What kind of left are you?

Also feel free to write in your own.

Of the dial

Democratic Socialist
Social Democrat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA

At this point in the UK there's hardly any difference between Labour and the Tories.

Hoxhaist

Big bunker fan tbh

sometimes i’m a brogressive, sometimes i’m a champagne socialist

the good kind

Leftishly poster left (= posting "Nazi links" on ilx till the end times)

"Anti colonial" and "labor leftist" kinda out of place here imo, since they can be combined w/ any of the others.

Aging Maoist trying to shoehorn in their latest Theory reading into every post.

Aging Maoist trying to shoehorn in their latest Theory reading into every post.

poll would only have been good if the options as presented had spelled out ADULTSINTHEROOM

How left was the poster “left”?

they left

I didn’t leave the Marxist–Leninist Party, USA the left me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist%E2%80%93Leninist_Party,_USA?wprov=sfti1#

“They left me”

What category are you if you want to put all the multi-millionaires and billionaires up against the wall and shoot them? That's my category.

what's the most irritating thing i could say here

champagne surrealist

list is missing sociopath

lazy Situationist who believes gulags are regrettable but necessary

champagne surrealist

― imago, Saturday, 24 May 2025 bookmarkflaglink

list is missing sociopath

― LocalGarda, Saturday, 24 May 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Funnily enough..

Babeuvist

I'm the Maxim Gorky of semi-literate, dyslexic shitposters. From an obscure branch of the Heavy Woollen District Communist party that has absolutely zero membership and has never convened for any public meetings. I'm also a hypocrite and a sociopath!

NLR Sidecar today has an essay about “left minimalists” and “left maximalists”, defined this way in terms of their responses to Trump.

Left maximalists largely fall into two camps. There are those who have celebrated Trump for taking a wrecking ball to the neoliberal order, casting the reality-TV president as a historical figure of major significance – ‘the world-soul riding a golden escalator’, as the Aufhebunga Bunga podcast put it last November. Then there are ‘national emergency’ leftists who see Trump’s assault on student activists, undocumented immigration and civil rights as an urgent crisis that overrides other layers of analysis and demands an immediate response.

Both these maximalist camps regard Trump as offering an opportunity for the left. For the first, the fallout presents the chance to pick up some of the fragments of discontent in the now shattered neoliberal system, opening the possibility of some kind of realignment with the working-class revolt against the Democrats. For the second, it is an occasion for a broad popular front against Trump in the name of a form of antifascism that will allow the left to exercise some influence alongside liberal allies. Here, however, I want to make a case for a – critical and qualified – left minimalism, focusing for brevity’s sake on just a handful of key issues during Trump’s first months in office.

Trump embodies action, power, movement, excitement: an incitement to open insurgency against the fascists, perhaps, or at the very least a symptom of the breakdown of liberalism. But this may be ultimately an attractive and convenient way of externalizing an internal blockage: the deep, dispiriting rift between the historical left and the historical working class. That is the main story of American and rich world politics since the 1970s – a bleak, long-running drama in which Trump does not star. The monstrous spectacle of Trumpism, which has already managed to breathe life into the dead objects of the Canadian and Australian centre, certainly offers political opportunities of a sort. Yet to seize them we must acknowledge and confront this deeper ebb tide within.

words words words

True, their time has passed, it is time for action.

*blows up carriage of European monarch*

Jack Frost’s answer at the end imo
https://i.imgur.com/sdXJ7Yl.jpeg

"Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho." Jean-Luc Godard

By American political standards I probably am a throwback to the sort of Kennedy Democrat that got along fine with Rockefeller Republicans, as long as we avoided discussing politics or religion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrx122CmXgo

Punks not dead, but I nearly am

I’m whatever left that does not think “actually Trump is good”

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Left-libertarian feels like the closest to the Montana ethos of "fuck off, leave me alone — oh, sure, I'll help shovel your car out."

Why isn't "dirtbag" an option

"Drawn from the Wikipedia" nm

Americans who call themselves left-libertarians are just anarchists with a fedora and a couple of hidden metoo accusations.

