Establishing a credible 'Left' - Page 8 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#14504875
Noob wrote:The left in the West has disavowed practically all of its values and has come to represent not the interests of the working classes, but increasingly those of the upper-middle class. The left that you pine for is dead. It has been infested with an endless empty abstract egalitarianism and the ideology of human rights best exemplified here.

Since the ancient ideas of 'citizenship' and 'democracy' and actually participating in public life mean nothing any more, there aren't citizens, but only persons born with natural inalienable rights. If human beings have these inalienable rights, these ideologues ask, why can't we extend those same equal rights and personhood to animals? 'It's only fair', they say.


The modern left does not represent the interests of anyone except the modern left itself.
#14504908
Liberals/Conservatives/Fascists/Communists/Left/Right/Orangutans does not represent the interests of anyone except the Liberals/Conservatives/Fascists/Communists/Left/Right/Orangutans itself.

Doesn't this statement just looks uber cool.
#14504916
Actually in the West it is clearly against ones personal interests to be anything right of Blair. As such it takes a degree of selflessness to identify yourself with the right.

Leftists in the west are generally social liberals and of the "costs me nothing variety". They demand adulation and recognition.

The type of people who want a round of applause for living in a certain area/ doing a certain thing.

For instance when have you seen the liberals writing on the Guardian actually talking about sacrifice? Never - they only talk in terms of individual rights.

Yep, the western left are inherently self serving.
#14504940
Marxism isnt the be all and end all of the left wing. So lets not pretend it is.

The western left these days dominated by liberals - and yes they are generally in it for props, kudos and a warm fuzzy feeling in their loins.

Show me the western leftists talk of sacrifice and denial. They talk only in terms of rights. And therefore they are self serving.

Not that being self serving can not be positive. Not that they do not holdup self sacrifice as something to be admired in others..
#14504950
Ummm, the only problem is that this thread is about left in the sense of Marxists (and other similar far left ideologies) only, did you managed to miss the entire thread?
#14504960
yup, you missed the entire thread. Who is defending these leftists in here? You are trying to argue with Marxists who themselves are criticizing this center left liberals.

If you had followed the discussion, the Marxists in here were defending the concept of Marxist left while Noob, Thompson etc were criticizing it.

Regardless, "its self serving" can be used for any political ideology and at the end of day its just a mere rhetoric not any substantial criticism.
#14504964
yup, you missed the entire thread.


Nap, I read it all. Saeko's comment was regarding the modern left in general. Which I agree with.

Who is defending these leftists in here? You are trying to argue with Marxists who themselves are criticizing this center left liberals.


I'm not arguing, I'm goading. ;)
#14504965
The Immortal Goon wrote:I don't speak Irish well at all.

My Italian isn't quite native speaker level yet either. And what?

The Immortal Goon wrote:The Irish I do speak, is modern Irish, which is not what my ancestors would have spoken deep in West Cork.

That Irish from West Cork, was not Goidelic that their ancestor spoke.

Goidelic was not the Celtic language that their ancestors spoke.

The Celtic language was not the Indo-European language that their ancestors spoke.

Sure. That's the development of a language. It doesn't mean that language is irrelevant. Do you not think that Ireland might be in a better position today in terms of being able to resist outside influence if most of its population actually spoke Irish, and not English as a native language? Or would this just mean capitulating to the local Irish ruling class?

The Immortal Goon wrote:...And on and on. What do you want me to do about this? Should I get down on my knees and cry and bitch and moan about it?

What specifically would this achieve?

The Immortal Goon wrote:What about the fact that I'm not mining copper like most of my family had been doing since the Paleolithic? I'm pretty happy not doing so. Should I shake my fists at the heavens because I'm literate?

No idea what point you're trying to make here. Is it that the orthodox Marxists who disappeared from the face of the Earth in '91 are the only hope for salvation and a bright future?

The Immortal Goon wrote:Whether you want to take this thing that far or not, the battle's over, man. It was almost 200 years ago. There's not a place on the planet that isn't part of a global capitalistic network in one way or the other. It's time to look ahead, not try to cover our eyes up and pretend something that happened hasn't happened.

Whether you feel good about this kind of advancement or not is completely irrelevant. It happened. Move on.

This is vague. Also:
    quetzalcoatl wrote:There will be no proletarian struggle. Not now, not 20 years from now, not ever. Get over it. Jesus, wtf is wrong with you guys? Not even a complete collapse of Western capitalism will be able to effect such an outcome, but will simply result in some degenerate form of fascist order.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Marxists don't fret and cry over this stuff, it's done. Now let's take the privilege from the bourgeoisie being able to move about and exploit this system while the vast majority of the world cannot cross borders and are exploited by those who can.

