The political landscape in the West has shifted dramatically in recent decades, with increasing numbers of people becoming disillusioned with mainstream liberal politics gravitating toward the right. This trend is not accidental but rooted in systemic, cultural, and psychological factors that make the right a more accessible and appealing alternative for those feeling alienated.
The left’s historical strength lay in its ability to articulate a clear critique of the capitalist system, centered on the exploitative relationship between workers and owners. Class, as a concept, derives its significance from the process of surplus extraction: the transfer of wealth from those who labor to those who own. This dynamic is the engine of inequality, enabling a small elite to extract wealth from the working class majority who toil with little to show for it. Yet, the left in the West has largely moved away from class analysis, instead focusing on social issues and identity politics.
While issues of race, gender, and other forms of identity are undeniably important, the left’s emphasis on these concerns has often come at the expense of addressing the broader economic injustices that affect all working people. By treating these issues as separate from class struggle, the left has fractionalized its base, creating a patchwork of identity groups that often emphasize their distinctiveness rather than their shared interests. As such, the left is unable to present a unified front to the capitalist system and the ruling class.
In contrast, the right has adeptly tapped into the economic anxieties of working-class people. While the solutions they propose are misguided or outright harmful, the right acknowledges the very real frustrations of those who feel left behind by the system. When right-wing figures argue that the economy is rigged against ordinary people, they resonate with the lived experiences of many who see their wages stagnate, their costs of living rise, and their opportunities shrink.
The right’s message is effective because it doesn’t require a radical rethinking of the world. Instead, it builds on the capitalist and nationalist ideologies that people have been steeped in their entire lives. By blaming immigrants, government overreach, or cultural elites, the right offers scapegoats that align with preexisting prejudices and fears. This makes their ideology not only accessible but also emotionally satisfying.
On the other hand, moving to the left requires questioning the very foundations of the system. Socialist thinking runs contrary to the ideas of capitalism, individualism, and the myth of meritocracy that most people have been taught to accept as natural and inevitable. For many, this is a daunting prospect. It involves rejecting deeply held beliefs and confronting uncomfortable truths about the world and their place in it. While some are willing to make this leap, most find it easier to retreat into the familiar narratives offered by the right.
If the left hopes to counter this trend, it must reclaim class analysis as a central pillar of its politics. This doesn’t mean abandoning the fight against racism, sexism, or other forms of oppression but rather recognizing that these struggles are interconnected with the broader fight against economic exploitation. The forces that perpetuate class inequality are the same ones that propagate racism, sexism, militarism, and ecological devastation. These issues must be framed as part of a unified struggle that unites all working class people.
The left needs to provide a compelling narrative that’s able to compete with the one that the right peddles. It has to be accessible and relatable to those feeling alienated from the political mainstream.
There’s a material reason (set of) that the left in the West abandoned building a critical narrative - persecution. In America they drove the left out and down. We’re not in a position in America for a left movement to succeed until we can actually build a left movement from the ashes. Said another way, we can’t win until we’re in a position to lose, and we’re not there yet.
And while I love the PSL for what they are doing, they have a very long way to go to build an actual movement that can lose.
Also, I know you don’t do this normally, but it really feels like your conflating liberals with The Left in this piece, and they haven’t been Left for 200 years.
The PSL is articulating a clear class analysis. And the reason it isn’t resonating widely is because the left was suppressed for 5 generations so very few people have parents, grandparents, or great grandparents that they could have learned from. So the PSL message is fighting against the deeply ingrained fear of social isolation, government oppression, and international evil demons.
This is a deep psychological problem and not one that can be overcome by better messaging. It can only be overcome through human relationship building over time and being ready to help people through crises in real time. When a person is in crisis they are most capable of trading one deep fear for another, but they will only do it if they have the support of others to make that trade. Right now, many people are trading their fear of being a bad person for the fear of the other being a bad person and hurting them. The Left needs to be there to help them see that communism does not make them a bad person but also that acting out of fear that “the other” is bad leads to bad outcomes for them. This is the trade that most people need to make. They fear accepting class analysis because they genuinely believe that it will harm them to believe it: they will become “evil”, their friends and family will abandon them, they will lose their jobs and be reld-listed, the government will oppress them, and bad communist people will take advantage of them.
Better messaging doesn’t solve this. Building a movement one person at a time does. It is easier to accept class analysis if you see lots of people doing it, a wide variety of people doing it, people who have loving families and decent standards of living, and people who are happy, healthy, secure, confident, and welcoming.
