- Commies propose the government run everything by a central plan. Progressives propose the government run everything with no plan at all.
- Commies believe that underdevelopment is a sin committed by wealthy capitalists against poor people, and propose to fix this by commanding stuff to be developed. Progressives believe that development is a sin committed by wealthy capitalists against Gaea and the trees, and propose to fix this by prohibiting stuff from being developed.
- Commies believe in democracy, and indeed believe in it so much that they will shoot anyone who votes incorrectly. Progressives believe in democracy, and if large numbers of people keep voting incorrectly, will import a foreign underclass to outvote them.
And here we learn how little is essentially leftist about either group. Or essentially [any other fundamental trait or philosophy] – it’s almost all contingent.
There’s little things like the implications of believing in democracy but also that you can vote wrong…which do follow from their premises. But for the most part those premises were obtained by pure natural selection.
You’ve got some definition of “leftist” that doesn’t include the two main groups on the left?
I am not sure what is “essentially leftist”
Leftism has an very lengthy official line, which line reflects the accidents of history and coalition building. Perhaps you mean that they do not take their own line all that seriously – that the conclusion (commies/progressives need to control other people’s property) is more important than the justification (“for the poor”/”for the trees”)
Precisely. Neither am I and neither are leftists.
Failure of writing on my part.
I mean the left has no essence. ‘Left’ is a term of convenience, useful only in a limited political arena, just as leftists are thinkers of convenience, only viable in a limited political arena. Figuring out if a policy is an inherently leftist policy is impossible.
I don’t buy this at all.
Power is the ability to get others to do what you want them to do. There are really only 3 ways to have power: strength, productivity and intelligence.
The fundamental characteristic of leftism (and all leftist policy) is boosting the power and prestige of intellectuals at the expense of the two other groups.
This seems to suppose that intellectuals are intelligent, which was probably true in the early twentieth century, but is no longer true:
Consider for example Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman: an Ivy League PhD, and dumb as a post.
And then there is the high priest of Global Warming, Michael Mann, an Ivy League PhD in science topics that are largely applied statistics – but it seems he is unable to do statistics at a level that one would expect from a BSc in such topics.
Because the left is the ruling faction, the smart people tend to sign up with it, but it demands that they check their brains at the door and believe a long, long, long, long list of impossible and mutually contradictory things, which requires the smarter believers to induce or simulate stupidity.
All proggies are indeed Athenian.
Not all Athenians are proggies.
The author of that definition meant by “Athenians”, sophists, who did not believe in anything other than the social consensus of their class, thus succeeded in making themselves artificially stupid, in that they knew nothing, nor, if given facts about external reality on a platter, could they deduce anything from those facts.
The “scholar”, he tells us, looks up the answer – in today’s society, gives the answer by rote from the left’s very long official line.
The sophist is exhibit A in artificial stupidity. He has no facts to reason from, nor can he reason from any facts.
Is Chavez a commie or a progressive then? He seems to be praised by the Commies in Cuba and the progressives in America.
All three can be to the left of the mainstream US without being the same thing.
He has not got a central plan, so I suppose he is closer to being a progressive, on the other hand he wants to control stuff for the poor rather than for the trees, which makes him closer to being a commie, but progressives and commies care about the conclusions (government needs to control stuff) more than they care about the premises. If you get the right conclusion – power – they forget the argument and justification.
Sooo, in the long term progressives are worse?
Example – East Germany. It will recover from communist occupation but will it recover from the whole “import loads of Turks” progressive occupation?
Commies are willing to start shooting immediately if it will not get them immediately killed. They will shameless and massively stack any election if they are not in a position to immediately shoot anyone who votes incorrectly. Thus commies needed to be met by immediate violence, and for the most part, they were met by immediate violence. Progressives mostly use means short of means that justify immediate violence, but in the long term they are worse, since they more willing to destroy everything, so that they can reign in hell rather than serve in heaven – for example compare Angola with Zimbabwe.
Amen.
Jim I believe you are confusing Communists and Stalinists. I have a friend who grew up in communist Poland and she pointed out that her father refused to vote in the local elections because they were a scam. No one tried to kill him, they just put pressure on him from time to time. He even voted in a couple of elections so he could get his daughter a passport and went right back to not voting. He’s still alive.
