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Thread: "On key economic issues, 'far right' regimes were to the Left of today's Labour and Dems." Discuss.

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    Default "On key economic issues, 'far right' regimes were to the Left of today's Labour and Dems." Discuss.

    It is something I have touched upon in other threads, but I think it deserves a proper discussion in its own right. On key economic issues to do with ownership of the economy and the role of trade unions, 'far right' regimes such as Peronist Argentina, Falangist Spain and Portugal and Fascist Italy were actually significantly to the Left of today's UK Labour Party and US Democrats. This isn't an endorsement of those regimes; rather, it is an indictment on the modern centre Left in the West, especially the Anglosphere. Let's look:

    (1) Ownership of the economy
    While of course the aforementioned regimes didn't support command economies in the Soviet/Maoist/Cuban sense, nevertheless they wholly or predominantly nationalised key services and industries like railways, buses, airlines and airports, utilities, oil, health, education etc.

    (2) The role of trade unions
    While it is true the aforementioned regimes usually banned independent trade unions, all the same there were some State-controlled unions which, within their limited competencies, were actually quite powerful, as they could regularly engage in collective bargaining and wage-setting.

    N.B. I shan't bother discussing Hitler and the Nazis in this debate, as they are utterly beyond the realms of any kind of respectability or sanity.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen View Post
    (2) The role of trade unions
    While it is true the aforementioned regimes usually banned independent trade unions, all the same there were some State-controlled unions which, within their limited competencies, were actually quite powerful, as they could regularly engage in collective bargaining and wage-setting
    That's actually true. see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_statism

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    Not all conservatives support economic freedom
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    Quote Originally Posted by axel.aleman View Post
    Not all conservatives support economic freedom
    Possibly because they have other priorities? Besides, there are sound practical arguments to be made against the privatisation of natural monopolies like the railways and utilities - private monopolies have the same operating costs that state monopolies have, plus they have to make a profit for the benefit of their shareholders and owners, actually making them more expensive and less value for money for the customers.

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    Tooting, I already addressed this issue on several other threads, where you failed to understand the true nature of the "Right" ethos and its implications in the political scene.

    As I told you, the fundamental objective of the Right is about preservation of the national group (in the ethnic sense or not, that's another nuance), which is seen as an organic body (each member of the society is a vital element of the Nation), whose past (traditions, customs, built National Identity) must be preserved/conserved and whose future is a shared common destiny that is everlasting (on a meta-psychological level, the affiliation to a larger strong ethnic-national group allows one to overcome the fear of death since the "Nation" is seen as eternal).

    The preservation of the identity and integrity of the Nation pushes the ethos of "Law & Order", of strong military, of charismatic leader as a symbolic and protecive Father, of strong collective institutions (family (mainly heterosexual married couple as the primary unit for reproduction), religion, school, sports, ...), border protections AND as a mean and not an end, a strong economy which final purpose is to serve the interest of the Nation, not to maximize one individual company short-term profits (by offshoring all manufactures and destroying national employment) or individual utility of the consumer (that wants to buy cheap goods from these offshored firms).

    In other words, "economism" is not a central feature of the Right (and even more for the "Far Right" which is the extreme form of it), but rather just an accessory to help the ultimate goals I mentioned before. To achieve these goals, it doesn't matter if some measures are "socialist" or "liberal" or "capitalist", as long as it serves the ultimate interests of the Nation. In these regimes, the Economy is submitted to the Politics, while in "modern liberal representative democracies", it's the Politics that is powerless against the Economy or put it in another way : Politics is Economy's bitch (it's enough to see how strong lobbies are).
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    Quote Originally Posted by RogueState View Post
    In other words, "economism" is not a central feature of the Right
    Um, what about Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Suharto, Hayek and the Friedman economists then?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen View Post
    Um, what about Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Suharto, Hayek and the Friedman economists then?
    - Thatcher & Reagan are Anglo-Saxon specificity from the 80s, in the context of the 70s oil crisis and stagflation, and against Soviet Union ideology, had to find measures to tackle these issues (with neoliberal economic policies) and to assert their divergence with Soviet Union (communism). It's a specific framework from that time. We can point out though the increase of military spending done by the US under Reagan, which are tax-payer money allocated to a specific industry, which are under your "framework" something "Leftist" while, as I said before, it is because in the Right, the prime motive is the National interest & security above all costs.

    - Pinochet & Suharto are anti-Communist dictators, their economic policies are just a consequence of anti-Communist and pro-US alignment (with the help of lobbying international companies that need a local comprador bourgeoisie), again, they are tactical tools to get US backup just to achieve their strong authoritarian regime.

    - Hayek and Friedman are liberal economists, nothing to do with political categorization. For them, it is the concept of Freedom that is their core ideology, which means pushing up for free market economies (where supply & demand establishes prices & quantities alone) but also freedom in terms of social issues (abortion, homosexuals, migration, ...), which is not what the Right is really about.
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    Yes, the modern right is the opposite of what it should be. Preferably it would be socially conservative and economically liberal. I do believe in the free market, but there has to be laws that punish harming people economically. Trade unions are something the right has sadly abandoned, and blue collar workers want to do nothing with the insane left, leaving then to die ungracefully.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RogueState View Post
    - Thatcher & Reagan are Anglo-Saxon specificity from the 80s, in the context of the 70s oil crisis and stagflation, and against Soviet Union ideology, had to find measures to tackle these issues (with neoliberal economic policies) and to assert their divergence with Soviet Union (communism). It's a specific framework from that time. We can point out though the increase of military spending done by the US under Reagan, which are tax-payer money allocated to a specific industry, which are under your "framework" something "Leftist" while, as I said before, it is because in the Right, the prime motive is the National interest & security above all costs.
    But although Reagan increased military spending (in some ways very irresponsibly too), at the same time he didn't duly raise taxes, he deregulated Savings & Loans and vastly cut social spending. Therefore, economically he is overall clearly on the Right to me.

    - Pinochet & Suharto are anti-Communist dictators, their economic policies are just a consequence of anti-Communist and pro-US alignment (with the help of lobbying international companies that need a local comprador bourgeoisie), again, they are tactical tools to get US backup just to achieve their strong authoritarian regime.
    But their radical neoliberal policies were very anti-national, and more extreme than other anti-Communist dictators of the same period and geography: compare Pinochet's economic policies to those of Videla, Banzer and the Brazilian junta, or Suharto's economic policies to those of Marcos and Ngo Dinh Diem.

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