Somewhat new here. Can this board be described as classically left? What do people think about the New Left...

Somewhat new here. Can this board be described as classically left? What do people think about the New Left. Where the hell did fat pride, safe spaces, enforced muh privilege theory and all this other strange shit come from? Also, isn't the left pretty much dead in the West? Does being left mean the same as being socialist?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
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Why would your entire position on an issue be classified by an undefined label?

Left wing economics is the issue, not some crazy nonsense about being on the left.

That was the 60s and a response to capitalism's contradictions.

A supposed alternative to class struggle is identity politics. Liberals use it to try to get sympathy for their pet projects while ignoring capitalism's root contradictions which always lash out at the working class to bring them to heel.

Nope. Suppressed. Capital can't kill its shadow.

We live in capitalism. The left would be alternatives to capitalism while the right is the supporters of the current system. Don't use the entire left/right dichotomy to merely mean the opponents you demonize and you should be fine.

Anyway, being left in capital can be anarchist, socialist, or progressive liberal while other groupings exist and cooperate in a number of ways.

Progressive liberals. Most I know who identify themselves with that label don't seek to provide an alternative to capitalism. Liberals are on the right. How are they left?

More or less. We're mostly Leninists and anarcho-communists here, although we have a fair share of other libertarian socialists here too (market socialists, democratic socialists) as well as a few leftcoms.

It's shit.

From the void left by a left that suffered huge defeats in the west, both from improper strategy and organization, as well as red scare and repression of all radical leftist ideology because of the rise of socialism in the east. Being relatively well-off under Keynesian social democracy in western Europe and the New Deal in the US, the left there basically became preocuppied with tackling the social rather than the economic. The communist tradition was thrown out of the window in exchange for post-colonialism and social liberal idealism.

Pretty much. The most radical things left are old social democrats like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, neo-Keynesians like Bernie Sanders in the US and a few meme Trot parties that do nothing but alienate working people with their purism and sectarianism.

Depends. "Socialism" nowadays, to most people, will basically mean welfare capitalism or social democracy. Socialism won't mean "in favor of worker self-ownership of the means of production", even if that's the original and true definition of the word.

Liberals are reformists. They can give capitalism a pretty face, but eventually they have to make a choice. The only reason I mark a distinction with the types of liberals is that you can have the neoliberals as ushered in by the Thatcher/Reagan Third Way Democrats (or corporate democrats) or you can look towards the FDR type liberals who see the reforms but ignore the revolution that built it.

They're still given the liberal label, it's just that you can see the different tensions with them and what they feel is the direction for society.

Well yes and there are those on the Left that emphasize evolution (reform) over revolution but what the Leftists have in common is that they wish to abolish capitalism. Social democrats, for example, wish to place to chains and locks over capitalism to make it "fairer" but wouldn't seek to remove it. This is why Scandinavian countries are considered capitalist, so how is any liberal a leftist?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

The crowd is diverse, but the materialists tend to be the most well-represented.

Reformist, divisive trash that misses the whole point.

Liberal intersectionality and all of the silly "post-" movements that became mainstream in the late Twentieth Century. The New Left with its counterproductive focus on culture started incorporating it into their shit which resulted in the kind of goofy nonsense that you hear the leddit "socialists" spout.

Yes.

No, the anarkiddies count as left as well, and "socialism" is such a broad category that it includes liberals like Corbyn and Sanders.

Anarchists are socialists and Bernie Sanders, at least defined by his own campaign, is not socialist. Same hold true for Corbyn.

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