Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Yeah, exactly. Which is why it's such a good example to show how the new left has succeeded where others has failed?

idk I just don't think persuading Krugman of the value of our ideas is a super useful measurement of impact

Fair enough. I do.

this is good

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/23/emmanuel-macron-presidency-gilets-jaunes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

AFA International President Sara Nelson accepted the 2019 AFL-CIO MLK Drum Major for Justice Award, with a call to conference activists from across the Labor Movement to talk with their union leadership about conducting a General Strike to end the Government Shutdown.

look i'm corny as fuck but i teared up at this:

Now listen to me… We can end this Shutdown together.

Federal sector unions have their hands full caring for the 800,000 federal workers who are at the tip of the spear. Some would say the answer is for them to walk off the job. I say, “what are you willing to do? Their destiny IS tied up with our destiny – and they don’t even have time to ask us for help. Don’t wait for an invitation. Get engaged, join or plan a rally, get on a picket line, organize sit-ins at lawmakers’ offices.

Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for?

Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike.

We can do this. Together. Si se puede. Every gender, race, culture, and creed. The American Labor Movement. We have the power.

https://www.afacwa.org/fierce_urgency_of_now

thank you. i emailed my AFT rep about it. who to email at AFL-CIO?

hell yeah

also i would like to lol @ the bureacratically oriented invitation to "conference activists from across the Labor Movement to talk with their union leadership about conducting a General Strike"

The (literal) money quote from Bill De Blasio in this interview; "If you're not willing to say we need to tax the wealthy more, you're not a part of the Democratic Party anymore." https://t.co/kFSg0rpljE

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 12, 2019

haven't listened to this yet but will later.

venerable marxist prof emeritus Robert Brenner talks about the US Economy on Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman

https://www.blubrry.com/jacobin/41771287/robert-brenner-on-the-state-of-the-economy/

nice

Not sure where to slot this exactly, but Tim Faust has a new M4A primer

https://splinternews.com/the-only-guide-to-medicare-for-all-that-you-will-ever-n-1832594853

that link is clarifying a ton of stuff for me, simon, thank you.

Siri, show me the Overton Window moving: https://t.co/KD0dWlIvKh

— Michael T Sweeney (@mtsw) February 16, 2019

is there a good explainer of the ADOS movement/hashtag anywhere? google is failing me

America Dunks On Sunken?

american descendants of slaves. reparations. can't find much about it from a cursory search

https://socialistworker.org/2019/03/22/nothing-can-be-changed-until-it-is-faced

Oh no anything but that

Just received approval from the House for the formation of the Anti-Socialism Caucus. This caucus will defend individual liberty & free markets and highlight the dark history of socialism.

— Rep. Chris Stewart (@RepChrisStewart) April 3, 2019

nice corrective to the NYMag piece on Brooklyn socialists, interviewing DSA folks in Iowa

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/democratic-socialism-surging-iowa-ahead-2020/586441/

Also, a bunch of socialists won election to city council in Chicago:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/democratic-socialists-america-city-council-dsa-rodriguez-sanchez/

The 2018 GSS was just released and there's some big news. Those of "no religion" (23.1%) are statistically the same size as evangelicals (22.8%). There was also a small resurgence of mainline Protestants, while Catholics are down 3% in the last four years. pic.twitter.com/uiyDSe7M6f

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) March 20, 2019

glad to see the surge in "no religion"

Other than evangelicals, who track very closely to anti-abortion politics, I'm not sure whether any of the other religious categories called out in that survey correlate very closely to right or left wing politics.

sure. and the surge in "no religion" predates the more recent left wing drift we're talking about on this thread as i understand it.

but the size/progress of this trend was news to me, and pretty much guarantees a left/center drift assuming your defn of left/center includes social attitudes (perhaps a little quaint these days).

is this praxis

https://external-preview.redd.it/CtqO236_Nua4TOf7H5-e67xdJAXV4r4eamG8tYX1k1Y.png?width=432&auto=webp&s=4a8f29bfe3fdd0d168540bfe9796f84e07640bc5

There Is A Spectre Haunting My Ass

Lack of shirtless, ripped Marx is truly disappointing.

