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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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Again, you are divorcing the necessary system of imperialism from the structures that imperialism supports. An accurate look at the German system requires investigating German neocolonies and multinational corporations, finance capital, etc. The German working classes are not actually in control in Germany, the concessions they have are thus eroding. The system isn't "more left." My point is that the differences that exist between European countries and the US are not such that they can actually be compared in terms of left and right, such a spectrum analysis does not accurately reflect reality despite attempting to increase the nuance. False nuance is obfuscation.
I understand your argument. I just don't accept that being capitalist and imperialist makes left-right comparisons within capitalism meaningless. If two capitalist societies differ substantially in redistribution, labour power, public ownership and market regulation, those differences can still be compared politically. Your framework choosing not to recognise them as left-right differences is seemingly arbitrary, and doesn't make the comparison incoherent.
My issue with your framing is that you erase the real nature of imperialist economies by pretending imperialism is separate from how the domestic economy functions. At this point, you're treating left and right as arbitrary, and not as functional, useful descriptors for systems.
But I'm not separating them. I'm saying that even accounting for imperialism, meaningful political differences still exist between capitalist states. If "left" and "right" are useful descriptors, they should be capable of describing those differences rather than collapsing every capitalist imperial power into the same category.
I never said there were not meaningful political differences, I said describing these differences as "more left" is a destruction of nuance by obfuscating what's actually going on. Differences can exist without calling one "more left" or "more right."
Then we agree that the differences are meaningful. I'm describing those differences using the conventional left-right spectrum. You're arguing that doing so obscures their shared capitalist and imperialist structure. That's a disagreement about the usefulness of the framework, not whether the comparison itself is accurate.
I never said there weren't meaningful differences. My point is that describing the imperialist European powers as "more left" does more to damage our understanding than improve it, and therefore is not an accurate comparison. There can be differences in form that cannot be boiled down to "left and right."
Sure, but I haven't "boiled them down" to left and right. I've used left-right as one axis of comparison. Acknowledging that Europe is relatively further left on that axis doesn't require ignoring imperialism, capitalism or any other dimension of the comparison.
It does, though, as you have to treat domestic policies dependent on imperialism as though they are independent from it. That's like saying one landlord is more left than another landlord, such a comparison doesn't make any actual sense.
Dependence doesn't imply equivalence though? A domestic policy can be enabled by imperialism and still be meaningfully further left than another domestic policy. You're arguing that its origin disqualifies the comparison, but I don't see why that follows.
It feels like this comes from a concern that identifying any small part of our society as left-wing somehow means accepting it as sufficiently left-wing. But refusing to locate anything on that spectrum doesn't help us understand or progress it either.
I'm arguing that identifying policies dependent on imperialism as "left wing" makes about as much sense as calling a Kibbutz settlement on Palestinian land "left wing." Left and right is not actually a spectrum in the traditional sense, and treating it as such obfuscates the reality of the situation.
That analogy doesn't establish your point though. A kibbutz can have left-wing internal economic structures while simultaneously participating in an oppressive or colonial system. Calling those structures left-wing doesn't require calling the settlement as a whole left-wing.
That's exactly the distinction I've been making?
I understand the distinction you're making. My point is that it entirely obfuscates the nature of left and right, rather than expanding our knowledge.
So this ultimately comes down to our different conceptions of what “left” and “right” describe. You treat them as classifications of the underlying system; I'm also using them as comparative descriptors of individual policies and institutions, but i don't see how the latter inherently obfuscates the former.
You look at elements of a system as though they are independent from the system itself. There's no such thing, however, as an element independent of the system it exists in.
It sounds a lot like calling a fascist party National Socialist German Workers Party to obscure fascism, or calling yourself a Zionist, then screaming that pointing out actual fascist genocide, copied directly from Germans who directly copied slavers is "anti-Semitic," against white Westerners, without a drop of Semitic blood in their veins.
Yea, the username is pretty apt.
I haven't said they're independent. Being able to distinguish and compare an element of a system doesn't require pretending it exists independently of that system. If it did, you couldn't meaningfully analyse individual policies or institutions at all?
You can compare, but when you declare individual elements of an overall system as "left" or "right," you immediately throw the entire comparison into disarray. Comparison does not require labeling them as left or right. For example, a military in a socialist country like China and a military in a capitalist country like the US can be very similar in form, or even identical, yet they play a left or right role thanks to their overall systems.
