Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?

[SpookyFrank]

Liberals are the worst in my opinion

I think your hard right types probably know on some level that they're full of shit but they simply don't care because making life worse for the people they hate is an outcome that justifies any means.

Liberals I think have to be able to delude themselves. They have to consciously and deliberately rationalise, dissemble and ignore so that they come back to exactly where they want to be; the position that the obscenity of modern capitalism is somehow the only sane and reasonable compromise option.

Or maybe people just don't think about things as much as we do and largely just accept the pre-packaged rationalisations provided because if they do that and keep their heads down they might be able to buy a house in twenty years' time.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I've met them and listened to them.

Also, at the top, records of Stalin's own life in power reveal consistency with regard to his private world and that of a Bolshevik. You might not like it, but that's irrelevant.

Anyone still in the Russian Communist Party after all the purges, anyone still alive, would of necessity be someone who agreed with the Party line, or someone who went along with it all out of self preservation. As I said, you can't tell what people think when they aren't allowed, or are too scared, to express themselves. Subsequently many would be reluctant to admit mistakes (if they had changed their minds) or to reveal their dishonesty (understandable) in going along with it all. You're confirming that Stalin was a grand old Bolshevik only reinforces that the dictatorial system was a bad place to start off from in the first place.

 

[The39thStep]

I think your hard right types probably know on some level that they're full of shit but they simply don't care because making life worse for the people they hate is an outcome that justifies any means.

Liberals I think have to be able to delude themselves. They have to consciously and deliberately rationalise, dissemble and ignore so that they come back to exactly where they want to be; the position that the obscenity of modern capitalism is somehow the only sane and reasonable compromise option.

Or maybe people just don't think about things as much as we do and largely just accept the pre-packaged rationalisations provided because if they do that and keep their heads down they might be able to buy a house in twenty years' time.

Middle para is spot on.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Marxist-Leninists I think have to be able to delude themselves. They have to consciously and deliberately rationalise, dissemble and ignore so that they come back to exactly where they want to be; the position that the obscenity of Soviet Communism was somehow the only sane and reasonable option.

(I'm using the term 'Marxist Leninist' not to imply Maoism or whatever, but those Marxists whose historical allegiances include Lenin as as good bloke.)

 

[Pickman's model]

Anyone still in the Russian Communist Party after all the purges, anyone still alive, would of necessity be someone who agreed with the Party line, or someone who went along with it all out of self preservation. As I said, you can't tell what people think when they aren't allowed, or are too scared, to express themselves. Subsequently many would be reluctant to admit mistakes (if they had changed their minds) or to reveal their dishonesty (understandable) in going along with it all. You're confirming that Stalin was a grand old Bolshevik only reinforces that the dictatorial system was a bad place to start off from in the first place.

Since the purges were by quota and not party loyalty there's no way of telling by necessity or otherwise what any surviving members thought.

 

[JimW]

Looked at another way, it's all the proof you need about how awful the mode of development offered by the capitalist world order is/was that regimes as failed and farcical as the Leninist states still provided a viable alternative.

 

[DotCommunist]

its possible because englands industrial revolution was so long ago and so glibly presented in fiction and pop history that people forget how it goes. They'll put your children to work in the arsenic mines and your wife will pull the cart. You had nail making villages where life expectancy was barely 40. men and women old by 25.

 

[PTK]

its possible because englands industrial revolution was so long ago and so glibly presented in fiction and pop history that people forget how it goes. They'll put your children to work in the arsenic mines and your wife will pull the cart. You had nail making villages where life expectancy was barely 40. men and women old by 25.

That is a good point.
The creation of a modern industrial economy in Britain was bases on enclosures, clearances, the Irish famine, the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendents, genocide, and the conquest of a large part of the world.

 

[The39thStep]

That is a good point.
The creation of a modern industrial economy in Britain was bases on enclosures, clearances, the Irish famine, the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendents, genocide, and the conquest of a large part of the world.

The death toll of the European empires and the American genocide of the native Americans in consolidating capitalism is just conveniently forgotten isn’t it ?

 

[kabbes]

This interview demonstrates how the Right can be honest, if it is clear about the ideological basis it is coming from, and thus also indicates why the current version of the Right is not honest. It also hints at the dishonesty of the current political version of the Left (a version that many here would argue is not truly left wing, but nevertheless represents the current political voice of the Left in the eyes of the majority of the country).

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Since the purges were by quota and not party loyalty there's no way of telling by necessity or otherwise what any surviving members thought.

There may have been quotas, but the easy and obvious victims were those who had earlier been on the side of, or associated with, major dissenters, such as Trotsky. Liking a tweet from a few years before which had vilified Stalin was the sort of thing which could get you into big trouble.

 

[Pickman's model]

There may have been quotas, but the easy and obvious victims were those who had earlier been on the side of, or associated with, major dissenters, such as Trotsky. Liking a tweet from a few years before which had vilified Stalin was the sort of thing which could get you into big trouble.

yeh but all those people were got out the way early doors

 

[Pickman's model]

That is a good point.
The creation of a modern industrial economy in Britain was bases on enclosures, clearances, the Irish famine, the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendents, genocide, and the conquest of a large part of the world.

