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From a left/progressive point of view they overlap so much that often it hardly matters whether they are presumably different or not.
But.
You asked in another thread what leftists/progressives say being left or progressive means. Or is. That question deserves consideration. This is as good a place as any to answer it.
In time.
It’s a big question. Deserves a thought-out response.
From a left/progressive point of view they overlap so much that often it hardly matters whether they are presumably different or not.
But.
You asked in another thread what leftists/progressives say being left or progressive means. Or is. That question deserves consideration. This is as good a place as any to answer it.
In time.
It’s a big question. Deserves a thought-out response.
I make a run at this but rather than give a philosophical deep grounding I will just go with some social and policy issues that I think tend to attract left/progressive attention.
First, one central ideal of any left/progressive view is that it does not accept the idea there is some transcendent norm outside of human action within history that determines how things are. We made the world we have and it does not have to be this way…it can be other ways. What are the principles of change? To promote a genuinely democratic system that benefits people.
That means no corporate dominance of elections, policies, or (to drive this all the way home) what counts as acceptable thinking. The corporate world is a powerful interest group and when it gets what it wants it diminishes what the rest of the population can have. The economic world should be ruled over by public interest, and not the population dominated by corporate interests. This includes things like protecting the environment at the cost of corporate wealth, developing sustainable and safer sources of energy, and providing universal health insurance at the cost of private interests and profits.
Neoliberalism needs to be strangled out of existence as a phony doctrine that only manages to feed the interests of the same ole same ole narrow money interests.
Labor should have a say in how businesses operate. Labor interests are starved at the expense of private profit-making and it should be exactly the other way around. There should at a minimum be basic obvious things such as sick leave, living wages, health care, and so on. Things the rest of the developed world has (which is why they quite rightly look upon us as some kind of disney-fied version of mordor.)
Both Republicans and Democrats are against these things because they are dominated by money–lobbyists, campaign donors, and so on. The ways in which they might differ are really never enough to overcome the ways in which they are both dominated by wealthy special interests. For example, both engage in widespread voter suppression. Democrats are no different from Republicans when it comes to that.
To me the parties are like 2 appalling alcoholic guardians of some poor kid, where one might be a little cooler when it comes to some things (like it uses less obvious racist language) but is ultimately still a bad alcoholic guardian.
It also means that those who are excluded from the full benefit of public good should be included. No “lesser share” because of gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality or any of that. Excluding people on the basis of their gender or race or so on means you have a social system that denies rights to many (if not most) of its population, which means there is no such thing as rights (rights are universal or they do not exist, if rights are not universal they are not rights at all but just some privileges of the dominant few).
The news and other sources of information should not be dominated by a small coterie of wealthy owners who, again–as the wealthy–are just a special interest group.
Foreign policy should not be based on the tyranny of controlling resources and propping up those places that are allied with us in doing that. Foreign policy should also promote democracy–which it absolutely has not for decades–and that includes things like curtailing Israeli power over subject Palestinians. Among many many other examples.
The financial industry should be aggressively regulated. Nothing changed in the financial world since 2008 and the financial world can create another 2008 any day.
Education should be funded, social work should be funded to address poverty, the war on drugs should be ended as an ineffective sham that just fed the prison industry, policing needs to be fundamentally changed. Voting is an absolute right and cannot be tampered with. All of these things lead to greater power for people in general, greater rights, greater opportunities, and other things that distribute the benefits of a benign social system to the greatest number of people.
That’s a start.
I change my mind about this, all the time. I changed it several times today, in fact. The differences between the two major parties. Are they significant? Are they meaningful, meaningless, relevant, irrelevant?
It depends. For me, it’s all relative and context is everything.
Struggling for useful metaphors, it’s kinda like comparisons seen up close versus those seen from distances . . . and those distances, between valleys, mountains, and further skyward. Up close, on most issues, if we just compare the two parties to each other, just them, to each other, as opposed to a certain set of standards for what should be the case . . . . as opposed to comparing them to higher ideals, the representation of all citizens and our best interests . . . adhering to those higher standards for helping us achieve the best quality of life (and society) possible, protecting the environment, embracing, extending, enhancing democracy and inclusion, etc. etc. . . . if we compare the two major parties not to each other but to “higher things,” they fail utterly, year after year.
But there’s a difference in the failure and the failings, and the differences can matter, on the ground. It can even be a life and death sort of difference, as in the case of Covid-19 responses, Climate Change, Civil/Workers/Women’s/LGBT rights, etc. etc. Following or fighting the science. Fighting or following authoritarianism to its logical ends. If we allow for the fact that they both fall so incredibly short of meeting the Higher Things . . . Yeah, there are differences between them that matter.
Have had a rough day so I’ll leave it there. Will try to elaborate on the above tomorrow, give examples and so on. It got “personal” today and yesterday as well. Not sure how it will all shake out over time, but it got personal for me.
Hope all is well, everyone.
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