What ‘left’ means

Most people who think they are  ‘left’ do not know. 

This article proceeds from what I wrote  about NDP  two weeks back. 

It also relies on my article about political personalities from last year. 

So I will use my professor Raccoon  graphics  as feature image for this,  and write partly in professor Raccoon mode  again. This annoys some people. However, what I  am saying needs to be  said, and  widely listened to. 

Scanning the net, you would get the impression that  few  people are saying what I am saying here. I think a lot of people are,  though usually in different terms than I use. It is the most  subversive thing imaginable to the Atlantic oligarchy, so it is very hard to get it through the algorithms to any significant number of people. 

Even where it gets through, many people are not going to like this very much. Especially, people who presently think they are on the left. Especially,  activists of the Canadian  NDP  political party. I aim this especially at that group of people. 

This  section may be hard to follow. I am weaving together  several concepts which  are  new to many people. It gets complicated. 

NDP needs to disappear up its own ass. It will need some encouragement to do so. This will be necessary if we are going to  ever have a serious social movement in Canada. 

Every effective movement  for reform of a polity was launched by starting a new political party. This   is true for  both left  and right movements. It is true for all reasonably effective left progressive movements, such as in Venezuela or Brazil. 

In countries where needed social movements fail to get going, it is due to two problems.  One is the failure to make a full break from existing fake ‘left’ parties. The second is the misidentification of what are actual left issues.

Examples of this  are all over, but one of the worst is Canada’s NDP. This is where I left off  with the previous article. I am going to start here with  another aspect to this phenomenon.

A lot of ideological right wing movements have been able to get going simply because there is no effective  left movement or party to counter them. The  ordinary people of  a country  are being badly harmed  by  liberal policies and  so called ‘neoliberal’ economics. They look for  a political party which can apply left wing solutions and it is not there. 

By the way, neoliberal is  a stupid term.  Neoliberal  economics  is identical with old liberal economics. The basic ideas  are the same. 

People are still confused because liberals of the  post war years, the ‘golden thirty’, found it expedient to allow some social programs  and social reforms. Liberalism  has  long returned to normal liberalism. There is not much ‘Neo’ about it. 

The  trend in ‘Liberal Democracies’ is for the oligarchy to create phoney left parties  which work to move  everything to the right.  Then they create new right wing  fake ‘populist’ groups.  What  fake right  populism is about is taking issues which should belong to a left populism, distorting them, and turning them into right  wing issues. 

This distortion of left populist issues is an important concept. 

It is also important to understand what the word ‘populist’ properly means. It is the politics of normal,  non ideological people. It is  opposed to ideology and to the interests of oligarchy.  

There is real populism. Then there is fake populism, designed to bait and  switch  people. There can   be  real conservative populism. I have even seen legitimate liberal populism. 

The real dividing line of concern here is between fake  versus real populism. Fake populism is always ideological.  Real, non ideological movements from  left, center, and right can work together. However, only the left can create progress. 

So, again; normal, ordinary people are  being driven to desperation by rampant economic liberalism. The real solutions for their problems  are  with  left populism, which is  driven deep underground.

In Canada, no political party or movement is really offering  normal folks any answer. Political Liberals    tend to think   things  are going fine. They cannot understand  what is bothering people. 

The ideological left is always  about ideological purity before anything. Everyone has to show they are fully committed to the  movement’s ideals. These ideas are  usually other worldly,  offer no real world solutions, are of no interest to  normal people,  and are often  very insulting and obnoxious to them. 

Orthodox Marxists  have degraded  into a subset of the ‘Purity above all’ mentality. Anything not happening according to their  theory  cannot be legitimate. 

All these bad tendencies  are aligned, one way or other, with financial capitalism. This is opposed by industrial capitalists, or productivist capitalists, who are always offended by financialists, They want political power in order to change things. 

To get power, they have to get  part of the  public to vote for them. Most people   would be really disturbed  by their actual views and intentions, so they have to keep those  hidden  until they can get power. They have to bamboozle the public. 

In order to do this, what they have learned to do with some success, is to coopt left issues. They pretend to offer the public solutions which they are not getting  from the  left and centre of the political spectrum.  

This is, of course, a bait and switch. The public  thinks it is being offered solutions for their problems. They may get partial solutions, but they  discover too late than they  are also getting a fascistic program which creates even worse problems for them. 