“Gaea and the trees” is all about increasing the gap of the average person’s material status vs the progressive elites. Make them drive small cars, have shitty toilets, ect while our elites enjoy the best things in life. It goes hand in hand with their ideas to reduce people to slave status through massive importation of 3ed worlds.
Commies have never believe any of the ideas about raising poor people up through production. Based on the out comes that was nothing more than propaganda.
Progressive still love state ownership of the means of production they’ve just decided to do it through regulation instead of direct ownership.
Put pressure on him to vote, since of course it was impossible to vote incorrectly. That he might vote, and write in the name of someone imprisoned or disappeared was entirely unimaginable.
Labels schmabels. Can we at least agree that they are a continuation of the same movement?
While progressivism and communism are disturbingly cozy with each other, I don’t think that there is a historical line of descent between them. Progressivism descends from protestantism, communism from Judaism. Of course progressivism has absorbed environmentalism, which also descends from Judaism and communism, but if we go back to the earlier progressives, there is not a Jew in sight.
Now that the progressive movement is full of Jews, a rewrite of history has been launched to write Jews into the past of the movement, but until around the middle of the twentieth century, progressivism was Judenrein and nominally Christian, though they found the New Testament’s acceptance of slavery, prohibition of divorce, and mandatory double standard (women may only have one sexual partner in their lives, come what may) entirely unacceptable. By 1840, progressivism was Christianity that had ditched the inconvenient New Testament, but as late as 1942 was still supposedly Christian and protestant, indeed supposedly a lot more Christian and protestant than those horribly old fashioned protestants that still paid some attention to the horribly reactionary words found in the New Testament
Observe that progressive Jews, meaning most Jews except orthodox Jews, love blacks, even though blacks conspicuously fail to love Jews, and really really love Muslims, even though Muslims really hate Jews. Observe the Jewish reaction to the Crown Heights Pogrom. Jews promptly blamed Jews. This is not the behavior of people who secretly rule the world, but of people desperately groveling at the door of progressivism begging to be allowed in. When Jewish self hatred led to the Jews purging each other out of the communist parties, they went begging to progressivism, seeking the tolerance that in the communist parties, they had failed to extend to each other.
It’s really just a continuation of 17th century German/French socialism vs Anglo Liberalism. The Anglo way always comes across as nice and fluffy and only slowly destroys it’s host nation(3ed party nations are usually ravaged quickly). German/French socialism destroys their host nations and are very hard core about killing their enemies.
Sometimes the sides fight as seen in the Napoleonic wars, Cold War, ect. But on the whole of it it’s more like good cop/bad but ultimately they’re both on the same team and they usually collaborate against anyone who’s not part of the team.
Now the interesting question is which faction was America closer to on the run up to WW2? My money is on the Hardcore faction as demonstrated by our love of Stalin and our distrust of and casting aside of Churchill. We starved millions of Germans to death after WW2, handled over hundreds of thousands of Russians and Poles to certain death after the war. It’s like we pretended to be nice cop while we let the bad cop do the dirty work.
So I guess you could say that Progressives are not Communists but it’s pretty clear that both have the same long term goals and both feel that they are fighting for the same cause. That’s close enough to consider them one and the same for most people.
Oh oddly enough it seems that hardcore Islam is the new hardcore portion of the leftist spectrum. It’s clear progresses go out of their way to put Islamists in power and do everything possible to minimize their crimes.
While the historical analysis sound reasonable – it is very important to recognize that when you excise very the core of Christianity (belief in Jesus as the Son of God and Lord of all) what you have left-over after this operation is *not* Christianity, but anti-Christianity.
The main difference between Communists and Progressives (political correctness) is that progressivism is the result of more than a century of further leftward development – to create an almost entirely oppositional, subversive, invertional and nihilistic (relativistic) ideology.
While the early Communists were highly motivated, brave and integrated characters (who survived very well in the Nazi concentration camps, apparently); the current progressives are self-hating cowardly weeds who are *only-just* prevented from lying down and killing themselves from boredom and despair by a steady infusion of daily novelties – iPhone Apps and the like.
Until the 1940s, perhaps the 1950s, progressives did not admit to excising Jesus as the son of God, still claimed to worship Jesus as Lord, though in fact they had quietly demoted him from God to community organizer, a demotion that was already perceptible in 1850.
