Is there any difference between a Communist and a Leftist?

[ishii]

 Fair enough.   To address the original question:  is there any difference between a Communist and a Leftist?

In the American conservative alternate universe, where the words liberal, socialist, Democrat, progressive, communist, Marxist, leftist, fascist, and Nazi are used as virtual synonyms, no… there is no difference.

You have built quite the strawman here, Cricket. I don’t know of too many conservatives who conflate the terms fascist Nazi with liberal or progressive. So your criticisms of conservatives is based on a false construct. Strange that you feel the need to do this, but whatever.

This is why the newest conservative boogeyman, “leftism,” is perfect: the word means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, and the hearer can interpret it in any way he likes. We can roughly define it as “anything we don’t like,” and it is so devoid of meaning there is nothing anyone can pin on you after.

What we see in America is leftists masquerading as moderates. The only way for the left to win is to muck up the waters and try to -pass themselves off as moderates in an attempt to hide who they truly are.

Ishii

 

[livingwordunity]

I think though that anyone who self-identifies as a liberal, or a leftist, or a progressive, or not-on-th-right, or any other label or non-label that those on the left use for themselves,are correct in denying that Nazis are on the left. Equality is a foundational principle for those on the left, and racial nationalism was as integral to the Nazi system. Such racism directly contradicts a primary leftist value.

When the left talks about so-called “equality” they selectively exclude a whole population, children in the womb, which they say isn’t human in order to justify murdering them. For the Nazis it was the Jews, for today’s leftists it’s children in the womb. The left also has eugenics in common with the Nazis. #255

 

[Cricket123]

You have built quite the strawman here, Cricket. I don’t know of too many conservatives who conflate the terms fascist Nazi with liberal or progressive. So your criticisms of conservatives is based on a false construct. Strange that you feel the need to do this, but whatever.

Strawman? Really?

google.com/search?q=obama+hitler&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UZnSUsyMAfPHsATi04HoCw&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=996&bih=435

 

[Arizona_Mike]

IEquality is a foundational principle for those on the left, and racial nationalism was as integral to the Nazi system. Such racism directly contradicts a primary leftist value.It really isn’t a value held by those on the right either though. Instead it represents the application of a biased science to pre-existing tribal European chauvinism.
As such, it is neither a left or a right value, but was a cultural feature of European society, especially in that era.

I think that racism, expressed as eugenics (a desire to reduce “undesirable” human genetic stock), was clearly a goal of the “progressive” Left in both America and Europe in the early 20th century. Certainly leftists such as Margaret Sanger in America and George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in Europe expressed admiration for eugenics-based goals of culling the human species, including black people. Wells asked what was the future of “those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop… it is their portion to die out and disappear.”

While some in the American conservative movement also approved of this, the eugenics movement was largely a movement of the left. Even progressive ideas like the minimum wage, while laudable, began as an attempt to reduce the “low-wage races” from competing for work with races seen as more desirable,

Here’s an article by Professor Tim Leonard at Princeton on the attraction of racist eugenics programs for the left, from the Journal of Economic Perspectives: princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf

It’s important to note that these racist views arose not from simple hatred of African Americans, Jews, and the Irish, but often from a misguided liberal view that the lives of those of the “degraded” underclass were not worth living, and that it was kinder to prevent them being born. This foreshadows current arguments from the left that support the idea that abortion can and should prevent the “genetically unfit,” such as those with Down’s Syndrome, or the offspring from rape, or even the poor, from being born. That those people who are born with Down’s Syndrome, or as a product of rape, or the desperately poor, may have their own ideas on whether they deserve to live, isn’t given consideration by the left.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

From Prof. Leonard’s article:

Why Did Eugenics Appeal to the Progressives?

Eugenic ideas were not new in the Progressive Era, but they acquired new impetus with the Progressive Era advent of a more expansive government. In effect, the expansion of state power meant that it became possible to have not only eugenic thought, but also eugenic practice. As eugenics historian Diane Paul (1995, p. 6) writes, eugenics legislation had to await “the rise of the welfare state.”

