Great stuff. I have some articles coming out on why leftists and liberals appear virtually the same to most ordinary people, and its in large part due to the similar socialization that they have. The voices who represent liberalism and leftism are cut from the same cloth, have a similar habitus, and have similar sensibility. The leftist is often just an unemployed or underemployed liberal. A precarious PMC
A lot of it is how much resentment one carries, sadly. It would make Contrapoints's Envy video correct if it had criteria for something that isn't that.
Very clear and persuasive argument. This hurt a bit, as one of those leftists who spends a lot of ink excoriating liberal politics, but in my defense I have always realized the general futility of "writing for change" and have maintained appropriate levels of self-loathing.
Kidding(?) aside, I can't speak for others, although I suspect this is common, but for me, sharpening my theory and critique is 1.) an effort to clarify my own thinking and develop strategies for putting words into action, and 2.) an attempt to build "organizing" / revolutionary capacity by converting more liberals and disaffected rightists.
Of course, the reality is that social media is largely an echo chamber, and while I know (based on feedback) that I have moved more than a handful of normies "left" over the years, getting people to sign the guestbook isn't going to automatically translate into the structured, sustained effort needed to surpass capitalism. I write because it plays to my strengths, not because I think it's the best, most direct way of affecting change. And I think many of us alienated intellectuals turn to writing as a desperate attempt to do _something_, to feel like we're moving the needle. And to keep at it, I think we all need to believe that moving the needle "matters," not in and of itself, but because there is a tipping point where the pressure becomes too great and change (or at least a challenge to power) inevitable.
Or maybe not. My current fixation is how power is becoming increasingly detached from popular legitimacy / will, a trend exacerbated by technology. But clearly, you _do_ need a critical mass of people who _do_ hold the 'correct' beliefs to have any attempt to challenge power, whether it's 5 million people or 100 million. The question is how many do you need, and what do you do when you have them? Do we have them now? And if so, what should we be doing? (This is rhetorical, and precisely what I'm trying to work out in my own writing.)
This piece of yours kind of hits at the philosophical utility of writing and persuasion. Obviously, authors can have tremendous impact (a certain Martin Luther comes to mind), but we seem to increasingly be in a world of power and propaganda* where facts and reality don't matter, nevermind political literature.** The question then is whether persuasion at scale can lead to social transformation, or if such change rests solely in material nodes of power. If the former, then convincing people that our outlook is good and true is necessary, no matter how slow or ineffectual. If the latter, then "writing for change" becomes a matter of the butterfly effect, hoping that the right people hold the right beliefs at the right moment.
*(Although, if propaganda works so well, this implies that counter-propaganda can too, although crucially the left lacks the reach and resources to combat right-wing and establishment slop at scale.)
**(Then again, you have the likes of Curtis Yarvin, another tally in the 'butterfly effect' column.)
Of course, real change probably requires both, but I sense some kind of irony that we're all here, largely writing about doing things instead of doing them, while trying to convince others what is, in fact, the right thing to do. And I'm not even saying we're wrong (or right) for doing so, but I wonder why we spend so much time thinking about what others think if it's not of crucial importance. Maybe we've only convinced ourselves that it is to justify writing instead of whatever it is we're supposed to be doing.
The last thing I'll say is that, again, even though it's just the echo chamber of social media, I have _never_ seen the word "revolution" tossed around so much in my life, along with direct denunciations of capitalism, along with disblief and outrage at the lack of action. This gives me a glimmer of hope. And I don't think you'd be seeing it without the years of work from countless writers just relentlessly hammering home the arguments, and then having reality confirm them. Again, this doesn't guarantee success, we get no points for "lots of people wanted the right thing," but it's not nothing. I'd rather have 50 million people waiting to be "activated" -- somehow, anyhow! -- than 30 million.
And I know "spontaneous uprising" or "spontaneous mass enlightenment" is not a strategy and a longshot, but as we who write, us cursed lot, it's always on the back of my mind. My hottest take is that we actually don't have time to "organize" (however you want to put it) the right way, and that simply priming people for action is the best we can (APPARENTLY) do right now, but that building that latent capacity might be unlocking possibilities we can't see right now. Unprecedented times may bring unprecedented times.
(Sorry this comment is a bit all over the place, your piece struck a nerve (in a good way).)
The original post is not useful, or especially insightful, unless your goal is to undermine Leftist movements. I won't question the heart or intent of the poster, in this particular reply.
