Libertarians and Communists: Two Sides of the Same Douchenozzle

[True Blue Door]

A long time ago, and perhaps still in the hearts of the naive, there was a utopian movement driven by Enlightenment philosophy that believed a certain economic system - suitably freed from the constraints and machinations of its enemies both internal and external - would allow Mankind to reach its full potential. Compromise programs and policies necessitated by political reality often showed superb results, to which this movement always attributed 100% to the part of the program or policy reflecting their views and nothing whatsoever to those portions reflecting the compromise.

Despite these advances, every step forward began to feel like two steps backward because their fantasies of a perfect system far outstripped the capacity of human beings to deliver. Believers began to feel frustrated, and pushed ever more vehemently for ever more radical policies in pursuit of their vision. The closer they got to getting 100% of what they demanded without realizing utopia, and the smaller the share of power allowed for alternative opinions, the more intensely the blame for all failures had to be focused on that diminishing opposition in order to Keep The Faith.

Until ultimately the real opposition was so clearly powerless that vast notional conspiracies had to be concocted to explain its supposed omnipotence to sabotage the Perfect System that would otherwise be in effect. Whispered notes of caution from moderates were interpreted as indications of vast global conspiracies to undermine The Faith and bring about apocalyptic ruin. Meanwhile, those hapless ordinary people forced to somehow survive in an increasingly malevolent and psychotic system were blamed for their own misery. If you fail to flourish under the Perfect System, they were told, then it is because you are unworthy.

In the 20th century, the above described Communism - the corruption of an originally benevolent, compassion-driven movement into a petulant cesspool of bigotry, unreason, and oppression. But in the late 20th and into the 21st, it describes Libertarianism - the corruption of an originally responsible, rational principle akin to the Hippocratic Oath applied to governance, into an excuse for malignant sociopaths with money to dismantle civilization and replace it with depraved feudal tyranny. In the 20th century, the world was threatened by the Politburo. In the 21st century, it is threatened by the Paulitburo. If the "free" market - i.e., the demands of the 1%, totally outweighing all other people combined - does not reward you, then somehow you are the problem; you are the immoral or lazy or unworthy one, because the Perfect System cannot fail.

Well, I'm tired of that sick shit. I say it's time we in this country Tear Down That Wall (Street), Mr. Gorbachev / Koch.

[hedda_foil]

1. Terrific piece. You,sir or madam, are one hell of a writer

[msanthrope]

2. Kick. nt

[riqster]

3. Excellent post!

[Puzzledtraveller]

4. but we are in bed with Wall Street, us, the Democrats.

[True Blue Door]

5. We are the Democrats. We right here.

I'm not in bed with Wall Street. Are you?

[raouldukelives]

9. No such thing as a liberal investor.

Only closest libertarians. The idea of a liberal investor. That someone who puts people over profits and who claims to care about the oppressed is abetting & profiting from the destruction caused by Wall St. is like a PETA member profiting from dog fighting.
They could holler all they wanted about how much they love animals, the actions are what matters and what defines them.

[True Blue Door]

15. That's a bit simplistic, and falls victim to ideological thinking.

Business performs a very specific function that works well when applied properly: It promotes economic efficiency. The total absence of business is catastrophically inefficient, as the history of such systems proves beyond all doubt.

However, business by itself cannot manage an economy, because it needs solid democratic frameworks to operate within or else its efficiency-seeking instincts become corrupting and destructive.

Business, in other words, makes for a loveable pet but a cruel master. It has to be kept in check and shown who's boss.

[raouldukelives]

32. I have no problem with business. I support many.

I do have a problem when people who call themselves liberal join hands with the likes of Lockheed, Chevron, Dow and Booz Allen. Every dollar they invest increasing the weight of the boot pressing on our necks.
With liberals like those, who needs Republicans?

[True Blue Door]

40. Okay, but where is this specific subject coming from?

[jeff47]

23. We're in an era without pensions.

As a result, a whole lot of people are now investors via 401k plans. Others are investors via their savings. And others do not have enough money to save at all.

What, exactly, do you propose the 401k-ers and savers do?

[raouldukelives]

31. I propose they continue what they are doing.

Unless of course they want to consider themselves a liberal. Or want to be considered a person who tries to make the world better and not one who makes it assuredly worse by supporting and providing fiduciary cover for the greatest villains the world has seen thus far.

[jeff47]

35. So your solution is they should retire in poverty to make a political statement. (nt)

[raouldukelives]

49. I guess. If one considers being a liberal a political statement.

I suppose it would depend on if one considers themselves a liberal because they vote for Democrats or if one votes for Democrats because they are a liberal.

