Leftism

Left Unity isn't about being ride or die together, it's about aligning on issues you can and discussing issues you can't. Marxists and Anarchists, for example, have a different end goal in mind. Marxists want a centrally planned, publicly owned economy with a democratically controlled government, while Anarchists want a horizontal, decentralized network of cooperatives and Mutual Aid Networks. You're going to run into disagreements, because their analysis of Capitalism has different conclusions and as such their end goals are different.

That's why we need to work together on things we do align on, like Palestinian liberation, anti-fascism, and anti-Capitalism.

We should also read more theory. Having a better understanding of our problems and how we believe they can be fixed is the key to any struggle. I keep a "Read Theory, Darn It!" beginner reading list on Marxism if anyone wants it, let me know if you have any questions.

We can hopefully all agree that genocide is bad and funding apartheid is never acceptable

This isn't expressly leftist content, but I recently found this video thought provoking. It's by a UK guy who studied history at university and now works on his family's farm. He explores the peculiar situation we have where (in his view, which is in accord with my own anecdata) UK farmers and other rural workers are overwhelmingly in favour of a socialist agricultural policy, but they vote for right wing parties.

My views would not be popular,

I continue to vote blue no matter who.

But I feel like the knee jerk reactions cause too many "babies to be thrown out with the bath water"

We expect perfection, we're against perverts and deviants who believe they have a higher power on their side that blesses their"leadership"to get away with whatever they want.

Unfortunately, I think this is herding cats.

I wish I felt otherwise.

If someone didn’t say thing A, but you’re pretending they did so you can make a big fuss about how they’re wrong about thing A when they actually said thing B, please don’t do that.

In fact, in general, it’s not good to try to “win” the conversation. If you said your thing, and they said their thing, and you all had your chance to understand it and make any counter arguments and ask questions, then the mission is accomplished. Not everyone has to see things the same way, just understand each other.

I look at it this way: Republicans have been sticking to their guns with consistent messaging for decades, no matter how crazy people thought they were. Rather than trying to “court moderates,” the Dems need to come up with a properly progressive platform and FUCKING STICK TO IT like the GOP did for all those years. Their messaging needs to be consistent and constant.

What I'm really driving at, is how can we have a shared culture that is safe for Marxists, anarchists, and people who would define themselves as Liberal? That was uncomfortable to type, but in order to affect material change we have to learn to speak each other's languages and treat each other with empathy, while remaining open minded and learning from each other. It doesn't advance any cause to dunk on each other for Internet points.

The tricky part is where is the line drawn? Some 'anarchists' are just accelerationists. Some MLs are just Soviet flavored conservatives. Some Liberals value the system itself more than marginalized people.

I propose that the shared value we all have is empathy. Regardless of how you felt about voting for Kamala - or whether you feel the system must be improved or destroyed - if you want to see the lives of marginalized people (and by extension, all of us) improve, we should be able to find common ground.

I'm down for the conversation. Commenting so I can follow what others have to say. The US and the world need to stop whipsawing back and forth ever few years. It doesn't benefit anyone but the extremely wealthy, which is an extreme minority.

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
— Groucho Marx

I am not doing left unity. Sure there are some common grounds, but most often there are also clear incompatibilities. I do not think someone calling themself leftist is enough for me to work with them.

Instead I want to be able to agree or compromise on these points:

• shared vision for the future
• what we want to do in a practical sense
• preferences for managing relationships(like how to organize, etc)

Of course this results in a pretty limited range of folks/groups I am happy to work with. In my case its mostly anarchists. But in singular contexts(like antifascist action and mutual aid) or in projects of limited scope like organizing a demonstration the alignement of these points is often enough for me to consider it.