Of courses there are intellectuals that talk more and think more than act, and all Westerners are pretty soft and conforming until their comfort is actually threatened, but so what.
Tolerance of the oppression and violence from the state and its Capitalist owners is baked into our collective consciousness as it has been programmed into us.
Breaking the delusion that Capitalism is your friend, morally good, or the futility of voting change from inside amongst you're fellow ultimately powerless citizens … is a slow processes of realization for many, a deprogramming. If social media engagement moves a few to start that process and to question the internal propaganda, its a worthwhile expenditure of energy.
I want to undermine leftist movements. They are antithetical to their stated goals and having them is preventing us from doing those things. Thanks for the comment!
Appreciate the honestly. Your post just showed up in my stack so I wasn't familiar with your frame of reference.
Hypocrites are not commendable, regardless of their politics. What, may I ask is your alternative approach, or, and your response to this would be more illuminating ... what if any is the problem you are trying to solve or critique?
Imo the main difference between "materialism" and "leftism" isn't so much what is achieved as how much energy is wasted achieving it.
As your understanding of the world changes, your actions change "automatically" in the sense that you understand different things to be in your best interest. E.g. having a very right-wing worldview might lead you to genuinely think that unionizing is against your interest. Becoming more left-wing (descriptively) changes this, it changes your actions. The materialism I interpret in this post lies in recognizing that as enough. It lies in what I call "revolutionary laziness", the opposite of voluntarism. Theory is a material force precisely because it acts through you simply because you understand it. It is not the mere groundwork for you to pick the right thing to will into existence through activism.
While wasting your attention and timenergy on activism can certainly lead to you missing real opportunities you would have otherwise seized, I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case. Alternatively, you could waste all that timenergy, still seize the opportunities a materialist would have, and just end up having less free time and fun than you would have had as a materialist; Not that this makes propagating materialism any less desirable.
I don’t disagree that theory can change how individuals understand their interests, or that this can lead to different choices. What I’m pushing up against is whether that alone constitutes a material difference in a political sense.
If theory only acts internally (reorienting individual cognition and optimization), then the behavior it produces remains fundamentally liberal: autonomous actors making better choices within the same structures, without creating new obligations, dependencies, or imposed costs. That kind of change is real, but it’s easily absorbed and doesn’t generate leverage.
When I’m talking about materialism here, I’m not talking about voluntarism or constant activism. I’m talking about changing conditions by building social integration and interdependence, what I’d call community rather than organizing. Not mobilizing people around issues, but becoming mutually necessary in ways that persist regardless of outcomes.
That’s not about willing things into existence, but it’s also not “automatic.” It requires ongoing involvement, friction, maintenance, and limits on individual autonomy. Theory matters, but only insofar as it produces that kind of binding behavior. Otherwise, the philosophical distinction stays real while the material one collapses.
"Autonomous actors making choices" arguably describes all organisms. "Within the same structures" is the crucial part, but that part is inaccurate because structures are the result of actors' choices. Different worldviews make you join and even found different structures out of self-interest.
I think lots of leftists, particularly the ones using the terms "(community) organizing", fully understand that the goal is not to mobilize atomized individuals around issues, but to build mutually beneficial lasting organizations. I find the term "organizing" fitting for this. "community" imo is a subset of "organization" that is "irrational" in the sense of being based on altruism. An organization like a union or a communist party is not a "community", it's a mutualist organization. It exists not because the members know and love each other but because it's rational to capitalize on the synergy of working together: Mutualism, not altruism.
Imo "community" in the strict sense is overemphasized on the left compared to mutualist organization.
You say multiple times that behavior changes under pressure or in response to constraint. What pressure or constraint if I may ask? And whose behaviour? Are we trying to change the ruling class' behaviour or our own? The ruling class doesn't look like it's gonna budge any time soon (except arguably in Russia? which has other problems) and there is a lot of pressure put on the working class every day and you see (and comment on) how that's turning out. I'm just trying to see what exactly we could be doing, what change we might have to change things. I'm barely ever at home and I don't know my neighbours and don't know how I can start knowing them. I live with my parents, and my mum's in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group and she says it's mostly old people with a lot of free time and little in common. I could try to get an equivalent started for my neighbours aged 30-60 or 20-60 but again, I have trouble with that. If and when I move out on my own, I imagine that at least initially I'll be too burnt out to socialise with any of my neighbours. And still too socially inept unless something big changes. I want to build bridges and help move things, at least at the micro scale, but I don't think I have the skills or even know what I ca do. And even when there's some kind of community/society, then what?
