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The fairy tales of Charles Perrault - flickr
We already know what the right wants. They have been quite clear about that.
They want to be able to rape and pillage and steal in the manner of Ivan The Terrible, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Al Capone and General Franco. With an army of hoods, thugs, enforcers and henchmen to protect them and put down any resistance.
But what is that the left wants ?
Well I am going to take a guess here based on what I have read and heard of the the last 20 years or so.
Capitalism without the greed, corruption, fraud, inhumanity, brutality, heartlessness and arrogance. All the traits that define capitalism.
The trust busting of Teddy Roosevelt, the social programs of FDR, the space programs of JFK, civil rights of LBJ, energy and ecological policies of Carter and technical savvy of Clinton. But with out all that nasty militarism and corporatism and imperialism.
A congress that listens to people with no money more that those with all the money. That put’s each member’s personal desires aside for the good of the citizens.
Business that puts the welfare of the workers and consumers and the planet ahead of any personal gain.
A society that is educated, informed, astute and involved. One that treats everyone equally. (More or less)
And economy that is just and fair and based on the needs of the people as a whole. Regards the planet and all its life as sacred.
Where The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid and Roy Rogers come galloping into town and “Clean it up” with little or no violence and certainly no bloodshed.
This list is obviously a fantasy and exits only in the minds of those who believe in such things or are on some kind of drugs since it ain’t no way gonna happen in reality. A list of contradictions and incongruities.
In other words a world that is as unlikely to materialize for the left as much as for the right. Not and keep the current system/government/economy intact.
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I’m not sure that any form of capitalism is what I would want. It seems to be best of the standard choices (capitalism, socialism, communism) in terms of providing a booming and vibrant economy, but it’s nowhere near the best in terms of fairness and taking care of ALL of the people.
Perhaps some new form is required. Because I think that any form of capitalism, even with the caveats you list above, is doomed to eventually result in what we’re seeing now. If anyone has ever played a game of Monopoly to it’s conclusion, you realize that seems to be the direction any sort of capitalism takes.
I do, however, agree with the general points you make and highly recommend this diary.
Oh for sure. This is the biggest fallacy. On a finite planet, only one country/group/etc. can have am growth economy and eventually it will fail as well.
I have seen most of what I mentioned above but only in small groups. Rarely – if ever -m in large ones.
The left wants, at least, a political party that represents its interests as much as the Republicans represent the right. Unfortunately, The Democrats also represent the right – as you define it:
“They want to be able to rape and pillage and steal in the manner of Ivan The Terrible, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Al Capone and General Franco. With an army hoods, thugs, enforcers and henchmen to protect them and put down any resistance.”
One wouldn’t assume that, given how many self-described progressives voted for Obama and his loathsome version of a political party that is “democratic” in name only.
Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Equality. Justice. Sustainability. Peace, freedom, joy, and laughter.
The Power of Laughtivism: Srdja Popovic
Common human visions, hopes, dreams. Unblocking why that can’t happen.
Marx says that can’t happen because the 1% is more interested into leveraging their capital into power and status and distance. At the expense of everyone else. And justifying it with the ideology and consciousness that “capitalists” themselves have come to promote as “capitalism”. Those capitalists who spend billions of dollars to ensure that the 99% is so divided that a good portion of them also worship at the altar of (now-Christianized) capitalism.
All of those items in your quotation are means that are purported to lead to what people want–but fail. Collectively there is is the possibility of building other means, which will likely also be imperfect. So the 1% finances another huge set of institutions to suppress that possibility. But it is also maintained by people who are part of the 99%. And that is the weakness that keeps the 1% awake at night. What if….? It is the same fear that slaveholders had in the 1800s.
Good work. Recommended (the article and the program).
I want complete reform of everything. I hope and expect us to get it; if not in the s world, then the next. (But since this is the only one we confidently know about now, we should try for it here and now.)
I want a well-fed clean-energy peaceful future with people cooperating for the common good, and happy that they are doing the right thing. And the forests will echo with laughter.
I must object to the inclusion of Napoleon in that list–a little. He did do quite a few things that actually improved the standard of living of most of the French people for years in some cases and decades in others.
Of course, that was at the expense of most of the rest of Europe, but I digress.
But I agree with everything else. The so-called Left in America isn’t REALLY very leftist at all. At best, it’s Social Democracy, an ultimately futile attempt to control capitalism. Some things just can’t be controlled. Like rabid dogs, it can only be destroyed.
I think the question itself is problematic, since it presupposes that the left is a monolithic Borg like movement that thinks and acts as one when in fact it is at best a loose coalition of disparate groups that is deeply divided on priorities, methods and outlook. It could hardly be otherwise -any categorization as broad and imprecise as “the left” can only either be described in terms so vague they are almost meaningless or else in terms that on closer examination will be found to exclude at least some of the groups that “the left” is commonly understood to encompass.
Btw, the same is true for “the right”, which is a sometimes uneasy marriage of convenience between social and economic conservatives.
Ideology is a conglomeration of values that should not be weighed on an attainability scale. Such is the nature of values.
Perhaps, as you say, “the left” envisions “a world that is as unlikely to materialize”. That doesn’t make such beliefs wrong nor does it render them unworthy.
I won’t speak for “the left” but what I actually want is to live in a country that values people over profits, a country that puts an end to all this military madness, a country that slams shut the perverse wealth gap, a country that reveres the natural world on which we all depend, a country that empowers its citizens instead of empowering its corporation, a country intolerant of poverty and joblessness and homelessness and hopelessness, and a country committed to fulfilling the potential of each and every citizen.
Oh, and, no more capitalism, please. To build an economy around the pursuit of profits at the expense of our humanity, our planet and our collective future is a path to an unsustainable existence in an unsustainable world. The future will be based on cooperation rather than competition… or there will not be one.
The Left in the United States ended with the Palmer Raids in November 1919. Since then and the creation of the FBI, the left has been continuously suppressed to the point that any mildly leftward chirps have been met with forced unemployment or worse. The resurgence of left-leaning thinking after 30 years of neoliberal dominance is something remarkable.
Note that repression of the left started early on. Haymarket Square is an example. Since 1919 it has been relentless instead of sporadic. Even during the New Deal and World War II.
Portraying something as a Borg is all the easier for guilt (or praise) by association.
Nationally, I can’t argue with that. Much. Locally…well, in the early 1930′s Communists in all but name were winning elections in the Dust Bowl-devastated areas of north Texas and Oklahoma. Ironic that all those counties are considered “Red,” in a very different way, now. And the labor movement was once again getting radicalized and starting to shoot back; one of the factors, I believe, that pushed FDR into the New Deal to save capitalism from itself.
Perhaps the resurgence in left-leaning thinking is caused by desperation and anger. I, for one, was not always a Socialist, just another liberal Democrat. People like us are pushed more to the real left by each Democratic Party betrayal of its self-professed principles.
