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#Post#: 11336--------------------------------------------------
Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Marxism
, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: February 17, 2022, 6:29 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I see 3 primary tasks when it comes to outlining a more accurate
political classification/typology of Socialism:
(1) Tracing Socialism's history to its ancient/mythical origins,
using our non-Communist definition of Socialism: "Socialism is
the belief that state intervention is essential to realistically
combatting social injustice, and that it is the moral duty of
the state to so intervene." This will establish that Marxists
did not invent Socialism, that they do not have a monopoly over
its definition, and that Socialism is far more encompassing than
just Marxist Socialism/Communism.
(2) After (1) is complete, we can move to the modern era, and
compare/contrast key points of various Socialist ideologies to
demonstrate their overall similarities and key differences. This
will once and for all establish that Marxist Socialism/Communism
is merely one type of Socialism among many competing versions.
(3) After (2) is complete, it will be obvious that many
"Communist" ideologies and Communist-influenced ideologies have
thoroughly diverged from actual Marxism. We can then outline
ways to salvage Socialist ideologies which have more in common
with the True Left than actual Marxism.
And once this is done, we can visualize the results using a
tree/phylogeny to show how these ideologies are related to one
another, and summarize key similarities/differences in a table.
#Post#: 11337--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: February 17, 2022, 6:33 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I don't have all the answers for these already plotted out, so
feel free to add any information to this discussion. To help us
begin, I will outline some basic information.
In the other thread, we already touched upon some of these
ideas.
Here we discussed how leftist ideologies might be classified:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10876/#msg10876
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10893/#msg10893
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10912/#msg10912
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10965/#msg10965
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10981/#msg10981
Other discussion that took place:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10612/#msg10612
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10645/#msg10645
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10742/#msg10742
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10802/#msg10802
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10891/#msg10891
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11107/#msg11107
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11112/#msg11112
----
For (1), it seems conventional history declares that "Pre-Marx
Socialism" began in the "Enlightenment Era" around the time of
the French Revolution and continued into the 1830s. I believe
Marx/Engels themselves wrote a bit about their
relation/development from these earlier 'Socialists'.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_socialism
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marx_socialists
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_socialism#Early_interpretations
Marx himself, and scholars following his lead, also declared
that some ancient pre-state societies resembled "primitive
communism". This was based on various (largely inaccurate)
assumptions about "class" and economic conditions in
hunter-gatherer societies:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marxist_communism
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism
We briefly discussed in the other thread about why Communists
did not consider these "primitives" to be "real" Communists, and
why these societies should not be considered Socialists anyway:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10742/#msg10742
More recent scholars have tried to more broadly examine
Socialism in ancient state societies and religious societies,
based on actual practices resembling Socialism:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_socialism#In_antiquity
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#Early_socialism
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism#Developments_in_Christian_communism
Since (1) is about ancient types of Socialism, examining the
many types of Socialism explicitly based on religion will also
be useful. (Recall that orthodox Marxism/Communism is explicitly
anti-religion). From these pages, it looks like most of the
ideologies are "unorthodox" Communists who have embraced
religion, rather than actual ancient implementations of
religious Socialism, however.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_socialism#Religious_socialism
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_socialism
----
For (2), we have established the Socialism of historic National
Socialism and briefly touched upon the Socialist/Marxist origins
of Fascism:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/
We have also seen that scholars A. James Gregor and Bertrand
Russell are in general agreement with our classification of
leftism encompassing National Socialism and Fascism. In
particular, A. James Gregor dedicated his career to comparing
and contrasting Fascism, Socialism, and Marxism, and it will be
beneficial to consult his works for aim (2).
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10912/#msg10912
There is a lot of overlap between (2) and (3), depending on how
deeply diverged from orthodox Marxism a particular ideology is,
but I think it might be best if we consider (2) to simply be
comparing/contrasting ideologies.
For example, what are the basic tenets of "orthodox Marxism"?
What are the key similarities/differences of orthodox Marxism
vs. Stalinism, or vs. Maoism, or vs. Dengism, etc. What are the
similarities and differences of orthodox Marxism vs. Stalinism
vs. Hitlerism/National Socialism? Or orthodox Marxism vs.
Dengism vs. Hitlerism vs. Fascism?
