"I am very much afraid that the real Left may turn out to have been an unrepeatable phase in the evolution of political societies. It relied on clear and obvious injustices that needed addressing, on clear and obvious political and economic targets that needed attacking, on a mass working class base, on communities organised around the workplace, on a discourse of class-based solidarity and economic justice, on middle-class supporters and on politicians close to the concerns of ordinary people. None of that now exists."
I'm afraid all of that not only exists, but with more intensity than ever. Clear, obvious injustices: genocide of Palestinian innocents before our eyes for months. Clear obvious targets that need attacking: a billionaire class that dictates nearly everything in society to the disadvantage of the majority of the population and is accountable to nobody in the west. In particular the FIRE sector of the west as pointed out so clearly by Hudson. A mass working class base: globalization has created a working class of former peasants so massive as to dwarf the western working class of the 80s.
Really the only thing that doesn't exist in your list here is this: "a discourse of class-based solidarity and economic justice, on middle-class supporters and on politicians close to the concerns of ordinary people."
And there's a clear reason it doesn't exist. The ruling class, recovering politically from the mid 70s into the 80s and early 90s was able to co-opt a handful of former lefts. These new "lefts" used idpol to supplant a rational class based analysis of capitalism with an irrational identity based model that looks left and anti racist, but is in fact meant to divide and stupify the working class of the west. This has created a political cover so that as you point out, there are no powerful political groups that actually care about the working masses. Under this discourse they don't need to, they just need to be anti racist, sexist, homophobic and with these tokens are accepted as left and virtuous and thus can more easily advance WW3 while reducing the western working class to the status of atomized peasants begging for crumbs and worshipping their billionaire overlords.
For an essay on the left, I find it curious that capitalism was not mentioned once. Also, the French Revolution is given quite a lot of attention, despite the fact it occurred between two socioeconomic systems (fuedalism and capitalism) but the ideas and politics that originally animated the successful Russian Revolution are not seriously treated at all. That's curious. What happened before Stalin took power? What were the slogans and policies of the Bolsheviks who ended WW1 with a revolution?
You mentioned trotskyists. What about Trotsky? Some review of what he actually conceived of as leftism should be present. Instead, we hear of what some epigones of Trotsky did in 80s UK.
I like the target of the article, but let's really aim at it!
We're talking about different things. The Left began as a way of addressing domestic concerns, notably the imbalance of power and wealth, not issues abroad which tended to be the concern of Liberals. And these concerns were very clear and obvious: the factory owner, the mine owners, the landowners, the idle rich: you saw and read about them every day. Strikes and political action could accomplish things. Now they can't: witness the Gaza demonstrations or the CoP demonstrations, which are actually a sign of political impotence. There may be terrible things happening in the world, there may be widespread discontent, but there is no organisation and no mechanism for change. It's fair enough to say "if only ..." but a hundred and fifty years ago strikes in favour of a ten-hour working day could achieve something immediate and concrete. No such possibilities exist no<.
That may be true. I thought your target was to get at what is truly left and then compare that with what passes for left. To do that one must, as you did, start in France and then move on to the Bolsheviks, who took up the cause of the French Revolution, won power, ended WW1 and consequently defined the "left" for the 20th century.
In a nutshell, I'd say the left is opposed to capitalism, imperialist war and all attacks by the capitalist ruling classes (whether they pose as lefts or not) on the social position of the working classes, which are now global and massive. When I say working class I mean only anyone who replies on a wage to survive.
Effective mass movements take time and proper social conditions to form. Every successful revolution was proceeded by numerous unsuccessful efforts. But those unsuccessful efforts nevertheless indicates the tensions and contradictions in society building and if not relieved (and it won't be, not by the misleadership currently at the head of "the garden"), will eventually break. The Russian Revolution came after 1905 and decades of state repression before that. The Chinese Revolution was literally in the wilderness for 20 years before being strong enough to rout the Western backed KMT.
Also, just because the Western anti-Zionist forces are not currently sufficiently placed and massed to force the insanely compromised Western political class to stop supporting Israel, doesn't mean that they aren't advancing. The last 69 days make the hypocrisy of the Western "Rule Based Order" extremely clear to anyone paying the least bit of attention. Like the Chinese and Russians before them, westerners are seeing the Fascist underbearing of their liberal states.
Meanwhile, the RoW is turning strongly against Israel in terms of BDS and they're also turning against Western brands that tie into the Zionist project. Even if Israel somehow succeeded in genociding every last Palestinian in Gaza (very unlikely, Hamas is winning by surviving and exacting punishment in the IOF), the chessboard has changed to be very hostile to Israel's long term survival.
> The Russian Revolution came after 1905 and decades of state repression
So, you consider the Third Russian Revolution to be driven by some mass movement. But this is a myth.
It was perpetrated by a fringe minority of two half-parties: Bolshevik (a slightly larger/bolshe wing of social-democratic party) and "right esers" - the right wing of social-revolutionary party.
They also were not attacking any viable and repressing state. If it was done - it was done by the pro-Western liberals, who did the Second Russian Revolution (February 1917). It was them who destroyed the monarchy and its insitutions, already very corrupt and ineffective. Then in mere 6 months they proven themselves even worse statesmen than the decaying monarchy was. It was then when the famous parliament exchange happenned that there allegedly there was not a single political party that wanted to take power in Russia.
The Bolshevik+rSR Third Revolution came not against a tyrannic state, but over a glaring void, a scorched earth when the "mass movements" proved themselves utterly worthless and ceeded power to fringe minorities to try doing at least something.
> The Chinese Revolution was literally in the wilderness for 20 years before being strong enough to rout the Western backed KMT.
Again, KMT and CCP are not alien indepenent entities, they are brothers. Just like aforementioned half-parties in Russia, they were opposing wings of one Chinese Nationalist Party (Sun Yat-sen). This party/movement when it could finally claim power - split and felt into infighting.
The KMT was not "Western proxy" also, it for a while was ally to Stalin's USSR no less, than Mao's wing was. And in 1945 when KMT was rooted out it was not without massive military help of USSR, which fallen out with KMT and had a lot of surplass army after defeating the Third Reich.
If you feel necessary to label 1945 KMT as Western-backed (it was then) then you equally has to label the "Chinese Revolution" as USSR-backed.
But then againt, there was not some "mass movement" of China that toppled the West+KMT statehood. There were two almost equally sized wings of the one mass movement infighting (and both drawing from foreign aid, of course). And personally i am not sure which a wing can be clamed "more mass" during the timespan of their growing split. I suspect it was initially KMT who actually enjoyed a majority of National Party's legacy, while Mao's base were largly "uninitiated" peasantry remote from all the political/ideological discussions.
I started to write a rebuttal starting with the claims of multiple Russian Revolutions when they're really phases of the same Russian Revolution, just as there are phases of the French Revolution but...
