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Why are so many people on the left so bitter?

There's hardly any rightists on here. Apart from durrutti who is blatantly a strasserite.
 
Stoat Boy said:
Left wing ladies always seem a bit more frustrated than their right wing counterparts although many do scrub up well and look good in a nice frock.
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lindsey_german_460.jpg
 
The old take the piss out of what Lindsey German looks like chestnut. Go on, call her call her an ugly old trout, it's fucking hilarious......

Maybe send her picture into Loaded so more people can have a good laugh. Tis fun.

You could switch the question around:

Why are so many bitter people on the left?
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I don't think that a lot of people start off that way. I've seen quite a few people join the left who started off as fairly up beat, sociable people and turn into complete zealots. I think what people have said about the far left being isolated from the working class in a wider sense and not having many victories leading to a defeatist and inward looking mentality where someone else always has to be blamed is probably at least partly right.

And, as said, a desire by some to recreate everything that happened in 1917 including arrogant and rude ways of dealing with people.
 
The old take the piss out of what Lindsey German looks like chestnut. Go on, call her call her an ugly old trout, it's fucking hilarious......
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Christ why are you so bitter?
 
I'm am constantly amazed at the amount of arguing (or shouting down might be a better description), accusations, slagging off etc that passes for a lot of "left" discussion on here. Still, since I believe in free markets and that kinda stuff I can only hope those on the left keep it up :D
 
I think this thread is all wrong, surely we should be bitter and thats whats put us into politics in the first place.
 
There was a time, Uberpuppy, when socialists thought they had more to offer the world than their personal bitterness and their daft enthusiasm for bomb-happy Commie-killing Islamoshite theocrats.
 
I don't think many people enter left wing politics through bitterness as individuals (although as the far left has become more isolated that might be a bit of a bigger percentage). Anger at the way we're treated, sure, but solidarity also has a lot to do with it. And I'm not talking about anger/bitterness towards the day to day conditions/ruling class/capitalism, I'm talking about the kinda people who end up lacking any social awareness and become zealot like in their condemnations of anyone who doesn't agree with them.

Anger obviously fuels a lot of working class poltiical resistance, but that's not the same as the zealots who make up a layer of the far left in this country.
 
JHE said:
There was a time, Uberpuppy, when socialists thought they had more to offer the world than their personal bitterness and their daft enthusiasm for bomb-happy Commie-killing Islamoshite theocrats.
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There was also a brief period when they frowned on ethnic provocation and political dishonesty, but I suppose there's always been a fair old market for both.

On the original question:

1. Of course it's reasonable to ask whether there's a personal element in what attracts people to the left. Who knows how many socialists have been formed by quarrels with their parents? But it's no more true or fair to ascribe political attraction to the left to some sort of unconscious psychological element than it is to do the same for the centre or the right.

2. If you're on the left, you're basically liningup with the powerless and the marginalised and yet trying to change the world at the same time: the task you set yourself is enormously disprortionate to your chances of achieving it. You will fail most of the time ad expend a great deal of energy and intelligence in doing so. This does tend to lead to disillusionment and bitterness: so does the mutual denunication and mud-slinging which accompanies failure.

3. Many people start out, idealistically, assuming that the left is full of good guys and is always in the right: they also start out with a good deal of optimism. They then find out that the left are often just as foolish and just as human as everybody else, and, having made the initial mistake, flip over to the opposite position.

4. The past generation or so has been a bad time for the left: the power of organised labour, on which it is ultimately dependent one way or another, has steeply declined. This has not really been because of anything the left did or did not do - longterm changes in people's ideas tend to derive from longterm changes in society, and these have been taking place. A lot of people (self included) have been cast adrift by that process and many of them have reacted either by becoming cynical careerists on the one hand, or by becoming bitter - either in the far-left-sectarian manner, or in its evil-twin opposite where you end up posting on Harry's Place.

All these things can be avoided, but only with a sense of proportion. And if we had a sense of proportion - would we have set out to change the world in the first place?
 
I don't think they are. Left-wingers, socialists, anarchists are generally those who see good, who see potential in people, IME. Bitter is Daily Mail-reading, complaining about the darkies and taxation to my mind. The OP needs to fucking cheer up, IMO
 
On the 26/27 June there is a massive Welfare to Work Convention at the International Convention Centre, Birmingham, sponsored by Serco. it costs 450 pounds per head, James Purnell, Chris Grayling (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) and David Freud are the keynote speakers. Yet, no part of the left, unions, etc, has organised a protest against what is basically a convention to dismantle a huge part of the welfare state, a process which will impact on some of the most vulnerable in the U.K and will almost certainly contribute to the rise of the far right as desperate people look to blame something or someone for their problems.

maybe one reason why some are bitter....
 
