The democrats used t be the power for underpowered working class people of all races uniting to not get fucked over by the boss. The consciousness of the left was housed in Union Halls and in the words of labour organizers, Now it seems as if all the left cares about is advancing the cause of the same "fuck you. got mine" capitalism as much as possible and putting little bandaids on the inevitable issues (Like our now guaranteed mass die off due to Climate change and Peak Oil) or shit like same sex marriage
What the fuck happened!? Why is the Left so thoroughly co-opted?
Not necessarily in order: Soviet Union collapses, commies have to reinvent themselves, they identify the proletariat not as the messiah but the villain, are bought by capitalists.
Commodified revolution ensues.
Aaron Wilson
I aint talking about commies though, I'm talking about left leaning democratic movements
Fucking John Oliver snickers at working class people with no job who latch onto whatever thing gives them hope and liberals yuck it up while a huge group of people get so ignored they go fucking crazy
Camden Diaz
It started buying the media picture of itself that it was intellectually superior while knowing it wasn't what it believed to be so.
Imposter syndrome, and low self esteem came from the bleeding hearts leaving them readily manipulated by those who sought power, and the contest was not won by the swiftest or the smartest, but those who could raise the most funds and who were the most brutal.
So here we stand today with hillary clinton on top of the mountain of fearful bleeding hearts who hate themselves for not being the promise they believed they should have been.
Bentley Reyes
>I aint talking about commies though, I'm talking about left leaning democratic movements Such as? What anti-soviet leftists could you be talking about? Did they even exist? Why would you renounce being funded by the USSR?
Don't you realize that I can't find a single leftist that isn't an apologist for Holodomor, anti-semitism during Stalin's reign, and Socialism in One Country?
Brayden Morris
>All leftists are tankies
That's like saying all Capitalists support the British empire and the Holocaust
Samuel Phillips
Prosperity during the 50s and 60s happened. They went from working class union socialists to edgy hedonists because they could.
Kevin Brown
The democrats (or "social democrats") were reactionary back then, and they are just as reactionary now.
They always talked about worker's rights, but when it came to passing laws they sided with the bourgeoisie in a heartbeat.
Jeremiah Sanchez
>mfw being a reactionary and reading retards using the word reactionary to mean "shit I don't like"
Sebastian Lee
>Hitler was a capitalist The Nazis weren't left wing but they were collectivist as fuck.
Lincoln Turner
The truth is that capitalist policies are good for society. The left wing mistake is to see intentions as being results. Sure let the state provide healthcare, education and a minimum income but otherwise leave it to individuals (with anti-trust laws of course). Also taxes and subsidies in the cases of externalities but these things can be seen as making markers freer. Don't forget about the traditional roles of the state as well.
Joseph Nelson
>What the fuck happened!?
Republicans outlawed labor unions?
Ayden White
>MUH UNIONS Unions are overrated as fuck. They can be good and bad but people tend to attribute all wage increases to unions and not to increasing productivity. Unions can lead to unemployment and lower wages for everyone else when they keep wages above the market clearing level. In this case they are no better than a cartel.
Leo Jenkins
All I did was answer OP's question. You mad?
See Germany for an example of how unions and corporations can both profit. Or are you really going to defend CEO salaries?
Christian Evans
Leftists used to be dillusioned in their economic ideas. After many examples of failure most finally conceded defeat but they had to adapt. The Frankfurt School and KGB infiltration of the US school system allowed them that ability to adopt into the cultural marxist shitfest that exists today.
>TLDR: Marxist economics was wrong and they learned the hard way, Social Marxism is also wrong but they have yet to realize this yet.
Nolan Allen
OP is obviously Euro or Canadian.
>labour
So don't come up in here with your American definitions of "left." This thread is basically dead in the water anyway.
Liam Rogers
>Union greed drove jobs out of the country
FTFY
Austin Butler
Citations? Proof? Or did you hear it on /pol/?
I will bury you in cases of the GOP killing unions, can you do the same with the point you made?
Adrian King
During the Cold War, both the US and the USSR were hostile to middle ground states, and basically demanded every country pick a side. The USSR memed hard that they were the one and only true gommunism because they didn't want other forms of gommunism undermining them. The USA memed the USSR was the only form of communism to suppress labor movements, and like the USSR wanted to make everything a black and white dichotomy. To this day, you still have Americans think that the USSR was the one and only form of gommunism because both belligerent super powers memed it, but for different reasons.
Levi Rodriguez
>GOP killing unions
Detroit has not had a Republican mayor since 1962
Brayden Lewis
>muh white working class they don't have it bad. they aren't killed by the police. They aren't discriminated against. They aren't sent to prison because the court has a racial bias.