It's really not a good idea to enter into conversation with anyone who seriously posits the Nazis as a left movement. Their actions and their supporters make clear that they are a Fascist movement. If you are still dwelling on names (eg NED, the Democratic Party) then there's really nothing I can do to engage in a productive conversation with you.
So, you confirm that only USSR-kind of Left, who de facto prostituted the resources they inherited to all the world to leech at mere lip service price, are the real Left. Well, if true, this means there objectively is nothing Left can offer to the world, and the Left idea should be left in the same archive as phlogiston idea.
Meanwhile in this essay above Aurilien defined the Left as those, who seek to expand the cohort of decision makers by bringing decision making down the the ordinary people ("for as much as practuically possible" and other due disclamers). Now, that is exactly what Wehrmacht was known for. Empowerting low-rank officers to make decisions and thus winning the wars against most other armies (including the Red Army until 1943).
Again, no one is obliged to agree with Aurilien'd definitions, but if you do comment upon the essay without expressing your disagreement, then de facto you did. Hence, to claim there is no possible Left AND Nationalistic ideology/movement/party it is not enough to claim "Hitler was badie", but to demonstrate it is not possible to "diffuse power" within state boundaries and retaining loyalty.
Lenin, to his credit, was explicit and vocal "national traitors" demanding any "true democrat" to cause as much harm to the statehood of Russia and its existential war effort. This, of course, is another reason it was not any "mass movement" who made the "third phase" of Russian revolution.
And if you demand that any Left movement to start with a demand to betray and harm one's own nation, then i think you just sentenced Left to forever be freak minorty everywhere. Just like Bolshvikes were until OTHER forces destroyed Russian Empire for them to feed off the corpse.
But the question remains if nazi - national-socialists - were Left, as international-socialists - communists - were? Or were they instead a "manifestation of the mostly reactionary power by the banksters" to borrow from Dimitrov.
There is a claim that fascism and national-socialism, albeit finding themselves in a marriage of convenience during WW2, were ideologic opposites, much like you describe Left/Libarals love-hate.
Because the dream of "proletariat having no nationhood" failed early, starting with WW1. And all the attempts of USSR to make them only turned those communists into free cow for everyone to milk, and eventually contributed to USSR collapse and PR disaster of communism brand.
When you describe demise of UK Left you do not mention very unpolular Afghanistan war and the rise of Chimerica, which seem to coinside.
Marxism treated nationalism and loyalty to governments/states as some illusion. Which feels not uttainable in practice, even if correct in some formal, mathematical sense.
Bolshevism was extremely hostile to anything Russian, probably seeing in vague Russianness its most capable (thus, dangerous) competitor here and now. It was coherent, based on Marx's idea of world revolution and impossibility of "peaceful coexistence". But the world revolution did not materialize. It is kinda ironic as the third Russian Revolution was actually anit-marxist event, happening in a mostly pre-capitalistic nation, instead of waiting capitalism to hatch, ripe, and die of age overwhelmed by "inherent contradictions", as foressen by Marx. Bolshevism was anti-Marx in one aspects, seemingly compensating for it being "more marxist than Marx" in others.
Anyway, what room should this leave modern Left to occupy?
How should modern Left position themselves towards national/state loyalties?
Ignoring it is fine for abstract theory, but any practical political movement should make an opinion. Talks about "a way of addressing domestic concerns" just could not lead to any practical movement, because in modern world even once great powers like UK, France and Germany became too small societies to act on their own.
And... what a princpled stance then could it be? Embracing it seems to put a Left movement to NSDAP road, while decrying it seems to put it to a CPSU road. Both having a promiosing start but leading to a dead end.
For me this question, you did not even touch, seems to be killing the Left. Ignoring the question is practically impossible, and giving any of the two answers looks a receipt of delayed suicide.
And the Left parties indeed become "shell companies" only serving as owners of established franchise brandnames to lend.
The discussion also overlooks the SocDem betrayals of the left in the run up to WWI and the aftermath. They supported their national imperial projects over class solidarity with the global proletariat. The Communists were reluctant to form alliances with the SocDems because of very recent and very serious betrayals. Or that course of the West might have been very different but for the coup against Henry Wallace in 1944 or the assassinations of the 1950s/1960s.
Or the course of the global South outside of the 15% garden. Somehow these peoples keep going back to socialist and communist movements and politicians even as previous generations get mowed down or corrupted. It's because life sucks for the vast majority under liberalism and the right's solution always ends up with more austerity, privatization, and open Fascism. This is about the strongest indicator that a Marxist social dialectic towards left revolution is an accurate assessment of social development.
Well, I can't cover everything in 5000 words, but yes of course there was a great deal of bitterness on both sides from historical incidents such as Ebert's use of the Freikorps to suppress the Communists. But irrespective of "fault" there were divisions within the Left that crippled for most of the twentieth century.
My point wasn't regarding "fault" but rationality. Given SocDem's history of betrayals, the Communists had very good reasons to be very wary of any alliance with them. I would argue that their decision may well have been the correct one strategically - most of the European resistance movements were Communist led and they came out of WWII in a very strong position to win it all. What they didn't count on was the counterrevolutionary force within the Allied forces headed by the Anglo-American deep state to immediately recruit Nazis and Mafioso to fight them and isolate them from the USSR.
There were certainly mistakes along the way, but I would argue that the main source of division came from SocDems and "moderates" who always sided with the bourgeoisie when it mattered, and the Communist left's naivete about being able to peaceably change a ruthless imperialist capitalist system that had no problems killing millions in colonies and shooting strikers at home. Yes, they were willing to make some concessions to the "left" and proletariat while Communism remained a visible alternative, but note how quickly NATO/EU turned on third way countries like Yugoslavia, Syria, and Iraq as soon as the Berlin Wall fell.
If we look at the "left" systems that persisted - Communist China, DPRK, Stalinist USSR, Cuba, early Yugoslavia - they were indeed paranoid and ruthless to the point of being counterproductive. But they persisted and arguably thrive (China practically doubling life expectancy and achieving near universal literacy under Mao) even under the extreme embargoes by the West. Meanwhile the softer and more accommodating leftism of Arbenez and Mossadegh were easily destroyed by Western chicanery. And defeat meant hundreds of thousands or millions dead and impoverishment and terror for majority of the population.
The "problems of the left" of being divided, being simultaneously ineffective but authoritarian... may well have more to do with the rightist actions against it, than an inherent weakness in the ideology. I think its greatest weakness lies in misunderstanding the ruthlessness and power of its rightist enemy and thinking it could come to a peaceful accommodation with the right.
> the SocDem betrayals of the left in the run up to WWI and the aftermath. They supported their national imperial projects over class solidarity
Here you imply that "national-traitors" is the only kind who can claim being Left.
You consider any idea of "national-socialism" be non-Left by definition. And only "international-socialism" be the Left.
I am not so sure.
Especially if to accept Aurelien's criterion of "diffusing power as close to ordinary people as possible" goal/dream.
