Political Terminology -- What Does It All Mean?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I’m arguing over what’s a progressive on a blog. And the blogger says progressives once advocated eugenics (i.e., culling out “defective” traits in human beings by limiting their ability to reproduce, sometimes involuntarily) among other things. I don’t believe ANY modern day progressives advocate this, but it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to list my idea of what the various current political philosophies entail and discuss them with the Dopers and see if there is indeed a common understanding of what we are talking about here. Also, it will give Brainglutton a chance to haul out his link to the Pew Political Typographies page!

My ideas are rule of thumb and related to current political/social trends … I’m interested in what people think of these philosophies in terms of how they affect current issues, not their historical roots.

We’ll go from left to right here:

Communist: the idea is that workers should control the means of production, organized in communes of various types, exercising the ownership of the farms and factories that they work in/run and that all power will flow from them. Ideally there would be no money, no government, no classes. Has never been adopted on a wild scale successfully due to the tendency of the power to concentrate at the top and turn into various stripes of fascist dictatorships: see Cuba, Russia, China, etc. A generally discredited philosophy in the US, perhaps in most of the world.

Socialist: a very broad term which generally means, people should own their means of production. Has evolved to mean that the state should be concerned with the welfare and success of all its citizens, not just the wealthy elite. Practically, that has tended to involve emphasis on good social safety nets (universal healthcare, help for the unemployed and the disadvantaged, etc.) strong educational systems, non-regressive taxation. Has been very successful in Western Europe under the label of “social democracy.” Deeply hated by American conservatives.

Liberal: Generally, a person who believes in a capitalist economic system but also believes in strong social safety nets for the the poor and the unemployed. Also believes in civil liberties and personal freedoms. Is typically not too concerned with the middle class, whose values they see as bourgeosie. The term has been discredited in the US by a very successful propaganda effort by conservatives, to the extent that very few identify as liberals any more.

Neoliberals: I have heard the term, but I have no idea what it means.

Progressives: generally, people who believe that economic and social policies that benefit the middle class and the poor will benefit society as a whole. Often are capitalists, not free market capitalists, they think that uregulated markets tend to benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. They favor regulatory and tax structures that encourage the growth and success of the middle class, whose striving to become wealthier and more successful drives the economy, in their view. Generally they do not have a problem with tariffs, etc., if they protect US workers. Tend to be very libertarian on social issues, favoring legalizing prostitution and drugs.

Democratic Centrist: Generally refers to political leaders in the Democratic party who favor whatever social and economic policies are halfway between the Republican right and the Democratic left, figuring that will get them re-elected. They do not have any particular political agenda of their own and because of the Republican’s fast drift to the right over recent decades, are now virtually Reagan Republicans. See: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. Politically successful, but their lack of ideological rigor means they sometimes favor policies that are huge blunders simply because they seem centrist at the time: see: repeal of Glass Steagall signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Centrist: A very nebulous term, generally means, someone who does not go with the extremes of either the left or the right. Typically, not associated with any positive belief or attitude other than a general belief that moderation in all things is good. Often not very politically aware. Think “jellyfish.”

Neoconservative: a strange splinter group of former liberals who now love war. Tend to be huge Zionists. Were at the heart of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) that gave support to the Bush Administration in the march to the war in Iraq. Would like to see the US engaged in militarized empire-building around the world. Generally, evil, evil people. Largely discredited because of the utter failure of the Iraq War, but still a potent force in some circles on the right. Think Dick Cheney.

Conservative: an umbrella term for people who believe in limited government and traditional social values. They tend to embrace capitalism and the free market, with as little regulatory restraint on the free market as possible. They tend not to favor social safety nets for the poor, feeling that such nets are in conflict with the traditional social value of self reliance and also in conflict with small government. They tend to favor introducing religious values (I.e, traditional Christian values in the US) into society. Conservatives have two major subgroups:

Fiscal conservatives: these are conservatives who believe in the economic principles outlined above but may not share the belief in traditional social values favored by social conservatives. They often will take a libertarian approach on social values. An increasingly isolated segment of the Republican Party, but still powerful because they mirror the attitudes of the wealthy corporate oligarchs who fund the Republican Party.

