What ideological labels would you use to describe your politics?

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT

I'm really not comfortable with the idea of 'LGBT' being an ideological label.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT

I'm really not comfortable with the idea of 'LGBT' being an ideological label.

I'm curious, why not?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

-Social Democrat/Democratic Socialist
-Feminist (I'm not sure about this one but I ardently support feminist causes)

That sums it up. My political views are pretty straightforward.

[Beet]

Left-wing, theist... that's about it.

[Miles]

I'd say something like 'communitarian populist.'

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT

I ship it.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT

I'm really not comfortable with the idea of 'LGBT' being an ideological label.

I'm curious, why not?

The implication of 'LGBT' being an ideological label is that LGBT people can be circumscribed as having a particular set of views that are universal enough for this to make sense, which leads to the marginalization at best and ostracism at worst of those who don't share those views. While it's probably fair to say that most LGBT people, at least in the United States, are 'socially liberal' broadly speaking, this isn't definitionally true. LGBT people don't even agree on the politics of LGBT issues! We don't even agree on the usefulness of the term 'LGBT'!

I guess 'LGBT' could be used as a modifier for other ideological descriptors in the same way that one can be 'a black progressive' or 'a Western libertarian' and so forth. So if LGBT is being used as a modifier for anarchocommunist, environmentalist, and feminist I'm a lot less uncomfortable with that. But its placement at the end of the list implies that it's meant to be taken as a description of an ideology itself, which is what I object to.

[traininthedistance]

General distaste for all intellectual projects to recreate society.

What counts as an "intellectual project to recreate society"? Is it better to perpetuate the mistakes of the past, and leave things broken, because to do otherwise would be to "recreate society"?  Even if doing so in actuality pledges your fealty to a previous such intellectual project?  Even if inaction has victims– real living, breathing victims– of its own?

More generally, does everything always get worse over time?  Is there any space in your worldview to try and make the world a better place (in full knowledge that success is never guaranteed), or is it all just funhouse anti-Whiggishness all the way down?

[Randy Bobandy]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT, revolutionary

forgot to add that I'm a firm proponent of violent political revolution.

[Murica!]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT, revolutionary

forgot to add that I'm a firm proponent of violent political revolution.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

-Feminist (I'm not sure about this one but I ardently support feminist causes)

A bit broad. I support gender equality but find modern liberal feminism grating, for instance.

As for myself, I'm not entirely comfortable with labels beyond "socialist"--I believe in an efficient society run by and for the working class with the long-term goal of full communism, and though I am most inclined towards Leninist organizational tactics I am somewhat of a pragmatist with regards to how socialism would come to replace capitalism--the exact methods for different countries or different time periods could differ depending on the material conditions. I am also not entirely hostile to the idea of markets for luxury goods, though these markets would of course consist of cooperatives rather than private businesses, and in recent months have grown friendlier to some sort of technocracy for running certain sectors of this hypothetical socialist economy (albeit hopefully a more efficient variety than what we saw in the late Soviet Union ).

[angus]

Anarchocommunist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT

That was my mood today, according to http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=pollabyn

In fact, I received the following top five labels (with matching scores in parentheses):

          Anarcho-capitalist (100%)          
         Geoanarchist (100%)          
         Geolibertarian (100%)          
         Non-interventionist minarchist (100%)          
         Non-interventionist social democratic statist (100%)    

Oddly, perhaps, depending upon how you interpret these things, within minutes of taking that test I took the "I side with" test and got the following results:

Green Party 74%
Democrats 72%
Libertarians 68%
Republicans 59%

I suppose I'm in a co-operative mood today, since all my numbers are above 50% in this test.  But apparently I don't play well with everyone.  Only 28% of Pennsylvanians agree with me on "social" issues, according to the Isidewith quiz.  Go figure.

[Oakvale]

#NoLabels actually.

Really, I dislike the idea that someone's required to sign up to an established political ideology in order to have a coherent worldview. I have no ideological affiliation. Insofar as I approach being a member of an ideological faction it's only by virtue of opposing terrible things like conservatism, nationalism, socialism, identity fetishism etc. Death to the -isms. It's particularly clear from perusing some of the posts here that ideological labels are both utterly meaningless and stifle argument - people wear them like phony war medals. Oh, you're a heterodox liberal? Fascinating!

Urgh - labels are great for conveying complex ideas with very few words but my convictions do not neatly fit under any of them. I guess a longer list is needed?

