David McKnight has a new book out - Beyond Left and Right: New Politics and the Culture Wars. I’ve only just started reading it, and Mark and I both bought copies today when we had lunch, so I’m sure in due course he’ll provide a more measured assessment. But the title and indeed the first chapter spur me to some reflections.
McKnight hits the nail on the head when he says that the terms “Left” and “Right” originated in the seating arrangements in the post-Revolutionary French National Assembly. Those who stood (or sat) for liberty, equality and solidarity were on the Left, and those who opposed them were on the Right. But the Left/Right distinction was and is a moveable feast. Even on the French Revolutionary Left, Girondins and Jacobins disputed actively. The Revolution of the Enlightenment already contained with in it the Left of the Bourgeois opposition to conservatism and the Radical Left who privileged equality over liberty. And this model lead, in time, to the pathologies of revolutionary Communism, and, through a different genealogy, to the supposedly more right wing tradition of Social Democracy.
But let’s not forget Lenin attacked Left-wing communism as an “infantile disorder”.
This should in itself indicate that McKnight’s claim that the lines are currently blurred between Left and Right presumes some sort of essentialised historical past when everyone knew what side they were on. That’s far from the truth, as any serious student of history knows. There is no fixity to the Left/Right distinction - only contigency in history.
Nevertheless, I’m sympathetic to the argument of the great Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio (sadly deceased last year) in Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Tradition that despite changing hegemonies, shifting discourses and the winds of time, the Left will always emphasise equality as the most important term of the triadic Enlightenment ideal - and understand liberty as resting both on equality of opportunity and community or solidarity.
Elsewhere: There’s an interesting discussion about the balance between equality and liberty at wsacaucus.org by Guy.
It strikes me - thinking of Dr McKnight who was hopeful enough in 1986 to edit a collection called Moving Left, which even at the time seemed to belie the direction of Labor and Australian politics, might just have lost that cardinal political virtue of hope.
But the Left cannot be identified with the interests of the Australian Labor Party, nor with the sort of liberalism when it comes to changing family structures and their consequences that McKnight sees as a reason to “move beyond”. There ought never to be a reason not to understand equality as a prime political virtue. For me, with a large dash of liberty and solidarity.
But, and I wish I could remember where I read this, our present age is one where only the Left want to “move beyond Left and Right”. The Right are quite happy to speak in their own name, and proudly. Because they’ve got the discursive and hegemonic runs on the board. For the Left to cave in and claim that we’re in an age where ideology no longer matters is to admit defeat before any political argument even begins. The trajectory of Marxist students in the 70s through social democratic disillusion in the 80s and now Beyondism in the new millennium is of no interest to me.
I was born in 1973.
And I’m damned if I’ll do anything else in 2005 but fight for the values that have always been central to the Left. And I’m not interested in tenured radicals telling me that feminism and environmental concerns transcend and surpass Left politics. All that reflects is an outdated view of the Left that sees the putative death of class politics as the end of history. Dr McKnight might like to scratch beneath the surface of the claims that we’re all aspirational now and ponder whether the announcement of the end of class might be a tad premature. But in any case, speaking as an uppity woman - Well, I won’t shut up and move on. I want to make history. And I’m not content to leave the field to the Right. The true meaning of equality, liberty and solidarity need reclaiming. And I’m not just going to roll over and die and cede the ground to the Right. Because they’re well aware of their strength. So should we be - we’re also the heirs of the Enlightenment whose inheritances are multiple. It’s time for the prodigal daughters and sons to return home.
Kim, indeed, I might have something to say about the book later. But I’m glad it’s inspired such an inspirational post - we need fighting words!
Well, I won’t shut up and move on. I want to make history. And I’m not content to leave the field to the Right. The true meaning of equality, liberty and solidarity need reclaiming.
I’d move to the right if I were you. That’s where the real action’s been, inadvertently or not, on those fronts over the past decades.
Good post, anyway.
