What is a Left? What is the task of the Left? What does a Left do? And how does it do it?
For a long time now the Left has been forced to play defense. That is apparent most strongly in the Democratic Party the (very) nominal political branch of the Left. The story of Democratic politicians since FDR is a story of staving off the attempts of the Right to destroy the Left….and they have succeeded.
The Right has pushed their agenda of destroying the New Deal and returning to a Wild West economy and Foreign Policy so viciously and hard …and effectively as far as The Middle is concerned that it has taken everything the Left has just to stop them.
Forgotten in all of this are the Principles of the Left. Discarded in the name of defense has been the true advocacy of the Principles of the Left. But most especially, in the decades long defense of the Left…the vision of the Left has fallen by the roadside.
Who is articulating and disseminating a vision of what a True Left, a powerful Left, an effective Left would make the world into? Who is painting a picture of what a country of a world run by true leftist Principles would look like?
Where is that bold vision for Lefty’s to rally around?
NOT framed in terms of electoral politics or government policies per se, (those would grow out of the vision) not framed in opposition to the Right, or opposition to the current Centrist (which as we all know, is basically Right Wing due to that Overton Window thingee) government…
But a vision of the Left framed for the Left’s sake alone?
A statement of how the Left would approach “fixing” the world apart from and not in reference to today’s political battles…
…which at the very very best would get us back to a true Center position of compromising with the Right as equals…instead of on defense as we are now?
Where are the the solutions that the Left would implement to take on the REAL underlying problems that the world faces…not the political problems, but the problems that lie behind the politics.
Where for instance, is a vision of a world where Humans are more important than Corporations?
Where is the story of how an Ideological Left would change the world, if it could?
Where is the narrative of a world “run by” an Ideological Left?
Without a solid ideological base, without a vision to rally around, without something to fight FOR….can the Left ever rise above merely playing defense? Is there one out there?
And/or….how do we create one?