If the creation of a modern industrial economy in Britain was based in part on the irish famine, how come the great famine came in the 1840s many decades after all the other factors you mention? After indeed the end of the slave trade and the deployment of the navy to suppress it.

 

[seventh bullet]

Anyone still in the Russian Communist Party after all the purges, anyone still alive, would of necessity be someone who agreed with the Party line, or someone who went along with it all out of self preservation. As I said, you can't tell what people think when they aren't allowed, or are too scared, to express themselves. Subsequently many would be reluctant to admit mistakes (if they had changed their minds) or to reveal their dishonesty (understandable) in going along with it all. You're confirming that Stalin was a grand old Bolshevik only reinforces that the dictatorial system was a bad place to start off from in the first place.

I will say again with more meat on the bones. I have met people who have lived in the USSR, of various generations, including some who came of age in the Stalin era. As anecdotal as it may be, your parroting of what JimW said earlier about hostile historiographies simply will not allow any complexity with regard to those who actually lived it. Why would they be dishonest to me? Why would they be scared?

On Stalin himself, I was referring to the views of him that disregard him as a Communist revolutionary or even a Marxist, and this also comes from the non-Leninist left. His interpretation of Leninist politics was invalid, his Marxism not to be taken seriously. He was only a dictator interested in personal power. His public image, cultivated and exaggerated via government propaganda, hid the shallow dullard who in private only devised ways to use the concepts and terminology of the revolutionary left to justify, post hoc, his own despotic ends. That makes it easier to just dismiss the Soviet Union as not 'real' socialism, not 'proper' or the 'correct' socialism.

 

[seventh bullet]

(I'm using the term 'Marxist Leninist' not to imply Maoism or whatever, but those Marxists whose historical allegiances include Lenin as as good bloke.)

Mao was a Marxist-Leninist. His own contributions to M-L theory was termed by the Chinese government as Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought. Maoism and Maoist have been used as shorthand to describe those Communists who have adhered to or adapted the above, but as a self-descriptor it came later when, through debate between various international anti-revisionist parties, the above would in their eyes be elevated to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

 

[seventh bullet]

The death toll of the European empires and the American genocide of the native Americans in consolidating capitalism is just conveniently forgotten isn’t it ?

And there are indigenous activists who say the genocide is still ongoing.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I will say again with more meat on the bones. I have met people who have lived in the USSR, of various generations, including some who came of age in the Stalin era. As anecdotal as it may be, your parroting of what JimW said earlier about hostile historiographies simply will not allow any complexity with regard to those who actually lived it. Why would they be dishonest to me? Why would they be scared?

On Stalin himself, I was referring to the views of him that disregard him as a Communist revolutionary or even a Marxist, and this also comes from the non-Leninist left. His interpretation of Leninist politics was invalid, his Marxism not to be taken seriously. He was only a dictator interested in personal power. His public image, cultivated and exaggerated via government propaganda, hid the shallow dullard who in private only devised ways to use the concepts and terminology of the revolutionary left to justify, post hoc, his own despotic ends. That makes it easier to just dismiss the Soviet Union as not 'real' socialism, not 'proper' or the 'correct' socialism.

Let's ask those who actually didn't live it, those who were killed, starved, emigrated etc. Those who survived, by definition, were not those whose lives were affected the most adversely. To this day the Russian establishment refuses to look openly and critically at its past. Not unusual for governments and establishments the world over. Nor is it unusual for governments to withhold information for many, many decades, so that its citizens do not understand or know what has happened.

 

[seventh bullet]

That is a good point.
The creation of a modern industrial economy in Britain was bases on enclosures, clearances, the Irish famine, the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendents, genocide, and the conquest of a large part of the world.

Liberal defenders of capitalism will talk of 'free markets.' We can talk about how nonsense that is from various angles, but much of capitalist development over the few centuries of its existence comes from violent theft and conquest, and importantly chattel slavery. Racism is baked into the system. I'm paraphrasing somebody here but we could have a different kind of society that isn't racist but not a capitalist society that isn't.

 

[prunus]

Pol Pot's CPK was the ginger stepchild of international Communism.

Would you mind trying not to use that phrase please? While I understand that it expresses a useful concept succinctly, it is potentially damaging and/or upsetting to people who are ginger or stepchildren or both to hear parts of their identity used as shorthand for “understandably despised”.

 

[seventh bullet]

Let's ask those who actually didn't live it, those who were killed, starved, emigrated etc. Those who survived, by definition, were not those whose lives were affected the most adversely. To this day the Russian establishment refuses to look openly and critically at its past. Not unusual for governments and establishments the world over. Nor is it unusual for governments to withhold information for many, many decades, so that its citizens do not understand or know what has happened.

Who are you to say whether or not those people were adversely affected by Soviet rule?

This is what I mean when you have to out of hand dismiss anything which might interfere with the script.