Progressives were drawn to eugenics by the same set of intellectual commit- ments that drew them to reform legislation. Paramount was the reform idea that laissez-faire was bankrupt. Sidney Webb (1910–1911, p. 237) said flatly, “[N]o consistent eugenicist can be a ‘Laisser Faire’ individualist unless he throws up the game in despair. He must interfere, interfere, interfere!” Similarly, Frank Fetter (1907, pp. 92–93) pronounced at the AEA meetings: “Unless effective means are found to check the degeneration of the race, the noontide of humanity’s greatness is nigh, if not already passed. Our optimism must be based not upon laissez-faire,” said Fetter, “but upon vigorous application of science, humanity, and legislative art to the solution of the problem.”

Progressive opposition to laissez faire was motivated by a set of deep intellectual commitments regarding the relationship between social science, social scien- tific expertise and right governance. The progressives were committed to 1) the explanatory power of scientific (especially statistical) social inquiry to get at the root causes of social and economic problems; 2) the legitimacy of social control, which derives from a holist conception of society as prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals; 3) the efficacy of social control via expert management of public administration; where 4) expertise is both sufficient and necessary for the task of wise public administration.

It is important to note that these racist views are not as common among the left now (although a degree of condescending paternalism is common), and that the left at that time did not feel that they were “bad people” (who does?) They felt that what they were doing would ultimately benefit society:

Emily Greene Balch, a Wellesley College economist and future winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for her role as a peace activist, made the eugenic case against subsidies for poor school children. “If you simply want to have more people . . . depraved people quite as well as any other class,” said Balch (1907, p. 102), then “feeding school children [is] a good thing; but if you believe it is important . . . to have more of the right kind of people, then any measure of encouragement should be most carefully selective in character.” That progressives could oppose subsidies for poor schoolchildren reveals the extent to which eugenics informed American Progressive Era reform.

The views of the left (as opposed to classical liberalism) is Pelagian - that society is infinitely perfectible by human means, and that a cultural and social elite (whether the vanguard of the party, or the Best and the Brightest, or whatever) should logically be the ones to make those decisions - for everyone. The Church’s view tends towards Augustinianism - that we are inherently fallen, and we have to exercise caution in attempts by imperfect humans to create the City of Heaven on earth.

The Church stood as the chief bulwark of the progressivists who supported eugenics, and it recognized the Nazi doctrines (as well as those of American progressivists) as anathema early on. As Professor Leonard notes, it was only in those countries that were traditionally Catholic that left-wing ideas on eugenics failed to take hold.

 

[Darryl1958]

I think that racism, expressed as eugenics (a desire to reduce “undesirable” human genetic stock), was clearly a goal of the “progressive” Left in both America and Europe in the early 20th century. Certainly leftists such as Margaret Sanger in America and George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in Europe expressed admiration for eugenics-based goals of culling the human species, including black people. Wells asked what was the future of “those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop… it is their portion to die out and disappear.”

While some in the American conservative movement also approved of this, the eugenics movement was largely a movement of the left. Even progressive ideas like the minimum wage, while laudable, began as an attempt to reduce the “low-wage races” from competing for work with races seen as more desirable,

Here’s an article by Professor Tim Leonard at Princeton on the attraction of racist eugenics programs for the left, from the Journal of Economic Perspectives: princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf

It’s important to note that these racist views arose not from simple hatred of African Americans, Jews, and the Irish, but often from a misguided liberal view that the lives of those of the “degraded” underclass were not worth living, and that it was kinder to prevent them being born. This foreshadows current arguments from the left that support the idea that abortion can and should prevent the “genetically unfit,” such as those with Down’s Syndrome, or the offspring from rape, or even the poor, from being born. That those people who are born with Down’s Syndrome, or as a product of rape, or the desperately poor, may have their own ideas on whether they deserve to live, isn’t given consideration by the left.

