As is gainsaying, which seems to be the bulk of your contribution to the discussion.
I am not sure this is a valid claim. A totalitarian state was not the genuine goal of the Russian revolution, it just turned out that way. It is not entirely clear that the observed result was inevitable, but certainly Lenin’s stated goal was markedly different from what the Soviet Union became. Whether he was merely dissembling in his treatises is uncertain, but he obviously could not advocate for a totalitarian mega-state, as that was what Romanov Russia already was, why would people fight for more of the same?
What is clear is that Lenin appeared to be putting forth a form of egalitarian populism meant to contrast with the quasi-plutocratic nature of industrialist capitalism. His ideology was based on untested theory, which gives it at least one thing in common with von Mises’ gliberalism.
Do you even vaguely grasp what “proletariat” means?
That’s absurd. I’ve made claims and supported them (successfully or not, which is in the eye of the reader), not sat back and flatly contradicted.
Ahem:
As has already been noted, Hitler’s Nazi party strayed from its official platform as well. I made it clear that I was referring to ideology-in-practice.
Whether Marxist-Leninist Communism inherently leads to a totalitarian nightmare is straying from the topic at hand, which is about the extent to which Nazism and Soviet Communism were similar or dissimilar.
Yes, I do.
How about this: you state a claim or position, or question one of mine (or BrainGlutton’s or Dissonance’s or whomever)? I’m not particularly interested in a round of snarky questions, or non sequitur shots at von Mises.
Which has been pretty thoroughly addressed. The obvious difference is pretty evident in the fact that the Soviet Union lasted over 70 years, as opposed to Reich 3, which dissolved after a little more than a dozen. You cannot maintain a regime for a significant length of time without the support of the governed (Machiavelli), the Soviets were not maintaining power by sheer force of the military over the citizens. In fact, I have heard that during much of its existence, the Russian people were pretty satisfied with the way they were living. Which circles back to the actual topic at hand, whether collectivism can serve as a viable, tolerable, even comfortable form of society. Apparently it can.
As compared to the individualist gliberal state, for which we have no useful data. There is an example of a nation, even today, that comes close to individualist freedom, but I will not reference it since you will simply dismiss it out of hand as anarchy.
Then you are aware that it means almost everyone? Without respect to race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, whatever? That is a massively far cry from the Aryan Master Race.
OK,
Lenin refers to the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. That is ideology. It is not totalitarianism, it is democracy. That it does not reflect the actual practiced system does not make it not the ideology.
And even so, I can point to at least one Soviet Bloc country where totalitarianism was a resounding success: Yugoslavia. Under Tito’s Iron fist, the Slavs may have been oppressed and miserable, but most of their misery seems to have stemmed from the fact that they were not allowed to be killing each other. Once they had freedom, the whole area became a horrible bloodbath. So as much as you might decry totalitarianism, it may not always be the worst choice.
You seem to want to take the word “liberal” away from the left. It is a wonderful way to put the “opposition” off balance. Personally, I could not care less, you may have it. But since it has been used in the US for so long to identify the left, we need some way to make a distinction. So, in the interim, as long as the Austrian School remains in the vacuum of theory, I personally will use “gliberal” as an appropriate substitute while the word is in transition, you do not get to take it for free.
True, but the Nazi state was destroyed by war, it didn’t wither and fail on its own like the Soviet Union did, because it didn’t have the chance. We can’t know how long the Nazi state would have persisted had it won the war, or held off on invading France and the Soviet Union and stuck with Greater Germany and half of Poland.
What is a Great Purge, a Holodomer, a secret police force, and a gulag system, if not maintaining power by sheer force? You don’t need the support of the governed, non-resistance will do, and this can be acheived through terror.
Then why did the state find if necessary to prohibit them from leaving, or having any access to media not controlled by the state?
We’re still waiting for the example, though. Describing the Soviet Union as “tolerable” and “comfortable” is perverse. Why did it even fall, one wonders?
Nations with individualist freedom? Let’s see…the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia, France…
It means the working class, those who do not own the means of production. It excludes the Soviet class enemies: Tsarists, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, entreprenuers, anarchists, kulaks, monarchists, “social parasites”, and so forth.
It’s not a “massively far cry”, in both cases broad groups within the society were designated as enemies, and subject to murder, inprisonment, and impoverishment as a result. In one case, the groups were racial, religious, and sexual orientation. In the other, they were classes and religious. Not the same, but of a kind.
Ideology is as ideology does. The United States was established on the idea that all men were created equal, while millions of residents were slave laborers, for instance. What Lenin wrote was all well and good, but the nation formed by his political party was not democratic, it was totalitarian.
Yes, it is possible that Tito was the lesser of two evils for the Balkans. It does not follow that totalitarianism is beneficial to the world at large.
“Liberal” does not belong to the left. It is the counterpart of “authoritarian”, and is independent of left and right on the political compass.