I think this is similar to what Professor Rockhill recently wrote, about how the “left” movement in the US has been astroturfed into being “compatible” with the status quo, such that there is very little action the left can take that isn’t merely performative. As you say, “organizing” has lost substantive meaning (Obama was a “community organizer” too) and sadly even the biggest mass protests in recent memory — Black Lives Matter, No Kings — amount to merely the sums of their parts, however many individuals performing individual expression but producing no leverage the wider systems can’t ignore.
Postmodernism hasn't changed in 50 years. I was there when it was created by liberals in order to purge Marxism and anarchism from academia, and I know it when I see it. I also know how to demolish it with dialectical materialist logic. To wit:
The claim that liberals and leftists have the same material goals is absurd. Liberals cannot exist without capitalism, whereas leftists want to DESTROY capitalism and replace it with a more democratic way of doing business, which enables a more democratic and generally prosperous way of living.
Liberals always have and always will allow the most vile political movements, ideologies and individuals to rule us all rather than allow leftists, be they socialists or anarchists, to actually destroy capitalism. This is well-established historical fact, and it cannot change.
Now everybody knows why I was never allowed to have letters other than BA after my name. None of the professors who would have sponsored me got tenure. I lived Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent before he wrote it, postmodernist, and THAT is your job description.
Can you please explain why you called this postmodernist? What I got out of this is that the preach and protest behavior is useless or even counterproductive when leftists should be busy strategizing if they serious. However, the way the term leftist is used contemptuously here is kind of confusing because it reads like written by a leftist. It’s as if the author used to be one but now isn’t. I don’t get it. I mean, if you told me you know any such person, next thing I’d want to know is how much was the check, or when was the lobotomy?
Anyway I’m interested in hearing what you mean regarding this.
That is a great question. I use Marxist definitions of Left and Right. For me, you cannot be a leftist if you want to preserve the capitalist system; leftists all want to see capitalism replaced with something else, ideally something far more democratic.
Postmodernism is a school of thought that got going in academia when I was in college in the 1970s. They said that unlike the traditionalists, who put the US in a white hat and the Soviet Union in a black one, or the Marxist revisionists, who did the reverse, THEY put everybody in different shades of gray.
They also never, ever call for the abolition of capitalism, and are always hostile to any kind of historical materialist analysis, especially the Marxist kind. Their job is to set the limits of the Overton Windows for students and society, always carefully insuring that Marx is never seriously studied.
IOW, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the DSA are not leftist. They're Social Democrats in that they want to reform capitalism, but not to abolish it.
Thanks for the question. The only stupid ones are the ones that go unasked.
I don’t quite understand what this article is saying.
Liberal and Leftist ideals are fundamentally opposed and seek opposing outcomes. Liberalism in any meaningful sense is built around private property, mutual agreement and independent action. Leftist movements are built around collective action, ownership and centralized control.
I understand that in the current political climate Leftist and “Liberals” are basically the same group, but it’s really just a semantic distinction. They’re all really just shades of leftist. None of them seem to hold any real principled liberal positions. Is this what you mean by them working in the same “mode” and seeking the same material conditions?
It just seems odd because the political and material conditions that a Liberal might seek would be very different from a dyed in the wool Leftist.
Of are you just talking about tactics and how Leftists and “Liberals” have all adopted revolutionary activism as their primary method of political engagement?
I appreciate the article, just looking for some clarity.
In the US, “liberals” fall solidly within the top right “right wing authoritarian” quadrant of the political compass. I consider myself an anti-authoritarian leftist and I absolutely do not want the same material outcomes that e.g, the DNC and their voters are aiming for.
This article is spot on. Leftist will be angry because it criticizes their actions, which needs to be said. I have seen this article get restacked by angry leftists that failed to grasp the content or just in denial
I’d argue liberals are more likely to have faith in their agency via voting and political campaigning, that those would lead to material changes via the Constitutional political process. To liberals, we have a liberal Constitution and, at least theoretically, it is valid if not sacred, though obviously very flawed and corrupted in practice.
Leftist are often more likely to engage in more militant activism and shows of force, and seem be more cynical. Because they have less faith in the Constitutional political process to serve their interests, effecting change in other ways becomes a higher priority.
