Newbie safe zone(ask any simple questions)

scheister

If you look in the poker section there is a section for not dump question but newbie question is best i can put it. Decided to set one up here and see if it works


Start off with a really newbie one

all the time in politics you hear about people being centre left right wing someone please explain to me what that is all about and what the sides stand for?

thanks

Raiser

Why are FF et al so scared of the potential fallout ahead of the upcoming Local Elections?

- According to a friend here in work they're only to elect Local Councillors - ie. the 93 year old backwards dopes grumbling about petty issues like where can we put an extra rubbish bin and lets vote to increase the price of a parking disc again this week

Secondary to my original query is how can the common Citizen use their vote [Is this from the usual registrar of electors?]to hurt the likes of FF and The Greens and send them packing !!!

Have I received bad counsel ? Please forgive my ignorance BTW

turgon

I dont want to answer question no 1 cas its a bit complicated and I might make an arse of myself!

Raiser wrote: »

Why are FF et al so scared of the potential fallout ahead of the upcoming Local Elections?

I suppose the confidence people have in any party is reflected in the number of officials they have at any level. So the goal should always be to get as many as possible. For future times, I would imagine its easier to re-elect an incumbent than elect new faces.

Coming into the next general election the last local elections will be used as an indicator of the result, and a bad result will reflect, em ... badly.

Also the councilors elect 70% of the senate. On second thoughts, that means nothing.

Raiser wrote: »

Secondary to my original query is how can the common Citizen use their vote [Is this from the usual registrar of electors?]to hurt the likes of FF and The Greens and send them packing !!!

Not voting for them usually works, but if you want to buy a load of dynamite and plant it outside some FF office you could probably use your burning ballot paper as ignition.

turgon

As regards question one, wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right_politics might be of use.

The whole left right thing is not that very descriptive to be honest. The Political compass offers an alternative to the left-right divide, its worth checking out. Link: http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Akrasia

scheister wrote: »

If you look in the poker section there is a section for not dump question but newbie question is best i can put it. Decided to set one up here and see if it works


Start off with a really newbie one

all the time in politics you hear about people being centre left right wing someone please explain to me what that is all about and what the sides stand for?

thanks

The terms left and right are a hangover from the french revolution, before the revolution, the nobles and monarchists sat on the right side of the national assembly and the republican socialists sat on the left.

The term is applied today to descripe people's attitude towards economics. Left wing describes people who believe wealth should be redistributed according to equality and need, while right wing opinion prefers capital to be assigned to economic activity as a means of meeting social needs.

Socially, left wing refers to collectivist, while right wing refers to individualist
(left = we should distribute resources according to need and care for the weak, right = everyone is responsible for themselves and if we all act in our own interests the 'invisible hand' will lead to the optimum outcome for society.)

Permabear

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Iwasfrozen

WoW, thanks Donegalfella thats cleared some stuff up, even for me.

nyarlothothep

donegalfella wrote: »

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This is inaccurate. Hitler and Stalin were not on the left by any means. Calling them so makes as much sense as saying China is communist or Bertie Ahern is a socialist. Both were defined by their authoritarianism. On Castro, yes he was a dictator as is Raul, perhaps because Cuba is under siege with the sanctions and failed coup attempts/assassinations . Nonetheless I don't agree with it.


Also some right wing dictators/dictatorships

Franco, Napoleon, Mussolini, Pinochet, The Apartheid Regime

turgon

nyarlothothep wrote: »

This is inaccurate. Hitler and Stalin were not on the left by any means.

No, what donegalfella said is right, ignore this comment newbies

I suppose whereas Stalin is defined as a complete lefty - he was both creating an authoritarian government as well as controlling the economy. He did this through farm collectivization (where farm land was seized and huge estates made, "collectives") and the five year plans. In a hard left economic state, the government owns most of the industry such as coal and oil.

Hitler isnt as easy to pin point. He had an authoritarian style of government with no freedom of press etc. However economically he still had a freer market compared to stalin. That is why the political compass came about, because very often you cant place people on the left right line.

Permabear

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brianthebard

DF if this thread is going to work then you should keep your personal politics out of explanations unless someone specifically asks you about them Suggesting the nazis were socialists is just a crass opportunistic smear (intended to make people think socialists are nazis) on your part.

In addition, your equation of communism or socialism with overbearing state control is wildly inaccurate (one might ask, deliberately so?), Engels explicitly writes about the gradual withering away of the state.

Permabear

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nesf

And this children is a perfect example of why it's so hard to get simple answers to simple questions in politics because quite simply there's almost always some perceived bias in the answers.