The point of this exercise is that Communism, National
Socialism, and Fascism were all competing Socialist ideologies
in the early 20th century, and that many of the major Communist
ideologies throughout the 20th century were so deeply diverged
from orthodox Marxism that, logically, they should be considered
entirely distinct ideologies from actual orthodox Marxism. (For
example, Juche recognized this and officially cut its ties with
Marxism in order to go its own way).
----
This leads in to aim (3). Some of these "Communist" ideologies
which have basically rejected all the key tenets of actual
Marxism can be salvaged by the True Left. Indeed, after
outlining a comparison of the key points of their ideologies, it
will be very apparent that ideologies like Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics have more in common with National
Socialism than actual orthodox Marxism.
Above I am talking about political regimes that have actually
been in power. But there are also other leftist ideologies,
which have remained mostly theoretical/philosophical, which have
nevertheless been needlessly trapped under the umbrella of
Marxist thought. I will discuss these more below.
#Post#: 11339--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: February 17, 2022, 6:57 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Recently I was skimming through some of the history of
Marxism/Communism and different schools of Marxist/Communist
thought that have arisen over the past 100 years, and it really
reinforced to me the importance of re-establishing Socialism as
the umbrella term under leftism.
For example, why does all of this need to be "Marxist"? I'm not
saying it's True Leftist or even salvageable, but why does it
need to be "Marxist" instead of its own type of
leftism/Socialism? The core focus of actual Marxism is on
"class" and economic/material conditions. Yet these ideologies
all reject that these are the primary issues in human society!
Immediately after the Russian Revolution in the early 1920s,
many Communist theorists rejected the strict
"materialist-economic" focus of orthodox Marxism and instead
placed primacy on the the role of how culture and traditions
shape society. I suppose we can say they had a
"cultural-economic" focus (or maybe "cultural-material").
[quote]Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier
schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater
emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist
society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects
of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to
investigating culture and historical development.[2]
[...]
Perry Anderson notes that Western Marxism was born from the
failure of proletarian revolutions in various advanced
capitalist societies in Western Europe – Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy – in the wake of the First World War.[11] He
argues that the tradition represents a divorce between socialist
theory and working-class practice that resulted from the defeat
and stagnation of the Western working class after 1920.[12][13]
Western Marxism traces its origins to 1923, when György Lukács's
History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and
Philosophy were published.[1] In these books, Lukács and Korsch
proffer a Marxism that underlines the Hegelian basis of Marx's
thought. They argue that Marxism is not simply a theory of
political economy that improves on its bourgeois predecessors,
nor a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. For
them, Marxism is primarily a critique – a self-conscious
transformation of society. They stipulate that Marxism does not
make philosophy obsolete, as "vulgar" Marxism believes; instead
Marxism preserves the truths of philosophy until their
revolutionary transformation into reality.[14]
Their work was met with hostility by the Third
International,[15] which saw Marxism as a universal science of
history and nature.[14] Nonetheless, this style of Marxism was
taken up by Germany's Frankfurt School in the 1930s.[1]
[...]
the theorists who downplay the primacy of economic analysis are
considered Western Marxists. Where the base of the capitalist
economy is the focus of earlier Marxists, the Western Marxists
concentrate on the problems of superstructures,[18] as their
attention centres on culture, philosophy, and art.[1]
[...]
While Engels saw dialectics as a universal and scientific law of
nature, Western Marxists do not see Marxism as a general
science, but solely as a theory of the cultural and historical
structure of society.[14]
Many Western Marxists believe the philosophical key to Marxism
is found in the works of the Young Marx, where his encounters
with Hegel, the Young Hegelians and Ludwig Feuerbach reveal what
they see as the humanist core of Marxist theory.[25] However,
the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, which attempts to
purge Marxism of Hegelianism and humanism, also belongs to
Western Marxism, as does the anti-Hegelianism of Galvano Della
Volpe.[26][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
Growing out of this, the famous "Frankfurt School" of "Critical
Theory" placed even more emphasis on the cultural aspect and a
much stronger critique on orthodox Marxism.
[quote]"With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it
argues that social problems stem more from social structures and
cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that
ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.[1]
[...]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes between
Critical Theory (capitalized) as the product of several
generations of German philosophers and social theorists of the
Frankfurt School on the one hand, and any philosophical approach
that seeks emancipation for human beings and actively works to
change society in accordance with human needs (usually called
"critical theory", without capitalization) on the other.