You’re right about the relentless repression, though. The Occupy movement caught the PTB off guard for a few months, but they recovered quickly, with pepper spray and other fun stuff.
Your main criticism, that leftists are living in a fantasy world because what we want is impossible, is idiotic. You ask what ‘we’ want and give a fairly accurate answer. You didn’t ask what we realistically expect.
By the way, most of what we want would come true if election campaigns were publicly funded instead of being funded by the wealthy and the corporations. So, one change is all that’s needed to get the ball rolling in a major way toward our ‘fantasy’. Of course the PTB including the Supreme Court make that change impossible right now, but to call a reasonably democratic society a fantasy is just depressing, cynical, and unrealistic.
Have a little historical perspective: the U.S. has had better, much more authentically democratic governance, only 40 or 50 years ago. That wasn’t a fantasy. Europe had even better governments, social democracies with an abundant cradle-to-grave social welfare system. That system is perfectly feasible today if we can throw off control by the rich and their corporations.
Maybe you’re confused about what ‘left’ means (communists and socialists only?) but I think what you’re saying is ahistorical, since you’ve ignored the powerful leftward force that organized labor was from the thirties to the seventies. And you’ve ignored the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, and the anti-war movement of the sixties.
Organized labor was a big part of Democratic Party coalitions from the 30s to the 60s that produced anti-unemployment Keynesian economic policy, labor laws for a time favoring organized labor, Social Security, civil rights law, Medicare, Medicaid, Glass-Steagal, a slew of federal agencies that actually protected the public from out-of-control corporate capitalism, and a Supreme Court that, compared to the entire previous history of the U.S., radically restricted the power of cops and radically advanced the Bill of Rights. (Have only just scratched the surface with the preceding…)
I’m not confused. The notion of “left” is elastic depending on who is talking about it. And the coalitions with Democrats from the 1930s to 1960s did not affect the repression that originated in the Palmer Raids and was transmitted through J. Edgar Hoover. And the labor movement had its limits when it came to the left and to civil rights. The textile workers strike of 1938 was left hanging out to dry because the national unions did not want desegregated locals nor did the like socialist and communist organizers having organized a wildcat strike.
It was the failure to unite organized labor and civil rights in the South that allowed the passage of Taft-Hartley and right-to-work laws. It was the fear of the left that Democrats had that allowed Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy to red-bait their way into power and redirect policy away from the trends begun by the New Deal.
Since 1946, we have lost labor power, lost desegregation, created a metastasizing military-industrial-complex that drives war without end, lost civil liberties to state secrecy, lost regulatory protections including Glass-Stegall, and lost a liberal Supreme Court. Labor’s failure to embrace equal employment opportunity and the defection of a signficant (although not a majority) of labor voters to the GOP on law and order and cultural values issues are one of the main reasons for the current erosion of what was achieved in the 1930s and the 1960s. And part of that movement was whipped by facile equation of liberalism, social democracy, socialism, and communism with the system that existed from 1917 to 1989 in the Soviet Union.
All of those historical movements are mostly spent as movements and any contributions are those that were successfully institutionalized. And the civil rights movement and antiwar movement were both infiltrated and repressed, creating strains that fragmented and depressed the numbers involved in them as the 1960s went along. Until Occupy Wall Street came along, the left was either aligned with the current Democratic Party or was squabbling among itself about who the authentic left was. Both of those are consequences of repression of the movement so as to try to move it more and more rightward. To a great extent, the left now must rebuild the gains it made from 1930 to 1972. It must refight voting rights in the South. It must fight for collective bargaining. It must fight for equal rights for women and minorities. And it must fight to restore the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly that we could take for granted from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The most important part of my answer @4 is the first sentence.
I stand by asserting the damage that political repression had done to the left. Where are these guys and gals from the civil rights movement now? Yes, definitely one of them is in Congress. But that’s a pretty long list of folks that were being tracked. How many “outgrew it” or moved to religious thought or..other options.
Speaking as someone on the left- I don’t expect businesses to put people ahead of personal gain. Although I tend to disagree that putting people ahead can not lead to personal gain for businesses. The company that pays the minimum for as long as they can get away with it gets the bottom of the barrel in terms of employees who are knowledgeable and loyal. The company who juggles payroll to get out of obligations like health care often has sick employees who are not operating at optimal productivity. The company that “saves” money by using inferior components destroys its brand and risks losing consumers to competitors. These are all examples of practices businesses use with an eye on the short term. I believe emphasis should be on creating a product or service with a focus on long term. That being said I expect businesses to treat people on par with profit since their profitability depends on the well being of the people who consume their goods and services which is not the same as putting something above.
Regarding militarism, I have no problem with reasonable means of defending oneself. If someone were to hit me there is a good chance I’d hit them back. However, I’d do so without being paranoid that everyone is out to get me and striking randomly everywhere which seems to be prevailing policy. I do have a problem with imperialism or enriching ones nation off the backsides of other nations. I have a big problem with hypocrisy and double standards within the system. They make us less safe and fool no one other than ourselves. The world sees that we pursue nukes while telling other nations they can not. They get the hypocrisy of it. The world sees we have no problems installing or helping install someone we feel benefits us even if it means that the indigenuous people suffer under their control(Shah, Saddam). THIS is why they hate us, not because of our freedoms. I have a huge problem with allocating more resources then 10 nations beneath you to the detriment of domestic policy and the people who are struggling at home. In short, like the business structure, I think our foreign policy positions are short sighted and focus on short term gain rather than long term health and security for this country.
The last 2 are spot on. Then again, I tend to believe that educated and engaged populations understand the value of fairness and equality or that one leads to the other. A smart person recognizes that they are only as strong as the weakest among them and understand that everything has value in its own way, even if that value is not monetarily high. They get that they and their experiences are part of the small picture and they understand that the billions of small pictures make up the “big picture.” I refuse to be apologetic about my belief that we’d all benefit if we took the time to examine things, not just from our own perspective, but from the perspectives of the other people who share the world we live in. I believe it is in our nation’s best interest to encourage and pursue this philosophy as much as possible even though idealistically we may never realize 100%. You can’t move forward if you give up at the beginning under the guise that realistically you’ll never get everyone to relinquish ignorance or apathy. The goal is to get as many as possible to choose to abandon a myopic, selfish view of the world that treats other people’s experiences as superfluous and embrace the idea that values such as respect and fairness matter just as much as the value of a dollar.
Or wound up working on Wall Street or in the military industrial complex or became libertarians or democrats or simply dropped out.
