You know what I mean?
No?
The rightwing, like the leftwing in a roundabout way, is largely a form of collectivism.
Capitalism is a form of individualism.
Today, in the Anglosphere, capitalism is normally considered rightwing.
But historically, even in the Anglosphere, it was considered leftwing.
I’m not saying it’s right or leftwing, I’m saying it’s a form of individualism, and individualism transcends right and left.
I’ll give you an example.
Take protectionism.
Protectionism is a form of rightwing collectivism, because it places the interests of the nation state/ingroup both above the interests of the individual, and above the interests of other nation states/outgroups.
Protectionism/‘fair trade’ is antithetical to capitalism/free trade.
Protectionism is normally placed to the right of capitalism on the political spectrum.
Protectionism is rightwing economics, capitalism isn’t really rightwing, it’s 3rd way.
Leftwing collectivism would do the opposite, place the interests of other nation states/outgroups both above the interests of the individual, and above the interests of our nation state/ingroup, particularly if other nation states were ‘needier’ than our nation state and/or ‘unjustly’ discriminated against.
Lately, I’ve been thinking of society, government and economics more like a triangle than one, two or three straight lines, dimensions or axises.
There’s rightwing collectivism, leftwing collectivism, individualism, and various positions in between these three.
I’ll give you two other examples, wiki paternalistic conservatism, and corporatism (not to be confused with corporatocracy/crony capitalism).
Paternalistic conservatism, corporatism and protectionism are all examples of how to do rightwing economics.
Feudalism may be one more, altho feudalism is no longer viable.
Conversely communism, socialism and distributism are all examples of how to do leftwing economics.
There are gradients, some forms of rightwing and leftwing economics are more individualistic than others, but the emphasis is still relatively on the collective.
For example, libertarian/market socialism is far more individualistic than authoritarian/state socialism, nonetheless it’s still less individualistic than capitalism.
Outside of Sade’s sadism and Stirner’s egoism, capitalism is perhaps the greatest individualism yet conceived.
An ‘enlightened’ egoism, if you will, organized chaos, as opposed to dark egoism or chaos.
That being said, there is such a thing as spontaneous order, spontaneous order could arise out of Stirner’s egoism, see his ‘union of egoists’.
Yea, capitalism isn’t rightwing.
Nationalism is rightwing, right?
Capitalism, free trade, the free flow of goods and people(s) (and with them ideas) within and between nations and states, facilitates globalization/globalism, not nationalization/nationalism.
There are many globalisms, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism are all examples of globalist religions, whereas Judaism and Hinduism are more insular.
Marxism is globalist, and fascism too can be globalist in a roundabout way, because of its militarism/imperialism.
There are many globalisms, but capitalism has by far and away been the most successful one.
It’s capitalism, consumerism, materialism and pop culture more than anything else that’s brought people(s) together, rather than collectivism.
People like money, toys and travel.
In America they like money, in Bangladesh they like money too, and in Mozambique???
You can BET YOUR ASS they love money in Mozambique too!
Money makes the world spin.
It’s something we all need, and the vast, VAST majority desire.
It’s something you may never have enough of, the poor want more, but the rich too, perhaps especially the rich.
If an American hands a Rhodesian a bible, the Rhodesian may pick it up and read it, or he may toss it on the ground, but if he hands him money, the Rhodesian will surely take it.
And what is capitalism but thee system for maximizing GDP growth?
Love it or hate it, all the socioeconomists across the political spectrum agree, it’s by far and away thee most efficient system for maximizing GDP growth yet devised.
And so if there’s going to be a bigger, stronger world government/more centralization of power, at this rate it’ll likely take an essentially capitalist form.
And in China, they like money too, they’re not Marxists in practice anymore, are you kidding???
We’re all capitalists now.
We taught China to love capitalism, both the Chinese people, and their oligarchs alike, they all love capitalism.
Virtually every country the world over has essentially adopted capitalism, and so whatever differences between them persist, they’re mere different piles of the same shit.
