[French writer Anatole France is drawn wearing a flowery tie]
The law,
in its majestic equality,
forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread
-Anatole France
The US supreme court just used this logic against trans kids saying it wasn’t discriminatory to restrict their HRT since both cis gendered and trans gender kids wouldn’t be able to receive HRT of the opposite sex assigned at birth so it applies to everyone evenly.
Its ridiculous since only trans kids would ever seek that HRT.
Aren’t some Birth Controls hormones? Does this restrict birth control?
Nope in fact cis kids are still allowed to do HRT since their HRT is the same hormones from the sex they were assigned at birth. I know someone who’s daughter is 8 years old and already getting her period so their doctor prescribed her puberty blockers and will take her off it it when shes a little bit older. No fuss or anything to get it and in a state where trans kids can’t do the same.
“The Law basically comprises a list of things which the upper classes do not want the lower classes to do, because they (the upper classes) would find it irritating, unpleasant, or inconvenient. These things are set out on paper so that the lower classes can readily find out what they are not supposed to be doing, and thereby avoid doing it.”
—GURPS: Goblins
A lot of poor people dislike getting robbed or assaulted
That on its own would not provoke creation of a law.
In a world without rich people, how do you think poor people would collectively handle the problem of people that assault, rob and murder other people?
Liberalism is a fundamentally oligarchic ideology.
It’s central tenet holds that those who privately own everything must be protected by the law but not bound by it, while those who do not must be bound by the law but not protected by it.
It’s truly sad that the left has completely missed the boat when it comes to liberalism.
Uhm… What are you talking about man. Leftists hate libs
Really? Then why did the left allow literal liberals to hijack and own liberal hatred?
Fundamentalist liberals (ie, the people who call themselves “conservatives” these days) and their working-class allies (ie, fascists) spewing hatred for liberalism is literally a trope - not so with leftists, who never misses the opportunity to alienate the working class by using the term “bourgeoisie” when the term liberal would suffice perfectly.
K
Say more. What do you mean the left has missed the boat on liberalism?
How many leftists do you know that, when given the opportunity to explain their politics, starts their narratives with liberalism - you know, the ideological justification for the private ownership over the means of production that the working class is already familiar with because fundamentalist liberals who calls themselves “conservatives” can’t stop whining about it - and work their way backwards to it’s (actually quite obvious) connections to capitalism and fascism?
Or do all the leftist pundits you know simply start regurgitating the same narratives leftist elites from a hundred years ago used - you know, those narratives that the modern working class has been thoroughly immunised against by decades of liberal media?
Ugh, more often the first one not gonna lie
Well this is where I need help because I don’t consume very much punditry. I read books and articles written by historians, organizers, and activists, and I talk to people.
You have a way of explaining your idea that is a little obtuse. You’re posing questions in the negative, and I need explicit and concrete.
I asked what you mean by leftists missed the boat on liberalism. You ask how many leftists begin by describing private property relations as the foundation of their politics. I would say, none, except perhaps to say they reject it. Then you suggest, again in the negative, that leftists use the talking points of “leftist elites”, I assume you mean leaders but name no specifics, use talking points from “a hundred years ago” that are ineffective against most regular people’s learned conceptions about how things work.
This leads me to believe that you adhere to a definition of liberalism that is similar to a lot of leftists, where you consider all capitalist ideology to be liberal, so progressives are liberal, but also conservative rightists are liberal because they all believe in the classical liberal principle of freedom and progress through ownership of private property.
The second point you make is that leftists aren’t doing enough to relate to the masses, and we are stuck in the past with our rhetoric.
Are these accurate assessments of your positions?
Assuming so, I don’t think you’re saying anything too controversial. I still don’t know what boat has been missed re: liberalism. Marx agrees with your second point:
the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.
And Marx might be an example of an “elite” but he wasn’t peddling in narratives. I would argue that the narratives are our own, perhaps based on the work of those who came before. But the success (and failures) of Marx, Lenin, idk name a bunch of ppl, was their ability to understand and act upon their own conditions. However I don’t like terms like “dialectical materialism” to describe our analysis, its just so clunky and difficult to understand when the theory itself is a fairly natural combination of concepts people are usually already aware of.
My personal view regarding “liberals” is that often leftists like to use one definition of liberal, the private property one, itself borrowing heavily from Stalinist “social chauvinism” theory, to condemn anyone to our right. I’m not sure if you’re condemning per se, but I do think you are subscribed to this very flat theory of liberalism.
The main problem with liberals is their idealism, their inability to distinguish abstract ideas from concrete reality. But this is, as you mentioned in your second point, a problem with the left as well. Also progressive liberals might get a little skittish around maximalist demands like abolish private property, but in my experience they often do not define their own beliefs according to private property relations. We can argue that these relations are implicit in their thinking, but this is another error which causes the left to categorize people rather than convincing them.
