" The Demonisation Of The Right "

[EUBanana]

Very interesting - do you have a source/link for that passage?

It's the opening passage from a book written by the historian AJP Taylor. This book, I believe :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-History-1914-1945-Oxford-England/dp/0198217153/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311683476&sr=8-1

The second paragraph is this :-

All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

Often quoted but rarely read, I think.

[fluffy666]

Why is a true free market not a stable state of affairs?

Because a market has winnners and losers. In your fantasy-land of no government, the winners will quickly acquire political power (the power to coerce, if you must) - firstly to protect their gains, then to stop rivals.

Feel free to show me an example of a zero-government state that has such a stable free market system.

Also, you don't have to spend protection money. You can always secure your house and protect it yourself.

Ok, so the local mobsters turn up in a few cars and point a couple of rocket launchers at your house, giving you the choice of either coming out (and being killed), or not coming out (and having your family killed in front of you first, then being killed). What's your next move?

You don't need to have a violent uprising. People just need to refuse to pay their extortion money and the state/gang will whither on the vine. Even the current state couldn't throw everyone in jail for doing this.

See above.

The government already stops people from freely moving and associating. It also uses extortion to raise money, with democracy providing a veil of legitimacy. The government ensures quite the opposite of what you are supposing it does.

I don't particularly suppose the government does anything, I'm just pointing out the gaping holes in your philosophy.

[EUBanana]

Ok, so the local mobsters turn up in a few cars and point a couple of rocket launchers at your house, giving you the choice of either coming out (and being killed), or not coming out (and having your family killed in front of you first, then being killed). What's your next move?

That is the state. Except they got more official looking uniforms than mobsters.

I think the state is a necessary evil, someone unfortunately has to be the local warlord. You have to engineer a situation where the warlord is benign as possible.

That doesn't mean to say the state should be lionised as the solution to all our problems, as fascists/communists/socialists/authoritarians of whatever stripe do/did. Its basic nature, ie a warlord, should not be forgotton. I think if people generally recognised it as a necessary evil then you would end up with minarchy. This was pretty much the norm before two total wars changed everything.

Edited July 26, 2011 by EUBanana

[Traktion]

Because a market has winnners and losers. In your fantasy-land of no government, the winners will quickly acquire political power (the power to coerce, if you must) - firstly to protect their gains, then to stop rivals.

Feel free to show me an example of a zero-government state that has such a stable free market system.

Show me a democracy in the time of monarchies.

As I have said before, it is expensive to maintain a monopoly on power. If you can't do it with popular support, people will ultimately dethrone you (case in point: any state which has had a popular uprising).

Ok, so the local mobsters turn up in a few cars and point a couple of rocket launchers at your house, giving you the choice of either coming out (and being killed), or not coming out (and having your family killed in front of you first, then being killed). What's your next move?

See above.

I call up my local security firm, lock down and protect my property or, as a last resort, make them a better offer (ie. bribe them). The latter works pretty well in many modern states, so it should work pretty well against some gangsters too.

I don't particularly suppose the government does anything, I'm just pointing out the gaping holes in your philosophy.

You asserted that the government ensures people can 'freely move and associate'. This is not true. It ensures the opposite.

Edited July 26, 2011 by Traktion

[fluffy666]

That is the state. Except they got more official looking uniforms than mobsters.

I think the state is a necessary evil, someone unfortunately has to be the local warlord. You have to engineer a situation where the warlord is benign as possible.

This is what worries me, though. If you see the state as a necessary evil, you can act to minimize that evil element. If, though, you start taking a fundamentalist line that there should be no state at all then you cannot act in this way.

[Riedquat]

How about the aspects of the state that aren't just about trying to keep the power-crazed as benign as possible? A large group of people trying to live together and do lots of different things is a pretty complicated thing. It needs some form of organisation and management to work properly, and that will probably require some people devoted full-time to it whilst others get on with the useful stuff.

[Traktion]

This is what worries me, though. If you see the state as a necessary evil, you can act to minimize that evil element. If, though, you start taking a fundamentalist line that there should be no state at all then you cannot act in this way.

