Liberals
Of those two? Christian Democrats, I guess. But there are ideologies far to the right of anarchocapitalists (eg. neomonarchists) and far to the left of libertarian socialists (eg. communists), and anyway political ideologies don’t map well to a single- or even dual-axis graph. You need axes for economic model, rights vs. authority, and stability vs. innovation at a minimum.
what makes anarchocapitalists neomonarchists?
The Judean People’s Front
excuse me. the People’s Front of Judea.
Splitter!
I’ve read enough political posts on Lemmy to know that the correct term for the people in the middle is “Nazi sympathizers.”
Does that tell you where the strongest voices on Lemmy fall?
The other answer is “the left / right spectrum is false.” The actual spectrum is “right / wrong,” and the writer’s beliefs are always on the former side.
Amen. Any political post I make, even like citing basic facts of government and law… often results in multiple screams of nazi and maybe one reply that is legit.
Extremists don’t like facts. Just the other gay some guy was arguing me and he defaulted to ‘everything is propaganda, therefore anything you say is propaganda’. And well, he got me. Because apparently in his world me taking a dump is a form of political pro-capitalist propaganda.
Oh, definitely. The far left never did anything wrong. They only want unicorns and rainbows. All the states that turned authoritarian to preserve their revolution of the workers are actually just far right fascists. If you want to make a dollar or increase your home’s appeal and attraction, you’re a stooge of Big Somebody.
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It’s difficult for some to understand the world is not black and white. I am an anarchist I always have to start saying: “I am an anarchist but I understand the world I am in and the things I have to do to survive they doesn’t mean I can’t spread the word” and the last word goes hard because I am a anarchocristian.
You can’t talk with “black and white world people”. All you can do is reply in hopes those who read don’t fall into the “black and white world hole”.
I would like to not own a car, to not have to spend half my life working for a company that pollutes the world and to no need money. I don’t live in that world but I can try to put a small stone in building that world even though I won’t see it because we are not ready for it.
That being said I hate this world where the State is God and its getting worse but as the saying goes: “the night is darker before dawn”
You don’t walk or ride a bike everywhere? Literal Nazi.
Then if you point out the implicist ableism in that… well you’re a woke nazi…
Left and right are misleading terms that originate from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly. Roughly speaking, left and right can be distinguished by the fact that those on the right approve of social hierarchies and want to maintain them, while those on the left want to abolish them. A supposed middle position would be “only some hierarchies are good.” But that is also just a right-wing position.
That is why there is no “middle ground” in anarchism. Either you want a system in which everyone benefits equally, or one with a clear capitalist hierarchy. Either everyone has one vote, or the weight of the vote depends on wealth. Either we consider the freedom of all to be important, or only that of those who have enough capital. Either no one is dominated, or only those who have to sell their labor.
There is only either/or here. Those who do not consider all people to be of equal value consider some to be more valuable. This is not a spectrum; rather, the difference lies in very fundamental normative decisions.
Are human social groups inherantly hierarchical?
There’s a natural tendency towards heirarchies, but “natural” doesn’t mean “necessary” and it definitely doesn’t mean “desirable”. To create and maintain a better world takes work, and part of that is dismantling “natural”, but harmful, heirarchies (eg. the physically strong dominating the physically weak).
There are a lot of hierarchies that are undesireable.
If humans are hardwired to create hierarchies and seek status would a complete lack of hierarchy be possible on a large scale?
Some heirarchies (my personal opinion now) are both natural and desirable: parent and child, teacher and student.
Many are harmful, and should be removed, no matter how “natural”.
I wouldn’t say “hardwired to create heirarchies” so much as there’s a tendency, in any case.
Wouldn’t we just create another hierarchy in it’s place? Have fun playing wack a mole.
It won’t be fun. It will be work. I was saying that from the beginning. It’s a task without end, but still worthwhile.
This is surely how they argued in the Middle Ages when it came to justifying the different estates.
I don’t believe that hierarchies are something inherently human. You don’t seek out hierarchies in your normal environment. Very few people do. And those who do are usually not very popular. You don’t want to subordinate yourself or dominate others. We are all only human, after all. It’s just that we live in a society that is hierarchical, and therefore it seems normal to us. In fact, however, this order can and is only maintained through violence. That cannot be natural.
So are you saying humans don’t seek social status?
Someone who is extremely intelligent and educated gains a lot of social status. But that has nothing to do with hierarchies. At least not necessarily. For example, I don’t think anyone feels subordinate to Eminem just because he has a lot of social status.
You think too high of Eminem fans, or fans in general. A system that ignores the instinct of humans to follow or lead is doomed to fail without permanent, pervasive, and relentless (re)education. Call it aculturization if you want, but that is dangerously close to fascism.
