this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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But not all of the far left is authoritarian. That’s where horseshoe theory fails. The fact that tankies and fascists share some common traits isn’t enough to save it.
Also, while tankies grew out of the left in some sense, it’s pretty debatable whether it’s still a left movement at this point. The philosophical differences with the rest of the left are enormous.
Not all of the far right is authoritarian either. And those non-authoritarian sects support basically the same kind of means for decentralizing power.
Some means that actually centralize power every time somebody tries... But yeah, honesty is not a common trait on either extreme.
I struggle to think of any far-right ideology, theoretical or practical, that isn't enamored with hierarchy.
A lot of right wing militias are anti-government, radical individualist, bordering on anarchist. They care about hierarchy, but mostly in-group. I wouldn't call them authoritarian.
The need for either total autonomy from - or total control of - the evil mainstream society is an example of the theory, not an exception.
The right is less authoritarian regarding business and environmental regulations than the left, as one example.
Businesses are just a different kind of hierarchy than government.
The point is the right doesn’t want the government regulating businesses, whereas the left does. Therefore the left is more authoritarian regarding regulation of business, just as the right is more authoritarian in regulating personal rights.
I don't really find that a meaningful distinction in the context of discussing whether far-right ideologies are capable of being anti-hierarchy.
Governmental hierarchy vs private sector hierarchy is the distinction. The existence of hierarchy does not define authoritarianism in government. Do you consider a head of the household an authoritarian government?
I would consider traditional patriarchal ideas of the head of a household as hierarchical, and that there's a significant body of work in anthropology that directly relates the outgrowth of complex and hierarchical societies from such family arrangements. So, in the broadest sense, yes. In the narrower sense of a competing polity with a monopoly on force compared to extant states, no, but that's only relevant insofar as those states continue to exist.
Preferring one authority over another isn’t the same as being anti-authoritarian. People who want complete capitalist dominance over society are not that different from people who want complete state control over society. Different organizational and legal structure, but same type of backwards moral reasoning.
Anarchist ideology is not a monopoly of the left.
Ancaps believe in hierarchy, just not government hierarchy. Though the distinction is dubious.
Markets are not hierarchies.
Though, yeah, the distinction between market oppression, government oppression, organizational oppression, racial-minority oppression, and cultural oppression is clear, but they are all oppression.
Markets aren't hierarchies. Private property, on the other hand, does impose a hierarchy; and markets without regulation inevitably are destroyed by capture by powerful firms.
And privately owned firms are extremely hierarchical.