I disagree about it costing nothing to use”the right language”. If you are viewed as too extreme, many employers will not hire you. Try getting a job at Amazon or Tesla while wearing a pro union pin.
If you want a job, you go to the interview dressed well without flair. If you want to be an activist, you wear a pro-union pin. If you want a job and to be an activist, then you are creating a contradiction, and that contradiction creates the cost, not the pin.
There is a material contradiction between the job and the union, and you do not need to wear union merch to experience or engage it. In fact, it's probably better if you do not wear union stuff but rather just do union stuff.
I disagree because so much of the modern left is libs suck and insert reason why I can’t vote for the dems. If only the dems went further to the left, they would win (despite polling showing dems further to the left than the average American).
Perhaps I have just completely missed it mate, but how exactly do you discern leftist and liberal? In your post, I mean.
The main difference you claim between liberals and leftists is the extent to which they go about improving their conditions—at least in their minds; one is about reform of capitalism, the other is about undoing capitalism. Both are idealistic, and not materialistic.
In that case, aren’t we just talking here more about two different facets of liberalism? One that idealistically projects change on the environment, incognisant of how to solidify said ideas (leftists) and then those that do not believe in complete reconstruction of the system but believe that capitalism can serve all members participating in it—even in ideas that don’t necessarily oppose said leftists too much?
After all, under that description, you can have liberals who will for instance try to talk of inclusivity in the workplace to care for minorities—goals that can be called leftist—without being branded leftists because their aims are not too extreme.
I don’t understand the necessity for such a minute distinction between what is essentially reformist liberalism and “transformational“ liberalism. It feels like trying too hard to differentiate pepsi and coca-cola.
Great stuff. I have some articles coming out on why leftists and liberals appear virtually the same to most ordinary people, and its in large part due to the similar socialization that they have. The voices who represent liberalism and leftism are cut from the same cloth, have a similar habitus, and have similar sensibility. The leftist is often just an unemployed or underemployed liberal. A precarious PMC
A lot of it is how much resentment one carries, sadly. It would make Contrapoints's Envy video correct if it had criteria for something that isn't that.
Very clear and persuasive argument. This hurt a bit, as one of those leftists who spends a lot of ink excoriating liberal politics, but in my defense I have always realized the general futility of "writing for change" and have maintained appropriate levels of self-loathing.
Kidding(?) aside, I can't speak for others, although I suspect this is common, but for me, sharpening my theory and critique is 1.) an effort to clarify my own thinking and develop strategies for putting words into action, and 2.) an attempt to build "organizing" / revolutionary capacity by converting more liberals and disaffected rightists.
Of course, the reality is that social media is largely an echo chamber, and while I know (based on feedback) that I have moved more than a handful of normies "left" over the years, getting people to sign the guestbook isn't going to automatically translate into the structured, sustained effort needed to surpass capitalism. I write because it plays to my strengths, not because I think it's the best, most direct way of affecting change. And I think many of us alienated intellectuals turn to writing as a desperate attempt to do _something_, to feel like we're moving the needle. And to keep at it, I think we all need to believe that moving the needle "matters," not in and of itself, but because there is a tipping point where the pressure becomes too great and change (or at least a challenge to power) inevitable.
Or maybe not. My current fixation is how power is becoming increasingly detached from popular legitimacy / will, a trend exacerbated by technology. But clearly, you _do_ need a critical mass of people who _do_ hold the 'correct' beliefs to have any attempt to challenge power, whether it's 5 million people or 100 million. The question is how many do you need, and what do you do when you have them? Do we have them now? And if so, what should we be doing? (This is rhetorical, and precisely what I'm trying to work out in my own writing.)
This piece of yours kind of hits at the philosophical utility of writing and persuasion. Obviously, authors can have tremendous impact (a certain Martin Luther comes to mind), but we seem to increasingly be in a world of power and propaganda* where facts and reality don't matter, nevermind political literature.** The question then is whether persuasion at scale can lead to social transformation, or if such change rests solely in material nodes of power. If the former, then convincing people that our outlook is good and true is necessary, no matter how slow or ineffectual. If the latter, then "writing for change" becomes a matter of the butterfly effect, hoping that the right people hold the right beliefs at the right moment.
*(Although, if propaganda works so well, this implies that counter-propaganda can too, although crucially the left lacks the reach and resources to combat right-wing and establishment slop at scale.)