 

[seventh bullet]

Would you mind trying not to use that phrase please? While I understand that it expresses a useful concept succinctly, it is potentially damaging and/or upsetting to people who are ginger or stepchildren or both to hear parts of their identity used as shorthand for “understandably despised”.

I'm ginger myself. But I see your point.

 

[seventh bullet]

On reflection it was, no matter how neatly it made my point, awfully insensitive and offensive and should have no place here. I sincerely apologise to anyone affected negatively by my choice of phrase.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Who are you to say whether or not those people were adversely affected by Soviet rule?

This is what I mean when you have to out of hand dismiss anything which might interfere with the script.

I'm just someone with opinions, some knowledge and the ability to come to obvious conclusions about stuff. As are you.

 

[seventh bullet]

Jumping to conclusions.

 

[Graymalkin]

its possible because englands industrial revolution was so long ago and so glibly presented in fiction and pop history that people forget how it goes. They'll put your children to work in the arsenic mines and your wife will pull the cart. You had nail making villages where life expectancy was barely 40. men and women old by 25.

As someone who lives on the North American continent it's worth noting that there's a reason so many of our horror stories/movies involve cemetaries/neighbourhoods/campgrounds build on Indian burial grounds. The whole continent is haunted. It's in our collective psyche. Industrialization wrought mass displacement and genocide wherever it took place.

 

[dylanredefined]

I am not an M-L, Tankie, Stalinist, whatever. I'm of the view that authoritarian forces from the left, especially when acting on behalf of the working class, should be treated with suspicion if not outright opposition. Despite what I think of their politics personally I still try and see from their point of view (it doesn't mean I am adopting it as my own), how they operated, why they operated in such ways, and the local and wider contexts which informed their decisions.

Marxist-Leninists have been explicit in their authoritarianism, and have had no tolerance for any popular political tendency they can't control for their own ends. They have had particular frameworks, devised by the USSR, either rigidly applied or local innovative adaptations, through which to understand the reality of their particular situations and then act upon them. Taking over, neutralising or destroying the organisations of political rivals was a part of that. In partitioned Vietnam's case they did have to be ruthless, for their very survival. Whether or not you think they deserved to survive is neither here nor there. Within the Marxist-Leninist political tradition of the ICP, and using both the Soviet and Chinese doctrines internalised and adapted to local conditions, they acted as they saw fit to ensure their survival, and then seek to win political control of the country from their enemies.

Kev brought up the USSR firstly, then I used a related political movement in another country to illustrate the compromising realities of revolution, where eventually my violence has to defeat their violence. The horrific actions of the Vietnamese I used weren't born out of nothing, they aren't unique to Communists, although how they understood them may differ. At one point in a revolution where anarchists really do have to fight to survive from attacks by the authoritarian forces of the left and right, does a firing squad become a justifiable course of action? When do several killings in hasty circumstances become a terrible necessity? When does something done in a situation of shifting or skewed senses of morality become excessive?

Cops soldiers informers etc. Possible justified as involved in active combat against you. Civilians thinking your ideas are a bit shit. Landlords,farmers objecting to having their stuff confiscated.Poltical opponents. If you can't win a debate either your idea is dumb or you can't explain it properly. Shooting people isn't the answer.
When questioning authority is impossible you get terrible results.

 

[seventh bullet]

The actions of the landlords aren't mentioned, nor even is the very concept of landlordsm questioned. I would hesitate to call the hoarding of the means to exist through force and then doing nothing productive but instead exploiting those who actually work upon that thing you own only because it's backed by the force of the state, 'their stuff.'

 

[JimW]

The actions of the landlords aren't mentioned, nor even is the very concept of landlordsm questioned. I would hesitate to call the hoarding of the means to exist through force and then doing nothing productive but instead exploiting those who actually work upon that thing you own only because it's backed by the force of the state, 'their stuff.'

There's a contemptuous Chinese phrase for those who bemoan the plight of the exploiters, 为地主阶级哭坟, "crying at the landlords' graves", that neatly captures how blithe you have to be about the reality to do it.

 

[Humberto]

The 'left', which should mean 'socialist' have to somehow hang together (to work or be a force), in the face of a state capitalism moving against it, where all the chess pieces are permanent before your mum and dad were born.

Socialism requires building, sewing seeds, community. Capatilism is click click for the next dopamine hit.

 

[Hotel Chocolate]

I wouldn't say the "Left” has a better record for not lying. - I mean claims of bumper crops and production records for making iron, The Eradication of Illiteracy, the elimination of poverty, plane crashes don't happen in the Soviet Union so and so forth lying was a major part of the whole Soviet Union's way of running a country. and all those other dubious claims made by countries like the Soviet Union and people's Republic of China and N Korea not only are they lies and not unbelievable. I have seen one video where the Chinese communists claimed they had been able to double/triple/quaduple their rice crop by planting the rice plants closer together so close in fact that you could stand on them and they even made a video, it's obvious nonsense even watching the video and ...

...besides that isn't there a strain of Marxism who's how idea is how to come to power by devious means IE Trotskyism?

Life would be easier if we could just divide people into the "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys", but real life is not like that.