Sticking with China they practice an illiberal, more authoritarian brand of capitalism than the one practiced in the west…but west can be pretty damn illiberal/authoritarian too these days.
Marxism, fascism, anarchism, premodern sociopolitical and economic systems?
By and large they’ve all been scrapped, tossed in the dustbin of history.
It’s a world of money, and so it should come as no surprise America, one of if not thee most capitalist nations on earth, is still leading it.
Capitalism was born in Britain, along with the industrial revolution, altho there were prototypes the world over, especially in other parts of western Europe like northern Italy, western Germany, France and Holland.
It’s an Anglo-American world we’re living in, that we’ve been living in for the past two or three centuries, and at least for the time being, we’re all going to continue living in it for the foreseeable future.
So if you want to understand how the world works today and why, and where it’s headed, understanding capitalism and its permutations is paramount.
Capitalism laughs at your woke.
Laughs at your national populism and social conservatism too.
Laughs from its mountain.
Capitalism doesn’t complement national and social conservatism much, if at all.
Instead paternalistic conservatism, corporatism (again, don’t conflate corporatism with corporatocracy/crony capitalism, wiki the difference) and protectionism complement national and social conservatism.
So what sort of culture does capitalism complement?
It complements consumerism, materialism, egoism, hedonism and pop culture, and vice versa, they’re mutually complementary.
So what tends to go with Capitalist Economics?
Society: Civil Libertarianism
Government: Representative Democracy
Culture: Consumerism, Materialism & Pop Culture
However, capitalism is more than capable of becoming authoritarian, perhaps especially in its latter stages, more on this later.
Capitalist authoritarianism is pretty distinct from other forms of authoritarianism.
I think understanding authoritarian capitalism is key to understanding the contemporary west and where it looks like it’s heading.
Authoritarian capitalism is more covert, dynamic and insidious than other, more straightforward forms of authoritarianism, which can make it even more dangerous.
I really like this alternative version of the political compass (can’t seem to embed the image, admin needs to get on that…).
A full explanation is here (and part 2) but the idea is to recast the political compass with a thrive/survive axis, and a coupled/decoupled axis:
I agree that capitalism is individualist (‘decoupled’), as you point out, but I think it’s agnostic on the thrive/survive axis, and so seems to fit more comfortably on the right than on the left. Put another way, while it’s true that “capitalism isn’t [necessarily] rightwing”, there is such a thing as rightist capitalism but not really such a thing as leftist capitalism.
Doubly agreed not on principle based on any viable economic decoupling between say, the conservative-traditional axis, correlate to the survival- thrive one, and analogously structured parallel with it, whereas the polarities of left and right reflect that. as if some growing authority would arise from such couple, the uncoupling would casually reduce the apparent menace that could result from the failure to uncouple it, But on an intuitively based escotologically referenced revision.
An agnostic premis , may necessitate such process, but not necessarily curtailed as fixed to a spatio-temporal description , so as to correct a possible optically maneuverable set geometric foundations.
So I agree with both the premise and the conclusion of such designations as well represented.
In particular, within The Curch (Catholic) shift apparent in the popes’ Benedict/Francis controversy…
And that controversy is essentially significant . and increasingly becomes so, in light of the escotologically rise of the reintegration global significance of the universal amalgam into which the new world order is trying to reform.
Thanks for sharing.
For me, the opposite of populism isn’t liberalism/libertarianism, it’s elitism, the opposite of liberalism/libertarianism is authoritarianism.
In official history and in practice, all systems are more or less elitist and authoritarian.
At best systems that ‘aim’ for liberalism/libertarianism may be better at concealing, or mitigating their authoritarianism a bit (I’m being generous), whereas systems that aim for populism may be better at concealing, or mitigating their elitism a bit (again I’m being generous).
For me, both the leftwing and rightwing are both fiscally and socially collectivist, whereas what I think your typology may be saying is, the leftwing are fiscally collectivist but socially individualist, whereas the rightwing are fiscally individualist (capitalist) but socially collectivist.