Other: stupid

xp yeah I guess "dirtbag" hasn't quite made it to the political science lexicon.

lol also feel free to write in "abundance"

It’s coastal, but not elite. It’s the media with a paid-subscription model, yet it’s not mainstream. It’s the New Yorker’s caption contest on a date with a kayak reading Sylvia Plath and listening to Childish Gambino. It’s a June Saturday at Ted Koppel’s Southern Maryland lake house. It’s John Mellencamp’s denim overalls on a Nantucket shore with Meg Ryan. It’s Meg Ryan in Top Gun. It’s small watches and big coffee mugs and medium-sized Rainbow sandals. It is arugula with highly caloric Caesar dressing. My liberalism contains multitudes.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/whats-my-brand-of-liberalism

either democratic socialist or social democrat. or a secret third thing

sociocratic demidog

What lake is there in southern Maryland (rhetorical, there is none but there’s the Chesapeake Bay which no one has ever called a “lake”).

pragmatic but feral

big tent (i like 'socialist' as a descriptor bc its broad enough to include or overlap with a lot of these tendencies)

What lake is there in southern Maryland (rhetorical, there is none but there’s the Chesapeake Bay which no one has ever called a “lake”).

― That Pedo Band (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, May 27, 2025 10:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I thought you were probably right, but wanted to fact-check your claim anyway. Does that say anything about the kind of leftist I am?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Ridge+Dr,+Maryland+20689/@38.7400672,-76.6841612,855m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x89b7844ecd6c13bb:0x1c51f26fd93f1aeb!8m2!3d38.661982!4d-76.577856!16s%2Fg%2F1tffknvs?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lakeside+Ct,+Maryland+20754/@38.7406448,-76.6797767,855m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89b79067bf879dc1:0xe3c5d9fd15aa6be0!8m2!3d38.7406406!4d-76.6772018!16s%2Fg%2F1tdm96by?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lakes+End+Ct,+Maryland+20646/@38.495553,-76.8619883,858m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89b70b62a465ad89:0xb7baf5aee0189f1f!8m2!3d38.4955488!4d-76.8594134!16s%2Fg%2F1tf7t085?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

First one should have been https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Ridge+Dr,+Maryland+20689/@38.6619861,-76.5827269,856m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89b7844ecd6c13bb:0x1c51f26fd93f1aeb!8m2!3d38.661982!4d-76.577856!16s%2Fg%2F1tffknvs?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

I'd guess Ted Koppel doesn't live in any of those, though.

Looks like his home is on the St. Mary's River. https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B009'40.0%22N+76%C2%B025'23.0%22W/@38.1615708,-76.4244937,431m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d38.161111!4d-76.423056?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The only lake house a Marylander would have is on Deep Creek Lake, in the far west of the state.

BoMd, Lake Truther

(Sidenote, natural lakes are rare hereabouts)

Non-existent, even.

None in Maryland, only a couple in Virginia I think.

Americans who call themselves left-libertarians are just anarchists with a fedora and a couple of hidden metoo accusations.

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z)

hey, there's nothing wrong with anarchists. left-libertarians otoh can fuck right off.

i guess the label i'd describe myself as today is "intersectional leftist". in practice i tend to view political describers in about the same way as i view terms for queer identity - as rough approximations, attempts to find commonalities among complex and disparate individual experiences. i believe that the left are a people divided by a common language. i also believe that the people united will never be defeated - it's just that getting the people united is a lot easier said than done, since there are real and significant differences between different groups of people on the left. right now, particularly, i'm less interested in advocating for queer interests than i am in listening to the experiences of people who aren't like me. when i worked a white-collar job it was called "de-siloing".

i don't think the left, organizationally, is fundamentally different from any other organization. honestly my idea of "leftism" is just a reinvention of traditional parliamentary politics except that nazis and tankies aren't allowed. i can be pretty uncompromising in practice, but i do _believe_ in compromise. i think compromise is both necessary and good. i've had the experiences of making compromises i shouldn't have, on a personal level, compromises that didn't benefit me. so i have a distrust of compromise.

i got a message yesterday inviting me to a council at which "no politicians are allowed". again, divided by a common language - if you're forming a council, that's unavoidably a political act, imo. i _like_ a lot of things about the traditional politics of democracy - i just don't think they work in practice right now. i'm an ex-liberal centrist who abandoned centrist liberalism when hillary clinton lost. i'm very hesitant to compromise my beliefs to for the benefit of failures.

that said, i think it's fair to describe leftism, at present, as... failing. i don't think failing is necessarily bad. i think the values of failure is that one learns from one's mistakes, and what centrist liberals are learning is antithetical to my values. since i'm an ex-liberal, i believe that a lot of liberals can be part of a leftist coalition. i'm not a fan of "the party left me" rhetoric. i think it's normal and natural for people to change. change is scary and hard, i hate change. i've just found it to be necessary in a number of cases. i think a lot of people would benefit from change, both individually and collectively.

