Right? Left! Left? Right!

[luiz]

But compared to 0 seats, 2 is gigantic.

No doubt, but it was not like the "working class" abandoned socialist parties and voted far-right. The far-right did not have that many votes! The explanation for the socialist defeat must be sought elsewhere. I have my guesses, but lets not threadjack further.

 

[Fifty]

I just showed your post to my wife, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law and they still can't stop laughing.
I reckon you will become some sort of humourist super-hero around here. Please check your e-mail carefully the coming days for invitations to humour festivals down here.
PS: You may quit you day job any time!

Could you elaborate on this? I am good friends with a 68 year old Polish woman and she is moved to tears every time she talks about how bad things were in Poland, for example, having to live on nothing but dog food for over a month at a time because that was all that was available.

I can't imagine why she would lie. She is far from wealthy, a member of the working class in America, and will go on and on and on for hours about how much better things are here.

Is she lying? Is her situation atypical, and if so, what evidentiary support can you bring to the claim that her situation is atypical? She says it is true of everyone in Poland that she knew.

I'm not being accusatory--I'm genuinely perplexed as to how to answer these questions. Thanks!

 

[aelf]

But it wasn't the BNP who won, it was the Conservatives. The BNP vote was not that big, really.

I didn't say the BNP won. I don't know how you read that. But a large if not the larger part of the BNP base is in the working class.

Actually, I could probably say the same about why some of them voted Tory this time. The BNP is just a better example.

 

[luiz]

I didn't say the BNP won. I don't know how you read that. But a large if not the larger part of the BNP base is in the working class.

Actually, I could probably say the same about why some of them voted Tory this time. The BNP is just a better example.

As I said to Huyana Capac, the BNP (and similars throughout Europe) is not the reason why traditional socialist parties lost. If that's not what you were trying to imply, my bad.

 

[aelf]

As I said to Huyana Capac, the BNP (and similars throughout Europe) is not the reason why traditional socialist parties lost. If that's not what you were trying to imply, my bad.

No, what I'm talking about is essentially how workers' parties lost their support base, not exactly saying that it's all because another party stole their votes.

 

[Perfection]

I can't imagine why she would lie.

She probably made it up so that you would still visit with her and she could still drink in your soulful eyes.

 

[amadeus]

I just asked you a civil question.

And I gave a civil answer. Unfortunately, that's when you decided to start belittling my* comments

*Again, I did not post the story of being a newspaper editor in communist Poland, I was referencing it, as opposed to your rosy account of the Soviet puppet regime.

You might answer it or refrain to do so without any further ado. I don't recall last time I voiced any strong opinion about Taiwan either, but that is irrelevant. It seems to me that: YOU FORGOT POLAND!
Also note well that my question was in two parts and that you for some reason chose to ignorance the second part of it. Interesting...

I've already answered this with regards to both; the intellectually lazy fallacy of saying that you're somehow more enlightened simply by the grace of being in the country 20 years after communist rule ended and that the Polish parliamentary results showed a landslide win for non-socialist/communist parties.

And finally, considering your age, level of education, life experience and posts I am convinced that my knowledge generally surpasses yours.

Well, you already seem to be convinced of many things that aren't so... add this one to the list.

And moreover, I don't think your knowledge about this very topic, Poland, is exactly impressing.

By "impressing", do you mean delusional enough to think that the Polish want a return to communism?

So I propose that we don't discuss this further and return to the topic of the thread. Because to be frank, this is embarassing. And not the most for me, I am afraid.

While a majority of CFC-OT'ers may not agree with my particular viewpoints regarding a variety of issues, it would seem that most OT'ers are uniformly historically opposed to the communist regimes ruling Eastern Europe, save for a couple Russophiles and disillusioned teenage "Marxists".

 

[potatokiosk]

I know very little about Poland, but it looks like their economy overall is doing better than it was under its Communist government. However, I'm surprised to find that Poland's agricultural sector employs sixteen percent of the labor force but only produces four percent of the GDP, and Wikipedia claims that over half of farm households in Poland are essentially at subsistence level, so I suppose there is room for criticism of Poland's economic performance.

 

[Yeekim]

I just showed your post to my wife, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law and they still can't stop laughing.

Might your parents in law have been some sort of party functionaries with an access to "foreign currency stores"?

I admit I don't know a whole lot about Poland, but at least in Estonia, temporary, unpredictable shortages of /any basic consumer good/ were common, at least towards the end of the regime (80-s) and nothing laughworthy (is that a word?).

As my mother once put it: "today you go to the store to get what you need; in these times you went to see what they've got".

Although I must say that Fifty's story about "survival on dog food" seems somewhat suspicious.
1) While some (not all!) foodstuffs were of terrible quality and might probably be derogatorily called "dog food" as of today, specially manufactured doggy food was, iirc, a concept entirely unknown in USSR. Maybe Poland was different, though? .
2) People were indeed frequently challenged with situation where a local "supermarket" was only supplied with two weeks old mincemeat, bread, noodles, rotten cabbages and caramel bonbons, whereas e.g. sugar or potatoes were impossible to find. However the situation described seems somewhat extreme for any postwar period.

