Should we discard the political label "progressive"? I say no

[KingOrfeo]

The MODERN "liberal" is, yes, a Socialist (or Communist or Fascist, they're all sides of the same coin). The CLASSICAL Liberal was the man who championed Liberty, which in turn gave birth to Capitalism.

Sadly, most people have no clue about the truth of this.

Both modern liberals (as distinct from progressives/social democrats, and as really, really distinct from socialists of any flavor and as having nothing whatsoever in common with fascists -- I mean liberals as Michael Lind is using the term in the article discussed in the OP) and modern Libertarians are ideological descendants of the classical liberals, but they are very different things.

Stupidity is most frustrating when it comes right up to the verge of making a valid point.

 

[BentSecrets]

Both modern liberals (as distinct from progressives/social democrats, and as really, really distinct from socialists of any flavor and as having nothing whatsoever in common with fascists -- I mean liberals as Michael Lind is using the term in the article discussed in the OP) and modern Libertarians are ideological descendants of the classical liberals, but they are very different things.

Stupidity is most frustrating when it comes right up to the verge of making a valid point.

You're wrong. The modern so-called Liberal in the vein of Obama, Gore and friends, is absolutely a Socialist. You're an idiot if you believe that there is nothing in common between a Socialist and a Fascist.

Socialism, Communism and Fascism (and even Christianity, Judaism and Islam) are ALL--every single one--flavors of COLLECTIVISM. They are all flavors of the philosophy that INDIVIDUALS do not matter and have little or no rights except as ascribed to them by the State, the Society, the Deity, whichever authority figure fits.

The Contrast--and the root of Classical Liberalism and modern Libertarianism, is INDIVIDUALISM, which is the idea that all rights begin with the Individual and that no group, no matter how large, can have more rights than what the individual possesses. Just because you get 20 guys together does NOT give you more rights than the one man standing across from you.

The US was founded on the idea that government should protect rights at an individual level; today we're ruled by whichever group of thugs can intimidate and fearmonger their way into power. Democrats and Republicans are MASTERS of fearmongering, and they do it for a very simple reason: if you scare a man out of his wits, he'll have lost the very thing he needs to fight back against your tyranny.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans want an educated and alert population--they want us scared shitless. And between scarecrows like Terrorism and Global Warming, (both of which have ELEMENTS of truth that do legitimately deserve consideration and probably purposeful action but are nowhere near as dire as they're made out to be), they've got 90% of the market, from left to right, scared out of their minds and convinced that the guys on the other side of the fence are their mortal enemies.

In truth, the REAL enemies of the American People are the Democratic and Republican parties.

 

[KingOrfeo]

You're wrong. The modern so-called Liberal in the vein of Obama, Gore and friends, is absolutely a Socialist.

Please reread the OP, and post #22.

Socialism requires, at the very least, public ownership and management of all the most important means of production in society. A welfare state, however thoroughgoing, is not socialism. Neither is heavily regulated capitalism. Neither is capitalism actively guided and directed by the state -- that is dirigisme. (That last is something that deserves serious consideration here, especially now; the Japanese have had a lot of success with it.) We're not going to get socialism or even dirigisme from Obama, he's barely even a liberal. What's being done to "nationalize" the finance industry or the auto industry is not any systematic program; the Admin is simply demanding, on an ad-hoc basis, some measure of control in exchange for saving a few specific failing businesses, because it would be very stupid simply to give vast amounts of money unconditionally to be spent by the same CEOs who caused their companies to fail in the first place.

You're an idiot if you believe that there is nothing in common between a Socialist and a Fascist.

They do have something in common, but you are an idiot if you believe there is no important difference between them. From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, by George Orwell (1941):

Socialism is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production”. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.

However, it has become clear in the last few years that “common ownership of the means of production” is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class system. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. “The State” may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.

But what then is Fascism?

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and—this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism—generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that nonnordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State.