Campaigning on the basics, commonsense, so why big Fails?
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
^^^^^
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Sorry, but I really dont buy that in the slightest. A host of groups across the left are entirely aware of the issues, the causes and trying to inspire action and awareness with varying levels of success and failure.
"Their relationship with the Labour Party means they lack links to most groups on the Left, who are hostile towards Labour."
It's not just that other people may or may not dig them for that, it is the internal contradiction within who they are and what they stand for.
If I want to campaign for vegetarianism I dont do it through the Countryside Alliance.
I’m inclined to agree with taffboy gwyrdd here. Focusing on this-or-that as a strategy rather assumes that this-or-that isn’t really a problem in itself, but more an opportunity to promote the traditional left wing take on social justice.
The reason for public indifference is that the subject remains the same wet value laden discourse that so defines the bourgeois political circus. It exists in the realm of student debating societies or at best symbolic action. These are not inspirational endeavours, they aren’t setting out courses of action, but instead advocate a sterile reverence for victimhood, suffering, weakness, innocence and sacrifice. When we ask ourselves for the reasons for the “failure” of the left, the answer is bound up in an analysis of how the left is actually useful. What is politics really for? The protection of the weak and innocent? It’s not going to cut it in the inspiration stakes. It’s just trite. Quaint.
The reason for public indifference is that the subject remains the same wet value laden discourse that so defines the bourgeois political circus. It exists in the realm of student debating societies or at best symbolic action. These are not inspirational endeavours, they aren’t setting out courses of action, but instead advocate a sterile reverence for victimhood, suffering, weakness, innocence and sacrifice. When we ask ourselves for the reasons for the “failure” of the left, the answer is bound up in an analysis of how the left is actually useful. What is politics really for? The protection of the weak and innocent? It’s not going to cut it in the inspiration stakes. It’s just trite. Quaint.
do you wanna fuck off and come back when youve grown up
this is a forum for political discussion, not your unpleasant attention seeking wank
Apparently the Japanese Commmunist Party is on the up, partly because as the Guardian says by
'dispensing with ideological rhetoric and focusing on welfare and jobs, the JCP has struck a chord with students, the unemployed and the estimated 10 million Japanese earning less than 2m yen (about £14,000) a year.
n the last 16 months membership has soared to more than 410,000 as the revamped party courts younger voters from the working poor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/japanese-communist-party-resurgence
A lesson for the Left here?
'dispensing with ideological rhetoric and focusing on welfare and jobs, the JCP has struck a chord with students, the unemployed and the estimated 10 million Japanese earning less than 2m yen (about £14,000) a year.
n the last 16 months membership has soared to more than 410,000 as the revamped party courts younger voters from the working poor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/japanese-communist-party-resurgence
A lesson for the Left here?
Yeah. When in doubt take recourse to the bourgeois work ethic, family values, and mystic notions of "human rights". Not to mention, the continuing appeal of nationalism to the working class. Didn't it start from a base of 400,000 anyway? An extra 10,000 is very nice I'm sure, but I doubt it'll make much difference. Welfarism and creating jobs from thin air won't solve the "crisis", in fact it's one of its ingredients.
But part of most peoples politics is the belief in the protection of the weak and innocent. And it makes sense to me as its really just basic self interest.
And self interest to me is really at the heart of most politics. Personally i see basic socialism as in the selfinterest of me and most people.
A lot of the failure of the left is bound up with the huge influence of Liberalism and Stalinism ( for want of a better word) both these political currents see the majority of people as people who need to be led and told what to think.
And loads of people basically agree with a lot of their pessimism but pessimism is not inspiring. And much of the Left are much happier in struggles against something than for something.
Nah. And even if it was true, it would hardly be an excuse. We're not obliged to make life easier for life's mediocrities.
Blessed are the meek etc. The malaise of the left is is a consequence of the perspective which sees the working class as just another disadvantaged group in a shopping list of innocents in need of liberation. However, the working class is not defined by its victim status, but by its daily conflict with bureaucratic society.
Of course. But we don't owe the left a solution to their problems. The left's fundamental premise (discounting the determinism of the ICC et al) has no more currency than traditional religious belief.