We have to work at all levels simultaneously, but look at the PSL and ask why centering class analysis for years has not led to the outcomes you are looking for.
I very much agree that the US nowhere close to having a serious socialist movement. I don’t think I’m conflating libs with the left, as I specifically point out that libs are the dominant ideology, and this is what people are becoming disillusioned with. My argument is that the actual left has to focus on the class struggle. However, people falling out of the political mainstream are going to have liberal beliefs, and need help restructuring their world view.
I don’t mean to say that messaging alone is a silver bullet, but it is an important aspect of building a movement and attracting a critical mass of people towards socialist ideas. There needs to be a clear set of ideas that people can unite around, and work towards a common goal productively. Currently, the left is incredibly fractured with many small groups fighting each other and pulling in different directions. Messaging obviously has to be coupled with material actions, such as mutual aid, to be effective. However, building a movement one person at a time, requires communicating a set of ideas and goals to that person.
Regarding, PSL, I think it’s exactly as you say, they’re fighting upstream against massive indoctrination. That doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is not effective, but rather that society as a whole isn’t at a point where there is a critical mass of people who are ready to pursue meaningful change.
My whole argument is that the narrative on the right is effective precisely because it’s not advocating for change. Instead, the right argues that what’s happening now is not real capitalism, and if we just get back to doing it properly everything will be great again. I strongly suspect we’re going to have to live through a period in the west, where the right tries to put their ideas into practice, and only after it discredits itself the way the liberals have, will there be a possibility of a worker movement forming.
The other issue is tribalism. People are rejected by parents, siblings, friends and employers when they go against the grain. This was absolutely the last holiday for visiting parent.
This was absolutely the last holiday for visiting parent.
same here for my family.
i get that we need to build bridges to bring us back in from the political wilderness in this country; but there’s something to be said about finding a balance between trying to help the people you care about and preserving your own well being. especially when you see the a particular beloved member of a younger generation getting sucked into the overwhelming nature of that tribe for the first time and simultaneously recognizing that there’s nothing you can do about it and that all of your efforts have been in vein.
this past xmas break has made me wish that i was as smart as my sister is when she warned me that it’s best to keep a friendly & welcoming distance from them decades ago; permanently. i became invested in my nephews & nieces (like i did their parents and my own siblings) and now i know that i will have to watch another procession of an entirely new generation of my family members laugh & meme at the tankies while unhappily assuming their roles as capitalist cannon fodder to the point of self harm & recycling generational trauma that their grandmothers and I had to endure. all the while proudly proclaiming that everything will be fine (eventually) because they will always vote blue no matter who and will soon be the majority.
a third of us are trumpers now and the rest still won’t/can’t see it 🤦
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I get the authoritarianism of people like Che Guavara. I need to study Stalin more before I can speak on that.
Actually mainstream liberal is not liberal but libcon (liberal conservatism)
Socialist thinking runs contrary to the ideas of capitalism, individualism, and the myth of meritocracy that most people have been taught to accept as natural and inevitable.
For mutualism, socialism is not contrary to individualism also meritocracy is not a myth. You just have system and social problems.
Liberalism is an ideology with two primary facets: political liberalism and economic liberalism. Political liberalism emphasizes individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights, while economic liberalism is essentially capitalism, focused on free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects are inherently incompatible. While political liberalism may appear to champion the people’s cause against oppressive regimes, once in power, it inevitably prioritizes economic liberalism, protecting the interests of the wealthy elite at the expense of the majority.
Private property rights are central to liberal ideology, serving as the foundation of individual freedom. However, liberalism’s defense of private property amounts to the protection of minority wealth at the expense of the communal good. Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property, which it enshrines as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing it from political debate. Thus liberalism perpetuates a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many while presenting itself as a champion of freedom and democracy.
A good primer on the subject https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
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This comment is chock full of misogyny, with some transphobia sprinkled in for good measure. You should reconsider your beliefs. Feminists aren’t the reason liberalism is the dominant political ideology in the US, come on, that should be obvious.
Left/Right does it actually matter?
Whether you have a more capitalist or more socialist system, you will still have an establishment, an elite class*. People are disillusioned with that class of people and want to kick them out. If we had a more socialist system we could still be in this same situation, so what does it actually solve? People just want to hit the reset button every so often when the elite become too greedy. That’s really all there is to it.
*Spare me your anarchist fantasies.
“Elite Class” isn’t a thing. Capitalism is a problem because Capital has supremacy over humanity, and thus society is bent to the whims of the profit motive, which necessarily pushes exploitation. Socialism is the solution because it places humanity over Capital, via central planning and public ownership, forcing production to be done for the common good and not individuals getting wealthy. Administration is a requirement for that, as is management, and these are real systems that can be employed.