Gabriel Perry
They don't have a voice in government
They are the last group that you can be intolerant towards
They are the only demographic in America that's quality of life and life expectancy is going DOWN
They are the only demographic in America that has rising drug addiction
but lol their dum lol no cultur john oliver is so funee guize
Lucas Watson
>they don't have it bad. lmao >They aren't discriminated against lmao
Charles Sanders
>I will bury you in cases of the GOP killing unions, can you do the same with the point you made? >inb4 the Mexican proposed, bipartisan (though primarily Democrat) passed NAFTA is evidence of the GOP killing Unions Unions killed unions. They didn't need any help from either political party. The second they became legal extortion rackets, they fucked themselves.
Easton Barnes
>they aren't killed by the police >yet they're killed more by police than niggers >they aren't discriminated against >yet college and job applications, and military promotion tests are denied solely because of their skin color >they aren't sent to prison because the court has a racial bias >and niggers aren't either because evidence is the only rule in a court of law Take your sociology department talking points and fuck off to your failed Bernie office.
Tyler Rivera
The American Left pretty much shattered when Obama was elected because they all thought he'd be a an actual game changer instead of just Bush's third and fourth term on everything except for the half-assed healthcare reform.
Couple that with the internet allowing for massive echo chambers (like /pol/ for alt-right stuff, for instance) and you have a recipe for the loudest most persistent fucks to take over.
Levi Lewis
They have nothing left to fight for, so now their stuck shitting over the little things.
Luke Green
The Left was never really supper powerful to start with.
Outside of New England and a few states out west and up north, the country has a strong authoritarian streak since the time of colonization.
Our electoral system is easy to co-opt, since there is no proportional representation in the congress. The winner takes all system assures there will never be meaningful third parties that can force the elites to compromise.
Remember, the most progressive reforms ever enacted nationally were made possible by FDR, who was one of the establishment elites. He likely did it, in part, as a way to forestall a revolution by the socialists who were gaining power back then (look up Eugene Debbs). The New Deal pretty much saved the oligarchs from themselves.
Jose Ward
lol. at the national level man. google Reagan and the Air Traffic Controllers union.
Grayson Torres
nonsense. They do have it bad. They just don't have it bad in the same way blacks and Hispanics do.
If the white working class has it so good, why has the life expectancy for middle-aged white Americans gone down? No other demographic in the USA is experiencing a DECREASE in longevity, except for working class, middle aged whites. So can the bullshit.
They got hijacked by people who are only interested in identity politics. Instead of caring about workers rights they now care about gender quotas and unisex toilets.
You have people on the left who applaud female CEOs as a sign of progressivism when they should have the class-awareness to realise that it doesn't matter whether it's a male or female CEO that fucks them over.
The pathetic state of the political left is the final triumph of capitalism.
Sebastian Baker
OP, ignore the retarded /pol/ crossovers shitting up this thread. I've got what you need.
Vox actually ran a really good article on this a little while ago.
1. Leftist intellectuals and revolutionaries have almost always been elitist in practice if not theory. You really think most over-educated Communists and socialist grad students ever truly identified with much less cared about some dirty peasants and factory workers? There have always been genuine true believers of course, but there usually the first ones devoured after the revolution or shunted off to be loyal political commissars.
2. The old-school left focused on economic issues and equality above all else; most of their "solutions" were retarded at best and soul-crushingly evil at worse.
3. The New Left (started after the end of the Second World War, had it's glory days back in the 60's and 70's) realized that the working-classes of their countries were culturally traditionalist/conservative and reasonably prosperous. The New Left switched to dismantling traditional cultures and mores' promoting certain kinds of tribalism (feminism, Third World nationalism, non-Western religions, non-white racial identity politics, LGBT movements, etc.) while discouraging and being hostile to other kinds (white racialism, traditional gender roles, Western Christianity, and Western nationalism).
4. Businesses started to realize (particularly within the past decade) that they could push socially "progressive" policies to earn moral brownie points from social activists and essentially distract them from the usual corporate fuckery.
Charles Cook
The Left in the West lost because the left in the West won. To be more clear, the left achieved many if not all of it's policy objectives ,workers rights and protections, fair wages, etc. These successes made life better for everyone, but once enough time passed from when these gains were made, people just kind of assumed that these were the natural state of things and forgot that they were the result of specific policies that had to be maintained. Thus they grew to resent the regulations and sacrifices (taxes) that they no longer understood were the enablers of the good times. The right seized on this forgetfulness and tricked everyone into thinking these regulations and taxes were actually used to enrich various boogeymen like "the blacks" or "commie intellectuals".
