“left” isn’t a thing academically because there isn’t some line that actually captures the wide variety of political positions.
This meme of “there is no left in America” is just a childish way of saying, “I don’t like the current majority opinion of the Democratic Party”.
Well, for Europeans (and I'd guess Canadians, Latin Americans, etc.) there is a line, and the Dems never cut it. A fuzzy line (a spectrum if you will on the left) doesn't mean there isn't one, and one can be of either side. Dems are not, and have never been, even close to the fuzzy "border" part of that line, always to the right of it.
Centrist is the more accurate term for Dems (and even that's charitable).
It's basically center-right (Dems), and right-to-far-right (GOP).
Sure, for some Americans, Democrats might be called "left", but then again other Americans also considered Swedish style social democracy as "communism".
>This meme of “there is no left in America” is just a childish way of saying, “I don’t like the current majority opinion of the Democratic Party”.
No, it's more like saying "America never has had a left party, just a party more to the left than the other".
Not in any historical sense of the term as developed and still currently used in Europe, at any rate.
Poverty rate in Sweden is, like in most of Western Europe, low. [1] whilst the cost of living is lower than in the USA as an example. [2] At the same time schools, university, healthcare, social services, is accessible to everyone. There is a shortage of housing, only 0.8% of rental properties are availbe for rent[3] but it isn’t necessarily only a failure of government as the housing market is largely commercial, only 19% of housing is owned by the government [4].
[1] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm
[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...
[3] https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...
[4] https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11...
Japan is very capitalist but builds lots of housing because landowners can build up with little zoning restrictions.
The USSR was very communist and they also built a lot of housing because the government just went in and did it.
But the USA and Europe seem to easily get stuck in NIMBY traps where nothing gets built, and then when prices go up due to lack of supply people will reach for solutions like rent control, which almost 100% of economists will tell you is bad for longterm housing supply because it discourages new construction.
I've heard Stockholm's rent control is especially stupid because while the landlord is forced to rent to the primary tenant at a low, below market rate, that primary tenant can turn around and sublet their entire unit at a much higher, market rate to a secondary tenant. So the primary lease is basically a capital asset with perpetual returns. The unit ends up renting for market rate anyway to the secondary tenant, while the primary tenant collects free money.
This is overly simplistic. For instance, the US (left?) has been ahead of Europe on issues like accessibility for the disabled or same-sex marriage.
In any case, it's not like the right is against "accessibility for the disabled".
Similarly, same-sex marriage is not about left vs right but about progressive/liberal (in the in favor of invididual rights sense) vs concervative.
An anarcho-capitalist can be all about same-sex marriage without being left (the opposite), where even communists were known to be socially conservative in several cases, or pioneering such rights in others.
It’s so incredibly stupid to think that there is just one dimension driving all political views and it’s stemming from the lens of the US two-party system sucking the oxygen out of the room.
Pick all of the policies you think defines a “left” party and we can go through one-by-one and find parties in some country that are considered right-wing that will share some of the same views.
Additionally, political science has many subfields and the ones that are closely related to political beliefs are subject to the same replication crisis as the other fields of social psychology (i.e. lots of junk science). So any of that stuff that generalizes 1 dimensional outcomes to entire lifestyles and views is likely complete trash.
In quantitative political science, candidates and parties tend to be placed in "n-dimensional political spaces" where each issue occupies a different dimension. For example, if an election contains candidates who have publicly stated their positions on LGBT rights, free trade, and public healthcare, then you can call this a 3-dimensional political space where candidates place their attitudes on these issues on these axes.
In qualitative political science, there's many distinctions. There's "liberal rights vs substantive rights" political systems (e.g. whether the government guarantees individuals rights against their government or whether the government guarantees individuals substantive (standard of living e.g. basic healthcare) claims. There's "authoritarian vs democratic systems" (e.g. both fascist systems and Democratic Centralist ("politburo-style") socialist systems are authoritarin systems; liberal democratic, social democratic, and participatory economic systems are all democratic systems).
Even then, Europe has social democratic and communist parties that are anti-immigration. Japan has pro-labor pro-immigration parties. Politics cannot be boiled down to a "left" and a "right". When discussing "the Left" in the context of political philosophy, I've largely seen it as a reference to Hegelian Marxist thought at its strongest and a general orientation around the disenfranchisement of labor at its weakest.
Also, the majority of American citizens don't like the opinions of the democratic party. They works for the corps, not the people.
There is no “global center-right”.
What is considered a “right wing extremist” in France could still be extremely nationalistic, anti-immigration, pro state entitlements, anti free speech, and anti gun rights. That has zero overlap with any of the political parties in the US no matter where you plop the dumb pin on the 1d line.
Gore Vidal
It's almost like not all issues fit neatly on a single left/right dimension.
Also the Democrats created Obamacare which is similar to the Swiss system of mandated insurance, so they obviously do care about healthcare.
And in many states, Democrats have passed gun control at the state level.
That doesn't sound right.
> or banning guns.
In which other western country or part of Europe are guns banned?
Increasing partisanship and gerrymandering are making this less true, but it is still a significant force, particularly for Senate seats.
Strong parties, that run on a policy platform and where they have much more control over their members, just isn't a thing in the US, and couldn't be, without a lot of constitutional changes.
Minor parties and coalition governments in other countries function in somewhat the same way. It's not uncommon for a party to win but not gain absolute power in the legislative branch of government, and have to compromise with others to pass laws and spending bills.
Democrats are the ones pushing for universal healthcare: https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/achievin...
> or banning guns.
Yep, they're the ones pushing for gun control too: https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/healing-...
>The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.
>Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction. This overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic stagnation of trade; division of society into a small class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their numbers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the economic structure which forms it basis.
From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor of Free Trade on that ground, is that not a reason for every supporter of the present order of society to declare against Free Trade? If Free Trade is stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens vote for Protection as a conservative plan?
>If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do so because Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding the other.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/
(This isn't to say the two parties are the same, especially post ~2018. Just that the main dynamic is very similar)