POLITICAL SCIENCE - PART 2

Time for a little Political/Social Sciences lesson, kids. Know your history or you're doomed to repeat it. Oops, too late.

Statism - In political science, statism is the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree. Statism is effectively the opposite of anarchism, an individual who supports the existence of the state is a statist. The term "statism" was introduced to American political discourse by the writer Ayn Rand in a series of articles in 1962. Since that time, it has been adopted for use by other political analysts. Statism can take many forms from minarchism to totalitarianism. Minarchists prefer a minimal or night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud with military, police, and courts. Some may also include fire departments, prisons, and other functions. Welfare state adepts and other such options make up more statist territory of the scale of statism. Totalitarians prefer a maximum or all-encompassing state. (this pervasive thought pattern is becoming more and more pervasive in our modern society; many want the government to give them cradle-to-grave support for doing nothing, at the expense of those who work to keep Capitalism alive and well).

Anarchy is the condition of a society, entity, group of people or a single person which does not recognize authority. It originally meant leaderlessness, but in 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted the term in his treatise What Is Property? to refer to a new political philosophy, anarchism, which advocates stateless societies based on voluntary associations. German philosopher Immanuel Kant treated anarchy in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View as consisting of "Law and Freedom without Force". Thus, for Kant, anarchy falls short of being a true civil state because the law is only an "empty recommendation" if force is not included to make this law efficacious. For there to be such a state, force must be included while law and freedom are maintained, a state which Kant calls republic. Kant named four kinds of government:

    Law and freedom without force (anarchy)
    Law and force without freedom (despotism)
    Force without freedom and law (barbarism)
    Force with freedom and law (republic)

Anarchy holds the political philosophy that the state is immoral, or alternatively, as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations. The Anarchy model is not long-lived; sooner or later a  leader typically comes to the fore (usually by force), evolving into a dictatorship.

Socialism is a political ideology and movement which has proposed a set of social and economic measures, policies and systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production (equal work, equal pay, equal status). The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies that originated amid the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 1700s out of general concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism (seen as the few wealthy vs. the many poor; see USSR).  In addition to the debate over the degree to which to rely on markets versus planning, the varieties of socialism differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, how management is to be organized within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe (Nazis, Mussolini). Influenced by national syndicalism, fascism originated in Italy during World War I, in opposition to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism. Fascism is neither right nor left, but statist in nature. World War I was a revolution that brought massive changes in the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant. Such a state is led by a strong leader — such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party — to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.

Communism is the social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state (see Cuba). Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism (anarchist communism), and the political ideologies grouped around both. All these share the analysis that the current order of society stems from its economic system, capitalism, that in this system, there are two major social classes: the working class—who must work to survive, and who make up a majority of society—and the capitalist class—a minority who derive profit from employing the working class, through private ownership of the means of production, and that conflict between these two classes will trigger a revolution. See also:

https://infogalactic.com/info/Marxism

https://infogalactic.com/info/Leninism

https://infogalactic.com/info/Stalinism

https://infogalactic.com/info/Trotskyism

More to come in Part 3...