The answer I'm happiest with regards where Stalin and Hitler are on the political spectrum is this one: http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 (read down)

In reality while both Hitler and Stalin were extremely authoritarian and Statist, Hitler allowed a lot of private enterprise in the Third Reich while Stalin abolished almost all (if not all) private enterprise with his version* of the communist model. These two positions economically are very far apart.



Right and left wing have two separate meanings in terms of attitudes towards social issues and economic issues. Right wing in social terms is Conservatism and Left wing is Liberal and all the various shades between the extremes. In economic terms, right wing is at the extreme utterly free and unfettered market economy and at the extreme left is Stalin's total state control and production.

Untangling these two meanings like they did with the political compass allows far better analysis and avoids the fights like the above.


*Stalin's version was not the only form of communism and to equate this with socialism is an untruth and a good way to provoke a reaction from left wing people. Similarly arguing that anything but state control of things like the Health System will automatically bring about the kind of inequality we see in the US is equally disingenuous. Both are a very good way to lose the respect of "the other side" in political debates and for newbies to this kind of thing it's worth keeping this fact in mind.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Um, the above diatribe is hardly in the spirit of the topic and is mostly fed by a pathalogical hatred of 'collectivism'

Permabear

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Permabear

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nyarlothothep

always? Firstly you're equating collectivism de facto with regimes. This is untrue. Secondly you're saying by implication that collectivism=regimes=mass slaughter. The first assertion is untrue but moreover there are collectivist societies which have not descended into mass slaughter, for example the Kibbutz. In the interests of impartiality you should mention all those non collectivist right wing regimes which have descended into bloodbaths.

Permabear

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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You think Thatcher wasn't conservative socially and that Friedman wasn't mildly liberal in this regard?

donegalfella wrote: »

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I'm more interested in what Hitler did when in Power than early manifestos of the Nazi Party. He didn't abolish or seize private enterprise to the same extent that Stalin did separating them economically in ideology.

donegalfella wrote: »

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This is a separate issue.

Permabear

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Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Liberty, egalite fraternity the values of the french revolution are the values of socialism, not economic 'liberalism' (where equality and brotherhood mean zilch, and freedom only applies to capital)

Just because the word had not been popularised does not mean my first (deliberately simple) explaination was invalid.

As for the virtues of collectivism, newbies should be aware that collectivist regimes killed over 100 million people during the twentieth century. That is equivalent to wiping out the current population of Mexico. And yet today's starry-eyed collectivists refuse to acknowledge that collectivist regimes always degenerate into repression and mass slaughter.

Collectivist is different from totalitarian... Collective action is what made human civilisation what it is, cooperation, sharing resources, sharing ideas, trade and culture. Totalitarianism is not the same as socialism.

Permabear

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Gorilla

Hi,
Whats the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism?

Permabear

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turgon

Id agree with donealfella.

American patriots like to hang the American flag outside their house.
Irish nationalists like to burn the British flag.

nesf

Gorilla wrote: »

Hi,
Whats the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism?

I'll try and answer this in simple terms rather than attempting to fully capture the scope of the difference.

Patriotism is the love of one's country/nation/whatever. Nationalism is more of an ideological position focussing on some concept of a nation-state. Patriotism is almost always part of a nationalist position but not all patriots are nationalists.

For instance with regard to the north. Nationalists in common parlance would be people who believe that the nation should consist of the entire island of Ireland rather than just the Republic. It's an ideological position on what should be rather than a love of what is the nation etc.


Edit: The real basic questions to ask yourself are:
"What is a nation?"
"Am I really closer to someone else who is a citizen of this nation than another person from a different one?"
"Why are the boundaries of our nation drawn as they are? Are they just arbitrary or is there something deeper going on?"

scheister

not sure if this section is working the way it is meant to so far 3 questions have been ask and a couple of fight have broke out some trying to explain left againest right a comparison came between thatcher and hitler if i read it correctly

what does everyone else think

nesf

scheister wrote: »

not sure if this section is working the way it is meant to so far 3 questions have been ask and a couple of fight have broke out some trying to explain left againest right a comparison came between thatcher and hitler if i read it correctly

what does everyone else think

Welcome to political discussion, it's always about trying to sort out the signal from the noise.

In reality there generally isn't a simple answer accepted by all for every simple question. Politics is an area where even the fundamental questions can be disagreed upon.

Permabear

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Sgt. Sensible

This thread makes history cry.

It looks like the Hitler was a socialist nonsense has been lifted from this tripod site. Great source. Strange how such a fundamental fact has not yet found its way into any orthodox historical studies of Hitler and the nazis.