Philosophical approaches within this broader definition include
feminism, critical race theory, and forms of
postcolonialism.[7]"[/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
By the Counterculture era, leftists elevated basically every
issue to be equal or more important than the Marxist
economic/class focus.
[quote]The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the
1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who
campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and
political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights,
abortion rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.[1] Some
see the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist
and labor union movements for social justice that focused on
dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used
the term see the movement as a continuation and revitalization
of traditional leftist goals.[2][3][4]
[...]
Herbert Marcuse, associated with the Frankfurt School of
critical theory, is celebrated as the "Father of the New
Left"[8][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left
While rejecting Marxist obsession with economics was good, it is
no surprise that the usual suspects once again derailed leftism
into pursuing the wrong things:
[quote]The German-Jewish critical theorist Herbert Marcuse is
referred to as the "Father of the New Left". He rejected the
theory of class struggle and the Marxist concern with labor.
According to Leszek Kołakowski, Marcuse argued that since
"all questions of material existence have been solved, moral
commands and prohibitions are no longer relevant". He regarded
the realization of man's erotic nature, or Eros, as the true
liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias of Jerry
Rubin and others.[11] However, Marcuse also believed the concept
of Logos, which involves one's reason, would absorb Eros over
time as well.[12] Another prominent New Left thinker, Ernst
Bloch, believed that socialism would prove the means for all
human beings to become immortal and eventually create
God.[13][/quote]
Then we have Critical Race Theory, which seems to take certain
methodological ideas from the original "Critical Theory" (hence
the name). But its focus on race and society is a complete
ideological break with the materialist-economic focus of
orthodox Marxism and the cultural-economic focus of "Western
Marxism" and the original Critical Theory school.
I suppose we could say CRT is "cultural-race" focused--with
culture shaping our perceptions of "race" and these cultural
views shaping society. National Socialism is "race-culture"
focused--with innate biological factors shaping culture, and
hence society.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
Relatedly, "Intersectionality" places economic factors as merely
one of many factors shaping society (and often one of the
factors of comparatively lesser importance to activists applying
intersectonality). Critical Race Theorists (and National
Socialists) argue racism/race is the most important form of
tribalistic oppression in their application of
intersectionality. When applied to politics/social justice,
intersectionality is a Socialist mentality which has no logical
reason to remain connected to Marxist thought.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
Present-day orthodox Marxists argue that all forms of tribalism
are ultimately derived from "classism"/economic factors (even
racism is just an "illusion" to distract from classism,
somehow). I suppose "cultural-economic Marxists" (like those of
the original Critical Theory/Frankfurt School) would make some
convoluted explanation of how "classism" and other forms of
tribalism all have some complex cross-pollination and try to
"critique" their way to untangling these complexities? Lol.
I'm sure plenty of Intersectionality activists and academic
theorists do not see themselves as connected with
Marxism/Communism, but Intersectionality is just one aspect of
leftism/Socialism, so these individuals nevertheless often draw
inspiration from pre-existing Communist ideas, since they know
of no other source for leftist attitudes beyond
intersectionality/anti-tribalist critque. Rightists also try to
tie them to Communism by basically grouping all social justice
activism under the umbrella of "Cultural Marxism"--even though
21-century social justice advocates have completely diverged
from actual Marxism, and even the Frankfurt School (who are
supposedly the originators of "Cultural Marxism") themselves had
rejected many of orthodox Marxism's core ideas!
----
Again, why does all of the stuff listed above need to be
"Marxist"? Especially Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality,
which are basically "race-culture" focused (instead of
"materialist-economic" or "cultural-economic" focused), just
like National Socialism!
Do modern empiricists call themselves "Aristotelians"? They may
give homage to him for putting certain attitudes into words, but
they don't feel the need to elevate him to godhood where all
their own (very divergent) philosophical developments are
required to be mere shadows of his own. Instead, they all fall
under the umbrella of empiricism; with many empiricist
philosophers being in ideological disagreement with one another
and essentially all of them moving well beyond a strict
adherence to Aristotle's original ideas.
What is badly needed is to restrict the meaning of Marxism to
just "orthodox Marxism" (the pure theory of Marx/Engels) and
Communism (i.e. Marxist-Leninism and other closely-related
political movements which tried to be strict in their adherence
to orthodox Marxism).