If, as a report in one of the papers today suggested ominously that we all will - those of us in our 20s and 30s (presumably those like me with private health insurance), I as someone in my 30s live to be 130, I can never envisage Kim moving to the right.
Thanks, Rob. Perhaps in my post there’s hidden another truth - “the centre will not hold” (though the rest of what Yeats had to say is rarely quoted) - there’s little passion in being dispassionate - and maybe being stirred up provokes better writing.
Yes, Mark, speaking as someone who by virtue of her lack of a right leg by definition leans to the left, here I stand and I can do no other.
Sad to envisage never imagining, Mark. Why, I can even imagine myself moving to the left.
Hey, I’ve been up for 20 hourrs, so I’m going to bed. ‘Night all.
Night, Rob - 20 hours is too long, I always find! 18 is a nice round number for being up.
Why has it always got to be a battle between two sides that have basically been artificially constructed and pitted against each other for all eternity? It frustrates and saddens me to no end.
For the reasons Kim so eloquently gave, Nic. The default position in our culture/society is Right so if the Left lays down and plays dead, we’ll have an endless succession of Howards and Nelsons and never again a Fraser or a Keating. Politics is about contestation. There’s very little centre ground to be occupied - and nor should there be - democracy is about choice.
It’s a good question for the fag-end of the night, Nic, but there’s no answer except that hey, we humans are like that. Bastards and all.
My answer conflicts with Mark’s, methinks. Should have kept my mouth shut.
Maybe not, Rob, but bed time looms for all of us I feel!
One and even two dimentional politics is very depressing. I live in the hope that there could be and is an alternative. That is can be more colaborative and less combative.
Art is the alternative.
That wasnt really what I had in mind.
It’s only a left/right battle for people more interested in fighting on behalf of their view of the world than in winning a better world for others.
Untrue, Nabs, if people are properly motivated. The only point in being on the Left is to win a better world for others. It would usually be an advantage personally to sell out and either give up or go Right, as so many examples prove.
Umm, Mark, you may want to reparse my comment above.
But then again, I’m now pissed on a good single malt and listening to the special vocal-free version of the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshi vs The Giant Robots” album.
Anything’s postuable under such circumstances. Even re-reading old Andre Norton books.
Gotcha now, Nabs. Too much Pinot!
It’s only a left/right battle for people more interested in fighting on behalf of their view of the world than in winning a better world for others.
Excellent Nabs, although I’m reminded that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.
Now seriously hoein’ into the Laphroaig and playing Brooklyn Funk Essentials really fucking loud.
“I Got Cash”
I got the cash in fuck you quantities
Know what?
That makes you uncomfortable
Fuck you and the Range Rover you drove in on
Fuck your Saab convertible
And your twice weekly trips to the analyst
Stupid Motherfuck
Fuck the Hamptons, Maine
And the fly infested south of France
I’m paid, asshole
Got more cash than God can count
So why don’t you just…die
Choke on your damn designer bagel from Balducci’s
Low cholesterol, naturally
Fuck your big old Sunday New York Times
Fuck the Wall Street Journal
And Newsweek and the lot
Including Nation, Villiage Voice, Guardian and the rest
Stupid set of priviledge motherfuckers
Think it’s fashionable to have an ‘alternative view’
And fuck, if you can
Your pencil thin, evian drinking
Calorie counting, caffine limiting
sodium sparing, nutra-sweet sweetening
rear-view-mirror-preening
carrot-nibbling bunny
Go drown in a lake of diet coke, fucker
I got cash_What else matters
I got cash…Slave
Fuck your fencing
Screw your squash
Piss on your polo
And your Pavarotti
Fuck all that shit you call music and pretend to enjoy
I got cash
Mega cash
Unhappy with that?
Oh, go sit on your ski rack!
Money talks
You little pussy_
And let your politically correct pals know
That I think you’re a dick also
Neutered asshole
Your idea of multiculturalism
Japanese restaurant on Monday
Indian on Tuesday_And on Wednesday, Carribbean
Not too spicy please!
