From: Jeremiah A Blatz <jer+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 22:26:11 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Extreme Left/Right
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.91.961118184355.23458G-100000@hpg60.astea.com>
Message-ID: <0mYJ==200YUe083bw0@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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James Ormond <jimo@astea.com> writes:
<snip>
> He defined the "political spectrum" as follows:
> 
> < ------- LEFT                                                 RIGHT ------->
> 
>             Monarchy      Oligarchy      Democracy      Republic      Anarchy
> 
> Rule by:      ONE            FEW           MANY           LAW           NONE
> 
> Examples:   Dictator,     Communist,      Lynch Mob     Constitutional
>             King          Fascist State                 Govt (US before
>                                                         1930's)

I prefer the 2 dimentional spectrum (the libretarians tend to push
this) that l;ooks more like this:

                (fucking) Statist



           Left                   Right



                   Anarchist

The statist-anarchist (the lidretarians use "libretarian" instead of
"anarchist") scale is dependant on the centralization of power, and the
left-right scale has to do with the amount of collectivism.

So, the extremem of leftist-statis would be a socialist monarchy
(think China), whereas leftist anarchist societies (like the commune I
lived in last summer) are also possible. To round it out, there's
right(ist? wing?) statist, like say pre-revolution France, and
right(ist/wing) anarchist, which is what most people think of as
anarchy, I guess.

As you hint at in your post, the simple right-left scale is totally
inadequate to describe political beliefs. I think that the one you're
using was created by folks who wanted to demonize leftists.

> Maybe I'm totally wrong in my thinking.  If I am please try to clarify 
> things for me.

Hope I did.

> I think that most "leftists" and "rightists" want many of the same 
> things.  We can't get together because the language we use has been so 
> corrupted.  

Yeah, personally, I'm a moderate-left anarchist. It seems to me that
most folks on this list are rightist anarchist. While our desired
furute worlds are not the same, they are completely compatible as
there is no central power to enforce an economic model on the citizen-
units. Our methods to achieving our goals are also quite similar.

Hope this helps,
Jer

"standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew
 why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole

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