Comments on: Beyond Left and Right?

By: Sach

Sach — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 05:27:05 +0000

Ah - good

I’m tired from concentrating at work for the last few hours…

By: Kim

Kim — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:20:01 +0000

Sach, I’ll address those points in my second post.

By: Sach

Sach — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:08:23 +0000

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��m 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!

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 15:08:19 +0000

Thanks, Paul.

I must get around to writing part 2 now that I’ve read the whole book!

By: Paul Watson

Paul Watson — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:10:45 +0000

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)

By: weathergirl

weathergirl — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 08:50:15 +0000

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…

By: Sach

Sach — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 02:49:37 +0000

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.

By: James Hamilton

James Hamilton — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:02:37 +0000

“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?”

We want “the institutions” back.

By: Lefty Elitist

Lefty Elitist — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 00:26:39 +0000

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.

By: Sach

Sach — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 07:06:06 +0000

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!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 13:37:06 +0000

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.

By: Sach

Sach — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 06:56:45 +0000

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?

By: cs

cs — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:41:25 +0000

An oldie … but a goodie.

By: Zoe

Zoe — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:37:33 +0000

That old thread! heh - and Mark, this blog is a Cancer sun with Gemini in Mercury.

Just stargazin’

By: cs

cs — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:26:44 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 22:45:23 +0000

Be interesting to hear your take, Chris. I might have more to say about the book on the weekend sometime.

By: cs

cs — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 22:36:53 +0000

I’m a bit behind you guys, and’ll have to wait till I’ve read the book.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:27:14 +0000

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.

By: cs

cs — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:50:03 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:42:36 +0000

This was very well said by Kim in the original post, too:

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.

Brilliant post, Kim - one of the best. I’m not sure if that’s been said often enough on this thread.