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Which extreme is more dangerous to America?

Choose.

  • Far Left

    Votes: 35 46.7%
  • Far Right

    Votes: 40 53.3%

  • Total voters
    75
The deatrh count suggest the far left is worse however they are both facist in my opinion and i would literally fight ethier to the death.
 
The far right is the side the blows things up and kills people. From a purely "value of life and defense of property" stand point (excluding thoughts on how dangerous beliefs can be) I'm going with the far right.
 
Neither extreme seems all that dangerous to me, at least in terms of being dangerous to America. Personally, I think the apathetic nation of self-centered zombies who don't even think critically about the country at all to be the most dangerous group. Which is easily the majority, those who take this country and what we have for granted.
 
Wow, perfect 30-30 tie.

In my mind, that means that most if not all of the persons on this forum think that both are bad, and they only chose one or the other based upon which they think is the worst of the 2 really bad options - most likely influnced by their own political leanings.

Personally, I chose "far left", probably because I myself am slightly right on most of my views.
 
I'm not interested in your crude jingoistic sentiments. The Constitution itself is admittedly rather anti-democratic in a number of ways, and we're rather far removed from the agrarian conditions in which classical liberals presumed egalitarianism would flourish since presently existing corporate capitalism has radically altered previously existing settings, but the fundamental point is that I favor libertarianism and participatory direct democracy. I don't particularly care for arbitrary nationalistic distinctions; the maximization of liberty and democracy, fundamental ingredients in our capacity for self-governance and improved happiness are the relevant aspects. :shrug:

Notice how he fails to answer the question, yes of course this man wants to see the US Constitution dissolved that is because he does in fact hate the Republic and everything it stands for. As for his "direct democracy" and "workers cooperatives" what this man is describing is Castro's Cuba and Soviet Democracy, there's a reason why Communism always leads to dictatorship and that is because the workers need their strongman to get things done, his assertion that workers cooperatives are highly efficient in governing the needs and wants of a society are laughable, to the contrary they are highly inefficient outside of a society with less than say one thousand people which is why the communists always turn to the planning boards which again are highly inefficient.


This simply illustrates more ignorance of political economy. I never claimed that "real communism has never existed"; on the contrary, I claimed that some degree of libertarian communism was implemented throughout the Spanish Revolution

There's a reason why the Communists always have to turn to this example and that of the Paris Commune as their glowing examples of "
their" brand of Communism, that is because they didn't last longer than a year and didn't have time to devolve into totalitarian statist hell holes.
 
Notice how he fails to answer the question, yes of course this man wants to see the US Constitution dissolved that is because he does in fact hate the Republic and everything it stands for.

Fine. Dissolve the goddamned thing already; republicanism is inherently inferior to participatory direct democracy, and there are other existing elements in both the Constitution and republicanism in general that inhibit the maximization of libertarian principles. And as I said, I don't care about your crude jingoistic nationalism; my primary allegiance is to liberty and the corresponding maximization of human happiness that results from it rather than arbitrary national distinctions.

As for his "direct democracy" and "workers cooperatives" what this man is describing is Castro's Cuba and Soviet Democracy, there's a reason why Communism always leads to dictatorship and that is because the workers need their strongman to get things done, his assertion that workers cooperatives are highly efficient in governing the needs and wants of a society are laughable, to the contrary they are highly inefficient outside of a society with less than say one thousand people which is why the communists always turn to the planning boards which again are highly inefficient.

These are most ridiculous comments to make. The USSR and Cuba (though Cuba to a far lesser extent) were and are dependent on a level of authoritarianism completely inimical to the maximization of direct democracy in workers' cooperatives, which was a reality grimly noted by libertarian socialists and anarchists at the time, and indeed, predicted of the more hierarchical elements of Marxism as early as the nineteenth century. As for the similarly absurd comment about the "inefficiency" of workers' cooperatives, the empirical literature almost unanimously indicates the precise opposite. For example, consider Doucouliagos's Worker participation and productivity in labor-managed and participatory capitalist firms: A Meta-Analysis.