There Is A Spectre Haunting My Ass

― Simon H., Thursday, April 11, 2019 3:43 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lmao

seize the means of production and do 100 reps with it

repeat until ripped

Conquested In The Butt By My Billionaire Anthropomorphic Loaf Of Bread

I wish people would understand how counterproductive it is to deny or downplay this stuff

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-russian-effort-to-target-sanders-supporters--and-help-elect-trump/2019/04/11/741d7308-5576-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html

"Russian employees at the Internet Research Agency were given a document explaining how to influence the U.S. election. The workers were told to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them),” according to Mueller’s indictment of the Russians."

On the denial/downplaying side (I'm paywalled for WaPo atm so can't assess one vs the other)

https://www.carlbeijer.com/2019/04/the-flimsy-case-for-russias-role-in.html

I agree that the efficacy is impossible to fully gauge. After Warren, I think Bernie's the best 2020 candidate out there, and I think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens if it starts to look like he's going to win the nomination. I suspect there will be an apparent collapse of his support among the far left--all of a sudden people will be taking Gravel's "joke" candidacy very seriously, and saying that Bernie's a capitalist sell-out for reasons X, Y, and Z, and so they would never be willing to vote for him.

And I think it's maladaptive to not take seriously the idea that shifts like that might not be organic.

I don't foresee that happening at all, even if Gravel makes it to the debate stage and manages to not sound like a 90-year-old quack. (Two big Ifs.) He hasn't even managed the 65k donation threshold yet AFAIK. The biggest threat to Sanders is Warren, who's been much more consistent in offering substantive legislation, but she hasn't been picking up support yet.

The gravel thing is just an example of an astroturfed message that the Left is more vulnerable to if they deny the possibility of being subjected to propaganda. It could just as easily be a heavy push on the "change never happens at the ballot box" message or any number of other things.

I could imagine Bernie's support eroding if he seems poised to capture the nomination and honestly if I were a Bernie supporter (I'm not - he's near the bottom of my list of preferred candidates) I'd be concerned about him getting the nomination. He's a great protest candidate but seems like a potential disaster for the left as an actual nominee or President (whereas Warren who is at the top of my list I think could actually make good on the left-wing agenda).

Ben Burgis went on Dave Smith’s show yesterday, and it was a rare case when you have an actual Marxist Professor debating an actual AnCap on Taxation as Theft. It goes more congenial than one would expect.

https://youtu.be/nqbglf3KRlo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqbglf3KRlo

Why the attack on Highlander matters:

https://www.thenation.com/article/highlander-attack-arson-racism/

Finally having an organizing meeting for a local chapter of the Tech Workers Collective this weekend, let’s see how it goes

That’s great, Kingfish!

I could imagine Bernie's support eroding if he seems poised to capture the nomination and honestly if I were a Bernie supporter (I'm not - he's near the bottom of my list of preferred candidates) I'd be concerned about him getting the nomination. He's a great protest candidate but seems like a potential disaster for the left as an actual nominee or President (whereas Warren who is at the top of my list I think could actually make good on the left-wing agenda).

― Mordy,

Can you go into a bit more detail on this? I am a Bernie supporter, so what interests me most is good/persuasive takes that he shouldn't be. There's a lot packed into this post, so i think i have three questions

1) Why would his support erode if he got the nomination?
2) Why would he be a disaster as nominee?
3) Why would he be a disaster as president?

my thought when i wrote that post is that a lot of what ppl like about bernie don't seem to be attributes that suggest success in governing. they like that he's antagonistic and critical of the dem party but if he wins the nom he's going to need the wide support of that party to win the election. they like that he wants a political revolution but his supposed plan for governing (generate a mass mobilization of protestors that force ppl like senate republicans to pass legislation) seems very unlikely to me. once he's in office he'll have trouble enough shepherding his own party where some of the party will be openly hostile (cf corbyn labour), and it'll be even harder to get republicans in line which will be necessary even if he did have a full support of the dem party. there are options for getting around that as well (like ending the filibuster) but he seems totally unwilling to consider them. so if he did win it would be with a divided dem party, a recalcitrant republican party. much of his agenda relies on radical new legislation but if it plays out like this he'll be limited to executive orders. one could easily imagine a scenario where he's a complete disappointment and ineffective president which ultimately sets back the leftist agenda. (by contrast Warren i think has more of these transactional skills, she at least seems willing to get rid of the filibuster, she seems to have a good handle on what kind of policy is necessary and what will be effective.) i have no faith that bernie has either the disposition or intelligence for POTUS - but i think he's great for organizing people and exciting people so it's not like he's a bad person just imo unsuited for this particular job. so i could imagine if it seems like he's going to win ppl starting to notice these areas of concern. as long as he's primarily about registering a protest ppl may (huge caveat here that i could be super wrong and ppl will just get really fired up at this point but at the time i wrote that post -- and iirc without scrolling back up i was responding to someone or somepeople making a similar claim?) be willing to overlook what seem like terrible flaws but once he's going to be the nominee and/or actual president the same skills don't apply and the risk of the venture might become more apparent.

