The Essence of the Left

I have found this great assessment of the Left ideology by the Russian blogger Kirill Kaminets. Here is the assessment itself:

"A leftist wants the society to be ruled by those who Know the Truth. Not only they have to know the truth but they also should be righteous. I've already wrote that left singularity, the highest degree of left idea purified from everything unnecessary, incarnated in Zhang Xianzhong who was the leader of peasant rebellion in China in 17th century. First he robbed the rich and gave their riches to poor. Then he was killing (and sometimes eating) rich people as a punishment for exploiting the poor. Then he eradicated state employees and other "intelligentsia" -- because they did not support his ideas enough, and, of course, for the lack of righterousness.

And what those ideas were? Honest leftism spelled to the last letter. «Left singularity». Zhang Xianzhong's ideology was written on the «Stele of seven kills», he formulated it himself:

The heaven gives to men countless goods.
Men have not anything to thank the heaven.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.


Change «Heaven» to «Nature» or «Society» (or whatever is popular in the leftist trend now) and you get a universal manifesto for every left movement in history. After «intelligentsia» Xianzhong moved to poor people whom he cut arms, legs and ears for insufficient gratefullness. A little later he started to flay his own comrades. Xianzhong dispeopled the province Sichuan. From three millions of people only several tens of thousand have left alive. Everyone else he exterminated with artificial hunger, torture and mass murders.

If you think leftists need sound ideologies, mass society or industrialization to reach heights of Pol Pot, you are mistaken. If you think that the goal of left movements is something other than 殺 殺 殺 殺 殺 殺 殺 you are also mistaken. In the left system of morality the price of human is based on his «piety». The more one hates himself and others of his kind - the better. To harm your own social class to please the masses is good. To betray you nation by supporting other -- even better. As far as I see it, currently the highest degree of leftism is environmentalism: when a leftist tzadik reaches the level of self-condemnation when he begins to hate the very biological essense of his kind and values plants and animals more than humans."

So, let's discuss. I think he have covered most points of Leftism. What do you think? Is there anything to add?

This post gave me cancer.

The rightist wants mankind to transcend itself, the centrist wants mankind to be mankind and the leftist wants mankind to transcend nothing.

Thanks to this post, it is now metastasizing.

Pretty much everything including Social-Nationalism and Fascism (which from reactionary point of view are typical left movements).

Take, for example, environmentalism with its obsession with climate change. If they were given real power they would seriously pursue stopping using oil and natural gas which would quickly crash world economy and kill billions.

No they wouldn't. Next strawman please.

Like fascism, the use of force is purely leftist, I assume.

Is this sarcasm?

Not true at all leaders will emerge through sheer force of character or charisma, to stop that from happening and maintain equality you will need force.

So? Simply being charismatic isn't wrong. It's the creation of violent hierarchies that is wrong. And must be abolished, by force if necessary (hint: it's necessary).

Inequality doesn't need to be maintained, it's the natural state.

It's a (silly) Marxist myth that our modern liberal state "enforces" class distinctions and uses violence and threats of violence to "maintain inequality". The opposite is true. Our state exists to protect the weak from the strong. To limit the power of the strong.

The "natural state" is not one where "egalitarian mobs" take everything for themselves. It's one where the strongest (and eventually the smartest) lord over everyone else.

Yea, no. Personal property is impossible without the state. Look at your average hunter gatherer society for an example.

Haha, good one. The defense of private property matches Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. I just drove by a "private property killing field" next to a Walmart. Thousands of skulls piled up.

Haha. Oh, Marxists. Don't ever change.

Meanwhile, 25,000 people will die of starvation today because of global capitalism and private property. But tell me more about how crapitalism dindu nuffin.

Pinochet over decades killed less people than Stalin did in one day in Katyn. And what "enemies of the nation" are being killed in the defense of private property? What are you smoking? Where are the private property killing fields? The private property GULAG?