An ideal education system would teach citizens to recognize these instincts as pernicious and illegal, just as the instinct to, for example, grope an attractive person. From time to time, someone will surely rediscover hierarchies, and that will be a test of resiliency for the New System.
Social media is built on social status and comparison.
Some groups are hierarchical and others are not. My group of friends, for example, is not hierarchical. My partnership is not hierarchical either. So human social groups cannot be described as inherently hierarchical. Perhaps it is necessary to entrust people with tasks. But temporary, democratic delegation of responsibility is something different from social hierarchy. For example in cooperatives there is usually an elected chairperson. Nevertheless, most cooperatives are not hierarchical.
This applies to economic hierarchies such as those between the working class and the owner class, but also to social hierarchies, for example through patriarchy, racism, and other forms of discrimination. If you believe that hierarchy between people is natural and therefore worth stabilizing, for example, that men should call the shots in relationships and in society, or that it is right for the majority of society to work, while a small minority does not work but becomes rich from the labor of the majority, you are advocating a right-wing view of society.
What mammal doesn’t try to establish a hierarchy? We have over 300,000 years of neural programming to seek social status because it increases the odds of reproducing. I am questioning if completely eliminating all hierarchies is even possible.
Discussions about human nature are always fruitless, as humans cannot exist in a natural state. They are always culturally integrated and completely shaped by their culture. Hannah Arendt once said, “Anyone who says ‘human nature’ is lying.”
“Every fool,” as Emma Goldman put it, “from king to policemen, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weakness of human nature. Yet how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?”
Change society, create a better social environment and then we can judge what is a product of our natures and what is the product of an authoritarian system. For this reason, anarchism “stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.” For ”freedom, expansion, opportunity, and above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.” (Red Emma Speaks p. 73)
I am just saying I don’t know if eliminating all hierarchies is possible while humans are wired to seek social status. What mammal doesn’t use dominance to defend resources and territory? I agree that most hierarchies should be abolished but I am questioning if this is even possible in the real world.
I would say that almost no mammal does that if it has alternatives. Especially when resources are distributed in such a way that there is enough for everyone. Cows in a pasture don’t attack each other. Why should they? But this applies above all to humans, who are capable of reason. That’s why we have created systems such as democracy, which are enormously de-hierarchical. That is also why there is no right-wing democratic tradition. They will always attack democracy because it creates equality where, in their view, hierarchy actually belongs.
What kind of dominance exists in normal circles of friends? Do people fight over who gets the most pasta? Of course not, because they prefer to be considerate of everyone else. Circles of friends do not function according to a logic of dominance. They function through negotiation, empathy, and mutual recognition. Why not build society in the same way?
Violence, subordination, and rigid hierarchies are not laws of nature, but rather the result of social circumstances. They usually occur where there is scarcity, which today is mostly artificially created, or where inequality is ideologically justified. Where people experience firsthand that cooperation works better than competition (like in friendships), the logic of dominance loses its appeal. And that is precisely what authoritarian ideologies fear.
Anarcho-primitivism?
“genuine” anarcho capitalists (who arent grifting or trying or are otherwise not just interested in new political concepts like anarchism) dont know what they believe in and no one really helps them out because its easier to make fun of them (valid, but making fun of something isnt how you fix things). They are in a transitionary phase between liberalism, fascism, and socialism. They started from one of those places, are becoming dissillusioned to it, and are opening up to ideas of the other two.
Now you know how to talk to an anarcho capitalist and sway them to your side. Find out where they are coming from, and appeal to whichever side you want them to go to (or back if you want them to see the err in their ways). This also works in favor of fascism btw so if you dont help the anarcho capitalists, they will, and they are.
Would the capitalism we currently have be the same in anarcho-capitalism? Corporations wouldn’t exist without government. Legal tender laws would not exist.
Capitalism is inherently incompatible with statelessness. You need some kind of police or military force to enforce private property and contracts. In anarcho-capitalism, that force doesn’t disappear. Those with more money would be able to buy more protection, better courts, and stronger enforcement, they would increasingly turn wealth directly into power.
What we understand as a corporation today wouldn’t vanish without the state; it would reappear as large, hierarchical firms held together by contracts, private security, and internal command structures. In practice, these would look less like free associations and more like dictatorial private governments, exercising control over workers and communities without even minimal public accountability.
Removing legal tender laws or corporate charters doesn’t eliminate capitalism’s core dynamics: private ownership of productive resources, wage labor, and profit extraction. Anarcho-capitalism keeps those intact while stripping away any collective checks on them. From an anarchist anti-capitalist perspective, that’s not anarchism, thats straight up the replacement of public authority with unaccountable private power.
How do enforce a lack of private property without a state? How do you prevent a capitalist system from sprouting up in socialism without a state?
