarian, democracy or dictatorship.
The “dictatorship of the proletariat” was a term used to define working class power apart from the order Marx’s contemporaries were speaking of. Revolutionaries of Marx’s day were talking about “revolutionary dictatorship”, this idea can be seen in Bakunin’s works, in Blanqui’s writing and elsewhere quite commonly. Instead of a supposed “revolutionary dictatorship”, Marx counterposed to this idea of a dictatorship of workers over their oppressors.
The writer of the piece above is absolutely right that the US is run by two deeply reactionary capitalist political parties whose policies are virtually identical and whose rhetoric often clashes to the extent that they struggle with each other for power over the state itself. The US political landscape hasn’t changed much since the nineteenth century. The left in the US was crushed back in 1919. The IWW was smashed, the Socialist Party of America was isolated and splintered, and the Communist Party was straight out illegal before it was legalized and then smashed. Anarchism in the US was strong but without political organization was left in the dust by other political tendencies. The sixties left in the US was a last gasp from a dying corpse of an old movement. The US will only become more right-wing and it will be the US ruling class that starts WWIII.
All republics turn into oligarchies. Note the three kind of republic in modern society are a “democratic” republic, a fascist republic and a stalinist republic. They are all capitalist in the most fundamental ways and they all end up as military plutocracies. As far as I can tell a republic is just a hypocrites’ word for a plutocracy.
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