Yes, Marxist-Leninism is the only form of communism or leftism. Anarcho-communism don't real. Makhno who?

You want your killing fields? Go to the third world. There you will find the killing fields of capitalism.

As Gandhi said, "Poverty is the worst form of violence."
 
So? Simply being charismatic isn't wrong. It's the creation of violent hierarchies that is wrong. And must be abolished, by force if necessary (hint: it's necessary).

I never said it was wrong, once leaders emerge hierarchies will develop that is a good thing providing it's built encourage certain values. You display nothing more then violent jealousy.
 
I never said it was wrong, once leaders emerge hierarchies will develop that is a good thing providing it's built encourage certain values. You display nothing more then violent jealousy.

No, hierarchies are inherently bad. No man is better than me; no man is worse. If you think that entails "jealousy," get your head checked.
 
No, hierarchies are inherently bad. No man is better than me; no man is worse. If you think that entails "jealousy," get your head checked.

That is insanity, there can be no way that everyone you have ever met has been your equal in everything. You wish to level society and everyone in it to the lowest point, anyone who has ever achieved anything will be brought down to your level, how is that not jealousy?
 
That is insanity, there can be no way that everyone you have ever met has been your equal in everything.

Careful, any more straw in your arguments and this thread will become a fire hazard.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm:

Spoiler :

Liberal Professor Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is on the war path against socialism. This time he has approached the question, not from the political and economic angle, but from that of an abstract discussion on equality (perhaps the professor thought such an abstract discussion more suitable for the religious and philosophical gatherings which he has addressed?).

“If we take socialism, not as an economic theory, but as a living ideal,” Mr. Tugan declared, “then, undoubtedly, it is associated with the ideal of equality, but equality is a concept ... that cannot be deduced from experience and reason.”

This is the reasoning of a liberal scholar who repeats the incredibly trite and threadbare argument that experience and reason clearly prove that men are not equal, yet socialism bases its ideal on equality. Hence, socialism, if you please, is an absurdity which is contrary to experience and reason, and so forth!

Mr. Tugan repeats the old trick of the reactionaries: first to misinterpret socialism by making it out to be an absurdity, and then to triumphantly refute the absurdity! When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability.

It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Dühring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes. But when professors set out to refute socialism, one never knows what to wonder at most—their stupidity, their ignorance, or their unscrupulousness.

Since we have Mr. Tugan to deal with, we shall have to start with the rudiments.

By political equality Social-Democrats mean equal rights, and by economic equality, as we have already said, they mean the abolition of classes. As for establishing human equality in the sense of equality of strength and abilities (physical and mental), socialists do not even think of such things.

Political equality is a demand for equal political rights for all citizens of a country who have reached, a certain age and who do not suffer from either ordinary or liberal-professorial feeble-mindedness. This demand was first advanced, not by the socialists, not by the proletariat, but by the bourgeoisie. The well-known historical experience of all countries of the world proves this, and Mr. Tugan could easily have discovered this had he not called “experience” to witness solely in order to dupe students and workers, and please the powers that be by “abolishing” socialism.

The bourgeoisie put forward the demand for equal rights for all citizens in the struggle against medieval, feudal, serf-owner and caste privileges. In Russia, for example, unlike America, Switzerland and other countries, the privileges of the nobility are preserved to this day in all spheres of political life, in elections to the Council of State, in elections to the Duma, in municipal administration, in taxation, and many other things.

Even the most dull-witted and ignorant person can grasp the fact that individual members of the nobility are not equal in physical and mental abilities any more than are people belonging to the “tax-paying”, “base”, ‘low-born” or “non-privileged” peasant class. But in rights all nobles are equal, just as all the peasants are equal in their lack of rights.

Does our learned liberal Professor Tugan now under stand the difference between equality in the sense of equal rights, and equality in the sense of equal strength and abilities?