i don't do a lot of reading or know much about theory. my feeling is that most of the people who cite theory (including myself) are faking it and have just read a wikipedia article or watched a youtube video or something. mostly i'm informed by lived experience, and in particular the _subjective emotions_ that arise from those experiences. i believe people's feelings matter, that they're important. they're not facts - they're not a fit basis for governance - but they're important. my lived experience differs from a lot of people in that in the past, liberal democracy _hasn't_ effectively supported me as a queer person in the past, and _doesn't_ effectively support queer people now. when liberals compromised with conservatives for the "common good", that compromise both erased and excluded me as... whatever word you want to use, a queen, a trans person, a despin convert. liberals now cape for genocide. if someone says they support me and capes for genocide, i don't believe they actually support me.

I like to think that at heart I am an anarchist. But in practice, anarchism asks a lot from people, more than most(and I'm counting myself here) are willing to give. Where the rubber meets the road I think I am some flavor of Dem Soc. But, I also accept political labels only with great begrudgement, and think they tend to do more harm than good. They often group what shouldn't be grouped and divide what shouldn't be divided. But that's just an unavoidable consequence of language. Fuck.

i'm whatever sort of left it is who wants everyone to be fed, clothed, housed, given medical care and a chance for an education in a nation without an ultra-wealthy class, a secret police, or a surveillance apparatus. once that's accomplished we can think of whatever else would go well with that, for dessert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxK0a67_b3g

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

That's about the breakdown I expected. I was one of the "progressives" fwiw. I mostly call myself a left-liberal, but that wasn't one of Wikipedia's categories. The "liberal" side of that for me is that I feel strongly about individual rights on lots of things. I'm kind of communitarian by nature but I think it's OK for people to go off and live in the woods and mostly not be bothered. (They still need to pay taxes tho.)

Americans who call themselves left-libertarians are just anarchists with a fedora and a couple of hidden metoo accusations.

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z), Tuesday, May 27, 2025 5:18 PM (yesterday

I would say anarchists with a coinbase account who don’t like Crass but hey

The communists shouldn't be voting in polls btw..

I believe the majority of them were engaged in direct action on the server

other: Behind

I'm kind of communitarian by nature but I think it's OK for people to go off and live in the woods and mostly not be bothered. (They still need to pay taxes tho.)

Been thinking and dunno if there's anything intrinsically incompatible between this and any of the options listed - in fact I'd even wager this was possible under some of the more totalitarian failures of the 20th century (self isolation an elegant solution for dissidence to become irrelevant, after all). The problems would arise once these people see the road to their shack as their private property, or the grounds around it as their private hunting grounds (assuming they plan to be self sufficient and not trade on a black market). But if we then accept their claims to self sufficiency I don't know it would be coherent to have them pay taxes either.

lol @ anarchist votes

But if we then accept their claims to self sufficiency I don't know it would be coherent to have them pay taxes either.

Oh yeah, I don't accept anyone's claims to "self-sufficiency," not at all. I believe in individual rights and mutual responsibilities. Hence the left-liberalism, and why I'm not any variety of libertarian.

lol no one is "self-sufficient" without massively limiting themselves in a hundred ways that I can't imagine all but the most fringe of contemporary people being willing to do.

if your income is below some level you don’t pay taxes, so in theory a self-sufficient person could not pay taxes if they kept enough of it off the books or lived modestly. my stepbrother lives in the wilderness in northern british columbia and is pretty much the most self-sufficient person imaginable. he built his home out of wood he cut himself, hunts and fishes for food. for a few years his income was low enough that he didn’t pay taxes, but i think he bought some property and started selling some wood and fish (previously he was living in some pseudo-legal greyzone the tax implications of which i dont fully understand). self-sufficiency is an ideal he strives for, but he would easily admit he is dependent on the state and modern technology in various ways

Anyone who still has to buy cloth or clothing or shoes or machinery or technology like phones, or calorie crops like wheat or rice, or literally anything they didn't grow or extract themselves is not self-sufficient. It's meaningless.

answering “what kind of left are you” in 2025 when the left is out of power almost everywhere and it’s all so online and feels like LARPing, or the political equivalent of astrology. it had more stakes in the 20th century. if i’d lived then i like to think i would’ve thrown my lot in with the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions circa 1950 of the meidner plan (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehn%E2%80%93Meidner_model)

Sorry flop, that's not at all a judgement about your family member or anyone else who minimizes their footprint at all! There's just not much practical use to assigning "self-sufficiency" as a quality that can be achieved. It's not reasonable and if it were our society would be so broken down that it wouldn't be recognizable as such. It's good that we need each other and we can specialize and exchange goods with others. Etc.

