Why the left is losing - Page 7 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14803036
Mod note: stop discussing whether or not this article belongs in this forum. It's fine here;
it does have international significance, and even if it didn't, it wouldn't necessarily be out of place.

And would people stop making multiple posts. Everyone on this thread has been a member long enough to have heard of the board rule about this. It's too tedious to go back and edit people's posts together; so just don't do it in the future (it looks as if people may have realised what they were doing wrong anyway, since the problem was a way back).

Just try and stay on topic (and I don't think a discussion here of what is the definition of 'left' is helpful; I agree that it's fairly clear who the OP article means by 'left', so stick to that).
#14803038
1. The English Civil War and French Revolution were both organic examples of bourgeois rule becoming bloody in their creation. It is not difficult to find the spread of capitalism as being resisted and violently put down; from the entirety of the Americas, to the implimenting of capitalism in Ireland and India causing massive famines that murdered untold millions. And beyond that to forcing Indian crops be converted to opium in order to enslave a billion Chinese; and up to, and including, the National Guard being deployed to murder the families of striking workers, the systematic elimination of black nationalists that committed the crime of reading Mao; and the creation and patronage of the most extreme rightwing religious administrations in Asia and Africa to suppress the masses and enable resource distribution to capitalist centers of power.

This is not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. But it exists, and it is the worst kind of ignorant philistinism to pretend it doesn't exist.

2. It is insane to pretend that Russia and China were more prosperous before the communist revolutions. And not a credit to an argument.

3, the British, and the imperialist powers in general, had no problem murdering Indians. The only reason he wasn't put into a cell and murdered horribly and desecrated like Toulsaint or Casement was because there were a billion Indians willing to grab rifles if he stopped holding them back. It was the threat of violence sprinkled with acts of violence that freed India, make no mistake; and no small part of it was the threat of India joining the Soviet sphere of influence and the US's global supremacy eclipsing that of Britain's.

4. The article absolutely gains power in its imaginary world in which the left does not exist. And this should be addressed.
#14803039
fuser wrote:Ummmm India still got divided, ummm you know Pakistan Bangladesh. Seriously give it a rest, the non violence didn't win Indian independence, stop parroting liberal propaganda if you think yourself as communist, you are only embarrassing actual communists and in this case specially Indian communists like me.


**Sigh I am a socialist who doesn't think that the government should get its way. I oppose Authoritarian Socialism (Kina pointless to free people from economic enslavement only to put them under political enslavement :lol: ), and support libertarian socialism, with a small government to make sure everything goes right without infringing on the people.

If you are Indian, tell me, would India have won an all-out war with Britain? Definitely not before WWII. Even after WWII, an all out war would have yielded heavy losses and a devastated nation.

I am aware that India got divided, and it was a bad idea -- It only elevated the tension between groups to an international scale. Now India and Pakistan have nukes facing each other, an equivalent to a local cold war.

Response to the article: It seems to me that the right exists as an institution to halt progress being made by the left; it is a reaction to the left (hence reactionary, an older term for the far right). This is quite evident in the US where a "left" goes to office and institutes reform, after which a "right" president undoes that reform -- for example Obamacare, then Trumpcare (In reality, Obama was center, meaning that he instituted change when the public saw it as necessary, and Trump was reactionary, not only halting change like a normal conservative, but aiming to undo it and regress to the good old days where people died due to lack of healthcare).
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By Beren
#14803041
The Immortal Goon wrote:4. The article absolutely gains power in its imaginary world in which the left does not exist. And this should be addressed.

I actually dig the article, it's so well-written and conservative, and highlights the reason behind the rise of right-wing populism, which is the goddamn left liberals of course, in America especially. The right-wing media and the Republican Party hardly have anything to do with it, it's left liberals who can't capitalise on right-wing failures properly, so it must be their fault in the first place. Also, what else could conservatives do now than collaborate with populists and blame left liberals for everything as they used to do?
#14803044
Beren wrote:I actually dig the article, it's so well-written and conservative, and highlights the reason behind the rise of right-wing populism, which is the goddamn left liberals of course, in America especially. The right-wing media and the Republican Party hardly have anything to do with it, it's left liberals who can't capitalise on right-wing failures properly, so it must be their fault in the first place. Also, what else could conservatives do now than collaborate with populists and blame left liberals for everything as they used to do?


If the left collapses, so would the right. The right is built upon dragging its feet on the left's progress, and would have no basis for policy if the left suddenly disappeared.
#14803057
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:
I don't want to be rude, but you are a good example of what's wrong with the left/progressives.


I'm oddly amused by this statement for some reason.