What are the implications of this? Ultimately, the left-wing ideology of no borders meshes very well with the right-wing ideology of free trade. The human rights groups which presently represent the left in the West (and more than likely always will do) are simply cheerleaders for the continuation of a rapacious capitalism. Your solution is to confer the same privileges that privileged people have to under-privileged people in being able to migrate from one place to another. The result is that you want the working masses to simply follow capital to wherever it moves. Surely that will work well. Essentially:
    Roland Breton wrote:To say 'long live the difference' does not imply any idea of superiority, of domination and of contempt: the affirmation of oneself is not the lowering of the other. The recognition of the identity of an ethnicity can only subtract from others what they have unduly monopolised.

    The affirmation of the right to be different is the only way to escape a double error: that error, very widespread in the Left, that consists of believing that "human brotherhood" will be realized on the ruins of differences, the erosion of cultures, the homogenization of communities, and that other error, widespread in the Right which consists of the belief that the "rebirth of the nation" will be achieved by inculcating in its members an attitude of rejection towards others.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Their genetics are irrelevant. It's a single world, a world-capitalist system. Getting butt-hurt about what languages are being spoken in your country compared to Japan isn't going to stop that. It's been over for hundreds of years.

Somehow I think you're just waiting for a materialist version of Jesus.

__________

KlassWar wrote:Efficiently deport immigrants requires allowing the ruling the class enemy to have a functional police state with the capability and permission to engage in mass surveillance, racial profiling and all sorts of civil rights violations. And even then it probably wouldn't work: The militarized police forces to secure borders won't stop immigrants at all (the typical immigrant enters their chosen country legally and then just plain overstays... and not all immigrants are easy to tell apart from the local population. In any case this police state is not something we should allow the class enemy to have: The proletariat should work tirelessly to undermine the bourgeois police state, because it's the primary tool of the class enemy against us.

If immigrants aren't allowed in in the first place, there's literally no issue. There's no reason not to enforce borders. The fundamental disagreement is that leftists think that migrants can be assimilated, taught, and taken under the arm - which is fine when there are few - but with mass immigration, that's not happening. They are here to work, there are many, and that's it. Enforcing Europe-wide borders and for instance turning back migrant boats in cooperation with North African governments is something that every Mediterranean country ought to be doing instead of taking all of the migrants who happen to come along on board and then creating ghettoes around the metropolitan zones and the country's train stations. If the left is just looking for a substitute proletariat instead of caring for its own, I want nothing to do with the left, and neither do other indigenous working class people of European countries, hence the total lack of interest or care amongst working class people for the 'inclusive' leftist parties of today.

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taxizen wrote:Nationalism arises as the complex of all the characteristics that emerges as the requirements for being of the republic, a citizen; to be one of the collective instead of someone outside of it. Language, geneological associations, place of birth and sometimes ideological affliliations have emerged as the classic markers for picking out who is in and who is out, but the emphasis varies from place to place.

Pretty much. What internationalists don't often like to realise is that the word democracy from ancient Greece actually means nothing if the 'people' in 'people power' isn't a population where only the autochthonous population have citizenship. 'People' isn't just 'persons', but a group of people with a shared history and common lineage and so on. The original sense of 'demos' is "land occupied by a people". This is essentially why the Middle East at the moment needs dictators and strongmen - because the people that live in Syria and Iraq previously lived under empires and there were no homogenising attempts by national/regional elites (who never existed). With the loss of the Ottoman Empire and its division, those countries are now essentially broken countries as evidenced by the rise of ISIS trying to unite the region under a catch-all Islamism.

So if we take 'democracy' to mean what it did in ancient Greece, and not the democracy of today that has been abstracted from its territorial and historical dimensions by referring to actual abstract conceptions like liberal rule of law, we can see that nationalisms and regionalisms march hand-in-hand with democracy. And citizenship is also directly related to being a part of a particular territory, because an atomised individual with no roots has no desire by definition to live in a community (non-citizen in Greek is idiótes from which the word idiot is derived). In the ideology of human rights - which leftist organisations have readily taken up in promoting their brand of humanitarian universalism - there are no 'citizens', but only persons, which is why citizenship has been mutated to mean 'universal people' instead of 'national people'. The Marxist conception of citizenship ends with socialism.

