Rich wrote:No explanation is needed. Being left wing or right wing is not about some unchanging set of policies, its just where you are on the left right polarity spectrum. This spectrum constantly reproduces itself in different times and countries, but it is clearly recognisable. We get the same whining from both the left and the right.
See, this claim right at the start is where the main issue with the post is, to me. We are supposed to believe in a cold hard analytic reality where there are these immutable social categories of 'left' and 'right'. Indeed, we must believe in such a reality, for without these categories, how would we be able to pretend that Anglo-American liberal democratic hegemony has transcended politics? To posture as the Westerner which has reached a state of supreme enlightenment, in which these apparently transhistorical states of being have suddenly been rendered primitive?
It's all well and good to complain about 'leftists' and 'rightists', @Rich, but are you really the only kind of person who shouldn't be boxed into these categories? What are they? Were there leftist Sumerians and rightist Sumerians? If so, it seems strange to me that all of your historical examples are from the 20th Century.
Rich wrote:The Khmer Rouge the nick name given to the Communist Party of Kampuchea were part of the international Communist movement and were supported by the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party and the Vietnamese Communist Party prior to them all falling out. The Communist Party of Kampuchea, prior to the civil war operated amongst the wider left and workers movement, the same as any Communist Party.
Yes, though the Khmer Rouge does seem like something of a cherry-picked instance of 'communist fascism' or whatever, given that you've already acknowledged that all the classical fascist movements were not on the side of socialism or communism. For the sake of argument, let us assume that each of the states of the 20th Century which were ran by communist parties were indeed communist. While the Khmer Rouge identified as communist, we must take into account that the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese governments also identified as such.
Four years after Democratic Kampuchea was established, Soviet-backed Vietnam literally invaded and occupied it. The United States (which had also orchestrated the bombings that allowed the Khmer Rouge to take power) opposed this occupation. Now, what can we take away from these events? If the Khmer Rouge was communist, then I suppose we might say that the US was upholding true communist thought and the Soviet Union were capitalist sellouts. Or, perhaps, if we were being a little more honest with ourselves, we might conclude that geopolitical actions of a state do not neatly correspond to the ideological positions expounded by its government.
Rich wrote:To understand why Fascism is not a proper narrowly defined social phenomena, we first need to understand Marxism. And what you need to understand about Marxism is that its all about dictatorship. All the endless theory, all the endless fantasising about workers control, workers power and a future stateless society is all directed towards one end and one end only, the creation of a totalitarian dictatorship.
And once you board the dictatorship train you have no idea where its going to end up, particularly a totalitarian dictatorship where huge power is concentrated in one man. So the Russian Communist Dictatorship led to the gray colourless bureaucracy of the late Soviet Union, but a dictatorship whose doctrinal ideals were not that far from the original Bolsheviks. China's led to National Socialism with freer markets than under Hitler. North Korea led to a sort of modern priest-king Pharaoh state and the Khmer Rouge led to an Agrarian slave state and the path of total national destruction.
When you board the dictatorship train, the colour of the flag they're flying, red, black, green, whatever is no guarantee of your destination. Right can become left and left can become right. Because in the ideal absolute dictatorship, which can never be completely actualised, there would no longer be any internal left and right, and left and right could only be measured in relation to external societies.
Yes, but entirely unlike those confounded conformist authoritarians, you have the one correct ideological position which is not on the dictatorship train. I suppose.