My original argument was that racism is not so much a left vs right question, but a question of European cultural chauvinism directing Darwinian science. My argument about communism not being nationalistic, like Nazism itself iwas is still a sound one. Global citizenship is the goal of many progressives today. Nationalism is something that is looked down upon, in general.

I think where my argument fails is that to the extent that it is progressives that allow science to guide their sense of morality and their religion and their belief that they are wiser than all who have come before, it is the progressive left that have been most responsible in instituting eugenic policies and abortion into the politics of a nation.
Conservatives, by definition, allow themselves to be guided by religion and the wisdom of the ages, and therefore do not give science the final say. As we have seen with Darwinism and the eugenics that developed out of this science, science is not independent of the biases of the one performing the experiments.

I think the last bastion of covertly racist policies is still from the left, and not just on the abortion front. Underpinning the ideas being put into law that gives minorities special treatment is the same European chauvinism that white people need a handicap to take away the unfair advantage that they have over black people and other races in general. The argument is no longer genetic and eugenic, but it does come from the same place of Eurocentric chauvinism, and white liberal guilt of overcompensating for that guilt.
Nevertheless, the inherent racism behind these policies of good intentions is obvious, once you look.

However, it has also been progressives bucking traditions who were most responsible for bringing down institutionalized segregation in the United States. The argument that racist eugenics is a leftist value therefore misses the heart of the matter. Leftists just do not see themselves in these arguments, so the arguments do not make a personal connection with them.
Just as when people on the left describe the Tea party or people as myself as extreme right wing, there is a point where the argument becomes a strawman. There is no intent on behalf of the Tea party to maintain class privilege over those poorer, so the argument comes off as hot air. Likewise, the intent of the typical leftist is simply not the extermination of the underprivileged races. It really misses the mark on that account.

 

[ishii]

Strawman?  Really?

google.com/search?q=obama+hitler&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UZnSUsyMAfPHsATi04HoCw&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=996&bih=435 .

Of course some google images count as the majority of conservative thought concerning Obama.

Well, I see the problem. You seem to think the center-right (reality-based) Obama is a leftist (conservative alternate universe). Hint: to be a socialist, you’d have to do something… anything… a socialist actually supports.

To be center-right, you have to be for something the center-right actually supports. What has Obama done that remotely qualifies as center-right?

But Obama is a leftist. If you prefer the term socialist then fine. But this is the important part that I want you to understand, Cricket: a president can be an authentic socialist/leftist but understand that he/she cannot quite implement the entire socialist agenda - due to the fact that there are still enough voters who are in touch reality and believe in our constitution. So the agenda is implemented partially. For example, Obamacare might not quite be outright single-payer socialized medicine, but it is the beginning of it - and will make it easier to implement socialized medicine down the road.

Ishii

 

[Arizona_Mike]

My original argument was that racism is not so much a left vs right question, but a question of European cultural chauvinism directing Darwinian science. My argument about communism not being nationalistic, like Nazism itself iwas is still a sound one. Global citizenship is the goal of many progressives today. Nationalism is something that is looked down upon, in general.

I think you make some very sound arguments. I’d disagree that communism in practice is international, as a) the degree of Russian ethnic dominance within the former USSR, to the exclusion of other republics, was quite extreme, and b) the nationalistic interests of communist countries that were nominally internationalist demonstrated that communist-organized governments were just as nationalistic as any others, as seen by the conflicts between the PRC and the USSR, between the USSR and Yugoslavia, between China and Vietnam, and so forth. Internationalism is observed more in speech than action under Marxist states. Perversely, there was a greater degree of cooperation, arguably, between the “national” fascist socialist states, such as Germany, Italy, Paraguay, Japan, Argentina, and Spain, than ever existed among the “international” fascist socialist states.