I think this was the watershed of bitterness in the revo left

The Split in the LFI: expelled members respond

On 1 July the leadership of the League for the Fifth International (LFI) summarily expelled 33 members, mostly from the organisation’s British section, Workers Power but also comrades based in Australia and Ireland. Those expelled included the majority of Workers Power’s trade union activists, and a substantial proportion of its leading members and regular contributors to its paper.

The supposed pretext for the expulsions consisted of “leaked” emails that discussed the possibility of leaving the organisation either prior to or during the LFI’s congress later this month. The LFI leadership issued a very lengthy public statement branding the expelled members as “petit-bourgeois dilettantes”, who had succumbed to the “torpor of the labour aristocracy in Britain” and were seduced by “Chinamania”. Along with the ritualised abuse, the statement contains a number of inaccuracies and falsehoods that cannot be addressed here, but have already been answered in a statement from the expelled members (go to www.permanentrevolution.net).

The real reason for the expulsions stems from substantial political differences which had developed over two years and resulted in minority and majority factions being formed. The expulsions marked the culmination of a long-running battle within Workers Power and the LFI, which first saw the emergence of an organised tendency in Workers Power (Britain) early last year. In March 2006, came the formation of an international faction for the first time in the history of the LFI and its forerunners.

An increasingly bitter dispute had developed over perspectives since the LFI’s last congress in 2003. That congress adopted what those of us now expelled had characterised as a "catastrophist" outlook on the world economy. This view provided a justification of sorts for the notion of a global "pre-revolutionary period" characterized by capitalist stagnation and crisis. It was accompanied by a "new turn" towards mass agitation that seemed designed to feed younger members recruited through the youth group, Revolution, a diet of hyper-activism. Under pressure from the tendency/faction the leadership retreated from some of the language of 2003, but did not discard the substance.

Increasingly, schemas replaced concrete assessments of the balance of class forces in particular countries and regions. The need for a serious analysis of imperialist globalization, the impact on the world economy of the collapse of the Stalinist states and the opening up of these regions to capitalist exploitation, the rise of China as an economic and political power, was dismissed. In the mindset of the LFI leadership the World Social Forum/European Social Forum became the vehicle for the imminent creation of a 5th International to be formed “in months or years”. Every fightback, large or small, was evidence of the new pre revolutionary period internationally.

The call for a “new workers party” became a mantra in Britain and a slogan applicable throughout Europe. Using the critical support tactic towards the Labour Party in Britain was abandoned – electoral abstention became the order of the day, with the tactic of critical support categorically rejected, even in circumstances where the BNP posed a significant electoral threat.

Workers Power issued a blanket call on the unions to simply disaffiliate from Labour despite the absence of a credible alternative. The leadership directed the group to act as footsoldiers for the Socialist Party’s Campaign for a New Workers Party, a left reformist project that has had precious little resonance to date.

As in most every faction fight, comradely relations broke down and with them went the once healthy norms of the organisation’s internal democracy. The LFI leadership increasingly resorted to organisational measures to marginalise the influence of the tendency/faction. The British organisation on the eve of the expulsions was already effectively split into separate youth/adult branches – ones that represented different factions. This was done against our will and against the group’s constitution.

The majority refused representation on the Political Committee to faction supporters, reducing Workers Power’s executive body to a factional tool of the majority – disciplinary commissions were set up with ever wider remits to hunt faction members on trumped up charges of indiscipline.

The expulsions have only brought forward the inevitable. It had become clear to the minority that the LFI leadership had no intention of allowing the fight to go beyond this month’s planned congress, much less of attempting to reach a higher synthesis through collective working.

For us this is not a time for despair but for purposeful reflection and action. Our intention now is to launch a new organisation in the very near future – in Britain a new magazine Permanent Revolution will be on sale shortly – not least because we wish to defend and develop what was best in the tradition of Workers Power (Britain) and its international tendency. This includes a commitment to international regroupment of the revolutionary Marxist left through a process of dialogue, debate, splits and fusions.
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I don't think they are. Left-wingers, socialists, anarchists are generally those who see good, who see potential in people, IME. Bitter is Daily Mail-reading, complaining about the darkies and taxation to my mind. The OP needs to fucking cheer up, IMO
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I know what you mean, but my experience of the far left is certainly not upbeat, optimistic people. For sure there are some people, but I think the reason there aren't more people like it is partly outlined in DFs post.

