Thursday, January 10, 2008

Where extremes meet

It is sometimes said that political extremes come full circle and meet in the form of the extreme left and the extreme right. This is invariably a symptom of the refusal of those who see themselves as belonging to the left to admit that the fascist right is left wing, and so is bogus.

But the extremes do meet. It is just that the opposite extreme to the Marxist left is actually monarchical feudalism. Under both systems, individuals have neither power nor property. In the former case, the State owns everything, in the latter the crown does. In both cases, the property-owning institution has absolute power over individuals, whether or not it chooses to exercise it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's monarchical feudalism as an idealised entity, rather than actual existing monarchical feudalism as was.

Peter Risdon said...

No, it isn't.

Peter Risdon said...

That was unduly terse.

Monarchical feudalism included, in practice, the Norman Conquest - which was the assertion of a claim to a throne followed by the reallocation of estates. It included the reallocation of estates at the start off Henry II's reign.

It included the rights of High Middle and Low justice.

Actual monarchical feudalism as was fitted precisely the definition I gave in my post.

Trooper Thompson said...

As for the meeting of extremes, you should acknowledge the relationship between monopoly capitalism, corporatism and communism.

Why do you think big corporations love China so much?

Rather than a political left vs right, I'd say there's an elite and then the rest of us. As Animal Farm shows, it's hard to tell the pigs from the humans.

Anonymous said...

Well, that's three snapshots of it, but it lasted hundreds of years and in many different places.

Peter Risdon said...

Why do you think big corporations love China so much?

Because they love any "big government" to which they can snuggle up and negotiate favourable deals that disadvantage ordinary people. The fact that China is communist is neither here nor there: they'd snuggle up to a fascist government, or a dirigiste one like our own.

Well, that's three snapshots of it...

Sure. Three "actual existing [example of] monarchical feudalism"