Clashism or Vosemism?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I think this brief exchange (loosely defined) helped to perhaps best define the radical(ish) ends of the cleavage between "traditional conservatives" and "liberal conservatives". Most people conservatives (sorry for the mixup) are likely between these two points (I doubt, say, RFayette would entirely dismiss market economics as needed, for example). Lefties of various sorts, please place yourselves accordingly.

Socialism is value-neutral and, in some cases, can even be used to advance conservative causes whereas the kind of politics espoused by SJWs seeks explicitly to erode tradition and undermine authority.

Authority has nothing to do with conservatism (indeed, it is usually an enemy of it) and tradition is good for conservatives only in the sense that it usually supports their endeavors; in cases where it does not (such as countries that have long-established strong welfare states, for instance) it is "value-neutral", as you say, or can sometimes even work against real conservatism.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Socialism is value-neutral

What?

I think he meant in the sense that socialism is neutral on concepts like cultural traditions and nationalism.

It isn't though. Socialism has no more room for the nation state than communism does, since both maintain the same long term ends.

And yet, strangely enough, socialism in a variety of forms has made do with the nation-state, to the point that for a number of post-Soviet republics, the Soviet system was the first time where they functioned as territorially-defined, distinct entities...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Socialism is value-neutral

What?

I think he meant in the sense that socialism is neutral on concepts like cultural traditions and nationalism.

It isn't though. Socialism has no more room for the nation state than communism does, since both maintain the same long term ends.

And yet, strangely enough, socialism in a variety of forms has made do with the nation-state, to the point that for a number of post-Soviet republics, the Soviet system was the first time where they functioned as territorially-defined, distinct entities...

Are we speaking in terms of practice or just ideology? While many of the early socialist movements were indeed nationalistic, it's also worth remembering that the Soviet Union adopted "socialism in one country" while supporting revolutionary movements abroad to the very end. They never surrendered on world revolution.

I had an effortpost drawn up, but it disappeared owing to my changing locations (picked up a shift at work).

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Sanchez, to elaborate now that I've regained some of my strength, what I--most simply--meant was that regardless of a nation's socialist ideology or internationalist aspirations, it still functioned as a polity with identifiable and agreed upon boundaries, a national budget limited to some extent by the realm of the material, a defined population, and so on.

What I meant in a more complex fashion was that, despite the Soviet Union's "multi-national" character (and the same goes for Yugoslavia, I've been told), the Russians treated it simply as an expanded Russian nation. A fictional character in some book I once read remarked that you knew you were a superhero if the rest of the world complained you were tourists and that your citizens didn't know the language. I imagine this sentiment is to some extent the source of Russian nationalism at this point. In a similar vein, the Soviet Union ironically functioned to grant certain nations boundaries they had never had before. These borders may have been drawn with the intention of obfuscating the growth of national movements, but, aside from the Kazakhs at some points, they nevertheless were "republics" with non-Russian ethnic majorities, and named accordingly. Especially as it pertains to Central Asia, the Soviet period was the first point in which they received this explicit national recognition, and in many ways you could say that authority merely devolved to the level of the former SSR following the Soviet Union's collapse.

What I believe clash meant--and I agree with this in limited portions--was that socialism can theoretically function in a number of societies; one could have a socialist economy in a Christian nation and simultaneously have socialism reign supreme somewhere else marked by sexual liberty and the like. It seems clash divides the world much more by culture and cultural orientation rather than by system; and sees these systems (capitalism, socialism, liberalism) as simply serving the ends of national promotion. In such a context, he likely favors what he simply believes "works" in any particular context.