But if you do, if you consider only Bolshevik/USSR to be Left, then this seems to leave Left nowhere to exist. USSR became free cow to milk and then failed, leaving behind the burgeoning nationalistic provinces and eaten out internasionalisted host it parasited upon. Not a very convincing "vision of future" to sell to voters.
And China was USA's proxy and willing spearhed to slay USSR, if you would then consider it as a "city on a hill" of "class solidarity" for XXI Left to dream of, then equally should be Ukraine, Israel and other USA proxies.
Another very satisfying and enlightening piece - thank you! I wonder if the downward plummet of ordinary people's living standards now, currently bolstering radical populism, will eventually work its way over to something of the point of view of the old left. After all, in the end, either all of society benefits, or the inequalities give rise to at least chaos, if not revolution. But it can take a long time. My husband's family got out of South Africa at the beginning of apartheid, because they thought "everything would blow up". It took what, 50 years or so? The downtrodden lack the energy or resources to fight for change, at least initially. And then, when they have power, they generally lack the experience and philosophical coherence to make it work towards their goals. I wonder if that's why some of the most effective movements for change (in the far past, at least) arose from religious and spiritual leaders. It tapped into something other than self-interest. The next decades will be instructive, no doubt.
In the media enforced empire of beltway neocon DC, there is no right or left. There is on one side's disdain for the deplorables (used to be the rugged individualist accused of anti collectivism), and Trump supporters aka deplorables.
Between those miniscule poles is the immense, unitary blob mind.
Quite nice, indeed! Although a little too focused on the Anglo-American sphere - but it's ok, the idea that the Democratic Party in the USA is the left, since left= liberals, It's as widespread as it is wrong. Anyway, it would be nice to bring some other regional spheres to the discussion, like, say, Latin America, or even China (or Russia, by the way :))
Well, as far as I know, they never call themselves the Left but liberal (vs. Right or Republicans). But in a country with only 2 parties, the tendency, especially from abroad, is to apply the Left vs. Right paradigm. I think this is part of the problem with the modern European Left, heavily influenced by the American worldview
Thank you, Maria. Been living in America all my adult life, and in my experience, the Democrats here very much think of themselves as the Left. On the other hand, conservatives are increasingly not thinking of themselves as Republicans, and seeing the Dem/Reps as a uniparty, not unlike the communist parties of the former Soviet bloc. Just to make it more confusing.
Yes, America has way too much influence. But as many have pointed out, it was the French who gave us Left vs Right. And just last week, on a Czech blog I follow, we had a bit of a tumble with huge comment participation, where people were all over the place on the same topic. It's starting to make me crazy. It wasn't a flame war by any means; more of an explosion of wildly disparate views with no hope in sight. :-)
If I were to peg the Uniparty? Hm. Woke/neoliberal, I think... Or to put it bluntly, woke welfare statist warmongers. Argh.
The Democratic and Republican Parties of today are **not** the same as the parties of fifty years ago. To roughly quote the writer Chris Hedges, the Democrats became conservative and the Republicans went insane.
There was much effort to pushing out anyone who was a New Deal Democrat especially under the Clintons’ DLC (Democratic Leadership Council). The economic populism of the New Deal was killed and the increasingly radical “liberal” civil rights used as a distraction. As Bill Clinton said where can they go? Newt Gingrich led the efforts in the Republican Party to get rid of the RHINOs or Republicans In Name Only, really the people who would not slavishly follow what whacked, money friendly, ideas of the party leadership working for their wealthy patrons.
I believe that most Americans are far to the economic left compared to the establishment of both major parties, while still fairly classically liberal, but also socially much more moderate, even conservative, compared to the Democrats.
The modern Democratic Party, really the entire political establishment in Washington, follow what is called the “Washington Consensus,” which is an economic policy of austerity with lower taxes, reduction of regulations, and cutbacks in the social safety net along with efforts to privatize government services. Neoliberalism.
The Republicans do have more extreme positions, but the Democrats have tried to privatize Social Security and Medicare with Republican cooperation. It just has been blocked by popular rage and Medicare is still being slowly privatized like the British National Health Service is. Google the term “Grand Bargain” with the two American parties with regards to tax and welfare benefit cuts along with Wall Street lobbying for the privatization of Social Security into a gigantic 401K plan for Americans. To be run by Wall Street firms for a service fee.
More generally, it is the elimination of most of the New Deal and is what is generally imposed on countries seeking loans from the World Bank. It is essentially what was called Reaganonics or what President George H. W. Bush called Voodoo Economics.
Remember that the only real differences between the two major parties are their putative differences in social issues and those issues are often more of a façade than actual beliefs or policies. I mean, if the Democratic Party had really believed that the right to choose to have an abortion was really important, they could have codified it into federal law much of the time between 1973’s Roe v. Wade and now. However, just like with gun control, it is a useful tool for getting the base energized, get the donations, and more votes.
But even the economic ideologies of both parties, which have some differences, are both still essentially the same and both are forgotten anyways as soon as there is another war to fund without raising any taxes.
No, these are not groups, these are individuals, and that's the point. After all, it's fair to say that "Royalism in France is still very much alive:" true, but irrelevant since there is no organised political movement with a chance of restoring the monarchy, just as today there is no organised Left.
1. Good point. Challenges to the elites come via individual politicians these days, both on the left and on the right. For a variety of reasons, organized parties are not powerful the way they were.
2. Otoh, social change does not come fully fledged and with labels. Before change occurs, there are usually many tentative campaigns, often ending in failure, . We could view these,political figures as forerunners.
3. Predictions solely based on the recent past don't take into account the hidden trends that will cause Black Swans - the improbable events that rock society.
I hope that Sahra Wagenknecht's new party in Germany will revive the original values of the Left. I read a description of the Left's most important missions in this publication (in German):
Andrej Hunko, a German politician, mentions two main missions in his opinion: "social welfare mission" and "peace mission" - Sozialauftrag and Friedensauftrag. He left the party "Die Linke" together with 10 other personalities to join the new party initiative of Sahra Wagenknecht, because in his opinion the "peace mandate" was obviously violated. The "peace mandate" was also a driving force behind the original Green Party in Germany. A well-known personality in this context is Antje Vollmer, who unfortunately passed away a few months ago.
In your article, you don't mention the "peace mandate" as an inherent characteristic of the Left, although it developed later in history. It would be nice to have more historical context and more insight on this topic as to how the „Peace mandate“ originally developed among leftist movements in different countries. It might have been an opposition movement to the interventionist policies of the Right? The reasons why this mission, together with other principles of the left-wing movement, is no longer practiced are already well described in your article.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell in Switzerland and France, I don't see any political party like Sahra Wagenknecht's that would be prepared to return to the original values. In Switzerland it is definitely The Right party which stands up for neutrality and no arm deliveries to Ukraine as opposed by an aggressive pro war policy of The Left.