**(Then again, you have the likes of Curtis Yarvin, another tally in the 'butterfly effect' column.)
Of course, real change probably requires both, but I sense some kind of irony that we're all here, largely writing about doing things instead of doing them, while trying to convince others what is, in fact, the right thing to do. And I'm not even saying we're wrong (or right) for doing so, but I wonder why we spend so much time thinking about what others think if it's not of crucial importance. Maybe we've only convinced ourselves that it is to justify writing instead of whatever it is we're supposed to be doing.
The last thing I'll say is that, again, even though it's just the echo chamber of social media, I have _never_ seen the word "revolution" tossed around so much in my life, along with direct denunciations of capitalism, along with disblief and outrage at the lack of action. This gives me a glimmer of hope. And I don't think you'd be seeing it without the years of work from countless writers just relentlessly hammering home the arguments, and then having reality confirm them. Again, this doesn't guarantee success, we get no points for "lots of people wanted the right thing," but it's not nothing. I'd rather have 50 million people waiting to be "activated" -- somehow, anyhow! -- than 30 million.
And I know "spontaneous uprising" or "spontaneous mass enlightenment" is not a strategy and a longshot, but as we who write, us cursed lot, it's always on the back of my mind. My hottest take is that we actually don't have time to "organize" (however you want to put it) the right way, and that simply priming people for action is the best we can (APPARENTLY) do right now, but that building that latent capacity might be unlocking possibilities we can't see right now. Unprecedented times may bring unprecedented times.
(Sorry this comment is a bit all over the place, your piece struck a nerve (in a good way).)
The original post is not useful, or especially insightful, unless your goal is to undermine Leftist movements. I won't question the heart or intent of the poster, in this particular reply.
Of courses there are intellectuals that talk more and think more than act, and all Westerners are pretty soft and conforming until their comfort is actually threatened, but so what.
Tolerance of the oppression and violence from the state and its Capitalist owners is baked into our collective consciousness as it has been programmed into us.
Breaking the delusion that Capitalism is your friend, morally good, or the futility of voting change from inside amongst you're fellow ultimately powerless citizens … is a slow processes of realization for many, a deprogramming. If social media engagement moves a few to start that process and to question the internal propaganda, its a worthwhile expenditure of energy.
I want to undermine leftist movements. They are antithetical to their stated goals and having them is preventing us from doing those things. Thanks for the comment!
Appreciate the honestly. Your post just showed up in my stack so I wasn't familiar with your frame of reference.
Hypocrites are not commendable, regardless of their politics. What, may I ask is your alternative approach, or, and your response to this would be more illuminating ... what if any is the problem you are trying to solve or critique?
Imo the main difference between "materialism" and "leftism" isn't so much what is achieved as how much energy is wasted achieving it.
As your understanding of the world changes, your actions change "automatically" in the sense that you understand different things to be in your best interest. E.g. having a very right-wing worldview might lead you to genuinely think that unionizing is against your interest. Becoming more left-wing (descriptively) changes this, it changes your actions. The materialism I interpret in this post lies in recognizing that as enough. It lies in what I call "revolutionary laziness", the opposite of voluntarism. Theory is a material force precisely because it acts through you simply because you understand it. It is not the mere groundwork for you to pick the right thing to will into existence through activism.
While wasting your attention and timenergy on activism can certainly lead to you missing real opportunities you would have otherwise seized, I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case. Alternatively, you could waste all that timenergy, still seize the opportunities a materialist would have, and just end up having less free time and fun than you would have had as a materialist; Not that this makes propagating materialism any less desirable.
I don’t disagree that theory can change how individuals understand their interests, or that this can lead to different choices. What I’m pushing up against is whether that alone constitutes a material difference in a political sense.
If theory only acts internally (reorienting individual cognition and optimization), then the behavior it produces remains fundamentally liberal: autonomous actors making better choices within the same structures, without creating new obligations, dependencies, or imposed costs. That kind of change is real, but it’s easily absorbed and doesn’t generate leverage.
When I’m talking about materialism here, I’m not talking about voluntarism or constant activism. I’m talking about changing conditions by building social integration and interdependence, what I’d call community rather than organizing. Not mobilizing people around issues, but becoming mutually necessary in ways that persist regardless of outcomes.