Using meta-analytic techniques, the author synthesizes the results of 43 published studies to investigate the effects on productivity of various forms of worker participation: worker participation in decision making; mandated codetermination; profit sharing; worker ownership (employee stock ownership or individual worker ownership of the firm's assets); and collective ownership of assets (workers' collective ownership of reserves over which they have no individual claim). He finds that codetermination laws are negatively associated with productivity, but profit sharing, worker ownership, and worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with productivity. All the observed correlations are stronger among labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles).

I can't imagine where you've gathered such ill-informed ideas and am frankly not sure I want to.

There's a reason why the Communists always have to turn to this example and that of the Paris Commune as their glowing examples of "
their" brand of Communism, that is because they didn't last longer than a year and didn't have time to devolve into totalitarian statist hell holes.

As previously mentioned, the Spanish Revolution endured for approximately three years, and involved about 40% of the population. Aside from that, there's nothing but sheer and blatant lunacy and positively obscene corruption of the political spectrum involved in referring to anarchism as "totalitarian" and "statist." :roll:
 
Extremism in any form is equally dangerous. Far righties are idiots. Far lefties are idiots. Asking the question that is asked in the OP is like asking whether you would prefer to die from a gunshot to your right eye, or a gunshot to your left eye. The results are the same.
 
Nothing like a well placed thanks-grubbing post, no matter how platitudinous. :2razz: Yes, of course I'm joking.

Actually, I've made comments like that MANY times. Folks around here know how much extremists irritate me and just what I think of them. My comment is no surprise.

And btw, where is my "thanks" from you? :mrgreen:
 
Stop trying to cloud the convo with semantics. The fact of the matter is your post attempted to tie the far right in with racism. The only thing that would make the far right synonymous with racism is posts like yours.

I'm still trying to find the relevance of your point in relation to this thread, btw.

The relevance as i see it, is what some Far Right groups bring to the table. I,m not discarding what the Far Left would bring to the table, in terms of horrendous policies.I hope that's not confusing. Just a few examples of what the 'term' Far Right means to me. if its not Your definition of Far Right then you needed to be clearer in your opening post. The following examples are gathered by little research or effort, just Google Far Right

Hungarian Jews reeling from far-right party’s gains | JTA - Jewish & Israel News

Far-Right Grouping In European Parliament A 'Disturbing Show Of Unity' Among Racists

Racist Slur: Far-Right Party Leaders Convicted in World Cup Racism Case - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

World Briefing | Europe: Belgium: Court Upholds Racist Ruling Against Far-Right Party - New York Times



Paul
 
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Fine. Dissolve the goddamned thing already; republicanism is inherently inferior to participatory direct democracy, and there are other existing elements in both the Constitution and republicanism in general that inhibit the maximization of libertarian principles. And as I said, I don't care about your crude jingoistic nationalism; my primary allegiance is to liberty and the corresponding maximization of human happiness that results from it rather than arbitrary national distinctions.

Then don't claim not to hate America when you want to see its foundations completely destroyed.


These are most ridiculous comments to make. The USSR and Cuba (though Cuba to a far lesser extent) were and are dependent on a level of authoritarianism completely inimical to the maximization of direct democracy in workers' cooperatives, which was a reality grimly noted by libertarian socialists and anarchists at the time, and indeed, predicted of the more hierarchical elements of Marxism as early as the nineteenth century.