Social conservatives: this group is not all that concerned with money and economics, they are focused almost exclusively on the importance of traditional social values. They strongly oppose abortion rights, favor prayer in school and think that government should be based on traditional Christian values. They do not believe evolution should be taught in school and are anti-science wherever science opposes their values. They tend to be the more racist, xenophobic element of society. For example, although many social conservatives are poor they oppose social safety nets because they feel they are basically for black people, whom they hate.

Libertarians: this group despises government and would like to see it have as little power and influence as possible. They believe in unfettered free markets. They do not believed in social safety nets. They also would legalize all forms of consensual behavior, including prostitution and buying and selling recreational drugs. Basically, their only use for government is maintaining an army to protect the US from invasion by non-libertarians.

There I think that does it for starters, there are other groups, of course, but these seem to me to be the majors. Does this description jibe with your understanding of the terms? If not, why not?

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  1. Don’t argue with people online who create strawmen. You aren’t going to convince them, especially when they operate with an argument that is headed towards Godwinning.

  2. Don’t create your own strawmen.
    Is your libertarian clutching Atlas Shrugged and has a “Rand/Rand 2016” button? Note that even the Pauls don’t claim to be libertarians.
    Are centrists these guys? (IME people who are politically unaware certainly aren’t nuanced enough to not take at least some extreme positions, and wouldn’t use a title for themselves).

  3. NB: “Liberal” here is the US meaning. Many people identify as liberal in my experience, and mean it in the leftist sense.

3b) Neoliberal is kinda vague in US terminology, but outside it has a clearer definition.

  1. the two conservatives you list aren’t mutually exclusive, and there are also other groups. Along with neoconservatives (hawkish) or paleoconservatives (traditional and less warlike, but more isolationist than dovish).
    See 2. Yes, conservatives sit around all day, basing all their policies on how to best fuck over black people. The social conservatives base zero of their opinion on economic concerns.

  2. I think there are only 4 Communist countries remaining (officially, North Korea has abandoned the term).

  3. I think that “socialist” and “social democratic” aren’t synonymous, although not sure of the nuance. The former term is often used to disparage groups claiming the latter.

  4. The Pew categories are of course their own terminology, and most of the world/US doesn’t use them.

  5. Blue dogs? People who are conservative in many ways, but aren’t interested in voting Republican?

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I don’t think it was necessarily a case of straw manning on her part, possibly she did not understand much about modern progressives. She’s a VERY intelligent writer.

All right, but if the crows get into the cornfield it’s on you.

I think I did a pretty fair job of describing libertarians in my OP. I personally think libertarians are extremely weak in the human empathy department and frankly don’t understand government at all, but I didn’t put it in my OP because it’s not part of their basic position as I understand it, those are implications I take from their positions.

No, centrists are not politically neutral, they will do some radically crazy things if they seem moderate at the time. The repeal of Glass-Steagall in the Clinton Administration is the classic example: it was a radical thing to do, since the legislation was installed after the Great Depression and since then there had been exactly 0 bank crashes after the legislation was installed, a period of 50 years, unprecedented in American history. But the bill had a fair amount of bipartisan support and so the centrists went with it … and in 2008, we got the results. Real neutrals would never do anything that radical.

Right, this is the US meaning, and I understand it’s different in Europe but hell, my OP was long enough as it was. Note that you are the only one who has responded to it.

Which may be why I’m unclear on what it means.

True.

Good point, I left the paleoconseratives out, an oversight, but I wonder if they are a large and important group. Is anyone other than Pat Buchanan and his followers identifiable as such, and are there a whole hell of a lot of them?