Abolitionist (death penalty, nuclear arms), allophile, anti-authoritarian, anti-dominionist, anti-imperialist, anti-islamist, anti-zionist, bourdieuan / weberian, civic nationalist, civil libertarian, constitutional republican, constructivist (foreign affairs), continentalist, cosmopolitan, decentralist, democrat (representative), democratic socialist, egalitarian, elitist, federalist, fiscal conservative, globalist, green, humanitarian, individualist, interculturalist, leftist, liberal feminist, liberal internationalist, market socialist, ordoliberal, personist, pluralist, pragmatist, preservationist (environment), pro-choice, pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, pro-reunification (Korea), radical, red, reformist, secularist, sentiocentrist, social liberal, socialist, universalist, and world federalist.

Several are probably missing from here but it'll work I guess. In local politics I use "democratic socialist" and accept that most folks won't understand what it means.

Fúcking hell! Case in point!

Anyway, I think Hash briliantly broke down this debate in a thread on this kind of topic a few years back. One of my favourite posts, and makes the case far better than I could. Emphasis mine.

I would like to think that I have a coherent set of beliefs and political opinions, even if they may change and even if I keep pretty quiet about them because I dislike political debate. I am not a Moderate Hero, I don't adapt my opinions to circumstances and in some cases I feel pretty strongly about certain issues. Push comes to shove, I lean more to the left than to the right.

But why is there an absolute necessity to attach a label to me? Why is there a need to conform to established ideological labels? One of the reasons I don't identify with any of the existing labels is because I feel that I do not 'conform' to the main ideological labels out there ('social democrat', 'social liberal' etc), in addition to the fact that those labels are pretty useless and increasingly devoid of meaning. Given that those ideologies (like most) are quite vague, what constitutes a 'coherent set of beliefs' which conforms to said ideology? I'm pretty sure there is no one 'coherent set of belief' which defines you as a social demcorat and nothing else.

Besides, even I did have a label attached to me, what good would it be? An ideology is not like food and water, it is not something which I 'need' to have, it's not some kind of consumer product either. I'm some random poster on some internet forum who writes a blog. Why would anyone give a sh**t about what my ideology is? Certainly only few people are genuinely interested about your random opinions about political issues and even fewer people will reconsider their own random opinions based on my own random opinions. What purpose would it serve to have an ideological label attached to my beliefs? It's not like I'm a politician or something, there's no need for me to attach myself to labels.

Again, I do have an ideology: anti-reactionary Mustafinism-Komovism. It's not one of the prepackaged products on the markets? Well, that's really too bad.

EDIT: I just had a sudden moment of clarity - a lot of us treat ideological factions the way BRTD treats religion.

[The Mikado]

General distaste for all intellectual projects to recreate society.

What counts as an "intellectual project to recreate society"? Is it better to perpetuate the mistakes of the past, and leave things broken, because to do otherwise would be to "recreate society"?  Even if doing so in actuality pledges your fealty to a previous such intellectual project?  Even if inaction has victims– real living, breathing victims– of its own?

Most movements don't actually consider the human costs of disruption of norms on actual living, breathing people, for whom such disruptions are not statistical aberrations but real crises with real consequences. Inaction is always easy to measure and quantify, action is trickier to justify or examine because those policies have not yet actually been instituted.

To take one example, it is easy to call for "saner" environmental policies, but to what degree can we be sure that the (real) harm caused to future generations by climate changes outweighs the (equally real and immediate) harm to those whose livelihoods are dependent on producing coal, oil, and natural gas, or to the massive costs needed to renovate the power grid, or to the extra expense of transportation to those struggling to get by as is? We cannot quantify the harm of inaction over the next century, so how do we know the consequences of global climate change then outweigh the costs of action now? This bias of action or just doing something to look like you're doing something over the alternative solution of actually weighing whether the consequences of inaction outweigh the consequences of action is very distasteful.

Given that action generally takes more effort and resources and involves more disruption than inaction, the standard of proof that action is justified is much higher.

Is there any space in your worldview to try and make the world a better place (in full knowledge that success is never guaranteed)

Of course the well-being of people can be improved by the efforts of other people. I'm distrustful of any attempts to do that on a systematic level. You improve people's lives by covering for your coworker when she goes to take her kids to the doctor or by volunteering at your local food bank. That doesn't make the world a better place, though. The world is neither good nor bad, the world simply is. You can make other people's lives more pleasant and your own more pleasant by extension, though.