Yeah, what did he mean by that, anyway? An individual can be a dictator; an organization (junta, committee, political party) can wield a collective or collegial dictatorship; but how can a social class be a dictator?
Well, the USSR dissolved; the Third Reich was conquered. Apples and oranges. Hitler’s regime could easily have lasted for decades, if he had not been such a fool as to try to take on the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America all at the same time.
Liberalism is “a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality”. It is a core part of libertarianism, i.e., all libertarians are liberal, but not all liberals are libertarian. Liberalism’s descendents include classical liberalism, conservative liberalism, and various strains of economic liberalism, such as neoliberalism.
It wasn’t my most eloquent statement, but “liberal” is not part of a left/right axis, it is a different concept altogether. It most certainly can’t be “taken” from the left.
on the one hand, its important to no get to wrapped up in semantics…
on the other, words are very powerful and should be used judiciously. (when a word is forgotten , it’s meaning is also forgotten).
when words are equivocal, sure, we should define our terms at the moment, out of convenience, or utility if nothing else. i mean we could just as easily call communism Susan, and fascism Jane if thats what we agreed to. the point is that its not the semantics we want to address here; we want to address the reality of these totalitarian statist systems, and how it sucks. how the track record is ridiculously ridden with misery, cruelty, demoralization, and dehumanization. how culture gets thrown out of the window; who needs more O’Keefes, or Mozarts??
Whether Orwell would have been describing a fascist anti-utopian nightmare or a communist anti-utopian nightmare seems totally besides the point, and splitting hairs over which brand name more closely represents the *real *anti-utopia approaches myopia.
agree about the word liberal/ liberlism… started another thread trying to get a discussion going on this word, but didnt go anywhere…
the word liberal has been totally hijacked, imo.
from the roman root word liber, it means, book, or learning.
it’s connection to ‘freedom’, or liberty is because in order to be a free man and not a slave in ancient Rome, one was required to become lettered, and study, so that one could participate in public forums, and government. being free and knowing how to read and write, and most importantly, to use the arts of logic, and rhetoric were synonymous.
it’s ironic, if not hilarious that logic seems totally foreign to self-described liberals today, and their mode of debate is ‘there is no debate" (ie’ political correctness fallacy).
grammar, logic, and rhetoric are 3 of the 7 liberal arts.
in my book, people who are at least vaguely intersted in pursuing the use and mastery of these arts are the true liberals.
the others arent exactly imposters, because they dont even seem to know what they are supposed to be representing.
im not sure, but it looks like to them it means ‘supporting change’, and ‘compassionate’… and its based on feeling, not reason, or anything thought out, or having had any contridictions removed (ie. logic).
just try asking a self-described liberal to name even one liberal art. they will most likely name you a fine art?
to anyone interested, i recommend reading ‘Metalogicon’ about the liberal arts by John of Salisbury (@1150)
have you heard of UN agenda 21.
agenda for the 21st century.
you can read their own document yourself.
In present white house science czars book from the 70s ‘Ecoscience’ he talks about the necessity for a ‘Planetary regime’, and the end of national sovereignty.
some hippy type people seem to be naive enough to assume that since it means the end of the evil, bad, bad USA that we should be so ashamed of, and the unity of the world, in the establishment of a world government (the purpose of the Rockefeller created UN), that this will mean unicorns and rainbows, and peace on earth, and blah blah, which isnt founded on anything but wishful thinking… (while the UN calls war 'peace keeping)…
it would be nice to think that the intention of these plans (again not conspiracy, its out in the open more all the time, and its in black and white from the horses mouth) was for the good of you and me, and so that everyone could have a good life for themselves and their family, and thats what we would plan, if we could…
Instead, from their own documents, what its going to be is a return to a hyper-feudal system. no middle class. no single family homes, no agriculture, no private transportation (cars). you eat what youre told to eat. you are stored and inventoried like livestock.
slave classes living in pre-medeval conditions with no rights whatsoever.
total control and monitoring af all human activity, in the name of ‘sustainability’.
All post-feudal systems of government are “statist.”
Eh? Some threads slip off the front page of the forum without comment. That one got up to 2 pages, 52 posts – that’s “going somewhere” by GD standards.