An important element of the social conservatives are racists, that’s what the southern strategy was all about. Do you think if I left the racism out I would be accurately describing them? I don’t. And if the social conservatives have an economic agenda, what is it? I got no idea, and don’t really think they have one of their own.

Yes, and are any of them heading toward a withering away of the state? Don’t think so. They’re not what the theory describes.

Well most social democracies are European and once again, the terms don’t translate well between the US and America. But conservatives generally do hate the European social democracies for making America look bad.

Agreed.

Blue dogs are politicians elected in conservative states who won election as Democrats campaigning on Republican values. They are Republicans who happen to have a D after their name. DINOS … Democrats In Name Only, on most issues. I do not think t here is a voting block known as Blue Dog Democrats.

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I have a degree in political science, and I wouldn’t choose to get into a debate on the meaning of any of these terms.

The definitions change over time and from person to person. The terms are at least as much obstacles to understanding as they are anything else – people use them to pigeon-hole other people and other ideas into discrete categories.

You’re better of not engaging in debate on these terms. Does it matter that some people this guy calls “progressives” advocated for eugenics? What if he called them “fascists”? A worthwhile question to address is whether or not there are legitimate reasons in some cases to put involuntary restrictions on human breeding. If you both agree on the answer, what does it matter what you call yourselves?

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I was thinking it might be possible to arrive at a general consensus on what each term means, though of course some people would have their own peculiar definitions for each term. But there does not appear to be sufficient interest here for such a discussion to succeed.

Well my response to her is that pragmatically it would make no sense for someone who wants to advocate for involuntary sterilization of human beings to become a progressive, because progressives no longer support that. It would be like voting Democratic if you were a racist, because Democrats once supported racism. Democrats don’t support racism any more, so you’d do much better voting Republican in that case. If you were into involuntary sterilization you need to find whatever weird-ass fringe political group goes for it, because it’s not the progressives.

But my main purpose in starting the thread was to see if any my ideas about political groups were wildly at variance with most people’s, and maybe to develop a pragmatic political lexicon here. People might be arguing past one another based on mistaken beliefs about one another’s political leanings based on misunderstanding of what their political terminology means. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “One of the biggest obstacles to communication is the mistaken belief that it has occurred.”

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Hahahahahahahahahaha! :smiley:

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What you define as communism is actually socialism. Socialism is the workers owning the means of production. Communism is a type of government trying to bring about socialism. In communism the party is the expression of the desires of the workers and the party controls the state which controls the means of production.
No one calls themselves liberal anymore not because of a propaganda by conservatives but because of the failures of liberalism. In the US liberalism was behind judicial reforms which caused crime to skyrocket, and economic policies which caused inflation and unemployment to go up. This gave the term liberal a bad connotation and liberals started calling themselves something else.
Neo-liberals are people who believe in what used to be called liberalism one hundred years ago. Some people now call it classical liberalism. It is an international term and not an american one which is why it does not fit in the liberal conservative nomenclature. Neo-liberalism was a response to the stagflation of the 1970s. It was adopted in the UK, and the, the US, in the 1980s and by Canada and Sweden in the 1990s. It has been a success everywhere it has been tried and has generated faster economic growth for the countries that have tried it. Its success is most apparent in South America where neoliberal countries like Chile and Peru have had great economic success over the past twenty years while countries that have rejected neo-liberalism like Argentina, and Venezuala have lurched from crisis to crisis.
Progressives are american leftists who believe that the state needs power to ensure a fair outcome for all americans. They think the market is a dangerous and unjust and that the government needs to make sure all americans are taken care of.
Democratic centrists are democrat politicians who represent districts who are not dominated by democrats and have to appeal to independents. They tend to not support the more controversial democrat programs are constantly trying to keep the constituents happy.
Centrists are people who are mostly uninvolved in politics and have no strong opinions. They have not joined a side and just pick whichever side has the best candidate and is most likely to win.
Neo-conservatives were a bunch of leftist intellectuals who because disenchanted with liberalism in the 1960s because of either the failures of the great society or the affection of the new left toward communism. Because they were familiar with leftism from the inside they were unusually hawkish towards communism and believed America had a duty to defeat communism in the cold war. When the cold war ended they remained believers in a strong foreign policy. Because they were disproprotionately Jewish many cared deeply about the Israel -Arab conflict and were very aware of the dangers of radical Islam. They advocated a strong foreign policy to defeat the menace of radical Islam just as a similar strong foreign policy defeated the Soviet Union.
Almost all economic conservatives are social conservatives and vice versa. There are not really two groups. It is just that some conservatives emphasize one flavor and others emphasize others. It has to do with the electoral realities whereever they are running.
Libertarians are people who don’t believe in the government doing anything. They see no difference between a person demanding one third of your paycheck and the government doing so. They see both as immoral. Some conservatives describe themselves as libertarians because it is a term with fewer partisan connotations and doesn’t provoke as much hate as conservatives.