All these other things that are considered sub-types of
Marxism/Communism, "Marxist schools of thought", leftist
movements with practical elements that are derailed by
Marxist-influenced intellectual fops and their beloved Marxist
abstractions, etc., need to be liberated from their constraints
and just allowed to be types of Socialism. People think that
Socialism _needs_ to be Marxist, and hence they shoe-horn
Marxist theory, constructs, and general framing into everything.
Socialism does not need to be Marxist. Even most of what has
been called "Marxism" for the past 100 years has become
thoroughly un-Marxist in character.
I guess with the political success of the USSR,
Socialist-sympathetic intellectuals desperately tried to keep
(ostensibly non-Communist) developments of Socialism hanging on
to Communism by a thread...? Or stupid academic traditionalism
compelled intellectuals who were inspired by Marx to want to
claim their (ostensibly non-Marxist) critiques and
reformulations of Socialism as the "successor" to Marx, or
whatever?
I don't know, but the obsession for Socialist theorists to carry
water for Marxism is just so absurd. As Hitler said, he came to
liberate Socialism from Marxism. Imagine if Critical Race Theory
was liberated from its unnecessary Marxist baggage. If it were
to be reclassified based on its ideological characteristics
alone, it would group closer to National Socialism than Marxism.
At the very least, there would be little stopping Critical Race
Theory from logically evolving towards the True Left/National
Socialism if the threads needlessly tying it down to Marxism
were severed.
Even the cultural-economic schools of Socialist critique could
likely give useful insights for us to use, if they stopped being
held back by a stupid 19th-century philosophy which has long
outlived any usefulness... Instead of trying to conform
themselves to Marx's overly-academic analyses and shoe-horn in
his endless constructs, they could just exist as fresh forms of
Socialism. Why does critiquing things (along lines very
different from Marx) need to be "Marxist"? Is doing geometry
ideologically Pythagorean?
As I mentioned before, even Stalinism by the 1920s rejected the
strict internationalist focus of orthodox Marxism. While
Stalinism didn't acknowledge any breaks from Communism,
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics acknowledged certain
breaks, despite functionally barely being "Communist" at all.
(If we were to reclassify it, its state control of reproduction
and centrally-directed economy would place it far closer to
National Socialism than to actual Communism). The various
political movements lumped under "African Socialism", "Arab
Socialism", "Third World Socialism", and others, have also
broken with Marxism in key ways, which is at least acknowledged
by calling these ideologies simply Socialism. Juche managed to
break with Communism/Marxism completely.
But the various intellectual movements--which have far more
ideological flexibility than political regimes--which should
have been able to distance themselves from Marxism the most have
not. How absurd.
They are all poisoned by the (very incorrect) convention of
placing Socialism as a mere derivative of Communism/Marxism,
rather than Marxist Socialism/Communism being merely one type of
a wide variety of possible Socialist schools of thought.
#Post#: 11368--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: guest55 Date: February 18, 2022, 10:41 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh, this is the thread I was referring to here:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/?message=11367<br
/>
When I have more time I'll have to revisit this thread here and
go in depth into it. But yea, as I was saying on the post I
linked above, shouldn't we do a full break down of John Locke
and topics like the "social contract" also?
#Post#: 11369--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: guest55 Date: February 18, 2022, 10:45 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Btw, I get the renaissance and enlightenment mixed up often, not
sure why....
#Post#: 11599--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: March 1, 2022, 4:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure if it would be necessary to do a thorough
examination of John Locke and other "Enlightenment" theorists.
For a Progressive or Communist (who theoretically value
democracy), they may find it important to trace themselves back
to him, but I don't see why it should be necessary for our
re-establishment of Socialism as its own category to do so.
(Beyond what the main site did by broadly distinguishing the
False Left's origins in "Enlightenment"/democracy/Locke-ist
ideas vs the True Left which rejects these foundations.)
They way I'm looking at this is: instead of trying to further
distinguish the False Left as a whole vs the True Left, since
democracy is on its way out (e.g. the most powerful political
party in the US has been pro-oligarchy for 2+ years, and other
Western nations will surely follow suit), we should focus on
prying apart the False Left and True Left within the category of
Socialism.
Democracy is dying on its own as rightists reject it and as
leftists begin to wonder aloud why mentally ill and
empathy-devoid rightist votes are allowed to count the same as
theirs. At some point leftists will be forced to choose between
rightist oligarchists (or rightists who support voting for
"whites" only) vs autocratic Socialism. We must ensure we are
ready to present authentic Socialism to them by that point.
