General

Re: Ideology

liberty student — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:12:57 GMT

Ideology goes hand in hand with a core belief system.

Re: Ideology

scineram — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:42:16 GMT

There is no disagreement then.

However I found this a good description of ideology:

"Ideology is not so much a way of seeing the world as it is a set of blinders designed to keep you going in the ‘right’ direction, even when you would normally bolt and run the other way from horror at the sight of the place your faceless rider, Ideology, is taking you."

Re: Ideology

Prateek Sanjay — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:56:42 GMT

Multiple liberal ideologies in the same person?

That schism that Burke's corner discusses is between two parties, but we are talking about the same person changing views according to circumstance.

Bastiat and von Mises did not style themselves as philosophers, but merely people interested in practical matters of everyday life, of commerce, trade, and law.

Re: Ideology

scineram — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:43:04 GMT

I think the conclusion is the opposite. There are, by necessity, multiple liberal ideologies.

http://burkescorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/when-is-schism-not-schism.html

Re: Ideology

Prateek Sanjay — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:34:45 GMT

See here's a contradiction.

1) Historically, liberals have been guilty of compromise and choosing contradictory stands, instead of sticking to their guns and principles.

2) Historically, liberals have been obsessed with sticking to one defining principle, no matter what the situation.

Which ones have liberal heavyweights been most guilty of in history? You guessed it, the former!

Seven quotes from Frederic Bastiat, as collected by Brad deLong

(1) There is an article in the Constitution which states: "Society assists and encourages the development of labor.... through the establishment by the state, the departments, and the municipalities, of appropriate public works to employ idle hands..." As a temporary measure in a time of crisis, during a severe winter, this intervention on the part of the taxpayer could have good effects... as insurance. It adds nothing to the number of jobs nor to total wages, but it takes labor and wages from ordinary times and doles them out, at a loss it is true, in difficult times...

(2) For a nation, security is the greatest of blessings. If, to acquire it, a hundred thousand men must be mobilized, and a hundred million francs spent, I have nothing to say. It is an enjoyment bought at the price of a sacrifice...

(3) It is quite true that often, nearly always if you will, the government official renders an equivalent service to James Goodfellow. In this case there is... only an exchange... my argument is not in any way concerned with useful functions. I say this: If you wish to create a government office, prove its usefulness.... When James Goodfellow gives a hundred sous to a government official for a really useful service, this is exactly the same as when he gives a hundred sous to a shoemaker for a pair of shoes. It's a case of give-and-take, and the score is even...

(4) [L]ast year I was on the Finance Committee. Each time that one of our colleagues spoke of fixing at a moderate figure the salaries of the President of the Republic, of cabinet ministers, and of ambassadors, he would be told: "For the good of the service, we must surround certain offices with an aura of prestige and dignity. That is the way to attract to them men of merit.... A certain amount of ostentation in the ministerial and diplomatic salons is part of the machinery of constitutional governments, etc., etc..." Whether or not such arguments can be controverted, they certainly deserve serious scrutiny. They are based on the public interest, rightly or wrongly estimated; and, personally, I can make more of a case for them than many of our Catos, moved by a narrow spirit of niggardliness or jealousy...

(5) Should the state subsidize the arts?... [A]rts broaden, elevate, and poetize the soul of a nation; that they draw it away from material preoccupations, giving it a feeling for the beautiful, and thus react favorably on its manners, its customs, its morals, and even on its industry. One can ask where music would be in France without the Théâtre-Italien and the Conservatory; dramatic art without the Théâtre-Français... ask whether, without the centralization and consequently the subsidizing of the fine arts, there would have developed that exquisite taste which is the noble endowment of French labor and sends its products out over the whole world.... To these reasons and many others, whose power I do not contest, one can oppose many no less cogent. There is... a question of distributive justice. Do the rights of the legislator go so far as to allow him to dip into the wages of the artisan in order to supplement the profits of the artist?... I confess that I am one of those who think that the choice... should come from below, not from above, from the citizens, not from the legislator.... Returning to the fine arts, one can, I repeat, allege weighty reasons for and against the system of subsidization... in... this essay, I have no need either to set forth these reasons or to decide between them.... When it is a question of taxes [and subsidies], gentlemen, prove their usefulness by reasons with some foundation, but not with that lamentable assertion: "Public spending keeps the working class alive"...

