Some Worthy Political Definitions/Distinctions

[ilaughatrightwingers]

Capitalism - an economic system that allows for non-labor income like profit, interest, and rent based on extended absentee ownership.

State - a monopoly on violence/power over a geographic area. It was designed to protect private property and continues to protect the capitalist system existing today. States can take the form of official government police to private thugs like the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Socialism - an ideology that seeks to abolish capitalism and all forms of non-labor income. Consistent socialists push to abolish the State and Capitalism since they are both connected. Marxists and Anarchists only differ on the strategy of how to do this.

Extended Version

Anarchism - a socialist ideology that rejects all forms of authority, hierarchy, domination, and exploitation regardless of who is implementing them. Anarchism stands in opposition Marxism since Marxism embraces the authoritarian state as a tool to implement revolutionary change.

Libertarian - the term embraced by the French anarchists and anti-authoritarian left when the French nation-state banned the use of the term "anarchist" back in the 19th century.

Libertarian Socialist - a term used by anarchists to separate themselves from so called authoritarian "socialists" and Marxist-Leninists.

Authoritarianism - an ideology that embraces the concepts of structural authority and institutional hierarchy.
----
From: http://thedecentralistsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-definitions-extended.html

[MrModerate]

1. Piffle - semantically null, internally inconsistent daffynitions made to impress the simple-minded.

[ilaughatrightwingers]

2. Sooooo

How would you define each of these terms?

[MrModerate]

3. I'd go to Wikipedia, expect it to be 85% accurate, and apply edits. n/t

[MrModerate]

4. OK, OK, you asked nicely and so I did.

TDC’s: Capitalism – an economic system that allows for non-labor income like profit, interest, and rent based on extended absentee ownership.

WIKI’S/MINE: Capitalism – an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the free market; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses and companies.

Comment: “extended absentee ownership” is encompassed under capitalism, but is an extremely minor feature thereof – far from being the basis of capitalism.


TDC’s: State – a monopoly on violence/power over a geographic area. It was designed to protect private property and continues to protect the capitalist system existing today. States can take the form of official government police to private thugs like the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

WIKI’S/MINE: State – the formal institution on which a political community is organized under a government. A Sovereign State is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, independence from other states and powers, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.

Comment: again some elements of TDC’s definition are not entirely untrue, but are presented as the central fact of the definition when they are merely incidental. A state is formed for a whole host of reasons besides protecting private property (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” being a good starting point). Under no circumstances do police equal a state, and the Pinkertons even in their heyday were never as important to the man in the street as the local cops (Pinkerton strikebreaking notwithstanding).


TDC’s: Socialism – an ideology that seeks to abolish capitalism and all forms of non-labor income. Consistent socialists push to abolish the State and Capitalism since they are both connected. Marxists and Anarchists only differ on the strategy of how to do this.

WIKI’S/MINE: Socialism – an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. Its society is characterized by free association not based on wage labor. It is organized on the basis of relatively equal power relations, self-management, collective decision-making and adhocracy rather than hierarchical, bureaucratic forms of organization in the economic and political systems.

Comment: Socialism is an economic system in much the same way that capitalism is and is not defined by the abolition of capitalism. Nor is it incompatible with the concept of a state. Marxism and Anarchism differ on almost every single element of their doctrines – to the extent that Anarchist “doctrine” can even be defined.


TDC’s: Anarchism – a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society. It seeks to diminish or even abolish authority in the conduct of human relations.

WIKI’S/MINE: Anarchism – a socialist ideology that rejects all forms of authority, hierarchy, domination, and exploitation regardless of who is implementing them. Anarchism stands in opposition to Marxism since Marxism embraces the authoritarian state as a tool to implement revolutionary change.

Comment: As above, the difference between Marxism and Anarchism is huge.


TDC’s: Libertarian – the term embraced by the French anarchists and anti-authoritarian left when the French nation-state banned the use of the term "anarchist" back in the 19th century.

Libertarian Socialist – a term used by anarchists to separate themselves from so called authoritarian "socialists" and Marxist-Leninists.

WIKI’S/MINE: Libertarian – Any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power (either total or merely substantial) from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals, whether voluntary association takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives.

Libertarian Socialism (sometimes called social anarchism and sometimes left libertarianism) – a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production.

Comment: There’s a fair amount of slop in all these definitions, but Wiki considers libertarianism a much broader field than merely a linguistic device by disenfranchised French leftists.


TDC’s: Authoritarianism – an ideology that embraces the concepts of structural authority and institutional hierarchy.

WIKI’S/MINE: Authoritarianism – a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is opposed to individualism and democracy. In politics, an authoritarian government is one in which political power is concentrated in a leader or leaders, typically unelected by the people, who possess exclusive, unaccountable, and arbitrary power.

Comment: Authoritarianism goes a lot further than “embracing the concept of hierarchy.” It breaks down your door, drags you out into the street, and shoots you in the back of head. Food for thought, no?

[truedelphi]

5. Can I point out to you that the good old fashioned, traditional

And "conservative" definition of Capitalism included the concept that those of the investment class made whatever choices regarding the market they wished to pursue, without government interference, and if they lost, they lost: i.e. they were then out the monies invested.

And since that part of the definition was always the accepted definition of Capitalism until the Reagan theories of the bastardized Milton Friedman concepts became the definer, for those of us holding to the old definition of Capitalism, Capitalism died the day that the Bush government put together the Paulson concept of "Too Big To Fail" and gave to the Federal Reserve and US Treasury the ability to bail out Wall Street on the backs of Main Street.

The moment that this new doctrine of Bailout and "Too Big To Fail" became operative, Capitalism as we knew it died. The rich and the investment class are now part of a New Socialism. This New Socialism has put eleven to thirty trillion bucks into the hands of the .05 % Uber Rich, while making the rest of us pay for it, through either the coming inflation or other methods, such as the hand over of the 2.1 surplus Social Security Fund to help reduce the deficit.

[reACTIONary]

6. Your definition of the state...

... is confused. It conflates the Weberian definition based only on means (monopoly of force) with a definition based on an end (protection of property). And your selection of ends is extraordinarily tendentious.

Here is an alternative conception of the state which is teleological (that is, focused on ends, not means). http://ssrn.com/abstract=1904088