Well, I’ve got stash on stash
And it ain’t nouveau cash
Money’s been in my family for generations
My great, great, great grandfather made the bag
Selling European slaves in Africa
I got cash, motherfucker
And you can’t tell wwhether or not I’m joking
Can you?
Heh. I’m listening to Dwight singing “Blame the Vain” (rflouder).
In the spirit of coherence, I guess I should kick in the lyrics:
I blame the vain for what we wear,
And I blame the blind when we can’t see.
I blame it all on someone else,
Till there’s nobody left, then I just blame me.
I blame her mind for the thoughts we share,
Whoa, and I blame her heart for the time we cared.
I blame it all on how we used to be,
Till she’s finally gone, then I’ll just blame me.
So go ahead and blame,
Anything that you want.
‘Cause it all ends up the same,
When everything that you’ve been claiming is wrong.
Oh and don’t you know that blame,
Is always never enough.
It just keeps you in the game,
Till you’ve only got yourself left to bluff.
So I blame the vain for what we wear,
Yeah, and I’ll blame the blind when we can’t see.
I’ll blame it all on someone else,
Till there’s nobody left, then I’ll just blame me.
Till she’s fin’lly gone, then I just blame me
cs, there are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can’t …
Townes Van Zandt said there were three kinds of people in the world. Those who say “The glass is half empty.” Those who say “The glass is half full.” And those who say “Is that vodka?”
I’ve yet to read David’s book, so will reserve judgement on it until I do (pace Michael Danby vis-a-vis Antony Lowenstein).
I have some comments to offer on the specific issues of whether feminism and environmentalism take us beyond left and right.
Firstly, gender equality is a different beast to ecological sustainability, and each must be thought through on its own merits.
Secondly, the concepts of gender equality, and of relations between men and women being rationally and discursively constituted relations between free and equal citizens (albeit with a large affective element), rather than being determined by tradition, religion and traditional notions of ascriptive difference in roles and status, entail a close fit between equality and liberty.
Thirdly (and this will be contentious) I think that patriarchy - defined as a socially sustainable system of domination supported by the consent of both the dominant and subaltern groups - has been busted beyond repair by the simultaneous impacts of feminism on one side and capitalist individualism on the other. The question now is whether a new system of gender and family relations based on egalitarian and solidaristic values can be created, or whether the future will be one of atomisation, anomie, full membership of the consumer capitalist “brotherhood of men and women” for women on the right side of divisions of class, race and north-south inequality, and a nasty, brutish and short existence for people of both genders on the wrong side of these divisions. In short, feminism or barbarism. The reasons for preferring feminism over barbarism have a lot to do with the values which have always motivated the left at its best, and distinguished it from the right.
Fourthly, it is theoretically possible for concern about the environment to be discursively articulated with socialist, social-democratic, radical-democratic, libertarian, liberal, conservative and/or religious perspectives. However, if one accepts that there are ecological and biophysical limits to the scale of global human society and economy, one must accept the need for non-market, non-economic constraints to be imposed on the macro-economic scale and meso- and micro-economic character of market economic activity. The big questions which then arise are:
(a) Should these constraints be determined and implemented through the political process, based on a combination of good, transparent science and discursive democratic deliberation, or should they be imposed technocratically and bureaucratically?
(b) Should we be alert to the distributional consequences of such policies, and design them so that they mitigate poverty and unemployment amongst vulnerable groups, improve equality of opportunity and entail an improvement of public provision of important services, or should we accept that long-run limits to growth will mean long-run persistence of poverty for those whose circumstances might have been improved by economic growth?
The answers to both these questions have a strong left-right dimension.
I’ve never understood the motivations of radical Right reformers. Capitalism already exists, in its most rapacious, ruthless and destroying forms, unhindered and unquestioned, at its most ideologically hegemonic it’s been for decades.
What more could there be to do?
