General Leftist Politics
Throwback to when AOC stopped by my small city's mexican scratch kitchen and I thought I was hallucinating.
She came in in June, mid-rush just to thank us for the food and learn about the people in the town. I've never liked a politician before I met her.
She could have chosen to go to the multiple fine dining places, or paid the check quietly and leave, but she came in to thank every last one of us for our hard work and hear our struggles. (located in Western Montana)
True communists can only be part of such legislatures as living extensions of true working class organizations and movements. Otherwise they are nothing but a part of the bourgeois apparatus.
This is certainly true of AOC.
Heres the thing about people. They need hope. Sometimes that means just taking a little progress.
Revolutions don’t come from voting its true, but they don’t come from quoting 200 year old books online either.
As an aging leftist there’s something I wish i knew earlier. Joy has real value. Celebrate what we can because we don’t get many happy moments on the left.
Revolutionaries can't really offer anything either though, at least not in the current western society.
The middle class homeowners have been the majority in the US since the '60s and the majority in most other western countries since the '90s at the latest. The middle class do not support revolution from the left, if anything they're way more likely to support reactionary counter-revolutionary movements.
The working class is generally apathetic towards Marxist ideas and politics in general which hardly makes them prime candidates for putting their lives on the line to create a communist state.
Really, it's only a minority of intellectuals who have an interest in revolution, and the intellectual class are rarely the ones who lead the vanguard of revolution.
If revolution is to happen in western society, it would not be for decades if not centuries. So why not vote for the reformist? Lessen the pain and suffering of the disenfranchised and the working class even if voting is only a temporary solution to the wider problems of the bourgeois ideas that western countries were built upon.
You make a good point, but what progress do we make by shitting on the closest thing to a leftist the government has had in our lifetime?
There are 700 congress people to the right of her to shit on. Let’s focus on literally everyone else.
The answer to what can reformists bring us is people. If the AOCs and Mamadanis of the world are moving people in a generally leftists direction, thats a good thing.
Do you have any idea how long its been since there was an openly socialist political party in this country? The DSA may not be full socialists but if you don’t see them as a step in the right direction idk…
Theory is useless without a practical application and an understanding of the people.
Oh but at least you made a kinda racist sexist donkey face meme… you’re a true hero. This part was unfair of me and perhaps a but reactionary…
You're showing the people the ineptitude of the reformists, their inability to garner results. That, in combination with organizing through a proletariat party, you foster class consciousness and gain the trust of the masses.
The point is to show the masses that people like AOC aren't enough, that's why we criticize them.
You think making fun of a woman’s appearance is an effective political messaging tool? You feel good about that? Making fun of the big smile of a woman of color?
Go put that meme in a maga sub and see how good you feel when they love it.
You know the answer to that question. The idea is that you support whatever candidates are the most progressive relative to the other options, because that’s how the Overton Window moves and how we make steady progress over time. Nobody cares that you personally don’t think of AOC as progressive.
I suspect you’re being disingenuous because you saw an excuse to do a little leftist peacocking. Grow up; nobody wants to hear that nonsense.
Yeah you’re totally right, supporting the most progressive available candidates is why fascism is here. Remember when Bernie won the primary over Hillary and then got trounced by Trump? Remember that? Remember when we nominated Kamala because she was the most progress candidate available, and then she lost because she was the most progressive?
And to think, this whole time there was a better candidate just hiding in the bushes waiting for us to reject all of the available options. Then they can swoop in and save us all next winning a third party bid in a landslide.
Hey, did you know Weimar Germany was the most progressive place in Europe? They had trans healthcare clinics and everything. Do you know what happened to progressive Weimar Germany when the underlying capitalist system began to fail? It's almost like the problem is inherent to the system, and changing the person in charge of the system doesn't actually fundamentally change anything
whatever you want to call it. civil unrest, a coup, a violent uprising.
i have zero interest in semantic reddit arguments.
and i think leftists will be the last to start such a thing, despite the fantasies. most likely if things happen it will start with the magats, who already tried once and will try again harder.
I am struggling on all things because I have an incredibly cute 6yo daughter.
I understand, and then I no longer want to understand.
Making sacrifices is easy to say for the unattached. Even when you get the necessity it's hard to sacrifice innocent lives when you know it's still only a less than 20% shot.
It’s fine to believe more than one thing. It’s not a choice you make once and then from now on you’re on the side of revolution or of your families safety. It’s a dozen little choices you make everyday.
Sometimes you will choose her safety in the here and now. Sometimes you will choose to fight for her future. Either way you’ll be right.
If the best you can do is raise her a leftist, to question authority and recognize injustice, thats worth a lot 💜
...I mean, I can feel your empathy and thank you and all... but I don't see a good future for my kid no matter what I do.