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Neoliberalism refers, in practice, to free markets for the masses and welfare for the rich, despite all the talk about “free markets” and “free trade.” It’s what the rich world did to the poor world for centuries, and re-started doing to itself around 1980 or so. It’s great for those on top, and toxic for everyone else. Witness the shrinking middle classes, declining real wages, shredded safety nets, and the crises the west has been in since 2008.

Even Pinochet kept the copper mines nationalized, and in any case Chile was still extremely unequal at the time of his ouster. Latin American countries were some of the first independent countries subject to neoliberalism, and they were some of the first places where decades of valiant, dangerous organizing by the social movements eventually began to achieve political change. Sometimes it goes well (Brazil), sometimes more poorly (Venezuela), but it’s inspiring all the same.

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So your position is that neo-liberalism caused a worldwide depression 28 years after its implementation in the US and has managed to make that recession worse in areas that did not implement neo-liberalism.
Look at Chile and Argentina who are very similar countries geographically. Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world and Chile was an economic basket case with an evil dictator. Chile embraced neoliberalism and Argentina has not. In 1980 GDP per capita was 45% higher in Argentina. Since then Chile has had the fastest growth in the region and is now much richer than Argentina. Chile has an inflation rate of 2% and Argentina has 25%. GDP per capita is now 20% higher in Chile than Argentina.
This is not an isolated case, countries that have embraced neo-liberalism in South America,such as Peru, and Columbia are growing much faster than the countries that have not such as Brazil, Argentina, and Venezula.
If you think that Venezuala, the country with the world’s largest oil reserves is inspiring you must have a different definition. That countries slide into chaos has been as sad as it has been predictable. It is blessed with some of the greatest natural resources in the world and has massive shortages of staples, the highest murder rate in the world and now a president who is trying to hold onto power by torturing dissidents. Nothing inspiring there.

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This is the Official Doctrine of Communism, but really, does anybody believe in it any more outside communist states where they are required to? In practice, communist states inevitably become dictatorships or oligarchies, rule by one very powerful person (and his cronies, see: North Korea) or rule by a bunch of cronies (see: China). The state does not wither away, it becomes all-powerful in almost every case, and by that I mean, every case that I know of. So going by the Official Doctrine is misleading, the practical definition of Communism is “a bunch of phony-baloney platitudes which some dictators and oligarchs have used to facilitate their rise to power.”

Close enough to my understanding, though I would add that liberals from the 1950s-90s focused only on the problems of the poor, because the middle class was not perceived as being in trouble, which further distanced them from the bulk of Americans. They failed to perceive that many middle class households were one job loss away from being poor.

So, neoliberalism is mostly a thing in South American. I had noticed that many South American countries are performing a lot better now in terms of taking care of their people. How do Brazil and Uruguay fit into this picture?

Fair enough. I would add that it’s not so much that they feel that the state needs power but that they see it as a bulwark against amoral corporations, so it’s good to have some kind of power to fight the wealthy oligarchs.

