It seems like now is a good time to have a conversation about finding common ground between the various factions of left/progressive folks. I know this isn’t a new topic but maybe it’s worth revisiting.
What are the sticking points and what can we all agree on in the context of current-day politics?
Adding some things I think any leftist should be able to agree on:
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Capitalism has been a strong negative influence on human existence
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People who look, act and live differently from you deserve exactly the same human rights as you, even if they make you uncomfortable
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Health care, food, water, and housing are human rights
My views would not be popular,
I continue to vote blue no matter who.
But I feel like the knee jerk reactions cause too many “babies to be thrown out with the bath water”
We expect perfection, we’re against perverts and deviants who believe they have a higher power on their side that blesses their"leadership"to get away with whatever they want.
Some things are not eligible for compromise. Human rights are non negotiable. We can debate about voting systems and trade policy but the only other is those who aren’t willing to treat the least privileged members of society the way they want to be treated.
When you refuse to support the lesser of two evils you get the worse outcome. I don’t like it, but as long as one side remains unified there will never be more than a 2 party system,
Yes, but if you pledge unconditional support to the lesser of 2 evils, they have no incentive to ‘be better’ - they can just be slightly less evil than the monster who gets worse every day.
I did vote blue even though I wasn’t happy about it and it mainly came down to ‘i really haven’t done much to express my distaste over the past 8 years, why am I choosing to protest the Dems today?’
But I do think this is a turning point for me. I want to be having these conversations more often, I want to be more involved, and I want to make it known to the people in charge: what can they do to earn my vote. I think starting to define what are the universal ideals we can agree on is a great conversation to have over the next few weeks.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about the recent thing we’re all doing our best not to panic spiral about. I’m talking about common ground in shared spaces and future politics.
Purity tests build republican wins
Unfortunately, I think this is herding cats.
I wish I felt otherwise.
That’s a good way to look at it. You don’t herd cats, you show them something they want and they’ll herd themselves independently :)
Exactly! Now we just have to figure out what they want.
Basic human rights would be a start.
This is exactly what I was hoping to crystallize
The problem is that, while getting there, all the cats tear themselves to pieces for not being cat enough to really want it.
If someone didn’t say thing A, but you’re pretending they did so you can make a big fuss about how they’re wrong about thing A when they actually said thing B, please don’t do that.
In fact, in general, it’s not good to try to “win” the conversation. If you said your thing, and they said their thing, and you all had your chance to understand it and make any counter arguments and ask questions, then the mission is accomplished. Not everyone has to see things the same way, just understand each other.
This could be distilled down to ‘empathy’ almost. It’s very easy to fall into patterns of chasing rage bait and lose track of ourselves
I look at it this way: Republicans have been sticking to their guns with consistent messaging for decades, no matter how crazy people thought they were. Rather than trying to “court moderates,” the Dems need to come up with a properly progressive platform and FUCKING STICK TO IT like the GOP did for all those years. Their messaging needs to be consistent and constant.
I dont see any consistency even when I just look at Trumps messaging. The platform Republicans ran on also changed significantly in the last two decades
Trumps messaging is erratic because Trump’s erratic. He’s a useful idiot for the party. At first, they fought it, but when they saw the voter response the first time around, they said, “Fuck it, let him rif.”I’m not even sure he knows what he’s saying (to quote the guy!), but he’s a means to an end for them. They’ve made incredible progress working behind the circus that is his public life.
The core goals of the party haven’t changed in over 40-years, though. As the party has shifted right, positions that were once fringe have become mainstream and rolled into the platform, but the core positions are all still there, and they’ve made significant progress. Abortion is back to the states, Charter schools are getting more and more common, public funding is starting to get to religious schools, many states have right to work laws, some are even starting to limit access to porn. And of course the rich are getting stratospherically wealthier! None of those goals are new. They’ve moved further right because of their success in achieving some of the core goals, and because some of those previously fringe ideas have gained traction. Most of this comes down to generations of consistent messaging (and actively working to hobble the government making it look increasingly inept to fit their narrative). You hear something long enough, it becomes “normal.” You grow up hearing it , it’s almost “acceptable”, while not ideal. Other industrialized countries would’ve taken to the streets if Roe had been struck down. We all went back to work the next day. Sure, there are reasons we didn’t have much of a choice in accepting it, but progress on those fronts have been very slow as well. The last major step being the ACA and Obergefel (sp?).
Left Unity isn’t about being ride or die together, it’s about aligning on issues you can and discussing issues you can’t. Marxists and Anarchists, for example, have a different end goal in mind. Marxists want a centrally planned, publicly owned economy with a democratically controlled government, while Anarchists want a horizontal, decentralized network of cooperatives and Mutual Aid Networks. You’re going to run into disagreements, because their analysis of Capitalism has different conclusions and as such their end goals are different.
That’s why we need to work together on things we do align on, like Palestinian liberation, anti-fascism, and anti-Capitalism.
We should also read more theory. Having a better understanding of our problems and how we believe they can be fixed is the key to any struggle. I keep a “Read Theory, Darn It!” beginner reading list on Marxism if anyone wants it, let me know if you have any questions.
What I’m really driving at, is how can we have a shared culture that is safe for Marxists, anarchists, and people who would define themselves as Liberal? That was uncomfortable to type, but in order to affect material change we have to learn to speak each other’s languages and treat each other with empathy, while remaining open minded and learning from each other. It doesn’t advance any cause to dunk on each other for Internet points.
The tricky part is where is the line drawn? Some ‘anarchists’ are just accelerationists. Some MLs are just Soviet flavored conservatives. Some Liberals value the system itself more than marginalized people.
