The left wing: Why are so many feminists still bothering with them?

The women I know who are holding on are those that have put a great deal of work and talent into the parties involved. It's their party - why should they give it up to misogynists? The TRA lobby has already stolen so much from us.

It's like any of the organisations that have been captured by this nonsense. I respect any woman who wants to leave, but I also respect any woman who wants to stay and fight to reclaim what's been stolen from her.

Agreed blackwave

The problem is that communism is fundamentally an ideology

Well, Marxism is an ideology. Communism is used (somewhat inconsistently) in academia to describe a range of moneyless societies but in everyday parlance it's used to mean the political system of communist states (hence my distinguishing it from Marxism before slagging it off).

As for why modern communist nations have been authoritarian, Marx would probably say it's because they were not at the historical stage where a communist society could occur

I think Marx knew communism was a bit pie in the sky for the remotely foreseeable future but I do think he suffers from being very woolly in his predictions and descriptions of socialist societies. This facilitates the 'no true Scotsman' approach of those who want to claim Marx's ideas are completely correct despite the mountain of evidence about their limitations.

I think even the much more benign examples of non-marxist communism you give often have an element of coercion under the surface.

Fundamentally the reason capitalism has been so successful is that it is very very efficient compared to other models at the macroeconomic level.

Of course, left unchecked, it rewards undesirable behaviour and eventually mutates into oligarchy.

Specific modern communist governments are almost all on a few models, Stalinist, or Maoist, or Leninist.

There are communist models of governance that operate quite differently, but not at the level of the modern nation state. Many religious communities are examples, some traditional societies have communist principles. Communitarianism is a type of communism in many cases. You could look at something like Mondragon for a business example.

As for why modern communist nations have been authoritarian, Marx would probably say it's because they were not at the historical stage where a communist society could occur - which is outlined by Marx as having some very specific characteristics. Therefore it was really just certain individuals forcing people into a kind of false appearance of communism.

However, what I do find odd is that many people on the progressive/liberal side will behave as if the evils of communist regimes are somehow totally separate from the ideology, whereas the evils of right regimes are completely inherent. I'm reminded for example of the way someone like Richard Dawkins sees the persecution of a group with a specific ideology under a historically religious government as a natural result of religiosity, whereas the persecution of people under the Soviets was just a sort of chance thing unrelated to their ideology.

I think it is completely delusional and could only be said if one were determined to believe that the left is always good and morally left no matter what the evidence to the contrary is.

There are people who think that way, but I think RedToothBrush's point is solid, and you can see it in this thread where people keep talking about liberalism and leftism as if they go together.

For various reasons liberalism, and particularly social liberalism, has become associated with leftism in recent decades, but it's not an obvious pairing. Liberalism tends to be individualistic, and leftism isn't. Social liberals have gained a lot of dominance in leftist politics though, to the point that man people no longer realise that they are not identical.

You can also see it in other reversals, most notably the embrase of glabal capitalism and free markets as simply a fact, what had to be accepted, in most supposedly leftist parties. In the UK, Blair carried on with Thatcherism quite explicitly, just as in the US Bill Clinton and Obama carried on Reaganism. Traditional concerns of the left, like protecting industry, or movement of capital and labor, wariness of international trade deals that put power into the hand of corporations over nations - have been utterly and completely abandoned by leftist parties. And people who continue to take the traditional leftist approach are considered crazy, at best.

Those are't minor things, they are completely contrary to any sort of traditional leftist economic perspective. They aren't traditionally conservative either, they are liberal.

It's difficult to see how we could call the people running parties like Labour left. Arguably the Lib-Dems are in fact supposed to be liberals so it would make sense their economics would be liberal.

And I still don‘t know what is so horrific about Cuba
Well, they decided they didn't want to have any indigenous people any longer, so removed that category from the census, thus legally obliterating them (Source: one of the legally obliterated).

I once knew an ex-Czeckoslovak... Nah, I shan't bore on.