i don't like trump is like bernie comparisons bc trump is a liar, criminal and bigot and bernie is not but they both have styles of "leadership" where i think it'll be a big struggle to "get stuff done." the press will be extremely critical, i don't get the sense bernie knows how to hire good employees, that it's hard for him to listen to others, hard to run a large organization, he'll be fighting his own party, he'll be fighting the opposition, and his entire plan (a critical mass of protestors) is a fantasy. i think one of the reliefs of the trump era is how incompetent he has turned out to be about exercising his will - he's been incapable of marshaling the tools and power of the presidency to enact the kind of changes he wants and that's been a blessing. but bernie might struggle in similar ways and if you're a bernie supporter that might not be quite the same sort of blessing to see him flounder and fight a dozen different enemies while his legislative wishlist languishes.

i think there's a lot too that analysis, and it captures some aspects of why i'm leaning more warren than bernie (tho i think i'm more in line with the latter's structural critique, sorta). but you do lean really heavily on this notion that his "entire plan" is to count on popular mass movement demand. if that's true, it's true of any politician advocating for something - it's never enough to get in office with something in your "platform," there have to be organized people beyond and outside your campaign who are beating the drum for it and getting neighbors to call their congresspeople, etc. saw a good article the other day about how warren's college debt plan will require a continuous massive push from the public even if she's elected.

so that's all pretty normal. but have other candidates spelled out a more specific set of legislative tactics ("I pledge to you that first I will meet with Senator Bugs Meany and agree to form an executive task force to study his proposed farms bill in exchange for....")? or is this more an impressionistic take on their personality and style?

*to

yes just impressions. any dem will rely on some level of push from the public but that alone won't be sufficient (and the kinds of numbers that would be required for it to be sufficient -- i just don't see millions & millions of Americans marching especially *after* the Dems win and a lot of that expectation is satiated - but there will likely be loads of right-wingers protesting and fired up over the loss). they'll need to be able to negotiate with Senator Bugs Meany, and maybe having a legitimate threat of ending the filibuster will help too. it will def help within the party to not have alienated key wings (like the moderates + neoliberals) that are losing influence but aren't going to disappear. i know they fear and hate warren too but she has a level of comity and her policy proposals will immediately have an impression of validity and intelligence. the media wonks will love her and her proposals which will help. i can't help but feel like an ideal situation for bernie would be recruiting warren and actively promoting legislation as the Warren Plan, to try and capture some of that enthusiasm from major party players.

mordy super otm. you need your caucus to be in line to get legislation through congress. i can't see the nominally-independent sanders corralling waffling establishment dem senators as well as warren could.

nb i think warren would have a tougher route to actually winning the election and absolutely to winning the nomination which seems like a longshot at the moment. whether that's because of american misogyny or her own flaws or whatever i can't speculate but obv who you support has something to do w/ whether they could win not just how they'd do once they did but atm since it's so early in the race by the time PA votes in the primaries a lot about the field could change, i'm just talking about who i think would be the best president. if it's just about winning back the WH bernie might be the best option but in terms of long term success of the left i don't know if disappointment over the accomplishments of the most left-wing President in US history is going to be good for it. but tbph i have no idea it could very well be that even in a worst case bernie presidency scenario the left is so fired up about their successes that it galvanizes new movements, new participants, the next president is an all star leftist policy machine idk.

it could very well be that even in a worst case bernie presidency scenario the left is so fired up about their successes that it galvanizes new movements, new participants

I think this is what a lot of Bernie voters are banking on, and certainly what I would hope for - galvanizing enough traditional nonvoters and the usually-disillusioned to help build a left movement with a spine. (and no, I don't think Bernie is the only person who could do this, he just happens to be the best-positioned at this time.) tbh without that movement in place I would need to be convinced that lasting, meaningful change is even possible given the immense legislative and systemic hurdles in place.

re the nuts and bolts stuff, I would only add that Bernie actually has a history of working with sympathetic Republicans and moderate Dems on particular issues