In my case it has been the exact opposite tbh. The more I have to deal with reality there more I wander to the left. I’m kinda ashamed for my edgy centrist years as a teenager. Fuck that guy.
I mean you were eleven. I breifly flirted with it in college and thought it might be a the way to go. This was the long ago libertarian though that would go with legalization of drugs and a citizens income. Even then the philosophy ultimately falls apart. This might be one reason its gotten to where it has as the liberal types realized it won't work and left but the right side of it hung around.
Yeah overall I have become more liberal. I would still say im a bit left of center but of course by modern skewed standards that makes me way liberal. I have seen many of my peers though fall to nutter right levels.
I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.
My mother was a hippy before I was born, marched in every march going when I was a kid. Anti war, greenpeace, Land Rights the works. The last thing she did on her drive to the hospital for what would turn out to be her last time, was post in her postal vote for gay marriage rights. She was 74 years old. You don’t get more conservative as you get older unless you choose to.
This will never stop being weird to me, or at least unfamiliar.
Reason; I was raised by boomers, but they were legitimate 1967 Haight-Ashbury hippies (actually my dad derosed out of Vietnam in '67, so he wasn’t in SF until '68, but leave us not quibble) who even now, though both my parents are dead, are still far to the left of me, and I’m basically a Bernie-style democratic socialist.
To put in perspective, while my parents weren’t actually part of the SLA, they personally knew and were friendly with some of the most notorious of the lot, though they had parted ways by the time the SLA started to get seriously crazy.
All of which is just to say that growing up with Boomer parents in NorCal was a very different experience for a lot of gen Xers like myself.
I was always leaning liberal and now I’m even more leftist. Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.
And I’m someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don’t do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don’t even think older people even believe that whole “you get more conservative as you get older” garbage.
I was left leaning when I was younger and a lot of that was due to left leaning people on the internet.
As I got older my views haven’t changed that much but I definitely feel like the left have caused me to move further to the right. I still heavily believe in high government spending for essentials and free speech (which was a strong left view but is now a far right view). But I definitely see the left skewing the narrative. Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit. Day to day conversations with the right are much more manageable and logical than conversations with the everyday left. But the big policies need to be left.
I wish there was some middle ground. Or more accurately a mixture of far left and left with a mixture of right and far right policies. But the left are shooting themselves in foot with a lot of little stuff and ignoring a lot of the big stuff that people care about.
Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit.
You’re describing a tiny small minority of the left, if there’s anyone who seriously thinks that. It seems like you’re cherry picking radical positions that the majority of the left don’t hold.
I remember when that photo of that dead kid on the beach was everywhere. There was plenty of people talking about open borders.
People we definitely called racist for having the view we should stop illegal migrants and/or that some people are benefiting from the situation. People definitely also called for open borders and have have spoken to a few people in university who thinks all borders should be open. But it’s usually someone with something like a media degree and no follow through for how it would work in practise just that “there shouldn’t be borders and it’s racist to not let people come to your country”
From a starting point I feel everyone should have an equal start in life (to a point). So for example everyone that is born should have free healthcare and be able to get whatever job they want as long as they have the ability. That’s my core left view.
Secondly. I have a degree in economics and that educates some of my views to be more monetarily and free market orientated. So I’m big on cash transfers where someone else might go for say free food stamps. But overriding that I believe governments should focus more on happiness and wellbeing than GDP or GDP per capita. That’s in contrast to my education, or typical takeaways from my education.
My policies would be high government spending, high taxes and cash transfers, subsidies and externalities to fix market issues and help push things into certain ideals.
That means I see myself and left or heavily left leaning. But I’m still proud of my country and think my country comes above others with my money and the money of my countrymen. Which is the right policies I wish more for in a left leaning party. I also feel like people are more responsible for themselves than some people make out.
The issue I find is when talking to the average right winger verse the average left winger.
I have had discussions with people saying they don’t think university education should be free or subsidised because if it’s valuable they people can take out loans themselves or if someone works hard they can gift it to their children. Someone shouldn’t have to give their money so someone else’s kid can go to university for free. Now I don’t agree but I understand the point and respect their arguments.
On a similar issue I have talked to left wingers who have said all jobs should pay the same, or that men and women should be paid the same irrelevant of what jobs they have. That it’s not fair that one degree gets you higher paying life than others. Something like this I do not agree with and do not understand.
It’s basically the logic of right wingers make sense but I disagree. The logic of left wingers doesn’t make sense but I still agree a lot with them for different reasons.
