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Because political ’science’ hasn’t yet understood, and therefore cannot scientifically (that is, in a 100% historically truthful way) define, ideological labels, such as “leftist” “rightist” “progressive” “liberal” “conservative” “socialist” “communist” and “fascist”, these labels are normally handled propagandistically, instead of accurately; and, so, here will be a historically 100% truthful — that is, a scientific — set of definitions of the major ideological labels.
But, first of all, as a preliminary: the word “science” refers only to 100% historically truthful beliefs or statements of beliefs, because, even in the most-fundamental science, which is physics, no statement that is established to be historically false can be accepted as being scientifically true. This is actually the situation throughout all of science; and, so, any ‘science’ that doesn’t adhere to this rule (of currently being a field of science) is not yet a field of science, but is only pretending to be such (as physics was before Galileo, and as biology was before Darwin). In matters of theory (as opposed to empirics) political ‘science’, like all of the existing social ‘sciences’, is of that latter category: it’s a field of fake ‘science’ (otherwise called “philosophy” — it’s hypotheses, mis-called ‘theories’, that are based upon other peoples’ hypotheses, which also are mis-called ‘theories’; it’s not actually based on any empirical facts, much less on any scientific theory at all). Defining ideological categories is a theoretical-science issue in the field of politics, not directly an empirical field of investigation (not directly an empirical issue); and, therefore, as a theoretical political-science issue, it has not yet been dealt with in a scientific way, such as will be done here, addressing ideological labels in a scientific way, starting here with an example:
Up till the morning of February 18th, the Wikipedia article on the current President of Peru, Dina Boluarte, had said: “During the 2021 Peruvian general election, she was part of Free Peru, a Marxist party; after she was expelled from the party in 2022, she adopted more moderate views and appointed conservative figures in her cabinet.[69]” I then corrected that to say: “During the 2021 Peruvian general election, she was part of Free Peru, a leftist (social-democratic) party; after she was expelled from the party in 2022, she adopted more moderate views and appointed conservative figures in her cabinet.[69]” The reason I gave to Wikipedia’s editor to justify the change from “Marxist” to “leftist (social-democratic)”, as being a correction, was that I had “changed the word ‘Marxist’ to ‘leftist (social-democratic)’ as descriptor of the ‘Free Peru’ party, because Free Peru is a democratic party, unlike Marxism (which favors a ‘dictatorship by the proletariat’ — as Marx repeatedly said — and is therefore self-acknowledgedly against democracy.” (NOTE: I did not challenge the original’s misleading phrase “more moderate views” — which propagandizes against that “leftist (social-democratic) party” — because challenging the CIA on two, instead of only on one, matter(s) would be even less likely for the U.S.-Government-controlled Wikipedia to approve, than would my challenging only the “Marxist” label there. They rejected my edit of their propaganda anyway: they changed it to this, which retains the false charge that she and her former Party had been — now lower-case — ‘marxist’. As regards the CIA’s allegation there that after she abandoned the Free Peru Party during the coup and promptly became appointed President, “she adopted more moderate views,” that was precisely when her public-approval rating ditched, to now 71% “Disapprove”, which is even lower than Joe Biden’s is in America: 52% now “Disapprove.” So, that statement by the CIA is a lie, but they insist upon lying, so, only fools can trust Wikipedia. I don’t, but I do link to their articles as summary-articles when the lies in them don’t severely affect the truth that I am linking to the given article for. One should never unquestioningly trust any Website or other ‘news’-source, but especially not U.S.-and-allied ones, since those are incredibly lie-filled — as any dictatorship’s media need to be.)
Marxism (or “communism” as that term has generally been understood after Marx’s death) refers not to all forms of “socialism” but only to some dictatorial ones. To a large extent, Scandinavian countries today are “socialist” but definitely are not “dictatorship by the proletariat”: they are instead capitalist (against which Marx ranted — sometimes truthfully), and whether any of them are “democratic” can be debated, but it can be scientifically debated only if and to the extent to which all of the issues (problems) involved in that debate are purely empirical, not at all theoretical (which would be building theory upon existing hypotheses, instead of directly upon empirics, and so would be propagandistic, because no authentic scientific theory can be based on anybody’s mere hypothesis; all scientific theories must instead be based purely and directly upon empirics — that’s how real science is done).