I think it was already anti Christianity in 1840, but as late as 1940, they still thought themselves to be Christian. Today, they would be just as astonished to be told that progressivism was a branch of Christianity, as in 1940 they would have been astonished to be told that it was not.
I think this nails it.
I think you overlook the influence of introgression from the progressive branch of the tree into 20th C communism via the Bellamy momvement. Lenin basically inherited the structure of the soviet state from the nationaslist movement via Boris Reinstein and Daniel De Leon of NY.
There have been major introgressions in both directions, notably the environmental movement, descended from Judaism and communism, communism itself being descended from Judaism, was entirely absorbed by the progressive movement, descended from protestant Christianity via abolitionism.
But despite numerous and substantial introgressions, the main lines of descent are separate all the way back. The doctrines of progressivism are still the overwhelmingly the corrupted, distorted, and transformed doctrines of Christianity. Similarly, dialectics is corrupted Talmudism.
But it’s the *structure of the soviet state*! That’s what people are talking about when they are talk about communism.
Daniel De Leon was a Jew. Back then, you could not be a Jew and a progressive. You could be a Jew who admired progressivism from the outside, but they would not let you in. Similarly for Boris Reinstein. So if the structure of the Soviet State comes from Daniel De Leon and Boris Reinstein, does not come from progressivism. Jews were not allowed to be progressives until after World War II.
Solomon Schindler wasn’t a progressive?
Until now, I never heard of Solomon Schindler. On looking him up, I see he was a “Boston Radicalâ€. Observe that the terrorist Bill Ayers is supposedly not a radical but a “distinguished professorâ€. Similarly Barney Frank. If you are part of the group that is in power, you are never called a radical, no matter how radical your views. If he had been a progressive, been part of the predecessors to today’s establishment, he would be a “Boston Liberalâ€.
I’ll add Felix Frankfurter and Walter Lippman to the above question and will port a longer response later if I have time.
By the structure of the Soviet State, I mean in particular a confederation of representitive bodies of industries. Lenin got this from De Leon who got it from the not at all jewish Bellamy. This is what “industrial democracy” is. As I said, if I have time I’ll add some info on the relationship between Bellamy Nationalism and progressivism all the way up to the New Deal. It obviously wan’t the onnly movement that contributed, but it is not an overstatement to say it may have been the most important.
One final comment for now. Do you know how Boris Reinstein, former personal sec. to De Leon and Sec. to the leader of the SLP got to Moscow to become the personal Sec to Lenin? He came with the not very jewish Elihu Root adn his not very jewish crew.
Yes, but communism is primarily Marx, not Bellamy. Starting 1860 or so the Jewish left was struggling with the Christian left for the claim to be lefter than thou. The Christian left went with feminism, the Jewish left with revolutionary trade unionism. So it is unsurprising that the Jewish left swiped the most radical ideas of the Christian left on proletarianism. That does not make them a descendent of the Christian left, though both factions are descended from the enlightenment left. The Christian left lost enthusiasm for socialism, de-emphasizing it without altogether abandoning it, reinterpreting socialism as welfarism and heavy handed state regulation of nominally privately owned industry.
In the late nineteenth century the Christian left decided to stake its claim to be lefter than thou on feminism, blacks, anti colonialism, and so on and so forth, while the Jewish left was gung ho for the proletariat. The Christian left allowed itself to be outflanked on socialism, when it became obvious in the late nineteenth century that revolutionary trade unionism was just not all that appealing to the proletariat. Proletarians wanted a deal with the boss, not to get rid of the boss. Faced with a strikingly unenthusiastic proletariat, the Christian left decided they were better off letting the Jewish left win on that front.
You are scraping the bottom of the barrel. On googling for him, I find that Elihu Root was an employee of Jewish leftists. I found no indication that he had any political views, other than that he should receive his paycheck on time.
The Jewish left was not exclusively Jewish, indeed it hated, denied, and rejected the fact that it was Jewish, causing them to affirmative action non Jews to positions of power, especially visible positions of power, and leading the Jewish Bolsheviks to purge each other when the Bolsheviks gained power. The Christian left was almost exclusively Christian until after World War II, and if any Jews got in before then, those Jews found they were being gently condescended to and were not getting into the inner circle of power.
