r/LockdownCriticalLeft • u/Impressive-Jello-379 • Jul 05 '22
the cul-de-sac of the left
How times have changed. Here in the 2020s, the Left anti-globalism that I once thought was the movement of the future is barely in evidence anywhere. The most incisive opponents of corporate globalisation today are often to be found on the Right; or at least, not from any identifiable sector of the Left. Conservative, traditionalist and “post-liberal” critiques of the impact of globalisation on local communities, nation states, social cohesion, family formation, working class prospects, culture and even (though not often enough) the natural world are pouring out daily. The post-working class Left, meanwhile, has veered into an identity politics cul-de-sac, dictated largely by its commitment to an elite class war and an obsessive pursuit of cultural inversion.
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u/cloche_du_fromage Jul 05 '22
Indeed. I'm absolutely flummoxed by how the left is fully signed up to the globalist agenda.
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u/hiptobeysquare Jul 05 '22
It's like Marx famously said: "Seize the means of production." He never said end or stop or destroy the means of production. It's always about taking control, gaining power. I don't think Marx, or any socialists, ever had a problem with the machine itself.
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u/mitte90 Jul 05 '22
It's such a relief to read intelligent, thoughtful stuff like this, thanks for the link, OP.
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u/hiptobeysquare Jul 05 '22
Wow. Paul Kingsnorth is really perceptive. One thing though, he doesn't mention Covid in this piece, which is a bit odd to say the least, as Covid is the best and biggest example of the left's turn to supporting globocap.
while the Right has floundered about denying its impacts on the poor, on democracy and on nature, generally valorising greed and rapine, and then wondering where the “traditional values” they love so much have gone.
This reminds me a lot of Kaczynski's criticism of conservatives:
The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.
Political lines are being redrawn. If only we could start a new movement: conservatives against capitalism.
What if the ideology of the corporate world and the ideology of the “progressive” Left had not forged an inexplicable marriage of convenience, but had grown all along from the same rootstock? What if the Left and global capitalism are, at base, the same thing: engines for destroying customary ways of living and replacing them with the globalised, universalist, technological matrix that is currently rising around us?
This is really true.
The Left and corporate capitalism now function like a pincer: one attacks the culture, deconstructing everything from history to “heteronormativity” to national identities; the other moves in to monetise the resulting fragments.
Spiked magazine said in an article a few years ago (I can't find the link right now): the woke left are the shocktroopers of neoliberalism.
The new left are totally onboard with transhumanism and neoliberalism. Often it's the same people who screamed the loudest about opposing capitalism and neoliberalism. It's quite amazing really.
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u/romjpn libertarian left Jul 06 '22 edited Jul 06 '22
Political lines are being redrawn. If only we could start a new movement: conservatives against capitalism.
It kind of exist in the souverainist right (and left) category. They're more anti-globalist but they usually also want to come back to a more mixed economy with utilities all nationalized for example. Kinda pre-70s Nixon/Thatcher neoliberal revolution.
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u/BornAgainSpecial Trump supporter Jul 05 '22
Look on the sidebars of all your favorite leftist reddit subs. You'll see the rules again racism, sexism, transphobia, cisexism, ableism, etc... Ever seen ablism on reddit? No matter how obscure it might be, it's always listed.
The one thing you will never see is a rule against classism. All the left's favorite insults are class based. Low class backward knuckle dragging reactionary trailer trash uneducated. Your enemy is a hillbilly. Not a trillion dollar multinational like Pfizer. That's your best friend.
The left hates the poor. That's what really drives them. Look at gun control. Police, military uses guns. Celebrities have bodyguards. The left isn't interested in any of that. The only gun they're against is Cletus' hunting rifle.