French Elections: The Morning After | 300 comments (300 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 1)

Yes. I have this feeling that in many countries (including my own), the left is just useless. Not because it lacks money, organization or anger it could channel, but because it lacks ideas. That's where we come in, I suppose. And this is not at all limited to those who are centre-left or who have drunk the third-way kool-aid, but basically all of them. I don't think I could mention even a single Swedish social democrat who both gets it even rudimentary policy-wise (no matter what the issue is!), and who is in a leading position, or interested in exploiting these things in an electoral way. There is one guy who seems to get it in Sweden macroeconomy-wise, Jonas Sjöstedt (as he is a econo-ph.d), but he is sadly the new chairman of the old commie party (even if he's the bannerman of the previously purged democratic socialist splinter group), so to most people he still carries the toxic commie deaths-head.

But still, it begs the question: why are these establishment leftists often so damn dense and uninterested in actual policy? I know that they are, because I do know quite a number of them.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Apr 23rd, 2012 at 06:37:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

Because they got their positions due to their ability in electioneering (for the third-wayers) or factional backstabbing (for the secterian commies), not policy.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Apr 23rd, 2012 at 08:00:17 PM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 1)

Left leaders used to come from the labor movement. Now they come from the party bureaucracy, or worse, journalism/academia.

by rootless2 on Mon Apr 23rd, 2012 at 10:37:11 PM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 1)

Left leaders used to come from the labor movement. Now they come from the party bureaucracy, or worse, journalism/academia.

When you criticise "left" leaders in this way, are you referring to the comprador class leadership of the social democrats or the 'radical' left?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 03:07:52 PM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

All of them. I mean here in the USA, we can listen to comrade Chomsky, Comrade Hedges, or Comrade Crispin Miller or others explain the "left" position, and find in it nothing - exactly the same as someone like an Anthony Weiner or Kucinich or Lieberman or Schumer or Cuomo or ...

If it were not for the people who come out of the remains of the civil rights movement, we'd have absolutely nothing at all.

by rootless2 on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 11:21:35 PM EST
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Wow (none / 1)

No substantial difference between Chomsky and Lieberman, but a world of difference between the Lieberzombie and Mittens.

That's a... low resolution political spectrum, shall we say.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 25th, 2012 at 05:24:49 AM EST
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Re: Wow (none / 0)

Of course there are differences, but the similarity is the absence of solution.

by rootless2 on Wed Apr 25th, 2012 at 07:41:03 AM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

How much the willingness of the top unions to pass losses to others has weakened left? Industry unions seem to be more willing to agree that the employer may contract cleaning or other services to lowest bidder than to accept lower pay rises.

by Jute on Wed Apr 25th, 2012 at 07:12:24 AM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

Because industry unions know that they are competing in a global marketplace, and if they can't compete, everyone will lose their jobs.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Wed Apr 25th, 2012 at 07:31:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 8)

For Swedish soc-dems factional backstabbing is a must too, at least if you come up the long way. (The other option is to get recruited for being famous, and those guys are mostly in it to make money.)

The best young politicians (interested in policy, interested in understanding what is going on) in all well-established parties tend to sort themselves out. Once they see ideas they fought for be discarded for short-term gain (in particular short-term gain against another faction in their own party) they tend to go bitter. Leaving those that enjoy the power-game for its own sake to advance.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 04:30:43 AM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 4)

That's where we come in, I suppose.

Except that we don't, because we're not part of the party apparatus since we were 15.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 02:15:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 6)

The idea is something like that the pure politics types dominating the parties need somebody to install the policy in them. They are the unwitting slaves of some dead theoretician, in other words.

That said, there still remains the little question how to get their ear.

by IM on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 04:54:41 AM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

Think tanks. Which require money. The labour unions are absolutely flush with cash. Let's have them donate some of it... to us. :)

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 05:35:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 2)

There is still the problem how to get them listening to the right think-tanks. The german unions do have a think tank:

http://www.boeckler.de/imk_36261.htm

But I haven't seen success in the public sphere yet.

by IM on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 05:50:54 AM EST
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Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

And German parties each have their own Stiftung.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 06:19:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 4)

Think tanks are not a way for you to get their ear, it's a way for them to get people to make the noises they want made.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 06:05:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 4)

And a source of sinecures.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 06:12:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 1)

If that is so, they're failing pretty badly as the left doesn't seem to have any think tanks of their own, or at least none that anyone ever heard of.

Here in Sweden, we have the Think Tank of the Labour movement (Arbetarrörelsens tankesmedja) which is just a few years old. It has three (3) employees, and no one cares about it. The central labour union have thousands upon thousands of full time employees, most whom are not apparently paid to think about policy. People I know in the labour movement tell me that the main reason why there is no intellectual development in the Swedish left is a general stuck-in-the-walls tradition of anti-intellecualism and anti-freethinking. Something the right has much less problems with, at least around here. The main think tank of the right (they have lots) is called Timbro. It's well financed, well organised, very influential, has been around since the early 80's, and most importantly: it doesn't toe the party line. While it generally says stuff the right want to hear, it has the intellectual freedom to say stuff the right does not want to hear, and the donors accept this. That is why Timbro is so very successful.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 06:20:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 0)

Don't political parties have "foundations"?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 06:25:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (none / 1)

Some do I suppose, and the last few years have seen an explosion of think tanks, most who don't do much and whom no one has heard of. Checking Wikipedia, they're called stuff like Civitas (never heard of), Cogito (might have heard the name), Agora (leftists who obsess with identity politics, at best voters don't care, at worst they get pissed off), Fores (neoliberal greens - don't ask), Sektor3 (never EVER heard of them, and they seem unusually retarded, naive and irrelevant even compared to the usual Swedish establishment types).

The last one is the second think tank people actually care about: SNS. More or less loosely connected with the Swedish big business community. Was recently involved in a scandal where the businesspeople wanted to stop a report which claimed that maybe private for-profit schools and nursing homes weren't the best thing on earth since pre-sliced bread. But the thing to note here isn't that they tried to censor the think tank, but that the people on the think tank started resigning en masse, going to the media, and in the end won the fight.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 01:50:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: French Elections: The Morning After (4.00 / 4)

The short answer is:

It's a lot of work (example) to simultaneously derive an accurate theory of political-economics and policies based on that theory. Existing organizations who have the people and funding are uninterested (see Jake's comment.) Ad-hoc groups, e.g., ET, don't have the necessary support structures and funding to see it through.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

by ATinNM on Tue Apr 24th, 2012 at 02:54:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

French Elections: The Morning After | 300 comments (300 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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