I'm certainly not asking people to retire in poverty, I am only asking them not to increase the suffering of others to comfort only themselves. I don't consider that a political statement. I call it the beating heart of a liberal conscience.
I don't want to earn a dollar when an Iraqi child losses his legs, when a dolphin chokes out in sludge, as third world people struggling for democracy, for liberalism, are crushed under treads. I wouldn't feel comfortable earning money every time someone is denied a life saving operation, a water table is poisoned, a hole opens in the tundra. If forming a symbiotic relationship with and funding the efforts at climate denial and groups like the Heritage Foundation are what it takes not to retire in poverty. Well, then poverty it is.

Maybe I just have a high regard for the liberals I have known and read about. I feel that many of them probably feel the same way. I certainly hear them saying the right things.
Sadly though, just as we see in our elected "liberal" politicians these days. It appears many are extremely good at talking the talk, just unable to walk the walk.

[jeff47]

56. You are demanding they don't use 401ks or other savings/investing tools

How, exactly, are they supposed to not retire in poverty when they are not allowed to save or invest any money?

[raouldukelives]

60. It is the same problem that plauged those invested in slavery.

How can they remain comfortable without giving up the enslavement of others.
Of course, we ended it. Liberals that is. Many gave up good, guaranteed income streams. Only because they felt it was correct. It didn't end because people voted for it to end, it ended because good people with a conscience demanded it did and refused to support it or profit from it. It took a war then, it might take another now. I certainly hope it doesn't come to that.
We have never faced a man-made evil like climate change and the environmental destruction bequeathed to us by Wall St. IMHO it dwarfs them all. If there was ever call to liberals, to act, to be part of the change and not part of the problem, it is today, in our time.
For those too evil or ignorant to care or too invested to be bothered with facts. I don't know what the answer is. They will cling to it until it is dragged from their hands and set free.

[progressoid]

17. I'm not, but many of our Democratic leaders are.

And many Democrats here at DU often sing the praises of Wall Street.

[The_Commonist]

6. I consider myself a "Balance-atarian."

We need a little bit of this and little bit of that. There is no "Perfect System." Just a system of systems, and sometimes things swing to the left, and sometimes things swing to the right. Both "sides" need to be represented, and if either side "wins," everyone loses.

[True Blue Door]

11. Successful governance is all about not fetishizing means.

Markets are tools, and laws and regulations are tools also. Choose the right tool for the task.

And, more importantly, make sure "the task" is set democratically. That's another thing Libertarians are monstrously immoral about: They don't merely say that money should dictate how we do things, but also that it should dictate what we do. In other words, that markets should replace elections.

They've really turned into a totalitarian movement in many ways - one so twisted that the absolute government they would create denies that it is a government.

[PowerToThePeople]

48. "And, more importantly, make sure "the task" is set democratically"

Funny thing, that there quote of yours sure sounds a lot like socialism to me...

[True Blue Door]

54. And indeed it is.

The opposite of socialism is sociopathism - social Darwinism or the negation of rational governance in favor of de facto "God's will" results, at least when such results serve powerful interests. Otherwise interference occurs rapidly and without shame to protect the powerful.

[freshwest]

7. Thanks for cutting through the rhetoric to get to the results. Bravo. May I share this?

[True Blue Door]

12. Feel free.

[freshwest]

55. Thanks!

[gordianot]

8. It all comes down to energy and natural resources.

Communist, Capitalist, Authoritarian, Libertarian where ever you fall on the spectrum. Right now the worst thing that could happen to a good western capitalist is to lose your investment in expensive non renewable energy. Funny renewable energy will allow the former Communist to out capitalize the capitalist. China does not care much for patents wait for all of the neglected and suppressed energy advances to show up gradually. Check the root causes of conflict in the 20th Century it was energy so far in the 21st century it is stupidity, greed, and energy.

[Tarheel_Dem]

10. Ain't it the truth?

[SidDithers]

13. DU rec...nt

Sid

[rug]

14. Libertarianism has as much to do with Communism as this post does with political reality.

[True Blue Door]

16. I explained what they have to do with each other.

If you couldn't listen well enough to offer a substantive rebuttal, I don't know what you think you're contributing.

[rug]

30. As a matter of fact you didn't. To wit:

The closer they got to getting 100% of what they demanded without realizing utopia, and the smaller the share of power allowed for alternative opinions, the more intensely the blame for all failures had to be focused on that diminishing opposition in order to Keep The Faith.

In the 20th century, the above described Communism - the corruption of an originally benevolent, compassion-driven movement into a petulant cesspool of bigotry, unreason, and oppression.

