The 1 word essence of the political right?

[HoreTore]

Hmm, I'm a little confused here.

While I understand that Marx had no qualms about revolution and violence where necessary, he was opposed to the use of terror. Where revolution was the expression of a social will, terror was the imposition of a will on society.

Totalitarianism has no qualms about terror as a method.

He opposed the terror tactics of the russian revolutionaries of the time, yes(like Bakhunin, for example). But not because it was willful killing, but because it was counterproductive. The masses needed to be rallied, then one could use violence.

Lenin was a die-hard totalitarian who had zero qualms about killing anyone and everyone who disagreed, but he too opposed the terror tactics. Stalin isn't my strongest point, but I believe he only believed in terror as a way to gain funds for the party(through postal robberies). But don't quote me on that.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Without multiquoting, I'll try and address your points.

1. If you want to go by the standard and not particularly helpful authoritarian-libertarian spectrum, the moderate left is generally more authoritarian than the moderate right, while both extremes are notably authoritarian.
2. Again, regardless of the actual results of lowering tax rates, the moderate Right believe that doing so increases individual economic freedom, that is their ideal.
3. Imperialism is by no means a logical conclusion of sovereignty, nor is their a historical basis for such a claim.
4. Racism is extremely marginalised today, and while is might have some sort of influence on the far, far-right, it also has links with the left due to the left's identification with the Palestinian cause (not that anti-semetism is in any way a natural conclusion of anti-Zionism - some people are just silly - see for example George Galloway walking out of a debate upon hearing that his opponent was an Israeli - this is outright racism).
5. Your categorization of extremists eg Al-Qaeda as right wing is incorrect, since a) it is based upon your false presumption that the Right is inherently authoritarian and b) Islamism is an entirely different ideology from Western left-right issues.

And as for your 3 scales of the various types of power, they are ridiculous.

For example with the first one, you begin with three levels describing the level at which representation takes place, then suddenly jump to "unequal powersharing"?! You go from fair with the first three, to entirely unfair. It makes no sense as a progressive scale.

As for the second, apart from presuming the free market is unfair (I agree it is but you can't make such a presumption an axis for debate when only one side agrees with it) can't really set the framework for a left-right debate for obvious reasons, it is bizarre because I presumure your idea of a "fair market" is really a "biased market", and yet the free market stands between them on your scale.

And as for the third, any leftist knows that social power is merely a reflection of economic realities, hence is should note require a separate scale.

[Idaho]

The more interesting, and more voluminous of Marxist writings is about the nature of power and politics and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The communist future stuff is overplayed.

[Fragony]

The more interesting, and more voluminous of Marxist writings is about the nature of power and politics and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The communist future stuff is overplayed.

Marx saw it as inevitable, it is the core of his writings. Historians even call predictionalism Marxist form, an inevitabilty of developments. Left and right are outdated concepts anyhow imho, neither refuse democratic processes, both have submitted to the rules of majority. Nothing can exist in it's pure form, there is always compromise required.

[HoreTore]

The more interesting, and more voluminous of Marxist writings is about the nature of power and politics and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The communist future stuff is overplayed.

There's Marx the economist and sociologist, and there's Marx the communist. While the latter is his own conclusion of the former, you can of course adopt the former without the latter(although I don't think you can adopt communism while rejecting his social analysis).

Marx' academic writings make up a hefty portion of the material in the disiplines he engaged in even today, he is definitely one of the greats. For example, while an economist can create theories of economic growth without employing Marx' focus on production, it's hard to to do so without being aware of that theory's existance(at least its modern form).

[Idaho]

There's Marx the economist and sociologist, and there's Marx the communist. While the latter is his own conclusion of the former, you can of course adopt the former without the latter(although I don't think you can adopt communism while rejecting his social analysis).

Marx' academic writings make up a hefty portion of the material in the disiplines he engaged in even today, he is definitely one of the greats. For example, while an economist can create theories of economic growth without employing Marx' focus on production, it's hard to to do so without being aware of that theory's existance(at least its modern form).

Marx's analysis of the capitalist process is still not been bettered in it's scope. His description and prognosis regarding capitalism is as significant now as it ever was. However the prescription of what to do was later, and in my opinion, a weak reflection of the earlier work.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I never assumed the right wasn't rational. They might have numerous ideas such as some people being better than others, by genetics, lineage and a host of other reasons and they see it as their right to be above those on the hierarchy.

You will rarely (if ever) find these ideas in the modern mainstream Right.

Marx's analysis of the capitalist process is still not been bettered in it's scope. His description and prognosis regarding capitalism is as significant now as it ever was. However the prescription of what to do was later, and in my opinion, a weak reflection of the earlier work.