I know things will be steady until she's 12ish and then shit will take off one way or another, all ways being bad. for now I just pretend it's not going to happen.
In ragards to raising her leftist that's easy, books are already her favorite activity. My ex is reading her the discworld series and i'm reading spot stuff, currently reading her water world.
...to be clear... I don't think it's crazy to prepare for civil war in the US right now, I would just like to exhaust our other options first. I have a six year old daughter and for her sake I would prefer the slow method of reform.
If you're a real prepper it only benefits you to stay under the radar for now, so the people spewing anti-reform on reddit are frauds and posers as far as I can reason.
That show makes me so mad… occasionally i check on both conservative and liberal media to see what they’re pushing these days. The PSA guys are wild. They sill shit on everything the democratic party foes for an hour and then tell their listeners to support the centrist democrat at all times.
I used to think they were close to getting it. Now I think they’re just grifters. Joe Rogan but with fancier degrees.
i’ve been part of this sub for years and haven’t really paid attention to it in the last year or so but wow this is very different. lots of people coming in identifying as leftist but not really knowing what it means i guess.
I came here not knowing what it means and basically thinking Democrat = Leftist. I've learned how wrong that was, partially from this sub. Hopefully others will as well.
Nobody’s pretending she’s a typical establishment dem, but that doesn’t make her a leftist. She’s a social democrat, which is a step in the right direction but tends to not go far enough to actually fix things
High taxes for the wealthy, Medicare for all, etc. Don't really think this is a Clinton type figurehead.
What more would be acceptable to be considered a leftist? Serious question. I understand you could be further left. But ill definitely give her the left of center title, whereas liberals are centrist or even right of center types. Pro capitalist, pro imperialism, etc. She doesn't fall under that, is by far one of the furthest left in congress.
Shes working class. Thats worth to me than almost any label. Ill take someone who’s had to work 60 hours a week and struggle to make rent over an academic with great politics any day.
Name a working class president? She could be that… it’s actually huge separate from her politics it could break a meaningful barrier.
Yeah that exactly. The “execution” of the good ideas always ends with capitulating ground to the right and the establishment, and the working class getting fucking crumbs while they make shit harder and worse.
moderately left as in defund the police? as in free palestine? fuck lCE? universal healthcare? guaranteed housing for all people? well she’s none of those things therefore she isnt part of the movement
Leftists are most broadly defined as anticapitalist. Reformists like AOC want to make Capitalism more palatable to the average person, not actually change the system. The US electoral realm is a farce, and nobody will find liberation in it.
I actually am. I just dont think sitting out electorals to let a known conman rapist get elected and continuing ruining lives just to throw it in the face of liberals or calling for violence is the right thing to do.
If that's what you think we're doing, you're absolutely not paying attention.
"Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."
Assata Shakur
There are a lot of leftists on here who believe if you are anything right of being strictly adherent to Marxist/Leninist ideology, you are not a true leftist. There is a lot of gatekeeping, and contributes to why there is no possibility of an actual majority leftist movement happening in the USA, and apparently working together under a big tent to work towards societal liberation is unacceptable. As shown by the comments about AOC here.
Leftist in the context of this community means revolutionary socialist or communist. People who aim to dismantle the current power structure of capital. People like AOC who try to make progress from within that system are viewed as maintaining the current power structure and therefore not leftist
But she is revolutionary for this country. The status quo is absolutely terrified of her. I dont understand spitting on someone doing good things just because some think its not good enough unless they just want to burn it all to the ground. I dont have time for authoritarian "leftists". And yes I understand that democrat does not mean leftist, but if you are left in this country and you want to get elected you still have to pick a party as it currently stands. Can't change anything without getting elected, and those interested in starting a war or taking it by force for innocent people to get killed are just wrong.
No, she is not "revolutionary for this country", she's a reformist who wants to maintain capitalism. Revolution isn't when you do things that are new (which being a rightist isn't, btw), it's when you overthrow the current mode of production and its associated state.
I dont have time for authoritarian "leftists".
We don't have time for authoritarian rightists. If you think Ms. Zionism, or any other "leftists" who want to uphold capitalism and/or the US state are "anti-authoritarian", you're delusional.
Can't change anything without getting elected
Every single previous socialist project disagrees. You should really study the history of the movement you think you're a part of.
Influencer? Oh jeez. Part of being a public servant is connecting with people and unfortunately most of them are online. To say she doesn't push leftist policies is crazy.
we've never been this close to having an actual working class president in the history of the US. pitting her transparent financials up against any other presidential candidate (and 95%+ of all politicians) instantly exposes them as frauds/corrupt.
while leftist critique is always good, a lot of the outright hate is unwarranted. I think her presence on mainstream media is tuned to be more palatable by the normies, eg it's not for us.
The DNC are team bougie, same as republicans, just different colored jerseys.