If you believe the first excerpt, you've ignored 83% of 20th century history because a) at no point did self-described communist governments or movements approach anything near a majority, much less get near 100%, and b) these governments merely attempted socialism, not communism, and were from 1917 onward under continuous threats and multiple, actual armed interventions which turned the policies from rudimentary socialism into state survival.

To continue your second excerpt:

But in the late 20th and into the 21st, it describes Libertarianism - the corruption of an originally responsible, rational principle akin to the Hippocratic Oath applied to governance, into an excuse for malignant sociopaths with money to dismantle civilization and replace it with depraved feudal tyranny. In the 20th century, the world was threatened by the Politburo.

If you consider libertarianism, even as a concept, to be "an originally benevolent, compassion-driven movement", you either do not understand what it is or, consider what is actually is to be benevolent. It isn't. It is an elevation of the self which is the antithes if what communism is.

I truly hope you did not hand anything remotely like this post into your political science class.

[octoberlib]

33. Thank you for this response. Facts matter.

[True Blue Door]

39. You merely prove my point without realizing it.

If you believe the first excerpt, you've ignored 83% of 20th century history because a) at no point did self-described communist governments or movements approach anything near a majority, much less get near 100%, and b) these governments merely attempted socialism, not communism, and were from 1917 onward under continuous threats and multiple, actual armed interventions which turned the policies from rudimentary socialism into state survival.

In other words, once again, the Perfect System and its acolytes are held to be above criticism by an infinite web of recursive excuses. All of its real-world horrors can be dismissed as not representing "real" Communism, all of its perpetrators not being "real" Communists. That attitude is how you distinguish people who want to make the world better and ideologues who just want to punish the world for not rising to their standards.

Advocates of Christian theocracy refuse to accept any responsibility for the Crusades or the Inquisition because they can concoct some petty doctrinal quibbles with the exact religious beliefs behind them; same way that Fascists can reject responsibility for Hitler or WW2; same way that every adherent of every discredited and corrupted ideology in history pretends that its utter failure when tried in reality is just really unfair and the world should really just keep giving them infinite chances to fuck it up.

If you consider libertarianism, even as a concept, to be "an originally benevolent, compassion-driven movement", you either do not understand what it is or, consider what is actually is to be benevolent.

I know its foundations in Enlightenment thought, and the morally laudable thinking that says government should operate as if with a Hippocratic Oath rather than intervening by default. That is the original basis of libertarianism, just as solidarity with the poor was the original basis of Communism. Unfortunately, the root often has very little resemblance to the fruit, and the fruits of both Communism and Libertarianism are bitter and poisonous. I suggest you think deeper before deciding you have a workable insight into these ideas.

[rug]

50. By your words, "the Perfect System and its acolytes" you've established you're simply

a run-of-the-mill garden variety anti-Communist. Nothing original there at all.

By your words, referring to libertarianism as "morally laudable", you've established precisely what I said you were.

I suggest you think deeper before deciding you have a workable insight into these ideas. That, or open your eyes to reality to see whom is the actual intended beneficiary of each ideology.

Oh, and fuck Ron Paul and his morally laudable ideology.

[DonCoquixote]

53. both Libertarian and Communism

are fond lovers of the "one true Scotsman" fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

"When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing&quot , rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing&quot ,[2] creating an implied tautology. It can also be used to create unnecessary requirements by adding "true" or "real" to the subject."

In other words, bith the Libertarian and the Communist will harp on about how the neither the Americans or the Russians really implented the ideas; they were always corrupt. The line goes "if they had actually established the TRUE system, it would have worked."

Of course, this is where economic philosophy reveals the hereditary traits it got from Religion. In religion, you have several dozen claimints to the "True Faith." Just ask any Shia or Sunni in Iraq, Catholic or Portoestant in Belfast, or, on a smaller scare, take a look at the Religion forum here on DU. Even Athiests are splintering into various factions of what "REAL" Atheism is, depending on whoever Richard Dawkins decides to offend this week. Religion of course, was the orginal "how do we relate to others and the world" scheme, so as economic tries to fill that gap, it takes on many of Relgion's old habits. Go to any forum dedicated to Communism, and you will see the Social Democrats take on the Maoists. The winers then dogpile on the anarchists. Go to "libertarian" sites, and you will fond everyone from the LGBT/Dopesmoking Libertarians who might be the leftward end (despite wanting to pay no taxes), versus the Jesus freak right wing who thinks Libertarianism is right because it will pave the way for America to be the true "Christian Nation" the founding fathers meant it to be. Of course, as along as the actual definition of what "true libertarianism/communism", that allows the goalposts to get moved with every successive failure of the basic policy. It becomes like the old cartoons where Wile E. Coyote keeps coming up with new inventions "That it, I know what I did wrong last time!" and keeps getting his ass kicked while trying to catch the roadrunner. The main difference is, unlike the Road Runner, the people that DIE when these experiments are tried will NOT be coming back next episode. Oh well, gotta break a few eggs to make an omlette, right?