Oh, but Liam, there’s still so much rapine to consummate, ruth to shed and forms to destroy. B-b-b-baby you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Liam and others like to highlight the villainish aspect of capitalism. But capitalism functions best in an environment of long term rational self-interest where individuals have shed their atavistic emotions of tribalism (and its associates of racism and bigotry) which even class solidarity is based on. Liberty, equality and fraternity (including racial and religious tolerance) are never better illustrated than in the smooth functioning of a capitalist economy as this quote by one of the progenitors of the Enlightenment, Voltaire brings out:
“Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt. There the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the promise of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others in search of a drink; this man is on the way to be baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, to the Holy Ghost; that man is having the foreskin of his son cut off, and a Hebraic formula mumbled over the child that he himself can make nothing of; these others are going to their church to await the inspiration of God with their hats on; and all are satisfied. “
I’ve noticed a trend amongst some leftists towards denying that the Left exists.
Is it a weak attempt at stealth, or an attempt to feel superior, or even just self-deception? I don’t know, but it’s definitely happening in some quarters.
Could be good for blog-fodder sometime.
Jason,
Can I take it you now agree that Voltaire is one of us?
As for the villainy of capitalism, the word “villain” comes from the medieval French word for serf. It’s ironic to hear that the same capitalism that freed the peasants from their aristocratic and theocratic masters is now associated with the oppression of the working class.
fyodor
i don’t think i ever disputed that he was, just his relevance to the ID debate
Haven’t read the book - but a lot of the “where now post left” ramblings in this country have been a product of the Howard lite years; and his tendency to focus wedging on so-called new left totemic issues
With Howard bitter and his IR reforms now on the horizon we can expect to see increased union prominence - with its invariable corollary of increased membership and a resurgence of class/ income / equality, whatever you want to call it, as a defining political theme.
Personally, Id like to see more red/green alliance moves in the offing. Jack Mundey is most inspirational in this area, and in recent years people like Dean Mighell have made some good noises. But nothing’s really come off. That’s the way forward IMHO.
Incidentally, I urge broad leftists to take a peek at the Greens IR policy. In many ways I find it superior to the ALPs, who, hair-tearingly, are as yet refusing to give specific committments on unfair dismissal laws, individual contracts etc.
http://greens.org.au/policies/society/industrialrelations
LE:
* In my Doctoral thesis I devoted an entire chapter to the efforts of the AMWU in workplace environmental campaigns and coalition-building with the environment movement.
* The ACTU has also improved its orientation since the likes of Crean and Ferguson were kicked upstairs and people like Sharan Burrow and Greg Combet took charge.
* The Victorian Greens’ co-convenor is Sue Pennicuik, who was until recently the ACTU’s National OHS Coordinator and was also AMWU Environment Projects Officer from 1994 to 1996.
* The MUA has a long history of environmental campaigning, which was reciprocated with Greens support for the union in the ehady days of 1998.
* The public transport unions, teacher unions, Australian Services Union, CEPU and CPSU have all taken good stance and practical actions on the environment.
* The Mining and Energy Division of the CFMEU has approached greenhouse and other environmental issues in a much more cooperative and constructive spirit than the Forestry Division has done with logging, and was centrally involved in the ACTU’s contribution to the Ecologically Sustainable Development process.
* Recently, FOE Victoria and the Greens have been involved with the Victorian THC in developing campaigns against the Howard Government’s IR changes.
In short, there’s a lot of good stuff being done, but not much is heard of it through the white noise of forestry disputes.
The ACF has produced an excellent paper on this issue at http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res_tp011.pdf
and a very good book from overseas is Laurie Adkin (1998), Politics of Sustainable Development: Citizens, Unions and the Corporations, Black Rose: Montreal.
I learn new things about the stockmarket every day. Just as well I own no shares, if I did I’d expect the dividends to come back to me instead of being shared out amongst the entire population of the world.
London Exchange pfft. Hotbed of fucking communism.