----
On the other hand, I've seen some Communists try to claim China
is somehow more "democratic" than the US. So we will have to
explain how councils being made up of non-elite community
members from local regions, different professions, etc. is not
"representative" in the same way as democracy claims to be
"representative".
In other words, we will have to explain how the ostensibly
positive things democracy claims it wants to achieve are (1) not
exclusive to democracy and (2) are actually not even possible
under democracy. Just as I described how the ostensibly positive
things about "equality" are not exclusive to egalitarianism:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg11107/#msg11107
#Post#: 11600--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: March 1, 2022, 5:03 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Recall my attempt to classify leftist ideologies in this post:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10717/#msg10717
Based on what 90sRetroFan said about "Enlightenment" attitudes
being broadly rightist:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10742/#msg10742
And how Communists tend to consider regular liberalism to be
"rightism", I moved Enlightenment-based democracy to rightism to
see how things would look.
Here is a very basic outline of rightism I came up with. It is
not as fleshed out as the tree of leftism. I am open to
criticism on it. Since democracy is such an old ideology, it
only made sense if I subdivided Tier 3 democratic political
movements into two tiers.
Tier 0. (Temperament)
- Rightism
Tier 1. (Abstract/general attitudes)
- (a) Western "Enlightenment" ideas
- (b) Traditionalist-Tribalism
Tier 2. (Ideological theories)
- (a) Democracy
- (b1) Traditionalism
- (b2) Ethno-tribalism
-- (c) I think many pre-Marx "Utopian Socialists" would have
dashed lines from the Socialism (leftist) and Western
"Enlightenment" (rightist) categories, placing them about
halfway between.
Tier 3. (Political movements addressing the problems defined by
the ideological theories)
- (b1) Confucianism, Vedicism, Judeo-Christian traditionalism,
etc.
- (b2) White 'Nationalism'/Neo-Nazism
- (b2) Zionism
- (b2) others
Tier 3.1 (early democratic political ideologies)
- (a1) Liberalism
- (a2) Conservatism
Tier 3.2 (derived democratic political ideologies)
-- Social Democracy/Progressivism (has dashed lines from
Marxism and Democracy categories indicating influence from both.
(Maybe 2/3s democracy, 1/3s social consciousness originally
deriving from Marxist attitudes?))
- Paleoconservatism (? has dashed lines from Judeo-Christian
traditionalism and Conservatism.)
- Neoconservatism (? derived from Paleoconservatism.)
- Neoliberalism (has dashed lines from Liberalism and
Neoconservatism.)
Tier 4. (Specific implementation of the political movement to
govern based on the specific circumstances of a country and time
period)
- Since democratic governments reject strong leadership, the
-isms under this category would be derived from specific party
platforms, "think tank" ideological platforms, etc.
----
Would this classification make the term "False Left" more
difficult to use? I don't necessarily think so. It seems our
argument is that ideologies which have been categorized as False
Left are built upon shaky and inconsistent ideological
foundations to begin with (and hence are not actually truly
leftist). I have even seen some Communists call Bernie Sanders a
rightist (despite literally being the "far-left" of mainstream
US politics), so I don't think we should be afraid to
acknowledge some False Left ideologies are closer to rightism
than actual leftism.
Further thoughts:
I kind of hastily threw Paleoconservatism and Neoconservatism in
there. There may be a more precise way to indicate the dashed
lines showing their evolution.
Where would Alt-Rightism fall? Dashed lines from Conservatism,
White 'Nationalism', and Judeo-Christian traditionalism?
However, the Wikipedia article on Paleoconservatism claims it
was an influence on the US Alt-Right (and lists many
Alt-Rightists as examples of "Paleoconservatives"). This
influence from US-centric Paleoconservatism may not hold true
for EU-based identitarian movements.
Circling back to John Locke, maybe we should spend time
examining/criticizing him in order to make the particular
argument "Enlightenment" democracy is broadly rightist, rather
than genuinely leftist?
Should Humanism be included? A Renaissance predecessor of the
"Enlightenment" category? Should Marxism be considered
influenced by both Humanism and (authentic) Socialism, thereby
providing a reason demonstrating why its interpretation of
Socialism is poor? e.g. ctrl+F for "Marx" in the following
article:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism
As for Social Democracy/Progressivism being influenced by
Marxism, see the very last part of this post. Apparently
liberalism only really began to care about 'social liberalism'
after actual Socialism arrived on the scene:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/national-socialism-is-revolutionary-not-reactionary/msg10802/#msg10802
I suppose present-day "social liberals" have degenerated into
mere Humanists rather than actual Socialists?
