Thursday, December 15, 2005 - 2:45 PM EST

I found this article very interesting, but I think something is missing. I haven't really explored the whole site so you have to deal with my limited knowledge.

I'd like to premise this with where I come from. I consider myself philosophically on the anarchist-socialist side of things and I am having a lot of trouble figuring out where I would be on your spectrum. I also had a recent epiphany and so I'm in the midst of rethinking my analysis of how things are.

I am very left wing socially in pretty much all spheres although my artistic tastes run from realistic to abstract. I guess that would be Liberal Left to some extent.

I am also generally for a participatory economy as defined in parecon.org or on related articles on znet.org. I am not a devotee, but I think they are on the right track. It involves participatory planning, a non-market system, non-hierarchical organizational structures, and each job containing skilled (Doctor) and crap work (bed pans). There's more to it, but I don't have time to bore you.

And so I am far left socially and economically and yet am thoroughly anti-Stalin.

Here goes to my epiphany of sorts.

My new axis would be something along the lines of the following: equality vs elitism, inclusiveness vs exclusiveness, democracy vs hierarchy, etc.

RE: economy.
Equality - equal pay for equal effort/sacrifice, democratically run business.
Elitism - pyramid sructure, be it capitalists/managers or Inner Communist Party Members/Managers

RE: Church/Religion
Equality - people in and out of a religion are treated equally.
Elitism - the chosen (whichever faith) are treated better in some way

RE: Sexism
Equality - men & women treated equally
Elitism - men have more power than women. Men are treated superior in sme manner.

RE: Racism
Equality - all are treated equally
Elitism - one particular ethnic group has privileges, or their maybe a pyrmaid of privilege

RE: Homophobia
Equality - Homosexuals can be married and have equal rights to hetero couples.
Elitism - Only hetero marriage is real and are the elite group (although %-age wise they/we are greater).

RE: healthcare
Equality - Equal tx, first come first serve barring severity, free
Elitism - scaled on pay or political power (such as probably happened in USSR).

I am running on and on, but you get my point. Just something to think about.

Thanks.

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 2:48 AM EDT

A refreshing way to look at the Political Spectrum is the way the founders of our constitution looked at it.A They measured it based on a continuum between tyranny and anarchy. A You can view at:A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ_ZnVL8fDk

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 4:42 PM EDT

 Alot of discrepancies in this article. For instance, I love the way the writer dances around Marx labor theory of value. The writer doesn't give any real context  into the theory all this person stats is 

 "Marx pointed out that capitalism increased the socialization of production, i.e. the interactions and interdependencies between human beings throughout the production process. At the same time, capitalism restricted ownership of socially created value to a few. Therefore capitalists acquire unto themselves value that is created by society, and this is the key to the way in which capitalists are able to amass great wealth in a short period of time - they are accumulating socially created value that is produced by millions of people around the world."

This is vague,ambiguous,incorrect and ultimately a horrible misrepresentation of what Marx outlined in Das Capital.You also give brief descriptions on exchange value and  use value, but conveniently leave out surplus value(obviously because of your ideological background)and where surplus value originates from. This, of course is just one glaring example on why this article is objective and hardly value free. Another issue concerning this article is how you take historical context into account.You do give the broad scope into the subject but fail to make the causal connections.

For instance, you state Marx on the middle class

"Marxism is opposed to Liberal "middle-class" society, referred to by Marxists as bourgeois (pronounced boor-zhwa') society, on a variety of levels, all of which are ultimately related."

and earlier in the article you mentioned the three estate system,but fail to connect these two. Marx considered the bourgeois "middle class" because in the totality of humanity,the wealthy merchants didn't wield the authority that the higher classes obtain(which was a closed class system.Meaning that you had to be born/married into it or, was granted into by royal permission) they were under the aristocracy,the religious,the noble, and royal class(exept kings who were considered outside the class system)  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

this is an example of the heritablity and casual interconnection of historical events. 

You see you're stringing historical events together in a static fashion. This brand of shell(surface) information is an isolated,and unauthentic representation of history that has no room for true context and sadly the end result is without any actuality(other than surface or one dimensional value).I actually only read half of this article because of it's subtle taintness.I also don't accept the political spectrum graphs represented at the beginning of the article. I encourage any reader to do the slightest amount of research into the majority of the claims presented,to get a authentic grasp on the subject.

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 1:45 PM EST

And I encourage you to learn the English language. "Taintness"?