Having read the post and all the responses, I feel a little funny - I’m not sure what my reaction is. I can understand the left/right dichotomy - but there’s unsatisfying about it for me. At first glance, it’s the apparent one-dimensionality, but at a second glance, I think that it’s because the left/right thing, although relevant for human beings in recent and near future history, is not the main game - it’s wrong as the prime focus.
The main focus should be about recognising ourselves as part of the Earth system, not separate from it. This is the main game - the left/right thing is a “subsystem” - important as it is.
I can’t post comments on this thread any more. The ether swallows them up.
Rob, this seems to be the comments database problem. Rob C’s working on it. Hopefully things will be fine soon.
Thanks Paul for the links (and not mention the entire history of the green bans!). But Im talking about political/ organisational alliances, eg a few unions actually affiliating to the Greens would be a good sign for me. Im aware that a two-way street, lot of movement on both sides needed. And probably the enunciation of a coherent unifying narrative of progressive social change.
Printing out that ACF paper Paul - looks great.
Another good post and comments. My interest is not so much on the left/right divide, but between the centre and the extremes on both ends of the spectrum. I think that there is a qualitative difference between the centre and extremes, which is pretty obvious to most people already, but that this could also be used as another way to look at politics - in a way that rephrases liberty, equality and fraternity in a more ‘lefty’ way.
The centre could be, perhaps, the place where people are able to speak for themselves while at the extremes you find ‘experts’ who think that they can speak for others - and push them around as abstract units. At the centre the narratives are more personal while at the extremes the narratives are grander [civilisation, class or national group talk] - arguably on both the left and right.
The political change in doing things from the centre/extreme perspective, for people in the centre, could be about focusing on liberty - as promoting civil society and public forums to help direct policy. This is about sharing ideas, rather than just taking polls or CIR. These are just some ideas.
This focus on promoting civil society and participation might be considered to be from the old traditional liberalism, but I think that with the new power of states and corporations this old-style liberalism might, again, be considered radical - rather than of the right. This isn’t just indulging in weasel words - the historical contexts have changed. Liberalism would change to suit the times [and we all know that the Liberal Party is not a liberal party].
And the liberal individual could be understood in a way that enables people to live by their values in their societies as they like, within the context of states. I don’t see social democracy as an alternative to the Right…
Of course being left-wing is about making the world a better place. the problem is, most of its prescriptions fail when put to the test - not because of malign or misguided intent, but because of the obstinacy of human nature and the iron law of unintended consequences. As I once said somewhere else, socialism is a marvellous idea that doesn’t work, and capitalism is a terrible idea that does. These are the horms of our contemporary ideological dilemma.
Finally made it.
With the ethereal aid of Popper, no doubt, Rob!
It’s great to see my book (Beyond Right and Left) has already sparked discussion. To provoke such debate is why I wrote it.
(And because I think the Left needs new ideas to tackle the Howard Asendancy.)
For instance, why do we tend to think environment issues are ‘left wing‚Äô? Is it always ‘right wing‚Äô to worry about the family? A new new politics based on values is rising and the Left is scrambling to catch up .
But in the current climate the new free market Right holds the ascendancy in ideas while Labor and the Left have a crisis of belief. Their old ideas don’t spark popular support in the way they used to.
Here’s one new way of conceptualisng things: I think the new Right has a radical agenda, not a conservative one. Its radical economic policies — in spite of its claims to the contrary — erode real ‘family values’.
It is very telling that the ACTU was able to win the first round of public debate on the new IR laws by pointing to the effect of the new laws on personal time and family life — that is, they didnt appeal to ideas of ‘class’ or of equality traditionally conceived as an economic thing.
But to implicit concepts of ‘class’, nonetheless. Faithfully. Not old left stereotypically.
David, thanks for the comment. I’ve been reading your book and it seems to me that there are two things that could be picked up from an initial look above and beyond what’s discussed here. First, the fact that it’s eminently arguable that the issues you raise as “Beyond” ones in fact do break on lines which are predictable given the Left/Right distinction if not unproblematically able to be mapped on to it. You seem to me to have fallen into the dead end of a conception of politics as “post-materialist” without looking at whether class may still be an underlying factor whose effect on these issues is just less predictable.
