Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

Read it. I'm not sure why. Your summation "seems v hostile to ilx" doesn't fit any version of ilx I'm aware of. It appeared to be the usual pointless wrangling over the exact details of eliminating capitalism, when there is no evidence such wrangling has a single identifiable consequence. In fact, it is written from and about a Marxist point of view that is so marginal in US politics that it analyzes nothing germane here at all.

With respect, it's the kind of piece that seems convincing until you think about it. The first obvious question it raises is what Kyeyune - afaict himself a writer/blogger/activist, not a unionized welder - is FOR and how it would differ from the kind of leftist electoral campaigns that have failed. The Wiki on the municipal political party he belongs to doesn't make it sound very different from the Sanders/Corbyn version:

The party is heavily opposed to political corruption and high politician incomes – among some of the measures it supports are reducing the wages of politicians and senior officials,[12] making plebiscites easier to enact and more potent,[25] increased social housing and subsidies for youth recreation,[12] and free dental care.[26] The party opposes continued privatization of health care, elderly care, public housing and municipal education, among other things.

It's not like Sanders was fighting for fully automated luxury communism or massive investments in modern art museums - M4A, $15 min wage, a wealth tax, organizing Amazon workers: these are left-populist, pro-worker policies. (And I mean, if anything, at least here, it's Trudeau the winning centrist Liberal, who doubled arts funding. I doubt the more left-wing NDP would have made that a priority.)

I'm also not sure about where he is drawing his hard lines when it comes to class. If the educated children of the PMC are angry about their jobs stocking shelves at Walmart, does that really make them bad socialists or inauthentic workers? Why shouldn't they be angry - Marx didn't call for a worker revolution because he thought their lives as workers were good, surely. Even if they are grad students or adjunct teachers or freelance writers, should they be excluded from the working class? On what grounds? Many of these people face the very same material struggles.

In fact, it is written from and about a Marxist point of view that is so marginal in US politics that it analyzes nothing germane here at all.

It seemed much more about UK politics (and UK ILXors) tbh.

The point here is not a moral one.

Just read the whole piece. Not sure what the exact point was in the first place tbh, other than 'the contemporary left is failing', which is a debatable statement, depending on your perspective. I do agree that the so-called left should start by actually winning elections, which is probably not a very popular opinion on this here board, but I'm not convinced that the author's would-be analysis paves the way for such a victory.

At least in our country, I'm pretty much OK with the NDP doing a good job of representing its constituents (who mostly are in authentically working-class ridings) and winning concessions from minority governments. In general, though, yes, political movements should try to win.

I am too, and in many ways our current federal government is farther to the left than it's been in decades just by virtue of leaning on the NDP. If anything, this once again speaks to the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of a one-size-fits-all reading of the 'international' left, which is something we must aspire towards, but whose pragmatic existence is so flimsy as to be laughable. Hence the need, once again, for some measure of caution when writing such pieces, unless you explicitly identify with the Zaporozhian Cossacks, which the author clearly does.