I'm completely baffled that you have to ask those questions. Just think about yourself moving to China, Italy or Uganda. Would you consider yourself to be Chinese, Italian or Ugandan simply because you resided in the country? Do you believe that the people in those countries would or should think about you as being one of them just because you have just turned up? In other words, if you think about what you as an immigrant need to do to feel, say, Italian, and for the local Italians to think about you as an Italian, you have answered your own question.


I obviously have my own views on what would give someone living in the US the illustrious status of being considered american. Those views are going to be different than what an Italian thinks makes someone Italian which itself will be vastly different than what a Japanese person will consider makes someone Japanese. The history and culture I grew up in leads me to have very lax views about what makes someone an american and I can't speak for any other country and what it decides on that issue.

I will say that the standard has been changing, has always been changing, and always will change. You used to only be part of the political community if you were a wealthy white landowning male in a lot of countries. Now our political communities in the west are expanded to groups who would never have been considered part of the political community before. Now it's expanding more where foreigners residing in a country are beginning to be seen as part of the political community. I consider this neither particularly good or bad. I think it's weird that you have to be ethnically Japanese to ever get Japanese citizenship for instance but whether or not it's a good or bad thing that japan has this standard is impossible to ever really show objectively. I could never be Japanese. There are certainly countries I can imagine going to live in and feeling like part of that country without too much trouble as well.

Basically the only standard I can really speak too is the American one, and I do think that someone moving to the US can and should be able to integrate into the country. They should be able to feel like an american, it's an rather ingrained sentiment in our mythology of ourselves afterall.


Even if you thought - and I'm not claiming you are - that Italians should accept you as an Italian on the day you entered the country, I'm fairly certain that even on the left nobody is deluded enough to claim that they could feel Italian on day 1. Hence, feeling Italian must become arbitrary and the existence of a unifying culture and anything beyond the mere physical presence of a person being important must be denied. That's the only way to interpret statements, such as “There is no such thing as French culture. There is culture in France, and it is diverse.” (Macron) and, as Merkel has recently described Germans, there are those who have lived in Germany a little longer and those that haven't. And going by developments in the US and increasingly in Europe, to me it looks like whether you are in the country legally or illegally is not supposed to matter in the future either.


Cultures are amorphous concepts that change over time, they are in some sense arbitrary constructions of humanity over several generations in a time and place. This too isn't really good or bad. Whether or not you let other people into your country with the evil seeds of the essence of not frenchness French and German culture was never going to simply stay what it is now. There's too much cultural mixing from media and the internet to ever really go back to the age of strongly stratified cultures.

Really though, we both know we aren't really talking about all cultures mixing into France an Germany. No one is overly concerned about Americans living in Italy. This is about Muslims and the particular set of cultures they are from.

By that logic, we could take the world's population, mix it up well, and then redistribute people randomly. There would then be hundreds of cultures in France and any Frenchmen who by chance ended up in his home country together with millions of foreigners ought to at worst feel neutral about and at best welcome this change. After all, France has just become a little bit more diverse and diversity is self-evidently always a good thing. Further, since things have always changed and immigration has always occurred, the only people who could be opposed to this have irrational fears and/or are xenophobic and racist.

Overall, my view of the left is as follows: They used to have no problem wrecking our countries economically if we let them run wild, but they didn't use to be culturally suicidal and destructive. However, ever since they've given up on economics and basically left this area to the right, they have now embarked on wrecking our societies and cultures. I'm at a point where I would be relieved to have the old left back. You can recover from bankruptcy after all, but the kind of destruction the left is aiming for now is very hard to recover from.


This just boils down to amorphous complaints about how the left is going to kill the very essence of frenchness. Or, from what I've seen from most people who talk about the left committing cultural suicide, it's more a complaint about how they are trying to let Muslims take over and be the dominant culture.

I don't have anything to make you feel better about this. Leftists aren't writing policy with the goal of killing all that is french. They write policies with a particular set of values that you disagree with. Perhaps they do undermine what it means to be french in the long run. After all that's something people level against right wingers as well, that authoritarian controls on what sort of people should be allowed into France also undermines what it means to be french. Many Americans on the left view right wing immigration policy as a fundamental rejection of American culture and values.

In the US at least, and I suspect in europe as well, both sides push opposite policies based on the same set of mythical cultural values while complaining that the other side is destroying everything good about american culture. In the US accepting immigrants to become part of the country is considered fundamentally american by the left. True this is purely liberal ideology and simply boils down to peoples feelings about what our culture and values are, but all politics boils down to peoples feelings and values about stuff.

