Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on May 12
th, 2012 at 6:34pm:
As you can see I work in an environment where I have direct experience with leftists.
It's not so much ideology that's the problem, it's a constant taking sides with all that supposedly suffers. Should this really be the departure point for all intellectual activity?
I'm not sure what you mean by taking sides. Everyone who works has direct experience with all sorts of people.
Leftists? They are actually quite rare these days. I'd count a few Socialist Alternative types and people who sell the Green Left Weekly at train stations.
Go back to the 70s. Campuses were full of them. Unions were full of them. The whole country was dripping with leftists.
It's a different story now. It's a post-cold war world. The economy is fundamentally different. Students compete for places and marks with people from different backgrounds; workers compete for jobs with people from Asia; businesses compete for contracts and sales with cheaper operators overseas.
Conservatives like Prince Charles advocate environmental conservation. Far-right crusaders like David Oldfield advocate socialism. Old boys on this site advocate Enlightenment humanist values in their critique of multiculturalism.
An all-encompassing narrative of the left does not exist anymore. You have to go to places like Nepal, West Bengal, Venusuela or Guatemala to find old style leftists, and even there you'll find them struggling with realpolitik.
For Marx and Lenin, this would always be the challenge of leftist parties - the issue of putting theory into practice.
In Australia, we've put them out of business with affluence. In places like Europe, where the GFC proved Lenin right about speculative capitalism, they seem to be making a bit of a comeback.
But not for long. It's hardly the end of ideology, but the right and left have shifted into the other's territory. While we sit around and squabble along ideological cold-war lines, the rest of the world is working out how to develop and catch up with the west.
As always, politics will follow economic growth. Much of the west is now in recession with dwindling economies. China, India and Brazil now have the highest economic growth. If their domestic consumption improves as predicted, their GDPs will surpass the US and Europe in less than 20 years.
Economic growth changes everything: population, living standards, employment and education. Look at the baby boom generation and how their politics and values transformed the west.
This is the real story of the world at this point in our history. It's not about right and left, it's about stagnation and growth.
Old boy moaners are a symptom of change. They don't occupy an ideological position; they just resist change, whether they lean towards left or right.
The world is turning, Bolshie. Same as it ever was.
Reducing everything to economics was Marx's position. While you make some fair points, I disagree that economics is the sole driver of human affairs. If we do a reduction to a sole cause, I think Nietzsche's will to power comes as close as we can get. Yet just claiming the base human drive is to will power doesn't analyse the content of the ideas driving man to power.
Money or economics is one of those ideas that drive man. There's also science, engineering, religion, procreation, utilitarianism, to name just a few.
My concern is what I call a will to weakness; which goes under the guise today of 'equality' and 'tolerance.' There is a huge trend toward castigating anything that is perceived to have power or that is in authority. There's a trend being encouraged to whine about power just for the sake of it. This is childish. Most of those who whine about power have absolutely no idea on what the authority structure should be replaced with. Just one example is those who whine about capitalism. Never do they have a solution.