One way to do that, is to not allow one state to gain a monopoly.

Allowing multiple competing factions could ensure that the power is never overly centralised. It would also give people the power to reject factions which attempt to coerce them.

[Rare Bear]

It's the opening passage from a book written by the historian AJP Taylor. This book, I believe :

http://www.amazon.co...11683476&sr=8-1

The second paragraph is this :-

All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

Often quoted but rarely read, I think.

Funnily enough I was searching the bookshelves for it when Traktion asked for a source and one of the books I came across was The C Programming Language which reminded me that Unix was not created by decree of government or business but because Thompson, Kernighan and Ritchie wanted an operating system.

[EUBanana]

How about the aspects of the state that aren't just about trying to keep the power-crazed as benign as possible? A large group of people trying to live together and do lots of different things is a pretty complicated thing. It needs some form of organisation and management to work properly, and that will probably require some people devoted full-time to it whilst others get on with the useful stuff.

Such as...?

Planning laws?

[Riedquat]

Such as...?

Planning laws?

I know they aren't exactly popular here, but yes, some are a good idea - insisting that the big chemical works isn't built right next to everyone's houses and so on. But I was thinking more along the lines of anything that potentially affects everyone, such as where the roads go and how big they are, getting the bins emptied and so on. Everyone trying to make their own arrangements would end up with a very inefficient mess, yes, even more so than a government-organised inefficient mess. Businesses need management to work efficiently. So do societies.

[EUBanana]

Everyone trying to make their own arrangements would end up with a very inefficient mess, yes, even more so than a government-organised inefficient mess. Businesses need management to work efficiently. So do societies.

Food distribution?

[fluffy666]

One way to do that, is to not allow one state to gain a monopoly.

Allowing multiple competing factions could ensure that the power is never overly centralised. It would also give people the power to reject factions which attempt to coerce them.

Would this be like Somalia?

[Traktion]

Would this be like Somalia?

Is the UK like Sierra Leone?

[Britney's Piers]

The BNP are socialists - if you take the "send the buggers back" bits out of their stuff you are left with something lifted straight out of Engels.

"Did you know the BNP is actually far left blah blah blah", if I had a pound every time I heard this I could buy a house. This trite argument is usually wheeled out once the pro immigrationist realises that calling someone a Racist is not working any more, or by johnny come lately parties like UKIP trying to scaremonger any affluent people who may be persuaded by BNP policy. I bet most simply heard it somewhere and decided to repeat it themselves, parrot fashion.

The fact is that when people are presented BNP policy it's found that most of them actually agree with it, and only withdraw their support once they find out they came from the BNP, which sums up the damage that media and establishment scaremongering has done to democracy.

[LuckyOne]

Wouldn't your belief in the natural rise of a monopoly state mean that Somalia should naturally have one? Maybe they are operating differently to people in Somerset, and a single monopoly state couldn't stop them doing it, any more than the lack of a single monopoly state could turn Somerset into Somalia.

Have you ever looked through any of these :

http://www.heritage.org/index/

http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~kris/FreedomIndex.html

http://www.freetheworld.com

http://www.stateofworldliberty.org/report/rankings.html

Overlaying these results with gini co-efficients and debt to GDP ratios tells us pretty quickly which countries are well run.

[Injin]

"Did you know the BNP is actually far left blah blah blah", if I had a pound every time I heard this I could buy a house. This trite argument is usually wheeled out once the pro immigrationist realises that calling someone a Racist is not working any more, or by johnny come lately parties like UKIP trying to scaremonger any affluent people who may be persuaded by BNP policy. I bet most simply heard it somewhere and decided to repeat it themselves, parrot fashion.

The fact is that when people are presented BNP policy it's found that most of them actually agree with it, and only withdraw their support once they find out they came from the BNP, which sums up the damage that media and establishment scaremongering has done to democracy.

Sure, sure.

But the BNP are still basically socialists with a racist/nationalist element.

[KingBingo]

Or...

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html

You pays your money, you takes your choice. Either way Far Left and Far Right are to be avoided at all cost.