I think the main problem with Marx's predictions was that he didn't see the relationship the Industrialised West would take the on with the rest of the world - through colonialism and the outsourcing of production, the Western bourgeoisie was able to thrive through a foreign proletariat. And this proletariat expressed their grievances in nationalist rather than communist terms because their imperial/industrial rulers were foreign.

One of the main appeals of the Chinese Communist Party was always that they were more nationalist than the Nationalists.

Meanwhile the Western proletariat largely disappeared as a class because they either:

a) rose to middle-class status with the need for an expanded bourgeoisie/service economy due to the massive levels of 3rd World Labour (and they were able to make this transition thanks to better education and other welfare state benefits)

or

b) were unlucky enough not to be able to take advantage of the above, lost their jobs due to outsourcing and the move to a service sector economy in which they had no relevant skills, and devolved into some sort of modern day Lumpenproletariat.

At least that is my theory on what has happened. As for the future, it is hard to tell. I don't see how there can be a communist revolution (or economic/social revolution of some sort) from the 3rd world proletariat, since their only productive forces are useless when they are isolated from the international production chain (their international investors would presumably just relocate), and they lack the infrastructure/technological development to develop their own productive forces.

Which leaves the only prospect for revolution/change coming from the West. But it seems unlikely that revolution can happen there, since the downtrodden class there is actually a minority of the population. And it's not a working-class, it's the benefit-dependent underclass, or what I have been calling them recently, the 'Lumpenproletariat' (hence my user title change not long ago, lol). I think that where Marx viewed the Proletariat as the ultimate expression of capitalist oppression, capitalism has in fact proved more oppressive than he realised. Whereas the proletariat were on the bottom of the class chain, capitalism's excesses have actually meant that it was able to discard a whole class of people and completely remove them from the chain. A people with no stake in society, the economy, or anything. That is what I mean when I talk about a modern Lumpenproletariat.

It would be pretty funny IMO if, after the failure fo the proletariat to deliver a revolution, that the Lumpenproletariat should, at the last, prove to be the true revolutionary class.

But that will only happen if they have enough influence as a class. Currently, they are irrelevant, they don't vote, they don't have a politcal party to express their grievances (the closest party to doing so is the BNP, but these guys lack any vision of where they stand in things, and see themselves as race warriors rather than class warriors, gah!). But I think they will increase a lot in the coming years as the West starts to lose its advantage in the world economy, and Western nations begin to realise they can't always have a large middle-class dependent on third world labour and wealth. That, and the fact that capitalism being what it is, the people that have work are working more, leaving less work for everyone else (I mean, notice how it used to be 9-5, I've been looking for jobs recently and its almost always at least a ten hour day). In fact I look to Japan in this regard, where I looked things up after watching a BBC documentary, and the business model they adopted from a certain American thinker post-WW2 (I am extremely frustrated here not to remember his name or find it) is effectively a model of turbo-capitalism, and what has happened is that a tiny minority of young people are taking the good jobs and working up to 18 hour days to keep them, while the rest are unemployed or working low-paid part-time jobs, unable to marry, or afford their own place to stay. Japan is just a little ahead of the West in this respect, that is the direction we are heading in, look at the number of articles all over the place about how young people here are having an extended teenage experience due to these problems.

So, perhaps Marx jumped the gun with the proletarian revolution, and it is in fact the class that even he despised and looked down upon, the Lumpenproletariat, that will deliver the goods at the end of the day.

Or maybe the technological revolution will prove to be greater than economic ones, and technological advances will have such massive social consequences that they will blow all the above out the water.

Who knows...

[Tellos Athenaios]

One of the main appeals of the Chinese Communist Party was always that they were more nationalist than the Nationalists.

One of the main appeals of the Chinese Communist Party was that at least prior to gaining power they didn't treat the Chinese like shit. They were the first to give the Chinese people, you know the actual people not just some fraction of the elite, the idea that maybe there could be a party that at least didn't get its kicks out of ritual humiliation and exploitation.

[gaelic cowboy]

In fact I look to Japan in this regard, where I looked things up after watching a BBC documentary, and the business model they adopted from a certain American thinker post-WW2 (I am extremely frustrated here not to remember his name or find it) is effectively a model of turbo-capitalism

Hmm any chance your thinking of Philip Crosby he coined the idea of Zero Defects

Or maybe could be W Edwards Deming he was another quality legend in Japan after PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust)

Joseph M. Juran "the vital few and the useful many" and he talked on Cost of poor quality

These fellas all became legends in Japan for exporting there management and defect control ideas to Japan, the big laugh is that the USA had already invented and used all these in WW2. (and stupidly discarded them after but thats another story)

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Marx' critique of capitalism as practiced in the early middle 1800s is a powerful commentary. Child labor, 70-hour weeks, company stores etc. were all, ultimately, exploitative to the point of being abusive. Nor was "informed consent" really possible for the labor force of the era.

