Asking
Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE »

okay someone explain it to me like i'm 5

If you know me for 2 seconds, you know I am super anti MAGA, anti ICE, pro marginalized communities, yet independent..I take a little of this, a little of that.

But is it just me, or are leftists ultra rude too at times? It's almost like they go sooo left, that they circle the globe to right..as far as rudeness and bullheadedness, at least.

The leftist vs. liberal thing is so strange to me. I feel like they have much more in common than they care to admit..it is just that leftists are more organized/action-oriented libs??

Leftists: want demands, not just protests..perhaps violence is preferred..unionization..?

Please explain if there is more to it that I am missing. I will admit..I had a "classical Christian" education, and have not read Marx/Stalin/etc.
Top | New | Old
BlueVeins · 26-30
In capitalism, economic power is distributed by the free market. Successful small business owners outcompete other small business owners and become big business owners, while the rest go bankrupt. Those big businesses compete with each other, and some come to dominate the country while others close up shop. Capitalism therefore creates a very pronounced hierarchy of economic power.

In democracy, political power is allocated to all citizens, equally.

Over time as money pools in fewer and fewer hands by the aforementioned process, companies run out of room in their respective markets to compete over, and they run out of options for innovation as technologies mature. In order to continue making profit increase -- and they must always increase -- the companies have no choice except to compensate employees less, work their people harder, and set prices higher. At the same time, companies start using their vast economic power to buy political power. They buy off the media and the politicians to do stuff like gut environmental regulations, lower taxes, and strip away worker's rights.

Regular workers get upset over this, and they try to use their political power to restrict the economic power of the corporations. The corporations and the political apparatus they've built redirect this anger against racial minorities, immigrants, women, and people they view as sexual deviants. Thus, Conservatism is born.

This creates a distraction for some portion of the population, but this strategy on their part creates natural divisions. They alienate all those demographic groups they're using as a scapegoat (as well as anyone who's not dumb enough to fall for that bullshit), who then go on to form the opposition to that ruling elite. These disaffected power minorities back politicians who they see as amenable to their interests, but politicians need funding and the main benefactors available are the same companies they're supposed to be against. Thus, these nominally opposition politicians, the Liberals in government, have to either compromise between their donors and their constituents or simply lie to the latter.

As time goes on, the Conservative party instills bigotry as a value in its constituents through their messaging, and they attract people who are more interested in acting out bigotry for its own sake than in simply using bigotry as cover to protect the interests of the wealthy. When this happens, rhetoric reaches a fever pitch and a fascist movement is born. Liberal politicians try to fight back against this, but they can't because they can't acknowledge the reason why all of this is happening in the first place and address it at its source. To do so would be to indict their own ideology and admit some measure of complicity. They can't actually uproot a fascist movement because doing so would require taking actions that their donors would not accept.

I don't hate Liberal voters, to be clear. In fact, there's a world of difference between Liberals and the people they vote into office; the former are good and decent human beings and the latter are generally ghouls in human skin. I think most -- though not all -- of the hate leftists direct towards Liberals is directed towards two-faced corporatist politicians such as Harris & Schumer, not average proletarian Liberals. But if you're willing to consider the Republicans at this point despite seeing how bad MAGA is, that kinda tells me that you maybe don't understand why MAGA arose in the first place and will therefore be impotent to actually stop it. It's sort of like being in favor of a leaky pipe in your bathroom but against the flooding and mold that it causes.

And just tangentially... if someone tells you they've "read Stalin," you can disregard them right there. Marx was an accomplished economist and political theorist. Stalin was just some delusional freak who seized power over his country and immediately ran it into the ground.
OldBrit · 61-69, M
Classically Liberals want social equality, welfare systems, health services etc provided by government and regulated capitalism and see that happening over a long period of social change.

Socialists want more stars ownership of industry and regulation etc along with state providing welfare, healthcare etc. Workers unionisation etc

However if you look at UK for example the Labour party long term socialist party is arguably now more liberal than the Liberal Democrat Party and they more socialist.