(6) When a public expenditure is proposed, it must be examined on its own merits... a presumption of economic benefit is never appropriate for expenditures made by way of taxation. Why?... In the first place, justice always suffers from it somewhat. Since James Goodfellow has sweated to earn his hundred-sou piece... he is irritated... that the tax intervenes to take this satisfaction away from him and give it to someone else.... [I]t is up to those who levy the tax to give some good reasons for it.... If the state says to him: "I shall take a hundred sous from you to pay the policemen who relieve you of the necessity for guarding your own security, to pave the street you traverse every day, to pay the magistrate who sees to it that your property and your liberty are respected, to feed the soldier who defends our frontiers," James Goodfellow will pay without saying a word...

(7) Another species of spoilation is commercial fraud, a term which seems to me too limited... [when restricted to] the tradesman who changes his weights and measures... [it should also apply to] the physician who receives a fee for evil counsel, the lawyer who promotes litigation, etc...

Bastiat supports stimulus packages, large expensive national security, high salaries for public sector workers, public spending on museums and arts, taxation for public services, and regulation of professions.

Secondly, Ludwig von Mises himself, as per the book Omnipotent Government, supports

1) labour reform and legislations to improve working conditions of workers and empower workers

2) large, powerful armies, and pre-emptive strikes against potential enemies

3) democracy, especially as a tool for improving labour conditions (democracy over liberty)

4) trade and migration barriers to prevent support to possible enemies of state

5) nationalism, mandatory patriotism, and conscription of armies from civilians

6) protectorate rule over Third World nations and diversion of taxpayer's money to support, administer, and "liberalize" them

7) public school systems run and funded by the state to "remove boorishness and supersition from the rural masses"

What?! Two giants of liberalism and laissez-faire are fully willing to give up liberty to promote their own personal ideas of a good society? Tell us it isn't so!

Could it be that there has never been any kind of ideological liberalism, and that liberalism was purely an umbrella word for a broad range of views? That liberals have included anti-war cosmopolitans like Bastiat and pro-war nationalists like von Mises? In truth, there is no liberal ideology, and even the "knight of liberalism" von Mises was against ideology.

Re: Ideology

scineram — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:55:26 GMT

You must read Gene's series from this spring on (libertarian) ideology.

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/04/ideology-and-me.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/libertarian-class-analysis-and.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/confessions-of-recovering-ideologue.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/nature-of-ideology.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/libertarian-running-track.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/napping-at-wheel.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/aristotle-and-ideology.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/aristotle-and-ideology-ii.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/homesteadin-is-place-for-me.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/another-lap-around-nap.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/look-at-violence-inherent-in-system.html

http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-principle-on-principles.html

Re: Ideology

Prateek Sanjay — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:50:22 GMT

Azure:

I'm confused as to what you're getting at here.

It's a topic on ideology, and trying to understand why it exists.

If we are humans, aren't we in an already good state to talk about human life? At least through common sense and rough casuitry? Why do some aberrations of humans invent these metrical ways to understand human beings....just to fail to understand human beings?

Marx and von Mises were consistent. Ideologies do little to solve problems of our day and age, and they knew this harsh fact applied as much to them, even if they avoided ideology, attempted to understand things, and act accordingly. Socialists of the 19th century claimed their views to be rooted not in ideology but in science, reason, and statistical evidence, but faith in reason is itself unreasonable when humans are too complex/contradictory to be reduced to reason and statistical aggregates. Scientism itself has been ideology, because chaos theory proves that we can not scientifically predict anything.

Look at all the contractarians, like Messrs. Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Rawls, who invented hypothetical situations and deduced everything from there, where they disregard facts and invent some State of Nature or Original Position, and then ignore human nature by saying that people will do or should do what their hypothetical characters in those situations did. As if all reality existed in the vacuum they created.

Re: Ideology

Azure — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:32:35 GMT

I'm confused as to what you're getting at here.

Ideology

Prateek Sanjay — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:16:26 GMT

"Ideology is substitute religion, a belief system based on ideas that are often contradicted by history and common sense." - Patrick Buchanan

"All doctrines, and all parties and pressure groups applying them are condemned by an unappealable sentence of history." - Ludwig von Mises

"He who, in the face of the tremendous catastrophe whose consequences cannot yet be completely seen, still believes that there are some doctrines beyond criticism, has not grasped the meaning of the portents." - Ludwig von Mises

"[Ideology] has failed to put forward an understanding of society that corresponds to what is known about human nature." - Thomas Fleming

"...for the 20th century, it is hard to escape the conclusion that [ideas] have on net balance made the world a worse and more dangerous place." - Thomas Sowell

"Ideology stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sex." - Karl Marx