Actually the whole of left-wing ideologies is based on the concept of fighting human hierarchies i.e. it literally predisposes the existence of an elite class. Capitalism/Socialism is only a subset of that. I’m not sure how you can be a human adult (?) with and kind of lived experience and claim that it all boils down to the economic system. Have you never interacted with other humans irl?
Well, let me tell you this.
If we didn’t presuppose we had development of internet as we have, we might not be able to communicate
If we didn’t presuppose your mankind has developed long enough to have the brain, you might not be alive, at least as a human
This basic presupposition we have is materialism, which is that material reality and how we deal/evolve with it (eg. economy involving natural resources, nature outside of us, our human body, animals, plants, food, wood, stone, iron) comes first as a basis for our survival. Ideas come second, which influence back at materialism.
This materialism is the requirement for us to think of culture, hierarchies, and what not.
I don’t know what you are getting at when you say leftism is about “fighting human hierarchies.” Marxism has always been about moving beyond class society, but has maintained that hierarchies are not inherently bad. That alone accounts for a large majority of actually existing Socialist societies. Anarchism is about fighting hierarchy, but that’s only a subset of leftism. Moreover, hierarchy is not the same as class, as previously mentioned classes are relations of ownership to Capital. Looking at it from a Capitalist business, middle managers are not distinct classes, but stratifications of the Proletariat. Management is not the same thing as ownership.
No, it does not all boil down to economics, but political economy is the driving factor of how society is organized and run. The implication that elected officials are a distinct class is false and not bounded on material reality, just vibes. I suggest you read theory, you might better be able to get your own ideas across if you speak using common terms and definitions, or change your views, even.
Do you just come here to troll here? Fine, then consider it that you’ve won in your mind.
It does matter, and I don’t accept with a socialist system, you have an elite class. With communism, maybe, but with democratic socialism, the goal is democracy first, because if you give powers to local people, to decentralise, and remove the disenfranchisement that people feel, you get the change for people to push for changes that help their circumstances. This was a view advocated by the late, great Tony Benn.
First past the post puts too much power in the hands of a few “representatives” and the more you break it down, the more working people can campaign and win. It’s hard to campaign against centralisation as it requires a level of organisation, mobilisation, and cohesive view that is very hard to organise. Then you get corruption within that as pro-business interests influence and fund those that aim to divert the movement from the benefits of people. The Labour party in the UK could be an example of that. Currently, they’re pushing for deregulation, growth and tight controls on migration.
14·3 days agoHow do you have class, under a classless system? That makes no sense.
Oh wait, “elite class”, " democratic socialism". Makes more sense.
It was a response to the point about an elite class. In communist systems, that is usually the political class, the ones that make the decisions. That needs to make the decisions and are essential to the system functioning. In a democratic system that is localised, those decision makers don’t have that much power as they have a small sphere of influence and are more administrators. Redistribution of wealth doesn’t mean there is no wealth. Wealth can still exist, be taxed significantly and redistributed.
The point being, you misrepresented my point. Saying there is no elite “political” class, doesn’t mean there is no class.
“Political Class” is not a thing. Classes are based on social relations and ownership of the Means of Production, central planners and government officials do not form a class. Moreover, this is not in contrast to democratic systems. Democracy is necessary and important for Socialism as well, and has been within AES. In a Socialist system with central planners and full public ownership, there are no longer any classes. We call this phase “communism,” though eradicating private property and small production will take a very long time.
“Democratic Socialism” purely exists as a means to smear AES, all Socialism is democratic. Moreover, decentralization is less democratic, and gives rise to competition and eventually Capitalism. Centralization is necessary for proper public ownership and central planning, even if you have local planners subservient to regional and national planners.
In what sense are you using AES? Are you referring to the soviet republic and unironically?
My initial vibes here is this place is mostly soviet supporting communists pretending to be socialists. Anything other than glowing praise of communism is showered in down votes. That’s cool and all, but it feels a bit too echo chamber for my liking.
I always assumed the goal was to bring people with you, rather than go after any unpure view. Maybe arguing with libs online too long has clouded the goal of furthering class consciousness.
AES includes the former Soviet Union, as well as existing Socialist countries like the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos. As for this community, it’s for Socialists, Communists are a type of Socialist. Moreover, the Hammer and Sickle imagery making up the icon of this community is explicitly a Marxist symbol first popularized by the USSR.