If we re talking about the 1980s, then the "Peace" dimension of the Left was largely about anti-Americanism, and more pragmatically dislike in Germany of having foreign forces stationed in the country, and being the designated theatre for the next war. In some other countries, it was the stationing of intermediate range nuclear missiles.There was also a sizeable overlap between anti-militarist groups and parts of the Left. This effectively stopped at the end of the Cold War (and indeed in Germany there were protests at the closure of US bases, because of the loss of employment) and the Left began its long journey towards militarism.
> "... organised political parties existed by the Eighteenth Century, but they represented constellations of interests more than abstract political ideas."
As I see it, political parties always represent both and so they should. I like to simply the language further into "theory" and "practice". All political parties exist to put their hands on the levers of state power. Real politics should offer 1) a practical plan of what you propose to do with that power, i.e. what you want to change, and 2) a theory explaining why that's the _right_ thing to do.
What's interesting about our current period is that the practical plans are largely missing in the political discourse and, it appears, in the heads of the politicians vying for our votes and many of their most vocal supporters.
A tidy example of this is the SNP in Scotland. Independence is never properly explained. How will the independent nation be established and function thereafter and who will win/lose what in the process? In my profession some are wont to say, "That's arm waving not engineering." In the political discourse it's fine to wave your arms on the theoretical side but not so much on the practical.
1. Most of what we see as "left" vs" right" in western society has little to do with coherent ideology and everything to do with a series of ad hoc coalitions. For instance, in the US, Team D can be viewed as a shotgun marriage between certain idpol grievance groups and the PMC. None of these have all that much in common other than their enemies, and inf act they don't even like each other all that much.
2. "The second mistake was one of imagination. At the beginning of her reign, Thatcher was such a divisive and in many ways ridiculous figure (she was nicknamed “Attila the Hen” in Whitehall because of her outbursts of temper) that it seemed impossible that she could last very long. And indeed had it not been for a great deal of sheer luck and the utter incompetence of the Opposition she would not have done so. By the time her political enemies realised that she and her clique were serious, the machine was loose, rampaging through the country and destroying everything, as well as invading other countries."
In the US, something much the same could be said about Ronald Reagan and, for that matter, Bill Clinton. Had Ross Perot not run in 1992, Clinton probably would have been a footnote in history, and after taking office, Clinton was catastrophically unpopular until Team R overplayed its hand and Waco gave the fat boy a chance to look presidential.
The Right wing has traditionally had another political advantage, namely the sympathy of the military. In a political crisis the military often steps in to restore order--usually a traditional (right leaning) order.
In the U.S. today (and probably Europe and increasingly Latin America) the officer corps is populated by pretty bland members of the PMC, like the upper ranks of the business class and most bureaucracies. Although the working class is attracted to Trump's revolutionary theatre, a re-elected Trump won't help them much because he is really an oligarch with his own class interests. As Trump proved in his first term, he is just a typical self-aggrandizing and corrupt opportunist. He has no program, only slogans (MAGA!). In this respect, he is a traditional (if much more extreme) version of the last three or four Presidents we've had.
One danger of another Trump presidency is that, historically, a successful Right-wing coup doesn't require the support of the entire military. Often a well-organized fanatical group within the officer corps is enough.
It astonishes me how the woke keep on fantasizing about a right wing coup, when we are visibly living post woke coup, and its attendant chaos... everything is going to hell in a handbasket, now, but oooohhhh Trump!
Good question. Some- hardcore, perhaps- don't really fit into the Left-Right scheme at all. Others, notably anarchy-syndicalists, seem to me to be comfortably part of the real Left.
Brilliant. I have been struggling to write on the subject - a brick compared with this gem. Many thanks! I would like to translate the article to Dutch. How do I contact you?
Why do you say that all of rural France opposed the Revolution and fought against it when this was the case only for the most backward area, the Vendee?
I didn't say that, I said that most of the population of France was still rural, and that enthusiasm for the Revolution was limited in traditionalist areas. And there were serious outbreaks of armed resistance elsewhere: look upon the "Chouans" for example;
Overall a great essay, although I would like to point out that the definition of the left can't be made without a proper definition of the right, and the right contains more than just "Conservatism", which is and has always been a defined as a backwards liberal. There is no such thing as a Conservative intellectual tradition. The intellectual traditions on the right are reaction or traditionalism, like de Maistre, or libertarians like Hayek and Mises. With a special case for Schumpeter and Spengler who are definitely on the right but hard to place in these traditions.
What unites these, against the liberals, socdems, fascists and communists is not that they want to maintain status quo. If you look at a modern libertarian bitcoin permaculturists such as myself, I'm perfectly willing to embrace full in societal collapse. I am however not trying to achieve it through political means. This because I don't think that a bunch of midwit bureaucrats sitting in a commission can be entrusted with anything.
What the traditionalist, libertarians and Conservatives have in common, is our mistrust of the state which is seen as a necessary evil and bereft of creative powers. Thus the creative force has to be placed elsewhere.
For a libertarian such as myself, that is technology and markets, with technological change being the real driver of social change, markets being the best mean of transmission and the state generally being a sclerosis protection racket for established interest groups.
For a reactionary, the creative force that moves through history is divine providence.
This of course in opposition to the liberal who thinks it is rules and regulations (ie, the above mentioned protection racket), or the leftist who thinks that history is moved by class interests and material models of production, through a predetermined fashion towards a set future utopia I'm which everyone has a job but no-one seems to work. Much like a leftist mini utopias of the academy, journalism and state and corporate bureaucracies.
For the left, history is progress and thus it has a telos. It is going somewhere Good. This is the key difference. For a reactionary, ie a Catholic this is heresy and the immeminization of the eschaton. For the modern libertarian, or new right, history moves in cycles and we are headed for a full on collapse caused in large by the hybris of politicians who thought they could bend reality by politics.
That all of that largesse could be maintained indefinitely by letting money printing go brrr.
My impression is that people who see themselves "on the Left" while retaining their need to vilify the other side(s), are not likely to have key insights in this day and age when the old definitions have unraveled.
For example, I am an egalitarian (left) who believes in the free market with some caveats (right), who wants to protect the earth against the devastations of the industrial economies as well as trampling by too many humans (left) while seeing that many traditional strictures have served better than the modern transgressive patterns (right). I am against the massive growth of the welfare state (right) while thinking that a few welfarist solutions benefit us (left). I am for free speech (right but used to be left!). And I could continue. Who benefits by this utter confusion?
Well, if you want to know the origin of party politics that would he byzantium where the emperor used a party system to divide and rule over the empire. It's quite clearly described in the secret history written authentic time.
So yes, the constant division over petty symbolic issues benefits the oligarchy.
"I am very much afraid that the real Left may turn out to have been an unrepeatable phase in the evolution of political societies. It relied on clear and obvious injustices that needed addressing, on clear and obvious political and economic targets that needed attacking, on a mass working class base, on communities organised around the workplace, on a discourse of class-based solidarity and economic justice, on middle-class supporters and on politicians close to the concerns of ordinary people. None of that now exists."