I’m trying to get a grip on “The Left in the United States ended with the Palmer Raids in November 1919. Since then and the creation of the FBI, the left has been continuously suppressed to the point that any mildly leftward chirps have been met with forced unemployment or worse.” How could there have been no left during the ‘golden age’ (1945-1973) for American workers? Was it the right that decided to give such a large share of capitalist profits to workers during that time? How could there be no left during the golden age of the civil rights movement, from the mid-50s to the early 1970s? Was it the right that created the voting rights act, and affirmative action for African-Americans, Latinos and women? How could there be no left during the great antiwar movement? Was it the right that forced U.S. imperialism to retreat from Vietnam and Indochina, and created a ‘Vietnam effect’ that lasted at least till Bush I?
Okay, enough, we probly just have a misunderstanding on what ‘left’ means. Impossible to agree on that, but I think that the following covers most of what we mean it: anti-imperialism, pro-civil rights, pro-egalitarianism (which means redistribution from the top to the middle and bottom), pro-prosperity for the working class broadly defined, and pro-social-democracy. I think you likely have a narrower definition that excludes everything except the last item on the list and adds other stuff.
We’d be lucky if it was social democracy, or even moderate liberalism, that today’s left is seeking. Most of the organized “left” in the U.S. has become a pathetic veal pen for a rightist president.
Human consciousness Rely on its self. Extinction is not my big concern. Residuals are.
Recommended highly. Wonderful post and comments. Are we as a country willing to sacrifice totally our spoiled little lives and lifestyles to finally do a complete makeover? Not yet.
Reality is going to have to get much more desperate for many more people for that to happen. Almost on the verge of hopelessness,then surrender.
The Occupy movement gave me much hope and encouragement to not give up or give in. Contrary to some MSM thought, it’s not dead, just resting and catching it’s breath for the next round. I will be there again, as I know many others will too.
This movement may be our last chance. PEACE
We don’t have a misunderstanding about what “left” means. As I said before, that’s a pretty elastic term depending on who is using it. Ideas from the left of the turn of the 20th century did get popular centrist support during the New Deal and World War II because the right was discredited because of its approach to the Depression (Hooverism) and because of its isolationism and infatuation with Hitler before World War II. You can see this in the failure of the center, which accepted the New Deal, to protect workers seeking collective bargaining from repression by the states. Example: River Rouge strike.
Ideas from the left were adopted by necessity because nothing else had worked. That’s your first golden age.
The golden age of the Civil Rights era is more complicated because it main accomplishment was the ending of segregation by law in the South. It was a necessity of the center’s self-image of the US at the time–especially compared to the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union disappeared, so did the motivation for the center to continue to extend rights to minorities.
The left did not lose popularity; the idea there was a left remained unpopular to the center exactly as left ideas were being institutionalized in the New Deal. Even the New Deal faced constant delegitimization and attacks that continue to this day because there is not a left within the US political conversation (it is still beyond the fringe–”professional left”) to defend it.
When the police protect civil rights workers and labor seeking collective bargaining and peace activists and other peaceful protesters from goons, I might see the golden ages you keep talking about. It hasn’t happened because the law enforcement arms of the federal, state, and local governments have not ended repression of left ideas.
What we likely disagree on is the perception that the Democratic Party was part of the left in the 1930s and 1960s; it was nowhere near that. There were Henry Wallace, Olin D. Johnston (if you ignore his racism), Claude Pepper, and a few others in the Democratic Party who might be considered from the left. But James F. Byrnes, Bernard Baruch, both of whom advised FDR on what was possible? Likewise in the 1960s; it was a begrudging and divided Democratic Party that institutionalized desegregation. At the moment between “civil disobedience” and “law and order”.
Of course social democracy or moderate liberalism look good now, even to me. I supported Obama in 2008 because I was suckered by his rhetoric into thinking that maybe, just maybe, he was FDR II. FDR II would obviously have helped me and mine far more than the Bush III that we got.
Hell, right now Napoleon looks pretty good to me, or even Cromwell. You must understand that I am referring ONLY to the overall improvements in the living standards of the French and English peoples under their rule, and nothing else. This was not the case just ten years ago. Now I am no longer sure that representative democracy can survive, or even should for a few years after the current system collapses, which is now unavoidable, IMHO.
I am pointing out that if enough people lose too much, too quickly, if they see that their children have no hope of living as well as they or or their parents did just a few decades ago, that something like a military dictatorship that delivers the goods becomes acceptable to them. And that it can happen in just a few years. I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism, so I believe that it CAN happen here.
Especially when the organized “left” has become a pathetic veal pen for a rightist president.
Very good summary. The period in U.S. history when center-left to left ideas were most popular was immediately before World War I. Admittedly, the actual achievements of the liberals and leftists in that era were not great–there were horrible working conditions and appalling racism–but the arrow of change was in a leftward direction until World War I and the political witch hunts of the Wilson administration created an anti-left popular prejuedice that has never really dissipated. Theodore Roosevelt, though his actual achievements were somewhat paltry, was arguably the most progressive U.S. president between Lincoln and the present day. The Progressive (Bullmoose) party which he led in the presidential election of 1912 ran to the left of the Democrats and Republicans and finished second, ahead of the Republicans under Taft. In that same election, the Socialists with Eugene Debs as their standard-bearer received 6% of the national vote.
Right on about the police. The militarization and gang mentality being created in law enforcement across the country must be stopped. Dorner’s case was just an example to others of what will happen if you step out of line. It was the LAPD, though. The NEW RULE OF LAW is being enforced.
We just aren’t being told what that is. PEACE
As long as their children can be hypnotized by the glitter and bells and whistles of a coporatised educational system and the Lexus and shiny new condos it promises – but usually does not keep – this will take a while.
I thought of another difference. When I say there is no left left in America, I mean that the debate and discourse that is present in the center truncates off the left by discrediting, marginalizing, and using dishonest paraphrase of left ideas. From the 1930s to the 1980s, those techniques in center discourse were applied to both the left and the right. Now only the left is treated that way. What that does is isolate the left to talking among themselves. And that leads to contradictory trends: emphasis on orthodoxy (who is really “the left”), schism and left-left conflicts that distract from the main political issues, a social dynamic that is not welcoming to new folks, a social dynamic that become dour. The Occupy Wall Street movement worked counter to that trend of isolation: “the 99%” is the frame for breaking out of isolation and opened up the left political conversation to lots of new people. For a few folks, that ruined the club. Now they will have to talk about left ideas with folks who cannot be automatically presumed to nod and agree and say the predictable things in response.
Thanks for raising the issues, fairleft. It’s pushed my thinking some.
Oh…you’re talking about those who just love(d) Cosby and Sammy and George Lopez all from the living-rooms of the their nice ethic free suburbia.
Who work in their cushy jobs in academia and the defense related jobs in high tech or the software or health care areas. That believe that unions are vulgar and beneath them.
Who just love having a black president just as long as he does not look, act, dress or sound black. Like an Eisenhower come Clinton in black face.
Like the liberals that Phil Ochs sung of.
