[Post]

I like the sound of Burke's ideas (never read him). But I think that's more because I don't like ideologies that can be too utopian, and libertarians seem to me to be too utopian. Don't care that much for tradition or anything, just don't really trust change when it happens too quickly.

[prog2djent]

(Original post by Drapetomanic)
you're right about the Hayek circle jerk in these here parts...

'Oh, yeah, yeah tell me about the failures of planned economys... **** yeah, you're the greatest academic of all time yeah, yeah, yeah uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh...'

Where have I mentioned Hayek, someone who was a pseudo-economist, like many in the Austrian School (despite Hayek not actually being an austrian economist if he were alive today).

His criticism of planned economies came from a social side, out of them all (not just austrians .. I mean all economic schools) Mises was the first to savage the idea of a planned economy, despite that not being socialism, and Mises misunderstanding what socialism meant, and looking at it under practace under the early stages of post revolution Russia and early leninist rule.

Also

"uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh"

what with the black and red anarcho-something revolutionary left flag, syndicalist, communist, whatever, you aren't helping the stereotype of "the incoherant left" there, are you?

I think you are angry and flustered that they were the first, and most correct on their criticism of a planned economy, canny hack it bretirick se lupe?

[Drapetomanic]

(Original post by prog2djent)
Where have I mentioned Hayek, someone who was a pseudo-economist, like many in the Austrian School (despite Hayek not actually being an austrian economist if he were alive today).

His criticism of planned economies came from a social side, out of them all (not just austrians .. I mean all economic schools) Mises was the first to savage the idea of a planned economy, despite that not being socialism, and Mises misunderstanding what socialism meant, and looking at it under practace under the early stages of post revolution Russia and early leninist rule.

Also

"uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh"

what with the black and red anarcho-something revolutionary left flag, syndicalist, communist, whatever, you aren't helping the stereotype of "the incoherant left" there, are you?

I think you are angry and flustered that they were the first, and most correct on their criticism of a planned economy, canny hack it bretirick se lupe?

It was a joke, man, and the "uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh" was supposed to represent orgasm (guess us lefties make different noises, eh?).

Just for the record, I actually think planned economies (especially central ones) haven't and probably wouldn't work. As for a tenancy, I'd identify myself as 'socialist', 'market socialist' at a push. But yeah, I might change the flag since I'm not really 'communist' any more. Your last sentence has succeeded in confusing me.

[TheIronist]

(Original post by Cheese_Monster)
Disraeli was an inspirational one-nation Conservative.

Burke's influence was simply to emphasise a rejection of ideology in place of pragmatic, piece meal reform while preserving the institutions, hierarchy and tradition.

But today's TSR users seem to all be inclined to New Right free-market ideals.

I guess I don't see that Burke or anyone could be without ideology. In fact you mentioned that Burke wanted to preserve traditional institutions and traditional hierarchy. What's so "pragmatic" about that? why is that not an ideology itself?

I think everyone has an ideology. Some are simply deluded and seem to think that everyone else is dogmatic but themselves. Some know it well but they still try to convince the rest of us that they are free from ideological beliefs (which again to me sounds like a nonsensical statement - any kind of policy suggestion involves some kind of belief in one idea or another - equality, freedom, etc - i.e. an ideology).

[Post]

(Original post by TheIronist)
I guess I don't see that Burke or anyone could be without ideology. In fact you mentioned that Burke wanted to preserve traditional institutions and traditional hierarchy. What's so "pragmatic" about that? why is that not an ideology itself?

I think everyone has an ideology. Some are simply deluded and seem to think that everyone else is dogmatic but themselves. Some know it well but they still try to convince the rest of us that they are free from ideological beliefs (which again to me sounds like a nonsensical statement - any kind of policy suggestion involves some kind of belief in one idea or another - equality, freedom, etc - i.e. an ideology).

I completely agree. I think that's where the strength of his argument comes from though. People are so fickle, they think they can challenge anything.
It's pragmatic because even if you're completely wrong and you make slow gradual changes, you can see the effect much clearer and return if you need to what you know at least functions in some sense (even if it is badly)

[Cheese_Monster]

(Original post by TheIronist)
I guess I don't see that Burke or anyone could be without ideology. In fact you mentioned that Burke wanted to preserve traditional institutions and traditional hierarchy. What's so "pragmatic" about that? why is that not an ideology itself?