Nobody is right, nobody is wrong, and we're probably screwed either way. Talking in breathless terms about how the other side is out to destroy all hope and joy in the world, whether talking about how the left is out to kill all that is french, or about how right wingers want to gas the Muslims is a good way to spin your wheels and never get anywhere while talking about abstractions instead of the real things sitting in front of us.

When I see someone in the US doesn't have healthcare and is dying I don't overly concern myself with abstract notions of american culture that the right proclaims precludes us from having welfare programs to help the poor. In the same way I don't see a Mexican immigrant struggling to feed his family in the US and feel overly burdened by the abstract possibility of undermining some sense of Americaness by not deporting him.

It seems strange to me that so many on the right, and the left, are so much more concerned with abstractions and vague feelings about some grand sense of good and evil and mythical culture and ignore real world things we can actually effect and can know for sure have at least some actual meaning.
#14803060
I think the progressive liberals in western societies (i.e. the "left" as described by US conservatives, PL for short) are not necessarily losing a specific battle, except in public perception.

The right wing conservative position is clear: Drastically limit immigration from the developing world, especially Muslim countries.

The PL position is not clear. Many people think it is "open borders" or getting rid of white cultures, or not being racist.

In reality, both sides want roughly the same thing: to limit immigration along economic lines while ignoring the actual causes of migration. The PL side wants to do it without looking racist, while the other side wants to look like they are the noble defenders of the home race.

As for the discussion on whether or not socialism needs to be authoritarian, I think that the answer would change depending on the specific context. The answer is far more complicated than a simple yes or no to violence. Having said that, the capitalists will not hesitate to use violence when their interests are threatened.

And finally, the old school leftist position on immigration is on the one hand the most realistic solution (as it actually addresses why people migrate) and the most unrealistic (in that it will never be implemented as it dismantles global capitalism).
By Decky
#14803066
Zagadka wrote:See, you think he came off as an idiot. A large part of the country sees exactly the opposite, and the left can't seem to comprehend why people vote against them.


No one votes for the left in the US anyway. If you think the millionaire scum of the democrat party are the left you are wilfully blind.

Mod edit: and this is the sort of comment that's going to get deleted as off-topic from now on.
It's clear from the article that it's about the "liberal left" (the article only ever says "liberal left", except for one use of 'center-left'; there is no point at all obsessing about the headline use of 'left' on its own). So make comments about the political parties that the article talks about, not whatever fringe elements in those countries that have no electoral chance, and possibly don't care.
#14803070
The Immortal Goon wrote:Did you read anything after that?

Capitalists aren't good readers, I realize, but you might be surprised what you can learn.


I did read it and you haven't provided an example that holds up. If you feel you have, then perhaps more detail is required.
#14803073
Rapperson wrote:Then find such an example; you haven't yet.


Really? The imposition of capitalism at gunpoint in Chile under Pinochet is the first example that pops to my head, for personal reasons. But there are so many examples in history that it is hard to imagine that you are being serious.
#14803076
Pants-of-dog wrote:Really? The imposition of capitalism at gunpoint in Chile under Pinochet is the first example that pops to my head, for personal reasons. But there are so many examples in history that it is hard to imagine that you are being serious.


Chile was already a capitalist economy.
#14803080
Rapperson wrote:Chile was already a capitalist economy.


...and then the Chileans voted for socialism, and then the US paid the far right in Chile to impose capitalism at gunpoint.
#14803119
@Rapperson

The very first example is the English Civil War perhaps. The final days of the feudal order in England was overthrown and the people were fully made in to propertiless labour force. Also the Monarchy was crushed and capitalism had free reign over the country.

Something along the lines of this:

To summarise it briefly, this interpretation is that the English Revolution of 1640-60 was a great social movement like the French Revolution of 1789. The state power protecting an old order that was essentially feudal was violently overthrown, power passed into the hands of a new class, and so the freer development of capitalism was made possible. The Civil War was a class war, in which the despotism of Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established Church and conservative landlords. Parliament beat the King because it could appeal to the enthusiastic support of the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside, to the yeomen and progressive gentry, and to wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about.
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By Rugoz
#14803283
The Immortal Goon wrote:2. It is insane to pretend that Russia and China were more prosperous before the communist revolutions. And not a credit to an argument.


Economically the communist revolution was disastrous for Russia.

As for the rest, the powerful exploiting the powerless has been a constant throughout history, it has nothing to do with private vs state ownership of the means of production.
User avatar
By Zagadka
#14804112
Finfinder wrote:A good example of why the left is losing is the hypocrisy of reaction to the firing of James Comey and the continued attempts at spin and propaganda.

For the billionth time, the opinions of Comey from the DNC are the inverse of the GOP. They cheered Comey when he opened up Hillary's emails the week before the election and now curse him. Both sides are stupid.
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