Comment by hodwik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hodwik | Hacker News Reader

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In discussion of economics, 'left' generally means large-scale government intervention in markets, while 'right' means truly free-markets based on the efficient market hypothesis. E.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Politica...

There is a lot of confusion -- no doubt. This has to do with the new usage of the term "liberal" to describe Democrats or people on the left, when historically, liberal meant people on the right, like Libertarians or Republicans. As a result, we now describe free-market liberalism as "classical liberalism", to distinguish it from modern "social liberalism".

To further complicate things, pundits on the left have attempted to associate the uglier side of left politics (namely, fascism) with the right, so you have a lot of people calling neo-nazis "far-right", when in reality, National Socialism was a leftist movement. Hitler was a "liberal", in terms of being a believer in large-scale government intervention in the markets.

Conversely, the USSR was and China is "conservative" in the classical sense. That is, they believe in government intervention in markets, which was called conservatism 100 years ago, and is called liberal today.

Great example. 4 paragraphs of utter nonsense!

They mean nothing in practice because of bizarre narratives like that.

Before taking power, the Nazis caucused with the National Conservatives, the Free Conservative Party, and the German Conservative Party.

German leftists were first to the concentration camps under the Enabling Act of 1933. Under the Röhm Putsch, the Nazis killed and outlawed the left-leaning faction of their party. Under the Commissar Order, Hitler prioritized the death of leftists in conquered land. Socialists, leftists, liberals and communists got their own special badges at the death camps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge#...)

The USSR and China are autocratic state-run corporatists. They are conservative in that they are effectively industrialized reactionary feudalism with integrated propaganda to prevent populist revolution.

And finally, some may enjoy calling an intentionally plutocratic state liberal, but it's essentially autocracy without coronation ceremonies.

The confusion here isn't that the ideas themselves are confusing. The historical record is abundantly unambiguous. However some don't like it so they do revisionism and taxonomy hand-waving to try to confuse people. But that's the nature of power.

It's unclear how reminding us that Socialist Fascists locked up Socialist Democrats is proof that Nazis were somehow secretly Libertarians.

The Nazis nationalized industry. They're Socialists, on the left.

That's because they were reactionary monarchists. The nationalising was a throwback to 18th century imperialism. That's a rather extreme form of "conservative". Its not like we're talking worker self directed cooperatives regulated by government for the public good.

Marxist in first international was about extending democratic principles to the organization of labor. When you have a single party dictator snatching up enterprise, you don't have first international.

Besides, the terms are for camps more than anything. It's an affinity, not a taxonomy.

Monarchism is a sort of leftism. It's still about having the state own and manage industry, rather than spreading its ownership out among many people. In the end, leftism always ends up looking like Monarchism anyway, to go to your 'affinity not taxonomy' claim.

No again. It's about syndicalism. Modern monarchism is structurally capital enterprise. Always has been. Antiquity talks to this. You have hierarchy, autocracy, authoritarian systems... that's capitalism - combining it with statecraft and religion, you get monarchism

Calling Nazism, democracies, socialism, and monarchism the same thing is about as useful a classification as calling them nouns.

It sounds like you think a system free from government would be free from coercion.

As if places in actual war, without government, is free from coercion or as if the natural animal kingdom with its dog eats dog nature is free from coercion.

Almost as if you're making the fanciful objectivist argument where everyone is pathological and greedy, but also upstanding and moral...

Monarchism and capital enterprise may be similar in their internal hierarchy, outside of some corporate structures, but they are rather unlike monarchies in one very important way.

A capitalist enterprise (outside of a handful of extremely inelastic markets, like defense, catastrophic healthcare and public safety) require that people choose to purchase their product. That is Democratic in nature.

Anarchy is not free of coercion. Fortunately, free markets are not anarchic. Ballot and autocratic are not the only forms of government. Capitalism is itself a form of government -- the left intuits this, but are clouded on the internal forces.

The nature of ballot-organized government, even direct democracy, is less democratic than that of dollar-voting markets.

Ballot government has much more in common with monarchy. Generally -- you're choosing a single person,and that person makes choices ostensibly on your behalf for a number of years. Additionally -- you may get to choose on some issues once in a while, and watch as your choices are undone by the courts and legislature.

Conversely, in dollar voting, everyone is making all of the choices all of the time.

As a result, unencumbered capitalism is a purer form of direct democracy, which measurably produces a more responsive form of government.

It allows the public to vote directly for specific desires, producing an organizing impetus which is more respondent to the will of the public than any other form of government, even direct democracy.

What the left intuits as misrule by business, is actually the result of the votes of their fellow dollar-voters. It is the wisdom, or folly, of the people.

Thanks for the thoughts. Social Sciences are so indeterminable. I appreciate the civility. I need to disengage from this now however. Plenty to think about.

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