With his emphasis on the dialectic as the sweeping tool for explaining history, however, Marx falls into a classic trap of academic thinking -- failing to account for change and/or the impact of his own critique. Capitalism, for Marx, had to continue to act as some great ogre and be felled by violence to yield the radiant future. He never really accounted for reasonable people thinking, "yes, there is some abuse and it needs to stop. Now how do we improve things without tossing out the child along with the dirty water." Its a variation on the "either-or" fallacy to assume that things will either change the way/direction you think they should or they will never change. Marx is FAR from alone in this flaw to his thinking. It is a hallmark of academe.

Really, Marx could stand as a poster child for the entire critical project. They can and do expose flaws and gross inequitites in the current modus vivendi, but they generally screw up by the numbers when trying to "answer" the problems identified by their critique.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Militant Communism... would certainly serve third world countries who are under the yoke of western corporations and puppet governments supported by western interests and governments.

I don't think militant communism would help those countries much. By Marx's own words, they lack the developments that would, in theory, allow a socialist system to work in the first place. In the end they would probably go down a Mugabe-style road.

With his emphasis on the dialectic as the sweeping tool for explaining history, however, Marx falls into a classic trap of academic thinking -- failing to account for change and/or the impact of his own critique. Capitalism, for Marx, had to continue to act as some great ogre and be felled by violence to yield the radiant future. He never really accounted for reasonable people thinking, "yes, there is some abuse and it needs to stop. Now how do we improve things without tossing out the child along with the dirty water." Its a variation on the "either-or" fallacy to assume that things will either change the way/direction you think they should or they will never change. Marx is FAR from alone in this flaw to his thinking. It is a hallmark of academe.

I think these things are true of certain Marxists, but not Marx himself. He was well aware of (and had plenty of dialogue with) a whole host of people and movements that attempted to address the abuses of capitalism without resorting to violent revolution. In his writings, he frequently addresses the likes of the Saint-Simonians, Owenites, Chartists etc. In fact, the latter example there is particularly significant, since Marx himself said that unlike in Europe, Britain's suffrage laws would allow for the working-classes to achieve real political representation through a democratic system. Marx wasn't the blinkered radical many of hs followers became.

[Kralizec]

Marx' critique of capitalism as practiced in the early middle 1800s is a powerful commentary. Child labor, 70-hour weeks, company stores etc. were all, ultimately, exploitative to the point of being abusive. Nor was "informed consent" really possible for the labor force of the era.

With his emphasis on the dialectic as the sweeping tool for explaining history, however, Marx falls into a classic trap of academic thinking -- failing to account for change and/or the impact of his own critique. Capitalism, for Marx, had to continue to act as some great ogre and be felled by violence to yield the radiant future. He never really accounted for reasonable people thinking, "yes, there is some abuse and it needs to stop. Now how do we improve things without tossing out the child along with the dirty water." Its a variation on the "either-or" fallacy to assume that things will either change the way/direction you think they should or they will never change. Marx is FAR from alone in this flaw to his thinking. It is a hallmark of academe.

Really, Marx could stand as a poster child for the entire critical project. They can and do expose flaws and gross inequitites in the current modus vivendi, but they generally screw up by the numbers when trying to "answer" the problems identified by their critique.

I never read Marx' works myself, but I did read a modest amount about his ideas in secondary sources, and in the past I argued a lot with bona fide marxist on another internet forum I used to visit (incidentally, that was also primarily a gaming forum).

What I understand is that in Marx' view, the political developments are entirely dictated by underlying economic factors. "Ideologies" (a term he coined) like liberalism and conservatism were just smoke and mirrors as far as he were concerned. His economic theory on the other hand, was not an ideology but a scientific theory. According to him.

As you say, he did not believe that the capitalist mode of production could give concession after concession in regards to child labour, safety standards for workers etc. It goes against the direction that the capitalist mode of production dictates, and therefore such a strategy would only enhance the tensions in the end. Related, but more fundamentally: he did not foresee that in the political systems which existed then (and largely endure to this day) universal suffrage would be possible.

Communists/socialist writers after him have pointed out that he was wrong in that, and argue that the "capitalist elite" gave the lower classes voting rights, as well as social security and whatnot (Bismarck's introduction of social security for 65+ seniors in Germany is an often cited example) in order to diminish the likelyhood of a socialist revolution. And there is a kernel of truth in that.

Lenin was, I think, in many ways a very perceptive man. The reason why he thought a "worker's vanguard" (i.e. the Party) would be necessary was because the populace at large would never advance beyond what he called "trade union consciousness" in a system that was too democratic. They would simply settle for fair wages, decent safety standards and so on and not pursue a truly socialist/communist society.