1 Its not about making life easier for mediocrities its about a safety net that protects everyone.
2 Again its not about victimhood as far as im concerned its about the aspiration for a happier life with more security. IMO That means opposing gross inequality.
I appreciate your point of view, but you seriously over estimate the degree to which we value security. Security is actually what we demand in return for banality. Any road up, entertaining the idea for a moment, it only means "opposing inequality" from the perspective of the inept – and so is inevitably caught up in precisely the cycle of self defeat we're observing. It is, as Nietzsche would say, a slave-morality.
I think security is important to all of us..Maybe some more than others and more so at certain times. But most people i think are motivated by self interest. Opposing inequality does not mean supporting mediocrity it means looking seriously at what most people want and what can be delivered by co-operation for the common good.
A society dedicated to profit and greed also throws up plenty of banality.
You can have a society where people get incentives for working hard etc but without the huge gulf in income in the country and world at the moment.
That would make for a far happier world in my view and happiness is surely what we all strive for in life.
Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, as far as I know, represents the most reliable model of behaviour. The value to the individual of the expected outcome of the behaviour, more or less as you say I suppose.
Arrow’s Result calls the general applicability of concepts such as “the common good” and “the public interest” into serious question.
Sour grapes. Imagine a flamboyant swashbuckling bon viveur. Men want to be him. Women want to be with him. What does contemporary political discourse have to say to his self interest? Not much comrade, not much.
As Einstein once said imagination is more important than intelligence.
So imagine if you can that i am that swashbuckling bon viveur.......I love myself, which means unlike some i am also able to really love others.....
The man who loves himself cares for others and wants the best for all.
No man is an island.
What of it? Those marginalized peccadilloes are common enough amongst the personalities drawn to sundry humanist political circles. A critique of the left remains an intellectual bauble. For what it's worth, whatever the failures of the left might be, they are a consequence of its core political philosophy rather than external factors acting against it. Factors that, incidentally, are just symbolic abstractions of its own invention.
Eeeeew. Pass the bucket.
It's Carousel who imagines himself as that swashbuckling bon viveur.
In reality he's some middle grade town hall clerk who reads Nietzsche.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Possibly the best way to approach it...
Political discourse remains mired in antique bourgeois philosophies that adopt the false premise of “the best for all”, “the greatest good to the greatest number” and so on. All that remains for their adherents to do is debate the significance and meaning of suffering and other essentially contestable matters of fairness and justice.
These things mean little to your average punter - and not because they’ve been numbed or corrupted by the prevailing order - but because they are in political advance of ideologues peddling variations on slave-morality. A morality whose obsolescence tracks the decline of religious authority.
When we deliberate on political action what are we suggesting an arbitrary someone should do today that they didn’t do yesterday? Why?
These things mean little to your average punter - and not because they’ve been numbed or corrupted by the prevailing order - but because they are in political advance of ideologues peddling variations on slave-morality. A morality whose obsolescence tracks the decline of religious authority.
When we deliberate on political action what are we suggesting an arbitrary someone should do today that they didn’t do yesterday? Why?
How did they do that - the LRC (Lothian Regional Council) was disbanded ages ago?
I agree with this especially the point with regards to liberalism and stalinism. Far to many people on urban and out there in the wider alternative/radical/political world treat working class issues and working class people with contempt. There was a housing shortage from day one of nushamebores administration and no one gave a shit. Until the petty minded petty borgy borg attitudes change then the big fails will sadly continue.
No . The the fact that, say house building for example is not a priority , nor popular with the 'left wing social niche' is exactly why there attitude and character is to blame and needs to re-adjust. Your other point, in the post above about the death of 'isms' in terms of the popularity of wider ideological concepts is a good point which i agree with.
Blame for what? The working class have no business looking to the left to get houses built. In what way does it "need" to readjust? No one's obliged to maintain the left's survival merely for its own sake. It's not a problem in the general sense, but a straight forward observation that the left's decline is intrinsic in its founding premises or ideals, such as "from each according…", as if needs and abilities have a meaning widely held enough to generate effective collective action. Whatever housing shortage one might entertain isn't a consequence of the left's flawed priorities, but our own unwillingness (or inability) to positively organise production and power.
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