I would disagree here. Democratic centrists are politicians using a particular political strategy that involves passing whatever legislation they can get a majority for from the Republicans. In practice, this involves truckling to the Republicans to such an extent that they are in essence Republican-lites. See: Barack Obama famously bragging that his initial offer on a piece of legislation with John Boehner gave the Republicans 95% of what they wanted … and Boehner of course predictably responding that it wasn’t enough.

You could drop the words “more controversial” because they basically freeze out Democratic liberals and progressives and, well … Democrats generally … and the bit about trying to keep the constituents happy … what politician does not do that?

Pretty much my understanding of them, except I’d throw in their advocacy of “realpolitik” which I consider a code word for betraying people right and left, endorsing dictators, overturning states just because and otherwise fucking up right and left.

Sure, there is some overlap between the groups, but SOME people who are economic conservatives are socially liberal, and the bulk of the grassroots base of social conservatives don’t understand or care about economic issues … the wealthy conservatives have been playing them like violins for decades, using various social conservative bogeymen (abortion, gay marriage) to get them to vote consistently for candidates who favor economic agendas that are against the social conservatives’ own economic interests.

Fair enough, though I’ve not heard of conservatives describing themselves as libertarian for that reason before.

11

No, you have it precisely backwards. Argentina suffered at the hands of neoliberal far-right military regimes, enthusiastically supported by the US. The generals fell after the 1982 Falklands War, but the same neoliberal policies were in place for years afterwards, leading to the collapse of 2001. You ought to watch “The Take.” Since then, the Argentine social movements have had to struggle mightily against the forces of reaction, including the plutocratic upper crust left over from previous regimes.

Growth, in and of itself, is not a panacea. What if all that growth occurs to the rich, since they’ve rigged the game to give themselves the lion’s share?

Venezuela’s social movements are not about to see the plutocrats who ran that country for so many years take power again. The trick, there as everywhere, is not to emulate their authoritarianism. Decentralization and workers’ power is the answer, not capitalism or a too-powerful state.

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These are both pretty loaded definitions of libertarianism which seems to me to be missing the distinction between libertarianism and anarchism. A lot of what is being described here is much closer to the latter than the former. In general, I would say that libertarianism is best envisioned as the philosophy that government should only do those things that either it must or that it does best. This is perhaps best viewed as the antithesis to the authoritarian philosophy that government should do as much as possible except those that it cannot or should not.

Admittedly, most libertarians are in favor of free-market capitalism, and legalizing recreational drug use, same-sex marriage, etc. But you will still see a lot of libertarian disagreement about other roles of government and whether they are best and properly done by government or private hands. I have seen some argue that essentially anything other than national defense and courts are best and properly handled in private hands including funding roads, schools, even emergency services whereas others would argue many of those roles should still be done by government, but should be managed at a lower level where the people can better effect change in policy and the government can react to more specific needs, and perhaps even at local levels some areas might have some of those functions performed by the government and by private hands in others.

Obviously, like many other political terms, there are a lot of people who describe themselves or others as libertarians, for one reason or another, that just aren’t. Sometimes people who are much better described as anarchists will call themselves libertarians either because they don’t know any better than many others and don’t distinguish the two concepts, or they realize that anarchism is generally seen as a childish mentality intent of overthrowing the government and so choose a more palatable term. There’s also a lot of other people who will associate themselves with libertarianism because they dislike other aspects with which they have, rightly or not, been associated with. For instance, a lot of people who would have formerly described themselves as conservative have tried to rebrand themselves as libertarian due to movements like the religious right or the tea party.
But specifically to the OP, I feel like this is an exercise in futility. People will continue to use terms in whatever ways they always have. Sure, it gets tiresome to see people make assertions about people who follow a particular philosophy based upon misconceptions or misuse of the term, but that’s best fixed by defining a term within the context of the discussion at hand.

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This is true because it is impossible for socialism to be achieved and it can only be imposed by a coercive government. This is not because communists were charlatans or just using socialist rhetoric to advance themselves. They were true believers and were doing what they thought needed to be done to achieve true socialism. It is just that when reality intruded and told them their dream was not achievable they rejected it and held closer to their ideology. It was always that success was right around the corner after more enemies were killed and more power was gained.