Both the USSR and Cuba used what is known as "Soviet Democracy" which sounds exactly what you are calling for when it is implemented on a mass scale.

into As for the similarly absurd comment about the "inefficiency" of workers' cooperatives, the empirical literature almost unanimously indicates the precise opposite. For example, consider Doucouliagos's Worker participation and productivity in labor-managed and participatory capitalist firms: A Meta-Analysis.

lol employee stock options are not the same thing as worker cooperatives. This was a study of a capitalist system in which workers work with owners and management not a study of workers cooperatives and where do we go to find actual large scale worker cooperatives? Well that would be in highly inefficient economies like that of Chavez's Venezuela. The idea that you can run an efficient business democratically is laughable. Not to mention that a society in which all businesses are ran this way would simply grind to a halt and resort to the centralized planning board IE welcome to the Soviet Union. "How much rice do we want to produce this year?" "Let's put it to a vote." Oops now the masses are starving.

As previously mentioned, the Spanish Revolution endured for approximately three years, and involved about 40% of the population. Aside from that, there's nothing but sheer and blatant lunacy and positively obscene corruption of the political spectrum involved in referring to anarchism as "totalitarian" and "statist." :roll:

I think I'll do without the mass executions of your supposed non-statist libertarian communists. lol the basic principle of libertarianism is that the use of force itself is immoral and yet your glowing example of libertarian communism implemented mass executions against those they considered bourgeois.
 
I personally believe that the far left is much more dangerous to America, simply because it seems that they don't see America as something worth defending.

In the words of Bill Clinton "I would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right".
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And when was the last time America needed defending and the 'far left' didn't defend America???:roll::roll::roll:
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And when was the last time America needed defending and the 'far left' didn't defend America???:roll::roll::roll:
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Historically? They took their que from the Soviet Union, for example when the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed the far left in the U.S. was anti-war but when Hitler invaded poof they were magically pro-war. Funny how that works huh?
 
Historically? They took their que from the Soviet Union, for example when the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed the far left in the U.S. was anti-war but when Hitler invaded poof they were magically pro-war. Funny how that works huh?

The UK Anti War demonstrations pulled together all manner of 'opposing' ideologies. Its funny what a common belief can do.

Paul
 
Then don't claim not to hate America when you want to see its foundations completely destroyed.

As I see it, you seem to be the one here who hates America. After all, I've proposed the expansion of democracy from republicanism to participatory direct democracy and the expansion of liberty by extending such democracy to the economic realm and instituting workers' self-management, proposals that would undoubtedly aid Americans. Conversely, you stand in opposition to such proposals, hindering their progression. :shrug:

Both the USSR and Cuba used what is known as "Soviet Democracy" which sounds exactly what you are calling for when it is implemented on a mass scale.

That is completely wrong, and is based on a severe misunderstanding of socialist political economy that many misinformed anti-socialists apparently suffer from. Regardless, since you've apparently ignored the matter of Kropotkin's 1921 letter to Lenin, why not have another look this time? :2wave:

Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name. The influx and taking over of the people by the 'party,' that is, predominantly the newcomers (the ideological communists are more in the urban centers), has already destroyed the influence and constructive energy of this promising institution - the soviets. At present, it is the party committees, not the soviets, who rule in Russia. And their organization suffers from the defects of bureaucratic organization. To move away from the current disorder, Russia must return to the creative genius of local forces which, as I see it, can be a factor in the creation of a new life. And the sooner that the necessity of this way is understood, the better. People will then be all the more likely to accept [new] social forms of life. If the present situation continues, the very word 'socialism' will turn into a curse. That is what happened to the conception of equality in France for forty years after the rule of the Jacobins.

These standard attempts to link anarchism and libertarian socialism to the Soviet Union are utterly idiotic simply because of the fact that these libertarians were the first ones to condemn Bolshevik authoritarianism. Even prior to that, Mikhail Bakunin was critical of the excessive hierarchical elements of Marxist organizational principles and warned that such elements could be utilized by the authoritarian. The predictions of these individuals were in many ways prophetic, and the response from the novice anti-socialist is to compare anarchist organizational principles to the Soviet Union? :roll:

lol employee stock options are not the same thing as worker cooperatives. This was a study of a capitalist system in which workers work with owners and management not a study of workers cooperatives and where do we go to find actual large scale worker cooperatives?