Same way animals do. You don’t need to enforce something that doesn’t exist in the first place.
If there’s no state to stop me from building a garden on some billionaire’s ranch, private property no longer exists.
How do you prevent someone from not taking ownership of something?
I believe I already answered this? There is no ownership without a state to enforce your claim.
So nothing then. If you want something then you take it, if you are more powerful. That sounds problematic.
depends on which anarcho capitalist you are talking to. I know many former ancaps were free marketeers before going more socialist routes like market anarchism and mutualism. Think like Kevin Carson, a former bleeding heart libertarian, now probably a mutualist. These kinds of ancaps would see todays capitalism as a farce of the free market—they dont believe at all that capitalism is a market free of state sponsored racism, oppression, or violence etc. They believe a market free of state sponsored violence (they call current capitalism crony capitalism but whatever) would look more egalitarian.
Capitalism would be completely different under anarcho-capitalism. I think ancaps are for using dispute resolution organizations to resolve conflicts and for a polycentric law system. Legit cryptocurrencies and legit DeFi could work well in an anarchistic society as a decentralized currency system.
There are no real core ancap theories. Unlike leftists which you can 9 times out of 10 just start with the observations of marx and go from there without necessarily supporting his solutions, ancaps don’t have a core theory they can revolve around which is why often they just stick with the libertarian “non aggression principle” and go from there.
We should be against the concentration of political and economic power. We should try to expand both positive and negative freedoms of the individual as much as possible for as many people as possible.
There’s no such thing as the middle. It’s not a spectrum.
Sometimes things are actually just distinct beliefs.
You can’t be in between Christianity and Hindu for example. They aren’t attached to each other, they are distinct.
Why is it not a spectrum?
Why would it be?
Different ngos would compete for a govenment funding contract.
If sugar is on the left, and salt is on the right, what would be in the center?
Because you can’t really have parts of both.
Either you have wealth redistribution, or you don’t. A lower amount is still wealth redistribution.
You can have a government, or you don’t. A smaller government is still a government.
So if someone wants some wealth redistribution, and some government. They are just arguing how much of a Libertarian Socialist they are, not how much of a anarcho-capitalist they are.
I personally am a Social Democrat. Capitalism is good most of the time, just make sure you’re holding the reigns tight so it goes in the right direction. Skip capitalism altogether for specific industries where it just doesn’t do very well and have the government run those ones directly.
I’m neither a libertarian socialist, nor an anarcho-capitalist. Not even close to either of them, because again, it isn’t a spectrum.
A georgist could use a land value tax to fund a minimum income program. Can social welfare programs be rolled out mostly (but not completely) outside of the state through ngos and non-profits?
It depends on what you mean by social welfare programs.
A basic income system requires very little administration, and what parts of it are required wouldn’t make sense to have it sitting outside the government.
I’d rather see a basic income than need non-profit food banks needing to exist. Grocery stores already exist, are reasonably competitive, and are enormously more efficient if people have the money available to use them.
For things like helping people with disabilities, where economies of scale are mostly irrelevant, ngos and non-profits can make more sense because they can specialize according to the need.
Why would it not make sense?
The administration of a basic income sitting outside of the government?
The government already has a list of every citizen registered via birth or immigration, and provides identification for people. They’re always going to need to do that. There’s really no reason to replicate that level of information outside of the government.
Most people would just go online and register where you’d like your money to be sent (Direct deposit, Mailed cheque)
However, you would still need a few call centers to handle issues, and If someone needs in-person support, the government already has common government service offices like DMVs and service centers that can provide in person service if required, saving significant money on needing dedicated service locations just for this one service.
Tl;dr Economies of Scale matter, and it doesn’t make any sense to replicate the parts that the government already does and has to continue doing.
What would it be a spectrum of? Either you think society needs to be ruled by elites (right wing) or you think society should run itself based on universal rights (left wing).
How would you have elites without government?
Are you asking why governments exist or what classes are?
I believe in universal rights.
Class systems predate governments so, no I don’t think governments as we know them are a prerequisite for class systems. Class systems are always perpetuated with violence so when a state has a monopoly on violence then class systems can only be upheld with state approval.
Because it’s an axis
Did you mean “gradient” instead of “spectrum”?
The leave me alone, live and let live, enough with the politics because every politician lies (we can tell because their lips are moving) middle.
Libertarian capitalists and anarcho-communists?
What is in the middle of libertarian capitalism and anarchocommunism?
Libertarian socialists and anarcho-capitalists!
Ideologies such as social liberalism and democratic socialism are often regarded as in between extreme left and extreme right positions. There are many other positions of course such as centre-right and various “green” and religiously motivated positions. They could also often fit somewhere in between on a conventional right-left spectrum. This of course varies a lot between countries and political systems.
Rationality.
