Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Liz from Leeds is my nu-god

Last week when @AyoCaesar was on The Wright Stuff, Liz from Leeds rang in to explain communism and it was beautiful. 😍😍 pic.twitter.com/OJoCHicuey

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) August 9, 2018

novara crew are going to need a better line on the USSR etc. than that

Are they?

if only stalin had had more revolutionary zeal

I don't really think it's up to present-day communists to answer for past regimes any more than it is present-day capitalists' job to answer for [insert major war or other foreign misadventure of your choice]. It's a dumb line of argumentation.

I agree but that doesn't make no true scotsman arguments convincing

liz from leeds i luv u

made this while bored at work
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10160621854435304&set=a.98630175303&type=3

https://i.imgflip.com/2fzdto.jpg

Ha, is that from an actual Misfits show?

could be, I just wanted a tense/ambiguous image of a crowd of people so I GIS'd mosh pit photos

A+

Corey Robin in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/what-socialism-looks-like-in-2018.html

It took Mr. Sanders to convince them that if tax credits and insurance exchanges are the best liberals have to offer to men and women struggling to make stagnating wages pay for bills that skyrocket and debt that never dissipates, maybe socialism is worth a try

What a ridiculous statement. You have miles and miles of distance to cover on the spectrum of re-distribution of wealth in America. How about exploring some of that before pursuing an entirely different economic system. If you're really serious about advocating something, which you have no evidence of being ever being succesful to a fraction of what you promise, then how about addressing the major inherent inconsistencies in the economic theory before deciding that "eh, it's worth a try"?

The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree.

There are many arguments against and valid criticisms of capitalism. Expounding does in no way increase the merit of socialism. Marx had that drivel about the oh so terrible division of labor as well, but at least he put forward a more or less coherent theoretical base. How about starting there?

Socialism means different things to different people. For some, it conjures the Soviet Union and the gulag; for others, Scandinavia and guaranteed income

Denmark, Sweden and Norway are literally examples of how wealth generated from capitalist economies can facilitate strong social programs to ensure high living standards for everyone and people are actually using it as an example of why capitalism is bad?

Under capitalism, we’re forced to enter the market just to live. The libertarian sees the market as synonymous with freedom. But socialists hear “the market” and think of the anxious parent, desperate not to offend the insurance representative on the phone, lest he decree that the policy she paid for doesn’t cover her child’s appendectomy. Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.

This is written by someone with a degree in political science? What kind of argument is this?

an argument that sure sounds fucking effective if you've ever been that anxious parent

Cool sock Prof Friedman

And why do you need to abolish capitalism to fix it? You know there are capitalist countries where basically everything up to breast implants is 100% covered by the state, right?

Actually, in many cases, you can get public grants for breast enhancement surgery here in Denmark, so imma scratch that

we need to abolish capitalism because it's destroying the planet and can't be "fixed"

also, you're in the wrong thread, you want this one:

your terrible ideas

also, FP

what's with the proliferation of Danes

did Fred leave the back door open again?

why do you need to abolish capitalism to fix it?

Good lord, This is the reddest of red herrings. "Abolishing capitalism" is nowhere on the US political radar. the highest flights of contemporary US socialism extend no further than "Medicare for all", student debt relief, and some form of livable wages. There are minor rumblings about Universal Basic Income, but they are no larger than a tiny cloud on the horizon. Europe is also far from trying to abolish capitalism, afaics.

Simmer down a bit and try to address reality.

tbf my city council rep is on the record as in favor of nationalizing Amazon.com

european capitalism is good yo varying degrees capitalism isnt the problem tbh sorry

there's only one capitalism

~ bob marley

no point in a totalizing theory if it doesn't totalize

oh i enjoy the discussions dont mind me

I was addressing an article that was posted here that criticized capitalism. Not crony capitalism, not unhinged capitalism, not neo-liberalism, not corporatism, not the state of the american economy. Unless the NY Times is in its own bubble way left of the US political radar, how am I off target?

Aboloshing capitalism because of environmental concerns is probably the only valid argument, yeah.

just as well we're literally destroying the planet and it's the most pressing concern in the existence of the earth

an article that was posted here that criticized capitalism.

god forbid! we all know that capitalism is beyond criticism. btw, here is a direct quote from that article:

There’s not much discussion, yet, of classic socialist tenets like worker control or collective ownership of the means of production.

Someone tweeted that the Onion has moved to the left of Jacobin and it's all I think about when I see their political stuff now. https://t.co/KM69clgVAO

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) August 27, 2018

god forbid! we all know that capitalism is beyond criticism.

Dude, i literally wrote in my initial post: "There are many arguments against and valid criticisms of capitalism". That doesn't mean that any unsubstantiated claim against it should stand unchallenged.

how am I off target?

By implying that abolishing capitalism was the point of the article you were responding to.

It’s an op-ed, it’s not going to be “substantial”

Capitalism has varying "iterations" but none, AFAICT, are sufficient to the task of the massive reorientation needed to circumvent climate catastrophe.

As soon as capitalism stops supplying me with cheap bup, it's in big trouble.

bup?

Fuckin' booze

lol I looked that up and the internet told me it was UK speak for "bread and butter" but I was pretty sure u meant booze

I don't think some of the colloquialisms of Dewsbury make it to Urban Dictionary!

hey have you guys ended capitalism yet

we've only just started this morning, jeez

ah, I heard some leftists were fighting about it and figured we were almost there :(

lmao "crony capitalism" doctor friedman you are unmasked

brony capitalism

It's good to know that in 2018, long after logins became required, people can still Google shit and randomly end up on ILX.

The marketplace of ideas, at least, still works.

This may be an opportune moment to note that I've been working my way through Jodie Dean's book The Communist Horizon since I stalled out with Donna Haraway in Anthropocene or Capitalocene.

The Dean book has 6 relatively short chapters, and so far I'm finding them alternately right-on on the one hand and decidedly Marx-apostate on the other. "Our Soviets" makes an interesting argument for a recovery of some of the Soviet legacy, "Present Force" is a dumb chapter that lays out communism as--you might guess--a present force. The next overlong chapter argues that 'the people' should replace the laboring class as the revolutionary subject, and sometimes I think she's onto something and sometimes I think she's just being another post-Marxist looking for a way to differentiate herself.

Next on the list is Radicals in the Barrio and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Gonna be a substantive end to summer reading.

Also for people interested in doing & improving organizing work, I wanna highly recommend a couple biographies I read this year, of Fred Ross (who taught Cesar Chavez) and Bob Moses (who led SNCC in Mississippi). Social Arsonist is the Fred Ross book and the Moses book is Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots. Both men with very compelling lives, both well written by people who aim to draw out the subjects' organizing methodology through biography. I learned a ton.