One side believes that government can be, and should be, improved by collective effort.
The other side believes government cannot be improved because government itself is per se bad.
There is zero equivalence between the two.
I think, the real answer is that both parties rule for the oligarchs, just different ones, and they also take on opposing sides in certain culture wars that Americans care about to win votes.
Most of those people would say that the party they vote for represents them "enough", which is at the end of the day what matters electorally.
For example, Biden. A lot of people voted for Biden not because they think of themselves as Democrats but because they don’t want republicans in power (this includes former republicans)
I can imagine Americans of both sides don't see the parties as representing them. This seems to be a theme these days, no matter if the party in power is left/right/center, and it's not only contained to democracies either (it's pretty clear by now that turkish and russian folks aren't happy w/ their dictatorships either, for instance). It somewhat feels _distrusting centralized forms of government_ is the (new?) trend?
I think it is more that people recognize that many parties and politicians exist to serve those with power, and act to enforce plutocracy over those without power.
_____ believe that the interests and the voices of the American people should determine our elections. Money is not speech, and corporations are not people. _____ will fight to pass a Constitutional amendment that will go beyond merely overturning Citizens United and related decisions like Buckley v. Valeo by eliminating all private financing from federal elections.
In the meantime, _____ will work with Congress on legislation to strengthen the public funding system by matching small-dollar donations for all federal candidates, crack down on foreign nationals who try to influence elections, and ensure that super PACs are wholly independent of campaigns and political parties. We will bring an end to “dark money” by requiring full disclosure of contributors to any group that advocates for or against candidates, and bar 501(c)(4) organizations from spending money on elections. _____ will ban corporate PACs from donating to candidates and bar lobbyists from donating, fundraising, or bundling for anyone they lobby.
Guess which party. You may say they don't mean it. But there is no symmetry in the parties in this issue.
>> The other side believes government cannot be improved because government itself is per se bad.
> I know this is usually how americans explain democrats vs republicans, but is it really how the parties function? As an outsider (not american) looking in, and judging by the policies of the last couple decades, it seems republicans always increase government spending (therefore they don't actually believe in "small government"), and democrats pretty much rule for the oligarchs (therefore they don't really believe in the better of the "collective")?
IIRC. Republicans pretty much always try to cut or reduce social spending, regulation, and programs meant to help poor and middle class Americans; and their stated reasons are basically "government itself is per se bad." They don't mind military spending, and tend to increase the deficit through tax cuts (despite making a big deal about how deficits are bad whenever Democrats are in power).
The Democrats generally believe the government can perform useful social functions, so they pursue social spending, regulation, and government programs. However, they're often milquetoast about it and tend to preemptively cave to anticipated Republican objections.
For concrete proof look at Federal deficits and spending under right and left wing administrations, or the corresponding growth in the size and scope of government. There is at best no difference, and in a few cases government actually shrank in nominal terms under more left-leaning administrations.
The left believes we need government for pragmatic reasons, but most of them could be sold on the idea of giving up state power if alternative mechanisms to achieve their goals could be found and demonstrated to work in real life. The right on the other hand worships hierarchy and authority as a good in and of itself and almost deifies the state and its hierarchy as a manifestation of a divine order. The right would never let go of the state even if it were no longer needed, for doing so would mean there would be no mechanism for enforcement of divinely ordained hierarchy.
(This is why libertarians are neither left nor right.)
I'd have to say that the Americans that adopted the libertarian label are on the right, but the original anarchists for whom the term 'libertarian' was coined were on the left. That dichotomy is where the labels right-libertarian[1] and left-libertarian[2] were derived.
"Racism is the lowest form of collectivism." - Ayn Rand
I've read Randian / Marxist where there is broad agreement as to many humanistic goals. There's just a deep disagreement about how best to get there.
(I'm not a Randian, though I do think she's worth reading and had some valid points about a number of things.)
In the past few years alt-right types have started trying to bogart the term libertarian as part of their broad recruitment efforts. I no longer use the term much for that reason. I did back when words meant things.
I was part of the effort to rid r/Libertarian of the literal fascists that took over the sub a couple of years ago. It is apparently really easy to turn an Ayn Rand libertarian into a full blown fascist.
At the heart of it, and to touch back on your previous points, is that right-libertarians worship hierarchy as much as their right-wing peers do. Yes, they seem to have disdain for political hierarchies, but they love market-created hierarchies. They also have no problem using state violence to enforce those hierarchies, either, so long as the state is shooting at people to protect private property.
It doesn't take much to push right-libertarians into supporting the use of state violence in a very Hoppean[1] manner, either. Most right-libertarians view anyone to the left of them as an existential threat, so it isn't hard to get them to support Pinochet's helicopter rides[2] for "communists" and other perceived threats from the left.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe#Expulsion_o...
That's because Ayn Rand's ideas are juvenile. They boil down to "You're special, and They are jealous of your specialness, and so keep you down." (See Fountain Head. See Atlas Shrugged.) This same idea that everything bad that happens to you because a bunch of plebes that can't stand you because you're better than them. This folds directly into to fascism's doctrine of the weak, but all oppressive scapegoat. The specifics of the scapegoat change according to time and place, but the formula remains the same.
This is not quite accurate.
The descendants of anti-authoritarian radical labor-pricing (communist, etc) theorists are generally now called libertarian socialist or simply anarchist.
The term left-libertarian is more often used for derivatives of Georgism (Steiner-Vallentyne, etc) and frameworks promoting employee ownership and union bargaining power within an essentially capitalist economy (mutualism, etc). It might be more appropriately called "center-libertarian", although the bevy of unconventional ideas therein is difficult to reconcile as "center-" anything.
Some libertarian socialists do call themselves "left-libertarian" but more often they seem to reject being lumped in with people who like capitalism (at least a little).
Seriously though, large-scale crimes are committed by people with power, so it's not surprising to see governments in there. But that would be ignoring all gangs, guerrillas, sects, etc.
You cannot really put in the same bag dictatorships and democracies. Not to say the latter are perfect. There are many examples of atrocities committed under democratic regimes, which are indeed cautionary tales of government gone wrong. But under a dictatorship, the state serves one person or clan, it's a completely different beast. The lesson from these is more like "don't ever put a strongman in power".
Also, limiting yourself to the last century is very reductive, because it was a period with strong governments and powerful nations, which limited excesses from private entities. But if you take government control away, those will back filling up the power vacuum. I am not certain we would be enthusiastic bout a 21st century version of the East India Company, and several corporations would have the resources to do something like that.
As I said, while I don’t follow the position myself, I think it’s pretty reasonable to be skeptical of powerful centralized governments.
I agree - it's clear that the social democrats and other leftists would clearly like to remove government entirely and achieve a stateless society.
Or did you mean the right-wing libertarian types who want to have no government so they can own nukes?
These analogies are just silly and not really the point - the goals don't really matter to the point. The point is that when there is less perceived legitimacy of government, people are more willing to look for other options.
Only one side attacks democracy and government as concepts.