Jeff Dickey
Jul 24, 2017 · 1 min read

There are at least two kinds of socialism.

National socialism (the far right, as you point out), and democratic socialism (the moderate left). As someone pointed out a few days ago, “left” and “right” break down near the extremes, because then they are indistinguishable from one another in terms of the effects they have on people’s and nations’ lives. Think of a circle, with the point on the circumference opposite the one labelled “centre” replaced by a black hole.

More useful than American dogmatically unidimensional “left” v “right” holdovers from the Cold War, is a two-dimensional “authoritarian/communitarian”, “progressive/reactionary” grid. You can be progressive and authoritarian, you can be a reactionary communitarian. We’ve tried authoritarianism for centuries, culminating in the first decade of the 21st century where the reactionary authoritarians beat all comers and literally trashed most of what was left of the planet. We need new leadership, new thinking, and a new way of thinking by the heretofore dominant political and economic powers. Or we, as a species and a planet, are toast — toast burnt so badly that the slightest gust of reality will blow it irretrievably away. Not a happy outcome.

    Jeff Dickey

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    Writer. Gentleman Historian. Chief Engineer at a wantrapreneurial Web “startup”.