this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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If you want to know, there's an objective difference. It's the presence of a hierarchy. Centrists support a hierarchy that's either voluntary or mildly coercive. Justifications for violent enforcement become more severe the farther you go to the right. Leftism is cooperative and anti-hierarchy.
you seem like a nice person, i get that you misunderstood what i said at first. now you're really committing to arguing with me
well, no not really, that's anarchism, which is historically a small part of leftism, sometimes there are no anarchists in a leftist movement.
"Leftism" historically has all kinds of hierarchies, Marx, Lenin, Castro, all very hierarchical. You can say they are not real Leftists. Personally I would not say that Marxists Aren't Leftists, that seems incorrect to me. I have lots of disagreements with Marxists but they are part of "the Left" whether we like it or not.
The Jacobins, who were the first group of people to be called "Leftists", were ultra hierarchical and dictatorial. There's a funny story about the Origin of the terms 'left' and 'right wing': during the french revolution the National Assembly would meet in this big room, the allied delegates would naturally sit together. Some sat on the Left side, others sat on the Right side. That's it, that's the the origin, there's no innate essence to leftism, it's certainly not some trans historical entity.
Those hierarchies you described and attributed to leftism were authoritarian. They were supported and maintained by violence. They weren't leftist, you were just raised to believe they are by your government, which itself has been approaching total fascism your entire life.
You should try understanding where the other person is coming from before accusing them of being brainwashed by their government.
Have you ever looked at the so-called Political Compass? There's a 'left to right' axis and an 'authoritarian to libertarian' axis https://www.politicalcompass.org/ So you can be authoritarian and leftist according to them (there is a hidden bias in the test, towards libertarian socialism)
I'm not even saying that, I'm coming at this from more of a 'post-left anarchist' perspective, that there is no 'leftism' as such but what is left or right is a relative historical development, so otherwise contradictory movements end up being lumped together as 'leftists' by historical accident, but they still end up influencing each other, so for example marxism has historically influenced anarchism and vise versa.
You're saying there is some ahistorical 'true' leftism that's objective and indistinguishable from anarchism. You can also just say "anarchism is cool" and I would agree with you and we can not have this pointless argument. see also no true scotsman fallacy
The political compass is skewed. The far right is always authoritarian and the far left is always anarchic. The middle is bargaining, the realm of confusion and many masters. I agree that right and left are mere terms of convenience. Politics are delusion. The real spectrum is gnosis (left) versus ignorance (right).