Do some of you still find the concept of the Old Left, particularly those who hold socially conservative views while maintaining economically left-wing or anti-capitalist positions, politically foreign or difficult to reconcile with contemporary left-wing politics in America?
I'm asking this because a little while ago, a person sent me a message saying that the concept of socially conservative leftists was somewhat foreign to them, as the variation of leftism that most people here are exposed to tends to incorporate both economically left-wing and socially progressive values. Initially, they assumed an inherent contradiction between being socially conservative and economically left-wing, since the two are often treated as politically incompatible in contemporary American politics.
However, historically, that hasn't always been the case, especially when you look at older generations of leftists, traditional labor movements, and socialist movements outside the Western world(e.g., Christians for National Liberation (CNL) in the Philippines, Nyerere's Ujamaa in Tanzania, Nasserism in Egypt, and Ba'athist Arab socialism in Iraq, etc.), where anti-capitalist economic positions have often coexisted with socially conservative attitudes toward religion, family structures, gender roles, etc.
I grew up in this tradition, as did my father and his father before him (none of whom were particularly religious, btw). The men in my life believed that a post-capitalist society would still need socially conservative values in order to promote a functional collective because, say, for example, if you're trying to build a society around collective ownership and mutual responsibility, how exactly would that society function if everyone prioritized their individual desires over their obligations to their families and communities?
From their perspective, simply abolishing capitalism wouldn't mitigate selfishness or the tendency to prioritize personal interests over the collective good. They believed that traditional family structures, intergenerational obligations, and certain cultural expectations helped cultivate the sense of responsibility necessary for a socialist society to function. In other words, economic collectivism needed to be accompanied by a social and cultural framework that encouraged people to place the well-being of their communities above their individual interests. My father isn't a campist either, and he doesn't believe leftists should automatically defend authoritarian governments because they oppose Western imperialism; his social conservatism is rooted more in his connection to our culture and his desire to preserve cultural continuity and collective responsibility across the generations.
Since migrating here in my youth, I've obviously adopted many socially progressive values that differ from those of my father, grandfather, and my entire hometown. However, my support for these values largely comes from my belief that people shouldn't be forced to adhere to traditional cultural expectations simply because they're considered essential to maintaining social cohesion or preserving cultural identity. I tend to view it through an analogy where a particular therapeutic modality might be appropriate for one person but not necessarily for another. Just because someone finds a culturally conservative life meaningful or fulfilling doesn't mean we should assume that everyone else would benefit from following that same path.
But I digress. Do some of you still find socially conservative leftists hard to wrap your head around, or is this something you're already familiar with
Cockshott
Im not socially conservative but woke retards are fucking cringe and should be shot
>>2944695I've lived in the U.S. my whole life so my views are probably bound up in that. But I think it's a mistake to believe economically left / socially conservative views are some indivisible remainder that can't be co-opted. People who espouse these views often assert that what came before the New Left of the 1960s was more authentic or radical, and we have to retvrn to that, but I think they have the order reversed. It was actually the decline of radicalism of the Old Left that happened first and then leftists looked to new social movements just to try to keep a radical tradition alive at all. Now that might have also failed / been co-opted / watered down as well but it doesn't mean the preceding statement is false. Like right now the Democratic Party is playing down cultural politics and are focusing on economic slopulism or whatever, and it might even help them win elections, but it's not a radical program.
As a subsection of that, if you were to radically transform the economic system, how would you also not radically transform everything else in the process. That goes for family structures, hierarchies of status / authority, culture, inherited norms, religion, national identity, gender roles, and so on and etc. I don't know the answer to that. But you also see socialist governments reemphasizing social conservatism some years after revolutions occur because that is often bound up in maintaining social stability. In the USSR once socialism had been "achieved" then the government could rationalize a relative shift towards social conservatism by viewing it as maintaining socialist relations rather than capitalist relations. That could happen, but in any event, all of these relations have been transformed anyways worldwide if you look at it over the long term (like 100 or 200 years).
