No we don't. The CIA and FBI intentionally created this culture in leftist movements, why do we need to debate and reach consensus on everything?
We can just stop infighting, shut up about praxis and labels, and march together until we differ. It would leave us in a better place to go even further, however we might envision it
Healthcare, lower rents, higher pay, workers rights, tax the rich. Just get on the bus, you can get off whenever you like but we can't all hold up the bus driver
Then what is it measuring? Right and left are directions, they're labels that are extremely contextual
I genuinely don't know which of many axis you might be referring to. I think you're probably gesturing to something like equal/inequal distribution of power, but you could also mean progressive vs regressive, or even liberal vs fascist
Some guy came out of nowhere and invented a new currency. One based on ideas that couldn't work
The nobles on one side said "we have to maintain the status quo, despite that being impossible". The nobles on the other side said "we have to accept our financial losses and find a new way forward"
There were no other groups in the room. They were all nobility
And the whole thing went on until the starving peasants broke in and brought out the guillotines
It was not simple. It never is. What is simple is the sanitized version fed to the masses to placate them
I laughed at that way harder then I should've
I wish. The world would be a much better place if the left could agree until we differ
Neat way to reduce a complicated situation to something simple. No deeper lessons to be learned
Thinking takes effort. It's easy to spout platitudes
The French revolution wasn't that simple. Read up on Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, and how he pushed the assignant and destroyed the French economy
It's never that simple. Life, and how humanity organizes itself, is always far more complicated
That's an insane paradigm. That's putting so many things on one axis
You have to try to understand others from where they are. The right is generally bad, but they also believe in people... Which has merit. The left is generally good, except when their plans are bat shit insane
Personally, I believe anarcho-communism is the ideal situation. It's also bat shit insane. I don't know if I could live in such a society, I'm certain most people today couldn't
You have to see the nuance and see where people agree and differ. Every successful political movement is evangelical. I refuse to believe most people don't want to live in a better world, they're just generally really fucking stupid
But they have values... Some are good and some are bad. Some are inherent and some are learned.
Good things are good, bad things are bad. We have enough food to overfeed everyone... People shouldn't starve. You can believe in that fact, I think nearly everyone believes this, while also being a too dumb to understand how to solve that contradiction
There's no objectively best system. The world is a messy place. The best system is the one that works best at the moment
Withdrawal isn't what I'm worried about... You can't cut teens off from their peers and get a good result
Those who can will evade, those who can't will feel a crippling level of isolation. That doesn't do good things to a teenage mind
You've fallen into the trap. Political stances aren't on a spectrum, they're multi dimensional
Some leftists believe in anarchy, in a lack of hard boundaries and a more organic cultural resistance to bad actors. Some believe in rigid structure, in the rules creating equity and equality.
Tankies believe in an authoritarian, top down force that will impress ideology onto the masses.
All lefties believe in equity and/or equality. That's the common thread. Tankies are crazy high on the authoritarian vs anarchy spectrum, but they genuinely think that road will lead to an equitable society
Like teenagers, who run off social validation, suddenly feeling like they're excluded from their society
Kids are going to kill themselves.
And far more kids are going to develop complexes that they'll never recover from
Social isolation hits the brain like physical pain. We're hardwired to feel social isolation as trauma, logic can't save you from feeling like you've been cut off from your peers
Okay, well I disagree on the effectiveness of ML methods, they industrialized quickly but easily fell to corruption and ended up falling to capitalism
But do we really need to debate that? I'd love to build something better than capitalism, but a glorious revolution isn't on the table.
In the mean time, I totally agree.
I bet we'd agree with everything possible to do right now. I think imperialism is bad, but I'm worried about the future for my friends and family. I'm worried about my neighbors, about my country, about human rights violations against my countrymen
But I'm not going to live or die on stopping imperialism or on Palestine - we have to fix our county so we even have the ability to resist the forces of capital at home if we ever want to reign it in globally
I don't think we should sacrifice these issues either, but I don't think we have to... I just think we have to focus on that can be done now. We're not going to unwind the World Bank and the IMF to get the global south off the debt treadmill tomorrow
We could overturn citizens united and start trust busting tomorrow if we fix healthcare today. If we fix housing, and food availability. If we bring back social programs
The empire is collapsing. I think that's set in stone.
But Rome never truly fell, the people woke up the next day. The question is, do we fall into a dark age as we wait for the contradictions of capitalism to make the economy go poof, or do we wind it down gently
I think we can make material conditions for people better, which means that when the music stops progressives will be in power and have the trust of the people
And we can argue about how to build something better then. The next steps are the same
If you believe in ML or aspects of it, fine. I don't care if you're a full on tankie. You can be a militant vegan or radical environmentalist too.
But when progressives march, we all have to set down (not give ground on) our single issues to join them. Because they're the movement marching against capital right now under a banner that we can all fit under without compromising any of our goals or ideals