As you elaborate, I get it that your historical assertion — “The Left in the United States ended with the Palmer Raids in November 1919″ and so on … — makes sense within your special to me understanding of what ‘the left’ means, sort of. We can interpret the movements that successfully pushed the country way to the left on civil rights and women’s rights as centrist movements, those who got the U.S. out of Vietnam and created the ‘Vietnam hangover’ that greatly cut back on U.S. militarist imperialism as centrists, the environmental movement that created the EPA as centrists, and the unions who for several decades made sure the government pursued a Keynesian pro-high-employment economic policy as centrists.
Love me I’m a Liberal…
Thank you too. Your notions about centrism canceling out leftism are credible and I will think about them a lot.
“Was it the right that created the voting rights act, and affirmative action for African-Americans, Latinos and women?”
Yes.
I don’t know what the Left WANTS but I can tell you what it NEEDS:
History lessons.
There is no left in the US… just a scattered bunch of people who are not happy with the greed that unfettered capitalism leads to. We’ve lost the sense that we are in shared present and future and not just taking care of no. 1.
The policies of the US are now about advancing the interests of capitalism and corporations which are the players in that paradigm… all others get dragged along and some occasional crumbs fall their way.
What do Progressives want?
They want the same thing that Lafayette wanted when he came here from France, supported and fought for George Washington. They want Liberty, Justice, Equality. They want TRUE representation of the People and REAL Respect from those they place into office!
I’ll add one;
capitalism without corporatism
In pre-PowerPoint days, FDR had a pretty good list of bullet points in his 1944 State of the Union address:
Left/Right…In/Out……Up/Down….. What we want and what we get are very different things, and 99% of us really don’t have anything to say about it. How about we start over ? PEACE
When capitalists sing the praises of capitalism, alarm bells should be ringing in your head, because that means they’re fucking you financially.
Socialism is what keeps these vampires in check, FDR KNEW this.
My wish would be for honest politicians – if we had that, all the rest would follow.
Your statement is a VERIFIABLE lie…The votes for all the civil rights legislation including the 19th amendmant ( it required an amendmant to that holy bible of liberty the constituion before women could votes) are a matter of record….We all can use some more history lessons, but not from wherever you got yours.
thats just the kind of ridiculous twisting of words that was mocked in the post.
“In other words a world that is as unlikely to materialize …”
Choosing to live an ethical life begins with intent and continues with action. It is not dependent on outcomes. The commitment to build a better world for everybody should not be disparaged because it is difficult or unlikely.
Book Salon up in a few min.
Book Salon up with Tom Wilber’s Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortune, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale hosted by Steve Horn
The Palmer Raids of 1920 were against the foreign born elements of the IWW. The suppression had begun in ernest even before WWI.
The IWW was for a replacement of the capitalist and working wage system.
That was the left. It was destroyed.
The AFL was for negotiated inclusion in that system.
The IWW was quite distinct from the COMINTERN. The later commandeered the mantle of the ‘left’, even though as socialism goes, they were (authoritarian) right wing.
See Chomsky on the Soviet Union vs Socialism.
Effective propaganda was developed in the US to conflate socialism with the Bolsheviks. It was easy since both major propaganda systems (the US and USSR) made essentially the same claim. For diametrically opposite reasons.
I digress. The point is, there is almost nothing remaining of the ‘left’.
So to ask what does the left want, the same thing they always wanted, if you can find any of them.
The Occupy Movement was a remarkable exception, but again, they were dramatically suppressed.
I will digress again to make another point.
The working class consists of people who have no individual authority over the nature of their work.
That is about 80% of the US population.
The middle class are Doctors, Lawyers, middle managers, people who have some authority over the nature of their work.
That is about 20% of the US population. They tend to side with the capital class.
The capital class has complete (subject to those laws that are enforced) authority over the nature of their work. In fact, they can work or not. Their wealth and/or its investment maintains them.
They are about 1% of the US population.
The interest of the capital class has been served by convincing the working class that they are actually middle class when no such thing is true.
The problem for the IWW was their rejection of collective bargaining relying instead on continuous worker action. The AFL embraced collective bargaining which gave workers the sense of inclusion in the system the IWW wanted to replace.
This has led to present condition where few workers or anyone else can imagine an alternate system to the capitalist and wage system we have.
I think you and Tarheel are arguing 2 sides of the same coin and not realizing it. I think Tarheel is confusing “the Left” with the ideas of the Left. It seems to me that what he is really lamenting is that their hasn’t been another period of Left thought and ideological formation corresponding to that of the early part of the 20th century, which was the time of the greatest ferment of new ideas from the Left to address societal problems. After that time period, some of those ideas migrated and were taken up by the so-called Center. That’s when you see some Left ideas enacted into law through the New Deal and Civil Rights years, establishing a new baseline for Right-Center-Left in this country. This is the part you were arguing since these ideas were put into place by the nominally Left Democratic Party. After that time, it seems the Left devolved into just arguing over degrees of the same policies or technical points of implementation that don’t really matter much to anyone in a practical manner. If my characterization of Tarheel’s point is correct, I also share that lament and critique. So to say that there hasn’t been a Left in this country since 1919 just isn’t true. It’s just that the Left stopped coming up with any new ideas and settled for just transforming old ones.
I think Hedrick Smith’s, “Who Stole the American Dream”,told a compelling story of what happened to the American middle class from seventies until today. That story is one of a terrible loss starting with the Powell memo.
I’m not sure what the “left” really is. It seems to me we all have our own versions of it. For me I think it is a belief that government can improve our lives and it should pursue ” the public purpose”, as ill defined as that may be. The public purpose has been hijacked in my view. It has been bent to the will of the wealthy. We are trapped in a neoliberal economic world that defines our own views of the world, like small government, free markets (they don’t exist), the evil of deficits and acceptability of unemployment, to name but a few. Most importantly it now gives us flawed politicians as the best answer to the public purpose and keeps us in never ending wars.
The question is how do we move forward, not that conservatives have been at our throats for a hundred years. Shit. I think the wealthy have ” hunted” the left from the beginning. They have to, or they will realize their worst fears – - loss of power.
Capitalism to me is an American Communist system. Most people never really profit from working in a capitalist society. Only those ruling Capitalists who own the banks and corporations and pass the riches down to their heirs are profiting from pure Capitalism. Those who work and help promote the Kochs, Gates etc. I view as “oversee’ers” who think they will get rich and powerful by helping the elite. To me its similar to the days of salvery. In the end we really end up with nothing……our homes are taken from us when we get old and sick by the Nursing Homes and Hospitals when we can’t pay for care and many elderly get into “reverse mortgages” where the bankers end up getting your house back after you paid for it for 30years. We have nothing to leave our kids. In France, Spain and numerous other countries, these properties go from family to family throughout the years.