I think everyone has an ideology. Some are simply deluded and seem to think that everyone else is dogmatic but themselves. Some know it well but they still try to convince the rest of us that they are free from ideological beliefs (which again to me sounds like a nonsensical statement - any kind of policy suggestion involves some kind of belief in one idea or another - equality, freedom, etc - i.e. an ideology).

I know, I agree. I'm only stating what Burke himself believed. Most people that reject ideology are themselves, ideological. Take postmodernists for example.

[TheIronist]

(Original post by Post)
I completely agree. I think that's where the strength of his argument comes from though. People are so fickle, they think they can challenge anything.
It's pragmatic because even if you're completely wrong and you make slow gradual changes, you can see the effect much clearer and return if you need to what you know at least functions in some sense (even if it is badly)

I have to say (as I did before) that I don't find the term "pragmatic" to mean anything substantial (it's primarily used as a rhetorical device to bully one's political opponents). We come to hold certain political ideals (e.g. healthcare for every single citizen) and then we choose the means with which to attain these ideals (e.g. a nationalised healthcare system). Now yes the means can be pragmatic. I.e. we can see in practice which kind of system, a nationalised or a privatised system, would in fact realise our political ideal - healthcare for every single citizen - most effectively. But that's not where the real debate lies. The real debates lies in our political ideals which are not "pragmatically" chosen for there can not be such a thing as a non-ideological ideal.

[D.R.E]

As above, I don't see how one can be 'pragmatic' when coming to political beliefs. I also fail to comprehend what exactly libertarians espouse that can be described as utopian. Furthermore, I find it extremely strange that the OP (and other posters) are attempting to juxtapose a conflict between so-called Hayekian Utopianism, and Burkean 'Pragmatic Conservatism'(whatever that means), when Hayek himself saw no conflict between their ideas and referenced him extensively in his essay Individualism: True and False which you can find here.

[Classical Liberal]

(Original post by anarchism101)
How can we talk about 'intentions' with Nazism? There's no real definition of Nazism other than 'what the Nazis did'. And Hitler, in all essence, WAS Nazism, it's meaningless to separate the two.

A Nazi is basically a nationalist racist socialist.

Nazism was the logical product of collectivism devoid of any individualistic content. It was all about group supremacy and a planned society. It silly to just brush Nazism off as one crazy guy who got power. He only got power and was able to maintain it because of the ideas of the time. It is no accident that many of the socialist thinkers came from Germanic descent whilst many of the liberal thinkers came from Britain.

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” - JM Keynes

I believe this quote was actually referring directly to Hitler.

The practical man being Hitler. The intellectuals being the socialists.

[Classical Liberal]

(Original post by Drapetomanic)
you're right about the Hayek circle jerk in these here parts...

'Oh, yeah, yeah tell me about the failures of planned economys... **** yeah, you're the greatest academic of all time yeah, yeah, yeah uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh...'

Sorry if you do not like it but Hayek probably was the greatest all round thinker of all time. The only person who might come close to having developed such a general theory of society might be Marx.

In fact Hayek really is the Marx of the right. They were both economists. Both social theorists. And both philosophers.

Which probably explains why lefties always use Marx. And righties always use Hayek.

[Llamageddon]

I've not noticed any unusually perceptive or intelligent remarks from libeterians as a whole. Most of them spout out a load of meaningless drivel, harp on about europe all the time and have a fairly dogmatic approach to economics.

As with extremists of any sort they typically fail to realise that a lot of what their opponents state is also true and consequently make an ideological rather than pragmatic judgement on what the best way to approach a situation is.

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by prog2djent)
FINE, Fu it, I'll lift this straight out of the saught after wikipedia entry which has been revised many-a-time

And don't you dare Tl;DR me.

Fascism ( /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology.[1][2] Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood through a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics.[3][4] Fascism seeks to purify the nation of foreign influences that are deemed to be causing degeneration of the nation or of not fitting into the national culture.[5] Fascism promotes political violence and war, as forms of direct action that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.[3][6] Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violence against opponents or to overthrow a political system.[7] Fascism opposes multiple ideologies: conservatism, liberalism, and two major forms of socialism—communism and social democracy.[8] Fascism claims to represent a synthesis of cohesive ideas previously divided between traditional political ideologies.[9] To achieve its goals, the fascist state purges forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration.[10]

