Why has Social Justice and Feminism become such Pervasive Topics?

Right, but Marxism was also coined later and no one claims Marx wasn't Left-Wing. And though the term Feminism was coined later, I'd be willing to wager that women wanting to be treated better is older than the term.

The issue here is, again, that Social and Economic Left are frequently kept distinct from eachother. Feminism trends towards the Social Left, whereas things like Single Payer are economic Left.

These terms are ill defined, but they are useful as a term of comparison.

Edit: Of course I get the pagetopper again...

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 15th 2018 at 11:01:14 AM

I did say that Feminism and Civil Rights became conflated with Leftwing politics. I never said they are not Leftwing politics. My point was that the reason they became a part of the Leftwing was because of the nature of Leftwing politics. Leftwing politics is about change.

A specific type of change. Specifically change towards greater equality and equity.

Turning a democracy into a fascist hellscape is a change too, but it's decidedly not Left-wing.

In those cases it's more of a regression to authoritarianism or a less liberal form of democracy with far more limited voting rights.

The rightwing gets a lot of mileage out of nostalgia. It's why they use words like "taking back control".

Edited by M84 on Oct 15th 2018 at 11:34:44 PM

Progressive movements haven’t been immune to embracing changes that aren’t exactly great. Eugenics in the early 1900s is probably the big one, though there are plenty of smaller examples.

I was just thinking of that too.

The embrace of revolutionary ideals also comes from the fact that direct action is by and large the most efficient way to affect long-term social change. In that respect, revolution is direct action writ large.

Not all revolutions have been violent uprisings, though it's the perception in popular literature.

Definitely.

Another great example of that would be TERFs.

One thing to note, though, is that many of these changes that aren't exactly great turn from Left to (extreme) Right as people realize they're not great (in the sense that you won't find many modern progressives who view Eugenics as a legitimate path to progress, whereas pretty much all neo-Nazis and 'race realists' do).

Its kind of ironic as the right if you ever accuse some of them rightfully of being racists for spouting racist rhetoric or letting nazis in their midst go unchecked (or even worse, supporting them) the right will then try to turn the argument back on the left in some kind of broken circular logic that the left were the real racists. This was the case back when Eugenics was a thing but its not the case anymore and now the right has embraced the idea of Eugenics and spout it and ideas based off of it like a broken record.

I do occasionally see racism on the left but it happens more with really muddled issues like cultural appropriation and stuff like that where no one can agree exactly where the line is. The left has a shit ton of infighting from what I have noticed.

Edited by Wispy on Oct 15th 2018 at 9:22:14 AM

Right Wingers weren't Pro Eugenics as well in that time?.

And for Social Justice. I wonder.

What do you think of the Guys thay say that "The left shouldn't ally with the state! The Left should always be about Rebellion, Sexuality and disdain against rules!".

I've seeing it a lot in Latin America. The "real leftists fighting against the neo liberal order".

I think that’s more a function of time than anything else. Like you pointed out earlier, ideas slide from left to right over their lifetime. LGBT rights were once a radical idea, but now many on the right are embracing them, and so on.

The right wing during the Progressive Era was more focused on other stuff. I mean, they were horrifically racist, sure, but everyone was back then so that’s not saying much.

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 15th 2018 at 9:40:50 AM

The Right Wing ended up adopting it, as seen in 30s and 40s Germany.

That seems...overly specific. Are you referring to someone in particular? Sounds like some flavor of Left-Libertarian or Anarchist. Unless...are you asking for a values judgement?

Yeah, very few people from the Progressive Era come off as anything but horrifically racist.

I think that what he means is that our left is known for being uncompromising to death even in cases where dialogue could help them have more reach.

For instance, the Chavez-Maduro regime, despite dragging Venezuela to the mud with its economic policies, will never be critized nor acknowledged as bad by any prominent member of the left because they are “on the same side”; it also gets worse when it comes to the matter of terrorism, with some even going into full apologia.

Needless to say, as a Centre-Left person, it’s as tiring as annoying to hear as you can imagine.

No. I mean the typical Edgy Leftist person that is angry because he can't sexualize others and be seen as the cool rebel.

Is a small group but very vocal. "Brogressivism".

Ah, the Tankie brigade. Of course. Yeah, political tribalism is really annoying, as it puts your tribe above the general good of the populace. I think Maduro defenders are a good example. Just...disown the dude, he's clearly malicious and incompetent as hell.

Although, I'd view that as distinct from being uncompromising, which tends to be more demeaned by people who have nothing to lose in said compromises. Sometimes, a hard line on issues is absolutely necessary.

What do you mean by "sexualize"? I'm actually confused, are you referring to Brogressives and sexism? Until that last post, I thought you'd been talking about the open expression part of LGBTQ pride, or maybe the "free love" hippie-ish crowd.

That kind of people actually exist? I mean, I can understand the typical rebel without a cause who wants to look cool instead of thinking whether or not a rebellion is actually needed but that’s a new type I haven’t heard of before. Clearly I need to hit the streets more often.