We shall now deal with economic equality. In the United States of America, as in other advanced countries, there are no medieval privileges. All citizens, are equal in political rights. But are they equal as regards their position in social production?

No, Mr. Tugan, they are not. Some own land, factories and capital and live on the unpaid labour of the workers; these form an insignificant minority. Others, namely, the vast mass of the population, own no means of production and live only by selling their labour-power; these are proletarians.

In the United States of America there is no aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat enjoy equal political rights. But they are not equal in class status: one class, the capitalists, own the means of production and Jive on the unpaid labour of the workers. The other class, the wage-workers, the proletariat, own no means of production and live by selling their labour-power in the market.

The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.

This explanation of socialism has been necessary to enlighten our learned liberal professor, Mr. Tugan, who may, if he tries hard, now grasp the fact that it is absurd to expect equality of strength and abilities in socialist society.

In brief, when socialists speak of equality they always mean social equality, equality of social status, and not by any means the physical and mental equality of individuals.

The puzzled reader may ask: how could a learned liberal professor have forgotten these elementary axioms familiar to anybody who has read any exposition of the views of socialism? The answer is simple: the personal qualities of present-day professors are such that we may find among them even exceptionally stupid people like Tugan. But the social status of professors in bourgeois society is such that only those are allowed to hold such posts who sell science to serve the interests of capital, and agree to utter the most fatuous nonsense, the most unscrupulous drivel and twaddle against the socialists. The bourgeoisie will forgive the professors all this as long as they go on “abolishing” socialism.
 
Meanwhile, 25,000 people will die of starvation today because of global capitalism and private property.

I think that more people die of starvation each day in countries which are not capitalist.

There are a few marxist countries in the world, quite famous for chronic food shortages.

You want your killing fields? Go to the third world. There you will find the killing fields of capitalism.

There is really no capitalism in the 3rd world, so you can't blame it for poverty of the 3rd world.

For example most of Africa has had communist or even more radical leftist governments since decolonization.
 
Careful, any more straw in your arguments and this thread will become a fire hazard.

So you have encountered people who are better then you at something, so there people who're better then you and more suited to certain tasks (whatever that may be). You were just talking a load of nonsense.
 
I think that more people die of starvation each day in countries which are not capitalist.

There are a few marxist countries in the world, quite famous for chronic food shortages.

There is really no capitalism in the 3rd world, so you can't blame it for poverty of the 3rd world.

For example most of Africa has had communist or even more radical leftist governments since decolonization.

More reactionary strawmen. No one light any matches please, or you'll send us all up to heaven in a pillar of light and smoke.

The no true capitalist fallacy is the oldest argument by apologists of oppression, but the fact is that the imperialism of Africa, past and present, is a direct product of capitalism.

So you have encountered people who are better then you at something, so there people who're better then you and more suited to certain tasks (whatever that may be). You were just talking a load of nonsense.

Did you even read the linked piece? I even copied it here for you.
 
Personal property is impossible without the state. Look at your average hunter gatherer society for an example.

The most primitive societies don't have personal property only because they don't have ANY property at all.

That was the condition of most primitive peoples such as the Fuegians, the Bushmen, the Tasmanians, or the Veddas.

But it would be terribly wrong to claim that hunter gatherer societies had no hierarchy. Have you ever read anything about Australian Aborigines? Their society was HIGHLY hierarchical, with the elderly males being at the very top. It was literally a "geriatric dictatorship" - old males were taking all young women as wives, as the result of which young males had no wives. Unless old males renounced their old wives - then young males could take them. Moreover, Australian Aborigines practiced polyandry - one young woman could be a wife of several old husbands, but she was still treated as their property (women had no rights). So such a wife was actually being a co-property of several old men. Sometimes it happened that young boys tried to steal young girls (wifes) from the elders, and sometimes the elders would forgive them and allow them to marry. But in general that "geriatric domination" was never overcome, until the European colonization.

the fact is that the imperialism of Africa, past and present, is a direct product of capitalism.

