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The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literally destroyed left wing politics in my mind.

by navidr 7y ago

smitty1e 7y ago
The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. Politics is the continual friction between individuals and various groupings of people.
- dominotw 7y ago
  > various groupings of people. why isn't left/right a valid grouping then?
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    The directions lack meaning.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
    - gherkinnn 7y ago
      You sound rather liberal, in the literal sense.
      - mindcrime 7y ago
        To the extent that I care about, or claim any affiliation with any of these terms, I could probably loosely be described as a "classical liberal". I don't use the term much though, because most people don't appreciate the nuanced distinction between that and the modern usage of "liberal" (at least here in the US). I'm also a little more radical than most people, and if I have to pick a label for myself, I'm more likely to choose "voluntaryist", "anarcho-capitalist", or "libertarian".
      - __s 7y ago
        Liberal doesn't say whether someone is left-wing or right-wing, so we can disregard it as an idealistic person who refuses to take an opinion of the real political question: left or right?
    - dominotw 7y ago
      but can't you define your grouping by the disapproval for other group. eg: You are a red group if disapprove blue group. Even in your own example you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises. Otherwise how can you possibly form a group, there is no one else is the world that has the precisely the same preferences as me.
      - mindcrime 7y ago
        you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises. Sure, you could do that, and people do. The point though, is that it makes these terms mostly useless for actually describing anything. Let's say I chose to define myself as "right" because I care more about the second amendment than abortion. You see me self-identify as "right" and then conclude that I oppose abortion, support tight border control, want a legal system defined by Judeo-Christian ethics, etc. But all of those conclusions would actually be wrong. And the same kind of construction could be applied to what would happen in the other case. That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. But I still find that the terms are mostly useless because they lack any kind of logical consistency and because so few people actually have that "exact fit". But, that's just me.
        dominotw 7y ago
        > That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. Exactly, Unless @smitty1e knows the person personally, a generic response > The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. is invalid. since, as you noted, it does apply to some people.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. Not exactly. Grouping along left/right, conservative/progressive axes is in effect a severe dimensionality reduction, simplifying thousands of metrics of political stance into two neat little clusters. It is technically valid, but overly reductive and forces black/white thinking into the common psyche which itself becomes a source of friction.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    The cardinality, not the directionality, is the driver.
aezakmi 7y ago
This is antisemitic.
auntienomen 7y ago
The lesson of Solzhenitsyn is to beware of authoritarian politics: state violence and extralegal terror used to support the privileges of a minority group. Leftist and rightist ideologies are both vulnerable to this disease.
a-saleh 7y ago
With some risk of 'no-true-scotsman', more I look at soviet/cold-war era, more it seems like Russia was exporting weird meld of cult-of-personality, imperialism and fascism? To me, if reading about Gulag destroys left-wing for you, is like if realizing world was not created in 6 days destroyed your faith. Like what was your belief in the first place? But I had simmilar moments as well :) I did hear that SSSR does still have fans in some western countries, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn has really good antidodes against that, I myself am a fan of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literally destroyed left wing politics in my mind.

by navidr 7y ago

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literally destroyed left wing politics in my mind.

The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. Politics is the continual friction between individuals and various groupings of people.

dominotw 7y ago
> various groupings of people. why isn't left/right a valid grouping then?
- smitty1e 7y ago
  The directions lack meaning.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Because there is no logical consistency to the attributes used to define each grouping. They're just a hodgepodge of loosely related (at best) ideas. So a lot of people simply don't fit in either category. For example: I am absolutely pro-choice on the abortion issue. I am also rabidly pro-gun on the second amendment issue. So do I fall into the "left" bucket or the "right" bucket? The answer is "neither".
  - gherkinnn 7y ago
    You sound rather liberal, in the literal sense.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      To the extent that I care about, or claim any affiliation with any of these terms, I could probably loosely be described as a "classical liberal". I don't use the term much though, because most people don't appreciate the nuanced distinction between that and the modern usage of "liberal" (at least here in the US). I'm also a little more radical than most people, and if I have to pick a label for myself, I'm more likely to choose "voluntaryist", "anarcho-capitalist", or "libertarian".
    - __s 7y ago
      Liberal doesn't say whether someone is left-wing or right-wing, so we can disregard it as an idealistic person who refuses to take an opinion of the real political question: left or right?
  - dominotw 7y ago
    but can't you define your grouping by the disapproval for other group. eg: You are a red group if disapprove blue group. Even in your own example you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises. Otherwise how can you possibly form a group, there is no one else is the world that has the precisely the same preferences as me.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises. Sure, you could do that, and people do. The point though, is that it makes these terms mostly useless for actually describing anything. Let's say I chose to define myself as "right" because I care more about the second amendment than abortion. You see me self-identify as "right" and then conclude that I oppose abortion, support tight border control, want a legal system defined by Judeo-Christian ethics, etc. But all of those conclusions would actually be wrong. And the same kind of construction could be applied to what would happen in the other case. That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. But I still find that the terms are mostly useless because they lack any kind of logical consistency and because so few people actually have that "exact fit". But, that's just me.
      - dominotw 7y ago
        > That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. Exactly, Unless @smitty1e knows the person personally, a generic response > The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. is invalid. since, as you noted, it does apply to some people.
allovernow 7y ago
>The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo. Not exactly. Grouping along left/right, conservative/progressive axes is in effect a severe dimensionality reduction, simplifying thousands of metrics of political stance into two neat little clusters. It is technically valid, but overly reductive and forces black/white thinking into the common psyche which itself becomes a source of friction.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  The cardinality, not the directionality, is the driver.

aezakmi 7y ago

This is antisemitic.

auntienomen 7y ago

The lesson of Solzhenitsyn is to beware of authoritarian politics: state violence and extralegal terror used to support the privileges of a minority group. Leftist and rightist ideologies are both vulnerable to this disease.

a-saleh 7y ago

With some risk of 'no-true-scotsman', more I look at soviet/cold-war era, more it seems like Russia was exporting weird meld of cult-of-personality, imperialism and fascism? To me, if reading about Gulag destroys left-wing for you, is like if realizing world was not created in 6 days destroyed your faith. Like what was your belief in the first place? But I had simmilar moments as well :) I did hear that SSSR does still have fans in some western countries, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn has really good antidodes against that, I myself am a fan of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"