I have read far too much about Soviet Russia, Mao and North Korea to have any fondness for communism. The Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward, and all the shit that goes on in N Korea now... no thanks.

And to get back to the original question of the thread, I'm not getting a reply from the LibDems so I'll be cancelling my sub at the weekend.

This is a DIRECT result of right wing federal government policy on housing, which has run down social housing, ignored an out of control rental market, promoted policies to benefit those who own multiple homes and refused to get to grips with rapidly growing homelessness in women over 45.

If social housing or rent controlled housing were available to me ( left wing economic policy) I might have a hope of freedom.

But sure, in the meantime I'll console myself with the fact that the right pays lip service to freedom of speech.

If you right wingers don't care about women like me and the material reality of our lives under right wing governance, the don't be surprised we all still voting/working for parties that consider housing a right and not a luxury.

BlackWave you vote wherever you chose, women's rights are cross party, cross class. Most of us just hoping that Labour et al will eventually get some sense knocked into their stupid heads so that we can return to our natural home.

I won't give up my freedom of speech. It is the fundamental basis of all other freedoms. I want free healthcare, education and a universal basic income. But those will never happen unless we have freedom of speech.

I'm not wealthy and I'm not interested in mocking others for their opinions. But I don't think freedom is a luxury. I believe it's a basic human right.

We just had a right wing budget handed down that utterly ignored the needs of women, particularly unemployed or insecurely employed women, single women + women over 35.

It's not in my (older, poorer, female) interests to vote or work for the right. I've got a better chance under a centre-left government.

And - it pains me to say - that's even as the left indulges in gaslighting of me over the definition of women.

When you are not m/c, when homelessness as an older woman is a real fear, you don't have the luxury of supporting the right on freedom of speech and self-ID pushback. You can't manage another 4 years in poverty. You need to vote for the party of bigger government/redistribution.

Wealthy women who want to mock me for continuing to cleave left and not 'bravely' embrace the right had better have rw party policies that can show me how they are going to make my poor, older and female life better in a material sense.

But also before the wall fell in 89 leftists in Britain were enthralled by the Soviet union. They denied atrocities and decried any criticism as anti communist propaganda.

To be fair to them, essentially all the information they received about life in the Soviet Union was agitprop. The few defectors who spoke of the horrors were, by their very nature, traitors to communism.

Middle class liberals in the 90s were infatuated with Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. Edinburgh Fringe for example used to have "best of the Fringe" benefit concerts. I was there- I donated.

I suppose Latin American politics at the time were bloody awful and the alternative was even worse. But Nicaragua under Ortega is not a place I'd want to live.

Dido i think that's a great insight. But also before the wall fell in 89 leftists in Britain were enthralled by the Soviet union. They denied atrocities and decried any criticism as anti communist propaganda. They used the existence of the USSR as a kind of promise to the leftists here, an ideal of what we could have. When the wall fell that was the end of the socialist left in the UK. Obviously there were other big factors in play but I think to be a leftist in Britain for most of the 20th century meant having to position yourself in relation to communism. There wasn't really a leftist movement that didn't support communism in some form.

As for Freedom of expression: that doesn‘t Look too good in Capitalism either. Not only are Media concentrated in the hand of a few rich capitalists, which obvioulsy limits published opinion severely

This is an interesting take on freedom of expression that I haven't encountered before. If it is measured by the ability to be heard, doesn't that suggest that others would then be forced into spreading the word of others, potentially against their will?

On the subject of communism and slavery, might I recommend looking into how Soviet currency worked (not exchangeable for foreign currencies) and their system of internal passports? I'm reminded of the lyrics to 16 Tons.

I'm a kinder, more thoughtful, more empathetic person now, because I bitterly remember all the times I wasn't.

That's a great way of thinking about it. I often remind myself how wrong I have been about so many things and maybe the sense of shame I feel over those mistakes could also be understood as the conscience that must be heeded. Anyway I am glad to no longer dwell in mindless certainty!

