Chomsky on things...Gov't Shutdown

Traitorfish said:

It demonstrates that the distinction you're attempting to draw between "abstract principles" and "common sense" comes down to whether or not we tend to think of a given abstract principle is important. Even if you regard money as secondary to capitalism, you're still left with the fact that it is undeniably important, despite its wholly abstract nature. And even if the example of money is whatever reason unsatisfactory, we live in a world permeated by our ideas of nationality, race, gender, social status, democracy, law, order, justice, equality, all ideas that people seem to take quite seriously. All that we can really say is that some abstractions appear to resonate more widely with our concrete experiences than others, but the hows and whys are not immediately clear enough for us to derive any meaningful generalisations from that observation.

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Abstract principles aren't really abstract principles if they are being put to practice. Money isn't something that only should exist according to some theoretical economics text book, but is something that is actually used. Nationalism is only abstract if there is no polity that is remotely congruent with the "national idea".

The fact I used scare quotes for "common sense" means that I do not believe it is fully free from abstractions either. But it largely is. I don't think ideologies like Marxism or Libertarianism offer analysis that are truly applicable in real-life. Politics is about getting winning coalitions and appealing to certain groups whom a political organization believes can be of help to get into power. Maoism and Marxism-Leninism were radically modified to take into account the fact that agrarians played an important role in Chinese and Russian society respectively, and changed Communism to this, somewhat countrary to Marx's intentions. National Socialism is descended from "Scientific" racism and Aryan mysticism modified to appeal popularly by taking into account the circumstances of Germany at the time. Neo-Nazism is a very weak attempt to copy the original National Socialist thought, though its core is largely unpalatable and thus unsuitable as a justification for ruling.

Before the Enlightenment, Political Parties were largely non-ideological: They didn't appeal to things like the Free Market, the common good, welfare, etc. The closest resemblance to ideology in such political parties were the appeals to religious faith and/or rationalism. The 12th Italian factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines largely appealed to the Merchants and the Nobility respectively, using complex justifications about religion. Formally, the Guelphs were Ultramontanist, while the Ghibellines were Caesaropapist, using complex religious arguments, even though it boiled down to commercial interests in the end, with no one holding a significantly higher moral ground.

Politics nowadays have become much more abstract, and your points about money demonstrate that as well. However, while I do not view money (or many other abstract ideas we take seriously) as undesirable, I do find the overplatonisation and ideology-driven political thought as found in political Liberalism and Socialism highly undesirable. In fact, despite I'm an atheist myself, I find Pre-Enlightenment religious justifications for political positions to be preferable to secular ideological justifications, for the interests involved in the former are much more transparant than in the latter, where judgments are easily clouded by appeals to the "common good".

Kaiserguard said:

Abstract principles aren't really abstract principles if they are being put to practice. Money isn't something that only should exist according to some theoretical economics text book, but is something that is actually used. Nationalism is only abstract if there is no polity that is remotely congruent with the "national idea".

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I think you're working with a highly unorthodox definition of "abstract". Seems like you're just using it to mean "frivolous".

Traitorfish said:

I think you're working with a highly unorthodox definition of "abstract". Seems like you're just using it to mean "frivolous".

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I take abstract to mean something we don't have experience with. Libertarianism is a highly abstract ideology, for a Libertarian society has never existed, and thus moving to such a society would be essentially an experiment. Idem dito for Anarcho-Communism. The status quo is not abstract, since we can experience it right now.

As I said, highly unorthodox.

Formaldehyde said:

It is blatantly obvious that the Democrat Party has been getting more and more conservative for the past 30 years, much less recently. Just look how far Obama changed in just 4 years:

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I think it's already been asserted by political compass, that US politicians in authority are naturally authoritarian and right-leaning, regardless of party. They unfortunately don't test this thread's argument about post-JFK democrats, JFK, Roosevelt, etc... but I think even Roosevelt would be around 'Hitler' (central authoritarian, neither right nor left). The leftist authoritarians are revolutionary socialists/communists like Mugabe, Stalin, Mao, & Chavez. I'm not convinced that there are major party changes in ideology.

I think what is really going on is popularity politics, and I kind of agree that some of it is underdog shenanigans for attention, not ideology.

Lord Baal said:

That's not what abstract means.

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How would you define abstract in a context of politics?

One definition of abstract is:

"existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence." - From Google

It seems to me that this particular definition leaves some debate open with respect to whether or not "libertarianism", "socialism" or "communism" (or for that matter, laissez faire capitalism) are "abstractions". Does abstraction include the POSSIBLE?

Well, Libertarianism and Socialism propose a society that its followers THINK its possible and use mostly rational arguments to defend it. Occasionally, both utilise isolated cases of the past or currently in existence that exhibit elements of their idealised society, but their idealised society never existed completely. In fact, these societies may be logically impossible to exist at all: Socialists, Communists, Liberals, Anarchists and Libertarians rely on rational assumptions that may not always prove true when applied to real life, if these can even be applied at all.

That's why these are ways of thinking are abstract. All strongly favor rationalism over empiricism.

Again, not what "abstract" means.

Then you don't either understand or have read my posts: The abstract part is that these are a bunch of ideas. Not much more.

See, that doesn't actually mean anything. Physics is a bunch of ideas, that hardly invalidates it. All you're telling us is that you don't like them.

Kaiserguard said:

In fact, these societies may be logically impossible to exist at all: Socialists, Communists, Liberals, Anarchists and Libertarians rely on rational assumptions that may not always prove true when applied to real life, if these can even be applied at all.

That's why these are ways of thinking are abstract. All strongly favor rationalism over empiricism.

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That's true for virtually every single concept of society or parts of society, even Democracy or the "free market". All these ideas have a concept that seems valid and could possibly work, yet gets severely hampered because it ignores the human element. None of them work as they are supposed to work because of this element.

Traitorfish said:

See, that doesn't actually mean anything. Physics is a bunch of ideas, that hardly invalidates it. All you're telling us is that you don't like them.

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Physics isn't normative, political ideologies are. And I never said I didn't like them, though I do imply we should be highly distrustful of any normative statement that relies solely on assumptions.

Wastl said:

That's true for virtually every single concept of society or parts of society, even Democracy or the "free market". All these ideas have a concept that seems valid and could possibly work, yet gets severely hampered because it ignores the human element. None of them work as they are supposed to work because of this element.

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That is true. Both democracy and the free market only exist in so far countries have put the ideas behind them to practice. Thé perfect democracy and/or free market/communist utopia/nation-state doesn't exist.

Kaiserguard said:

Physics isn't normative, political ideologies are. And I never said I didn't like them, though I do imply we should be highly distrustful of any normative statement that relies solely on assumptions.

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I'm going to take your advice, and be highly distrustful of that normative statement that relies solely on assumptions.