I'm afraid all of that not only exists, but with more intensity than ever. Clear, obvious injustices: genocide of Palestinian innocents before our eyes for months. Clear obvious targets that need attacking: a billionaire class that dictates nearly everything in society to the disadvantage of the majority of the population and is accountable to nobody in the west. In particular the FIRE sector of the west as pointed out so clearly by Hudson. A mass working class base: globalization has created a working class of former peasants so massive as to dwarf the western working class of the 80s.
Really the only thing that doesn't exist in your list here is this: "a discourse of class-based solidarity and economic justice, on middle-class supporters and on politicians close to the concerns of ordinary people."
And there's a clear reason it doesn't exist. The ruling class, recovering politically from the mid 70s into the 80s and early 90s was able to co-opt a handful of former lefts. These new "lefts" used idpol to supplant a rational class based analysis of capitalism with an irrational identity based model that looks left and anti racist, but is in fact meant to divide and stupify the working class of the west. This has created a political cover so that as you point out, there are no powerful political groups that actually care about the working masses. Under this discourse they don't need to, they just need to be anti racist, sexist, homophobic and with these tokens are accepted as left and virtuous and thus can more easily advance WW3 while reducing the western working class to the status of atomized peasants begging for crumbs and worshipping their billionaire overlords.
For an essay on the left, I find it curious that capitalism was not mentioned once. Also, the French Revolution is given quite a lot of attention, despite the fact it occurred between two socioeconomic systems (fuedalism and capitalism) but the ideas and politics that originally animated the successful Russian Revolution are not seriously treated at all. That's curious. What happened before Stalin took power? What were the slogans and policies of the Bolsheviks who ended WW1 with a revolution?
You mentioned trotskyists. What about Trotsky? Some review of what he actually conceived of as leftism should be present. Instead, we hear of what some epigones of Trotsky did in 80s UK.
I like the target of the article, but let's really aim at it!
We're talking about different things. The Left began as a way of addressing domestic concerns, notably the imbalance of power and wealth, not issues abroad which tended to be the concern of Liberals. And these concerns were very clear and obvious: the factory owner, the mine owners, the landowners, the idle rich: you saw and read about them every day. Strikes and political action could accomplish things. Now they can't: witness the Gaza demonstrations or the CoP demonstrations, which are actually a sign of political impotence. There may be terrible things happening in the world, there may be widespread discontent, but there is no organisation and no mechanism for change. It's fair enough to say "if only ..." but a hundred and fifty years ago strikes in favour of a ten-hour working day could achieve something immediate and concrete. No such possibilities exist no<.
That may be true. I thought your target was to get at what is truly left and then compare that with what passes for left. To do that one must, as you did, start in France and then move on to the Bolsheviks, who took up the cause of the French Revolution, won power, ended WW1 and consequently defined the "left" for the 20th century.
In a nutshell, I'd say the left is opposed to capitalism, imperialist war and all attacks by the capitalist ruling classes (whether they pose as lefts or not) on the social position of the working classes, which are now global and massive. When I say working class I mean only anyone who replies on a wage to survive.
Effective mass movements take time and proper social conditions to form. Every successful revolution was proceeded by numerous unsuccessful efforts. But those unsuccessful efforts nevertheless indicates the tensions and contradictions in society building and if not relieved (and it won't be, not by the misleadership currently at the head of "the garden"), will eventually break. The Russian Revolution came after 1905 and decades of state repression before that. The Chinese Revolution was literally in the wilderness for 20 years before being strong enough to rout the Western backed KMT.
Also, just because the Western anti-Zionist forces are not currently sufficiently placed and massed to force the insanely compromised Western political class to stop supporting Israel, doesn't mean that they aren't advancing. The last 69 days make the hypocrisy of the Western "Rule Based Order" extremely clear to anyone paying the least bit of attention. Like the Chinese and Russians before them, westerners are seeing the Fascist underbearing of their liberal states.
Meanwhile, the RoW is turning strongly against Israel in terms of BDS and they're also turning against Western brands that tie into the Zionist project. Even if Israel somehow succeeded in genociding every last Palestinian in Gaza (very unlikely, Hamas is winning by surviving and exacting punishment in the IOF), the chessboard has changed to be very hostile to Israel's long term survival.
> Effective mass movements take time....
> The Russian Revolution came after 1905 and decades of state repression
So, you consider the Third Russian Revolution to be driven by some mass movement. But this is a myth.
It was perpetrated by a fringe minority of two half-parties: Bolshevik (a slightly larger/bolshe wing of social-democratic party) and "right esers" - the right wing of social-revolutionary party.
They also were not attacking any viable and repressing state. If it was done - it was done by the pro-Western liberals, who did the Second Russian Revolution (February 1917). It was them who destroyed the monarchy and its insitutions, already very corrupt and ineffective. Then in mere 6 months they proven themselves even worse statesmen than the decaying monarchy was. It was then when the famous parliament exchange happenned that there allegedly there was not a single political party that wanted to take power in Russia.
The Bolshevik+rSR Third Revolution came not against a tyrannic state, but over a glaring void, a scorched earth when the "mass movements" proved themselves utterly worthless and ceeded power to fringe minorities to try doing at least something.
> The Chinese Revolution was literally in the wilderness for 20 years before being strong enough to rout the Western backed KMT.
Again, KMT and CCP are not alien indepenent entities, they are brothers. Just like aforementioned half-parties in Russia, they were opposing wings of one Chinese Nationalist Party (Sun Yat-sen). This party/movement when it could finally claim power - split and felt into infighting.
The KMT was not "Western proxy" also, it for a while was ally to Stalin's USSR no less, than Mao's wing was. And in 1945 when KMT was rooted out it was not without massive military help of USSR, which fallen out with KMT and had a lot of surplass army after defeating the Third Reich.
If you feel necessary to label 1945 KMT as Western-backed (it was then) then you equally has to label the "Chinese Revolution" as USSR-backed.
But then againt, there was not some "mass movement" of China that toppled the West+KMT statehood. There were two almost equally sized wings of the one mass movement infighting (and both drawing from foreign aid, of course). And personally i am not sure which a wing can be clamed "more mass" during the timespan of their growing split. I suspect it was initially KMT who actually enjoyed a majority of National Party's legacy, while Mao's base were largly "uninitiated" peasantry remote from all the political/ideological discussions.
I started to write a rebuttal starting with the claims of multiple Russian Revolutions when they're really phases of the same Russian Revolution, just as there are phases of the French Revolution but...
It's really not a good idea to enter into conversation with anyone who seriously posits the Nazis as a left movement. Their actions and their supporters make clear that they are a Fascist movement. If you are still dwelling on names (eg NED, the Democratic Party) then there's really nothing I can do to engage in a productive conversation with you.
So, you confirm that only USSR-kind of Left, who de facto prostituted the resources they inherited to all the world to leech at mere lip service price, are the real Left. Well, if true, this means there objectively is nothing Left can offer to the world, and the Left idea should be left in the same archive as phlogiston idea.
