Marshall Sutherland

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:09:41 -0500 last edited: Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:10:25 -0500

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

If we are going to have a 1-dimensional political spectrum, this is the dimension I prefer to measure.

#^Is Individualism vs. Collectivism the New Left vs. Right? | Nicholas Baum

â€œThe real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians,â€ George Orwell wrote in a 1948 letter to Malcolm Muggeridge.

politics

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:38:17 -0500

Alexandre Hannud Abdo

aleabdo@hubzilla.com.br

Hm, it seem to me that he makes the usual mistake of forcing the association between libertarianism and (absolute) property rights.

The usual reason for this fallacy is to place anyone who questions property rights on the "authoritarian" side of the spectrum.

Yet property itself is a collectivist construction. It is a resource allocation system that a people collectively comes to agree with, while also agreeing on a system to guarantee it, which is most frequently coercive.

As a consequence, different societies have varying levels of property rights, with no necessary association with their levels of authoritarianism.

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 22:17:49 -0500

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

The author does equate collectivism and authoritarianism and I agree with you that he is mistaken. Voluntary collectivism is not authoritarian. I assume that he, as do I, think in a framework where collectivism is generally assumed to be involuntary. As I read it, it annoyed me a bit that he was using the words interchangeably, but it didn't really register to me as to why until thinking about your response.