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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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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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