Now to examine  several important political issues, to demonstrate how this is done. Also, to demonstrate a standard, a test for real left issues.

Conservativism  leaves people stuck in a  safe but stagnating past. Liberalism leaves people endlessly arguing about the present. Leftism enhances people’s life potential and  points to the future. 

This latter is a very important concept. It is the test for determining the validity of any issues, people, or institutions   claiming to be  on the left. 

Now, to some left economic issues. The issue which seems to over ride  anything else  these days is the fear created by the  ‘climate change’ trope. First let us be clear, this is the  phoniest of phoney issues. 

Yet people are demoralized by the fear that a  warming planet  will  lead to economic collapse and an apocalypse. Thus we  must stop using fossil fuels. The  fact that  the consequences of that  would be as grim as anything predicted for  ‘climate change’ is, so far, impossible to get through the propaganda  storm  set up by financial capitalism. 

The aim of the climate hysteria is to put through measures  which would  lead to the deindustrialization and depopulation of the world. This has been a long  term goal of  factions within the globalist oligarchy, the ‘Huxleyans’, for   a couple of centuries. Thus, opposing it is the ultimate ‘left’ issue. 

However, so far   mostly right  wing  fake populist groups are  opposing the climate trope.  These are, of course,  set up by the productivist capitalists, the opposite pole of irrationality to the depopulators. These people  want  infinite expansion  in a  finite world,  just for the sake of expansion, and without regard to the waste and depletion of resources. 

Some left groups are starting to question ‘climate’. That is a good sign. The measures to suppress  fossil fuel use are impairing the  quality of life of normal people in many ways. 

The ‘climate’ issue has given cover for the creation of  several regressive taxes. That is, taxes  which  weigh  more heavily on those  with lower incomes. 

Fuel taxes increase the cost of most means of getting around. They increase the cost of moving consumer goods around, thus their final price.  This increases living costs,   which are  a much bigger part of the living costs of low income people, compared to those with higher incomes. 

Renewable energy sources cannot replace fossil fuels in the near future. Turning to them will inevitably  reduce economic  activity. This will make  local industries uncompetitive with  those countries  which use the full  range of energy sources. 

This will reduce the  quantity and  quality of employment for  ordinary  people.  Less  revenue will be  available to fund  social services.  The standard of living will fall, probably quite drastically. 

There is a strong correlation between ample energy from multiple sources,    reducing the costs of living   for  ordinary people, and their increasing quality of life. There is no correlation between  use of fossil fuels and  the gross temperature  changes  in the  atmosphere, and warming would not be a problem if it  were happening. However, attempts to communicate this  are met with a highly organized and vicious suppression. 

There is very little which is coming out to challenge this nonsense. Yet it is a  very clear left issue, effecting  quality of  life for normal people. This would be the first  objective of a real left party in Canada. 

The financial capitalists have  a  great deal invested in maintaining this  falsehood. It is critical to their long range plans. If a real left movement can defeat them on this, they are likely finished. 

There is another  right  wing issue, which should be a left issue, which is driven by a lot of  intimidation. That is,  migration into Canada. Generally, the fake left  drives it and the  fake right wing populists pretend to oppose it. 

Some of the  pro migration fake left are so   absurd as to demand the abolition of national borders.  Anyone should be  able to move anywhere they want. The obvious consequence would be the collapse of national governments, and the  services they provide. 

Life would become nasty, brutish, and short, for the migrants as well as the  natives of these  countries. This would not bother the elites of all these countries. Their aim is always to break down  national government as  much as possible. 

These governments  are critical to the quality of life of ordinary people. Thus, mass migration as a weapon of class war  is something for the   real left to vigorously oppose. 

Another   aim of immigration is to drive down wages and drive up rents. This is a special problem for Canada, which was built on immigration. At one time immigration served a purpose. Now, it is a cheap solution of elites, to solve economic problems caused by falling productivity. 

In recent years  immigration has been  pushed so hard in Canada as to create a “population bomb” problem. This is usually a problem in underdeveloped countries with high birth rates. The population expands faster than the economy, resulting in declining per capita incomes. 

The fake left uses the “racist” trope to attack anyone criticizing mass immigration. Then the business liberals insist that immigration  leads to economic growth. They deny that it leads to lower  wages, lower overall productivity, and  problems with   rental availability. 

This is an obvious issue for a real left party. Most normal people  know that excessive  immigration is harming the country. Even most  recent immigrants know this   and  will support  limits. 