Meanwhile in this essay above Aurilien defined the Left as those, who seek to expand the cohort of decision makers by bringing decision making down the the ordinary people ("for as much as practuically possible" and other due disclamers). Now, that is exactly what Wehrmacht was known for. Empowerting low-rank officers to make decisions and thus winning the wars against most other armies (including the Red Army until 1943).
Again, no one is obliged to agree with Aurilien'd definitions, but if you do comment upon the essay without expressing your disagreement, then de facto you did. Hence, to claim there is no possible Left AND Nationalistic ideology/movement/party it is not enough to claim "Hitler was badie", but to demonstrate it is not possible to "diffuse power" within state boundaries and retaining loyalty.
Lenin, to his credit, was explicit and vocal "national traitors" demanding any "true democrat" to cause as much harm to the statehood of Russia and its existential war effort. This, of course, is another reason it was not any "mass movement" who made the "third phase" of Russian revolution.
And if you demand that any Left movement to start with a demand to betray and harm one's own nation, then i think you just sentenced Left to forever be freak minorty everywhere. Just like Bolshvikes were until OTHER forces destroyed Russian Empire for them to feed off the corpse.
Thread muted. Byeeeeeee
But the question remains if nazi - national-socialists - were Left, as international-socialists - communists - were? Or were they instead a "manifestation of the mostly reactionary power by the banksters" to borrow from Dimitrov.
There is a claim that fascism and national-socialism, albeit finding themselves in a marriage of convenience during WW2, were ideologic opposites, much like you describe Left/Libarals love-hate.
Because the dream of "proletariat having no nationhood" failed early, starting with WW1. And all the attempts of USSR to make them only turned those communists into free cow for everyone to milk, and eventually contributed to USSR collapse and PR disaster of communism brand.
When you describe demise of UK Left you do not mention very unpolular Afghanistan war and the rise of Chimerica, which seem to coinside.
Marxism treated nationalism and loyalty to governments/states as some illusion. Which feels not uttainable in practice, even if correct in some formal, mathematical sense.
Bolshevism was extremely hostile to anything Russian, probably seeing in vague Russianness its most capable (thus, dangerous) competitor here and now. It was coherent, based on Marx's idea of world revolution and impossibility of "peaceful coexistence". But the world revolution did not materialize. It is kinda ironic as the third Russian Revolution was actually anit-marxist event, happening in a mostly pre-capitalistic nation, instead of waiting capitalism to hatch, ripe, and die of age overwhelmed by "inherent contradictions", as foressen by Marx. Bolshevism was anti-Marx in one aspects, seemingly compensating for it being "more marxist than Marx" in others.
Anyway, what room should this leave modern Left to occupy?
How should modern Left position themselves towards national/state loyalties?
Ignoring it is fine for abstract theory, but any practical political movement should make an opinion. Talks about "a way of addressing domestic concerns" just could not lead to any practical movement, because in modern world even once great powers like UK, France and Germany became too small societies to act on their own.
And... what a princpled stance then could it be? Embracing it seems to put a Left movement to NSDAP road, while decrying it seems to put it to a CPSU road. Both having a promiosing start but leading to a dead end.
For me this question, you did not even touch, seems to be killing the Left. Ignoring the question is practically impossible, and giving any of the two answers looks a receipt of delayed suicide.
And the Left parties indeed become "shell companies" only serving as owners of established franchise brandnames to lend.
The discussion also overlooks the SocDem betrayals of the left in the run up to WWI and the aftermath. They supported their national imperial projects over class solidarity with the global proletariat. The Communists were reluctant to form alliances with the SocDems because of very recent and very serious betrayals. Or that course of the West might have been very different but for the coup against Henry Wallace in 1944 or the assassinations of the 1950s/1960s.
Or the course of the global South outside of the 15% garden. Somehow these peoples keep going back to socialist and communist movements and politicians even as previous generations get mowed down or corrupted. It's because life sucks for the vast majority under liberalism and the right's solution always ends up with more austerity, privatization, and open Fascism. This is about the strongest indicator that a Marxist social dialectic towards left revolution is an accurate assessment of social development.
Well, I can't cover everything in 5000 words, but yes of course there was a great deal of bitterness on both sides from historical incidents such as Ebert's use of the Freikorps to suppress the Communists. But irrespective of "fault" there were divisions within the Left that crippled for most of the twentieth century.
My point wasn't regarding "fault" but rationality. Given SocDem's history of betrayals, the Communists had very good reasons to be very wary of any alliance with them. I would argue that their decision may well have been the correct one strategically - most of the European resistance movements were Communist led and they came out of WWII in a very strong position to win it all. What they didn't count on was the counterrevolutionary force within the Allied forces headed by the Anglo-American deep state to immediately recruit Nazis and Mafioso to fight them and isolate them from the USSR.
There were certainly mistakes along the way, but I would argue that the main source of division came from SocDems and "moderates" who always sided with the bourgeoisie when it mattered, and the Communist left's naivete about being able to peaceably change a ruthless imperialist capitalist system that had no problems killing millions in colonies and shooting strikers at home. Yes, they were willing to make some concessions to the "left" and proletariat while Communism remained a visible alternative, but note how quickly NATO/EU turned on third way countries like Yugoslavia, Syria, and Iraq as soon as the Berlin Wall fell.
If we look at the "left" systems that persisted - Communist China, DPRK, Stalinist USSR, Cuba, early Yugoslavia - they were indeed paranoid and ruthless to the point of being counterproductive. But they persisted and arguably thrive (China practically doubling life expectancy and achieving near universal literacy under Mao) even under the extreme embargoes by the West. Meanwhile the softer and more accommodating leftism of Arbenez and Mossadegh were easily destroyed by Western chicanery. And defeat meant hundreds of thousands or millions dead and impoverishment and terror for majority of the population.
The "problems of the left" of being divided, being simultaneously ineffective but authoritarian... may well have more to do with the rightist actions against it, than an inherent weakness in the ideology. I think its greatest weakness lies in misunderstanding the ruthlessness and power of its rightist enemy and thinking it could come to a peaceful accommodation with the right.
> the SocDem betrayals of the left in the run up to WWI and the aftermath. They supported their national imperial projects over class solidarity
Here you imply that "national-traitors" is the only kind who can claim being Left.
You consider any idea of "national-socialism" be non-Left by definition. And only "international-socialism" be the Left.
I am not so sure.
Especially if to accept Aurelien's criterion of "diffusing power as close to ordinary people as possible" goal/dream.
But if you do, if you consider only Bolshevik/USSR to be Left, then this seems to leave Left nowhere to exist. USSR became free cow to milk and then failed, leaving behind the burgeoning nationalistic provinces and eaten out internasionalisted host it parasited upon. Not a very convincing "vision of future" to sell to voters.
And China was USA's proxy and willing spearhed to slay USSR, if you would then consider it as a "city on a hill" of "class solidarity" for XXI Left to dream of, then equally should be Ukraine, Israel and other USA proxies.