The left’s collectivism is based on the victim/oppressor dichotomy whereas the right’s collectivism is based on the inferior/superior and/or outgroup/ingroup dichotomies.
Fiscally for the left this means communism or socialism, whereas fiscally for the right it means protectionism, paternalism, corporatism and feudalism.
In real rightwing economics, rather than society and the state refraining from intervening in the economy, they intervene to maintain, but also ‘balance’, ‘moderate’, stabilize hierarchies to prevent class warfare.
Think Mussolini’s class collaboration as opposed to Marx’s class warfare or Adam Smith’s individual competition.
Socially for the left this means progressivism (anti or reverse discrimination, racial, sexual and so on), whereas socially for the right it means conservatism (discrimination, again racial, sexual and so forth).
So capitalism (fiscal) and liberalism/libertarianism (social) are neither left nor right, they’re individualist.
As for populism, it can mean just whatever’s popular with the masses, which can be anything, or it can mean egalitarianism, which’s largely synonymous with leftism and liberalism/libertarianism or left-liberalism/libertarianism.
Populism on the left typically emphasizes political economy over society and culture, populism on the right typically emphasizes society and culture over political economy.
Populism can mean the uncorrupted form of something, like state socialism and capitalism as opposed to state capitalism and crony capitalism respectively.
It can mean what’s both popular and (perceived to be) antiestablishment/anti-corruption in high places.
So yea, you could meaningfully divide sociopolitics into quadrants; leftism, populism, liberalism/libertarianism and rightism, but these things may mean something a bit different to me than what they mean to you, to me liberalism/libertarianism is synonymous with individualism, whereas both leftism (egalitarianism) and rightism (separatism/supremacism) are synonymous with collectivism, and populism is a wild card, could be anything, antiestablishment messages and politicians that appeal to a sizeable portion of the masses.
But underneath all that, all systems are largely authoritarian and elitist in practice.
Populism and liberalism/libertarianism aren’t complete fictions, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
In practice state socialism and capitalism are more or less state capitalism and crony capitalism respectively, and both are authoritarian.
In practice state socialism and capitalism aren’t all that different from authoritarian conservatism and fascism.
This is mostly correct. Capitalism encourages individualistic focus on yourself and being hedonistic, on materialism and ultimately leading to narcissism and huge problems of tragedy of the commons all of which end up undermining shared groups/collectives.
The right wing is collectivistic in terms of loving their nation, family and race/people, the left wing is collectivistic around loving the state and their political party/allegience.
Note that in the current world, because the state and politics have merged with big business and the rich, capitalist individualism (peaked as it already is into narcissistic hedonism) has taken a left-wing form rather than a right-wing form. The left-wing’s collectivist nature causes them to love the government and their political party, while the right-wing’s collectivist nature causes them to love their family, nation, heritage etc. Government and politics being subverted by capitalism, it makes sense that capitalism would become “left-wing” but in a way that cores out the heart of the left-wing, removing its collectivst tendencies or at least inauthenticating these in favor of moving everyone into the new hyper-individualistic ethos.
Then again there are others who claim the left-wing is inherently individualistic, because of how they sit on Haidt’s 5 moral dimensions:
Harm avoidance
Fairness and equality
In-group loyalty
Innate respect for authority
Sense of purity/sanctity
Right-wing people are fairly evenly distributed among all five moral dimensions but may be slightly higher on the last three, whereas left-wing people tend to be higher on the first two and lower on the last three. The argument is that the first two moral foundations are individualistic while the last three are collectivistic or focused on the group.
Left-wing people may have collectivistic tendencies toward loving the state and their political allegiances, but overall they are individualists because their moral foundations are centered on the individualizing values of harm avoidance and fairness/equality. These values focus on the individual and what is good and right for the individual. By contrast, group loyalty, respecting authority and a sense of purity/sanctity are more focused on the group overall and what is good and right for the group. At least that is the argument.