>>2944695>traditional family structures, intergenerational obligations, and certain cultural expectations helped cultivate the sense of responsibility necessary for a socialist society to function.that's so dumb, the family structure in the soviet union was far from traditional in any sense of the word, so did chinese all choose to abort their daughters out of the idea that a man is responsible to their parents and woman isn't because she belongs to the husband.
very few of the tankies are in any way socially conservative, it's nonsense larpers made up. what does exist is regular traditional people who see that communism provides their people the best outcomes and choose not to investigate but remain ignorant, which is okay as long as you remain a supporter.
>>2944703this. being a social progressive doesn't mean you're a vegan furry in a polygamous relationship. lenin was a social progressive, stalin was a social progressive, you, on the other hand, are mkultra victims.
>>2944695Political movements are driven by what is materially necessary to seize power. Organizing women and oppressed nations has often been necessary to seizing power. Queerphobia is a load of gibberish but queer people and other minorities have not been necessary to seize power and so they have been thrown under the bus. When Mao said "women hold up half the sky" the material reality behind his words was the political necessity of mobilizing half the population.
The men in your society believed what they did because it personally advantaged them and they could politically afford to do so. A lot of people are antisocial sadists and enjoy killing people so they see nothing wrong with killing queer people and other minorities. These people have the power to enact their violent fantasies on the weak and so they do.
It's not about what is "right" or "wrong." Revolutionaries will succeed because they enjoy mass support and cannot be stopped. Morality does not come into it.
Also now that you mention it:
>>2944695>In other words, economic collectivism needed to be accompanied by a social and cultural framework that encouraged people to place the well-being of their communities above their individual interests. Is that actually goal of the socialism? It's worth thinking about. There are people who think that you can have collective ownership but that also means people need to think a certain way, dress a certain way, organize their personal relationships a certain way. But then there are others who think collective ownership is a means to free people up to pursue their interests (more freedom).
>However, historically, that hasn't always been the case, especially when you look at older generations of leftists, traditional labor movements, and socialist movements outside the Western world(e.g., Christians for National Liberation (CNL) in the Philippines, Nyerere's Ujamaa in Tanzania, Nasserism in Egypt, and Ba'athist Arab socialism in Iraq, etc
That's not really true. Socialists in America and Europe in the early 20th century were radically socially progressive, promoting things like racial and gender equality. The USSR was the first country to operate an affirmative action program, and to date theirs is still the largest such program in history. They also heavily promoted gender equality to the point where women are still far more represented in fields of science and management in the former Warsaw Pact than in the West. Not to mention their secularism and anti-clericalism.
Left-nationalist movements in the third world are more of a mixed bag, but somebody like Nasser definitely wasn't socially conservative given his commitment to secularism. These movements only seem conservative by modern standards, but at the time they were considered crazy degenerate bohemian radicals.
What you're describing is a symptom of ignorance on what Marxism is. You're describing leftism well, but not Marxism. The very concept of "socially conservative" is a bourgeois definition, because all culture and ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, which in capitalist society naturally are the ideas of the bourgeoisie. It is impossible to be a Marxist while at the same time clinging onto nationalism, which is what social conservatism is, but on a smaller scale; this takes on the form of "petite nationalism" which has its parallel with petite bourgeois worship in the USA. Leftists often make the mistake of thinking "small business" is acceptable, while also thinking "small nationalism" is also acceptable. Both ideas are reactionary. It is ridiculous to talk about maintaining bourgeois "socially conservative" cultural traditions in communism because communism means the eradication of these things. For example, you say this:
>From their perspective, simply abolishing capitalism wouldn't mitigate selfishness or the tendency to prioritize personal interests over the collective good.
This is an idealist perspective in which "selfishness", "personal interest", i.e. what we might call "individualism" are simply choices you make and not something which is determined by material conditions. In the same way that one might make the mistaken assumption that the ruling class is oppressive simply because its their choice to be oppressive and not because the demands of capitalism force them to be, we would also be mistaken in thinking that communism would require us to make the same "choice" to put the collective well-being over our own personal well-being. This is often why people say "communism is against human nature", because they think it is "human nature" to be selfish and not the consequence of capitalist social relations. To be socially progressive or conservative is to argue within the narrow confines of the capitalist mode of production, and Marxists seek the destruction of this at all costs.
