Left, Right and the Political Compass Part 2

Deutsche version: https://www.minds.com/blog/view/629214663824908304 

Transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for tuning in.

A common question about the political compass is: Why is Hitler still in the middle and not far right?

The answer is: Because fascism still meddles with individual rights.Let me explain with our three fascist why they don't touch the right border.

Both Hitler and Mussolini started as socialists.

Mussolini implemented many economic measures free-market advocates would like; moving him to the right.

But, he also forced membership in the syndicates, enforced collective contracts and separated labour and capital with the syndical laws. That's not individualism!

Hitler has never stopped regulating the market and was very fond of deficit spending and public employment programmes in projects like the Autobahn highway system.

Deficit spending is a collective measure, as the society and not capital givers have to pay the interest.

Today these measures are validated by the work of the economist John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes is in favour of interventionism.

His proposed modus operandi in a crisis is to buy economic growth on credit in the hope that later generations can settle these debts.

With this he also legitimizes the measures of Kreisky and Roosevelt.

Pinochet is different, to a point that some academic definitions exclude Pinochet from fascism.

Not that it matters morally: He still was a brutal dictator, just with a different orientation.

He was heavily influenced by the Chicago school of economics. And with that by Milton Friedman.

However a brutal dictatorship excludes individualism and the true value of the "Chicago Boys" was after the democratization of Chile.

Let's fill the other squares: Friedman is a libertarian individualist. Let's start there.

Friedman also influenced Margaret Thatcher and the monetarist approach of her government.

But personally Lady Thatcher was more influenced by the economist Friedrich Hayek and his critique of socialism.

Hayek was a student of Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School.

He was and is heavily criticized by social democrats for arguing against interventionism.

For Hayek, the problem with interventionism is, that no central planner has sufficient knowledge to find the optimum for every individual and the economy as a whole.

But he was not a philosophical individualist, only a pragmatic one: Which lead also to criticism from the other side by Ayn Rand.

Criticized by all sides, at least he won the Nobel Prize for his work.

Another student of Mises, Murray Rothbard, coined the term nonarchism and spread the non-aggression principle from Ayn Rand.

Both concepts will be explained in a future video, but in short:

Rothbard demands adherence to human rights to a point that any form of non-contractual coercion is inacceptable.

Other important figures in this corner are the philosopher Karl Popper and the economist Frédéric Bastiat.

Let's move to the libertarian collectivists.

Bastiat sat in the left side of the French National Assembly together with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with whom he had fierce discussions.

Proudhon coined "Property is theft!" and argued against the idea of private property.

But his idea of labour notes was criticized by Pyotr Kropotkin for being just a different form of wages.

Kropotkin influenced Emma Goldman who became one of the best known activists for women rights, despite being against the ideology of feminism.

Next to the other libertarian collectivists is also the place of Mahatma Gandhi. He was not directly influenced by the other persons here, but from the author Henry David Thoreau and Hinduism itself.

Back to Kropotkin. He criticized Karl Marx for being a state socialist.

For Marx state power is the means to free the proletariat, while Kropotkin saw the state as the cause of its exploitation.

I believe Kropotkin does Marx an injustice with his criticism. Marx was certainly not a proponent of authoritarian dictatorships.

But like Keynes validated the well known fascist, Marx influenced the well known communists:

Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Joseph Stalin in Russia and Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania

Of course you could argue about some exact positions, but it is still better than Stalin and Gandhi next to each other.

Also the political compass is a tool for discussions, not to end of them.

I hope this video was helpful in using it.

Part 1: https://www.minds.com/blog/view/624110232083111956

Political left and right are insufficient to describe the view of many important political thinkers. This video shows an alternative.

After several responses: The first half of the part 1 is with tongue in cheek to emphasis on the problem with the left/right dichotomy.

 

Support and Sources:

August Heinrich Barbarossa provides an Austrian view on the world. Videos will be released in English and German. Support August on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ahbarbarossa

The Political Compass: https://www.politicalcompass.org/

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