Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
whose morality?
There's no such thing as left and right anymore...
- Thread starter ska invita
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The real arrogance behind this no such thing as left or right nonsense is not the idea itself but the one behind it - namely, the idea that the conditions that gave rise to the use of left and right are now gone, superceded, beaten. Arrant nonsense that could only come from those with an interest in pretending that this is the case or who don't/have never/no longer experience the existence of those conditions anymore. It's the same as Blair or Clegg asserting that the class war is over.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Yes I do hear this but it largely comes out of the conspiranoid tossers and no where else. There is also a tendency for a minority of tossers to call people like Obama a communist and the like, in fact it's usually done by the same conspiranoid tossers. So according to them there's no left and right anymore but they'll still use the same terms even though they're massively confused about the meaning of those terms/deliberately confusing the terms for reasons of propaganda. You'll of course rarely hear the terms mentioned in the main stream press as the vast majority of it is centrist horse shit.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Quite and it's part of the postmodernist rejection of meta-narratives. Fukuyama's 'End of History' bollocks sort of got the ball rolling. Nothing matters but the individual and so on. No wonder conspiracy theories are so popular and act as adequate substitutes, in the minds of their adherents, for rational inquiry, reading, research and so forth.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
He's right. Which is why we should be talking about what's behind the left, it's politics and all that.
Tronti btw is a now a left MP - so his real life activity highlights that there's a large element of rhetoric to such proclamations.
Tronti btw is a now a left MP - so his real life activity highlights that there's a large element of rhetoric to such proclamations.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Fucking postmodernists have a lot to answer for
Edit: I think the rot started about two decades before Fukuyama.
Last edited:
But those politics aren't homogenous, if the left is to include social democrats, postmodern liberals, Maoists, Union bureaucrats, anarcho-hippies, people who "uphold" Actually Existing Socialism, people who support Assad, Gadaffi and Mugabe, etc. etc. then I'm proud to not be 'on the left', nor do I think communism gas anything to do with left-wing politics.
If, on the other hand, none of that lot have anything to do with the left and it means something entirely different I've got no problem with being left wing. But that would mean redefining the term beyond recognition.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Tying an occurrence to a (convenient, in this case) metaphor doesn't necessarily imply a belief that the subject of the metaphor is recurring, though. It just implies that the user of the metaphor has a limited political vocabulary.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What though has being homogeneous got to do with anything - if you take Tronti's claim as accurate it matters not. If you take his assertion and look behind something being labeled as left-wing then you look to the conditions that produced such labels (self-imposed or otherwise). All else is just ICC-style posturing calling people the left-wing of capital. That sort of stuff only stays on the political level - it may be accurate in itself, but is meaningless in any wider sense - if you want to stay by tronti's partial assertion that is. And, as noted, he definitively decided that workers can be represented by 'a left' many many decades ago - the left-wing is a meaningful term, he wants a better left. So we have a partial rhetorical assertion (i.e one that doesn't deal with representation etc) that's contradicted by his own actions and politics. If we want to say that it's the class relations that are key - and we do - then we have to understand how and why this has produced a left and a right beyond mere rhetorical rejection.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
What you don't realise, my friend, is that dwyer has to rehearse the arguments he's going to make in his next book somewhere.
8ball
Maximum Facepalm
And whose freedom?
Plenty of people (not on this website, granted), would put control on the left, and freedom and morality on the right.
8ball
Maximum Facepalm
What you don't realise, my friend, is that dwyer has to rehearse the arguments he's going to make in his next book somewhere.
Has he done the 'God visible in the body of a goat' book yet?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Yup. I think we need to break down the OP into:
1) Whether there's no such thing as "left" and "right" in parliamentary (or similar national) politics anymore/whether the differences between the ideological positions of our democratic mass political parties have shrunk to a point where they can seem "the same".
2) Whether the ideological perspectives of "left" and "right" no longer serve to demarcate broad political positions.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
It does, if only because it needs to be addressed politically as well as (more broadly) socially.
Last edited:
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
In fact, you're here saying that the left exists, but you want no part of it - not that left and right doesn't exist. So what's the right?
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
"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."
It's a rare thing when I agree with that particular poster but this is one of the reasons why, personally, I wouldn't identify myself as left wing. Although anyone who knows me would say I'm a pink wristed bleeding heart liberal socialist tree hugging lefty etc... of course left and right do exist but it's probably down to individuals, rather than movements/political parties that can be taken seriously. This, of course, is purely my view.
It's a rare thing when I agree with that particular poster but this is one of the reasons why, personally, I wouldn't identify myself as left wing. Although anyone who knows me would say I'm a pink wristed bleeding heart liberal socialist tree hugging lefty etc... of course left and right do exist but it's probably down to individuals, rather than movements/political parties that can be taken seriously. This, of course, is purely my view.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
krtek a houby
pink wristed? i think you mean limp-wristed
pink wristed? i think you mean limp-wristed
Last edited:
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Prats:
I sing this song for it seems so wrong, why don't the GI love the Cong?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You're an odd fish 2002.
As in LM no longer stands for anything. Yes.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
left and right definitely do exist though. they don't not exist just because you don't like lefties (and actually look at the tory party or the labour party or the fash or anything - they all do the same thing - saying someone's "not really" xyz is something that loads of people who are politically involved or take it in any way seriously do, part of it is about scrutinising people's words and actions)
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Amphibian. And at least Debbie still loves me.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I imagine that you'll carry on regardless.
Whilst you were doing your best to de-rail the Anelka thread, I did ask you to explain your preferred alternative to the left/right "18thC spatial metaphor"....and I don't recall receiving a meaningful reply. Here, in this thread, I'm struggling to see what you perceive as an improvement upon the established linear notion. Save from expressing some preference for the phrases anti and pro-capitalist which appear little more than 'synonyms' for left and right-wing, you seem to offer little other than questions about the limitations of the conventional spectrum.
What is it that you'd like people to use instead of left/right, and why are you so keen to promote this change?
Obnoxiousness
>-->))).>
It's a question that will be settled in practice not in theory.
Last edited:
Like I said, I'd prefer "Pro-" and "Anti-Capitalist," because it focuses attention on the primary and determining factor.
That's got nothing to do with it, meta-narratives are good.
Similar threads
