How has the left evolved over the generations, since its beginning during the French revolution (altho you might say its true origins lie in antiquity, in the Mediterranean sea, in Athens and Rome)?
During the French revolution of 1789, or the American revolution of 1776, or you might say the glorious revolution of 1688, when Britannia became a constitutional monarchy, electing its first prime minister in 1721, Robert Walpole (altho Britannia was not yet a democracy, only about 3% of the pop had suffrage, still it was a beginning, or was magna carta the beginning?), what was the left?
Simply put, it was roughly libertarian, republican and capitalist.
During the 19th and early 20th century, the left evolved, it became socialist.
There were various socialisms, utopian, Marxist, national, social anarchism, social democracy and so on.
And what was socialism?
For contrast, in serfdom and slavery, the king and nobility partly or fully owned your property and your ass.
In capitalism, production was individualized, altho various voluntary collectivizations could arise out of individualization.
In socialism, production was partly or fully owned by the public.
During the 20th and early 21st century, the left evolved again, into postmodernism on the one hand, which was partly or fully subjectivist or nihilist, and into Cultural Marxism, for lack of a better term, and environmentalism on the other.
At first, cultural Marxism, or the idea women and minorities were oppressed by men and the majority, and environmentalism were peripheral concerns, the central one being class, more exclusively the working class against the middle and upperclass, or more inclusively the 99% against the 1%, but in many respects sociocultural and environmental concerns have eclipsed class for todayâs left.
The left has always been more or less corrupt, same as the right, same as any human endeavor or undertaking, but seems to me now more than ever, the left has been co-opted by the 1%.
Keep the working and middleclass, and now women and men, minorities and the majority fighting over scraps.
The old objective of the left was to emancipate, empower and enrich the working, and middleclass, but with all this environmental stuff becoming the central, rather than a peripheral issue, the plebs are being taught mankind is bad, and the earth good, to love their poverty, to give up their cars and meat, to live in tiny homes, meanwhile the elite live in opulence, I guess they can handle all that luxury, they earned it, we canât and didnât.
Itâs like the old leftâs goal was to become roughly equally rich, now its goal is to become equally dirt poor.
I see the left transforming yet again into a new classicism, a new sexism, racism and so on, into the very antithesis of what it was once.
All this voluntary asceticism and austerity reminds me of the medieval world, where the Popes taught the serfs those who lived in poverty in this life would be blessed in the next.
I see a new plutocracy, and technocracy rather than theocracy forming, a new serfdom, where the issue of the 1% is never addressed, or only in a superficial way, like weâll give you a few crumbs in exchange for near absolute power, and the lesser or nonissues of sex, race and environment are amplified many times over.
What I see is the upperclass ditching capitalism, or taking what works for them from both capitalism and socialism and discarding the rest, into a new covert or clandestine form of elitism.