spectrum of ideologies (fwd)

>A political scientist who studied the ideological spectrum in the Germany
>of
>the 1920s ("Weimar Republic"), Kurt Sontheimer, found something very
>interesting -- namely, the left-right spectrum of political ideologies is
>not a straight line but has the shape of a horseshoe or even a circle.

himm? isn't Kurt Sontheimer one of the positivist political scientists
in Germany?

>He
>found that when you move from centrist positions to the left and then to
>the
>far-left and when you move from a centrist position to the right and then
>to
>the far-right you reach virtually the same point, just like moving along
>a
>horseshoe or along a circle either left or right will eventually get you
>to
>approximately the same ideological location. 

generally, positivist social scientists use ideology in a highly
pejorative and one-sided way. for example, ideology is used pejoratively
to describe leftist regimes, giving credence to declarations that
ideologies become outmoded in a changing world. such a stance is based on
the assumption that the nature of so called "centrist position", that is,
liberalism as practised in WEstern democracies,is correct and good, and
that an alternative world-view is unrealistic and dangerous.Ideology, in
the sense developed by Marx, questions this biased position of positivist
scientists. Ideology, it is rightly argued, perpetuates class domination,
and distorts and obscures reality in our understanding of the social
world. For example, ideology is deeply rooted in the consciousness
(material) of western people living in capitalist societies, particulary
the US. american citizens experience great difficulty in comprehending
why, for instance, it was not the business of the US to wage a war against
Vietnam or to support the Pinochet regime in Chile. indeed, they tend to
accept the external controls that develop their everday consciousness. 


>In 1920's Germany the far
>right
>were the national socialists (=Nazis), the far left were the national
>bolsheviks (similar to Pol Pot in Cambodia or one contemporary wsn
>member).

gert, the name of the socialist party in Germany was "the Communist Party
of Germany", it was not a "Pol Pot of Cambodia". communists and socialists
together gained significant votes in Reichtag before the rise of
Hitler. they were popularly elected through a parliemantary mechanism
before Hitler took the power from the conservative president Von
Hiedenberg and established his dictatorhip.


>The ideological positions of the far right and the far left were both in
>favour of high degrees of violence and dictatorship.

No. communists were fighting against Hitler and trying to prevent the
possibility of fascism. i do not want to create a controversy here but the
Social Democratic party was partially responsible for the destinity of
GErmany. first, they did not take Hitler seriously even though they
perceived the great danger and the fact that they were losing the unions
to hitler. The Social DEmocratic Party was faced with contradictions:
either to go to a united front with communists since they already
constituted a majority in Reichtag? or to cooperate  with the
semi-dictatorhips of Bruning, Papen and Schleichter to ward off Hitler. in
bright Neumann's words, the social democrats were faced "with the most
difficult decision in its history". social democrats refused a coalition
with communists for the sake of protecting the liberal constitutional
order (weimar); it decided to tolerate Bruning  government,who would then
transfer the power to Hitler. at a time Hitler was gaining power, the
leading politicians of the Social Democratic Party, Rudolf Hilferding,
ridiculed Hitler, and said the "primary aim of the socialists was to fight
against communists" not against Hitler. then, left was doomed to death
forever in Germany. great historical opportunity would not have been lost
if social democrats had not been so bold. tolerance for fascism in Germany
should be a lesson for us. (See Franz Neumann, _Behemoth: the Structure
and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944_)


>Another common
>feature
>they had was that they were in favour of killing their own party
>supporters
>if they were deemed "soft" in one way or another.

killing is not in the nature of communists. governments kill its own
citizens.

>(A little known
>historical
>fact is that Hitler, long before he launched the war and the holocaust,
>had
>about 1000 fellow Nazis murdered in the so-called "night of the long
>knives"
>1934.

i do not see the relation to communists here. your basically want to say
that communists are fascists. i am leaving to the judgement of list
members to guestion the objectivity of your social science. communists
have no resemblance to fascists. in  their entire history, communists
fought against fascists. they were defeated , they were killed and they 
were tortured by fascists and regimes that tolerated fascist regimes like
the ones you are a member of!!! if you think that they have
resemblance, then you have to "show" me why and come up with logical
conclusions and explanations. otherwise, it is just a rhetorical
exercise aimed at deception.

>This is parallel to the Stalinist practice of killing fellow
>leftists,
>like Trotsky and thousands of others.)

communism is not under the monopoly of stalinism. one can be a
socialist/communist without ipso facto being a stalinist. 
you are reifying names here and create a big man out of stalin. socialism
is a social practice not a product of leadership or  personality. 

>I conclude from this that violence
>is
>the mistake of 20th century socialism. Stalinists and some Leninists are
>the
>Nazis of socialism and give socialism a bad name. A red-green world party


second, what died in Russia was not communism but Kremlin Bureaucracy and
revisionism--- the anti-thesis of Marxism and Leninism. lenin came to
power with popular support and revolution. he was not a dictatorship.
october 1917 was the first  working class revolution that the world
history had seen. didn't have any problems? of course, it had. as one
commentator suggested in this list (i think it was Andy), no economic
system is perfect. you can not expect from socialism FULL performance;
this is idealism par excellence. every system has limitations bacause we
are humans in the first place. capitalism has limitations and lots  of
inneficiencies too, but we are indoctrinized that it is perfect, and the
natural order of things. for this reason, as a Marxist socialist, i
believe that socialism is better then capitalism, if not the most perfect,
since it aims at equality and fair distribution of economic resources.
since i believe that the basic premise of life starts with the material
organization of society first, ie., whether or not you statisfy the basic
necessities of life, or whether or not you have equal access to wealth,
education, health as equal beings, i beleive we should strive to get the
best out of Marx and Lenin, or at least Marx, to be able to continue a
life of human beings, and to see what we can further develop from that.  


Mine

>Gert Kohler
>Oakville, Canada