Usually progressive liberals define their beliefs as a philosophy that defends human rights and stands up for people who are in harmed, and defends them from the people doing harm. These are leftist principles! There may be structural issues preventing these well meaning progressives from seeing deeper, or affecting change, but their hearts are leftist. And I don’t believe that blanket condemnation of liberalism reaches these people any more than quoting Mao at them. I think leftists are often idealist about liberalism, we think of it as a fundamental category rather than a historic social relation.
Are these accurate assessments of your positions?
Wow… you got all that despite my (alleged) “obtuseness”?
The main problem with liberals is their idealism,
So it’s not the ideology they cling to that dictates that the private owners of the means of production must de facto form the elite classes of society that must be protected and enabled by power while those who do not must be exploited and repressed by it?
It’s just their (alleged) “idealism”?
but their hearts are leftist.
So you ascribe to the “liberals are just misguided leftists who haven’t read enough of my favorite Beardy McDeadguy’s holy texts” school of leftist magical thinking.
Do tell… how has that been working out for the left since 1919? You know, that year when liberals first overtly took hands with fascists and enabled them to crush a leftist uprising?
Why are you so hostile? I’m being sincere. I’m walking through what you said so that I’m sure I understand. I asked you to say more, and you did, and I just want to confirm I understood it. You don’t need to come in so hot.
I didn’t mean obtuse like you’re intentionally doing that. But I asked you a question and you answered it with another question that described what you were presumably talking about in the negative. Like I have to figure out your meaning by trying to suss out what you dont mean. Thats what I meant by obtuse. If I “got all that” its because I took great care reading and trying to understand your comment. No one else who responded to you bothered to give a damn about your meaning.
You clearly have no clue what my philosophy is. To be clear, I am someone who has read many theory books, and understands them. And yes, I am a Marxist. But I dont think reading books solves the ideology problem you are alluding to.
Reading theory is something that leftists engage in because we want to change ourselves, and we do this by learning to understand facts. There is lots of leftists that just substitute a new ideology, but I try to keep myself honest. There is no author I’ve read, no org I’ve joined that I haven’t openly criticized, while working to improve the theory or the org.
So when leftists say to “read theory” I think they mean “you should work to improve yourself” which is nice but its a value judgement, it’s more idealism. If I’m doing certain kinds of work with people, then yes I need us to be on the same page with our strategies, tactics and definitions. But I dont usually tell people to read theory, I usually just quote/explain the theory in want them to understand. If we can’t do that, then imo we dont actually understand it either. More idealism, someone “should” do this or that. Thats not leftism, leftism isnt a social club, it is the struggle.for liberation.
My leftism is essentially practical. I believe that people learn by doing with other people, and when people do new things with new people it changes things in the individual and in the objective world. All the books that I’ve read, if you really condense Marx into a phrase, that is it. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it”.
In my experience a leftist is someone who does the work of liberation, not someone who has read certain books and says certain things a certain way at certain times. When people do the work they often read the theory. Sometimes when people read the theory they do the work, but I’d rather start with the first person than the second. To be honest, I’m much more the second person and its harder to fight idealism with ideas than it is with experiences. So someone who has their mind made up can read theory and it just confirms what we already think. If it doesn’t change the way we act, if it doesn’t engage us in the work, then the theory is just ego, a waste.
As for 1919 I have no clue what you are referring to.
And for idealism and ideology, these are complicated concepts and I dont think we are on the same page as to their meaning. If you’d like to explain what you mean a little better, rather than just asking pointed questions in a way that does not make clear at all what your beliefs are, that would be helpful. You dont talk like any leftists I’ve ever met, so its really hard to determine where you are coming from. Can you just name something that you believe other than “liberals bad”? The way you talk about liberals is not qualitatively different from how reactionaries describe liberals.
You don’t need to come in so hot.
Fine. I’ll quit with the “coming in hot.”
Okay?
You dont talk like any leftists I’ve ever met, so its really hard to determine where you are coming from.
That’s because my political label is working-class normie - not “socialist” or “anarchist” or whatever.
And for idealism and ideology, these are complicated concepts and I dont think we are on the same page as to their meaning.
Ideologies are not complicated things at all. At their core they all come down to a very simple thing - who it is that must be protected by power and who it is that must be exploited by it. Everything else is simply fluff that (at best) play a supportive role. Take the liberal fetishisation of “law & order,” for instance - despite this fetishisation it is absolutely not central to liberal ideology at all. It is merely a structural characteristic of liberal ideology -a necessary aspect to facilitate the necessary violence that keeps the working class where liberal elites (the people leftists insist on calling the “bourgeoisie” because… reasons) wants them to be.
This is what the quote up there refers to.
