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What the left stands for

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The genuine left welcomes the future, supports progress and development, takes the side of the oppressed.  

Our  marxism folder (located  inside the philosophy folder ) is highly relevant to the material here.

Left vs pseudo left

Analysing the pseudo-left - The fact that any sort of genuine left (however defined) is currently absent is what makes it possible for people with fundamentally reactionary politics to be mistaken for "leftists" merely by using a thin veneer of "left language". But that absence is not the cause of the reactionary politics nor is the pseudo-left the reason for the absence of a genuine left. I'm delighted to see Harry again using the term "pseudo-left" as widespread adoption of that term will help clarify a lot of things. But it simply doesn't make sense to hope that the likes of Monbiot finally realizing that they are not opposed to capitalism could be a step towards the emergence of a left that isn't pseudo.

(Published: 2006-08-06 08:31 PM)

We need Marx because he understood some things and said some things better than anyone else has since. It's important to read the original because people who call themselves marxists have always been in violent disagreement with what it means. If you don't read the original then you have no chance of working it out for yourself.

(Published: 2006-08-06 08:09 AM)

Fascism and the Left - "A major theme in left wing propaganda is opposition to fascism. Quite often relatively moderate opponents of the left are described as "fascists". Yet scratch a "Communist" and one quite often finds a fascist underneath...The degeneration of Communist Parties in power is a separate problem calling for a separate analysis. But what about the degeneration of parties holding no power?"

(Published: 2006-01-04 05:20 AM)
Written November 1980

What's wrong with the Left? Peter Tatchell says "When human rights violations are perpetrated by people who happen to be non-white, much of the left runs a mile. They are fearful of being accused of racism and neo-colonialism. Does that help oppressed people? Of course not! Their oppressors rejoice. Mugabe must be thrilled that the international left has not campaigned to isolate him. He can point the finger and say, it is only the western colonialists who oppose them."

(Published: 2005-12-27 07:38 PM)

SOME QUESTIONS from 1973

(Published: 2005-11-24 06:47 PM)
As a response to Red Politics 1 articles 1993. Although quite old (it was initially published in 1993) this article is still very relevant in 2005!

IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL

(Published: 2005-11-22 02:51 PM)
by Albert Langer Published in Red Politics No.2 1995

The Left and the Gulf War - During the [1990-91] Gulf War the pseudo left gave one of the most spectacular displays of its ability to get things wrong. They thought they were on a winner. Here was a chance to relive the Vietnam antiwar movement. But of course that fell flat when the Americans creamed the Iraqis in a matter of weeks, with the minimum of US body bags.

(Published: 2005-11-22 06:53 AM)

1993 review of "Imperialism, pioneer of Capitalism" - Bill Warren's book, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, performs a useful service by refuting much of the mythology that the left has embraced in the name of 'anti- imperialism'.

(Published: 2005-11-22 06:06 AM)

Barry York: Not in your name, indeed - It is too late for the so-called Left in Australia to stand anywhere but condemned for its failure to support the successful war to liberate Iraq. It stood on the side of reaction, and the history books must place its leaders alongside the British pacifists of the '30s who, as George Orwell pointed out, gave comfort and objective support to Hitler. The pseudo-Left proved not just that it can be wrong but that in the name of anti-Americanism it can support fascism.

(Published: 2005-10-15 12:00 AM)

Hegel and the Pseudo-Left - Three postings discussing Hegel's 1886 statement "All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real", in relation to current pseudo-left ideology.

(Published: 2005-06-15 12:00 AM)

Hitchens on Blair

(Published: 2005-04-26 07:25 AM)
There are things to dislike about Tony Blair. His rather sickly piety is one, and his liberal authoritarianism, on matters such as smoking and fox-hunting, is another. I can't forgive him for calling Diana Spencer "the People's Princess," or for seeking the approval of the Fleet Street rags, and he is one of those politicians who seems to think that staying "on message" is an achievement in itself. Nonetheless, he took a bold stand against the establishment and against a sullen public opinion and did so on a major issue of principle. It is absolutely necessary that his right-wing and clerical enemies be humiliated at the polls.

a Couldn't we live perfectly well without money? "I think that the problems with money are more or less self-solving. Marx explained this long ago, that the whole development of commodity production leads to the development of wage labour and capital, which leads to a deeper and deeper concentration of property in the hands of a few, and a larger and larger working class which has no stake in the present society and nothing to lose but their chains. That is the history of modern capitalist development, and it is the history of why Marx was so enthusiastic in his praise for the corrosive effect of money on the old communities."