The fascist party is a vanguard party designed to initiate a revolution from above and to organize the nation upon fascist principles.[11] The fascist party and state is led by a supreme leader who exercises a dictatorship over the party, the government and other state institutions.[12] Fascists reject conventional democracy that is based on majority rule.[13][14] Fascists claim to advocate an authoritarian democracy based on rule of the most qualified, rather quantitative majority rule, though multiple scholars are strongly skeptical of fascism's claims to be democratic.[14][15][16][17][18][19] Fascism supports a socially united collective national society and opposes socially divided class-based societies and socially-divided individualist-based societies.[20] Fascists claim it is a trans-class movement, advocating resolution to domestic class conflict within a nation to secure national solidarity.[21] While fascism opposes domestic class conflict, it favours a proletarian national culture and claims that its goal of nationalizing society emancipates the nation's proletariat, and promotes the assimilation of all classes into proletarian national culture.[21] It opposes contemporary bourgeois class-based society and culture for allegedly being based on selfish and hedonistic individualism that results in plutocracy and war profiteering at the expense of the nation.[22] Fascism claims that bourgeois-proletarian conflict primarily exists in national conflict between proletarian nations versus bourgeois nations; fascism declares support for the victory of proletarian nations.[23]

Fascists advocate a state-directed, regulated economy that is dedicated to the nation; the use and primacy of regulated private property and private enterprise contingent upon service to the nation or state, the use of state enterprise where private enterprise is failing or is inefficient, and autarky. It supports criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers because it deems these acts as prejudicial to the national community.[24]

There is a running dispute among scholars about where along the left/right spectrum that fascism resides.[25][26][27][28] Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.[29][30] Benito Mussolini in 1919 described fascism as a syncretic movement that would strike "against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left".[31][32] Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century."[33][34] They also, however, officially declared that although they were "sitting on the right" they were generally indifferent to their position on the left-right spectrum, as being a conclusion of their combination of views rather than an objective, and considering it insignificant to the basis of their views, which they claimed could just as easily be associated with "the mountain of the center" as with the right.[35] A major element of fascism that has been deemed as clearly far-right is its goal to promote the right of claimed superior people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior elements.

Why not read "Position in the political spectrum" on wiki for yourself.

I never said fascism was exlusively NOT on the right, and I would NEVER suggest fascism is left wing, it is synoptic, it can't be limited to the left-right dichotomy. It can't even be confined to the Authoritarian Left, Authoritarian Right, Libertarian Left, Libertarian Right axis. It is however, undoubtedly authoritarian, but it rejects and sort of civil liberties and free market and wants massive state control over the economy and social lives, so can't be libertarian right at all, it can't be libertarian left for those reasons aswell aside from private property and markets, it has some ideas of authoritarian leftism, state control over economy, revolution via a vanguard party, un-democratic, totalitarian and it takes from the authoritarian right with social conservatism, a strong nationalist ideal and national defence, but not necassarily interventionist, where the authoritarian left creeps back in (remember, most neo-cons can be closely linked by trotskyism today).

Wikipedia, hmmmm.... lol


Fascism did state it was neither left nor right, this is true. Mussolini was originally a socialist, this is true. However, this has to be placed in historical context. The fallout from WW1 and the social revolutions sweeping Europe, the rise of working class power and industrial unrest in Italy at the time (strikes, factory occupations, revolutionary committees, class against class violence etc). Fascism as an ideology said it would put an end to class conflict, that it would bring the opposing classes together to work for a common goal - that of nationalism and Risorgimento. Nationalism is clearly a conservative ideology. We also have to look at who supported fascism - land owners and business owners, who saw it as a bulwark against working class revolution and communism - again, a conservative ideal.

Then we have Nazism - an ideology, that again is set against the backdrop of the fallout of WW1, the first modernist war and all the horrors that entailed, the crippling reparations Germany was forced to make, the national humiliation. Then we have the failed 1919 revolution and the weak compromise of the Weimar Republic. Then we have the influence of Romanticism (a conservative movement), the ideas of lebensraum for Germanic peoples (a nationalist conservative idea), all the stuff about blood and soil of the people etc (again, conservative), the master race ideas, that certain people are destined to be in power etc - these are all ideas with roots in conservatism. Yes, there was a radical part to Nazism as well, but that was dealt with in the night of the long knives. And then look at what the Nazis did - persecuted and killed trade unionists, left wingers etc.


All without c&p'ing from ****ing Wikipedia too.

[Classical Liberal]

Proclaiming you are pragmatic is a guise for being unprincipled.

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by prog2djent)
Where have I mentioned Hayek, someone who was a pseudo-economist, like many in the Austrian School (despite Hayek not actually being an austrian economist if he were alive today).