Furthermore: even today’s China, which is ruled by its Communist Party, is no longer Marxist, because Marxist economics (such as the ‘labor theory of value’, which scientifically was never more than “the labor hypothesis of value” and now is definitely established to have been empirically — that is, historically — a false theory of value), has clearly failed; and, consequently, China is a one-party state, but whether a one-party state can be a “democracy” is not yet clear as an empirical (i.e., historical) matter.
In point of fact: the level of a given nations’s public’s trust both in their Government and in their news-media is, according to the survey-data on those matters, higher in China than in any other country — and vastly higher there than in the U.S. If the public’s trust is an accurate measure of the extent to which its Government has served the public’s interests — instead of any aristocracy’s interests or any theocracy’s interests (those two being the main types of dictatorships) — then China, which is a one-Party Government, is the world’s most “democratic” country (and America doesn’t even come close to being that). The standard propaganda-derived response to these data is that China is such a dictatorship as to have fooled its residents to think that its Government represents them and not some aristocracy or theocracy or any other type of dictatorship. However: should one really believe that the unquestionably propagandistic ‘news’-media and academic social-’science’ ‘experts’ in one’s own country know better about the Government of a foreign country that one’s own country’s Government is hostile toward — trying to capture or defeat — than are the residents in that targeted country? How crazy is that belief? Yet, it’s common. If the locals can’t accurately rate the performance of their Government, then who can? Maybe the target-country’s enemies — such as the U.S. and its ‘allies’ (colonies)? If that’s a joke, it’s a bad one, and it’s on them. And, of course, in dictatorships such as in Peru, and in the U.S., not all the ‘news’-manipulation in all the world stops the predominantly-negative approval-ratings of the sitting leaders. If the leaders deliver what the public wants, their approval-ratings will rise — and do. In some countries, such as China, Russia, and India, they are high. That is an indication those countries probably are democracies. Certainly Peru and America are not. In the dictatorship-countries, the ruling class know about the public’s contempt for them but really do not care. The public know but (because of the ideological and other confusions and misunderstandings) the media are used there in order to confuse the public about how and why things are bad there, so that the behind-the-scenes rulers won’t be getting the blame. (Instead: it’s “the Democrats,” or “the Republicans,” or “the Muslims,” or “the Jews,” or “the poor,” or “the Blacks,” or “the Whites,” or etc. — but NOT the few individuals who, behind-the-scenes, really are controlling the Government and exploiting the entire nation.) Stunningly, even the U.S. Establishment’s own New York Times published, on 11 July 2019, an opinion-article by two real political scientists, whose headline was “Politicians Don’t Actually Care What Voters Want” — and they presented some of the convincing empirical evidence that it is true in America. (Perhaps the Times accepted it because it was a study only of state governments, not of the U.S. federal Government, which that newspaper represents.)
Moreover: a now well-established empirical (i.e., historical) fact is that Governments (such as this) exist that (very unlike China) are multi-Party dictatorships. (In fact: the ONLY country in the world that has been scientifically analyzed to determine whether it is a democracy or instead an aristocracy (governed by its super-rich, even merely by its richest 1% of its richest 1%) is America; and it has two Parties, not just one; and all of the empirical approaches to that question there point clearly to that country’s being not only an aristocracy, but to its being more of a police-state than is any other nation.)
The basic message from all of these data is that the way one defines (i.e., explains the meaning of) the word “democracy” is central to the answers to all ideological questions if democracy is to count as being a central part of that definition. (Beyond that question, distinctions must be made between economic ideologies, such as between socialism versus capitalism; and between political ideologies, such as between dictatorial socialism or communism, versus dictatorial capitalism or fascism. But, I’ll leave those matters for another time.)
In any case: no one can scientifically understand politics who hasn’t first straightened-out ideological labels. And anyone who tries to understand politics who has not done this will come up with false interpretations and ‘explanations’.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
“…, even in the most-fundamental science, which is physics, …” While I agree with the author on the need of accurately – and possibly even scientifically – defining concepts like Marxism, communism, socialism, and even something seemingly as banal as democracy, as a physicist married to a mathematician I disagree with the quoted statement above. No physics is fundamental or even science if it cannot be either formulated in terms of a mathematically sound theory or model, or – in the case of experimental physics – interpreted in the framework of such a theory or model. My wife and I… Read more »
My statement there was that “even in the most-fundamental science, which is physics, no statement that is established to be historically false can be accepted as being scientifically true.” You ignored it. You neither agreed with it nor disagreed with it.