 

[jessiecat]

No, what I'm talking about is essentially how workers' parties lost their support base, not exactly saying that it's all because another party stole their votes.

The fact is that most "workers parties" are losing credibility with their working class base as they attempt to "modernize" ie. adopt capitalist strategies to the public sector. A prime example is the "New Labour" project over the past 12 years which has sold off public services like gas, water, electricity, transport etc. to private corporations, often foriegn. While financial service industries have seen their profits soar through govt. deregulation the gap between rich and poor has widened considerably. All that, coupled with New Labour's increasingly authoritarian nature, has alienated it's traditional voter base who now see it less of a friend of the working classes but it's enemy. It's not surprising that the BNP profits from some of this alienation in gaining a few isolated seats in disenchanted inner city areas even though the actual size of its core of supporters has not increased significantly at all.

 

[Richard Cribb]

I will make this short and sweet.
This is not a thread about Poland present and past and I am not going to turn it into one.
Consequently, I am not going to answer any of the posts concerning this topic. Moreover, if somebody post anymore about it, I am going to have this thread closed.
Sorry for that, but enough is enough.
I only need to comment on this one below.

Might your parents in law have been some sort of party functionaries with an access to "foreign currency stores"?

No. Both my parents-in-law come from reactionary Baltic families (you might know something about this phenomena) and they were never close to any party affiliation.
They have no such tall tales to tell anyway, and claim that things have become more difficult for the poor.
Terribly sorry for that too.
Could we now please return to the agenda of the day, please?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Ah, back to the question in the OP, I must say that the so-called leftists on this board should NOT be included in the political right. The political right as it is defined today is NOT the populist capitalists of old, attempting to expand commerce by encouraging small business and innovative business practices, but rather are a group interested in denying popular entry into the system of capital that can make life better for all of us. All other definitions I see on this thread so far are quite outdated and incorrect.

My $0.02,
SR

 

[holy king]

this amount of post-modern randdomness blows me away.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Hey man... there is no left or right. Those are concepts of the modernists. This is the post-modern era, and such "labels" don't apply.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

this amount of post-modern randdomness blows me away.

Thanks. I had to read the original post to remember exactly what this thread was about. the OP claimed that people who call themselves leftists are actually rightists in some century old definition. I had to look it up, and apparently what we call left and right have very little bearing on the dictionary definition. So I'm trying to bring it back to the original split, which honestly is hard to understand.

I would consider myself pretty centrist, but a bit to the right on fiscal and business issues. Mainly I'm anti-monopolist and pro small business all the way. However the government can help local business, I'm all for it. Today, that means
1. expanding health care support to all the uninsured so they can afford to work for small business owners. The current system traps people in jobs that offer health insurance. That hurts small business since they can't afford to compete with larger corporations.
2. Engage the government in protecting the smaller firms and individuals, invest in ways to share costs that are normally dumped on small business, and expand the public school system to encourage raising the standard of education so businesses can have a larger pool of talent to work with.
3. Interdict business practices that stifle competition.
-In short, incentivise a stronger nation.
However, that puts me on the left if I trust the old definitions I found in the wiki and googol.

 

[potatokiosk]

Okay, if right and left have absolute, non relative definitions, how are they defined? How are people to be categorized? Does it have to do with their political objectives, like whose interests they're advocating or what they consider most important, or are people categorized by the policies they advocate and not the reasoning behind these policies?

For example, if someone prioritizes the well being of the working class, but they're convinced that "laissez-faire" capitalism is what creates the best result for the working class, would they be left or right?

 

[Huayna Capac357]

They'd be right if they support a laissez-faire system. Only socialists, social democrats, and communists are left.

 

[jessiecat]

They'd be right if they support a laissez-faire system. Only socialists, social democrats, and communists are left.

They'd be right if they supported a "let business do what it damn well pleases regardless of the human cost as long as it satisfies personal greed" philosophy.

Only decent caring responsible human beings are left.

 

[Bill3000]

The fact is that most "workers parties" are losing credibility with their working class base as they attempt to "modernize" ie. adopt capitalist strategies to the public sector.

Uh, the leftist parties lost voters before they shifted to the right. That's the reason why they shifted to the right in the first place, in order to stay mainstream. Better to explain why people stopped supporting leftist stuff.

 

[aelf]

The fact is that most "workers parties" are losing credibility with their working class base as they attempt to "modernize" ie. adopt capitalist strategies to the public sector. A prime example is the "New Labour" project over the past 12 years which has sold off public services like gas, water, electricity, transport etc. to private corporations, often foriegn. While financial service industries have seen their profits soar through govt. deregulation the gap between rich and poor has widened considerably. All that, coupled with New Labour's increasingly authoritarian nature, has alienated it's traditional voter base who now see it less of a friend of the working classes but it's enemy. It's not surprising that the BNP profits from some of this alienation in gaining a few isolated seats in disenchanted inner city areas even though the actual size of its core of supporters has not increased significantly at all.

Yeah, I said that too... didn't I?

Uh, the leftist parties lost voters before they shifted to the right. That's the reason why they shifted to the right in the first place, in order to stay mainstream. Better to explain why people stopped supporting leftist stuff.

Both probably happened. It's no news that the right enjoyed a historical upswing during the decline and fall of the big Communist regimes.