 

[Darryl1958]

I think you make some very sound arguments. I’d disagree that communism in practice is international, as a) the degree of Russian ethnic dominance within the former USSR, to the exclusion of other republics, was quite extreme, and b) the nationalistic interests of communist countries that were nominally internationalist demonstrated that communist-organized governments were just as nationalistic as any others, as seen by the conflicts between the PRC and the USSR, between the USSR and Yugoslavia, between China and Vietnam, and so forth. Internationalism is observed more in speech than action under Marxist states. Perversely, there was a greater degree of cooperation, arguably, between the “national” fascist socialist states, such as Germany, Italy, Paraguay, Japan, Argentina, and Spain, than ever existed among the “international” fascist socialist states.

Authoritarian regimes are all substantially the same. In the end, I see very little difference between what Stalin and Mao were doing, what Hitler was doing, or what the Ayatollahs of Iran are now doing. The outer ideology changes with the times, but the inner core is equally putrid in all cases.

But there were people here who continue to make the argument that Marx was not a Marxist, that the all this is not really communism at all.

I can only note that the conservative Judeo-Christian values of my alternate right wing reality that I strive for DO EXIST in reality as well as in my faith system. I am believing in something that is REAL and is POSSIBLE, and has made great strides into being actualized over the centuries. This is not only something that feels good as it lights up all the right pleasure systems in my brain as I contemplate it.

Being against greed or against racist tribalism do not make such things anything less real.
Without a mode to move toward separation of powers, incentives for the producers of goods to provide for the needs of the consumer of the products, and without modes to deal with people as they actually are rather than how we might like them to be, believing in something is not going to bring those beliefs into fruition.
Neither will Alinskyist subterfuge bring about a change of human nature.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Authoritarian regimes are all substantially the same. In the end, I see very little difference between what Stalin and Mao were doing, what Hitler was doing, or what the Ayatollahs of Iran are now doing. The outer ideology changes with the times, but the inner core is equally putrid in all cases.

But there were people here who continue to make the argument that Marx was not a Marxist, that the all this is not really communism at all.

I can only note that the conservative Judeo-Christian values of my alternate right wing reality that I strive for DO EXIST in reality as well as in my faith system. I am believing in something that is REAL and is POSSIBLE, and has made great strides into being actualized over the centuries. This is not only something that feels good as it lights up all the right pleasure systems in my brain as I contemplate it.

Being against greed or against racist tribalism do not make such things anything less real.
Without a mode to move toward separation of powers, incentives for the producers of goods to provide for the needs of the consumer of the products, and without modes to deal with people as they actually are rather than how we might like them to be, believing in something is not going to bring those beliefs into fruition.
Neither will Alinskyist subterfuge bring about a change of human nature.

I don’t think we’re in disagreement.

 

[St_Francis]

Darryl:

…However, it has also been progressives bucking traditions who were most responsible for bringing down institutionalized segregation in the United States…

I am not sure this is true. At least in the US, segregation was breaking down after WW2 and Korea as a result of changes in military policies which allowed members of the races to serve alongside each other… This broke down a lot of barriers. All along, it was Democrats and progressives who put the segregationst laws into place, so I think that in the end, the progressives said–Oh look! Change is occurring!! and so they jumped on the bandwagon just hecause it was Change!!! But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the party traditionally considered conservative, not the party traditionally considered progressive
.

Many of those calling for desegregation were conservative and are now considered liberal only because desegregation is now considered a progressive or liberal idea. The advocates of desegregation based their arguments on conservative values of fairness and liberty.

 

[Darryl1958]

I don’t think we’re in disagreement.

No, I don’t think that I was disagreeing with anything that you have said.

 

[andrewstx]

Strawman? Really?

google.com/search?q=obama+hitler&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UZnSUsyMAfPHsATi04HoCw&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=996&bih=435

Well, I see the problem. You seem to think the center-right (reality-based) Obama is a leftist (conservative alternate universe). Hint: to be a socialist, you’d have to do something… anything… a socialist actually supports.

Great link Cricket. I think that to the far right anything a millimeter to the left of them must obviously be a communist, a socialist or worse even.

 

[ishii]

Great link Cricket. I think that to the far right anything a millimeter to the left of them must obviously be a communist, a socialist or worse even.

