The Rational Left: Fighting Authoritarianism

[mauricio]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-QCOuSGxg

Lot's of good points about an ideological rift on the left that has become very intense on the internet political discourse in recent years.

[Baruch]

Usually won't have time for such long videos ;-)  Certainly I agree to be against authoritarianism.

Anarcho-Leftist?  Or just Pragmatic-Leftist?  Certainly Statist-Leftist aka Stalinists are no-good-nicks.  Anarcho-Socialism is associated with France just prior to WW I.  It was associated with Syndicalism (trade unionism and worker ownership of factories) and Pacifism.  These were blown away by WW I and reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution.  Pragmatic-Leftist would be your usual post WW II European Christian-Socialists.  They are currently under siege since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Venezuela, Cuba etc to varying degrees are examples of current day Stalinism.

Not that the Right is attractive ... but in what way is any Left movement viable?  The default position of humanity is Right (particularly among Anglophones).  The Left only comes into prominence during revolutionary times.  In what way is the present revolutionary?

[mauricio]

Usually won't have time for such long videos ;-)  Certainly I agree to be against authoritarianism.

Anarcho-Leftist?  Or just Pragmatic-Leftist?  Certainly Statist-Leftist aka Stalinists are no-good-nicks.  Anarcho-Socialism is associated with France just prior to WW I.  It was associated with Syndicalism (trade unionism and worker ownership of factories) and Pacifism.  These were blown away by WW I and reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution.  Pragmatic-Leftist would be your usual post WW II European Christian-Socialists.  They are currently under siege since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Venezuela, Cuba etc to varying degrees are examples of current day Stalinism.

Not that the Right is attractive ... but in what way is any Left movement viable?  The default position of humanity is Right (particularly among Anglophones).  The Left only comes into prominence during revolutionary times.  In what way is the present revolutionary?

Well I don't know enough about the topic to really say, but you can watch this guy that participated in that first video and I thought he made some good points, he has a short series about what he calls the "empirical left" and videos about philosophy.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrnYMlsoyNeXuYNNh6xkv3Q

http://empiricalleft.blogspot.pe/

[Sal1981]

6½ hours? tl;dw

The rift in the Left, as I see it, is the so-called Progressives and the "old" Left. Where the "old" Left-leaning political ideology has been about the traditional workers imperatives, government regulations and sanctions, etc. while the Progressive Left are basically SJW and willing to erode Rights at the cost of minority group  special treatments.

[Baruch]

Well I don't know enough about the topic to really say, but you can watch this guy that participated in that first video and I thought he made some good points, he has a short series about what he calls the "empirical left" and videos about philosophy.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrnYMlsoyNeXuYNNh6xkv3Q

http://empiricalleft.blogspot.pe/

I was looking at things from a historical perspective ... your second item is actual philosophy, something that folks here about are allergic to ;-)

So I would naturally come out opposite to the author in that second item, because philosophy is usually idealistic and rational, whereas I am realistic and empirical.  And yes, as your author anticipates, a person of my thinking, would find ... Empirical Left a contradiction in terms, and a poor line of argument.  Naturalism would imply Social Darwinism, the opposite of anything a historical Left would argue.  Some lion prides hunt better than others, sometimes just by being lucky ... and so should drive all the lesser lion prides to extinction.

The first item is a whole Youtube channel filled with challenging philosophical items ... in toto much larger than the initial Youtube that started this string.  I particularly liked/picked out ... "Is Physicalism False? (3 parts) ... and will study it more later.

[josephpalazzo]

I haven't watched the video - at 6+ hrs, way too long, so if you watched it, maybe you can summarize it for all of us. Traditionally, the Left wants big government to counter-balance big corporations in order to implement their program, which is to get the underprivileged class get a fairer shake of the wealth. But as witnessed in the last 30 years or so, such policies produce huge deficits, inefficiencies and corruption, without really uplifting the poverty level. While the Right wants to reduce government - in the US, this is known as "bleeding the beast". They want no part in welfare program, universal health care, a department of education, or even an environmental agency - let the free market take care of all that, sort of. So the discussion boils over between: creating wealth (from the Right) and reducing inequality (from the Left) as to which one is better. From my point of view, society must do both, why is I'm never going to be totally on the right, or totally on the left. Political ideology is just as bad as religious ideology: you box yourself in a corner, and whether you stand on the Right or the Left, most likely you will react to events with a knee-jerk reaction. You see plenty of that on this forum...  :-)