Essentially, the disagreement here is that there is no 'humanity', and the equality of political rights amongst citizens in Greece doesn't reflect a belief in natural equality. The left's insistence on this silly theme (and indeed the recurring theme of a belonging to humanity I think is basically just a secular transposition of Christianity's belief in humanity and equal judgement before God) is part of why they will continue to be co-opted by liberals, who agree with them in this regard. So apparently, we're all human beings belonging to a different culture or people, rather than the other way around. The ideology of human rights is now essentially a civil religion.

I don't know if I quite addressed what you wanted to talk about there but I took the opportunity to blabber anyway. With regards to nationalism, it's very plastic and can take many forms. But for Marxists, anything aside from internationalist communism is a capitulation to some variation on the ruling class. It's tiresome and silly.

__________

Eauz wrote:If we assumed status quo all the time, then progress would never have occurred in the first place.

That's if your assumption is that progress is only to be had with what leftist organisations are promoting today. Leftist organisations and parties today - the visible ones - are not for 'progress', or for the working class.

Eauz wrote:Random acts of violence, such as attempting to assassinate a leader is going to land you in prison and in some places at the bottom of a river or in a disgusting prison cell. Plus, eliminating the leader of a country does not mean that the socioeconomic system is destroyed. This is why it is important to take claim over the means of production and send the bourgeois class, as a whole, packing.

The working classes aren't going to be able to just expropriate the means of production. Somehow I don't think you would be complaining all that much if it were Marxist militias running around, blowing up bridges and trying to assassinate the leaders and representatives of the bourgeoisie. I think you know that the potentiality of assassinating heads of state and prime ministers - what would amount to a serious shake-up in national politics - is not 'random'. Nobody wants to take the place of a dead man.

__________

fuser wrote:on immigration :

Basically The right wing just wants to beat up the weakest and most vulnerable part of society (me Strong!!) and see it as some sort of solution while ignoring the elephant in the room i.e. capitalism unlike left (real) which actually wants to address the crux of matter. Its not immigrants that are keeping wages in check but capitalism which will always maintain an army of unemployed people to keep wages in check, if you don't allow immigrants then they will simply export their shops to the lands of these immigrants. There is simply no benefit for native working class in this scenario.

I think if we look at the case of Japan, they were able to achieve their technological revolution far more quickly than Western European nations by favouring their domestic working population and by off-shoring some parts of industry involving low-level labour. The sociological disadvantages of this approach are far, far less than it is in the case of importing cheap labour and having alien populations with potentially contrary value systems settling in working class neighbourhoods. As a side note, this approach still allows Japan to choose and prioritise its trading partners (whereas mostly undifferentiated migration results in disparate peoples from different parts of the world coming into developed nations).

__________

Dagoth Ur wrote:Oh yeah the italian fascists. They're like the Romania of fascism.

This means nothing on multiple levels.
#14504989
Thompson_NCL wrote:
Italy didn't have a Night of the Long Knives. Fascism is a broader ideology than just National Socialism.


Benito Mussolini said:

"The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists."

"We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility."
#14505017
Noob wrote:Pretty much. What internationalists don't often like to realise is that the word democracy from ancient Greece actually means nothing if the 'people' in 'people power' isn't a population where only the autochthonous population have citizenship. 'People' isn't just 'persons', but a group of people with a shared history and common lineage and so on. The original sense of 'demos' is "land occupied by a people". This is essentially why the Middle East at the moment needs dictators and strongmen - because the people that live in Syria and Iraq previously lived under empires and there were no homogenising attempts by national/regional elites (who never existed). With the loss of the Ottoman Empire and its division, those countries are now essentially broken countries as evidenced by the rise of ISIS trying to unite the region under a catch-all Islamism.

So if we take 'democracy' to mean what it did in ancient Greece, and not the democracy of today that has been abstracted from its territorial and historical dimensions by referring to actual abstract conceptions like liberal rule of law, we can see that nationalisms and regionalisms march hand-in-hand with democracy. And citizenship is also directly related to being a part of a particular territory, because an atomised individual with no roots has no desire by definition to live in a community (the word non-citizen in Greek is idiótes from which the word idiot is derived). In the ideology of human rights - which leftist organisations have readily taken up in promoting their brand of humanitarian universalism - there are no 'citizens', but only persons, which is why citizenship has been mutated to mean 'universal people' instead of 'national people'. The Marxist conception of citizenship ends with socialism.

