The Revolutionary Communist Party recon there is no left and right any more as everyone is too afraid. Not sure many other people have taken up the idea. Some fascists claim to be beyond left and right and New Labour claimed to be a third way between left and right but that's not quite the same as denying left and right. I'm not sure who we are talking about.
There's no such thing as left and right anymore...
- Thread starter ska invita
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You found that rope down from the threehouse then?
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
the terms arent obsolete, its just that currently what constitutes a lot of the left have lost the plot. Which happens when you suffer catastrophic ideological defeat.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Or when your walls fall down.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Am I missing something here? All you appear to be saying is that you (for whatever reasons) personally prefer to use the terms anti/pro capitalist rather that accepted 'short-hand' of left/right. So, other than an expression of dislike for identity politics, you don't actually appear to be saying anything of value.
Define "traditional Right". By the way the term "big government" is just an American, specifically republican chant. It is not used in the UK.
Butchers: if you don't want this public, I'll edit. But I don't think there's any harm in putting it here, since people have asked.
Basically, for all our quarrels on here, I admire Butchers and what he does. And I don't want to hamper his real-life efforts through my interventions on here. So I told him that, if he thought I was doing so, he should tell me how and I'd leave the thread in question. Which I will.
Nice one
Well-Known Member
14, 15. You seem to be intsreted in something here.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
According to Progress and Helen Lewis, sure.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
I don't know how you could possibly think that your recent interventions are helpful to his (and others') real life efforts, frankly. So if you've already privately made that commitment to him, you should keep your word.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Do you think that the Tories were traditionally the party of 'small government'? We are talking about a party that maintained a fucking worldwide colonial empire.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
I think they call it the nanny state in blighty
That's not what I said. I said if I was harming them, in real, practical and (preferably though I'll take his word for it) demonstrable terms.
That doesn't include theoretical disagreements, nor can I imagine that he'd want it to.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
It's a spectrum on which either end is actually a minority position.
Public ownership of everything : classically left.
Private ownership of everthing : classically right.
PFI muddied the waters, which was partly deliberate, but mostly about general scams and fobbing off the electorate. Fascism might, on the surface be based around public ownership, but in fact engages very happily with private ownership.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
I think this about sums it up.
I have not thought this through too much as I think it is a rather pointless argument.
I think left = anti cap, and right = pro cap is a good start. But I think it is more true to say that the left recognizes and opposes the affects of capitalism. Hence you get those on the labour left (when there was such a thing) who think the negative affects of capitalism can be mitigated by the state while capitalism continues. then there is the revolutionary left who believe the sate and capitalism should be abolished. They are both on the left and both opposed to the affects of capitalism but with different understandings of what that means and how to go about it.
It's not "for whatever reasons," it's because the terms no longer apply to the real situation.
If they did, someone would be able to define them in a way that would make sense of today's politics.
But nobody can--not just here, anywhere. Meanwhile, there is a large and growing number of political phenomena which do not clearly fit into either category.
I think the question might be looked at another way: what is to be gained by retaining those terms?
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
thats what makes me so uncomfortable about aspects of this entire debate...we have shit ruuning about out there like third positionism, national anarchism, national bolshevism..nazis pretending to be leftists, socialists, anarchists ..
I cant link to more descriptive photos and slogans as theyre on their forums but if you google image the terms youll see what I mean.
So thats why I get the heebie jeebies when i hear this sort of no left or right argument advanced . It gets worse when I hear this usury and international finance stuff said alongside it . Honestly Phil, I find it a bit unsettling .
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What a)was/is the right? b) what was/is the left.
Simple way to deal with these apolitical idiocies.
Offer a) here and and b) here
b = social equality, a = personal inequality.
Easy this.
Simple way to deal with these apolitical idiocies.
Offer a) here and and b) here
b = social equality, a = personal inequality.
Easy this.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
You're tilting at windmills. As long as capitalism exists the terms left/right have meaning for triangulating ideological positions. I'm bemused by your obsession with these terms.
Now we're getting somewhere. I don't agree, but that's a basis for discussion.
Obvious objections: state capitalism would have to be "Leftist." And does "private ownership" accurately describe monopoly capitalism where, for example, workers' pension funds are invested as capital?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's just made up stuff. Dis-engaged from real life. Materially bound. But a right laugh.
Mustn't grumble
Member
The talk of the small state is always 'obvious' economic activity. As you say a "worldwide colonial empire"; & part of the great effort needed to keep the show on the road, when more distress is an aim of government, is hounding peeps off the streets & trying to close soup kitchens:
http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/...commit-rough/story-20528941-detail/story.html
(Please see http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/police-crackdown-on-those-who-commit-rough-sleeping.320064/ - thanx to eatmorecheese.)
As Commander Alison Newcomb reassured the public in that motherly & mechanical way desired by all apolitical feminists, ""Our activity today is ongoing and operations of this nature will be carried out in cooperation with our partners to ensure the safety of the public and make our city great."
Hey man, you do your thing and I'll do mine. I think we're doing the same thing. You don't. I'll prove you wrong yet. But first I'm going to bed.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
Years ago I picked up a dvd containing the original nazi propaganda , called Germany Awake. It pretty much advanced aspects of this argument too. It had one sequence were a communist worker giving the clenched fist salute morphed into a scumbag giving the nazi salute, the argument being his ideological position was simply askew, and his anti capitalist desire for change and revolution not in any manner incompatible with nazism . Hence neither left nor right being a traditional nazi trope . Indeed a mechanism for sucking in the working class .
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
i wish hed just call capitalism capitalism, and shut up about usury and all the rest .
ska invita
back on the other side
Ive heard it said, including by people who used to consider themselves 'of the left' in some kind, and ive seen it written in forums and comments and such a fair amount. You seem surprised by it butchers... it surprises me too...and I don't really know what they mean by it, hence the question in the OP.
Of the two times Ive asked people what they meant by it in person i got two different answers:
-one said, its all about finding common ground to set an agenda to get economic justice for the majority, from the minority < in this man's mind this was something that can be achieved by those involved in any party/political tradition
-another gave more of a Fukiyama/end of history kind of answer
I'd imagine there are a variety of other positions that lead people to say it...
I guess urban isn't the place to find lots of people who feel that way and get them to explain it, but i thought there might at least be 2 or 3.
Perhaps there is a God after all.
Casually Red
tomorrow belongs to me
I think the "Left's" involvement in identity politics has caused all sorts of problems in this regard. We can see it all over these boards, and all over every similar discussion group or political movement: everyone furiously scrutinizing each other's words for some verbal slip-up that might reveal them as "really" on the "right" because of some secret or unconscious prejudice or other. And pretty soon we're in a situation where "Left-wing" just means "tolerant" or "nice" or "decent" (as people here tend to put it). The term loses all significance.
like i said this what tends to happen when you suffer catastrophic defeat . The nazis did something similar when their defeat was staring them in the face, running about furiously hanging traitors on the slightest whiff of provocation and suspicion and the more irrelevant they were and more defeated they were the more they turned inwards on imagined enemies. While their actual enemies trampled all over them and swept them into historys dustbin.
like i said this what tends to happen when you suffer catastrophic defeat . The nazis did something similar when their defeat was staring them in the face, running about furiously hanging traitors on the slightest whiff of provocation and suspicion and the more irrelevant they were and more defeated they were the more they turned inwards on imagined enemies. While their actual enemies trampled all over them and swept them into historys dustbin.
Obnoxiousness
>-->))).>
Three groups, to me, are: Capitalist > Socialist > Communist. And then each of those three can be measured for their degree of democratic or authoritarian tendencies. Racism doesn't deserve a political label.
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