His criticism of planned economies came from a social side, out of them all (not just austrians .. I mean all economic schools) Mises was the first to savage the idea of a planned economy, despite that not being socialism, and Mises misunderstanding what socialism meant, and looking at it under practace under the early stages of post revolution Russia and early leninist rule.

Also

"uuuggghghfluuuuuugghhghhhh"

what with the black and red anarcho-something revolutionary left flag, syndicalist, communist, whatever, you aren't helping the stereotype of "the incoherant left" there, are you?

I think you are angry and flustered that they were the first, and most correct on their criticism of a planned economy, canny hack it bretirick se lupe?

You're hardly coherent yerself, Mr "I've been studying Wikipedia", lol

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by D.R.E)
As above, I don't see how one can be 'pragmatic' when coming to political beliefs. I also fail to comprehend what exactly libertarians espouse that can be described as utopian. Furthermore, I find it extremely strange that the OP (and other posters) are attempting to juxtapose a conflict between so-called Hayekian Utopianism, and Burkean 'Pragmatic Conservatism'(whatever that means), when Hayek himself saw no conflict between their ideas and referenced him extensively in his essay Individualism: True and False which you can find here.

Oh dear

A project that takes its theory from utopian "just so" stories of desert islands, that is ahistorical in its analysis and seeks to perfect capitalism, is not utopian?!?

Oh my aching sides etc

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by Classical Liberal)
A Nazi is basically a nationalist racist socialist.

Nazism was the logical product of collectivism devoid of any individualistic content. It was all about group supremacy and a planned society. It silly to just brush Nazism off as one crazy guy who got power. He only got power and was able to maintain it because of the ideas of the time. It is no accident that many of the socialist thinkers came from Germanic descent whilst many of the liberal thinkers came from Britain.

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” - JM Keynes

I believe this quote was actually referring directly to Hitler.

The practical man being Hitler. The intellectuals being the socialists.

Fallacies ahoy! Joker.

[Classical Liberal]

(Original post by Kibalchich)
Then we have Nazism - an ideology, that again is set against the backdrop of the fallout of WW1,

It is true that the economic circumstances of Germany were ripe for Nazism but Nazism was culmination of decades of collctivist thought. Throughout history when crisis strikes people turn to the ideas that happen to be lying about (rather than a rational approach) and it happened that collectivist socialists ideas were the ones hanging around in Germany at that time.

Yes, there was a radical part to Nazism as well, but that was dealt with in the night of the long knives. And then look at what the Nazis did - persecuted and killed trade unionists, left wingers etc.

The Nazi's did not like all left wingers. The Nazis were socialists. However the Nazi's did not get on with all other socialists (just like how some Libertarians hate other Libertarians). A funny historical anomaly is that the socialists that the Nazis hated came over the the UK. In the UK these socialists, who the Nazis hated, portrayed Hitler as a right winger who liked capitalism (because compared to them he probably was more right wing). This had a big influence on how Hitler would then been portrayed throughout history. From then on he was portrayed as a right winger who liked somehow liked capitalism. Very annoying and totally untrue.

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by Classical Liberal)
It is true that the economic circumstances of Germany were ripe for Nazism but Nazism was culmination of decades of collctivist thought. Throughout history when crisis strikes people turn to the ideas that happen to be lying about (rather than a rational approach) and it happened that collectivist socialists ideas were the ones hanging around in Germany at that time.



The Nazi's did not like all left wingers. The Nazis were socialists. However the Nazi's did not get on with all other socialists (just like how some Libertarians hate other Libertarians). A funny historical anomaly is that the socialists that the Nazis hated came over the the UK. In the UK these socialists, who the Nazis hated, portrayed Hitler as a right winger who liked capitalism (because compared to them he probably was more right wing). This had a big influence on how Hitler would then been portrayed throughout history. From then on he was portrayed as a right winger who liked somehow liked capitalism. Very annoying and totally untrue.

Excellent, LOL

The debate here just gets better and better.


Collectivist thought? Oh dear Try and be a human being with no one else around, see how far you get. Idiot.

[Kibalchich]

are you 12 or something

[Classical Liberal]

(Original post by Kibalchich)
Excellent, LOL

The debate here just gets better and better.


Collectivist thought? Oh dear Try and be a human being with no one else around, see how far you get. Idiot.

Listen to Hitler's speeches. That is more than enough proof.

Altruism. Planning. The Common Good. Group supremacy. All very common themes throughout his speeches.

Hitler was not some lone nut. He was the mouthpiece of one of the most brutal and logical forms of collectivism.