It doesn't make me down beat personally because I just think the left is at a low ebb. But the zealot like nature of some people does do my head in sometimes.

However as DF said you have to look at the wider picture.
 
CRI said:
I'm relatively new here, but I've seen worse examples of bitterness and fighting in other discussion groups - especially ones that are supposed to be for 'friendship.'

Seems there are alot of people here with quite passionate views - and others who may not agree with them. Some people can't tell the difference between challenging a person's views and slagging off the person.

Like any group of people anywhere, you're gonna get different communications styles as well as people who've had alot of knocks and dings in life. Maybe they'll come across as bitter without meaning to. Some folks will have just had a shit day, type and hit "submit" before thinking what people might think.

Don't forget, when you've only got typed words to communicate with, it's going to be easy to misunderstand and be misunderstood. One person's "joke" might be read by another as an "insult." Things can be read out of context. You can't really get across non-verbal cues, no matter how elaborate the smilies you use.

So, it's pretty inevitable arguments will happen. It would be boring if everyone agreed on everything and nauseating if everyone were uber-polite all the time.
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I think that has a lot to do with it. Bulletin boards are a particularly bad medium with which to communicate complex ideas, and somehow seem to naturally invoke antagonism.
 
cockneyrebel said:
I know what you mean, but my experience of the far left is certainly not upbeat, optimistic people. For sure there are some people, but I think the reason there aren't more people like it is partly outlined in DFs post.

It doesn't make me down beat personally because I just think the left is at a low ebb. But the zealot like nature of some people does do my head in sometimes.

However as DF said you have to look at the wider picture.
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that is what I have always liked about SW, it has never taken the arguments and debates on the left too seriously. People have mistaken this for arrogance, whereas in fact it is just cool recognition the left are not the enemy. There is no point in endless bickering, history will prove all of us right or wrong IF WE ENGAGE IN IT. in fact having many diverse strands on the left is a good evolutionary technique, that's why SW has always argued the demise of the Labour left, Communist Party, militant etc was not a good thing.
 
ResistanceMP3 said:
that is what I have always liked about SW, it has never taken the arguments and debates on the left too seriously. People have mistaken this for arrogance, whereas in fact it is just cool recognition the left are not the enemy. There is no point in endless bickering, history will prove all of us right or wrong IF WE ENGAGE IN IT. in fact having many diverse strands on the left is a good evolutionary technique, that's why SW has always argued the demise of the Labour left, Communist Party, militant etc was not a good thing.
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Again, our experiences differ. I'm sure other leftists will be able to better explain their experiences at events like Marxism, where violence has been used. The SWP are hardly 'comradely' when it comes to interacting with other leftists.

Although I agree with you that Socialist Worker didn't focus that much on other leftist groups (which was a good thing in my opinion), there was a lot of disdain for groups like the AWL, CPGB etc. Not that I care about the AWL or CPGB mind you.
 
mk12 said:
Although I agree with you that Socialist Worker didn't focus that much on other leftist groups (which was a good thing in my opinion), there was a lot of disdain for groups like the AWL, CPGB etc. Not that I care about the AWL or CPGB mind you.
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which is ALL I said. we 'may' have held disdain but we didn't become obsessed. we didn't view them as the enemy, just practically far bigger fish to fry.
 
mk12 said:
Again, our experiences differ. I'm sure other leftists will be able to better explain their experiences at events like Marxism, where violence has been used. The SWP are hardly 'comradely' when it comes to interacting with other leftists.
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Violence *snort*
 
treelover said:
On the 26/27 June there is a massive Welfare to Work Convention at the International Convention Centre, Birmingham, sponsored by Serco. it costs 450 pounds per head, James Purnell, Chris Grayling (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) and David Freud are the keynote speakers. Yet, no part of the left, unions, etc, has organised a protest against what is basically a convention to dismantle a huge part of the welfare state, a process which will impact on some of the most vulnerable in the U.K and will almost certainly contribute to the rise of the far right as desperate people look to blame something or someone for their problems.

maybe one reason why some are bitter....
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First Ive heard of it, did you suggest a mobilisation?
 
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