And you will have to ask yourself if you want really to replace capitalism or control it. Replacing it will require votes unless you plan something more ambitious. Those battles with communism and socialism ended in those systems being thought alien.
Those are exactly the kinds of problems that government can help solve. We will never have a nation of millionaires, but it can be a hell of a lot,better than today.
“Your statement is a VERIFIABLE lie”
But you didn’t verify it, did you?
Percentages of “Yes” votes by Party on the Voting Rights Act of 1965
House: R = 85%, D = 80%
Senate: R = 97%, D = 74%
Since I looked up those numbers for you maybe you’d look up the numbers on the 19th? A good starting place might be when it was first introduced in the Senate by Republican Aaron Sargent of California in 1878.
Did you know the Republican Party included support of the ERA in its platform for FORTY YEARS, by the way?
Thank you AliceX !
The Left is intellectually bankrupt.There is more enthusiasm for CU demise than a public option for campaign financing .Many ,if not most ,of the self-defined left tacitly or readily support economic globalization but hate military imperialism ,yet they are two sides of the same coin .Almost by definition ,the Left is most concerned about global warming along with life-sustaining ecosystems being plundered , yet ,obviously that imperial coin ensures planetary destruction via transnational trade and its stability-making militarism that maximizes returns by diminishing risks and imposing certainty into market pillage.
The Left has what it should have ,wins what it should win ,which is absolutely nothing .
Are you conflating Republican and Democrat with left and right, and the roots of the politics of the movement with the politics of the members of Congress at that time who voted on the legislation?
Southern Democrats (representing ideas associated with the right) voted against the Civil Rights Act. Moderate Republicans (representing ideas to the left of what we generally see among Republicans today) supported it.
Thank you, AliceX. There is nothing that I disagree with in your statements.
I chose the 1919 Palmer Raids because that was when the federal government in the form of the US Department of Justice institutionalized what had up to then been local or state repression. And out of those raids came the refocusing of an office primarily concerned with “white slavery” into an agency very much interested in the left, and shortly afterward headed by J. Edgar Hoover, whose ghost still stalks the halls of the Hoover Building. (metaphorically, folks) Repressing the left took on a national institutionalized form.
I think that gets at one issue among several consequences of repression. Where do you see the need for new ideas today? Coming at it a different way, which ideas of the left are now stale?
Dignity
Justice
Community
Peace
Let’s get this straight. Right here, right now.
There can be no capitalism that does not lead directly to corporatism. Ever. There is no “good” version of capitalism. Never can be. Never will.
The ONLY goal of capitalism is the accumulation of more profit, the sooner the better. Get this idea that capitalism without corporatism can exist, at least for the long term, out of your head. Now.
It can’t happen. It’s impossible. You dance on the line of insanity if you think otherwise. IMO.
That’s pretty good, if I do say so myself. And I do.
The question is: How far are you, or I, willing to go? There’s the rub, you see.
Why on Earth could you support Obama just a few months ago and then say something as true as what you just did now? Just curious.
You don’t have to answer; maybe better if you didn’t. Welcome aboard, mate.
That comment is so full on non-sequitors and illogic that it sounds like it came from a think tank like the Heritage Foundation.
Does it?
Maybe you should look up that figure. Why don’t you?
Just asking.
“The middle class are Doctors, Lawyers, middle managers, people who have some authority over the nature of their work.”
Interesting definition. Now, define “some.”
Pretty tough, isn’t it?
You made some really, really good points. But doctors and lawyers? How many of them really have some authority over the nature of their work when they are constrained by the orders of the corporate HMO’s and law firms for whom they work? And if they don’t, risk getting fired and unable to pay off their huge student loan debt?
Many doctors and lawyers, and other members of what used to be realistically called the professional classes, no longer have very much independence. This is an important fact. Think about it.
We want truth, justice and the American way.
That LBJ was a real arm-twister and if you express it in percentages, you don’t realize that the GOP only had 34 Senators in 1964 and 176 House seats.
The vote count, as opposed to percentages were Senate: D-47 R-30 (some folks ducked the vote)
In the House: D-221 R-112.
You need also note that this was before the modern conservative movement took over the GOP and purged it of the Javitts Republicans and Rockefeller Republicans who pushed for civil rights legislation.
Dishonest statistics and dishonest history.
The Eisenhower-era Republicans and Democrats from outside the South pushed for civil rights legislation only to encounter Senate filibusters from the likes of then-Democrat Strom Thurmond, who became a key player in the Southern Strategy the modern conservatives used to take over the GOP. Prior to the ideological Goldwater run in 1964, Congress was less ideological and less partisan.
Mostly because I think it’s the responsibility of the poster who called me a liar, partly because I already did provide numbers on the other issue, and partly because it doesn’t matter: I’ll just get told that they were left-leaning Reps and right-leaning Dems so it doesn’t count.
I think the percentages are more useful that the counts because they more accurately show the position of the Parties on the issue. Certainly more Dems voted for the Act than Reps: that’s because there were more Dems than Reps (about twice as many, in fact) serving, not because the Act enjoyed more support amongst Dems than Reps.
In the Senate, for example, there were 66 Dems and 31 Reps voting. Of the Dems, 17 voted “No”, of the Reps, just one. Seems pretty obvious which Party was ideologically more behind the idea.
Those 17 Dems were virtually all from Southern states, states in which the GOP now dominates. Again, parties in 1965 were not organized ideologically. Both parties represented a spectrum of ideologies from the conservatism of Goldwater (R) – Thurmond (D->R in 1965) to Jacob Javits (R) – Ted Kennedy (D). The ideology represented by this vote was at the center of public opinion at the time. Thurmond change in party anticipates the rightward move in the GOP.
Nays – Alabama – Hill and Sparkman, Arkansas – Fulbright and McClellan, Florida – Holland and Smathers, Louisiana – Ellender and Long, Mississippi – Eastland and Stennis, North Carolina – Ervin and Jordan, South Carolina – Russell (D) and Thurmond (R), Texas – Tower (R), Virginia – Robertson and Byrd.
In short, the vote was strictly regional.
Well yes, the corporate agenda squeezes everyone, except for the top rung.
Doctors and Lawyers generally do not punch a time clock, that is one underlying difference from the working class. I can’t answer for every situation but my point is that there is an important distinction to be made between those in what you call the professional class, a subset of the slightly larger middle class versus the working class.
How would I define ‘some’ individual authority. It is simple really, it is anything more than none. None is what the working class has, individually.
Unionism, in some form, is what provides the working class with whatever authority they might claim, but it is not an individual authority.
There has been fierce debate in the AFL vs the CIO versus the IWW as far as craft unionism versus industrial unionism.
But the debate about replacing the capital class, versus negotiating with them has long ago subsided.
Replacing the capital class is what the left wanted, that is what they still want, in their meager remnants. That is how I define the left.
It takes one to know one.