Another very satisfying and enlightening piece - thank you! I wonder if the downward plummet of ordinary people's living standards now, currently bolstering radical populism, will eventually work its way over to something of the point of view of the old left. After all, in the end, either all of society benefits, or the inequalities give rise to at least chaos, if not revolution. But it can take a long time. My husband's family got out of South Africa at the beginning of apartheid, because they thought "everything would blow up". It took what, 50 years or so? The downtrodden lack the energy or resources to fight for change, at least initially. And then, when they have power, they generally lack the experience and philosophical coherence to make it work towards their goals. I wonder if that's why some of the most effective movements for change (in the far past, at least) arose from religious and spiritual leaders. It tapped into something other than self-interest. The next decades will be instructive, no doubt.
McCarthy's red scare was show!
In the media enforced empire of beltway neocon DC, there is no right or left. There is on one side's disdain for the deplorables (used to be the rugged individualist accused of anti collectivism), and Trump supporters aka deplorables.
Between those miniscule poles is the immense, unitary blob mind.
Quite nice, indeed! Although a little too focused on the Anglo-American sphere - but it's ok, the idea that the Democratic Party in the USA is the left, since left= liberals, It's as widespread as it is wrong. Anyway, it would be nice to bring some other regional spheres to the discussion, like, say, Latin America, or even China (or Russia, by the way :))
Is the American Democratic party Right?
Well, as far as I know, they never call themselves the Left but liberal (vs. Right or Republicans). But in a country with only 2 parties, the tendency, especially from abroad, is to apply the Left vs. Right paradigm. I think this is part of the problem with the modern European Left, heavily influenced by the American worldview
Thank you, Maria. Been living in America all my adult life, and in my experience, the Democrats here very much think of themselves as the Left. On the other hand, conservatives are increasingly not thinking of themselves as Republicans, and seeing the Dem/Reps as a uniparty, not unlike the communist parties of the former Soviet bloc. Just to make it more confusing.
Yes, America has way too much influence. But as many have pointed out, it was the French who gave us Left vs Right. And just last week, on a Czech blog I follow, we had a bit of a tumble with huge comment participation, where people were all over the place on the same topic. It's starting to make me crazy. It wasn't a flame war by any means; more of an explosion of wildly disparate views with no hope in sight. :-)
If I were to peg the Uniparty? Hm. Woke/neoliberal, I think... Or to put it bluntly, woke welfare statist warmongers. Argh.
The Democratic and Republican Parties of today are **not** the same as the parties of fifty years ago. To roughly quote the writer Chris Hedges, the Democrats became conservative and the Republicans went insane.
There was much effort to pushing out anyone who was a New Deal Democrat especially under the Clintons’ DLC (Democratic Leadership Council). The economic populism of the New Deal was killed and the increasingly radical “liberal” civil rights used as a distraction. As Bill Clinton said where can they go? Newt Gingrich led the efforts in the Republican Party to get rid of the RHINOs or Republicans In Name Only, really the people who would not slavishly follow what whacked, money friendly, ideas of the party leadership working for their wealthy patrons.
I believe that most Americans are far to the economic left compared to the establishment of both major parties, while still fairly classically liberal, but also socially much more moderate, even conservative, compared to the Democrats.
When you say that the Democrats became conservative, what do you mean by it?
The modern Democratic Party, really the entire political establishment in Washington, follow what is called the “Washington Consensus,” which is an economic policy of austerity with lower taxes, reduction of regulations, and cutbacks in the social safety net along with efforts to privatize government services. Neoliberalism.
The Republicans do have more extreme positions, but the Democrats have tried to privatize Social Security and Medicare with Republican cooperation. It just has been blocked by popular rage and Medicare is still being slowly privatized like the British National Health Service is. Google the term “Grand Bargain” with the two American parties with regards to tax and welfare benefit cuts along with Wall Street lobbying for the privatization of Social Security into a gigantic 401K plan for Americans. To be run by Wall Street firms for a service fee.
More generally, it is the elimination of most of the New Deal and is what is generally imposed on countries seeking loans from the World Bank. It is essentially what was called Reaganonics or what President George H. W. Bush called Voodoo Economics.
Remember that the only real differences between the two major parties are their putative differences in social issues and those issues are often more of a façade than actual beliefs or policies. I mean, if the Democratic Party had really believed that the right to choose to have an abortion was really important, they could have codified it into federal law much of the time between 1973’s Roe v. Wade and now. However, just like with gun control, it is a useful tool for getting the base energized, get the donations, and more votes.
But even the economic ideologies of both parties, which have some differences, are both still essentially the same and both are forgotten anyways as soon as there is another war to fund without raising any taxes.
Agree.
Examples of what a left movement might be:
Corbyn in UK, Sanders in US, Mélenchon, Wagenknecht in Germany, several in Latin America
No, these are not groups, these are individuals, and that's the point. After all, it's fair to say that "Royalism in France is still very much alive:" true, but irrelevant since there is no organised political movement with a chance of restoring the monarchy, just as today there is no organised Left.
1. Good point. Challenges to the elites come via individual politicians these days, both on the left and on the right. For a variety of reasons, organized parties are not powerful the way they were.
2. Otoh, social change does not come fully fledged and with labels. Before change occurs, there are usually many tentative campaigns, often ending in failure, . We could view these,political figures as forerunners.
3. Predictions solely based on the recent past don't take into account the hidden trends that will cause Black Swans - the improbable events that rock society.
Dear Aurelien,
Thank you very much.
I hope that Sahra Wagenknecht's new party in Germany will revive the original values of the Left. I read a description of the Left's most important missions in this publication (in German):
https://www.zeitgeschehen-im-fokus.ch/de/newspaper-ausgabe/nr-16-17-vom-17-november-2023.html
Andrej Hunko, a German politician, mentions two main missions in his opinion: "social welfare mission" and "peace mission" - Sozialauftrag and Friedensauftrag. He left the party "Die Linke" together with 10 other personalities to join the new party initiative of Sahra Wagenknecht, because in his opinion the "peace mandate" was obviously violated. The "peace mandate" was also a driving force behind the original Green Party in Germany. A well-known personality in this context is Antje Vollmer, who unfortunately passed away a few months ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antje_Vollmer
In your article, you don't mention the "peace mandate" as an inherent characteristic of the Left, although it developed later in history. It would be nice to have more historical context and more insight on this topic as to how the „Peace mandate“ originally developed among leftist movements in different countries. It might have been an opposition movement to the interventionist policies of the Right? The reasons why this mission, together with other principles of the left-wing movement, is no longer practiced are already well described in your article.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell in Switzerland and France, I don't see any political party like Sahra Wagenknecht's that would be prepared to return to the original values. In Switzerland it is definitely The Right party which stands up for neutrality and no arm deliveries to Ukraine as opposed by an aggressive pro war policy of The Left.
best regards
Alex
If we re talking about the 1980s, then the "Peace" dimension of the Left was largely about anti-Americanism, and more pragmatically dislike in Germany of having foreign forces stationed in the country, and being the designated theatre for the next war. In some other countries, it was the stationing of intermediate range nuclear missiles.There was also a sizeable overlap between anti-militarist groups and parts of the Left. This effectively stopped at the end of the Cold War (and indeed in Germany there were protests at the closure of US bases, because of the loss of employment) and the Left began its long journey towards militarism.