Yet the issue is tricky for   the fake populist right. The productivist industrial capitalists behind  it really do want  more and cheaper labor.  They are uninterested in actually raising productivity; that would require  investment and skills. 

The usual way   by which right wing populists finesse this is to attack immigrants, rather than than the immigration system or immigration policies. They create prejudice against immigrants, which helps to control them. Their supporters generally do not notice they are not really in favour of  reducing the numbers of immigrants. 

Nonetheless, immigration is a  hot button issue. Populist parties, real or fake,  must seem to be on the right side of it. This is yet another reason why so much NDP support is going to the conservatives. 

Besides these  economic issues, or ‘bread and butter’ issues, are  the cultural issues. This may mean the  effort of  global financialists to  demoralize and break down society. It may also mean the campaigns of ideological conservative groups to ‘reestablish’   the ‘traditional values’  which never  really  existed. 

The  job of a real left is to determine  what kind of ‘values’ actually lead to a healthy  society. This  means using  sociology in a right way. However, creating  a healthier social environment should come naturally to people once malign influences are    removed. 

The biggest  example of social demoralization is the  campaign to eliminate gender. Trans women are women,  gender is a social construct, and so on. There is nothing really new about this kind of thing;  the ancient Manicheans, the medieval  Albigensians, the early modern Shakers all tried to eliminate gender. 

Often, what they  are trying to eliminate is reproduction. Worse, they  are usually trying to control people by setting an impossible  and  weird  standard of perfection. To be  accepted among the perfect ones, you have to deny and suppress your own biology. 

A proper left approach to these issues is not to go back to punishing people for  being homosexual. That may be the right populist approach. It is not to try to  create forty  different  gender identities. 

All forms of identity politics  are to be rejected. People cannot really change the gender they were  born with. Yet  everything reasonable should be done to enable people to feel comfortable with themselves. Most people will support that.

A very big question is what form a left/socialist movement  to transform society should take. It is clear that this will not happen without violence. There may be little violence if  the local establishment realizes it will lose if it tries to violently suppress the transformation. 

Pacifism  has nothing to do with  socialism. As one wise old man some time  ago put it,  to be pacifist is to be objectively  pro Fascist. This is a matter of the most elementary common sense, said he. 

A real left is synonymous with socialism. Someone who claims to be ‘left’ and support progress  but not socialism is a liberal, or an outright faker. Most of the political conflict in the world   is  about the need to transform away from capitalism to socialism. 

However,  the left should stop using terms like Communist or Marxist.

Communism is really the idea  that we can get to  left anarchism  by  a slow route. That is, no governments,  money, or private property. No one serious  believes in that  anymore. 

Marx is the start point for all useful thinking  about economics and society. Everyone who is a serious leftist is a Marxist. However, that is why the term has become generally meaningless. 

Critical theory about social economics  has evolved  far beyond Marx and in many different directions. Some of them are  very useful. Others  are invalid. 

After Marx the most valuable left thinker has been Gramsci. He pointed out that the Bolshevik revolution largely failed. Any kind of revolutionary movement or party  needs to take a more gradual approach. Yet it still must be willing and able to defend itself  against  violence from the oligarchy. 

Thus, the most  pathetic ‘leftists’ are the ones who want to argue Bolshevik party politics forever. They are the same people who deny that ‘communist’ China is  a socialist country and a good model of how to run one. They are ideological. 

The last thing  which should be said  about defining  leftism is the efforts by many right  wing  disinformation groups to turn the definition of left and socialist upside down. Various globalist aligned groups, like the Fabians, claim to be socialists.  They are extreme right wing. 

Yet  this allows  industrialist/productivist groups  to define globalist financialist groups  as  ‘socialist’. The troubles brought on ordinary people  by financial capitalism are  actually the result of socialism. We are living under socialism. 

Some of these people will claim that  the Nazis were a socialist party. Of course, this is all about using words to mean their opposite. 

‘Socialism’ is about organizing a political economy to meet  the needs of the whole society, not  an oligarchy. ‘Left’ means whatever favours improving the quality and possibilities in life for  the ordinary  people of  a society. 

At present, Canada is desperately in needs of  a new political party committed to those principles. It must recognize the kind of resistance which will be directed at  it by the oligarchy. Thus, it must be organized and motivated to take power   by whatever means are necessary and to put these principles  into effect.