And I should add, there is not an absolute delineator as to definition. But there are very real definitions according to economic power.
People without independent means can sometimes shift between classifications. In my previous line of work (artistic) I could sometimes be in the hiring class, my lowly euphemism for the capital class, where I was in control doing an independent, though high finance low budget project.
Or I could be engaged for consultation, ie middle class.
Or I could hire out as a wage slave.
Whichever it was I didn’t make squat.
There are working class people who can make upwards of one hundred thousand dollars a year, with overtime and what have you.
By my definition there are capital class people who might make very little.
But these are outliers. It is not the amount but the power that is essential.
Nor should potential political allies be denigrated for their failure to attain standards of legitimate leftism as defined by the “True” Left.
Other than the Defense related jobs, I fail to understand why one’s choice of employment, should be an issue.
There are many who are quick to assert that they, and only they, possess the qualities required to be practitioners of true liberalism, and all others who would claim to be leftists are apostates, the deluded, the posers, or veal.
Reminds one of some other groups who claim to be the only true believers.
As anyone can see, there is no ‘Left’ in America to speak of.
So the question ‘What does the Left want?’ makes no sense.
Division by zero yields nonsense.
Speaking of Zero, and division:
Here’s a clue- Democrats love Obama, despite the fact that he is arguably the worst president in recent history, eclipsing even the unmitigated global disaster that was George W. Bush.
(And since today, thanks to the amplification of technology, the decisions of a single man can have real world consequences far beyond what they have ever had to date, one might argue that Obama is indeed the worst president in America’s entire history).
That Democrats love Obama despite his policies, is a clue that suggests that the better question may be, “What do people want?”, since the term ‘Democrat’ has long since ceased to make sense as a practical category in the United States, just as the obsolete category ‘Liberal’ had before it .
The answer to that question ‘What do people want?’ seems to be power for its own sake.
This truth is at the root of the glib tribalism that obfuscates and lubes every debate on virtually any issue, consequential or trivial in this country- on those vanishingly rare occasions when there is a debate.
Starting decades ago, the Republicans embraced, nurtured, and wallowed in this truth. They grew gills to breathe it like air. There was a certain natural and honest affinity in their core lizard psychology that made the logic of this move easier for them. The dissonance was less painful.
Since Clinton, the Democrats have been playing catch up to the Republicans, but to the ‘Right’s chagrin, history has proved the Democrats to be more than adept. As science has documented, the lizard adapts to a variety of climates.
Obama is the fruition of the Clintonian promise and ideal, and although some may say its premature, I believe Obama’s hero, the Gipper, would swell up with pride and get a little teary eyed, if only he were here to see it. And then blink the mist away with nicotating membranes.
What do ‘Liberals’ want? If I ever happen bump into one in real life, I’ll ask and get back to you.
In the larger picture, its hard to ignore the fact that through a lot of lucky breaks, we had a pretty good chance here in America to build something, and that we then proceeded to throw it away for a cheesy business as usual run of the mill serf empire, increasingly bejeweled with cheap last century science fiction ornaments of all kinds.
Ask not what do ‘Liberals’ want, but rather what do people want. The answer is horrific, and what’s worse, we’re all getting it, “good and hard”, as Mencken used to say.
Leftists want to replace the capital class.
Liberals, as observed by Marx (but in a definition of another whose name escapes me), want to mitigate the oppression of the working class by the capital class.
There is a world of difference.
Most people in America want more exceptionalism. More exceptionalism for themselves, that is. Also, most Americans want True American Exceptionalism. They want more Americans to pay taxes, except them. They want their American neighbors, the jerks, to pay more for their houses in their neighborhood; any a-hole except them. They want the best deal on a new car and say, ” make the profit on the next guy “, every American except them needs to pay more. You name it; whatever it is, Americans want it and exceptional and preferential treatment, to boot. Just like that! Snap of the fingers, exceptional. This is why, when Americans go overseas, they pay close attention to those State Department warnings about tourist ” safe ” areas. Because they know deep down inside, most people in this world are kind and thoughtful, with the exception being themselves, of course.
Amen. No one is even trying to represent the left anymore.
I strongly disagree.
Not only is there a left that knows it is the left, but many people on the right poll left if issues are presented without characterizing them as left or right.
Politicians no longer represent the left. The left is not organized. Etc. Many things can be said about the left that are accurate. But, that the left no longer exists is not accurate. That is a myth sold by both major political parties and the media. Don’t buy it.
I disagree that the post accurately describes what the left wants.
What’s your point, cmaukonen?
I have blogged this before.India is a role model for democracies.
The civil servant can be a “strong hand of careful wisdom”. The framework is where the wisdom resides. I give this using the example of India with a better constitution.
India has a better government with “socialism” and “fraternity” added and “pursuit of happiness” deleted. I copy the preamble from the wiki:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Preamble_to_Constitution_of_India.pdf&page=1
India supports the commons well, with low taxes to the agriculture sector, free university education, rural employment for infrastructure development, funding for science and technology development etc. The central bank, RBI was nationalized in the year 1949 and combines the treasury and federal reserve, is owned by the govt and operates as a bankers bank for all state banks (owned by the individual states). Its banking is mostly government owned and operated by well qualified civil servants (from the Indian Administrative Service) and the plutocracy is kept away. Letting banks be private is a disaster because it gives money creation power to the wealthy which leads to corruption of the government. There are no too-big-to-fail banks in India.
Railways, oil and gas, National Airlines, post and telegraph, Ship building, Steel Industry are government owned. There are also many private airlines. Private enterprise is not discouraged but anything related to mineral wealth is owned by the government.
The treasury and fed are combined into a central bank and money creation is not restricted by “debt limits”. It offers T bills for sale but is not required to do so. It is left to the banking department. Projects approved for funding from various ministries are directly funded by the central bank. Commercial banks are restricted to support the commons:
Banks are mandatory required to keep 24% of their deposits in the form of government securities.
Banks are required to lend to the priority sectors to the extent of 40% of their advances.
As per the CIA World Fact-book, in 2010, India ranks 49th in the world, with respect to the public debt, with a total of 51.90% of GDP. India must know Modern Monetary Theory just like Japan!
There are many parties and proportional representation in elections. In general, coalitions govern better than a two party bought-and- paid- for government as in USA. In the lower house of the parliament, 33% is reserved for women( a proposal not finally voted on), 50% for men and the rest for socially backward classes and tribes. There are no lobbies but only selected (by peer review) committees and ad hoc committees to assist in policy making. There is no filibuster. Money matters are formulated by the lower house as here and the upper house has two weeks to consider changes. If nothing happens in that time the bill passes.
The idea “government is your enemy” will never fly in India.
The wealth inequality in India is similar to that of Canada and Australia. Of course, India is much poorer than western democracies but is doing the right things for the future of the country. The corruption in India is small scale and is not hyper-scale as here, approved by the Supreme court that corporations are people and money is free speech.