Labour had clause 4 in its manifesto for years

"common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange"

But removed it in the 1990s when essentially it stopped being a socialist party and has moved steadily to the right ever since. Historically it's been funded via political levy subscriptions from Union members. But increasingly unions are unhappy with the current policies and have either stopped direct support or are threatening it. That's particularly bad news when right wing parties attract huge donations from the very wealthy who obviously don't want to see better workers rights, industrial regulation, fair taxation systems etc etc etc
BohoBabe · M
I think a lot of Leftists get frustrated with Liberals because MAGA completely proves that liberal institutions don't stop Fascism. But instead of actually going against these norms and institutions in order to stop MAGA, Liberals just keep hoping that at some point, Capitalism and the Constitution will stop Fascism on their own.
Joe Biden should have forced the DOJ to arrest every Republican involved in the Fake Electors Plot, and he should have packed the SCOTUS with at least ten more Democrats. But Democrats would never do things like that, because it goes against the norms, and it would come across as too aggressive. I absolutely hate liberal civility politics, and I while I don't hate Liberals, I get why so many Leftists do.
MethDozer · M
@BohoBabe i dont think you understand how judges are appointed to the SC. Actually based on this comment I know you don't
MethDozer · M
Marx and especially Stalin aren't the be all and end all kf leftist thought. Stalin especially is very, rightfully so, controversial in left leaning circles to be polite about it.. Marx is usually respected on his analysis, but his method and ideas beyond that aren't universallly accepted or agreed with. Not all leftists are Marxists by any means, though his analysis is generally valued.


The thing is anyone on any side who has a passionate and studied about it tends to be insufferable. There's definitely a lotnof insuffersble leftists and most leftists will agree. There's plenty of insufferable liberals as well, however liberalism is much more mainstream and by most accounts status quo so there tends to be far fewer passionate and studied liberals. It's just so mainstreamnand also centrist it is kind of milktoast and liberalism just doesn't really have as strong a core philosophy to get passionate over. There are passionate liberals for sure but very few. It's just not a very inspiring philosophy to breed it, and it being so status quo it isn't revolutionary in anysense. One of the mamy things it shares with Conservstism is it is mostly, if not entirely, reactionary. At least in the modern world. So while there are mountains of insufferable liberals, they are insufferable about not challenging the system much so it tends to be a more comfortable variety of insufferable since they arent really challenging much if anything. While mosr of their insufferabilty being their attempts to either appease or find middle ground with the insufferable aspects of the left with the right.
Like they rarely ever actually address class conflict and struggle and just glom onto the janky identity issues and politics side since it doesn't result in much tangible conflict with their ironclad stance of maintaining the same class and economic structures of the right. Which god damn it makes them annoying as fuck to the average person and makes those on tbe left often loath them.


Blueboy's analysis is fairly good and accurate. It's not so much hate towards average joes who identify and vote liberal, it's more disdain forn the liberals in power whose whole platform can be boiled down to " hey rightwing, these proles are starting to get fed up. If we we want to keep our good thing going we better make some empty gestrures to quiet them dowm". Where the right just says fuck that, we can just shoot and arrest them.

It's like having one slave owner who says " hey if I feed them a little nicer amd five them an actual bed and let these d
Slaves honky-tonk two nights a month. Maybe grant them freemen status when they are too old to work and worth feeding anynore.These slaves are way less upity and runaway less.
The other slave owner says " fuck all that noise, I just whip faster, harder, and more often if ans when theu get uppity or try and run. Might even hang or drag me one for good measure. One is preferable to the other to be enslaved by but at the end of the day they're maintaining slavery.
Leftists: want demands, not just protests..perhaps violence is preferred..unionization..?

Where do you get the "perhaps violence is preferred" part? I don't see any violence coming from the Left, that is a major Right thing tho. Do you think there is a single Lefty in ICE? Highly doubt it.
Miram · 31-35, F
They can all be collective C..

When I was younger, it used to hurt me when I got attacked for criticizing Islam. I mean there was living among a community who wanted to chop off my head, and I log into the internet to sort my reaction to their bigotry only to be met by western leftists who think I am a rightist abusing, belittling, attacking, harassing...all because they can't process any form of nuisances.

 
Post Comment