sorry perhaps i was unfair, its fair enough to question the degree to which the undesirable actions of the totalitarian left (if left is an entirely appropriate word to use), such as the Fascists, are an inevitable outcome of socialist content in policy (although a difficult argument to make imo). it just seems that to play hard on it is a very easy way to gain advantage in debate given its emotional charge
Ok - I'm trying to draw a link between political and economic freedoms. If we take socialism to be collective ownership of the means of production (and the end capitalist institutions like the market, money, individual wealth and so on), this can only be acheived by a system of control - i.e. a top down enforcement of socialist laws. The limited (pre-globalised) practice of capitalism, private trade for personal profit, is a very old practice. Even socialist states have black markets of spontaneous capitalist activity, which then have to be suppressed by agents of the state.
I'm not saying that all socialism is always bad by necessity, or that all the struggles of the left have been for tyranny (when they clearly have not). A lot of good has beeen achieved by the left in the last century. Nick Cohen sums it up pretty well:
Cohen: Ok. Let's look at the last 100 years. If I were to go back to 1906 and meet a couple of angry right-wing New Yorkers, a little like yourselves, but better dressed, and describe the future to them, I would be able to say that in 2006 all men and women would have the vote; all the empires, including the American empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific would have vanished; it would be impossible for an openly racist or sexist candidate to win a democratic election; all Western states, including the United States, would spend a large proportion of gross domestic product on welfare; there would be rights for groups you -- as angry New York Right-wingers -- would never have thought about, such as homosexuals and the disabled; everyone, including Republicans, would talk in the language of human rights; it would be impermissible for any Western army to commit crimes against humanity...I could go on.
My point is that you would have felt that history would be moving against you while your contemporaries on The Nation of 1906 would be delighted. The 20th century was a left wing century.
-
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23339
[Rest of the article is an intersting addendum to the discussion here.]
I basically see the really important political disticntions as being between the forces of liberal democracy and the forces of illiberal tyranny. Ok, so I might have gone on about the growth of totalitarian political movements from the broad socialist movement of the time, but I think it's not an unreasonable argument to make, and to be honest I was getting a bit sick of being told I was a right-wing nutjob by all and sundry. It's not that simple. The greatest enemy of liberty in the last century was Communism (shades of which appeared all over the shop, not just in the USSR). Why? The revolutionary "counter-enlightnement" (or whatever terminology you're most happy with) movements wanted to take humanity (or just their own favourite section of it: workers, aryans, salafi muslims) to an imaginary state, un-corrupted by global capital.
To some extent (in parts of the Islamic world, in parts of the west), it's a narrative that is still on going.