Essentially, the disagreement here is that there is no 'humanity', and the equality of political rights amongst citizens in Greece doesn't reflect a belief in natural equality. The left's insistence on this silly theme (and indeed the recurring theme of a belonging to humanity I think is basically just a secular transposition of Christianity's belief in humanity and equal judgement before God) is part of why they will continue to be co-opted by liberals, who agree with them in this regard. So apparently, we're all human beings belonging to a different culture or people, rather than the other way around. The ideology of human rights is now essentially a civil religion.

I don't know if I quite addressed what you wanted to talk about there but I took the opportunity to blabber anyway. With regards to nationalism, it's very plastic and can take many forms. But for Marxists, anything aside from internationalist communism is a capitulation to some variation on the ruling class. It's tiresome and silly.
Yes, very interesting. I would say that where the international socialist is particularly unrealistic is that in practice collective properties are generally difficult to manage and the larger they are the worse it gets, the national republic with its marked borders and its criteria for membership is straining at the limits of what is practical for a collective property, so the international socialist who dreams of a boundless collective property with universal membership is pining for a practical impossibility, it just won't work. I do think the origins of the dream is really a mutation (or transposition, as you say) of Christian ambitions for a universal church under one god. Hence why they need to depreciate cultural, historical and genealogical associations because those associations break up their hoped for universal homogenous congregation. They are then left only with ideological affiliation as a means of tying together loyalty and allegience. But ideologies apart from typically being disconnected from reality to some extent are also prone to schism and heresy, so no universal association can be built on that either.
#14505055
Dagoth Ur wrote:The hell is that even supposed to mean?


fuser wrote:Liberals/Conservatives/Fascists/Communists/Left/Right/Orangutans does not represent the interests of anyone except the Liberals/Conservatives/Fascists/Communists/Left/Right/Orangutans itself.

Doesn't this statement just looks uber cool.


It means that leftist organizations are mostly about attracting members and then getting the new members to attract more members. They do this by making their platform as egalitarian and as inclusive as possible, so, naturally, only the weirdos and social outcasts like Ketchup join them. Then, as the more moderate members figure out the scam and leave, only the fanatics remain and that's how you get Occupy-style Hippie-leftism. The type of leftism that ignores socially relevant groups such as workers and prefers to give an inordinately high priority to groups that are as fringe and marginalized as possible such as otherkin and Ketchup. Then, when someone suggests they do something constructive to help the workers, everyone goes "Herp-derp! Check your ableist privilege! Durr!" or "stop trying to drown out the voices of the truly oppressed like Ketchup here."

Oh yeah, and since these people are for the most part moral crusaders rather than actual pragmatic militant revolutionaries and activists like the leftists of the past, they're mainly concerned with maintaining ideological purity and making sure that everyone knows just how totally not-racist and accepting of trans-lawyer wafflekin they are.
#14505057
fuser wrote:yup, you missed the entire thread. Who is defending these leftists in here? You are trying to argue with Marxists who themselves are criticizing this center left liberals.


What is missing is any sense of alternative. Going by the posts in this thread, there is either the self-serving liberal or the proletarian-struggle Marxist and nothing else. If these are truly the only alternatives, then establishing a credible left is an impossible task.

Are there no alternatives on the left that are neither self-serving nor hidebound to failure-mode?

I reject those apocalyptic marxists who revel in class war, and spend their nights making lists of enemies of the people they will liquidate. Not because they are frightening, but because they are silly and ineffectual.

This is not defeatism, it is realism. The first step to enlightenment is to realize one has been an ass, and then to regroup.

We all can agree on the failure of self-serving liberalism. The failure of class struggle and proletarian revolution is what is in question, apparently...although it should be utterly obvious to the meanest intelligence.
#14505065
Why are some people going on about "the end of real Leftism", just because we're going through a rough patch at the moment? There were no socialist states until they were created by often rag tag, unco-ordinated forces taking advantage of opportunity. The historical forces collided at the right moment and revolutions occurred. Now just isn't the right moment.

quetzalcoatl wrote:We all can agree on the failure of self-serving liberalism. The failure of class struggle and proletarian revolution is what is in question, apparently...although it should be utterly obvious to the meanest intelligence.


Why are you being so defeatist? You seem to be getting angry that other people aren't throwing away ideologies of a lifetime to join...what? Have you a manifesto for this "alternative to class struggle"? Have you any coherent ideas? If so, I'd love to hear them. If not, you seem to have egg on your face, no?
#14505102
Tim actually nailed it. Quetz talks a lot of shit about Marxism without ever offering a viable alternative.

JRS1 wrote:Marxism isnt the be all and end all of the left wing. So lets not pretend it is.

Outside of fellow socialists, yes it is. Liberals are not the left. In fact they are consistent enemies of the left.