[politicus]

To take one example, it is easy to call for "saner" environmental policies, but to what degree can we be sure that the (real) harm caused to future generations by climate changes outweighs the (equally real and immediate) harm to those whose livelihoods are dependent on producing coal, oil, and natural gas, or to the massive costs needed to renovate the power grid, or to the extra expense of transportation to those struggling to get by as is? We cannot quantify the harm of inaction over the next century.

We can know it will be far greater, which ought to be enough.

Anyway, "the next century" isn't the relevant time frame. The effects of climate change will damage living conditions permanently.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I agree mostly with what Oakvale and the Mikado said albeit with some qualifications. My own position would be something along the lines of 'radical stoic in personal view, critical rationalist in political views'. I could draw out a bit what I meant by that but that would take too long.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

While I agree that policies should not be based on abstract logical theories of 'improvement', I think this would lead too much to a very self-satisfied and unchanging conservatism. Yes, change should come with reasons but there are other ways of determining what is proper beyond the call of what seems reasonable to us, and that is evidence.

[traininthedistance]

Most movements don't actually consider the human costs of disruption of norms on actual living, breathing people, for whom such disruptions are not statistical aberrations but real crises with real consequences. Inaction is always easy to measure and quantify, action is trickier to justify or examine because those policies have not yet actually been instituted.

There's the kernel of a good cautionary tale in the first sentence here, but the rest goes deeply off the rails super fast.  Like, seriously, the idea that people are good at measuring and quantifying the costs of inaction just flies so directly in the face of every piece of evidence we have.  I mean, yes, of course "action for action's sake" is not something we should do.  But I'm quite confident that's not the problem we have right now, and behaving as if it is overcorrects us into absurdity.

To take one example, it is easy to call for "saner" environmental policies,

Ooh, good example.

but to what degree can we be sure that the (real) harm caused to future generations by climate changes outweighs the (equally real and immediate) harm to those whose livelihoods are dependent on producing coal, oil, and natural gas,

Okay, what about the real and immediate harm our current system has on people who get asthma and cancer from particulate pollution, or lose their water supply due to fracking, or are already getting hit with desertification, aquifer loss, more and stronger floods, etc? This isn't just some future-generation thing, even by your ludicrous standards there ought to be justification for some action seeing as there are victims already.  Unless of course victims of the status quo don't count as real victims in your mind.

or to the massive costs needed to renovate the power grid,

You think infrastructure lasts forever?  We'd need to renovate that sh*t sooner or later anyway, you don't get to count that as an extra cost.  And, anyway, there are a lot of investments that would pay for themselves over a pretty quick timeframe anyway, but for whatever reason (inertia, lack of upfront capital, bureaucratic obstacles) don't get built.  I mean, do you seriously think that there are no such worthy investments to be made? Not even just w/r/t the power grid, but in general?

or to the extra expense of transportation to those struggling to get by as is?

Oh, god, really? This disingenuous rot? Protip: those people who are actually most struggling to get by wouldn't see their transportation costs rise under a sane enviro policy.  To make that claim requires both a stunning ignorance of a) the reality for millions of people, and b) the actual sorts of solutions that are being offered on this point.

Also, BTW, our transportation system as currently designed is quite literally a grisly horror show. People getting maimed and killed trying to cross the street is a real crisis with real consequences.  But that's just the way it is, so those victims don't count, amirite?

(One of these days I need to start a thread about the invention of jaywalking, BTW– which is an underrated and forgotten case of societal change being harmfully thrust on people in exactly the way you bemoan.  Let's be perfectly clear– some changes are bad, and I'm happy to decry them when they should be decried. But I guess in your mind, it's been made, we shouldn't fix it, too late no backsies?)

We cannot quantify the harm of inaction over the next century, so how do we know the consequences of global climate change then outweigh the costs of action now?

[citation needed]

If you want to say that we cannot pinpoint things to the dollar and cent, sure.  But we can– and do– have enough evidence to make a reasonable, and overwhelmingly compelling, guess.  The plausible range might be wide but even on the lowest end of impacts/costs there are a lot of things we'd need to do. (And, of course, wouldn't a healthy risk-averse conservativism behave as if to prepare for the worst-case scenario?)  I mean, I guess you can be a radical skeptic if you so wish, but at a certain point I have to wonder how you square that with the existence of industrial and post-industrial technology in the world today.

Either that, or you're engaging in the most sharply sloping time discounting I've ever seen, basically to the point where future generations hold no moral weight in your calculus.  But, of course, there are people alive today who are those future generations.  Apres moi, le deluge?