:rolleyes: No, it doesn’t. As you would know if you had followed your own thread linked above.
exactly.
the American people are individualistic, thats a core American value, individualism.
this is what is being actively rooted out of us through public education, university systems, the media… our core values are intentionally under attack… this is a ‘must do’ in order to have a totalitarian system imposed… (the reasons should be fairly obvious). the Carnagie Institute wrote in ‘Recommendations and Conclusions’ 1933 that americans ‘quaint traditions of freedom’ need to go in order to bring in the world socialist state, and they outlined the means of doing so through public education. i know we were told that they were going great deeds out of ‘philanthropy’.
i never said the American peoples core values werent individualistic, of course they are.
but this is exactly what is being targeted, and this gets the crux of stating the thread to begin with…
you can’t have a totalitarian system where everyone values self-reliance, individualism, liberty, *[family/I] , oppurtunity above all because it would never fly when people don’t accept it with their values , attitudes, and beliefs. You cant impose something on people that havent been fooled into first accepting it culturally, and into changing their values first.
you can offer people this totalitarian socialist, collectivist, statist, communist, call-it-what-you-will crap, and nobody really wants it if you present it at face value…
thats why they have to hide it, misrepresent it, bait and switch you, and sell it as something else. get people to ask for the poison as the cure, by confusing and demoralizing them, and you dont need to shove it down their throat.
puzzled as to how you could think that the fabian socialists could just dry up and blow away?
they have an objective; the ultimate establishment of a world marxist state, but not arrived at through violent revolution (ie. the definition of communism), but through attrition, cultural means, incrementalism, and slowly wearing down opposition.
(the military tactic of fabius, the roman general for whom the society was named.
JFK went to the London School of Economics.
Tony Blair is a big time alumnus.
If the fabians wield no influence over policy, then i’m supposed to imagine that these gentlemen went just there for tea then?
what did you think of the article celebrating Obamas 08 victory as a huge victory for the ‘progressive’ (ie. marxist) movement?
why should they care what goes on in the US??
also, the black helicopter comments are nothing but an example of sophism, and the use of the ‘poisoning the well’ fallacy to create the semblance of a rational argument.
its a sophomoric attempt at casting dis-creditability to what i’m saying through what amounts to name calling.
I already corrected you on this nonsense in your other thread, but regardless whether you are ignoring the correction or hiding from it, it is an error to continue to try to redefine words when they clearly do not have the meaning you want to give them just to make a fatuous point.
The Latin word liber libri, meaning book, gives us such words as library.
The totally separate Latin word līber lībera, līberum, meaning free, gives us liberal and related words.
They are not the same word, despite the torturous folk etymology you imposed on them. (Note that they are not even the same declension, indicating their separate nature in Latin.)
Ignoring the clear factual error in regards to the words, themselves, I have never encountered your odd claim that literacy was a requirement for emancipation, or even citizenship, and I doubt that you will provide evidence for the same.
These two assertions seem to play against each other. Though there was nothing actually sophistic in Larry Borgia’s comment – “snide” is closer to what you are looking for. The whole Big Bad Agenda 21 business is very black-helicoptery.
Actually, if you had a point there, which you don’t, that would not be an instance of well-poisoning, it would be an instance of strawmanning, i.e., attributing to you a position which is not yours but an exaggerated caricature of yours. But, as For You points out in post #57 above, the black-helicopter thing ain’t no caricature, it is essentially your actual position.
I agree wholeheartedly that totalitarian systems lead to human misery, and that history bears this out.
I agree that it’s been hijacked. I contributed to the thread you speak of with the opinion that the original meaning in a political context, meaning something like “a worldview founded on liberty and equality,” should be the word’s denotation. In the U.S., at this time, its connotation is something rather different, describing leftists in a vague way.
This doesn’t appear to be the case. It’s not an essential part of your argument, so you may wish to retract this claim.
I don’t see the connection between liberalism and the liberal arts…they don’t really have anything in common.
I would argue that, in the United States at least, support for collectivism today is much reduced from what it was in the 1970s, or '30s, for example. I know of no mainstream major-party politicians calling for the abolition of private property, or the creation of new state-owned industries, for example. In 1934, Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana proposed a platform that called for limits on individual net worth and income, and wealth redistribution and price controls on a massive scale. Is there anything close to that on the political scene today?
The UN resolution is not binding, and appears to have in no way affected U.S. policy. As to the book, well, anyone can write a book, and it’s hard to read much into one written 4 decades ago. Is there evidence that such thinking is informing national or state policy, at this historical moment?
Be fair, now, wildorchid wrote “totalitarian statist”, which does have a distinct meaning relative to other governments.
Agreed, I’d say it’s a virtue of our system of government that it’s based on the individual (with rare exceptions).
In the '30s, there were significant portions of Americans that advocated for fascism, communism, and socialism. The era produced all sorts of radical politics. Thankfully, the storm was weathered, with less fundamental change to our system than might have been expected (though still more than I’d have liked). Compared to the '30s, ours is a time of political unity: nearly all Americans believe in private property and business, individual rights for all races, genders, and religions, democracy, civilian control of the military, the rule of law, and so forth. We quibble over details, not the underlying concepts.
What makes you think that the idea of individualism is under attack by public education, universities, and the media?
What is collectivism being sold as? Environmentalism? I’d agree that there is an authoritarian streak underlying some works on the subject, such as Gore’s Earth In The Balance.