Ohio Barbarian@59 ,yet you apparently don;t have the chops to articulate the illogical elements and non-sequitors in my comment .Or , maybe the truth pissed you off ,and you thought about how petty ,vicious ,and, ah ,intellectually bankrupt you would appear to be if all you were packing was some grammar nazi attack .
You understood all my points ,so challenge them and spare me the routine of some passive/aggressive pansy .
Excellent! I didn’t think I’d get you, TarheelDem, to respond. I think any idea of the Left today that deals with inequality or with labor is probably an outmoded or old/stale idea. Not that inequality is something that is old and should be foresaken but that the ideas put forward usually are. I’ve been thinking about this and I think that the problem with today’s Left is that it doesn’t challenge the nature of today’s society. It accepts it and only seeks to modify it, and that is the problem with the Left overall. The only way to truly affect society is to change its nature. That is why the Left of the early 20th century was so impressive. It sought to change the nature of society and its ideas could only hope but do so. We need to change the nature of our society. Instead of telling you what I think is stale, I’ll tell you what I think would change its nature.I think if we demanded that Glass Steagall was not only reenacted but made a Constitutional amendment (and hence quite difficult to game and revoke),that would change the nature of society. I think if instead of having safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare we instead said that we are going to give every American a stipend equal to 160% of the current federal poverty level as a basic living wage and say that anything more is up to them, that would change the nature of our society. I think if we said that corporations are not individuals and again made that a constitutional amendment, that would change the nature of our society. I also think that if we change our legislature to a parliamentary system with proportional representation and not a winner take all system, that would change the nature of our society. I think we need to aim larger and refuse to permanently accept middling changes that only seek to rearrange the chairs instead of changing the dance hall
Pansy?
Link?
This is getting even more idiotic. The left was an enormous and powerful force within the U.S. in the 1930s, obviously pressuring FDR from the left and so on. So the left of course was not ended with the damn Palmer Raids in 1919. I don’t know what larger point you and tarheel feel a need to make, but can we at least be reality-based? The left will always have a smaller megaphone than the right, but we need to speak truth against their lies.
There is no room in Obama America today for either real liberals or leftists. Open up a space for liberals and you will have a space for leftists (the anti-left, Cold War liberals of the 1940s through 1980s are an impossibility today). During the Cold War, liberalism was in the main stream. Today it is in the far fringes. To be a true liberal today means to have an open mind, which means to be open to left ideas. Liberals and leftists must unite. They must view themselves as part of a continuum rather than adversaries. Otherwise they will continue to be victims to the immense forces of the right arrayed against them.
Yep. Justice is an old idea.
Remember, the uniparty governs from the extreme right.
It’s definitely a confused conversation. But 1919 just won’t do. The simple fact is that the left in the U.S., and its ideas, were never stronger than during the 1930s. It would be very accurate historically to say the left was killed in the post-WWII communist witchhunt. And then came half back to life between about 1967 and 1972 or so. This is my and probably most people who think about it’s way of looking at things, which happily is a little more optimistic than the ‘it was all over in 1919′ perspective.
Sometimes I think people on the left are looking too hard for pessimism …
How do you know that? In your experiments have you tried social democracy, including social democratic control of the media, with of course all elections publicly funded? Did capitalism _still_ lead to corporatism when you tried that?
You keep talking about the left, but without definition.
You are quite right that what was called the left, continued into the thirties.
Their influence on FDR was greatly heightened by the campaign by Upton Sinclair for Governor of California. I include a quote from him below.
The basic definition we might seemingly agree on, is the meaning to replace the capital class.
The IWW did not define a state replacement, the Bolsheviks did.
The Bolsheviks, by their own campaign, commandeered the mantel of the left.
There is an enormous distinction to be made. The IWW sought to replace the capital class with the worker’s ownership itself. The Bolsheviks from the outset, despite the push from Trotsky, defied local worker’s ownership.
The Bolshevik’s meant to replace the capital class with their own class, the apparatchiks.
Which they did.
—
FDR at first clung to his initial campaign conservatism. But by 1935 he was pushed to the left.
Upton Sinclair, a member of the Socialist party until 1934.
From WIki:
Standing alone, the numbers you cite are meaningless and deceptive.
As for the Equal Rights Amendment, the left campaigned for it, Republican conservatives campaigned against it.
Now, I’m the one who is “just asking:” Why are Republicans attracted to post on Democratic message boards?
BTW, you seem to be assuming that Republicans were always “the right” and Democrats were always “the left.” Besides, the more relevant distinction is liberal versus conservative And region has always been very relevant.
The Republican conservatives that fought the ERA circa 1970s until its time expired and dog whistled about states rights while Johnson was passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shares little ideology with a liberal of the Reconstruction Era.
Guess how the “Solid South” votes today? (Hint: Google Lee Atwater Southern strategy or maybe Lee Atwater states’ rights and other dog whistles relied on by Republican politicians) Guess how California votes today?
I know, right. Every advance we have made has been the result of someone daring to believe and pushing for it even when the outcome was undetermined and meant possible failure. Heck, in some cases, generations failed at things before a dream could be achieved. Yet, it seems the “realists” would rather never try then risk failing. Myself? I’d rather die trying then live “realistically” in a world that believes that fairness and equality are too hard to attain.
seems to me as straight forward a statement as can be said, I think the only people who might think it’s “twisted” are those people who think the statement falls short of their opinion
Hi, Ohio.
I think many people use the terms “liberal,” “progressive,” “left” and even “Democrat,” but they are not all talking about the same thing. I believe that “progressive” and “liberal” especially have almost as many meanings as there are people who use those words.
Indeed, Obama has described himself as a New Democrat, a progressive and a moderate Republican of the 1980s. I think Obama has used all of those words correctly, but I am guessing that a good number of people who self describe as “progressive” think he cannot possibly be all three. However, the Progressive Party did consist of the left wing of the Republican Party.
To me, Obama and most of today’s Democratic Party is not left at all, but center right. Globally, today’s U.S. Democratic Party is considered relatively conservative and tends to align with conservatives of other nations. Of these things, I am sure.
I am a lot less sure of this, but I will throw it out. The Green Party today may be something like the Democratic Party of a few decades ago and there is almost nothing like the American liberals/unionists/Communists of the 1920s to McCarthy. If there is, I would really like to know.
Actually, I’m the only one here who offered a definition, neither you nor Tarheel has, in my comment 17 to TarheelDem:
The left did not die in 1919, and was very strong in the 1930s and it’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise. That’s all my beef with Tarheel consists of. But I think it’s obvious my definition is broader than yours, and maybe broader than Tarheel’s.
As for left pressure on FDR, I think you’re exaggerating the fear of Sinclair (who lost the gubernatorial election in 1934) and maybe ignoring the left populist threat Huey Long, who was a sitting Senator and overwhelmingly popular in his home state.