This bias of action or just doing something to look like you're doing something over the alternative solution of actually weighing whether the consequences of inaction outweigh the consequences of action is very distasteful.

Again, no such bias actually exists!  You've given me exactly zero indication that you take the "consequences of inaction" seriously– or that people in general take it seriously.

Of course the well-being of people can be improved by the efforts of other people. I'm distrustful of any attempts to do that on a systematic level. You improve people's lives by covering for your coworker when she goes to take her kids to the doctor or by volunteering at your local food bank. That doesn't make the world a better place, though. The world is neither good nor bad, the world simply is. You can make other people's lives more pleasant and your own more pleasant by extension, though.

Again, what counts as "systematic"?  Was the New Deal too "systematic" for you?  What about the introduction of an income tax?  Or the Voting Rights Act?  Fighting Jim Crow was a pretty systematic societal change, now wasn't it.  Freeing the slaves, now that was a shake-up, pity the poor plantation owners being disrupted.  Are you saying that anything worth doing, is worth doing solely through small-scale private charity?  Are we floating in a sort of timeless jelly where past actions have no impact on the present, where present actions have no impact on the future?

Look, I'm not saying that you should have to view the world as "good or bad".  I'm certainly not saying that human civilization has an inherent teleology, that "the arc of history bends toward justice" (Though I will admit that MLK's quote, while not necessarily accurate, is useful for those of us who give a sh*t about trying to keep it from bending toward injustice.)  I'm not saying you have to believe anything.  

I am merely saying that you should acknowledge that the observable universe seems to obey predictable laws.  And that we can draw inferences from those laws, and act accordingly. In short, as Gully said that there is such a thing as evidence, and sometimes the evidence really does say, loud and clear, that action is necessary.

[traininthedistance]

One more thing I'll add, Mikado, is that a certain amount of change/disruption is inevitable even in the absence of concerted political pushes in that direction.  At the very least you always have to actively push against entropy.  In many cases, preventing the sort of disruption you are semi-rightfully scared of requires, itself, a systematic societal effort.  (Examples: basically anything having to do with zoning. The New Deal AAA totally overturning how ag markets work in an effort to keep farmers able to work their land.  Etc etc etc.)

In fact, one can very easily argue that the sorts of sane environmental policies that have you crying "disruption!" are themselves tailored to try and provide the least actual disruption for real people. Yes, even compared to the baseline of inaction. This ain't Jacobinism here.

[Velasco]

I am Peronist, needless to say.

While I dislike labels and distrust attempts to enclose the complex and conflicting reality into abstract sets of beliefs, I can't help but to agree with train's rebuttal to cynicism and inaction.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Surely calling yourself a Peronist is entirely meaningless outside of Argentina? (Well, I'd also argue that the label is pretty meaningless even within Argentina but that's a whole other discussion)

[Velasco]

Surely calling yourself a Peronist is entirely meaningless outside of Argentina? (Well, I'd also argue that the label is pretty meaningless even within Argentina but that's a whole other discussion)

You are right, even in Argentina the label is pretty meaningless nowadays. As certain old-fashioned diehard Peronist said, Peronism is no longer a 'movement' and even less a coherent 'ideology' (if once it was). Right now 'Peronism' is only a disparate collection of "political franchises", personal vehicles for careerists of any kind. On the other hand, I dislike Peronists as a general rule (although many of them are fascinating types) and I don't claim to understand Peronism, because it's nearly impossible unless you are Argentinian. Someone told me that irony doesn't work in the internet

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, I have no f**king clue what Mikado is talking about. The idea that modern public policy has a bias toward action is laughably false.

[VPH]

I'd say something like 'communitarian populist.'

Although I posted a mini-list earlier, I feel this kind of sums me up.

[RI]

These labels are sort of accurate, but mostly just suggestive.

Communitarian
Technocratic
New Keynesian
Social Conservative
Christian Democratic (of the left-wing Catholic variety)
Some proclivities toward a non-secularist High Modern approach
Internationalist

Generally, I prefer an active government that uses highly scientific means to achieve non-secular ends. All means that produce properly-realized ends that align with these normative goals should be on the table, and the government should not be constrained in achieving them. A perfect government is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and perfectly efficient; although such a case is impossible, this fact should not dissuade from its pursuit.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yeah, I have no f**king clue what Mikado is talking about. The idea that modern public policy has a bias toward action is laughably false.

Given how much % of national GDP/GNP any government just to keep the apparatus of state going, this claim of yours looks very questionable.