Left-wing politics

In politics, left-wing, the political left and the Left are terms applied to a variety of political beliefs. The term has had different meanings in different countries and time periods. Originally, during the French Revolution, left-wing referred to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the left opposed the monarchy and supported radicalism. Since the publication of The Communist Manifesto and the rise of Marxism, it has been associated with socialism, communism and a wide range of related ideologies, as well as social liberalism and forms of social progressivism. Today, in most of Europe, the Left refers to socialist parties, while in the United States, the Left usually refers to modern liberalism, often used as a synonym for the Democratic Party. A typical example is this quote from the on-line magazine Slate: Support for Obama among women—who began to move left in 1980—also reflects a shift toward liberalism.^[1].

Origins and history of the term

See also: Left-Right politics

In relation to politics, the term left wing originates from the French Revolution, when radical Montagnard deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The moderate Feuillants generally sat to the right. It is still the tradition in the French Assemblée Nationale for the representatives to be seated left-to-right (relative to the Assemblée president) according to their political alignment. In some European countries classical liberals were labeled as 'left' before Marxist ideas came to define the left. In the case of Denmark and Norway the historical liberal parties still carry the name Venstre (literally meaning 'Left') even though they are now considered to be right-wing. A similar phenomenon exists in France, where it is known as sinistrisme.

From mid-19th century, 'left' would increasingly refer to various forms of socialism and communism. Particularly influential event was the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. It asserted that a proletarian revolution would overthrow bourgeois society, and by abolishing private property create a classless and stateless society.

Socialist movements emerged across Europe and some countries outside of Europe. The International Workingmen's Association (commonly named the 'Second International') gathered labour parties with a combined membership of millions. During the First World War, the Second International was divided on the question of supporting or opposing the war. The dissident tendency, which included the Russian Bolsheviks of Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg in Germany amongst others, considered themselves as further to the left that the other labour parties (see Zimmerwald Left). Out of this conflict the socialist movement divided into Social Democrats and Communists, the former category either seen as left or center-left. In the 1960s with the political upheavals of the Sino-Soviet split and May 1968 in France, thinkers of the 'New Left' viewed themselves as being more critical of Marxist and Marxist-Leninist discourse (labelled the 'Old Left').

Definitions

In terms of politics, the terms left, right and centre are contextual terms, relative to the political situation of individual countries and regions. In contemporary Western political discourse, the Left is most often used to describe forms of socialism, communism or social liberalism. Leszek Kolakowski defines the left in abstract terms as being utopian and ideological.^[2]. Center left is a term used to describe a political position that is close to the center of the political mainstream in a particular country. In several European countries, it is a term used for alliances that encompass both leftist and centrist elements.

In France, differentiation is generally made between the left (Socialists and Communists) and the far left (Trotskyists, Maoists, Anarchists) on the other.^[3]

The Chinese New Left denotes a tendency which opposes economic reforms and in favours of the restoration of socialist policies along Maoist lines.^[4] In the western context, New Left refers to cultural politics, sometimes referred to as identity politics.

Ultra-left refer to a various far left ideologies. The term hard left has been associated with politics of Tony Benn and the Campaign Group and Labour Briefing^[5], as well as Trotskyist groups such as the Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser. The hard left is strongly influenced by Marxism, while the soft left has a more gradualist approach to building socialism.

Positions

Economics

Some on the left believe in Marxian economics, which refers to a body of economic thought stemming from the work of Karl Marx. Adherents of Marxian economics sometimes distinguish it from his political philosophy, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding the economy is intellectually valuable per se, independent of his advocacy of revolutionary socialism or the inevitability of proletarian revolution.^[6][7] It does not lean entirely upon the work of Marx and other widely known Marxists (Lenin, Trotsky, etc.), but may draw from a range of Marxist and non-Marxist sources.

Although specific means of achieving these ends are not agreed upon by different left-wing groups, almost all those on the left agree that some form of government or social intervention in economics is necessary, ranging from Keynesian economics and the welfare state through industrial democracy or the social market to nationalization of the economy and central planning.^[8]

The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class. The left has identified with this group, although different left-wing parties define it differently. During the industrial revolution the left became associated with trade union movements. More recently, the left has criticized what it perceives as the exploitative nature by current forms of globalization, e.g. the rise of what the left calls sweatshops, the "race to the bottom" and unjust layoffs. Marx defines the proletariat as salaried workers, in contrast to the lumpen proletariat, who he defined as the poorest and outcasts of society, such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes.^[9].

The relation to farmers have divided the left. In Das Kapital, Karl Marx scarcely mentioned the subject.^[10]

National question

The question of nationality and nationalism have been central features of political debates on the left. The Marxist social class theory of proletarian internationalism asserts that members of the working class should act in solidarity with working people in other countries due to common class interest, rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan, "Workers of all countries, unite!", the last line of The Communist Manifesto. Union members learned that more members meant more bargaining power, and taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers ought to act in solidarity to further increase the power of the working class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the ruling class. According to Marxist theory, the antonym of proletarian internationalism is bourgeois nationalism. Left-wing movements therefore have often taken up anti-imperialist positions.