Noob wrote:This means nothing on multiple levels.

You just don't get analogies.
Fascist Italy - a country that failed to implement its own stated ideology so badly that the people who gave it power in the first place overthrew it and killed their Dear Leader.
Communist Romania - a country that failed to implement its own stated ideology so badly that the people who gave it power in the first place overthrew it and killed their Dear Leader.

Saeko wrote:It means that leftist organizations are mostly about attracting members and then getting the new members to attract more members.

Oh so like every political grouping ever. What a poignant insight.

Saeko wrote:They do this by making their platform as egalitarian and as inclusive as possible, so, naturally, only the weirdos and social outcasts like Ketchup join them.

Have you ever been to an actual leftist event or are you basing this off Tumblr?

Saeko wrote:Then, as the more moderate members figure out the scam and leave, only the fanatics remain and that's how you get Occupy-style Hippie-leftism.

How is it a scam? Are you seriously claiming that our attachment to egalitarianism is a ruse designed to bring people under our umbrella? Any proof you'd like to offer for this load of a statement?

Saeko wrote:The type of leftism that ignores socially relevant groups such as workers and prefers to give an inordinately high priority to groups that are as fringe and marginalized as possible such as otherkin and Ketchup. Then, when someone suggests they do something constructive to help the workers, everyone goes "Herp-derp! Check your ableist privilege! Durr!" or "stop trying to drown out the voices of the truly oppressed like Ketchup here."

Okay so yeah you're talking about Tumblr. When have any of the leftists on this site ever gone on tirades about "ableism"?

Saeko wrote:Oh yeah, and since these people are for the most part moral crusaders rather than actual pragmatic militant revolutionaries and activists like the leftists of the past, they're mainly concerned with maintaining ideological purity and making sure that everyone knows just how totally not-racist and accepting of trans-lawyer wafflekin they are.

#14505109
Dagoth Ur wrote:Oh so like every political grouping ever. What a poignant insight.


A lot of political groupings outside of the left are also mostly just ways for the members to recruit more members without anything concrete ever actually being achieved. While every political movement must recruit new members, it should also actually be able to do things other than recruit new members.

Dagoth Ur wrote:Have you ever been to an actual leftist event or are you basing this off Tumblr?


Nope. Just look at the CPUSA. Their platform is designed to attract liberals rather than represent workers.

Dagoth Ur wrote:How is it a scam? Are you seriously claiming that our attachment to egalitarianism is a ruse designed to bring people under our umbrella? Any proof you'd like to offer for this load of a statement?


No, I think your attachment to egalitarianism is genuine, but it has gone from being the goal of the left to being a marketing tool for leftist organizations. (Maybe this is an improvement?)

Dagoth Ur wrote:Okay so yeah you're talking about Tumblr. When have any of the leftists on this site ever gone on tirades about "ableism"?


Believe it or not, the people on this site are not representative of the left as a whole. Most leftists these days are upper middle-class college student SJW's and liberals rather than revolutionaries and working class people. (In fact, I think you yourself have made this point earlier on in the thread)
#14505112
Saeko wrote:A lot of political groupings outside of the left are also mostly just ways for the members to recruit more members without anything concrete ever actually being achieved. While every political movement must recruit new members, it should also actually be able to do things other than recruit new members.

What do the Democrats or Republicans do for lay members? What do fascist parties do for their people? We defend each other against cops which is more than you can say for most parties.

Saeko wrote:Nope.

Obviously.

Saeko wrote: Just look at the CPUSA. Their platform is designed to attract liberals rather than represent workers.

Haha you're talking about a party that is international lambasted for its trailing of the Democrats. Sam Webb, nor his party, are Communists. They are relics of the hippie generation. Once we are finally rid of their generation it will be easier to get rid of the young ones.

Saeko wrote:No, I think your attachment to egalitarianism is genuine, but it has gone from being the goal of the left to being a marketing tool for leftist organizations. (Maybe this is an improvement?)

Again any proof that we aren't actually concerned with egalitarian goals? This scam angle seems more flimsy by the second.

Saeko wrote:Believe it or not, the people on this site are not representative of the left as a whole.

Believe it or not most leftists don't post on Tumblr or any internet platform. Just like most other people.

Saeko wrote:Most leftists these days are upper middle-class college student SJW's and liberals rather than revolutionaries and working class people. (In fact, I think you yourself have made this point earlier on in the thread)

No I made the case that they are a significant issue that we have to overcome. They are by no means the majority and besides they'll all be conventional liberals in a decade.
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