The utter failure of African states like Zimbabwe is a product of marxism, not a product of capitalism.

Zimbabwe failed after Mugabe destroyed capitalism and introduced marxism. I cited it because it is the most failed of all states of Africa.

Society of the Easter Island failed after the civil war between the "long-ears" and the egalitarian "short-ears".

The "short-ears" who were basically something like workers & peasants, exterminated the "long-ears" who were the middle & rulling classes. But after exterminating the middle class & the rulling class, "short-ears" proved unable to run the island, and everything just collapsed. They descended into cannibalism... When European sailors visited the island after that war, they found remnants of its once large population, hiding in caves and still eating each other.
 
Did you even read the linked piece? I even copied it here for you.

I skimmed it, it's like an unfunny version of that copy paste of the liberal marxist professor teaching a class and the patriotic republican stands up to him and then the American eagle comes in and cries on the chalk board, after having read that and its many different versions its hard to take what you posted seriously.
But basically it is an injustice to force equality on the unequal, those who can carry a greater burden should have privileges and those who cannot carry the burden should not be expected to.
 
As Gandhi said, "Poverty is the worst form of violence."

In many cases it is a self-inflicted violence. You can't blame your poverty on everyone but yourself.

Many people start poor and end rich, others start rich and end poor. Some also start poor and stay poor, or start rich and stay rich.

Coming back to Africa - Sub-Saharan Africa in post-colonial times was inspired mostly by leftist thinkers and leftist economic models. Educate yourself on this fact. Capitalism is not to be blamed for post-colonial failure of Africa. Had they adopted capitalism, they would have been better off now, actually.

Also take a look at the USA - cities which are ruled by leftist Democrats, fail. Cities in which welfare and trade unions gain influence, cannot sustain industry which simply escapes from such cities to more profitable environments. You just cannot run business that is not generating profit, that's utopia.
 
i skimmed it, it's like an unfunny version of that copy paste of the liberal marxist professor teaching a class and the patriotic republican stands up to him and then the american eagle comes in and cries on the chalk board, after having read that and its many different versions its hard to take what you posted seriously.

+9000! 9000! 9000!
 
"A leftist wants the society to be ruled by those who Know the Truth. Not only they have to know the truth but they also should be righteous."

Perfect description of a rightest.
 
The most primitive societies don't have personal property only because they don't have ANY property at all.

That was the condition of most primitive peoples such as the Fuegians, the Bushmen, the Tasmanians, or the Veddas.

But it would be terribly wrong to claim that hunter gatherer societies had no hierarchy. Have you ever read anything about Australian Aborigines? Their society was HIGHLY hierarchical, with the elderly males being at the very top. It was literally a "geriatric dictatorship" - old males were taking all young women as wives, as the result of which young males had no wives. Unless old males renounced their old wives - then young males could take them. Moreover, Australian Aborigines practiced polyandry - one young woman could be a wife of several old husbands, but she was still treated as their property (women had no rights). So such a wife was actually being a co-property of several old men. Sometimes it happened that young boys tried to steal young girls (wifes) from the elders, and sometimes the elders would forgive them and allow them to marry. But in general that "geriatric domination" was never overcome, until the European colonization.



The utter failure of African states like Zimbabwe is a product of marxism, not a product of capitalism.

Zimbabwe failed after Mugabe destroyed capitalism and introduced marxism. I cited it because it is the most failed of all states of Africa.

Society of the Easter Island failed after the civil war between the "long-ears" and the egalitarian "short-ears".

The "short-ears" who were basically something like workers & peasants, exterminated the "long-ears" who were the middle & rulling classes. But after exterminating the middle class & the rulling class, "short-ears" proved unable to run the island, and everything just collapsed. They descended into cannibalism... When European sailors visited the island after that war, they found remnants of its once large population, hiding in caves and still eating each other.

