What are the left?

[Bloitzhole]

Unions, worker's rights, high progressive tax brackets, equal access to education regardless of financial status, strong social security for everyone. I'd argue that these are the core principles that most leftists will agree on.

The premise of finding a "true" anything when attempting to describe an entire half of the political spectrum that is subdivided into many different parties in the majority of the world is an unnecessary attempt at oversimplification.
's like asking what the true nut-based pie is.

What I know for sure though, is that screeching retards on the internet aren't true anything.

 

[DiscoRodeo]

Something to also highlight, that I should of added to my last post here:

When I stated that the French revolution and what the "left" stood for during that assembly was very alien to the situation we have today,

I should also point out that Marxism is as alien as well, which is something that Marxists don't seem to understand. The situation that Marx talked about, even if you agree or disagreed with it, highlights a state of society where the proletariat actually existed as a class. Where the vast majority of people did work in factories, and where worker control of factories could of maybe been a thing.

Marxists today, or even as far as the 60s, don't seem to understand or appreciate that our societies in the West are largely deindustrialized, and that even the term proletariat would be inaccurate in describing class today. The solutions proposed by Marx make little sense once you realize that economics are no longer about worker control of factories (even if you agree with Marx, which I do not), because there are no factories. It's hard to talk about a fair share of the fruits of your labor, when a plethora of income is generated outside of the industrial sector. Maybe theres a stool to stand on if we are mentioning a company like Amazon, but the majority of our economy is service based and continually getting the squeeze in terms of "who we require to actually work the McJobs".

The notion that, the proles outnumber the bourj and the bourj needs the proletariat is basically dead in the water. Labor is in demand now for some industries such as hospitality, but are we to imagine that communism will be built on the hospitality industry, where even the owners of restaurants are not making buck due to overhead costs, where nothing is actually produced in America anymore? Most of the working class is more the precariat, always looking for a job, going from gig work to gig work and otherwise they have little to do with 19th century labor functions. If being bourgeois means owning the means of your production, how does that fare for Onlyfans? What about streamers? Does the left think that the working class will rise up for antiquated marches and protests, that have become such a predictable part of the status quo that parents are alright with sending their teenagers to them to larp, that people hand out water bottles at parade stands, and politicians will attend for selfies, only to sell these same people out nightly to billionaires?

What happens with communism, when workers in America working at Wal Mart get better wages, but then conveniently remember that the only way that this house of cards actually works is because teenagers in sweatshops in guatemala are making our t-shirts for 10 cents a day or farmers in Mexico are turning their farmland into deserts to cultivate our avocados? Are they to get their fair share as well? What about the children who mine the minerals required for the average laptop in the Congo? Do communists in the US realize that the standard of life that we have in the first world is only possible with the exploitation of the third, and that sans this, the price of everything would sky rocket? I'm not even opposed to paying equal wages to the third world necessarily for basic products, its just- I do not think leftists in the first world realize what the cost of "true equality" would actually be.

Unions, worker's rights, high progressive tax brackets, equal access to education regardless of financial status, strong social security for everyone.

I don't know if the left would universally agree to this, I mean- fuck taxes and fuck the state, but these are some general left wing things that are rather common in the US, if not universal.

 

[Farmer John]

The Left and Right divide is a generalization, an umbrella that describes multiple smaller groups each with their own ideas and agendas. And within those smaller factions there are individuals who also have their own ideas and agendas, so trying to find their common causes and core beliefs as a whole is a meaningless exercise since when you work your way down to the individuals they will often disagree with some or all of the stuff that the larger group clings to as important.

Some of the smaller groups and certainly individuals have agendas that center on self enrichment and preservation, and they are happy to burn down society for the chance to be king of the ashes. They then find one of the smaller groups or form their own and get them to move in lockstep, forming a vocal minority that draws a lot of attention that paints a picture of the larger group and thus the individuals that fall under that larger umbrella. This is a problem that both Left and Right suffer from, and the "bad actors" who benefit from this division are more often than not just seizing an opportunity to further their personal agenda without regard for if they were the cause of that opportunity or not. The ones that have true Machiavellian schemes of divide and conquer are luckily few and far between, it's mostly just people seizing an opportunity without regard for the consequences and the consequences providing more opportunities.

The only useful thing to come from labeling people as Left or Right is that it gives you and idea of where they stand, knowing that the two people you were arguing with considered themselves Left and Center gave you an idea of which you were more likely to find common ground with. When it comes down to single issues though there is just as much of a chance that you will agree with one as the other even if the chance is zero, you learned more about their opinions and beliefs by talking to them as individuals than you did by the title they labeled themselves with even if that label was a useful tool for everyone involved going into the discussion.

Maybe I'm just a Doomer who is still trying to look at the world through rose colored glasses, but I think we put to much weight behind the labels we put on people especially when it comes to politics. The labels are a useful tool but in the end meaningless. The validity of an individual person's beliefs has more to do with their actual beliefs than what team they are on, since their beliefs are more likely to effect the team they are on than the team they are on is to effect their beliefs.

It's nice of you to buy the Leftist a drink though. Maybe one day he will get to enjoy his Victory Gin out of his little china mug without a handle in peace, but until then make him listen to the opposition in exchange for handouts.