This is because the middle class was not in trouble. These people had lived through a great depression and a war. They knew how good they had it. They were living in the richest country in the history of the world during the richest period of that history. They knew how good they had it.

Neoliberalism is a thing all over the world. It is just called neo-liberalism the most in referring to South America. This is because there was a battle ground over what type of economy to choose there that was much starker than in most other places. The UK went neo-liberal in the 1980s and France has mostly not, but the contrast there is not as stark as between Peru and Venezuala or Argentina and Chile.

If you look at most Democrat centrists they still vote the party line over 85% of the time. It is just that the issues that they differ on can be high profile and likely to attract the press. This helps them be seen as independent to the folks back home. For example Mark Begich and Mark Warner are thought of as centrists but both vote in line with their party 91% of the time. Every politician likes to play the part of the last reasonable man in Washington. In reality it is just an excuse for failure.

This is totally wrong, realpolitik is the opposite of neo-conservatism. Neo-conservatives would say that the US has a duty to try to use its foreign policy to spread democracy and freedom, believing that in the long run this will lead to a more stable and prosperous world. Realpolitik is to take the world as you find it and advance your own interest using any means necessary. Neo-conservatives wanted to replace Saddam Hussein with a democracy. Realpolitik wanted him as a counterweight to the Iranians and no disruption in the flow of oil. Him gassing Kurds and supporting terrorism in Isreal was someone else’s problem

Some economic conservatives are social liberals but there are enough of them to elect a dogcatcher in a mid sized city. Social conservatives understand economics just as well as any other group. Which means not particularly well, but better than social liberals do. The idea that the party that ran Detroit into the ground know what is best for anyone economically is deluded.

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From Wikipedia

The junta promised neo-liberalism but delivered state run companys, borrowed money, social spending, and currency manipulation, the opposite of neo-liberalism. When they lost power the subsequent government had run away inflation. This led to the currency peg in the early 1990s. This solved the inflation problem and neo-liberalism was implemented. But the currency peg proved unworkable. Bad monetary policy can mess up even the best fiscal policies. Then neo-liberalism was abandoned, the country defaulted, and the economy has been poor ever since.
Many leftists want to present a false choice between old style cronyism and corruption and leftist populism. Neither works, but what does work are free markets and open governments.
I agree with your taste in movies, John Leguizamo is a really good actor.

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Generically speaking, liberals support social/political/economic egalitarianism while conservatives support social/political/economic hierarchies. Liberals also embrace novelty and reject tradition, while conservatives prefer tradition and reject novelty. Liberals will embrace social change and revolution to obtain egalitarianism, conservatives will not (although they will embrace change and revolution to go back to an idealized olden days, usually one with stronger social/political/cultural divisions).

Also ‘undecided voter’ = someone who barely understands their own views and the views of politicians.

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This is not true, generally conservatives are much less likely to support a powerful central government while supporting local and non-governmental institutions.
The real difference between liberals and conservatives are differing notions of fairness. The difference is between hunter fairness and farmer fairness. In hunting societies a succesful hunt is only possible if the animals are there. You can be the greatest shot in the world but if no deer cross in front of your stand, then you go home empty handed. While some mediocre hunter will go home with more meat than his family can eat simply because the deer choose to go in from of his stand. In these societies it makes since to share the days harvest since it is not fair that one family starve and one feast just because of luck.
In farmer societies everyone shares the same weather, mostly the same type of land and you have to work hard to plant the seed, take care of the plants and harvest the crop. The harder you work the bigger the crop. So in those societies it makes sense for everyone to keep what they grow and it is unfair for the lazy to take what the dilligent produced.
Thus todays liberals see success as being the result of the luck of being born with privelege and having the right contacts, while conservatives see success as being the result of hard work and discipline.