(Published: 2005-01-21 08:23 PM)
Public forum, Melbourne Town Hall, 15 September 2000

The murder of Hadi Saleh – why are you silent? An open letter to the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition.

(Published: 2005-01-16 06:37 AM)
The torture and murder of Hadi Saleh, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions on January 4 was part of a wave of attacks on Iraqi trade unionists by the ‘resistance’. Make no mistake about it, the ‘resistance’ are pursuing a campaign of physical eradication of leaders of the Iraqi left and Iraqi democrats. The death of Hadi Saleh is the latest of a number of actual and attempted political assassinations which have been condemned by the international left and labour movement. The exception has been the Stop the War Coalition which has remained effectively silent on Hadi’s brutal murder.

And now for the good news

(Published: 2005-01-14 06:09 PM)
Beyond the bleak headlines, it's not all doom and gloom

The functions of Nihilism

(Published: 2005-01-04 04:47 AM)
From our old forum: "What purpose do Tariq Ali and his ilk serve then?" is a very important question.

Support for Iraqi Democrats

(Published: 2005-01-04 04:43 AM)

Red Politics

(Published: 2005-01-04 01:20 AM)
Two editions of a journal published by Australian Maoists in the 1990's.

Discussion of Postrel's book: "The Future and its Enemies" - Postrel divides the world into dynamists and stasists - dynamists support evolution and the processes of variation, feedback and adaptation - stasists supports stability. "Do we search for stasis - a regulated engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism - a world of constant creation, discovery and competition?"

(Published: 2004-12-12 06:00 AM)
Postrel divides the world into dynamists and stasists - dynamists support evolution and the processes of variation, feedback and adaptation - stasists supports stability. "Do we search for stasis - a regulated engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism - a world of constant creation, discovery and competition?" (from the Introduction)

Joan Baez and Me

(Published: 2004-11-18 08:11 AM)
Once Joan finished her minstrelsy riff, the audience, in which I did not see a single black person, went wild with applause and hoots and hollers. I have never felt so embarrassed for a bunch of "liberals" in my life. I wonder where Baez got her notions of how poor black country folk talk—she couldn't be stereotyping, could she?

Once all was lost, but now there's hope

(Published: 2004-07-04 07:31 AM)
Don't ask me. I'm still wondering why millions of people marched last year not to denounce the world's worst dictator but to prevent the overthrow of that dictator.

Albert Langer: Latham v reality: the looming crisis

(Published: 2004-06-13 11:15 AM)
Labor's blatant and cowardly appeasement strategy is exposed as never before, writes Albert Langer.

The enemy is not America - Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies? Why is it easier for millions of people around the world to see America as the great evil, rather than the countries in which governments ignore such horrific abuses of women?

(Published: 2004-05-03 06:18 AM)

Nine Red Herrings: How the Western 'Left' has Misread Iraq

(Published: 2003-06-18 12:00 AM)
How is it possible that Marxism has been so corrupted and distorted that "Marxists" prefer to see thousands more Iraqis die in the torture chambers of the Baath, and millions more suffer under the iniquities excused (not caused) by the UN sanctions, rather than admit that socialists not only can but must support even the worst bourgeois democracy against even the least bad tyranny?

Engels on Hegel - all that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real. "Just as in France in the 18th century, so in Germany in the 19th, a philosophical revolution ushered in the political collapse. But how different the two looked! The French were in open combat against all official science, against the church and often also against the state; their writings were printed across the frontier, in Holland or England, while they themselves were often in jeopardy of imprisonment in the Bastille. On the other hand, the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth; their writings were recognized textbooks, and the termination system of the whole development — the Hegelian system — was even raised, as it were, to the rank of a royal Prussian philosophy of state! Was it possible that a revolution could hide behind these professors, behind their obscure, pedantic phrases, their ponderous, wearisome sentences? Were not precisely these people who were then regarded as the representatives of the revolution, the liberals, the bitterest opponents of this brain-confusing philosophy?"

(Published: 2003-06-15 12:00 AM)
This is part 1 of Frederick Engels' article "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. (1886)
Created by keza
Last modified 2006-02-26 10:44 PM
 

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