On the other hand, there are strong elements of left-wing nationalism, political tendencies which some link to the pressure generated by economic integration with other countries encouraged by free-trade agreements. This view is sometimes used to justify hostility towards supranational organizations such as the European Union. Left-wing nationalism can also refer to any nationalism emphasizing a working-class populist agenda attempting to overcome perceived exploitation or oppression by other nations. Many Third World anti-colonial movements adopted left-wing and socialist ideas.

Anti-globalization

The Global Justice Movement, also known as the anti-globalisation or alter-globalization movement, protests against global trade agreements and the negative consequences they perceive them to have for the poor and the environment. This movement is generally characterised as left-wing, though some activists within it reject association with the traditional left. There are also those on the right, Pat Buchanan for example, who oppose globalization on nationalistic grounds. The Global Justice Movement does not oppose globalisation per se, on the contrary, it supports some forms of internationalism). The main themes of the movement are the reforms of international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the creation of an international social justice movement. It rejects the leadership of any political party, defining itself as a "movement of movements."

Institutions

See also: List of socialist countries and List of left-wing internationals

The Leninist branch of Marxism argues that a proletarian revolution must be led by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries, men and women who are fully dedicated to the communist cause and who form the nucleus of the communist revolutionary movement. The dictatorship of the proletariat or workers' state are terms used by Marxists to describe what they see as a temporary state between the capitalist and communist society.

Left-wing internationals include dozens of historic and current organizations such as the First International, the Second International, or the Socialist International, World Socialist Movement, and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, and the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle).

Feminism

Main article: The left and feminism

Early feminists and advocates of women’s rights were closely connected to positions that were politically radical and of the left in their time. Feminist pioneers like Mary Wollstonecraft were influenced by and in turn influences on politically radical thinkers like Thomas Paine and John Stewart Mill. A divide between this radical, leftist current of feminism and a more right-wing current can be traced to the relationship between feminism and the Abolitionist movement. In 1840, at the World Anti-Slavery Conference, feminists spoke about the connection between women’s rights and slavery. Other, more right-wing, white feminists, however, rejected this connection.

Similarly, in Britain, there was a divide between feminists on the left who connected the struggle for female suffrage with the struggle for the civil rights of working class men and for universal male suffrage, and those in the suffragette movement who wanted to restrict voting rights to middle class women. The divide between left and right feminists can be illustrated by the split of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Women's Suffrage Federation (WSF, later Workers Socialist Federation from Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). While the WSF called for the extension of civil rights to working class men and women, and fiercely opposed World War I, the WSPU was essentially a bourgeois organisation which took a patriotic line during the war and called a truce in its campaign.

Many important leftists have also been feminists. Examples include Marxists Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai and anarchist Emma Goldman. Some important feminists have also been active on the left. Examples include Helen Keller, a Communist, and Annie Besant who was involved in various socialist groups.

When contemporary feminism emerged, with the Women's Liberation Movement, it was closely connected to the New Left and other new social movements (e.g. the black power movement) that challenged the orthodoxies of the Old Left but shared key values with the left as a whole. As this movement split into different currents, some were closer to the left than others.

• ’’Socialist feminism’’ (e.g. the Beyond the Fragments group, Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women) and ‘’Marxist feminism’’ (e.g. Selma James, see also materialist feminism) saw themselves as very much within the left, even though they challenged its male-dominated and sexist structures.
• ’’Liberal feminism’’ is closely related to left-liberalism, the left-wing side of mainstream politics. (Example: the National Organization for Women, which has supported liberal politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton.)
• ’’Radical feminism’’ (e.g. Mary Daly) is harder to place on a left-right spectrum; it has more in common with currents like deep ecology which reject this axis.

The left, on the whole, has supported women's rights. Anarchists, Communists, and socialists have been strong supporters of the idea that men and women were equal, and should be treated the same in the workplace. Left of centre governments have often introduced legislation to remove gender inequalities in work.

Social progressivism

Social progressivism is another common feature of the left particulary in the United States, where social progressives advocated the abolition of slavery, Women's suffrage and civil rights reforms. Different groups of Progressives advocated the passage of prohibition and later worked towards its repeal. Current positions associated with social progressivism in the West include legal recognition of same-sex marriage, distribution of contraceptives, public funding of embryonic stem-cell research, and federally funded abortion on demand. Public education is a subject of great interest to social progressives, who support comprehensive sex education in public schools and the distribution of condoms to high school students, but are strongly opposed to school prayer, school vouchers. Most are opposed to faith-based initiatives and the death penalty.

Social progressives tend to be secularists, and believe that science and rationalism have rendered traditional beliefs to be obsolete. Thus, all current interpersonal social constructs, such as marriage, the family, monogamy and gender roles and gender identity, must be legally challenged whenever such a change is deemed to be for the greater good of society or is desired by those who wish to engage a social arrangement not currently sanctioned by law. Social progressives are opposed by social conservatives who contend that radical changes to longstanding traditional institutions, particularly when imposed by a court system, are undemocratic, destabilizing to society and potentially may entail reverse discrimination against religious believers.

