So David Pakman said today that there is a fracture on the left between the Marxist anticapitalist types and the woke social justice types. And I kind of have to say....no crap.
This has been a thing since 2016. This is actually one of the big divisions within the democratic party in 2016 between the Hillary types, who were identity obsessed social justice types, and Bernie supporters, who were more typical leftist types.
And the tensions were on display there. The democrats basically used postmodernism and social justice ideology to divide the left, and castigate the Bernie left as not being progressive enough on racism and acting like we were a bunch of racist, sexist, privileged neanderthals. Which is a huge reason why I became so alienated and jaded from those guys in coming years, because they kind of are radicals.
And yes, there are some leftists who are both. Anti capitalist movements often have a zero tolerance toward people who aren't also compatible with "intersectionality" and many will choose to put intersectionality above their own ideals, stating that we cant leave underprivileged people behind in pursuit of their goals. As a result, they rarely get much done because they get so bogged down in obsession with identity that it hamstrings the entire movement from focusing on ANYTHING ELSE.
Yeah. As you can tell, I'm not very sympathetic to these guys. it really does come down to the fact that these guys are purity testy AF and tend to suck the air out of the room allowing for discussion on literally ANYTHING ELSE. Everything must be subverted to the social justice cause in their minds or it is bad. It's the #1 reason I myself turned against these guys. The #2 reason being their radical illiberal nutcases whose extremism threatens free society, but that's also an outcropping of #1. ALL must be subverted to their ideals or destroyed to make way for them.
As a matter of fact, I dont see many people pushing back from the Marxist left. You have stupidpol I guess, but yeah. Now, I dont like these people either. Because they're also a bunch of radicals. I mean, dont get me wrong, I like the aesthetics of class struggle. i think, IN MODERATION some level of struggle between the working and ownership classes is a good thing. But I tend to approach it from a more LIBERAL perspective, not wanting to overturn capitalism itself, but merely have reforms that fix the relationship between the two. In a more traditional form this is stuff like unions, although my approach to indepentarianism and left libertarianism shows some level of solidarity to the working class. Now, dont get me wrong, I diverge a lot from left wing labor movements, even liberal ones, because many of them fetishize labor. The problem with these movements is they cant see a world beyond class struggle, their whole perspective is defined in it, and they seem to struggle to figure out the "now what", after. Its like leftists want perpetual class struggle and if they ever win, they have a massive existential crisis and/or devolve into literal communism and all the negatives associated with that. Meanwhile, being a problem SOLVER, I kinda wanna, ya know, solve the problem, not savor the moment in sisyphusian struggle because I see that as pointless, and move beyond this stuff. I want freedom as power to say no, and a form of left libertarianism in which people arent forced to labor at all. But again, because of leftie brainrot, many of these people dont seem to want to win, or if they do their ideas are terrifying, they find more value in the struggle itself than the solution and struggle to adjust to a world beyond it.
As such, while I have MORE sympathy with class struggle over identity politics, I understand that grievance politics are only legitimate when they have an actual clearly defined problem with a clearly defined solution that's actually feasible. For me, I think in terms of the problem solving approach to politics, I define problems, I propose solutions to fix the problem, and then hopefully i can move on. I long for a world in which all of my ideas are implemented, so that I can actually be conservative and defend them from all challengers, or at best propose mild fixes like a third way democrat wants to our existing system. I want my ideas to be status quo, so that I can defend that status quo and go on about how great things are, and oppose attempts to change the system for the worse. That's my end goal.
And honestly, while I dont really consider David Pakman to be a socdem but one of those third way libs, I am more sympathetic to the socdem or social libertarian approach to politics than I am either form of leftism. Because Im not a radical, I mean, I guess I am, but I'm simultaneously moderate. Point is, I'm not part of the current radical left. I'm much closer to a liberal or socdem than I am a Marxist or postmodernist.
On social justice issues, I've defined my ideology of just being a radical flaming centrist. A full on liberal. Not a leftist, not a conservative. On economics, I'm left of liberal, but right of the far left, and kind of in my own third camp. I want a lot of progressive change, but nothing that would destroy capitalism altogether.
So, I guess to answer David's question about where I stand, I'd rank the 3 factions as
1) liberalism/social democracy
2) Marxism
3) postmodernism
I'm TOTALLY against postmodernists at this point and dont sympathize at all. Vs marxists, i agree capitalism has problems, but dont agree with their radical solutions. And while I think many liberals and socdems are too moderate, Im probably closer to them than leftists these days. In reality, I'm kind of in the same place I've been for the past decade, with very little movement in any direction other than a seething hatred for the identity politics left.
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