Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Collapse Of The Left
Of Two Minds.Com ^ | 1-22-2017 | Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on 01/23/2017 7:37:57 AM PST by blam

January 22, 2017

The Left is not just in disarray--it is in complete collapse because the working class has awakened to the Left's betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power.

The source of the angry angst rippling through the Democratic Party's progressive camp is not President Trump--it's the complete collapse of the Left globally. To understand this collapse, we turn (once again) to Marx's profound understanding of the state and capitalism.

We turn not to the cultural Marxism that is passingly familiar to Americans, but to Marx's core economic analysis, which as Sartre noted, is only taught to discredit it.

Cultural Marxism draws as much from Engels as Marx. In today's use, cultural Marxism describes the overt erosion of traditional values--the family, community, religious faith, property rights and limited central government--in favor of rootless Cosmopolitanism and an expansive, all-powerful central state that replaces community, faith and property rights with statist control mechanisms that enforce dependence on the state and a mindset that the individual is guilty of anti-state thinking until proven innocent by the state's own rules.

Marx's critique of capitalism is economic: capital and labor are in eternal conflict. In Marx's analysis, capital has the upper hand until the internal contradictions of capitalism consume capital's control from the inside.

Capital not only dominates labor, it also dominates the state. Thus the state-cartel version of capitalism that is dominant globally is not a coincidence or an outlier--it is the the only possible outcome of a system in which capital is the dominant force.

To counter this dominance of capital, social democratic political movements arose to wrest some measure of control out of the hands of capital in favor of labor. Social democratic movements were greatly aided by the near-collapse ...

(snip)

(Excerpt) Read more at charleshughsmith.blogspot.com ...


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: collapse; left; marxism; politics
The Collapse Of The Political Left
(Michael Barrone)
1 posted on 01/23/2017 7:37:57 AM PST by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: blam

My personal statement about it all is that “there was no ‘there’ there there to begin with.”


2 posted on 01/23/2017 7:41:17 AM PST by Gaffer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blam

the Left’s betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power.>

Yep!

And the left now collapsing are hardly traditional democrats. Obama got rid of them from 2008 to 2010.The collapsing left are largely liberalfascists.

How you might ask?

Its all described here in detail:

Barrack Obama: The Quintessential Liberal Fascist.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html


3 posted on 01/23/2017 7:41:31 AM PST by Candor7 ( Obama fascism article:(http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blam
FOX News Declines to Renew George Will’s Contract

"Will left the Republican Party in June 2016 over President Donald Trump’s candidacy, after Trump secured the Republican nomination for the presidency."

4 posted on 01/23/2017 7:43:17 AM PST by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blam
Cultural Marxism draws as much from Engels as Marx.

Engels was like the ORIGINAL Trust Fund Kid.

5 posted on 01/23/2017 7:43:55 AM PST by PJ-Comix (Glenn Beck is one Blood Bucket shy of the Funny Farm)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blam

Good riddance to Will.


6 posted on 01/23/2017 7:52:53 AM PST by KC_Conspirator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: blam

I have heard this so darn many times. During the Reagan administrator, after Clinton, etc.

The Left will not be defeated, nor will it collapse while it controls the media, the schools, and the universities.

If you look at what they are doing to our kids, you will realize that the destruction of our Republic is all but accomplished.

When you look at the irrationality of the Left, you will realize that the US is no longer “One Nation” but is, in fact, several.

Only indifference, entertainment, and welfare checks (Bread and Circuses) is keeping civil war from breaking out.

Trump may simply be our last “Hurrah!” before we finish crumbling.


7 posted on 01/23/2017 7:55:05 AM PST by Little Ray (Freedom Before Security!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Little Ray

Wholly agreed


8 posted on 01/23/2017 8:00:07 AM PST by Hardastarboard (Freedom Trumps Fascism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Little Ray

Sorry but I just can’t agree with you.


9 posted on 01/23/2017 8:08:25 AM PST by reasonisfaith ("...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: blam

They won’t go quietly.
Violence and mayhem are sure to follow.


10 posted on 01/23/2017 8:10:23 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blam

Marx believed in Free Trade. He was right about its destructive power.


11 posted on 01/23/2017 8:12:43 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KC_Conspirator

The analysis is a simplistic division of the population into two categories, labor and capital.

In fact, the lines are quite blurry. Labor that wishes to have capital can easily have it, and many do. Many are required to do so with their pension plans. Most owners of capita also put in considerable labor. Those that do not tend to have their capital worn away, as a couple of generations of owners that do not work tend to lose capital.

What tends to happen is that the top 10% of capable people tend to accumulate 80% of the assets in society. And it is not very hereditary.

The more important situation is the movement to centralize power so that political power becomes far more important than productivity.