I propose that the shared value we all have is empathy. Regardless of how you felt about voting for Kamala - or whether you feel the system must be improved or destroyed - if you want to see the lives of marginalized people (and by extension, all of us) improve, we should be able to find common ground.
I have an anecdote that doesn’t really answer your question, but makes me smile.
A while back, there was a rent strike at a university which led to the activists occupying a university building for a while. One of the rooms had a large double-sided whiteboard which had the day/week schedule on one side. On the other side, there was a tally chart split into “Anarchist” and “Communist” — a joking rivalry based on the fact that the majority of organisers there would describe themselves as either communist or anarchist. It made me smile because it was a tiny slice of that shared culture that you speak of (which is much harder on the larger scale). It’s such a small thing, but that joking competition did a lot to reconcile the ideological tensions that can arise in diverse activism. Of course, it helped that it was set against an incredibly vibrant and welcoming atmosphere.
I’m down for the conversation. Commenting so I can follow what others have to say. The US and the world need to stop whipsawing back and forth ever few years. It doesn’t benefit anyone but the extremely wealthy, which is an extreme minority.
I think you’ve hit on major common ground, that all people should be able to see. The extremely wealthy have too much power and they are an extreme minority. Until someone, or a coalition of people stand up for that single issue and are willing to vocally withhold support from mainstream Dems, this problem will never be addressed in the US
The extremely wealthy have gotten their fingers so thoroughly in our politics through lobbying, campaign donations, and shady deals that it seems almost impossible to separate the money from power.
Agreed. We seemed somewhat close with Bernie, but we saw how that ended. But he had support, and he could’ve held more power over the DNC if he had refused to endorse Hilary without MAJOR concessions from the party.
But that could’ve ended with Trump winning in 2016, and nobody wanted that, so he sold out his values and toed the party line. Didn’t seem to work out.
I am not doing left unity. Sure there are some common grounds, but most often there are also clear incompatibilities. I do not think someone calling themself leftist is enough for me to work with them.
Instead I want to be able to agree or compromise on these points:
- shared vision for the future
- what we want to do in a practical sense
- preferences for managing relationships(like how to organize, etc)
Of course this results in a pretty limited range of folks/groups I am happy to work with. In my case its mostly anarchists. But in singular contexts(like antifascist action and mutual aid) or in projects of limited scope like organizing a demonstration the alignement of these points is often enough for me to consider it.
That seems like a reasonable definition of unity that most people could actually commit to.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
— Groucho MarxValid
We can hopefully all agree that genocide is bad and funding apartheid is never acceptable
I have always agreed on that but also knew Trump would make it worse.
Did you believe that genocide was a reasonable compromise? Did you constantly guilt trip people into voting Kamala? Did you consistently downplay all of her bad policies by bringing up Trump whenever mentioned? I’m not saying you did but there were waves of “leftists” (liberals) who did. Now that she lost can you aknowlage that she lost her own election? That constantly appealing to Fascists wasn’t an effective political method? That nobody likes war hawks? Or are you going to blame third party voters.
(This comment was intended for someone else but it also applies here tbh)
People with a conscience are all trying to make the best decision in front of us in the moment we find ourselves in. This election was one of those moments.
I voted for harm reduction and the ability to safely push and advocate for future change. Instead, apathy and right wing extremism held hands to send a demoralizing message. Whatever your motivations were for sitting it out or voting in protest, you didn’t achieve your goal of less suffering. That’s not a judgement, it’s a simple fact. Your passive act is actively contributing to the acceleration of the policies that have you so outraged.
Looking at the social media feeds of my undocumented and non-cis friends hurts. Seeing the fear and sense of rejection about the implications of this election is not like anything I’ve personally witnessed in my lifetime. A candidate for president discussed using an act that allowed the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, and people didn’t take that seriously. I do, and I hope anyone else who does is actively planning ways to resist.
So great job, I guess. It’s time to go from bad to worse. Life requires hard choices in hard times, and so many Americans couldn’t or wouldn’t meet that moment. Now we all get to endure the consequences.
You proved my point exactly, the fact that I criticized Kamala made you assume I didn’t vote for her. I did vote for her, that doesn’t mean I like or supported her. Despite voting for her I still think Kamala Harris deserved to loose. Its not the voters jobs to constantly make excuses for a fascist politican, did I want her to win of couse but I also understand why people voted third party. Before the next election I hope the workers can put together a true workers party.
Also I’m Trans, I understand how a lot of people are feeling. I also happen to be lucky enough to have a one way ticket out (which I obviously took).
Honestly, great. I’m glad you voted that way. It doesn’t change a shred of my point about the sentiment of the comment you made. I’m happy that you have a ticket out, too. No one deserves to suffer through this. We will, though.
They can take some blame but not the brunt of it, that’s trump>Republicans>Russia. I do think third party was missing the big picture or were privileged and wanted to make themselves feel better even though their actions will contribute to the downfall of the US, Ukraine, and Kamala was a AG, I have fought and protested police actions in my city. She was not my perfect candidate, but I know everyone would be safer and give us space to make progress. Now we will have to spend the next four years trying to survive and years after that clawing back rights and progress that was stripped away. I am already talking with pride groups in the area to run name change clinics.
This isn’t expressly leftist content, but I recently found this video thought provoking. It’s by a UK guy who studied history at university and now works on his family’s farm. He explores the peculiar situation we have where (in his view, which is in accord with my own anecdata) UK farmers and other rural workers are overwhelmingly in favour of a socialist agricultural policy, but they vote for right wing parties.