But your example assumes what you're trying to establish. You're defining whether something is left or right entirely by the system it serves. That's precisely the conception of left and right that we disagree on.
A redistributive policy doesn't cease to be relatively left-wing simply because it operates within capitalism, any more than every policy within a socialist state automatically becomes left-wing.
You're attaching "left" and "right" to elements of a system, when you cannot. I'm making the point that elements can have near identical forms, but the nature of the system determines what class they ultimately benefit.
But again, that's your definition of left and right, not an argument for why mine is invalid. You're defining them exclusively by which class ultimately benefits from the system; I'm using them to describe political characteristics that can vary within a system. That's the disagreement we've been having all along. You can't objectively establish your conception as the correct one here, because there isn't a single objectively correct conception to establish.
The reason your analysis is weaker is because it ultimately obfuscates reality more than it helps explain. Any attempt to categorize and sort something that detracts from our general knowledge, such as claiming unions built on imperialism are "left," does more damage than it builds up our understanding. Beyond that, it's a semantic argument.
But “it obfuscates reality” is the conclusion you keep asserting, not something you've demonstrated. Identifying one dimension of a system doesn't prevent analysis of the others. Calling stronger organised labour relatively left-wing tells us something specific; we can then separately analyse how that labour movement relates to capitalism and imperialism.
At this point, calling my framework “weaker” because it doesn't adopt yours is just circular.
I did demonstrate it. An example would be China and the US both having militaries, trying to call either "left" or "right" based on the form ignores the context. A kibbutz on Palestinian land is a settler-colonial project, it doesn't matter that it is a communalist formation. You confuse the situation by abstracting forms out of their context.
As I said at the time, those examples demonstrate that context matters, which I've never disputed. They don't demonstrate that characteristics can't also be described independently. Saying a kibbutz has a communalist economic structure doesn't erase its settler-colonial context. Both facts can be true and analytically useful simultaneously.
You're treating acknowledging one as necessarily obscuring the other, and that's the part you haven't established.
Ultimately, you could have saved us both a lot of time by acknowledging that what you really mean is: “I don't think Europe should be described in terms of leftism because its underlying capitalist and imperialist structure disqualifies it.” That's an opinion, and a reasonable one, but not an objectively correct conception of left and right.
I'm saying labeling the form of something divorced from the rest of the system as "left" or "right" is an impossible task, as they depend on the context of the system.
But nobody is divorcing it from the system. Analysing a characteristic within its context and identifying its political orientation is entirely possible. You're repeatedly equating distinguishing something analytically with pretending it's independent, and those aren't the same thing.
Calling a system more "left" based on analysis of individual parts of it on the basis of form, rather than the entire system, divorces them.
Why do you believe that?
Dont give another example with the premise baked in, put it into words.
Because forms do not exist without the context of the whole. Systems are not just the sum of individual parts, the actual interactions of the parts determine the overall nature of how the parts fit together.
That explains why context matters, but it still doesn't explain why analysing or comparing a part necessarily divorces it from that context. I can consider both the form of a policy and how it functions within the wider system. Where's the contradiction?
Because when you analyze the form as though it exists outside the system, and then use that form as a summation of reasons why a system is more left or right, you obfuscate the role it actually plays within the system. The form can only be analyzed within the system.
But that's the premise I keep asking you to establish. I haven't analysed anything as though it exists outside the system. You're defining any analysis of form as necessarily doing that, then using that definition to prove that it does. That's circular.
The fact you cant explain this must be telling you something about your premise?
You did, though. By saying "labor unions are left," you then looked at increased unionization within Europe as an example of why they are more left. You necessarily presuppose that unions themselves are left structures, even if the purpose of unions in imperialist countries is to placate the workers into maintaining imperialism. You are fully capable of comprehending my point.
I comprehend your point. I dispute the premise. You're asserting that the purpose of unions in imperialist countries is to placate workers and maintain imperialism, and therefore their function can't meaningfully be described as left-wing. That's your Marxist interpretation of their systemic role, not an objective property that follows from their existence within imperialism.
How does it falling in line with Marxism make it non-objective? Could it be that left and right cannot be meaningfully understood as a simple spectrum, as I initially asserted?
Marxism isn't non-objective by definition. Your interpretation isn't objective simply because it's Marxist. You're applying a particular theoretical framework to determine what these institutions “really” function to do, then treating that conclusion as proof that other frameworks are invalid.
And I've never claimed left and right are a simple spectrum. Something can be multidimensional and still permit relative comparisons along particular dimensions
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