Anyone who still has to buy cloth or clothing or shoes or machinery or technology like phones, or calorie crops like wheat or rice, or literally anything they didn't grow or extract themselves is not self-sufficient. It's meaningless.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Thursday, 29 May 2025 12:35 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

my crazy step brother doesn’t have a phone and doesn’t eat any of those crops, but he has this radar thing he pings once a day to let his mother know he’s alive. and he wears shoes and clothes he didn’t make. i would say his level of self-sufficiency—especially during his early years in the wilderness—was close to the maximum attainable level, but still far from absolute. not sure what his stance on paying taxes and the government is, he believes in lots of conspiracy theories (chemtrails type of stuff) so probably not too happy about it

astrology is more coherent than any of these tribal identities with political labels imo.

yes, I'm much more interested in "sustainable" living in community than I am in "self-sufficiency" which as per io seems like a pipe dream

xxp

tbc i completely disagree with the desirability of self-sufficiency as an ideal. it’s good to be dependent on others, imo. but to give the “steel man” version of his argument, he would say it’s an ideal that he strives towards, rather than an absolute that is possible to achieve. so when presented with two options, he will take the one he judges the more self-sufficient route, when possible

astrology is more coherent than any of these tribal identities with political labels imo.

― five six seven, eight nine ten, begin (map), Thursday, 29 May 2025 12:44 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

more fun to talk about too

astrology is more coherent than any of these tribal identities with political labels imo.

Yes and no. I only polled it because I was on the Wikipedia page and saw the list and thought "lol poll." I agree the labels are mostly kinda fuzzy and there's a lot of overlap between them, so it really is just a self-identification thing. But I think most people who are politically aware and active have some way they think of or frame their beliefs and principles, and those interest me.

self-sufficiency is an ideal he strives for, but he would easily admit he is dependent on the state and modern technology in various ways

At age 15 I was captivated by Thoreau and Walden, which I think did me a lot of good over the long haul, in that it strongly embedded the idea of keeping my life as simple as possible. But no matter how many ways I did the thought experiment of becoming wholly "self-sufficient", I was forced to conclude that not only was it impossible in the most literal sense, but it was not something to pursue as an ideal. Every line of thinking leads me to believe humans are knit into their social groups as a matter of necessity, not choice. Trying to deny this basic fact only makes life worse. Your stepbrother is obviously wise to this fact and knows its limits through lived experience.

i forgot to vote which makes me the truest leftist of all

lol

yeah, I don't accept anyone's claims to "self-sufficiency," not at all. I believe in individual rights and mutual responsibilities. Hence the left-liberalism, and why I'm not any variety of libertarian.

Sure, what I was getting at is that "leaving people alone" isn't really incompatible w/ socialism in any meaningful sense until that "leaving alone" runs into the ways self-sufficiency is an illusion.

Your stepbrother is obviously wise to this fact and knows its limits through lived experience.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 29 May 2025 12:52 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

his life sounds pretty amazing, to hear him tell it. he goes out on his canoe and catches tuna, has an extremely profound relationship with his dog who he goes hunting with, tends a garden, he’s getting really good at playing guitar. he seems happy. he was pretty troubled in his twenties and got into some pretty bad trouble with the cops for drug dealing a decade ago, so it’s a good turn for him

i don't really think of 'self-sufficiency' as an ideal to meet but a pole on a spectrum where it's important to find a 'sweet spot' of balance. i think of it as the ability to act directly to meet one's needs and desires. fundamentally i think it boils down to the ability to sit quietly and be at peace in the world. like, where one can't meet a desire one should instead try to shift perspective and be content. obviously we are connected with other people (and other non-people, which is a huge factor always left out of this equation) in our existence. how we're reliant on other people and non-people is also valid to consider along with how much we're reliant on them. becoming dependent on a really complex and resource intensive system in a frivolous way for something i don't really need is definitely something i personally like to avoid.