The thing is, I could just as easily say, “to the far left, anything a millimeter to the right must be obviously a far-right wing, corporatist, unfettered capitalist supporter and hater of the poor.”

The fact is, the political spectrum is relative. Where one stands on that spectrum will affect how they see others. Thus, a far leftist might consider a moderate conservative to be a far right wing extremist. Or a member of one of the left-wing fringe 3rd parties such as the Socialist workers party or The Party for socialism and Liberation would consider Obama to be a conservative or at least part of the “corporate capitalist system.” Similarly, a member of the constitution party (such as Howard Philips) would consider Mitt Romney to be a progressive liberal, and probably McCain as well. So while there isn’t a foolproof “absolute” scale, I think that most would consider Obama one of the most liberal presidents we’ve ever had. As a senator, I believe he was rated most liberal - getting 100% from the liberal groups and 0 % from the conservative groups. Anyway, just some thoughts for you to consider.

Ishii

 

[livingwordunity]

I think that racism, expressed as eugenics (a desire to reduce “undesirable” human genetic stock), was clearly a goal of the “progressive” Left in both America and Europe in the early 20th century. Certainly leftists such as Margaret Sanger in America and George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in Europe expressed admiration for eugenics-based goals of culling the human species, including black people. Wells asked what was the future of “those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop… it is their portion to die out and disappear.”

While some in the American conservative movement also approved of this, the eugenics movement was largely a movement of the left. Even progressive ideas like the minimum wage, while laudable, began as an attempt to reduce the “low-wage races” from competing for work with races seen as more desirable,

Here’s an article by Professor Tim Leonard at Princeton on the attraction of racist eugenics programs for the left, from the Journal of Economic Perspectives: princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf

It’s important to note that these racist views arose not from simple hatred of African Americans, Jews, and the Irish, but often from a misguided liberal view that the lives of those of the “degraded” underclass were not worth living, and that it was kinder to prevent them being born. This foreshadows current arguments from the left that support the idea that abortion can and should prevent the “genetically unfit,” such as those with Down’s Syndrome, or the offspring from rape, or even the poor, from being born. That those people who are born with Down’s Syndrome, or as a product of rape, or the desperately poor, may have their own ideas on whether they deserve to live, isn’t given consideration by the left.

Wow, very well said!

 

[St_Francis]

Strawman? Really?

google.com/search?q=obama+hitler&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UZnSUsyMAfPHsATi04HoCw&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=996&bih=435

Sheesh. Like no one ever did that before?

 

[Darryl1958]

I am not sure this is true. At least in the US, segregation was breaking down after WW2 and Korea as a result of changes in military policies which allowed members of the races to serve alongside each other… This broke down a lot of barriers. All along, it was Democrats and progressives who put the segregationst laws into place, so I think that in the end, the progressives said–Oh look! Change is occurring!! and so they jumped on the bandwagon just hecause it was Change!!! But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the party traditionally considered conservative, not the party traditionally considered progressive
.

Many of those calling for desegregation were conservative and are now considered liberal only because desegregation is now considered a progressive or liberal idea. The advocates of desegregation based their arguments on conservative values of fairness and liberty.

Good answer.
I think that it is very true to note that the nature of American life itself, and the tendency to e pluribus unom, works to almost inevitably erase even the most calcified racial barriers. It is just the nature of life in North America in general where the same guy that is making fun of Polish people on Monday ends up marrying that cute Polish girl on Friday, and moves on. As much as people of one generation consider the hard lines between religions and races to be intractable, people still are in proximity with each other and start relationships. Rebellious girls go for the kind of guy that is expressly forbidden to them, and families are formed in spite of, indeed to spite, the very traditions that stood in their way.
Fighting wars with one another fosters a respect and an appreciation of others that expose the old prejudices as not even true.
I don’t see it really as a conservative thing or a liberal thing, but as an American thing. It is tough to maintain the old prejudices once people start interacting with each other.