That’s not about willing things into existence, but it’s also not “automatic.” It requires ongoing involvement, friction, maintenance, and limits on individual autonomy. Theory matters, but only insofar as it produces that kind of binding behavior. Otherwise, the philosophical distinction stays real while the material one collapses.
"Autonomous actors making choices" arguably describes all organisms. "Within the same structures" is the crucial part, but that part is inaccurate because structures are the result of actors' choices. Different worldviews make you join and even found different structures out of self-interest.
I think lots of leftists, particularly the ones using the terms "(community) organizing", fully understand that the goal is not to mobilize atomized individuals around issues, but to build mutually beneficial lasting organizations. I find the term "organizing" fitting for this. "community" imo is a subset of "organization" that is "irrational" in the sense of being based on altruism. An organization like a union or a communist party is not a "community", it's a mutualist organization. It exists not because the members know and love each other but because it's rational to capitalize on the synergy of working together: Mutualism, not altruism.
Imo "community" in the strict sense is overemphasized on the left compared to mutualist organization.
You say multiple times that behavior changes under pressure or in response to constraint. What pressure or constraint if I may ask? And whose behaviour? Are we trying to change the ruling class' behaviour or our own? The ruling class doesn't look like it's gonna budge any time soon (except arguably in Russia? which has other problems) and there is a lot of pressure put on the working class every day and you see (and comment on) how that's turning out. I'm just trying to see what exactly we could be doing, what change we might have to change things. I'm barely ever at home and I don't know my neighbours and don't know how I can start knowing them. I live with my parents, and my mum's in the neighbourhood WhatsApp group and she says it's mostly old people with a lot of free time and little in common. I could try to get an equivalent started for my neighbours aged 30-60 or 20-60 but again, I have trouble with that. If and when I move out on my own, I imagine that at least initially I'll be too burnt out to socialise with any of my neighbours. And still too socially inept unless something big changes. I want to build bridges and help move things, at least at the micro scale, but I don't think I have the skills or even know what I ca do. And even when there's some kind of community/society, then what?
They’re mad but you’re right lol
Yeah, people don't like the idea they have been trained to be politically useless unless they are supporting the status quo, but it's what's happened.
I think this is similar to what Professor Rockhill recently wrote, about how the “left” movement in the US has been astroturfed into being “compatible” with the status quo, such that there is very little action the left can take that isn’t merely performative. As you say, “organizing” has lost substantive meaning (Obama was a “community organizer” too) and sadly even the biggest mass protests in recent memory — Black Lives Matter, No Kings — amount to merely the sums of their parts, however many individuals performing individual expression but producing no leverage the wider systems can’t ignore.
https://gabrielrockhill.substack.com/p/gabriel-rockhill-who-paid-the-pipers
Postmodernism hasn't changed in 50 years. I was there when it was created by liberals in order to purge Marxism and anarchism from academia, and I know it when I see it. I also know how to demolish it with dialectical materialist logic. To wit:
The claim that liberals and leftists have the same material goals is absurd. Liberals cannot exist without capitalism, whereas leftists want to DESTROY capitalism and replace it with a more democratic way of doing business, which enables a more democratic and generally prosperous way of living.
Liberals always have and always will allow the most vile political movements, ideologies and individuals to rule us all rather than allow leftists, be they socialists or anarchists, to actually destroy capitalism. This is well-established historical fact, and it cannot change.
Now everybody knows why I was never allowed to have letters other than BA after my name. None of the professors who would have sponsored me got tenure. I lived Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent before he wrote it, postmodernist, and THAT is your job description.
Can you please explain why you called this postmodernist? What I got out of this is that the preach and protest behavior is useless or even counterproductive when leftists should be busy strategizing if they serious. However, the way the term leftist is used contemptuously here is kind of confusing because it reads like written by a leftist. It’s as if the author used to be one but now isn’t. I don’t get it. I mean, if you told me you know any such person, next thing I’d want to know is how much was the check, or when was the lobotomy?
Anyway I’m interested in hearing what you mean regarding this.
That is a great question. I use Marxist definitions of Left and Right. For me, you cannot be a leftist if you want to preserve the capitalist system; leftists all want to see capitalism replaced with something else, ideally something far more democratic.
Postmodernism is a school of thought that got going in academia when I was in college in the 1970s. They said that unlike the traditionalists, who put the US in a white hat and the Soviet Union in a black one, or the Marxist revisionists, who did the reverse, THEY put everybody in different shades of gray.