Bruce, just because you can copy and paste text from sources that share your common misconception, does not make it any less a common misconception.

I could copy and paste volumes of official reports about Climate Change, and they would be wrong also.

[KingBingo]

"Did you know the BNP is actually far left blah blah blah", if I had a pound every time I heard this I could buy a house. This trite argument is usually wheeled out once the pro immigrationist realises that calling someone a Racist is not working any more, or by johnny come lately parties like UKIP trying to scaremonger any affluent people who may be persuaded by BNP policy. I bet most simply heard it somewhere and decided to repeat it themselves, parrot fashion.

The fact is that when people are presented BNP policy it's found that most of them actually agree with it, and only withdraw their support once they find out they came from the BNP, which sums up the damage that media and establishment scaremongering has done to democracy.

Have you ever read their manifesto, or indeed the manifesto of any supposed 'far right' group.

Of course you have not, because if you ever did you would see they are socialist. I even posted the Nazi party manifesto near the start of this thread, and all the brainwashed sheep ignored it because they simply do not want to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance when they finally figure out that National Socialists are infact a kind of Socialists after all. Just Nationalist ones.

[Bruce Banner]

Bruce, just because you can copy and paste text from sources that share your common misconception, does not make it any less a common misconception.

I could copy and paste volumes of official reports about Climate Change, and they would be wrong also.

Just because you think you know it all doesn't mean you shouldn't read the piece you quoted before jumping to a conclusion.

[shipbuilder]

Have you ever read their manifesto, or indeed the manifesto of any supposed 'far right' group.

Of course you have not, because if you ever did you would see they are socialist. I even posted the Nazi party manifesto near the start of this thread, and all the brainwashed sheep ignored it because they simply do not want to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance when they finally figure out that National Socialists are infact a kind of Socialists after all. Just Nationalist ones.

If you told a 'far right' group that they were left-wing, what do you think their reaction would be? Do you think they identify themselves as right or left wing?

[KingBingo]

If you told a 'far right' group that they were left-wing, what do you think their reaction would be? Do you think they identify themselves as right or left wing?

The people who join these groups make normal socialists look smart.

There is no chance they will understand their political heritage. For that you need to understand what people in the 1930's were saying, and if you review the primary evidence there can be no mistake. Back then everyone, right and left knew that Fascism was left wing. It is only after the war and the atrocities were uncovered that the left wing dominated media and education establishments began their spectacularly successful re-branding exercise.

[Britney's Piers]

Have you ever read their manifesto, or indeed the manifesto of any supposed 'far right' group.

Of course you have not, because if you ever did you would see they are socialist. I even posted the Nazi party manifesto near the start of this thread, and all the brainwashed sheep ignored it because they simply do not want to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance when they finally figure out that National Socialists are infact a kind of Socialists after all. Just Nationalist ones.

Meaningless labels.

[shipbuilder]

The people who join these groups make normal socialists look smart.

There is no chance they will understand their political heritage. For that you need to understand what people in the 1930's were saying, and if you review the primary evidence there can be no mistake. Back then everyone, right and left knew that Fascism was left wing. It is only after the war and the atrocities were uncovered that the left wing dominated media and education establishments began their spectacularly successful re-branding exercise.

Or alternatively the influence of American thinking on the matter has led to the right being re-branded as freedom-loving libertarians - the political spectrum in the US has always been very different from here. The UK did not share that view until recently.

Even when I was a kid right wing meant authoritarian and conservative while left wing meant anti-authority and progressive. This is more in line with the original European meaning of left and right.

[KingBingo]

Meaningless labels.

inconvenient accuracy (for you)

[Britney's Piers]

inconvenient accuracy (for you)

You can either have a country where utilities are owned by foreign robber barons, where jobs are sent to china, factories sent to poland, and the place swarmed with immigrants, or you can have the opposite. The BNP prefer the latter. I don't know where this fits in your construct of the world, but if I were to give them labels I would call the latter policies "common sense", the former I would call "extremist" or maybe even "traitorous and suicidal".

Edited July 26, 2011 by Britney's Piers