That is incorrect. While there are certainly major distinctions between mere partial ownership schemes and the establishment of democratic management itself, you'll note that the meta-analysis itself noted that full democratic management produced superior results to mere ownership. This is consistent with similar empirical research by analysts Logue and Yates of Ohio ESOP's, when it was noted that the mere implementation of the ownership schemes by themselves could not match the greater productivity yielded with the parallel implementation of worker participation in the management process, as illustrated by the fact that a democratic or otherwise board selection process resulted in increases in profit as well as quantitative and qualitative performance.

07f5721d.png


This is of course consistent with their observation in Cooperatives, Worker-Owned Enterprises, Productivity and the International Labor Organization that "worker-owned enterprises equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership."

Well that would be in highly inefficient economies like that of Chavez's Venezuela.

The preservation of a state and republicanism is of course ultimately unacceptable to me, but it seems more accurate to note that the expansion of labor cooperatives has been a boon rather than a bane to the Venezuelan economy. The Bolivarian Revolution has been largely successful in that oil nationalization has promoted successful increases in economic growth, and viable socialist economic policies have also promoted social benefits in addition to this growth. As noted in The Chávez Administration at 10 Years: The Economy and Social Indicators:

The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflationadjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually.

image006.gif
 
Moreover, as Robin Hahnel notes in Venezuela: Not What You Think, this economic growth has also had the effect of combating unemployment, which is of course a form of static inefficiency.

Like most Latin American economies, the Venezuelan economy deteriorated during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. From 1998 to 2003 real per capita GDP continued to stagnate while the Chavez government survived two general strikes by the largest Venezuelan business association, a military coup, and finally a devastating two month strike by the state owned oil company. However, after Chavez survived the opposition sponsored recall election, annual economic growth was 18.3% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005, and 10.3% in 2006, and the unemployment rate fell from 18.4 % in June 2003 to 8.3% in June 2007. Moreover, most of the growth was in the non-oil sectors of the economy, as the oil sector barely grew during 2005 and 2006. While this impressive growth would not have been possible without the rise in international oil prices, it also would not have been possible had the Chavez government not ignored the warnings of neoliberal critics and pursued aggressive expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.

My belief is that Venezuela have prospered because they have not sought to utilize the centralized state capitalist model of the Soviet Union (inaccurately depicted as "socialist" by so many, including you), and have instead promoted decentralized collectivization. Indeed, it is not possible to overemphasize the critical importance of participatory governance and worker-owned enterprises in this new era of prosperity. Hahnel goes on to note the successful nature of the worker-owned enterprises that were previously discussed in this thread.

New worker-owned cooperatives not only provided much needed jobs producing much needed basic goods and services, they also featured what was soon to become a hallmark of Bolivarian socialism -- popular participation at the grassroots level. When Chavez was first elected President in 1998, there were fewer than 800 legally registered cooperatives in Venezuela with roughly 20,000 members. In mid-2006 the National Superintendence of Cooperatives (SUNACOOP) reported that it had registered over 100,000 co-ops with over 1.5 million members.3 Generous amounts of oil revenues continue to provide start-up loans for thousands of new cooperatives every month, and the Ministry for the Communal Economy continues to spearhead a massive educational program for new cooperative members. However, the ministry provides more than technical assistance regarding technology, accounting, finance, business management, and marketing. It also teaches participants about cooperative principles, economic justice, and social responsibility.

Hence, I would find that to be in ideological tandem with libertarian principles of decentralized social and economic structures governed through democratic frameworks.

The idea that you can run an efficient business democratically is laughable.

As illustrated by a vast empirical literature on the matter, democratically managed enterprises routinely exceed the productivity levels of the orthodox capitalist firm. A theoretical approach will illustrate why this should be true. For example, consider principal-agent problems (or "agency dilemmas"). Their primary cause is the divergence of interests between owners and managers, so that the "principal" (the owner) is confronted with the task of compelling the "agent" (the manager) in some manner, typically with utilization of profit sharing or some similar mechanism. This problem is eliminated in the worker owned and managed enterprise because there is no divorce of ownership and management that exists.