Even things like COVID. I was huge into vaccines and science and got it as soon as I could, did everything the government told me I was behind it 100%. But I still agreed with the right wingers than any anticovid views should be allowed. I just thought the government should have done better in educating people on the truth.
Ultimately it comes down to my personal experience in dealing with people. In my experience left wingers talk a lot more nonsense and get a lot more aggressive than right wingers.
My dude, I consider myself pretty liberal. For quick context: I think Joe Biden and the establishment stole the 2020 primary from Bernie Sanders, and I haven’t been gruntled since.
I agree with every point you made, explaining your political opinions.
The only things that I want to say are that being liberal and being proud of your country are not mutually exclusive. That’s a media propaganda talking point. “Liberals hate America!” - That’s just not true. Also, it sounds like you had a conversation about pay rates with an actual communist. Very few liberals are going to support actual communism. That’s another propaganda talking point.
Liberalism and democratic socialism is nowhere near communism. Democratic socialism supports the things you expressed support for: Social safety net programs, funding education, social medicine.
We all have more in common than we’re led to believe.
I met a lot of left people that just spew talking points and choose whatever is the nicest view to have. They wouldn’t say they are communist but they say stuff that is partially communist. Then make out everyone is heartless monsters. A lot of people recently were complaining about supermarkets making 1% profit margin. Saying it’s too much, like loads of left wingers had this view and said they should be government owned. It’s madness.
I’m not American. Also I’m not that liberal at all, one of our most right wing governments ever was famously liberal and sold every government asset and let the free market deal with everything. There is a reason ding dong the witch is dead hit 1 in the charts when Maggie died. Liberalism is not anything the left or most of the right ever want back.
Socialism is communism though. That’s the definition of the word.
Socialism “…advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”
Practically speaking, all acceptable political ideologies in a liberal democracy could be considered liberal, or at the very least on the liberal spectrum. Liberalism is such a broad ideology, that both hyper religious neocon neoliberals and democratic socialists could qualify. Economic liberalism is typically what liberal has colloquially meant outside the US, while in the US, it has referred to social liberalism. Thatcher and Reagan had very similar ideologies, but Thatcher called herself a liberal, while to 1980s Republicans, liberal was a dirty word. It’s a fucky term, but if you’re a Brit who loves your country, you probably love liberalism in some way.
Democratic socialists are fiscally socialist, but still want to work within the system of liberal democracy to eventually achieve communism. “Communist” colloquially refers to people who want to achieve communism without working through liberal democracy. This includes everything from Marxist-Leninists(think the Soviets), to anarcho-communists, both of which wildly disagree with eachother. The landscape is full of people of don’t self identify accurately to what they ideologically believe because of the colloquial meaning of these terms.
Also, you are exceptionally lucky to have not run into fascists. If you actually exposed yourself to the double speak and misinformation they use to justify right wing beliefs, you too might lose faith in all right wing arguments like I have.
I apologize for making the assumption that you were American.
Its my understanding that even liberal american politicians are rather conservative, from a global perspective. This is probably the source of my confusion in our exchange.
But I agree with you that many people complain and are jealous when they see others being prosperous when they struggle to thrive. Also, people seem to just like to complain in general.
Here’s a section that I found from a website, on democratic socialism:
" In the present day, “Democratic socialist” and “socialist” are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given democratic socialists don’t necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy.
They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people’s most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success. "
I think in this context, democratic socialists are just in support of government having more influence in business, strengthening unions and worker protections, addressing the massive wealth inequality. The current american government is really more on the side of business than on the side of workers.
Sounds like the Democratic party is a perfect home for you. The Biden administration is center right on the border (in practical terms), the military, and trade. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “cost saving,” other than balancing the budget and trying to be efficient with tax dollars, things the democrats are doing way better on than Republicans. The party is built for your sensibilities. If you’re an American, your view is the one in control of the politically relevant non fascist party.
Yeah like “free speech” being a “far right” thing, while simultaneously trying to stop people from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.
Meanwhile the left is doing what that’s against free speech? You can say bigoted things all you want still as far as I know. It’ll affect what people think of you as a person, but that’s not what free speech is about.
Actually I went from moderate liberal to pinko-tree-hugging-anarchist-commie-radical thing.
Some folks did the mathFor me, it was watching shit go down in Ferguson 2014 and then realizing this what America looks like a bit too often. Next thing I knew, I was outraged and reading Das Kapital and singing glorious Bolshevik anthems.