I do agree with your thesis that a statement proven to be historically false cannot be accepted as scientifically true, which for me as a physicist is an indisputable condition for progress in research. I only contested your claim that physics is the most fundamental science, as I tried to explain. Meaningful physics must be quantitative, which is impossible without mathematics, because then it would be limited to observations only, even if these are expressed in terms of numbers.
Your philosophy of science bases or roots the concept “science” upon mathematical analysis — analysis that is rooted in set theory, which is the fundamental theory in math. Your philosophy of science ignores my meta-science, which bases or roots the concept “science” in the statement that “the word “science” refers only to 100% historically truthful beliefs or statements of beliefs, because, even in the most-fundamental science, which is physics, no statement that is established to be historically false can be accepted as being scientifically true. This is actually the situation throughout all of science …” Every philosophy is pre-science, and,… Read more »
FURTHERMORE: Your statement that, “No physics is fundamental or even science if it cannot be either formulated in terms of a mathematically sound theory or model, or – in the case of experimental physics – interpreted in the
framework of such a theory or model” throws around its terms without defining those terms, and is therefore not a scientific statement and cannot be intelligently responded-to as-if it were: it is instead an assertion of your philosophy, and is part of your philosophy of science, NOT part of any authentic science of science (or “meta-science”).
Clearly, I cannot discuss these issues on the same level as you do, because I work inside physics and you analyse it from the outside. If you call my assessment “philosophy”, that’s fine for me, you may also call it “gut feeling”. I would be perfectly happy with that. But I stick to my guts.
Nevertheless, I venture one final remark: you formulated a necessary condition for scientific truth, namely to be historically true, whereas I argued that in the case of physics the condition is indisputable yet insufficient.
I disagree. I would agree iff you are trying to say that in your field, any truthful statement will entail math in order to express the statement. HOWEVER, that fact doesn’t affect my definition of science as consisting ONLY of statements that are entirely truthful about history. Math is not necessary to refer to, in order to define what science IS. Math is instead a TOOL that is necessary in order to be able to achieve science in some instances — such as you happen to specialize upon. This is a meta-scientific statement; it is not a philosophical statement. I… Read more »
The fact that I use math as a tool without doing research in that field doesn’t mean math isn’t a fundamental science, in my opinion even the most fundamental of them all. In other fields physics results and/or techniques are used as tools without doing physics research.
Are you alleging that math is empirical? Or, are you instead alleging that science isn’t necessarily empirical? (Please ask me to define “empirical” if you want me to do that in order to clarify my question. I’m not sure that you would find that definition to be necessary, but you might.)
In none of my comments I employed the word “empirical”. Nonetheless, I don’t think one can call math empirical, because it is a self-sustained field of science, solely built on the foundations of logic. So it doesn’t need any outside input, of whatever nature. That’s the reason I call math the most fundamental science.
But please, give me your definition of “empirical”.
In TDOTR, if it is correct, I proved that math does not pertain to existence — it is NOT empirical, it says nothing about history — but is instead PURELY about structures, space-times, Physics is not. No field of science is. When you acknowledge that math isn’t empirical, you acknowledge that math is not a science. Your concept of “science” is false.
“Empirical” means describing or generalizing from history (events that have occurred, which can include experiments or any other). You say that “math is the most fundamental science” and give, as the reason, that math “is a self-sustained field of science, solely built on the foundations of logic. So it doesn’t need any outside input, of whatever nature.” By “outside input” you seem to be referring to history, historical events; and, so, you are saying that science doesn’t even need “outside input” or historical events and generalization that are derived from those. Obviously, I disagree and respond by pointing out that… Read more »
Since I was comparing different fields of science, I was clearly referring to other fields, like physics, chemistry, etc., when stating that math doesn’t need “outside input”.
I’m probably wrong in terms of your definitions, which I humbly accept as a phenomenologist.