Enormous regulations make political “capital” much more important than mere money. That is how congress critters go in with modest forturnes, and come out with large ones.

It is how Russian and Chinese apparatchiks become wealthy.

The difficulty is how to limit the power of the state while having sufficient power to protect from external and internal enemies.


12 posted on 01/23/2017 8:15:54 AM PST by marktwain
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: blam

Bump for a later read.


13 posted on 01/23/2017 8:32:10 AM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist (STOP THE TAPE!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog

Liberalism sold it soul long ago for “red pottage” (they hate capitalism, but love capital), and is now totally illiberal and despotic. Its helpless true believer victims are in full rage, and know no other option but to riot.

The “progressive” (follow the money) sellout and surrender to capital over labor is a done deal. Love him or hate him, Trump was the only presidential candidate to see this. It lead to Brexit and President Trump, with more to come I figure.

#RustyIrony… the fear is though Trump tapped into this frustration is he is really ready to fight it or succumb to it… or is he just part of it in disguise? For the “swamp” is in full war mode and seeks destruction of any who oppose!


14 posted on 01/23/2017 8:40:56 AM PST by FiddlePig (Who needs Truth & facts when you have narrative?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: marktwain

I think the distinction is between economic marxism and cultural marxism. The former is concerned with the creation and distribution of capital, while the latter is more concerned with the aggregation and “equitable” distribution of raw power. The former attacks a nation’s economic structures, but the latter attacks everything else, using its Hegelian hammer.


15 posted on 01/23/2017 9:42:07 AM PST by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Little Ray

The left is licking it wounds but it will be back even stronger in 2 years unless we lay waste to every leftist funding and power source that we can between now and then!

Now is the time to destroy them, we must expunge leftist thought and ideals from America. Reagan made great strides but look where we are now? We have 92 genders, gay marriage, white privilege, BLM, etc. As soon as he left office, the destruction went into overdrive by the Bush and Clinton dynasties.

Trump will be a speed bump like Reagan unless we do some real damage to the left!


16 posted on 01/23/2017 10:03:28 AM PST by bigtoona (Make America Great Again! America First!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: PJ-Comix
Engels was like the ORIGINAL Trust Fund Kid.

Marx also grew up as a wealthy, privileged child whose father was a rich lawyer descended from a long line of prominent rabbis and whose mother was a member of the Prussian aristocracy. He then married himself into a wealthy line of Belgian aristocrats - so he was in no way living in poverty as he struggled in his "mighty" task of bettering mankind via the communist struggle (as they tell us). And yes, "bettering mankind" is a bit of sarcasm there.

Marx's wife,Jenny von WestphalenMarx's mother, Henrietta PressburgMarx's grandmother Nanette Barent-Cohen The "story" told of Marx toiling in great poverty to write "The Communist Manifesto" is just a lie. A lie that the billionaire/trillionaire globalists tell about all of their false fronts that are tasked with infiltrating and destroying competing social groups. In this case Marx formalized and popularized the communist philosophy to redirect the working classes away from the emerging European republicanism movements (based on a philosophy of natural law and the rights of man) and into an easily controlled, philosophically unsound movement. Communism, as a totalitarian form of government, is easily controlled once the leaders of the Party are bought off or corrupted and blackmailed into submission.

Note: the globalists' "Communism Project" went off the rails during the Russian Bolshevik revolution when their two agents, Lenin and Trotsky, feuded throughout the revolution instead of working together as they were directed. Lenin won the battle with Trotsky but Lenin's ill health and early death allowed Stalin (who was not controlled by the globalists) to take over the revolutionary government and keep it out of the control of the globalists.
17 posted on 01/23/2017 10:32:51 AM PST by Garth Tater (What's mine is mine.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: blam
We are in an interesting time, that's for sure.

Trump has re-branded the GOP as broadly protectionist, conservative socially, militarily strong, but less interventionist.

The Dems are struggling to figure out who they are. They all agree on "socially liberal" and support for "marginalized groups", but whether they are labor or not is up in the air.

Roughly: Hillary was an internationalist aligned with big banking and Bernie somewhat harkened back to the older Democratic party labor tradition.

There are a whole bunch of Dems who want to party to re-seize the protectionist, labor supporting baton back from Trump, and they are (of course) willing to go to all sorts of extremes to do this. Stuff like Bernies free college, or even "Guaranteed Annual Income" which Leftist thinkers have been bandying about lately.

I suspect the Hillary wing will win out in the end. And the party will continue in the way that the writer has very nicely described it.

The classic liberal / libertarian philosophy is out in the cold right now. Reason Magazines "free minds and free markets".

18 posted on 01/23/2017 2:17:31 PM PST by Jack Black (Dispossession is an obliteration of memory, of place, and of identity)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson