Are these three categories for countries and political parties useful?

Politics & Elections
21

Two big problems:

1a. In theory, there should be a broad anti-Trump coalition consisting of conservatives who are what they say they are and everyone left of center. That was part of the motivation for the ne0liberal twitter account. That and to tweak the noses of socialists who liked to elide the center left with Reaganauts. In practice, Never Trumpers (former conservatives who drew a hard line between them and Trump) are electorally tiny. Sufficiently tiny that the neoliberals rebranded as new liberals.

1b. Or as former Republican election consultant Stuart Stevens said, “It was all a lie.” The OP creates an intellectual framework based in part on what self-described conservatives say they are. But such descriptions should be distrusted. Stuart Stevens:

How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? Because it had always been about power… It was all a lie.

The usual descriptions of conservatism are special pleading: they don’t have a firm sociological grounding in belief.

  1. Conservatism’s wellspring isn’t about policy, it’s about opposition to liberalism, which they like to elide with socialism because it’s all about opposition and drama.

All the same, I present another taxonomy.

Utopians, h/t Dr. Drake. These include authoritarian socialists (ie Communists), democratic socialists and various worker’s parties. They advocate for particular groups and lean against utilitarian calculus. They may or may not be empirical.

Reformists: This group seeks a more perfect union. Here are 2 subdivisions:

a) Progressive reformists vs reform skeptics. Reform skeptics understand the need for governmental policy to adapt to changing circumstances, but they like to proceed cautiously. This is what conservatives used to claim they were (less so now). Think Nixon: “They’ll pass environmental laws, we’ll pass environmental laws, but we’ll do it right.” Certain pundits with economic training like to pose as reform skeptics as well. Progressive reformists tend to push solutions for the biggest problems spotted with apparent solutions (not necessarily good solutions).

b) Empirical reformists v fake reformists. You need to take into account bad faith, right? If reform happens, it doesn’t work, and you still want to keep it, you weren’t motivated by public welfare to begin with. Now maybe you are a utopian, who doesn’t pretend to practice utilitarianism. Or maybe you are a conservative fake reformer who advocates for tax cuts under all circumstances like a broken record. Fake reformists like to disguise themselves as reform skeptics.

Everyone else aka conservatives. Here are 3 subcategories:

a) Reform skeptics. Lol. More like fake reformists. The center left has plenty of folk with deep policy knowledge and cautious temperament.

b) Conservative emotionalists. This group is huge, probably the largest. Its loadstar was best articulated by the American composer Francis M. Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

c) Griefers: “This group is all about screwing over the people they consider their enemies, even if it means that they hurt themselves in the process.” Aka fascists: Think Mussolini, not Hilter. Aka from a very different historical era, Trumpists or certain far-right European parties.

So if you’re hoping to pull reform skeptics into your coalition, don’t expect to get many takers: only a few conservatives are actually about that. Conservative emotionalists are the bigger fish.

22

Don’t believe me? You think conservative words should be taken at face value? Then consider Russell Kirk, conservative theoretician. He penned Ten Conservative Principles in his 1993 book The Politics of Prudence. He preens as a reform skeptic, never mind that there’s nothing prudent about eg runaway greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile about 40% of the Republican House voted last week for Jim Jordan behind closed doors in a secret ballot - so it reflected sincere political calculation. Jim Jordan is a Trumpist with no legislative accomplishments whose primary attraction is moral flexibility. Don’t believe that conservatives are in any way cautious or prudent: that is a psych-op. Study their deeds, ignore their words, and peel off those whom you think you can.

23

Along the same lines, in Andorra, Australia, Brazil, Portugal, and Sweden, parties calling themselves the Liberal Party are right of center, sometimes far-right. In Europe, Liberalism stands for a set of beliefs spanning left, right and center.

Over at the Times, law professor Cass Sunstein works his way through 34 sets of claims about liberalism, an ideology that Republicans and Democrats once shared, and which covers the spectrum from Milton Friedman, Abraham Lincoln, Hayek, and Ronald Reagan to John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Martin Luther King Jr., FDR, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.

Gifted article. It’s a little boring, but it’s a decent reference.

I maintain my previous position: if conservatives cared about policy and the things they say they care about, there would a highly visible fissure between the Never Trumpers and the MAGA crew. But there isn’t, and they don’t. Reaching out to conservatives is smart, as is alluding to their alleged and largely phony principles, but it would be a mistake to take their ideas seriously, such as they are.

24

I was going to mention Political Compass, and having just redone the test, felt it does a fairly accurate job of placing my political leanings on the left/right and authoritarian/liberal axes.

I do find it interesting that ‘liberal’ can be a label just as easily attached to the Left or the Right, depending on the issue.

25

That’s a great point about the term “liberal,” and points to why it is often not very useful as a political label.

26

The OP is so silly that it’s barely worth responding to, but it’s worth pointing out that it is a classic example of the Fundamental Attribution Error:

Translated here: when Republicans do bad things, it’s because they’re bad people and don’t care about others. But when Democrats do bad things, it’s just a simple error, or a consequence of the messy reality we live in. They’re still good people with only the best of intentions.

The reality is that everyone has good and bad attributes, and also good and bad ideas for how to benefit people, and also different ideas for what it even means to make people’s lives better.

27

Frankly I think these categories are doubly not useful right now.

Firstly because, as we’ve seen in this thread, there are actually multiple spectra on which we can place political parties. There’s nothing wrong with saying a party is conservative, say, but it’s more like a trait than a category IMHO.

And secondly, a lot of the new popularist parties and leaders aren’t very ideological, they are more like religions or cults. Yes there are certain beliefs that adherents must subscribe to, but when it comes to policy and actions they are free to be completely inconsistent.

28

Regarding my use of terms, I did state that I was using labels that just might make sense from the perspective of recent US history. It’s not the labels that matter, it’s whether or not these three broad categories, whatever you want to call them, exist.

In terms of the attribution error, here is my argument against that. How often, on this very board, have we seen posts stating something to the effect that MAGAs do what they do because they care more about “triggering the libs” than about improving their own lives. It’s not just this board either. If you look through comment sections of various social media, there will be many comments made where the essential take away is that other people getting screwed over makes that person happy. That characteristic is what I’m labeling as reactionary, and again, please feel free to use a different term if you think that one doesn’t fit. It’s not about specific terms, as we see in the debate about “fascists”. It’s about whether or not there exists people all over the world that can be linked by this type of thought process being their primary thought process when they make decisions about who should lead their nation. Of course here’s going to be differences in who the local ruling class is and how they manage to get the rank and file reactionaries to agree to the bargain. Javier Milei, Geert Wilders, Donald Trump, Victor Orban and the ordinary Argentinians, Dutch, Americans, and Hungarians that support people like that aren’t’ linked by specific policies. They’re linked by those leaders promises to screw over liberals, minorities, and intellectual elites. It comes down to a wealthy elite telling the ordinary folks something like “We’'ll really screw over the people that you hate, but in exchange you have to let us screw you over as well, just not as much as those people.” It’s people with that mindset that I’m terming reactionaries.

29

Which is it? A US perspective or world perspective?

I was answering in terms of the latter.

e.g. While I’d be happy with saying “conversative” and “progressive” are basically opposite, a term like “liberal” actually can fit on different parts of this spectrum in different countries, it’s not a given that liberal is opposite to conservative.

And again, my point is not that we should stop using terms like “conservative”, or even not group parties in that way. My point is that this is far from the only way of grouping parties, and it’s not even obvious that it’s the clearest grouping, even in the US. The new landscape is one in which the people who think they are the most engaged in politics; who wave flags and wear t-shirts, actually are the least knowledgeable on how government works and what the parties are actually doing.
e.g. MAGA is not conservative, indeed policy-wise it’s all over the shop. It’s not about traditional ideology at all.

30

IMHO the specific terms most closely apply to the US from the Gingrich revolution in the 1994 midterms through the end of Obama’s presidency. But the types of people in each group are universal. IMHO the “reactionary” mindset is present in all kinds of people from all many different time periods, and in some cases they are even directly opposed such as with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, or Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. It’s not about the specifics of who they hate or why they hate them. It’s that they have a group that they hate, and they care more about hurting that other group than helping themselves.

31

The title of this thread asks the question whether this particular way of grouping political factions is useful, but your posts seem to simply assert that it is.

But anyway, no, I disagree. It’s like if you made a thread that said all political groups can be classed as love, hate or duty. And then when people scoff at this, point out that so-and-so group was exemplar of one of these properties when such-and-such event happened.
Sure, these properties exist, but that doesn’t make it the best, let alone foundational, way to group political parties.

32

Is there some of that? Sure. But a lot is just garden-variety schadenfreude, which isn’t exactly limited to one political party. Liberals have their endless “I didn’t think leopards would eat my face” memes, after all.

While true, this only works when their audience has been convinced that they’ve been screwed over. Which, in many cases, is actually true. They may be misguided by the causes, but the point is that they think “the other” took their legitimately earned resources (money, etc.) and they want it back. Why should university elites get cushy, tenured jobs when I’m doing backbreaking labor? Why should my money go to support some rich person just because they’re a minority? Etc.

The left has their own version of this, usually focused on the rich. Never mind that–fair or not–if you took the income from that CEO making 400x the assembly line worker, and spread it out over the entire company, it probably wouldn’t amount to squat. If it’s really just the principle of the matter, then it still amounts to pinning all of your problems on “the other” and isn’t actually about maximizing happiness.

I don’t think reactionary politics have anything to do with cutting-your-nose-to-spite-your-face politics. It’s just an orthogonal thing. Maybe people with more extreme views are more likely to accept losses to win in the long term, though.

33

Ah cool, “both sides”, got it.

34

Sure, it’s true, but that’s my point. They are getting screwed over. But it’s not by the college professors making high 5 or low 6 figures who got there after spending large numbers of hours of their 20s and maybe early 30s in the lab and library mastering their specialty. It’s not by the Guatemalan laborer picking fruit for three bucks an hour. It’s not even by Lebron James or Tyler Perry or other rich minorities who earned their money by virtue of their talent and hard work. It’s the people like Trump and other wealthy elites who are screwing them over. The very people who they support for leadership.

This means, IMHO, that we should either conclude that these people are REALLY stupid, or that they know the game and don’t care if they lose (likely because they believe incorrectly that they’re screwed no matter what) as long as the other guy loses first. I think the latter is more likely.

35

But aren’t they screwed no matter what? And systemic changes that would help people with their positions would take a generation to bear fruit.

36

We haven’t had the right situation to help them since LBJ and the Great Society, and FDR and the New Deal before that. There were small windows of opportunities during the first two years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies, but they were too small and didn’t last long enough for any real change to take place.

But yes, getting people from this group to actually change their voting behavior is going to take a long time, at least decades, and that’s assuming the right conditions are ever in place again. Which is why I think it’s not realistic to expect them to vote D in the short or medium term.

Which is why I think people in the first group are better off trying to win over people in the second group (old fashioned Bush / Cheney / Romney conservatives) rather than trying to get the MAGA types to wake up. It’s not going to happen. The best we can hope for is an uneasy alliance between the other two groups to keep the MAGA in check.

37

Useful categories of political parties:

  1. Ideological Categories:
  • Liberal Parties: Advocate for social and economic equality, individual rights, and government intervention in the economy.
  • Conservative Parties: Emphasize tradition, limited government intervention, and often support traditional social values.
  • Socialist Parties: Seek to achieve social and economic equality through collective or government ownership of key industries.
  • Green Parties: Focus on environmental sustainability, social justice, and ecological issues.
  1. Economic Policies:
  • Left-wing Parties: Tend to support social equality, progressive taxation, and government intervention in the economy.
  • Right-wing Parties: Advocate for limited government involvement in the economy, free-market policies, and lower taxes.
  1. Centrist Parties:
  • Parties that position themselves in the center of the political spectrum, often seeking a balance between left and right-wing policies.
  1. Nationalist Parties:
  • Prioritize the interests of a specific nation or ethnic group, often advocating for strong borders and national sovereignty.
  1. Religious Parties:
  • Parties whose platforms are strongly influenced by religious principles and values.
  1. Single-Issue Parties:
  • Focus on a specific policy or cause, such as environmental issues, animal rights, or regional autonomy.
  1. Populist Parties:
  • Appeal to the concerns and grievances of the general population, often against established elites.
  1. Secular Parties:
  • Advocate for the separation of religion and politics, emphasizing a secular government.
  1. Regional or Ethnic Parties:
  • Represent the interests of a specific region or ethnic group within a country.
  1. Coalition Parties:
  • Form alliances with other parties to gain a majority or achieve specific policy goals.
  1. Social Democratic Parties:
  • Blend social and economic policies, often advocating for a mixed-market economy with a strong welfare state.
  1. Communist Parties:
  • Advocate for a classless society and the eventual abolition of private property.

The US Democratic Party today fits more squarely as a Green Party and Liberal Party categories while the The US Republican Party is more a collation of Nationalist and Populist categories.

The “reactionary” party is a bogus category as basically all parties are reactionary to some extent in that they all are “about screwing over the people they consider their enemies even if it means that they hurt themselves in the process”. You be the judge of the Democrat Party’s reactions over the last 3 years. Planned reactionary, it is!

Recent elections in Argentina and The Netherlands were won by the Nationalists and Populists. I feel these swings of the pendulum portend the demise of the Green Party and Liberal Party insanity throughout the whole world. Ireland is next to swing the pendulum. And then in the USA this is where the revolution starts!
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1727715153930522817

38

There’s a few small elements of that, but it’s very small, and due to the fact that the presence of such types of people isn’t limited to people who are part of a privileged group. One can be of the “screw everyone else over even if I hurt myself” mentality even if one comes from a group that lacks privilege. And so people of that sort, who don’t fit in to the Republican Party because they are part of the hated minority, don’t automatically change their psychology just because they voted Democratic. But they don’t represent the platform of the Democratic Party, they are just along for the ride because the Republicans don’t want them.

ETA. And I have no idea what a Twitter post about how much stiffing is in an Oreo has anything to do with politics.

39

No, it’s about understanding that people with opposing views to your own are not usually evil or intentionally trying to harm you, but instead have their own views about the nature of the status quo and different ideas about how to address things.

Why is it usually so much easier for people to accept individuals with opposing views than groups? It’s because as individuals, you can see that those views are one facet of their personality, and that they are likely to have positive attributes that ameliorate the negatives. But in groups, those positive attributes get averaged out and become invisible, with only the (perceived) negative ones left. So it’s easy to characterize the group as evil even if almost every one of its members would be acceptable as a neighbor or even a friend.

40

Thanks for explaining to me that different people can have different views.

But the political reality in the US right now is simply that one party is about demonizing the other side, literally describing them as “vermin”, and spreading disinformation about how they are pedophiles or worse. They go to Trump rallies to applaud the Jan 6th rioters, laugh about the attack on Pelosi’s husband and get pumped up about “retribution”.
Meanwhile the other side is talking about things like lowering the costs of prescription meds.

A democratic house majority got a long list of legislation done. A republican house majority has just been 100% on the attack, and has got nothing substantive done.

These things are not the same.