Not to mention that a society in which all businesses are ran this way would simply grind to a halt and resort to the centralized planning board IE welcome to the Soviet Union. "How much rice do we want to produce this year?" "Let's put it to a vote." Oops now the masses are starving.

This is also completely wrong. Few socialists advocate the utilization of central planning boards (Leninists do, but they are not socialists), and instead propose either the usage of markets as resource allocation devices or decentralized and participatory economic planning, which is wholly distinct from the centralized and authoritarian economic planning that the USSR employed. Indeed, libertarian socialists realized the folly of such an endeavor, with the aforementioned anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin commenting on the unfeasibility of centralized, authoritarian planning because of information problems that would be involved.

Production and exchange represent an undertaking so complicated that the plans of the state socialists . . . would prove to be absolutely ineffective as soon as they were applied to life. No government would be able to organize production if the workers themselves through their unions did not do it in each branch of industry; for in all production there arise daily thousands of difficulties which no government can solve or foresee. It is certainly impossible to foresee everything. Only the efforts of thousands of intelligences working on the problems can co-operate in the development of a new social system and find the best solutions for the thousands of local needs.

You'll keep in mind, of course, that this was prior to the publication of Mises's Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth and certainly prior to the ruminations of Hayek on assorted knowledge problems in his debate with Lange, Taylor, Lerner, etc.

I think I'll do without the mass executions of your supposed non-statist libertarian communists. lol the basic principle of libertarianism is that the use of force itself is immoral and yet your glowing example of libertarian communism implemented mass executions against those they considered bourgeois.

There were some admitted excesses by certain contingencies of the anarchist movement, but aside from the fact that this occurred in a wartime environment when they were to soon be subject to sabotage and destruction from their alleged "allies," that does no more to discredit anarchist organizational principles themselves than other anomalous deficiencies of that movement (such as their alliance with the Republican government) did. And that doesn't alter the fact that 40% of the population voluntarily chose to reside in anarchist collectives and communes, which is decidedly more "libertarian" than the coercive integration of workers into the capitalist labor market. Don't commit perfectionist fallacies. Oh, and more than that, anarchists created and used the term "libertarian" more than a century before its misappropriation by capitalists. Don't forget it. :2wave:
 
The right wing extremists are by far the more dangerous of the two.

The left is full of eco-terrorists who want to protect the environment.

The right is full of greedy, business-owing ****bags that seek get keep the rich, rich, the poor, poor and the middle class paying for everything.

The far right supports corporate welfare; the left supports welfare for the working class.

I suppose if I were a far right wing business owner I would feel different; however, I am a poor, overworked, middle class American.

As obviously subjective as this question is; I believe the right extremists are far more dangerous for the majority of Americans.
 
Communism is not a form of the right at all. Whoever said that is completely wrong.
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism]Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Communism (from Latin: communis = "common") is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general.
The two most influential theoreticians of communism of the 19th century were Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
...communism is a leftist ideology.
 
The right wing extremists are by far the more dangerous of the two.

The left is full of eco-terrorists who want to protect the environment.

The right is full of greedy, business-owing ****bags that seek get keep the rich, rich, the poor, poor and the middle class paying for everything.

The far right supports corporate welfare; the left supports welfare for the working class.

I suppose if I were a far right wing business owner I would feel different; however, I am a poor, overworked, middle class American.

As obviously subjective as this question is; I believe the right extremists are far more dangerous for the majority of Americans.
And you call yourself a Centrist. Hahahahahaha :rofl Proves my point about moderates and centrists over and over and over.
 
I believe the far right is more dangerous to America because they don't see democracy as something worth defending.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin "There Never Was a Good War or a Bad Peace."
 
I believe the far right is more dangerous to America because they don't see democracy as something worth defending.
On what do you base this?
 
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