[stonecutter357]

18. libertarians strike me as very odd.

[blackspade]

19. Sorry I can't rec.

Your central thesis is flawed.

Communism in the Soviet sense was a totalitarian single party state that had state run/managed capitalism.
It was not Communist by any stretch of the word.
Now, the actual communists in both Europe and the US gave successfully got a 40 hr work week, social security, bank regulation, and in Europe universal health care.

And what you are describing as libertarian is not a fringe element in our politics but the central core of it, unfortunately maintained by both the rethugs and the Democratic party.

However, your conclusion I do agree with: we have a system that has been corrupted by Wall Street and this corruption has to end for our constitutional democracy to survive.

[leftstreet]

21. +1

[TBF]

24. ^^ this. nt

[2banon]

25. Spot On, blackspade. Spot On.

[True Blue Door]

27. Communism is whatever Communists do and nothing more.

Platonic ideals do not exist in politics outside of empty rhetoric, so in some ways you fall victim to the same kind of ideological thinking. When they were in power they said their victims were "sabotaging" Communism, now they insist it never was Communism, the upshot being that Communism could by definition never be a flawed system - it is always kept morally pristine through infinite rationalization.

The same is how Libertarians and their business-minded conservative counterparts treat capitalism. It can never fail, only be failed by we imperfect, unworthy humans, because it, like Communism, is the Perfect System.

[socialist_n_TN]

38. Then by that logic, capitalism is what capitalists do and nothing more......

What we have today IS capitalism because that's what the capitalists SAY it is. Albeit with TOO much government interference, at least according to those capitalists.

And before you claim that the USSR wasn't sabotaged by the capitalist states, you really need to read some history. FROM THE VERY BEGINNING the USSR had something like 14 members of the Entente actually inside Russia supporting the White armies in the Civil War. AND IT NEVER STOPPED!There were CONSTANT threats to the USSR from then on, threats both overt and covert, militarily, economically, and socially from the world-wide dictatorship of capital. This first of a kind workers' state had no chance to develop naturally because of capitalist interference.

And finally, only the Stalinists called the USSR "communist". None of the other Marxists tendencies did. Lenin didn't. Trotsky didn't. The Trotskyists even said that the USSR degenerated from being socialist, which is the way station on the way to communism.

You're post is rife with Cold War propaganda and is shallow as a dewdrop on grass. You have NO understanding of the historical milieu in which the events of the early workers movement started and progressed in the early 20th Century. Equating an ideology like libertarianism with the scientific socialism practiced by Marxists proves this. The difference in ideology and historical materialism is that events prove out the one. Events are ignored by the ideologues.

And since the fall of the USSR, events have proved and are proving more and more every day that MARX WAS RIGHT. Being proven right consistently doesn't happen with an ideology.

[True Blue Door]

41. You continue to make my own points without realizing it.

What we have today IS capitalism because that's what the capitalists SAY it is. Albeit with TOO much government interference, at least according to those capitalists.

Yes, exactly. They have the same infinitely-unaccountable attitude as 20th century Marxists.

There were CONSTANT threats to the USSR from then on

Some threats were real, some were made up by the NKVD to meet Stalin's paranoia so he wouldn't decide they were saboteurs and have them executed. Of course, he did anyway, in millions of cases.

Since the gruesome inefficiencies in his radical economic system were causing millions of people to starve to death, someone had to take the blame for that, and of course it had to be someone other than Stalin and Communism.

Apologism for the USSR borders on holocaust denial. It was a monstrous, inhuman state built on the petulance of psychotic bigots who could never admit they were wrong about anything. That's why they kept everything a secret while we didn't. Our failures were all over the global news with no attempt to stop them; theirs they hid as much as possible.

If you see something humane and worth emulating in the Soviet Union, you really don't belong among liberals. The people of this forum would have been summarily executed or thrown in gulag, most never to be heard from again.

[Ken Burch]

44. that poster wasn't seeing anything positive in the Soviet Union.

The post simply pointed out that you can't ascribe the misery there to radicalism or "communism". What failed there was Stalinism...not the need to transform the world.

Nothing would have been better if Kerensky had stayed in power and Russia had stayed in the imperialist war. Kerensky was under the control of the right-wing Cadet faction, and would never even have tried to do anything progressive or pro-worker.