Class is not just economics.
Secondly, you don’t to my mind adequately distinguish between your own agenda (which is progressive) and being Left. Leading to a certain ambiguity which if clarified would invalidate your claim that we’ve somehow transcended Left and Right.
It’s nice to have David online. Now, I haven’t read the book yet, but will - yet, can we not all agree that class is relations to production, which is where the ACTU’s campaign has hit middle.
I certainly will agree, Chris. And Howard, as I’ve argued before, has revived class politics.
A friend of mine who’s employed recruiting for a union tells me that doors that were never open to him before are now wide open. In fact, they’re beating down his door.
The more I have found prescriptive marxism silly, the more i’ve been impressed by the validity of its traditional categories to define the problem.
Chris, I don’t know if you’ve ever read David Harvey’s Limits to Growth. It was published originally in 77 or 78 (ish - I’m too weary to walk to the lounge and check from the bookshelf), and republished by Verso in 99. Harvey added a new introduction where he talked about the fact that he’d taught a seminar on Capital every year bar one at Johns Hopkins since 69 (I think - from memory). He relates that when he started teaching it - it was full of activists, other faculty, all sorts of grad students. The big issue in the States was of course the Vietnam War. The heights of Keynesian economics were about to plunge towards a nadir. Organisation man was king in the economy. Harvey said that they all felt they needed various intermediaries between them and Marx’ text. By contrast, in the late 90s, there were no activists, no Faculty, only the odd grad student, but Marx seemed to speak directly to the state of the world and their lives in the American metropole with almost no need for a commentary and certainly not for intermediation.
This was very well said by Kim in the original post, too:
Brilliant post, Kim - one of the best. I’m not sure if that’s been said often enough on this thread.
Transcendent from Kim, I agree. But I also think David is well worth listening to. He’s done a lot of work in the area, and I can always discount for my own work etc. Welcome comrade.
Not arguing with that, Chris, but I, like Kim, am very sceptical that we’ve moved “beyond” Left and Right and I have no wish to do anything other than fight for what the Left has always believed in. I’m more and more of the opinion that we should take no backward steps, forget about the fancy footwork, get on the front foot, and hit the ball for six. I think that the time when the Left (or parts thereof) was afraid to speak its name is happily passing. So I can see what David’s doing in terms of pointing out that some of these issues can attract a wider constituency, but I think perhaps the moment for that particular take has past, and now is the time to draw some lines in the sand, stand tall, and fight.
I’m a bit behind you guys, and’ll have to wait till I’ve read the book.
Be interesting to hear your take, Chris. I might have more to say about the book on the weekend sometime.
I haven’t got much further than the last time I thought about the topic Mark, which if you take into account some of the comments seems (on the surface) to be neither inconsistent with David nor Kim. But, as I say, will have to look at the book. If it declares classes dead in this increasingly unequal and incredibly class conscious (in all its complexity) age, as Kim seems to say, I’m likely to have a lot of trouble with it.
That old thread! heh - and Mark, this blog is a Cancer sun with Gemini in Mercury.
Just stargazin’
An oldie … but a goodie.
Something about the left/right labels in analysing politics is that (a) they’re inherently fuzzy and (b) using them doesn’t encourage one to consider other alternatives, as they’re too limiting.
One must always be prepared to consider other alternatives. Attempts at this have been made by using multi-dimensional measures - this is a good first attempt, but not satisfactory.
Anyone who works for someone else knows that the idea of class is very important, and will be so for the forseeable future. But is it a satisfactory prism for politics as a whole?
I’ll come back to that, Sach, but two quick comments - first, Left and Right give shape to policy positions. If you look for the “best” solution to any problem you’re simply not reflecting on your values overall and you end up with a sort of technicist and anti-democratic politics. Secondly, yes, they’re fuzzy, but so? The degree to which over time the Left and Right poles both shift enables flexibility to be built into politics as well, while maintaing certain foundational values.