The goal is certainly to bring people over to Socialism, but that doesn’t mean it stops there. To stop at people merely tacitly supporting vague notions of Socialism would be a mistake, because just supporting the idea of something doesn’t translate into working to build Socialism. It isn’t a question of purity, but of taking a correct stance. The Socialist Revolutionaries, for example, celebrated an “end to theory” prior to the Russian Revolution, and were cast aside by history as failures in developing a correct line like the Bolsheviks did.
The issues I had with your comments were because, frankly, none of what you said made any sense. For Communists, democracy is a priority too, and the idea of decentralization goes against the concept of public ownership and central planning, which make the backbone of a worker owned economy. This doesn’t mean I hate you or anything, but you came out of the gate attacking Marxism on a Marxist aligned community, so it’s important to gently set you straight, which I believe I accomplished.
The importance of developing correct lines cannot be understated, criticism and self-criticism is a core aspect of Marxism-Leninism because it’s only through unity-focused dialogue that correct strategy and tactics can be found and employed. Does that make sense? If you want, I have a beginner Marxist reading list, the first section alone would be great for you to develop common footing.
I don’t think it’s “echo-chambery” for others to correct misconceptions people wandering in may have, rather, leaving such misconceptions unaddressed muddies up the water of discussion. I think it’s fair if you come out attacking Marxists and making false assumptions about the ideology of a large chunk to even majority of users here, that people come in and correct those.
With regards to the voting system, look at Germany. They have 6 parties and the AfD, but really only two choices. Having multiple parties doesn’t really make as much of a difference as you think it does. Political parties are formed from the same class of elites so they tend to converge on all political topics that matter. There is only divergence when you have another class of wanna-be elites trying to dethrone them. That would be the AfD or MAGA.
I think this is the crux of the problem: no matter the government and electoral system, you still end up with a government formed out of a narrow subset of the population, the elites of the day. This is inevitable because each political environment will select for some select few traits. And the only time you get disruption is when a new set of elites tries to dethrone them.
Now you can conjure some kind of system by which the government is explicitly not formed out of some elite class. Like worker councils or some such idea. However, you then run into a problems such as lack of continuity (governing terms being too short) and lack of expertise. There are also some advantages to having a government run by a (competent) elite class. So you see, it’s not so simple.
But overall the electorate feels excluded when you have a government that is run by people who are so alien to them and who are clearly completely disconnected from the everyday man. And unfortunately the only protest the electorate has is to vote for another set of wanna-be elites in the hope that the resulting political disruption will unset some of the most harmful of the current crop. It’s generally good when the elites are in-fighting.
This is assuming you need a national political party. In the UK we have a population of 70m, and MPs represent seats of 60k. District councils could represent around 100k people, and county ones could cover 500k. If you localise power so that all decision making for an area sits with the councils running areas of 100k, then you don’t need a nationwide party, a local party could gain a foothold and run an area. If that party is setup, so representatives can easily be voted out or replaced. For example open selection and you have to campaign to represent your local party again every term then the power sits with the members of that local party rather than a national party.
Ultimately, a system can exist for this, but it doesn’t mean that a system does exist or runs effectively in the world at present. Getting that system set up and running is a whole separate problem.
You did cover this, and the thing you suggest about expertise and continuity and problems that can be solved. Term length (and how many seats change each term can solve the latter), while expertise would likely be a solution that can be taken up by think tanks, and there are good ones, and dreadful ones. Legislation on transparency of funding and ownership would be key with that. Secondly health groups, co-operatives can form, that can be paid by councils for their expertise, which can build credibility and hire specialists.
I’m not saying any of this is easy, or would be without contest, but it is very possible, and while if you centre power in the hands of the few, you create elites, if you distribute that power, you can solve the problem around wealth and corruption. A system can be set up that adapts to the demands of the skills that are needed, whether that is technical skills, or knowledge based skills etc.
Can we agree that so far humanity has not manage to create an anti-fragile governing system? We engineer ever more complex governing systems, but humans keep figuring out ways to corrupt them. I cannot envision a system that would be anti-fragile, hence the need for periodic resets. Even my local council ruling over a village of a couple of thousand souls has been embroiled in corruption scandals.
Going back to the original topic, I don’t think it is the priority of the electorate to change the system. First they want to change the people in charge, which is a per-requisite to changing the system anyway.
Based on my limited knowledge, I can agree with that. I don’t yet know of a system that has been implemented that is optimal.
I think the electorate want change but I don’t think those the current system allow offer that unfortunately. Reformists tend to get filtered out.