Thank you!
> "... organised political parties existed by the Eighteenth Century, but they represented constellations of interests more than abstract political ideas."
As I see it, political parties always represent both and so they should. I like to simply the language further into "theory" and "practice". All political parties exist to put their hands on the levers of state power. Real politics should offer 1) a practical plan of what you propose to do with that power, i.e. what you want to change, and 2) a theory explaining why that's the _right_ thing to do.
What's interesting about our current period is that the practical plans are largely missing in the political discourse and, it appears, in the heads of the politicians vying for our votes and many of their most vocal supporters.
A tidy example of this is the SNP in Scotland. Independence is never properly explained. How will the independent nation be established and function thereafter and who will win/lose what in the process? In my profession some are wont to say, "That's arm waving not engineering." In the political discourse it's fine to wave your arms on the theoretical side but not so much on the practical.
1. Most of what we see as "left" vs" right" in western society has little to do with coherent ideology and everything to do with a series of ad hoc coalitions. For instance, in the US, Team D can be viewed as a shotgun marriage between certain idpol grievance groups and the PMC. None of these have all that much in common other than their enemies, and inf act they don't even like each other all that much.
2. "The second mistake was one of imagination. At the beginning of her reign, Thatcher was such a divisive and in many ways ridiculous figure (she was nicknamed “Attila the Hen” in Whitehall because of her outbursts of temper) that it seemed impossible that she could last very long. And indeed had it not been for a great deal of sheer luck and the utter incompetence of the Opposition she would not have done so. By the time her political enemies realised that she and her clique were serious, the machine was loose, rampaging through the country and destroying everything, as well as invading other countries."
In the US, something much the same could be said about Ronald Reagan and, for that matter, Bill Clinton. Had Ross Perot not run in 1992, Clinton probably would have been a footnote in history, and after taking office, Clinton was catastrophically unpopular until Team R overplayed its hand and Waco gave the fat boy a chance to look presidential.
This is a very good and very timely piece. Also explains why so many of us have become Fierce Independents!
The Right wing has traditionally had another political advantage, namely the sympathy of the military. In a political crisis the military often steps in to restore order--usually a traditional (right leaning) order.
In the U.S. today (and probably Europe and increasingly Latin America) the officer corps is populated by pretty bland members of the PMC, like the upper ranks of the business class and most bureaucracies. Although the working class is attracted to Trump's revolutionary theatre, a re-elected Trump won't help them much because he is really an oligarch with his own class interests. As Trump proved in his first term, he is just a typical self-aggrandizing and corrupt opportunist. He has no program, only slogans (MAGA!). In this respect, he is a traditional (if much more extreme) version of the last three or four Presidents we've had.
One danger of another Trump presidency is that, historically, a successful Right-wing coup doesn't require the support of the entire military. Often a well-organized fanatical group within the officer corps is enough.
It astonishes me how the woke keep on fantasizing about a right wing coup, when we are visibly living post woke coup, and its attendant chaos... everything is going to hell in a handbasket, now, but oooohhhh Trump!
Where do anarchists fit into thie picture here?
Good question. Some- hardcore, perhaps- don't really fit into the Left-Right scheme at all. Others, notably anarchy-syndicalists, seem to me to be comfortably part of the real Left.
Brilliant. I have been struggling to write on the subject - a brick compared with this gem. Many thanks! I would like to translate the article to Dutch. How do I contact you?
If you're an email subscriber, you just need to reply to the address from which the mail came. Otherwise, it's aurelien1952@orange.fr.
Why do you say that all of rural France opposed the Revolution and fought against it when this was the case only for the most backward area, the Vendee?
I didn't say that, I said that most of the population of France was still rural, and that enthusiasm for the Revolution was limited in traditionalist areas. And there were serious outbreaks of armed resistance elsewhere: look upon the "Chouans" for example;
Thank you Aurelien 🙏
Aurelien, your piece is a short and concise reminder to me of why I found Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas" so appealing.
Overall a great essay, although I would like to point out that the definition of the left can't be made without a proper definition of the right, and the right contains more than just "Conservatism", which is and has always been a defined as a backwards liberal. There is no such thing as a Conservative intellectual tradition. The intellectual traditions on the right are reaction or traditionalism, like de Maistre, or libertarians like Hayek and Mises. With a special case for Schumpeter and Spengler who are definitely on the right but hard to place in these traditions.
What unites these, against the liberals, socdems, fascists and communists is not that they want to maintain status quo. If you look at a modern libertarian bitcoin permaculturists such as myself, I'm perfectly willing to embrace full in societal collapse. I am however not trying to achieve it through political means. This because I don't think that a bunch of midwit bureaucrats sitting in a commission can be entrusted with anything.
What the traditionalist, libertarians and Conservatives have in common, is our mistrust of the state which is seen as a necessary evil and bereft of creative powers. Thus the creative force has to be placed elsewhere.
For a libertarian such as myself, that is technology and markets, with technological change being the real driver of social change, markets being the best mean of transmission and the state generally being a sclerosis protection racket for established interest groups.
For a reactionary, the creative force that moves through history is divine providence.
This of course in opposition to the liberal who thinks it is rules and regulations (ie, the above mentioned protection racket), or the leftist who thinks that history is moved by class interests and material models of production, through a predetermined fashion towards a set future utopia I'm which everyone has a job but no-one seems to work. Much like a leftist mini utopias of the academy, journalism and state and corporate bureaucracies.
For the left, history is progress and thus it has a telos. It is going somewhere Good. This is the key difference. For a reactionary, ie a Catholic this is heresy and the immeminization of the eschaton. For the modern libertarian, or new right, history moves in cycles and we are headed for a full on collapse caused in large by the hybris of politicians who thought they could bend reality by politics.
That all of that largesse could be maintained indefinitely by letting money printing go brrr.
Did I mention bitcoin already?
My impression is that people who see themselves "on the Left" while retaining their need to vilify the other side(s), are not likely to have key insights in this day and age when the old definitions have unraveled.
For example, I am an egalitarian (left) who believes in the free market with some caveats (right), who wants to protect the earth against the devastations of the industrial economies as well as trampling by too many humans (left) while seeing that many traditional strictures have served better than the modern transgressive patterns (right). I am against the massive growth of the welfare state (right) while thinking that a few welfarist solutions benefit us (left). I am for free speech (right but used to be left!). And I could continue. Who benefits by this utter confusion?
Well, if you want to know the origin of party politics that would he byzantium where the emperor used a party system to divide and rule over the empire. It's quite clearly described in the secret history written authentic time.
So yes, the constant division over petty symbolic issues benefits the oligarchy.