There are real clashes between the ideals of equality and liberty which are worked out through these prisms, and they also correspond to people’s ideas of how society ought to be organised.
That’s interesting, Mark, yes, I think that when you’re looking for the “best” response to something, you’re implicitly if not explicitly doing this with respect to certain values, your assumptions, and it’s important to be aware of these.
Now it’s time to go home - hooray!
WEll, lets move beyond left and right with this latest nonsense from Howard and Ruddock.
Extended interrogation under the exisitng ASIO powers was bad enough, IMHO - but now detention without charge? *without charge*!!
No matter how many timesd Ratty abuses the term “common sense” in relation to this, detention without charge is the *sine qua non* of a police state. Make my mistake, this takes us over the line. Not even Bjelke did it without charge.
Im disgusted with these bastards. In the face of terrorism, they immiediately give up - surrender everything we’re allegedly protecting. I call it treason. They’re traitors and cowards. You havde to ask - why are tnhey so ready to surrender our liberties, for no good reason? Is it because, secretly, they oppose them, and their natural insticnt is to maximise executive authority over individual rights? I think so. These people are not liberals.
This the acid test for a lot of right wingers. Do you have any principles at all, any respect for the rule of law and liberal democracy, or will you blindly follow the Rat into the sewer of authoritarianism?
Hands up. Time to be counted, or we’re screwed here.
“I‚Äôve never understood the motivations of radical Right reformers. Capitalism already exists, in its most rapacious, ruthless and destroying forms, unhindered and unquestioned, at its most ideologically hegemonic it‚Äôs been for decades.
What more could there be to do?”
We want “the institutions” back.
Last night I bought two books: “Beyond Right and Left” and “Quantum Field Theory” by Zee. The latter looks interesting as an understandable text on the topic, but is probably of lesser interest to most readers of LP than the first.
I’ve read through bits and pieces of “Beyond Right and Left” in a non-linear fashion, and it’s interesting to see the author groping for new ways of thinking about politics and to understand the electoral dominance of the Right, ideas I’ve been interested in lately.
Something I quite like about it is that the author talks about dealing with the environment properly by considering ourselves as part of the world, an idea which does not sit easily with traditional political ideas (which are more concerned with relations between people or groups of people). The real and potential environmental problems require human beings to think about a new world view which encompasses the left/right thang, rather than THE left/right thing being your world view.
Anyway, these are just some quick thoughts… I recommend people read the book.
You’re right, Lefty Elitist. Let’s call it treason. After all, they call us unpatriotic. Let’s hit them with their language… let’s all write letters to the editors with the ‘t’ word…
Yeah, good post, Kim.
I also liked Liam Hogan’s succint demolition of Jason Soon’s quoting of the “Go into the Exchange in London .. . ” set-piece by Voltaire (which lately Jason has been rather fond of wheeling out; see: http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/?p=1060)
Thanks, Paul.
I must get around to writing part 2 now that I’ve read the whole book!
I’ve now read more of the book and also Kim’s original post (finally!). The more of the book I read, the more I’m impressed with the author’s attempt to search for new ideas.
Just in reading Kim’s post, one sentence in particular stuck out:
“And I‚Äôm not interested in tenured radicals telling me that feminism and environmental concerns transcend and surpass Left politics.”
One thing that my reading of environmental issues and Earth system studies has unambiguously taught me is that “environmental” issues do indeed transcend Left politics - and I’m no tenured radical or academic. Environmental issues transcend human struggles - human beings are a part of the Earth system - I don’t know how traditional left/right politics, which is concerned with people and groups of people, can properly deal with sustaining life on Earth.
I am, of course, open to persuasian!
Sach, I’ll address those points in my second post.
Ah - good
I’m tired from concentrating at work for the last few hours…