Left is defined by extreme skepticism at least regarding the capitalism’s claims to produce the most ideal social order.
Women’s rights? Liberal. Civil rights for sexual minorities? Liberal. Civil rights for racial and religious minorities? Liberal.
You can have fully empowered women, married gays in the military, and black Presidents commanding a global military empire in a capitalist society that steals the future wages of its own people for a tiny elite of corrupt bankers, pushes the planet’s ecosystems and species to the edge of collapse, and crushes hundreds of millions of people worldwide into selling their labor at wage price that barely keeps them alive. The proof? We have that exactly right now.
We have Rainbow Coalition liberal capitalism and it is a global nightmare. The post 60s “New Left” of (worthy) liberal causes masquerading as revolutionary emancipation is exhausted. Its capitalist dance partner has fucked all the people that the New Left proposed to emancipate to death.
I would like a government free of indebtedness and servitude to the wealthy elite. A government that speaks the truth to power and that actually works to protect the rights and the economic well being of the average American. Not one clinging to power and the status quo by any means perpetuating corruption at the highest levels.
My definition includes social democracy, anti-imperialism, egalitarianism, and full-employment so I think I got you mostly covered … Anyway, if a ‘leftist’ were anti-civil rights I think it would be tough to call such a person a leftist. What can I say, it’d be weird …
One disagreement. The Democratic party led by Obama is really hard right, and is able to accomplish a sleight-of-hand among its hypnotized base by being liberal on a few social issues (gay rights and gay marriage; woman’s right to choose (albeit to a more limited extent than before); marijuana legalization (in some states–not within the Obama administration itself). On economic, environmental, social welfare, public education issues, and even many labor union issues affecting the public sector, the Democrats are little distinguishable from today’s Republicans. On national security and civil liberties issues, Obama is even more autocratic than W.
It is often not noticed that the rightward transformation of the Democrats has been just as extreme as that of the Republicans.
As I said above, the uniparty governs from the far right.
Totally true. In the hands of the uniparty leaders, these wedge “rainbow coalition” issues are cynically used to divide the American people. Democratic believers (those who are left) pride themselves on being more socially liberal, more science-based (as opposed to the Republican “religious nut cases”) in general, SO much more enlightened than the Republican troglodytes. Meanwhile, the planet continues to slide toward ecological doom. And one election is one by the Democrats, the next by the Republicans, as the political arrow moves ever further rightward.
Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply. I understand you better now, and I do agree with you, especially this:
“Replacing the capital class is what the left wanted, that is what they still want, in their meager remnants. That is how I define the left.”
That’s a damned good definition.
That’s a good answer and completely understandable.
I think you’re right about some of the Greens, anyway. I’m not familiar enough with them to say “all.” There IS at least one political party that does fit your description of a true leftist party, the Socialist Party USA, at least in its platform and the positions taken by its presidential candidate, Stewart Alexander.
Senator Bernie Sanders is a member, as much as he disappointed me in voting for the Affordable Care Act without a public option.
Be careful what you ask for. You are not describing the “Left,” as I and the diarist and lots of others here define it. You are describing what I would call “liberals,” who believe that capitalism can be successfully reformed and managed. They are not leftists.
You lay out a false argument because you use what I believe to be grossly false definitions, much like the the right wing does when it labels Obama a “socialist.”
IOW, you are using what in advertising and propaganda is called the Big Lie technique. Maybe you actually believe it, maybe not, I don’t know. I do know that I completely disagree with your definitions and therefore your conclusions.
Is that better? Or am I still a “pansy?”
Damn. That’s good. Every word is true. Well said.
“Standing alone, the numbers you cite are meaningless and deceptive.”
31 people in a group are sending out for pizza. 30 of them want a veggie pizza, 1 wants pepperoni and sausage. Is it “meaningless and deceptive” to say that as a group they support vegetarianism?
————–
“As for the Equal Rights Amendment, the left campaigned for it, Republican conservatives campaigned against it.”
You might want to submit that correction to Wikipedia. They have this crazy idea that “The Republican Party included support of the ERA in its platform beginning in 1940, renewing the plank every four years until 1980.[8] The ERA was strongly opposed by the American Federation of Labor and other labor unions, who feared the amendment would invalidate protective labor legislation for women. ERA was also opposed by Eleanor Roosevelt and most New Dealers. They felt that ERA was designed for middle class women but that working class women needed government protection. They feared that ERA would undercut the male-dominated labor unions that were a core component of the New Deal coalition. The amendment was opposed by most northern Democrats, who aligned themselves with the anti-ERA labor unions but the ERA was supported by southern Democrats and almost all Republicans.[8] In 1944, the Democrats made the divisive step of including the ERA in their platform, but the Democratic Party did not become united in favor of the amendment until Congressional passage in 1972.[8] The main support base for the ERA until the late 1960s was among middle class Republican women.”
————–
“Now, I’m the one who is “just asking:” Why are Republicans attracted to post on Democratic message boards?”
You’d have to ask a REpublican: I’m a registered Independent. As to why I’m here, it’s to read opposing viewpoints and discuss issues with people who hold divergent opinions. In theory that’s supposed to be a good thing in the political process.
For the record, I don’t consider FDL a “Democratic” message board as Nixonclinbushbama referred to it. I’m not a Democrat, either. I’m a Socialist. There are lots of Democrats here, as well as Greens, anarchists, independents of various stripes, and even a Communist or two.
I’d love to have a thoughtful, intelligent Republican. Unfortunately, thoughtful, intelligent people are rare over there these days.
Hey Ohio ,are you intentionally making straw arguments ? Initially I used the term self-defined Left with faux socialists John Nichols and Laura Flanders in mind.Even sell-out Van Jones defines himself as a socialist.Accordingly ,if you read my second comment more carefully, then it would be apparent you jumbled noun and adjective to construe a pansy ad hominem .
You make such snap judgments that you end up waging war against your own inferences .Why would you assume you have anything to teach me in the realm of political economy or German propaganda . Are you congenitally pedantic ? We’ve all read Bernays .
“I’m a Socialist. There are lots of Democrats here, as well as Greens, anarchists, independents of various stripes, and even a Communist or two.”
I came to the right place for “divergent opinions”, I guess!
Be well, OB.
So are canned responses that show you didn’t actually read my post.
I said:
And you responded:
As you can see, I originally phrased thing in terms of left vs. right, not Democrats vs. Republicans. As for the civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, Johnson administration led the fight for those, and the voting broke down regionally. The North and West voted for those bills, and Southerners opposed them. The Democratic Party in the North and West were not right-wing, of course, and especially Northern Republicans were far to the left of folks like Reagan and Goldwater. So the answer to my question should’ve been “no” not “yes”. ‘Nuff said.