Are you missing my point? My point is about science, NOT about subject-areas that science investigates. Science is an epistemology, it is a meta-methodology. Methodology is even more important than findings, because it determines the findings. A meta-methodology, or epistemology, is even more important than a methodology, because it determines the methodology. Your findings cannot be any truer than your methodology is. Your methodology cannot be any truer than your epistemology is. The ancient epistemology was faith (in some allegedly inerrant scripture). The modern epistemology (presented in TDOTR) replaces that by science. Do you practice science? What is it? TDOTR… Read more »
As I’ve said before, I’m obviously not capable of discussing the meaning of science from the outside with your level of expertise. I can only tell you about my experience and opinions from the inside of one its subject areas. Perhaps you should rather discuss these profound matters with an expert colleague from your field of research. That said, I regret that your above article has led to so many comments and replies about one single remark of yours which I disagreed with from my particular perspective. Instead, I would rather discuss with you the definitions of democracy, social-democracy, socialism… Read more »
I had asked you: “Are you missing my point? My point is about science, NOT about subject-areas that science investigates.” Your reply is yes, that you aren’t interested in science, you are merely a practitioner of it. You don’t care what it is. I therefore regretfully conclude that we have nothing to discuss.
Yes, you finally understood. I’m a mere practitioner of science and proud of it. Proud to have come up with an idea and developed it during my PhD research that went against the mainstream, which allowed me to discover something confirmed only decades later by experiment. The tool I used was math, complex analysis to be precise. My PhD advisor found it too risky and didn’t allow me to put in in my PhD thesis. Even the paper that resulted from it, published 5 years later and with further results thanks to a long-time collaborator of mine, went practically unnoticed… Read more »
Thanks, George, for providing that HISTORY, the EMPIRICAL RECORD, which confirms your achievement. It is extremely impressive. Apparently, your logic and math in analyzing the historical data were entirely sound. Would Einstein have rested on your laurels, or, perhaps, not quite?: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2169442 He wanted to go further, even than he himself did, but maybe because he was struggling to do so on the basis of philosophers of science instead of any scientist of science, he wasn’t able to. If that might have been the case, then maybe there is a constructive message for yourself to take on meta-science (since that… Read more »
Some more history and empirical records: The collaborator I mentioned, Eef van Beveren, sadly passed away 3 months ago. He was my true mentor, as an older and more experienced PhD student himself, and not my PhD advisor. He taught me to have an open mind in doing meaningful phenomenology when applying rigorous theory to problems in strong-interaction particle physics is simply not feasible. Building upon the project he had initiated, I came up with the idea I mentioned while he was temporarily teaching in high school. Many years later, with both of us living in Portugal, we started to… Read more »
On p. 17 of the 180-page TDOTR, I wrote, against the common philosophical viewpoint that though “Mental phenomena are experientially immediate, but they are neither ontologically nor scientifically primary.”5 This idea, while even today shared by most philosophers (in the English-speaking world, at any rate), has long been a minority-position among physicists, who by the nature of their work are forced to be more open-minded to reality, and so cannot well afford to hold onto myths — especially to romantic myths about the rock-solid tangible physical basis of science itself. Nobel physicist Eugene P. Wigner explained in detail the “reasons for the… Read more »
What do you mean by “phenomenology”? How do you define that term? There are more than one definitions of it. In my view, the only way to define it that would apply to myself or to Einstein (if either of us had used it so) would be: the systematic (including math and any other tool) investigation into the structure and operations of one’s own consciousness itself. Is that what you mean by it? Or do you mean something else by it?
My definition of phenomenology in research is very simple: describing measurements using established theories, controllable approximations in such theories, or models.
Oh, so you use a definition that’s different from the ordinary-language definition of it, and that is the exact opposite of the standard philosophical definition of it. I had thought you intended it to be understood as being Einstein’s version of that, which he applied in 1905, which my TDOTR elucidated upon, and which I otherwise described in my new book. Unfortunately, I was misinterpreting you. Sorry about that.
Sorry, that second link was intended to be to:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
My point wasn’t that physics is two sciences with two theories, but that the definition of “phenomenology” that you had just given me is a very different “phenomenology” than philosophers discuss as being phenomenology and than Einstein in 1905 introduced into the elementary concepts in theoretical physics (but that philosophers, even ones who called themselves phenomenologists, never even noticed). Until Einstein introduced “the observer” into physical theory as being not merely the frame-of-reference that it previously had been, but as being a uniquely important frame-of-reference — the consciousness that perceives and whose perceptions physicists must explain — there was nothing… Read more »