Skip to main content

The Realistic Thinking of the Left

I saw a Jacobin article recently that summarized the thinking of the left. It basically said: when people ask us where we will get the money to pay for Medicare for All and more social programs, they are just trying to distract us and demoralize us. The important thing is to win power and then we will deal with those questions later. These leftists don't want to ask about what the power consists in and what it's used for. They don't want to ask why so many people are completely destroyed and unable to afford basic healthcare. They don't want to ask what kind of economy needs massive social programs (hint: one that presupposes massive poverty). They don't want to clarify anything about the state and its basis. They don't want to think about the blackmail power of the capitalists that the whole system is based on. It's just like: "we will tax the hell out of them!" But then you have to ask: what will you do so that they invest? Without investment, no jobs and no tax revenue. And isn't the whole way work is organized the very basis upon which the power of the capitalist class is based on? Isn't that the reason for the ever-decried wealth disparities? If you just ask these very basic questions, which are well-known to any business student moron, they will freak out. For them, this is just a moral question. They think these questions just reveals some conservative ideology, and has nothing to do with the real interests of capitalists. It would seem the obvious answer would be to take away the power of extortion of the capitalists and to reorganize the economy so it becomes about meeting needs and not the profit interests of business. Instead these leftists have this fantasy of using the state and economy for good because they are so realistic and don't want to get too far away from the "possible". One is tempted to raise again the old Situationist slogan -- one of the few they had that made any sense -- against the myopic pragmatism of the left: "be realistic: demand the impossible!"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Absurdity Known As The Right to Resist or Overthrow

Everyone is familiar with the refrain that there is a right to resist tyranny. If a government is tyrannical, then the people have the right to resist it or overthrow it. The doctrine of the "right to resistance/overthrow" contains a contradiction that is worth thinking about. The rights that people are never squeamish about praising as "natural" actually have to be conferred upon the people by the sanction of a public law granted by a state. However, if the state then turns around and says, "well, this is really tentative upon the whims of the people we rule over", then this completely undermines the basis of law. In other words, the most authoritative legislation (a constitution) would contain within itself a denial of its own supremacy and sovereignty if the right to resistance were actually enshrined and taken seriously, not just as a sop to popular stupidity. It's a basic tenet of liberalism -- and doubtlessly many other ideologies --   that...
Post a Comment
Read more

The concept of cultural appropriation – a critique of racism on its own foundations

Original here: https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/das-konzept-der-kulturellen-aneignung-eine-kritik-des-rassismus-auf-seinen-eigenen-grundlagen/ In recent years, a new form of racism,  cultural appropriation,  has been criticized in some anti-racist circles . They always discover this where members of a group adopt cultural productions (e.g. certain cultural customs, hairstyles, items of clothing,...) that, according to advocates of the concept of cultural appropriation, come from other groups, namely those who have less power over the acquiring group due to racial discrimination. When criticizing cultural appropriation, respect for these cultures is demanded. This respect should then contribute to combating racial discrimination. There was criticism that a non-indigenous artist in Canada integrated elements of indigenous art into her artwork.  1  Even when “white”  2  people wear dreadlocks or throw colored powder at each other (a practice inspired by th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Red = mass death?

 Translation of: https://www.gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/rot-massentod/ On the debate about the Black Book of Communism Even before it was published, it caused a sensation. In France, of course, such a book is a different story: there, the communists are in the government and have always been a recognized part of the nation. There was a communist-socialist counter-culture, which was eliminated in Germany when the Nazis came to power. And of course it is also about the Resistance, the French resistance to which the French Republic refers and which also included communists. In Germany, therefore, it is also about something else: on the one hand, the GDR is to be portrayed once again as evil, evil, evil, Honecker = Stalin = Pol-Pot. On the other hand, it is about the permissibility of Marxist social criticism in general.  However, pointing out the interest of the editor and the discussants is not a refutation of the book's arguments. Because even a political opponent with the wo...
Post a Comment
Read more