[socialist_n_TN]

45. Thank you Ken. At least someone knows how to read.......

And as a Trotskyist, I would have been one of the first to be executed by Stalin and the bureaucracy. But just because I'm NOT a Stalinist doesn't mean that I don't recognize the attempted oppression and outright attempt at suppression of the nascent workers' state by the capitalist power structure and it's effect on the development of that state. That's what a Marxist does. I'm going to take a stand on issues that the evidential chain takes me to and NOT going to take a position based on Cold War propaganda like the original poster. That latter position actually IS the ideological one.

[socialist_n_TN]

47. I never said I "...belong among liberals". I don't belong there......

I'm a proud Bolshevik-Leninist and revolutionary socialist. Unlike liberals, I will never support fascism, even if it means the current economic system falls to socialism.

Another fail. You obviously are letting the Cold War propaganda against a "monolithic" Marxism color your thinking. The dictatorship of capital AND Stalin had a common goal in propagandizing that the USSR under Stalin WAS THE ONLY FORM OF MARXISM THAT THERE WAS! You need to realize there are other Marxist currents that DON'T involve Stalinism and what the USSR degenerated into. THIS is why your analysis in the OP is so shallow. You obviously have no study of the period you're talking about other than that common capitalist and Stalinist propaganda.

[Rex]

59. I have to agree, the OP needs to read more real history and less propaganda brochures. nt.

nt.

[octoberlib]

34. +1

[PowerToThePeople]

46. Rec you.

Red scare propaganda in a pro-status quo article...

[Fred Sanders]

20. Is this your original writing, because it is awesome. Expletives at end paragraph notwithstanding

[True Blue Door]

28. Yes, it is my writing. Why do people keep asking me that?

[Silent3]

22. Very well said. n/t

[Warpy]

26. I've always pointed out, albeit less elegantly,

that Rand and Marx both suffered from the same fatal flaw: that for their systems to work, the human race must first be perfected and purged of greed and laziness. Since that's just not going to happen, their adherents remain seated backwards on mules, trying to charge at windmills.

[True Blue Door]

29. Indeed, and trampling Mankind underfoot to their utter indifference.

[jamzrockz]

36. I see quite differently

Libertarianism doesn't assume humans be perfected for it to work. It just believes that only the people able to work out intricacies in the society would survive. Everybody else dies, its survival of the fittest format of society

[Warpy]

37. That is essentially the same thing

Be less than perfect, you die.

[True Blue Door]

42. Or, more to the point, those with means survive and label themselves

superior due to circumstances they mostly had no hand in shaping (e.g., inheriting a fortune), while demeaning their own victims as inferior and thus responsible for the crimes committed against them by the "winners."

It's basically victim-blaming. Someone with a heart of malice and greed will decide that whatever they do to other people to please themselves is the fault of those other people.

[Ken Burch]

43. The corruption of large-C Communism had nothing to do with utopianism or radicalism.

That corruption was about the siege mentality geopolitical isolation created in the USSR, combined with the bloodsoaked bipolar cynicism of Stalin.

It was never about staying committed to your priciples, and nothing the "centrists" did incrementally would have happened without radicals and revolutionaries pushing for deeper changes.

And nobody on any part of the radical Left has anything in common with Libertarians. Those people are driven solely by the desire not to care about anyone else-the radical Left, by contrast, struggles to transform the world, from the bottom-up, into a just and decent place for all-something incrementalists don't care about at all.

Your OP is smug and self-congratulatory, and you're not entitled to your sense of superiority.

[Peacetrain]

51. The closing of the circle

Where the two end meets and decide its time to take out the middle.. yeah thats the ticket.. good rant

[hifiguy]

52. Utopianism is utopianism

and it always fails to account for what human nature has shown itself to be down through the millennia. As such, any attempt to impose utopianism is the purest form of totalitarianism.

The only way to approach politics and governance is to remember the words of Reinhold Niebuhr - "Democracy is the search for practical solutions to insoluble problems." Run like hell whenever you encounter anyone saying they have THE ANSWER to any complex problem.

Every DUer should watch this interview of Dr. Richard Wolff by Cenk: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025347972#post10

[Tuesday Afternoon]

57. Rec-ing for one of the best discussions/conversations I have read here in quite some time.

Thanks, all.

[LeftishBrit]

58. Interestingly I was just on a thread about the dangers of all forms of religious fundamentalism...

which really means the distortion of religions in the cause of authoritarianism and harshness; and the same applies to economic ideologies distorted in the cause of authoritarianism and harshness.