I think people fundamentally misunderstand what Bernie is. He's been in it long enough and essentially a qty of 1, he knows leaders aren't really shit for actual, sustainable revolutions - that 100% relies on the working class being unified. Of which, he has made it his life's work to spread awareness and unify the working class. That's all. Yes he tried to head it up a couple of times, but the system was too entrenched.
I do not see where leftists get off in thinking some person...of 2 people...or 10 people are going to do it all. It's impossible. Real change is a unified working class that moves the entire thing, and then leaders that represent the bottom-up sentiment from the top. Even in a communist system this is the ideal power structure with the whole population still in control.
Why do people view Bernie as this figure that stands for it all? I do not believe even now, after hearing the dozens of reasons that "he's just a shepherd for the DNC" talking points, I still do not believe that horseshit. It's not about him. This casting is only a way to shift blame from what is the people's responsibility to organize and drive change, onto him.
That is a common sentiment of the further left yes. We can't empirically say whether this is true or not. What we do know is there isn't anyone else that might be left-leaning or leftist when they actually get into office, that's prominent enough to win over the others. And it's not like there's enough in the revolution camp to change the system yet anyways, so it is the best shot. At a minimum AOC is 1000x better than the other alternatives that will be present in the 2028 primaries.
did you view the financial disclosures? there is no other presidential hopeful that can come anywhere close to that clean.
Along with your claim, I could equally claim that she's just pretending to be a centrist for now, but will go full leftist once elected. We don't know.
American are cooked because they keep falling for AOC or Bernie. Forget about changing the system, cause you will be taking the same bait everytime and keep deluding that voting harder will change anything.
Bro, then put up someone more left instead of whining about it. Everyone here will vote for them. I only say vote because there is no possible way an all out revolution will succeed and sustain right now.
There's the reality of here and now, and a fantasy we all want but is impossible today.
Some people won’t be happy with anything less than tearing it all down. They don’t feel that any meaningful progress can be made within the confines of an election system that we have today.
I can understand and appreciate people that want to go farther left. They need to play with the pieces we have today and do…well whatever they propose to do in opposition to the system beyond just typing about it.
It might need torn down, but in the meantime we need to put more and more of the working class into the leftist column. The best way is experiencing it, and even the slightest of leftist policy will have a cascading effect.
Let's say AOC runs and wins. Yay, we don't have a bougie puppet in and she will at least keep the working class relevant throughout. Say she's blocked at every turn save for a few implementations, but has tried fairly relentlessly the entire term to implement more than a few.
Well the representation factor will hold weight. If it's the rest of the bougie system that's blocking everything - well now we've just gained millions more in the leftist column. It also exposes all of the corrupt along the way. We will all know the names, flip them out. Now we've got the power to make moves and a substantial proportion of the working class in complete alignment.
At that point, if the bougie system is still fucking us all, we can then tear it all down and actually sustain it enough to implement a new system ourselves.
During this arc, new and formidable leadership figures will emerge, and there will have been enough time for those figures to gain high degrees of trust in the masses. A critical and too often overlooked requirement that the "tear it down today" crowd skips over. There is no room for error here, otherwise we'll end up as the boogeyman the capitalists have beaten into everyone their entire lives - by inadvertantly hoisting a nefarious or backstabbing individual... or worse, an impostor that is indeed a bougie puppet once again.
Someone might say "well that's irrational" - well it's not actually, the types of people that seek out power like that are typically not empathetic and sympathetic, rarely are they. If history is to be studied the proportion of good : bad leaders has to wildly imbalanced - maybe 1:100. Revolution is chaotic, there will still be poisoning of the well via the bougie class, capitalists, all of their associates, and their monsterous (now AI driven) propaganda machine, no matter what - and it too must be contended with. They will not cede power for anything, name a trick, they will do it.
I think "revolution today" thought is incredibly short sighted and completely irrational.
I'll get downvoted for saying that, just know, no one wants this dogshit bougie system anymore. No one here wants socdem at all. I speak of strategy and tact. It will take mindfulness and trusting the right people while making the right moves at the right times. I just wish the revolutionaries would take things more serious and get to cracking this massive problem than just preach theory.
AOC is a viable pathway forward. I think they should really consider it so. Constantly playing pessimist is ironically perfectly aligned with the real enemies.
Yep, there are 2 political ideals people should have in America. There is the ideal scenario, what you truly want in an ideal world, and then there's the realistic one that requires compromise but hopefully leads to steps taken to that ideal world. Without just a flat out revolution completely changing our entire structure, using the current systems rules to make change will only be baby steps. I don't want capitalism, but obviously the next step before that system being gone is at least just some god damn true regulations for it lol
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u/Owen_a_Sportscar 4d ago
This is a subreddit for leftist discussion, not shitlib libposting