#Post#: 11602--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: guest55 Date: March 1, 2022, 5:43 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]Where would Alt-Rightism fall? Dashed lines from
Conservatism, White 'Nationalism', and Judeo-Christian
traditionalism?[/quote]
What about "Christian Identity"? Is it even Judeo-Christian? I
would argue it's entirely Judaism? All CI really argues is that
the Jews currently occupying Palestine are "fake Jews" and that
the "real Jews" are Western Europeans?
[quote]Christian Identity (also known as Identity
Christianity)[1] is an interpretation of Christianity which
advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such
as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, and/or Aryan people and
people of kindred blood are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob and are therefore the descendants of the ancient
Israelites. [/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity
Christian Identity's New Role On The Extreme Right
[quote]With its ideology linked to numerous domestic terrorist
attacks in the late 20th century, Christian Identity (CI) has
significantly influenced the development of American far-right
extremism. As an antisemitic and racist belief system, Christian
Identity provides religious justification for violence and
domestic terrorism. Although the traditional CI movement has
declined, Christian Identity has risen in importance as a
radicalizing and mobilizing force within existing neofascist
accelerationist communities. After examining the Christian
Identity movement’s history, belief system, rhetoric, decline,
and resurgent presence on Telegram, this paper will evaluate the
current state of the modern CI movement.[/quote]
HTML https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/christian-identitys-new-role-extreme-right
Apparently, it's "anti-Semitic" to argue that you're the "real
Jew"!? ??? ::) :D
#Post#: 11603--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: March 1, 2022, 6:28 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I think all 'Gentile-Chosenism' ideologies like that can be said
to be derived from (b1) Old Testament traditionalism and (b2)
'White' Supremacy. So, maybe 'Gentile-Chosenism' as a general
category can be put as a Tier 3.2 derived ideology stemming from
earlier (b1) and (b2) ideologies. And then specific types of
'Gentile-Chosenism' like "British Israelism" and "Christian
Identity" can be placed in Tier 4? Maybe?
-------
Unrelated:
As a thought to follow up my previous post--the term "Dark
Enlightenment" or "Neo-Reactionary Movement" is sometimes used
as a catch-all to describe emerging rightist ideologies which
reject either humanism/egalitarianism or democracy.
Maybe this could be its own Tier 2 classification, deriving from
both the "Enlightenment" (since some groups do value democracy,
and probably all of them value the empiricist aspects of the
"Enlightenment") and Traditionalist-Tribalism (this part should
be obvious; also some "Dark Enlightenment" ideologies do reject
most ideological foundations of the "Enlightenment", rendering
the inclusion of another category necessary).
This would include Alt-Rightism, Nouvelle Droite, Generation
Identity/Identitarian Movement, what we call ZC, etc. It seems
like Duginism should be included in this as well.
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web
I don't want to get too side-tracked into discussing rightism in
general in this thread. Although in redefining Socialism, it
will be important to show how True Left criticisms of democracy,
humanism, egalitarianism, the "Enlightenment", and so forth are
different from the "Dark Enlightenment"/"Neo-Reactionary"
criticisms of them. Therefore we can include them in our
ideological comparisons/contrasts in our discussion on these
topics.
#Post#: 11705--------------------------------------------------
Re: Leftist ideological camps in the big picture; Socialism, Mar
xism, True Leftism, etc.
By: Zea_mays Date: March 4, 2022, 10:35 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I have come to realize that aim 1 (exploring
pre-"Enlightenment"/pre-Marx/ancient examples of Socialism) is
going to involve a lot of discussion and will be more a matter
of history and archaeology, rather than strictly ideological.
So I have made a new thread:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/ancient-world/ancient-candidates-for-socialism/
In the current thread, we can stick to the ideological focus of
aims 2 and 3. I would say it's ok to talk about Socialism from
the 1700s to mid-1800s in this thread as well, since the
development of these ideologies are important to understand the
milieu in which Marxism developed. From what I'm reading, it
seems like Marxism emerged as the dominant ideology of the
"communalist" camp of Socialism (the other major one being
Anarchism, which soon succumbed to Marxism via
"Anarcho-Communism"). This "communalist" camp was itself merely
one type of competing Socialism at the time.
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