However, in some cases social progressives have combined progressive values with right-wing neoliberalism. In Canada the former federal Progressive Conservative Party often combined a social progressive agenda with a right-wing economic agenda, such as Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's advocation of action on environmental issues, such as acid rain, and support of multiculturalism, while advocating a neoliberal economic agenda.

Third-worldism

Third-worldism is a tendency within left wing political thought to regard the division between developed, classically liberal nations and developing, or "third world" ones as of primary political importance. Third-worldism tends to involve support for Third World nation states or national liberation movements against Western nations or their proxies in conflicts where the particular Third World state or movement. The thought behind this view is often that contemporary capitalism can be characterised principally as imperialism. Hence, third-worldists say, resistance to capitalism must principally be resistance to the predations of advanced capitalist nations upon others.

Key figures in the Third Worldist movement include Frantz Fanon, Ahmed Ben Bella, Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin and Simon Malley. The New Left led to an explosion of support for Third Worldism, especially after the failure of revolutionary movements in the First World, such as Paris 1968. Among the New Left groups and movements associated with Third Worldism were Monthly Review and the New Communist Movement.

Third worldism is also closely connected to movements such as Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Maoism, African socialism and Latin American socialist trends. National liberation movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Sandinistas and African National Congress have been causes célèbres of the movement.

More recently, Third Worldism has become a powerful force in the World Social Forum (particularly since the Mumbai WSF in 2004) and in the Cairo Anti-War Conference.

Some left-wing groups in the developing world, such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa and the Naxalites in India, argue that the Western left usually takes a racist and paternalistic attitude towards popular movements in dominated countries. There is particular criticism of the role played by NGOs and the assumption by the Anti-globalization movement in Europe and North America that it is a global movement with an automatic right to lead movements in the South.

Post-modernism

Left-wing postmodernism reject attempts at universal explanatory theories such as Marxism, deriding them as grand narratives. They argue for an embrace of culture as the battle grounds for change, rejecting traditional ways of organising such as political parties and trade unions, focusing instead on critiquing or deconstruction. Left-wing critics of post-modernism view it as a reaction to the economic failure of state socialism (both in Europe, Latin America and the United States), and disillusionment with authoritarian Communist regimes. They assert that cultural studies courses inflate the importance of culture through denying the existence of an independent reality.^[11][12]

The most famous critique of post-modernism from within the left came in the form of a 1996 prank by physicist and self-described leftist Alan Sokal. Concerned about what he saw as the increasing prevalence on the left of "a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking... that denies the existence of objective realities, or... downplays their practical relevance...", in which a mix of mis-stated and mis-used terms from physics, postmodernism, literary analysis, and political theory are used to claim that physical reality, and especially gravitation, do not objectively exist, but are psychologically and politically constructed.^[13] Sokal composed a nonsensical article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity",^[14] The journal Social Text published the paper in its Spring/Summer 1996 issue, whereupon Sokal publicly revealed his hoax. While some saw Sokal as attacking leftism in general, he was very clear that this was intended as a critique from within:

Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism… epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about "the social construction of reality" won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.… The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy.^[15]

Gary Jason claims that "the failure of socialism, both empirically and theoretically... brought about a crisis of faith among socialists, and Post-modernism is their response."^[16]

Symbols

The flag of Soviet Union - the world's first socialist state - combined three left-wing symbols: red flag; red star; and hammer and sickle.

The revolutionary or radical left usually uses the color red in its symbolism. The red flag became popular during the Russian Revolution of 1917.^[17] Red became the primary color of the flag of the Soviet Union, and the red star became a Communist emblem, leading to Cold War phrases such as Red Menace and Red China (distinguished from the Republic of China, Free China, or Taiwan). China's de-facto anthem under Mao Zedong was The East is Red. Mao Zedong was sometimes referred to as a red sun. The color was also associated with political groups such as the Red Guard in China and the Red Guards during the Russian Revolution of 1917, as well as with left-wing paramilitary terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction in Germany, and the Japanese Red Army.

The hammer and sickle is a part of communist symbolism. The two tools are symbols of the industrial proletariat and the peasantry.

See also

• Ideology
• Political spectrum
• Post-left anarchy
• Social criticism

References and notes

Bibliography

• Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas, Second Edition, Oxford University Press 1998, ISBN 0-19-512088-4
• Lin Chun, The British New Left, Edinburgh : Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1993
• Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000, Oxford University Press 2002, ISBN 0-19-504479-7
• Marxism on Terrorism by John Molyneux
• Terrorism and Communism by Karl Kautsky
• Leftism in India

External links

• The Marxists Internet Archive (a free online Marxist library)
• World Socialist Web Site News and analysis of current world developments in politics, economics and culture from a Marxist perspective.