I was born in 1991 and I’ve noticed a trend amongst people my age reaching their 30s which I call “the middle generation conundrum”
Basically, most of us grew on our parents belief that hard work meant a good life.
But as time passed we started to notice a couple of things:
Our parent’s way became more and more out of reach, even with the same involvement in our work. No more traditional way of life on a single salary, even starting out in the middle class
We tend to feel closer to the next generation’s way of life which is “work to live” and not "live to work"
We are also feeding on the general nihilism towards our planet’s future which is making some of us less likely to aim for the traditional “family lifestyle”
The result is that whereas me and my friends would have tended to move right on the political spectrum, the majority of us are actually moving far left as we age.
Last (French) presidential elections, I actually couldn’t believe how many people around me voted left. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years before
Similar for me. I was told this repeatedly when I was younger, but all I heard was “If you get rich and successful then the wealth will corrupt your values”. I’d like to think I could keep my values if I became wealthy, because I know what it’s like to be homeless and hungry. But money does change people.
In my experience in Korea, it’s the opposite. The people who grew up with real hardship are usually the first to hoard any and all wealth that comes their way.
I had what turned out to be Semi leftist ideals as a kid. As a teen I went through an Anti Conservative edgy Atheist ark. Intellectual dark web tried to turn me conservative, but while I was watching Sargon and other Alt Shite content I was always watching some leftists. My homepage was a nightmare. I believed in the marketplace of ideas, free speech, and socialism. But I didn’t know the word socialism. I was a no theory having motherfucker. So, I became an anti liberal mad at SJWs for thinking everything was more important than class and that Class wasn’t important at all. However, the right ended up being homophobic and shit with no principles and also didn’t care about poor people are class.
So I’m a communist cause I finally found the politics that actually cared about humans. The politics that were treated as “impossible” my whole life. As I age, I only drift further and further left. I challenge more of the grand narratives I was raised with. Even if I was to “get something to conserve” there is more out there than my crumbs.
Question…what drove you to Communism specifically? As opposed to, say… democratic socialism? I’ve read the communist manifesto by Marx…and I have to say, while tend to agree with some of the points made throughout…there is definitely some parts of the manifesto I do not align with. Do you have any more modern recommendations for a good communist society outline? Im trying to bridge the ideological gap in my mind because I despise capitalism in it’s current form.
Sorry, I’m late responding. Haven’t been on here enough. I fundamentally see Democratic socialism as insufficient. I see capitalism as the problem. Theres the TLDR up front. For clarification, Capitalism is a system that splits us into two groups. Those being owners and workers. Owning your home or a business you work at isn’t what we mean. Owning the means of production that give you the ability to extract value from workers is. This is class struggle. The rich owners want as much work for as little money. The workers want as much money for their work.
Now, I’m not trying to get into a debate on this, but this is bad. It creates a conflict and tension in society where one side has the power. Now, lets look at another system for a moment. Slavery is bad and had to abolished all at once. For if the slaver kept any power and leverage all improvements in the conditions of slaves could be retracted to suit the slaver’s needs.
We could say “don’t abolish slavery, but try make it ethical”, but not only does this fail to address the moral issues with slavery, but its also ineffective at preventing future abuses and the reduction in rights for the group of people without power.
So, return to capitalism. You have media, beholden to ad companies (the rich by proxy) and the rich who fund it and invest. You have politicians who rely on donors. The more you look the more you find that capital is power and leverage.
Those without have little beyond labor power and the threat of things like violence or sabotage. So, what little treats we win in a demsoc or socdem model will be always subject to the capitalist class allowing it and us maintaining the tension that won it in the first place.
Thus, like the slave owner would worsen the conditions of slaves again. The owner class would worsen the conditions of workers. You can’t reform this or slowly improve it to a bearable state. It has to be abolished. And it has to be replaced with a system of collective ownership of natural resources, automated industries, and the ownership of the means of production by the workers who work there.
As for recommendations. Not really. I have my own ideas, but frankly I believe in local community, education, and autonomy. I don’t believe the final form of society will resemble a central authority saying what it ought to be. So I feel what matters is giving everyone the freedom to solve their local problems in their own work, place, and community. I think this will be achieved via a government structure built around workers, unions, and democracy. I see the workers banding together to run the business and business unions forming unions around trades and then these interacting with local government for resource allocation.
I feel like more details is me trying to prescribe what it must be. My primary issue is capitalism and I’m open to discussions about the next step. I’m open to imperfect solutions. Capitalism isn’t perfect. It has market crashes, recessions, depressions. We would be fools to believe communism must be perfect and not just better.
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