Nonsense thread with nonsense responses. Socially conservative? Socially progressive? Economically conservative? Economically progressive?
All terms that should have you shot on sight.
>>2944703>>2944705>>2944709>>2944710Behold the culture warrior who hides behind the mask of practically and tactically. Karl Marx has already closed this loophole. The communist abhors hiding their true beliefs. They either be at their most historically progressive, or they will get caught lacking. No exceptions.
>>2944724bodied those leftychuds
>>2944724trve and avthentic
>>2944733The CNT-FAI condemned homosexuality, crossdressing and sex work.
>>2944741Is this "old left" to you? Old left is at least from the 19th century.
My opinion is that socio-cultural relations under socialism are unlikely to either match up with or be more radical versions of, either progressive or conservative orientations in any given country's contemporary cultural context.
I think the contemporary DPRK probably gives us the most likely approximation, given it is the least economically revisionist of the self proclaimed AES countries today (many of which I opine are just capitalist, albeit of the significant state interventionist variety). Ie. Certainly not libertarian/liberal but not particularly religious, sexist, racist, etc.
>>2944734>When Stalin called Harry Whyte an idiot and a degenerate it was because petty cruelty is fun and socially acceptable and Stalin had no political need for queer workers to support himThere goes the mask of practicality again. Social acceptability is not a concern when it prevents you from being peak historically progressive you. And class solidarity always trumps the political accumulation of power, else it’d be worthless anyways.
>>2944744The DPRK is notorious for homophobic and sexist language attacking political opponents. Of course, they have tried to clean up their image recently to attract tourism bucks.
>>2944759Idealism. A homophobic proletariat will produce a homophobic dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism doesn't suddenly fix all the flaws of capitalism and petty sadism. Some dotps will beat homosexuals to death in the street. That's how life is. Luckily, the arc of history with urbanization and so on seems to cut down on homophobia.
>particularly those who hold socially conservative views while maintaining economically left-wing or anti-capitalist positions,
This might very well just be my personal bubble or something unique to my region of the USA but this is actually fairly common in my experience.
>>2944695>social economic false dichotomythis was destroyed by marx
>socially conservative, economically leftwhat does this even mean anymore. women get back in the kitchen? blacks get back in the fields? gays go back to having fake straight marriages? What do these mythical socially conservative economically left people even want that hasn't already been laughed out of the room? be specific.
>>2944695You're considering things in the wrong framework. When looking at another society you need to compare things within that society. E.g. in Egypt the question is not whether their socialists were progressive relative to 2020s america, but relative to the Egypt of their time. This is where people always trip up: the USSR was more conservative on some issues than contemporary America, thus this is the transhistorically true position on those issues, rather than a reflection of the specific circumstances of that society.
The UK is an interesting counterexample where, as it economically undevelops, it slides into reaction on social issues. In many elements of public policy Britain is more conservative today than it was in the 2000s (and it was pretty bad then)
>>2944766>Idealism. A homophobic proletariat will produce a homophobic dictatorship of the proletariat.We do not appeal to reactionaries with reactionaryism.
>Socialism doesn't suddenly fix all the flaws of capitalism and petty sadismThat is what the dotp is for
>Some dotps will beat homosexuals to death in the streetNo dotp will beat homosexuals to death because reactionary behavior inherently goes against class war and will not be tolerated by scientific socialists.
>>2944784>No dotp will beat homosexuals to death because reactionary behavior inherently goes against class war and will not be tolerated by scientific socialists.a grand declaration not backed up by historical evidence, unless you're willing to do "No true DOTP" for many existing DOTPs thus far
>>2944703>Im not socially conservative but here we go…
>woke retards are fucking cringe and should be shotmind clarifying who, in your mind, qualifies as "woke retards"
Erik Houdini is a Jewish Pedophile, and an informant. Beware
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