Edited by raziel365 on Oct 15th 2018 at 12:39:26 PM

I think is a subset of brogreism in that some of rebel and changer actually have their own bias they dont really want to talk AT ALL.

I mean is not surprising that as general sense, Mao was a very sexist asshole for example.

Also another thing of this tribal loyalty with the left is how lefties all over the world kinda try to pretend venezuela dosent exist at all, even when many soport them.

And finally, does feminism go for colective to individual? I this point I feel social justice discurse actually run the other way arond: they try to dismantle the idea of sociaty being individualistic and that problem afect people in a group basis.

Venezuela is an interesting case, where the Left tends to ignore it (or even apologise in particularly bad cases) while the Right and Center uses it in lieu of an actual argument whenever someone tries to promote Socialist or even Social Democratic policies. Its particularly interesting as an example of how multiple fault points (ham-handed economic policies, nationalism, authoritarianism, incompetence, chauvinism, etc) can combine into a mess greater than the sum of its parts.

Also, I think you misunderstand, I understand what Brogressivism is. It just took me a while to realize that was what Kazuya was referring to.

On feminism, I'd say its rather both. It revolves around the actions of individuals (such as in cases of sexual harassment), and how it groups into the collective whole (structural inadequacies in dealing with sexual assault).

Pretty much.

And I feel social justice is in fact taking a oposite stand to must of american politics: as a general rule america is pretty damn individualistic, which is why you have ideas of the "one good guy with a gun", thinking racism is something only specially bad people do and and obsession with knowing why people do a thing and thinking it excuse for a while.

Almost all pieces feminism though come from social behivor.

Exactly that. Whereas classic American Individualism emphasizes what a single person does and is capable of, the Social Justice movement frequently seeks to deal with societal ills on a large scale, and tackling the consequences of many bad individual actions piling up into something larger. That requires collective pushes for change, something that runs contrary to the American Individualist myth.

Yeah no.

The main reason why neither I nor any of the other socialists I know talk about Venezuela in public anymore is because we were already sick and tired of talking about it when it was only alt-reich trash bringing the topic up.
And we're completely done now that that has somehow leaked to the centrists as well. And now any time we acknowledge publicly that Venezuela is royally fucked and it's a socialist party/politician that's to blame, all the alt-reich garbage people come out of the woodwork to say 'See! Even the socialist cucks themselves admit socialism is cancer!'.

But let's be clear here:
Venezuela's issue isn't simply 'socialism', it's either: Not enough socialism or too much socialism, combined with too much capitalism.

So yeah. ^{Rant-ish explanation} Venezuela's issues are not due to simply 'socialism', because Chavez and Maduro's nationalisation of the Venezuelan oil industry isn't according to socialist principles.
Within a socialist ideological framework nationalisation has a specific purpose: to take industries or services that are too vital to the public well-being to be subject to profit motives and put them into the hands of the government or community so that it can be provided to all and the cost shared equitably. Socialist nationalisation is, as a rule, always done for the public good and non-profit.
What Chavez did, and Maduro continued, was nationalize the Oil Industry and consolidate all private companies therein into one big national oil company... And then ran that for the express purpose of making a profit so they could use those profits to fund all sorts of social programmes, while continuing to keep the majority of all other industries and sectors, even the ones vital to the public, in the country completely private. That's not socialism, that's banana republic-style state capitalism. Far more left wing that the average banana republic, because most of those social programmes are socially progressive, but still.
Venezuela's problem is the result of Chavez and Maduro trying to have their cake and eat it too, by having a system where the majority of the population could enjoy the full extent of free market Capitalism with an extremely low corporate/income tax, while those in need would enjoy the benefits of a socialist welfare state paid for through the sale of Venezuelan oil.
And, like for every Banana Republic, that worked for a short time while the price of the single product they were investing all their efforts into was up. But, also like for every Banana Republic, it all failed horribly once the price went down and there was no other source of income to pay for all that expenditure. And at that point, rather than raising taxes and/or decreasing expenditure, Maduro just started printing more money to try and make up the difference and tried all sorts of half-baked tricks to try and keep inflation down.
But of course, trying to explain this gets you accused of trying to pull a No True Scotsman.

Edited by Robrecht on Oct 15th 2018 at 11:42:13 AM

Holy crap what has this thread become?

In what aspect exactly?

So only Alt-righters and Neo Nazis use Venezuela to show the flaws of Socialism in 90% of it's attempts.

Uh.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Oct 15th 2018 at 5:17:17 AM

The vast, vast majority of the time Venezuela is brought up in conversations about socialism it’s being used as an attempt to discredit the left, even though as Rob pointed out Venezuela’s issues have very little to do with socialism.

So yeah, it’s rarely being discussed in good faith.

What archon spoke, but also note that I didn't say only Alt-Righters and Neo-Nazis bring up Venezuela, I said that they used to be the only ones to bring it up to us and that was always in bad faith.

Nowadays there's lots of centrists who don't know what socialism actually entails who bring it up too, but at this point many people on the left are so tired from how often we've seen it get brought up in bad faith that even when the centrists are genuinely just not informed about socialism it's hard to answer without hostility.