Talk:Left-wing politics/Archive 1
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Could someone please check if the notion that leftist in America means "new left" and in Europe means lefts organized in communist parties is right? Myself an European, I think this differs widely from country to country. There was a "new left" hereover, too. --till we *) 19:39 Oct 19, 2002 (UTC)
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I do not object to the article as such, but the initial stub was misleading. What differentiates right and left is highly variable, and what constitutes right and left are also highly variable.
It is simply false to identify "left" with sympathetic to socialism or communism. This is certainly true of some leftists, but not all. It is an even more egregious error to identify this with liberalism in the US. Traditionally, US liberals were Cold War hawks staunchly opposed to communism, and far from agreed concerning socialism. Other leftists are anarchists who are oppsed to communism and socialism at least insofar as they have been practiced in Europe.
What "the left" means has changed over time, and it would be misleadint to readers to define "leftist" in a way that associates it with how some leftists in one place at one time understand themselves. SR
This is a vast vast vast improvement over the original, I am grateful to the person/those people who worked on it.
I made two changes.
US ambitions, and not solely Soviet ambitions, were responsible for the Cold War.
Also, I cut the last line that deprecated Nitzschian postmodernism. That it is NPOV is enough to justify deletion. But I would add that many claim that National Socialism was at best a perversion of Nietzsche, and at worst had nothing to do with it except some self-serving and ignorant claims. Whatever post-modernism's political claims are (and I do not think they are unified, isn't that the point of pomo?), and whatever its effects will be, I wouldn't blame any bad outcomes on Nietzsche's influence.
I am not qualified, but I hope that others will developm non-communist elements of leftism, including Democratic Socialism (or is it Social Democracy), environmentalism, feminism, and anarchism. SR
On reflection I added the fact that it was originally the right which defined the political spectrum. My point on communism, and the reason I spent so much time on it, is that it defined the left-right spectrum and to an extent still does. American liberals are on the left of American conservatives because they're relatively closer to communists. By now the ancien regime doesn't exist anymore, and there isn't yet something to replace communism as the defining point of the spectrum. A.J. (Oops, I thought the first part was an objection to mine, not the one he deleted. I certainly hope no one thinks I imply that all leftists, of any sort, actually support communism. For the most part they merely resemble it relatively more than those on the right.)
- right, the first objection was to an earlier stub. The current article -- which I take to be mostly or entirely A.J.'s work, is I think quite good. Nevertheless, many readers will not be prepared for such a generic and broad understanding of "communism." I think the article is clear, however. Also, there may be other ways to define "leftism." One possible definition is any programatic opposition to structural inequality. I say "structural" because I think there are many conservatives who also claim to oppose inequality, but of course their critique is of a rather different sort, and many may still take issue with the definition I just proposed. Clearly, contemporary "leftism" is not merely a reaction to the ancien regime but to a whole set of political and economic developments of modernity (and despite the term "ancien," absolute monarchs of the mercantilist era are rather more modern than ancient). I think this comes through in the article although perhaps it could be developed. Also, one has to distinguish between different kinds of reactions to modernity -- truly reactionary ones as well as so-called conservative ones that are nevertheless more modern than traditional. As I said, I do not have any objection to communism broadly defined and clearly distinct from the CP. But I do wonder if this is enough -- as you admit, it doesn't fully serve the New Left or postmodernist forms of leftism. I think others who know more about these topics just have to contribute more. SR
It is mine, except for the part about the Cold War you altered. I would object to you your definition of leftism because, for example, the Soviet Union had a great deal of inequality, both in how many material goods people had and in how much power they had. Unless you want to completely rearrange how people use their words it won't work. Of course you're right that the left is more than a reaction to the ancien regime (and right that it was modern, but that's what people called it), which is why the ancien regime no longer defines the ideological spectrum. Communism won't either once something else comes along. A.J.
- As you say, there was a good deal of inequality in the USSR -- this is why it is important to distinguish between communism in general and CP communism. I think my definition of "left" would work in the USSR not in spite of but because of your opposition -- after all, Trotsky, Preobrazhensky, Radek, and otthers identified themselves as the "left opposition." Clearly then the USSR was not "left" in any absolute sense, for within early Soviet politics there was a distinction between "left" and "right," and a good definition (and I am not saying mine is the best) has to account for this, SR
Just one point of historic fact. The Estates General was not the National Assembly nor a national assembly. A national assembly indicates a form of national participative representative body akin to a modern parliament. The Estates General was not a parliament in the modern sense; it was not democratic and it wasn't representative. Elements of it however broke away to become something akin to a national parliament. JTD 07:05 Feb 1, 2003 (UTC)
It would be nice to know what are/were each nation's left-wing political parties, and whom from said parties became a leader of state. Kingturtle 18:07 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)