i live a pretty cush existence generally speaking. nice mattress, a/c, plenty of space, can afford good groceries and time to exercise for its own sake. the closer i've been to more of a 'wilderness existence' the more important my connections with other people (or lack of them) have become, ironically. i've also found that being closer to wilderness doesn't necessarily make me more 'one' with it, it just highlights the ways i will never be 'one' with it, the ways that i'm irreparably human. at the same time, the wilderness expands my own interior boundaries. i find the experience and dialogue from being 'out there' really rewarding and healthy for my overall perspective.

xp that's nice to hear that the life is good for him and that he was able to find and pursue it.

more fun to talk about too

― flopson

knock yourself out

astrology C or D

anti-colonial, bring on the animistic spiritual revolution

Every time I see this thread title my head jumps to the Eagles song "Victim of Love."

_What kind of left have you got
You should be home but you're not_

"answering “what kind of left are you” in 2025 when the left is out of power almost everywhere and it’s all so online and feels like LARPing, or the political equivalent of astrology."

You weren't chatting about astrology when Mr. Trump and Musk were at their height of wrecking it all up a couple of months ago.

Left ideologies being rendered meaningless will have consequences for all of us, sooner or later.

The sense of powerlessness, especially for let's say people of ilxing age and life circumstances, is a real feeling tho

answering “what kind of left are you” in 2025 when the left is out of power almost everywhere and it’s all so online and feels like LARPing, or the political equivalent of astrology.

― flopson

it's not larping, for me. it's my values. it's my beliefs. those things don't all go away just because my ability to put those values and beliefs into practice are limited.

there's a certain amount of privilege in powerlessness, i find, in that... there's a lot of shit i just don't have control over. engaging in reality on anything more than a personal level is of dubious benefit to me. so yeah, i fantasize a lot, particularly when i can't do more than fantasize. who would i put on trial? what sentence would i advocate for? how _would_ i reform the carceral state-within-a-state? who do i compromise with? how much do i compromise with them? what beliefs of mine are open to change, and what aren't? who am i going to ally with and who am i not going to ally with?

because i want my life to be more than survival. it's not more than survival, right now. i'm not getting my needs met, right now. and part of those needs is believing in justice. believing in a better world.

and it's also practical because, i mean, i don't deal with fascists on a daily basis. fascists don't listen to me. i don't have any power when it comes to them. the people i deal with on a daily basis are other leftists. sometimes liberals, but liberals, sometimes i feel like they listen to me less than fascists do. when it comes to liberals, mostly what i wind up doing is conciliating and appeasing. i feel like, with liberals, that i'm begging for table scraps. i like to imagine a world where i can do more than beg for table scraps.

the people around me are people i have serious and meaningful differences of opinion with. there are plenty of leftists who have totalitarian sympathies, for instance. tankies. and then there are fucking trots. people who aren't leftists don't have to deal with trots. jesus they're insufferable.

either one day my beliefs and values will be of consequences, or i'll be dead. dreaming that the former might happen is... necessary for me.

oh, also, i'm a lesbian. i need to know astrology and tarot. they're cultural competencies.

It should also be pointed out that being the person who points out leftist divergences absent a way to power are basically just roleplay is an essential part of leftist pageantry, no discussion of any of these ideologies has gone without that moment since at least the 1970's. So really flopson pulled the biggest LARP move of them all, respect.

how dare you accuse me of larping in my post about how i would like to have been a member of the 1950s Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions

we need a poll for "worst leftist subgroup", tough call between the RCP and the aforementioned Trots

flopson that's more ttrpg imo

You weren't chatting about astrology when Mr. Trump and Musk were at their height of wrecking it all up a couple of months ago.

i feel like i haven’t talked about astrology in years, probably since my woo woo friends who wouldn’t stfu about it moved cities. i miss them, but i don’t particularly miss those convos. but i prefer the reactions and discussions you get into after someone finds out you’re leo scorpio moon to hearing someone talk about why they’re democratic socialist but not social democrat

xp lol, would play that board game

the left being out of power isn't even true in this hemisphere! with some notable exceptions, south and central america probably have more left-of-center leaders now than they ever have

otm

And hell the big 3 North American countries have 2/3 center-left governments.

i wasn’t counting center-left parties, but it’s a great point about latin america. and it’s much more interesting to talk about chavismo vs morales than demsoc vs socdem, imo. (though i admit whenever i talk to friends from latam am a bit intimidated by the complexity of some of the political configurations)