With the Jews purging each other from the communist movement, they went knocking on the door of the Christian left begging to be allowed in, and after World War II, were allowed in, bringing environmentalism with them, but the ideology of progressivism still shows its Christian roots, and the ideology of communism still shows its Jewish roots.
A Jew who converts to progressivism is converting away from Judaism, and acts like it. Observe which side progressive Jews took in the Crown Heights Pogrom.
“If you are part of the group that is in power, you are never called a radical, no matter how radical your views.”
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/expaine.html
Oh, come on. Do you think the left wants to disown Tom Paine?
Tom Paine died in poverty. Not part of the group that was in power.
“Elihu Root was an employee of Jewish leftists.”
What?
http://books.google.com/books?id=Io4MAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA18&dq=new+england+society+of+new+york+elihu+root&hl=en&ei=L-6fTpTTCIKr0AHC99GCBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=new%20england%20society%20of%20new%20york%20elihu%20root&f=false
Which tells us he had other jobs as well. As I said, he seems to be just some random guy, with little interest in politics other than that when employed by political activists, his boss should make payroll.
The New England Society, surprisingly, used not to be part of the progressive establishment. Among the recipients of its awards are William F Buckley Jr, which the progressive establishment views much the way they view Ronald Reagan and Thomas Clarence.
So as I say, no indication that Elihu Root ever had a political thought in his head. The New England Society was one of the last survivals of the old establishment, back from the days when it was not absolutely mandatory to be a progressive to be part of the establishment, before the progressive establishment had completely taken over every establishment organ and made its political program the central mission of that organ.
I didn’t realize I had to prove Root was a progressive, I was just trying to show that he was Wasp establishment. Of course he was a progressive, he was the president of the Carnegie Endowment for world peace and the VP of the American Peace Society under BF Trueblood. He also led the Root commission to the USSR along with Mott, Charles R. Crane some AFL guys, Reinstein and a bunch of Morgan cronies. His progressive bona fides should not be at issue. I don’t see where the jews enter into it either (Reinstein excepted).
To demonstrate an ancestral link between progressives and commies, you have to produce someone who was a significant progressive and a significant commie. I don’t see evidence that Root was a progressive or a commie, let alone both, let alone significant. And supposing him to have been a progressive, you then need to show him to be a commie:
Googling up hits on the Root commission, I see the commission, but not Root himself, promising that Russia will become moderate and democratic – will convert to progressivism – pretty much the tune that progressives are singing about the Islamic revolutions. Mott of the Root commission is singing this song at an event sponsored by the YMCA, a progressive organization. The Communist candidates for US president, Foster and Ford, had on their election platform a list of all the categories of people that they would liquidate immediately on taking power. It was a long list. A very long list. On the list was the YMCA, among a great many other categories.
Thus the relationships of today’s progressives with radical Islam recapitulates the commission’s relationship with communism. We may conclude that Mott was a progressive It does not follow that progressives are commies, any more than it follows that progressives are Muslims, nor does it follow that Root was a progressive, though it is reason to suspect. The Root commission did not engage in communism, but in anti anti communism, similar to the anti Islamophobia of today’s progressives, and Root himself does not seem to have engaged in anti anti communism.
Progressives wanted to love commies, as they want to love Muslims, but they found it and find it embarrassingly difficult.
“Among the recipients of its awards are William F Buckley Jr,”
A mere 60 years later.
The title of that particular article is intended to be drole as “Boston Radical” temds to imply a protestant, while Schindler was a Rabbi. Looking further into Schindler’s career, we see that he ran with the Boston Christian socialist ministers, who even attended his sermons and was certainly part of their philanthropy network. He was involved in the settlement house movement and spread his form of Unitarian Judaism to the progressive faction of his congregation. The organization which he founded the Jewish Charities of Boston was part of, not apart from, the Charitable trust movement which included the Boston and New York progressive elite.
“Unitarian Judaism” suggests Solomon Schindler was knocking at the door of the Christian left asking to be allowed in. Was he allowed in? Looks to me that he was patronized, which is not quite the same thing. In the end he reverted to traditional Judaism, which suggests that the welcome mat the Christian left rolled out for him was not all that welcoming after all.
Liberalism has morphed into exactly the opposite of what it meant originally, individual property & choice — meanwhile republicans get left with the clunker ‘conservatism’, which means quite a few different things, depending on the country.