They also never, ever call for the abolition of capitalism, and are always hostile to any kind of historical materialist analysis, especially the Marxist kind. Their job is to set the limits of the Overton Windows for students and society, always carefully insuring that Marx is never seriously studied.
IOW, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the DSA are not leftist. They're Social Democrats in that they want to reform capitalism, but not to abolish it.
Thanks for the question. The only stupid ones are the ones that go unasked.
I don’t quite understand what this article is saying.
Liberal and Leftist ideals are fundamentally opposed and seek opposing outcomes. Liberalism in any meaningful sense is built around private property, mutual agreement and independent action. Leftist movements are built around collective action, ownership and centralized control.
I understand that in the current political climate Leftist and “Liberals” are basically the same group, but it’s really just a semantic distinction. They’re all really just shades of leftist. None of them seem to hold any real principled liberal positions. Is this what you mean by them working in the same “mode” and seeking the same material conditions?
It just seems odd because the political and material conditions that a Liberal might seek would be very different from a dyed in the wool Leftist.
Of are you just talking about tactics and how Leftists and “Liberals” have all adopted revolutionary activism as their primary method of political engagement?
I appreciate the article, just looking for some clarity.
I believe leftism has a bourgeois class basis! All "directional" politics do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWy8EEqXbBg
Thanks for the reply. I’ll check out the video.
In the US, “liberals” fall solidly within the top right “right wing authoritarian” quadrant of the political compass. I consider myself an anti-authoritarian leftist and I absolutely do not want the same material outcomes that e.g, the DNC and their voters are aiming for.
This article is spot on. Leftist will be angry because it criticizes their actions, which needs to be said. I have seen this article get restacked by angry leftists that failed to grasp the content or just in denial
so what do you suggest? your idea of community is incredibly vague
we have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas
This dualism is imaginary!
Cloud serfs united!
https://open.substack.com/pub/antonpalisar/p/the-ultimate-way-of-liberation-el?r=74rb1l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I’d argue liberals are more likely to have faith in their agency via voting and political campaigning, that those would lead to material changes via the Constitutional political process. To liberals, we have a liberal Constitution and, at least theoretically, it is valid if not sacred, though obviously very flawed and corrupted in practice.
Leftist are often more likely to engage in more militant activism and shows of force, and seem be more cynical. Because they have less faith in the Constitutional political process to serve their interests, effecting change in other ways becomes a higher priority.
I disagree about it costing nothing to use”the right language”. If you are viewed as too extreme, many employers will not hire you. Try getting a job at Amazon or Tesla while wearing a pro union pin.
If you want a job, you go to the interview dressed well without flair. If you want to be an activist, you wear a pro-union pin. If you want a job and to be an activist, then you are creating a contradiction, and that contradiction creates the cost, not the pin.
There is a material contradiction between the job and the union, and you do not need to wear union merch to experience or engage it. In fact, it's probably better if you do not wear union stuff but rather just do union stuff.
The language creates the contradiction that results in a cost.
The language creates nothing. If acknowledges it.
I disagree because so much of the modern left is libs suck and insert reason why I can’t vote for the dems. If only the dems went further to the left, they would win (despite polling showing dems further to the left than the average American).
Perhaps I have just completely missed it mate, but how exactly do you discern leftist and liberal? In your post, I mean.
The main difference you claim between liberals and leftists is the extent to which they go about improving their conditions—at least in their minds; one is about reform of capitalism, the other is about undoing capitalism. Both are idealistic, and not materialistic.
In that case, aren’t we just talking here more about two different facets of liberalism? One that idealistically projects change on the environment, incognisant of how to solidify said ideas (leftists) and then those that do not believe in complete reconstruction of the system but believe that capitalism can serve all members participating in it—even in ideas that don’t necessarily oppose said leftists too much?
After all, under that description, you can have liberals who will for instance try to talk of inclusivity in the workplace to care for minorities—goals that can be called leftist—without being branded leftists because their aims are not too extreme.
I don’t understand the necessity for such a minute distinction between what is essentially reformist liberalism and “transformational“ liberalism. It feels like trying too hard to differentiate pepsi and coca-cola.
I'm saying leftists are the same as liberals but they think they aren't
I got that part. I am just saying why not flat out call both of them liberals?
Because they philosophically are not the same thing, as you pointed out in your long note.