As for 1919 I have no clue what you are referring to.
The Spartacist uprising - you know, that whole thing.
The way you talk about liberals is not qualitatively different from how reactionaries describe liberals.
Yes - because that is how leftists should have been talking about liberalism right from the start.
Thanks for describing some of your ideas. The “liberals” I was referring to are more like other working class normies, not thought leaders. My actual political strategy is to split the liberals, like the petty capitalists will have to be split by developing the conditions of struggle, along a material class basis, not with ideas.
Im not defending liberalism, I just think a lot of liberals are working class normies who aren’t as theoretically developed as you are. I’d say you are anti theory from your comments but that doesn’t seem to be the case either. You are contradictory, just like the rest of us, and in contradiction there is the possibility of change.
I follow your definition of ideology, it’s a good working definition. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is worth reading if you haven’t. But dont go off YouTube, nobody understands his actual theory. I can send you the essays im referring to, if interested. Only a working class normie, who learned critical thought by criticizing our own experiences could understand it. I’d like to say we have some things in common, I’m no academic and I’m too much of a contrarian to get along with party leaders. Im as self educated a person as youll ever encounter.
But i think there is advantages to being openly socialist, and I think that condemning theory and theorists is a far cry from being correct, especially when someone commits themself to being oppositional and judgemental at the earliest sign of possible disagreement. Intellectual elitism isnt a quality of the working class, its a quality of the bourgeois liberal. Mirroring elitism with “negative” elitism is playing by the same rules with different referees. But also people have to come to it on their own. You can’t convince a liberal to be leftist, something has to change for them, so I think we might agree that there is little use in bending over backwards over them. But I think we can represent a positive alternative, well meaning liberals can be won to socialist principles. But they can also end up disaffected fascists or apolitical bullies. It really takes a party, not an individual; but the party is made of individuals, so there is a dynamic to navigate imo.
I’ve read The History of the German Revolution by Pierre Brouè, so I wasn’t thinking about the spartatacist uprising like an event, more like a 10 year period, so thanks for clarifying. There are a lot of really great lessons from that time, although unfortunately, many cautionary tales. But one thing that I took from it is the necessity (inevitability?) to split the major moderate factions, like the split between the SPD and the USPD, and later, the KPD and the KAPD, into actual fighting forces for the working class. Unfortunately, it shows how crucial education and deep roots in the working class are to success. Maybe if the Spartacists had done more to prepare for the 1917 split then the working class wouldn’t have been so disorganized in the following years. The Vorwards uprising was a result of police agitators taking control of a disorganized movement, Rosa clearly saw the problems with a putsch, and sure enough, the failed action led to the death of her and Liebknecht at the hands of fascist police. If they had survived, the left may have actually seized state power, and Luxemburg’s sharp criticisms of Bolshevism may have lead to a dramatically different outcome in Russia as well – not to mention suppress the rising fascist movement in Germany.
Two questions, you dont think reactionaries are wrong about liberals? What they hate about it are its progressive qualities, by and large they support private property. You reject private property, do you reject communism? And if so, then what?
You gave this guy way too much of your time and effort
Maybe you’re right. Why do you think so?
You seem to be fully accepting the contortion of language to the degree that you accept that enemies must be allies. I don’t know any main stream media leftist pundits, they’re all liberal and some of them disguise themselves to be leftists; those ones are liars trying to muddy the water, not representatives of leftist ideology
I don’t know any main stream media leftist pundits,
Neither do I, so I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Don’t worry, we have no idea what point you’re trying to make either
we
Sorry to hear about your multiple personality disorder, okay?
Citation needed pretty sure it doesn’t
“You could face charges under modern laws against loitering, panhandling, or urban camping.” https://uslawexplained.com/vagrancy
But they don’t apply when the rich do it
…that’s entirely the point
The rich aren’t forced into situations where they have no other choice but to sleep rough, beg and/or steal food to survive
But they choose to and its legal when they do it just look at copyright
I’m not entirely sure I understood.
You are saying, even when rich people commit crimes, like copyright violations when creating AI models, they don’t get punished?
If so, yeah, agree.
I’m trying to tread this comment but my client won’t let me.
When’s the last time you saw a billionaire commiting vagrancy?
That’s the whole point being made, the laws are created to crack down on things which are done exclusively by the downtrodden.
A billionaire could have an odd situation where he would chose to do one of those things, because he knows he’d be able to buy his way out of any consequences.
There’s a movie exploring that. It’s called Life Stinks by Mel Brooks. It does not work out like you describe.
Nothing made by Mel Brooks is accurate to reality. Except for tangential plot points that add pith to the hilarity and hilarity to the poignancy.
Drunk guy on sunset right near the 405 two years ago passed out in very fancy suit
Whoosh