Yea, I'm not saying all hunter-gatherer societies were utopian models sans any hierarchy. But on balance they had a lot less hierarchy than modern states do; and anyways my initial argument wasn't about hierarchy, it was about private property.

But, I reject your argument that hunter gatherer societies have no property. This is patently false. I think you are confusing private property with personal property.

As for Zimbabwe being "Marxist," I would like to remind reactionary trolls, that, once again, Marxism is not same boogeyman to just hurl at any government you don't like. Words have meanings. Learn them.

As for Rapa Nui, the only thing I've learned from that is that you are woefully ignorant of the history of the island.

I skimmed it, it's like an unfunny version of that copy paste of the liberal marxist professor teaching a class and the patriotic republican stands up to him and then the American eagle comes in and cries on the chalk board, after having read that and its many different versions its hard to take what you posted seriously.
But basically it is an injustice to force equality on the unequal, those who can carry a greater burden should have privileges and those who cannot carry the burden should not be expected to.

Ah, so you didn't read it. Go ahead, please do so. It'll only take a few minutes. Or at least read this: It's not about equality of abilities, it's about equality of rights.

In many cases it is a self-inflicted violence. You can't blame your poverty on everyone but yourself.

Ah, the ol' conservative axiom that poverty is a choice. You know, objectively. Because Science (TM). Nope, nothing to do with capitalists monopolizing the means of production, forcing you to work for them with the threat of starvation, and then stealing from you by extracting surplus labor. None of that is relevant!
 
But, I reject your argument that hunter gatherer societies have no property.

Nomadic hunter-gatherers with primitive technology who are frequently moving from place to place tend to have almost no property.

They have only as much as they can take with them, using two hands and their own back (unless they carry a baby on their back).

Ah, the ol' conservative axiom that poverty is a choice.

Sometimes (not always) it is. Patton wrote about Sicilians that they are poor because they don't mind it, and they don't like to work.

There are many people who simply don't feel the greed for money. Having a full stomach and a TV to watch is enough for them.

capitalists monopolizing the means of production, forcing you to work for them

One cannot properly use means of production in a non-hierarchical way. Someone has to manage everything, and to organize it.

And you aren't working "for them", but for yourself - because you get paid for your work! It is a mutually beneficial contract.
 
A rightist tends to find flaws in humanity. Hence he accepts them and forgives them, and puts great eminence to those individuals who can transcend their flaws, knowing not all humans can hope to equal them.

The leftist wants humanity to be flawless and believes this possible in his lifetime. The lack of it is a great injustice and so he cannot fathom its acceptance. Yet those most successful in advancing this agenda, showcase mankind's greatest flaws of all.
 
Nomadic hunter-gatherers with primitive technology who are frequently moving from place to place tend to have almost no property.

They have only as much as they can take with them, using two hands and their own back (unless they carry a baby on their back).

Oh, good, we agree they have property then. Moving on.

A rightist tends to find flaws in humanity. Hence he accepts them and forgives them, and puts great eminence to those individuals who can transcend their flaws, knowing not all humans can hope to equal them.

The leftist wants humanity to be flawless and believes this possible in his lifetime. The lack of it is a great injustice and so he cannot fathom its acceptance. Yet those most successful in advancing this agenda, showcase mankind's greatest flaws of all.

(strawmanning intensifies)
 
It's not about equality of abilities, it's about equality of rights.

What do you mean by equality of rights? Equality of opportunities and equality before the law? This will not give you a result where everybody is truly equal in everything, due to lack of equality of abilities and - even more importantly - of will. Not everybody is determined to do something that others do.

Currently in most countries of the so called Western World you have equality of rights and equality before the law. What else do you want?

Oh, good, we agree they have property then.

Watch "Naked and Afraid" on Discovery Channel to see what kind of property they have.
 
No, you don't have equality of rights. Money gives you rights that others don't have.

This is not a difficult concept.
 
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