To simplify things and be as straight as possible, I often describe myself as a very hard-core committed leftist, but truth to tell, I’m bored by political theorizing, felt completely overwhelmed by all the Adam Smith/Karl Marx/ etc. reading in my poli-sci classes in college (and forgot what little I learned two weeks after finals), have no interest in economic theory, and I just realized that my entire line of political thinking is extremely simple: people need to distribute resources (such money, goods, access to health care) more equitably. That’s it.
Since leftists seem to assume that principle to be a given (and yak all day and night about how best to accomplish it), and righties are horrified by its implications, I feel ok as describing my political beliefs as left-wing, but am curious to know if you think that it’s too shallow, naive, insubstantial to be much of anything. Am I a lefty in your estimation?
That’s what I’m asking–do specifics matter? I could go into all that shit, but why? Is that important? If so, it seems to me that you’re saying No, I’m not necessarily left-wing given my one principle.
I would tend to describe more equitable distribution of resources as being a left-wing principle, but it’s not significant enough to qualify you as a hardcore lefty by itself, I don’t think. If you said something like, “Government should seize corporations’ money and give it to the people,” then yes, I would call you a hardcore lefty; even a radical lefty. You seem to be more saying, “I don’t believe poor people should starve to death on the streets.”
That seems kind of quibbly to me. The same exact act that a lefty would describe as “rational, planned equity of resources via taxation of corporations that still allows them to function and make a healthy profit” someone else might describe as “seizing funds legally earned from hard-working folks to give to lazy bums.”
What I’m saying is that I’ll support whoever is most in favor of sizable immediate redistribution of resources. If you want to discuss how and when and why, fine, but I’m going to go with whoever wants it the soonest and the most. Am I a lefty?
IMHO, when someone says they’re “hardcore” it means that they’re living the life as best as they can. Going all in.
A hardcore vegan, for isntance, is someone who’s all in on no animal products in their life anywhere. Not just their diet.
So…do you live the life to it’s fullest? Are you active in politics? Are you active in social services? Are you doing everything you can to push the idea that “people need to distribute resources (such money, goods, access to health care) more equitably?” That would make you hardcore.
Not activist at all. I vote, I contribute money (last year around $500) to candidates, sometimes I publish articles arguing for various lefty positions, but I don’t consider myself an activist at all. Is that a requirement for being a “hard-core lefty”?
As much as I hate distilling left-right down to a list of policies, it will be hard to assess without you giving us a long rundown of your views on the political issues of the day.
YMMV but … My experience is the bulk of Americans whom I know with a reasonable degree of interactions and describe themselves a “hard left” are, on the larger world scale, centre right.
It’s not clear that you have any political beliefs at all. Everyone agrees that resources should be distributed more equitably. They just disagree on what equitable means and how that distribution should take place. Some people believe that capitalism provides an excellent means of distributing resources and that it does so equitably almost by definition.
Presumably, you differ with that position, but that difference comes down to the detailed laying out of policy and principle that you don’t like.
I consider hard-core to mean uncompromising or obstinate, true to the ideology in every way. A hard-core lefty is someone left-of-center who I think is unreasonably radical in wanting to breaking down the hierarchies of society. ‘The whole system is corrupt and needs to change now.’
I would say that, culture war issues aside, if you are calling for a more equitable division of resources, you meet the minimum qualifications for being a leftist and may look for your membership card in the mail. I guess whether you’re “hard-core” would depend on whether you think it should be MUCH more equitable.
So many of those questions are false dichotomies… Example.
“The economic system in this country unfairly favors powerful interests”
“The economic system in this country is generally fair to most Americans”
“The obstacles that once made it harder for women than men to get ahead are now largely gone”
“There are still significant obstacles that make it harder for women to get ahead than men”
But unless you’re defining the current system as something other than “capitalism”, the people who believe that presumably think that we already have the optimum amount of equibilitiness and therefore would disagree that resources should be distributed more equitably than they already are.