My garbled post about one of the reasons why Communism might seem attractive should have read

I suppose for many people in the aftermath of WWII the huge debt owed by Europe to the Red Army was very difficult to ignore.

To expand on that I think for many years after WWII criticising Russian Communism may have felt ungrateful. The atrocities perpetrated by the Red Army in Berlin were downplayed too. In reality the gratitude should really have been towards the individual soldiers but without ignoring the atrocities.

Now having lived all over the world and read some history I feel quite a lot of shame over my younger self.

I was never far into it, but I've made enough mistakes in my youth to know that feeling well.

I read something once along the lines of wisdom just being an accumulation of guilt and regret. I quite like that idea- I think I'm a kinder, more thoughtful, more empathetic person now, because I bitterly remember all the times I wasn't.

I was about 17 too. But it took me a couple of years to extricate myself as essentially I'd joined a cult. It is hard to deprogramme but I eventually realised how wrong I had been. I'm sorry now for all the people i tried to brow beat in conversations like this, essentially making all the same arguments seen on this thread. I was so wrong but I had no clue.

Now having lived all over the world and read some history I feel quite a lot of shame over my younger self.

I was an idealist and there was quite some glamour to it. But honestly I was indoctrinated and it took a long time to realise that the gulag was real and not just imperialist lies designed to undermine the great communist project.

Yeah, I was a communist for about 6 months when I was 17. I don't think I realised quite how fucking offensive that was until a few years back when I randomly started musing on quite how many people had died in all the different communist genocides.

I need a hobby.

Yes - we were talking about millions dead through starvation under communist regimes. Funny how the goalposts keep moving in this conversation.

The Idea that communism made those people poor is a bit simplicistic.

Free markets have (on average) massively outperformed centralised economies in the last 100 years.

That said, my main objection to communism (in equating it to Naziism) that it made a lot of people dead, if it just made people poor I wouldn't be too bothered.

Dido I was an idealist and there was quite some glamour to it. But honestly I was indoctrinated and it took a long time to realise that the gulag was real and not just imperialist lies designed to undermine the great communist project.

As Peter Hitchens says of his own foray into communism, I was extremely wrong. It's why I have some empathy with people who are taken in by the TRAs today. I probably would have been taken in too. It's easy to indoctrinate people by manipulating their idealism. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to free my mind and undo the indoctrination through education.

You are mistaken. The opposite of communism is in fact capitalism. It is the mode in which property is treated. Insofar, many indigenous tribes are in fact communist.

Capitalism is about the capacity for unrestricted private ownership of trade and large economic enterprises. If communism is just 'not that' then every system of government is communist except Periclean Athens and the western system from maybe 1750ish. Actually, I suppose some communist countries would be capitalist if this were the only measure. No field of study defines communism so narrowly.

There are loads of systems which are not capitalism- feudalism, oligarchy, tribalism, anarchy.

I think it's pretty clear that everyone else is discussing the political movement of communism, not just the theoretical idea of a moneyless economy.

In capitalism, of course, where a human body is just viewed as capital to be used and invested, this desperate measure is rebranded as 'choice'.

There are lots of models of capitalism. Nordic and German model capitalism are the antithesis of what you describe. I don't think any country, even the US, aspires to that level of turbo-capitalism.

You have to look at societies in the way they really are, rather than as a philosophy exercise. The western capitalist/democratic model (which includes social democracy) has produced huge advances for humanity. It has many failings, but it's best examples are the pinnacle of human society thus far and it's worst abuses have usually been opposed from within.

Communism at its very best has been highly oppressive and it's worst abuses rank amongst the most awful things humanity has ever done.

I also have friends who lived in East Germany and under other communist regimes. They tell a rather different story.

No I don't think you can blame the 20 million plus deaths in Russia alone on the former Czar, any more than you can blame Stalin's death camps on the allies or on Japan. You're not really arguing in the realm of reality and it's honestly a bit offensive, like blaming the Holocaust on the economic depression that preceded the Nazis.