Yes. Though I would describe Sanders as left-of-centre (apart from her stance on the environment, Ocasio-Cortez is quite the centrist).
> am I correct in your assessment that basically just about only bolshevism counts as 'left'?
No. There is an entire range of actual leftist politics and economics that Americans tend to utterly refuse to engage with in good faith - the Cold War really did a number on that country's collective sense of a political spectrum. Left/right are instead essentially reduced to only being about social issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, with some lip service paid to the environment.
"Imperialist capitalism, but make the marginal tax rate somewhat higher and appoint more minorities" is not leftism.
See, this is the exact refusal to engage in good faith that I'm talking about. The red scare really did do a number on y'all.
Geopolitically speaking, opposition to colonialism and imperialism (and their neo- variants) are generally considered to be leftist ideals. Internationalism skews left and globalism skews right, despite American conservatives' pearl-clutching in that regard. Decentralisation of power (with the extreme including advocating for anarchic/acephalous societies) also skews heavily left, with the flaw that without strong systems this often leads to the re-centralisation of power in the hands of one or a few (conversely, hierarchism which skews heavily right often leads to codification of power in de facto aristocracies).
Economically, capitalism is unambiguously a right-wing economic theory (note that capitalism is not the same think as markets - another thing that people would rather remain cheerfully ignorant about). If your politico-economic system involves capitalism, you'd be very hard pressed to describe it as anything further left than centrist at best (as most mixed economies are). Actual leftist economics would include the somewhat vague blob that is left-libertarianism, encompassing everything from Georgism (often criticised as capitalism lite) to syndicalism, mutualism, anarcho-collectivism and the (of particular interest to me) various schools of African socialism. Opposition to capital/private ownership/wage theft takes many forms, not only that of the communist bogeyman.
Why do people want to think of themselves/be thought of as being on the left so badly when they're completely unwilling to actually engage with what leftism means?
I noticed that instead of responding to my examples of actual leftist governments, with a series of your own examples of major leftist governments that are "not super evil", or are more fair examples, you instead responded with general ideals.
Yeah, no. If someone is going to call AOC or Bernie Sanders as "centrists", then I am going to need you to point to an actual, real life example of a true "leftist" government to understand wtf you are talking about.
Examples are needed so you can't make a bunch of stuff up, and wash you hands with the actual, real life examples of how your "ideals" turned out in real life.
> unwilling to actually engage with what leftism means
Hey, I did try to give examples of actual leftist governments, so we can evaluate how those real life, not made up in your head, examples actually turned out.
When talking about this stuff, the only actual thing that I will except is real life examples of your ideal government. Because, if I don't do that, then leftists will just make a bunch of stuff up, that is not grounded in reality.
Unfortunately the gap in what a leftist will claim that they want, and how they claim things will turn out is miles and miles away different from how actual leftist governments attempt to implement their ideals.
The left-right spectrum is, literally, about ideals - social, political, economic. It is not a scale of "good vs evil", despite what Calvinism has imposed on people's brains. If your stance is that leftism is evil, you are entirely free to say or think so, but it still does not change what the ideals of leftism are, and it still doesn't make trying to change the definitions of those ideals so that you can call yourself/others leftists (for what reason?) any less intellectually barren.
It doesn't make claiming that I'm making stuff up when I'm referring to actual, much-written-about schools of thought that have been critiqued and analysed by people all over the spectrum any less intellectually barren. Reading is free, and many of the works in question are in the public domain.
> and wash you hands with the actual, real life examples of how your "ideals" turned out in real life.
As if you don't?
All your boogeymen (boogeymen that I'm willing to wager have never actually had an effect on your life) are communists. All _my_ boogeymen are capitalists, to this very moment: the UK, France, the Western world in general, first with literal colonisation and currently with a decades-long trail of neocolonialism and outsourcing the cruelty and inequity needed to sustain their economic systems to the parts of the world nobody really cares about. It's incredibly telling which of the atrocities of the 20th century get dragged out all the time and which get swept under the rug.
> When talking about this stuff, the only actual thing that I will except is real life examples of your ideal government. Because, if I don't do that, then leftists will just make a bunch of stuff up, that is not grounded in reality.
You know the funny thing about this? My proto-ideal society (cannot really be described or named as a government, because it was acephalous communalism) did exist, and fragments of it still remain. But then the British came.
And that's essentially the story of the late 19th and the 20th century - nascent right-wing politics and economics running roughshod over nascent leftism, particularly violently so. First with a new wave of colonisation in Africa and Asia to fuel the growth of imperialist capitalism, squashing and integrating various societies that traditionally leant left along the way. And a few decades later with the fascism that swept Western Europe (the quote that free speech advocates like to bring up does not start out with "first they came for the socialists/trade unionists" apropos of nothing). The leftist movements that survived were the ones that were big enough and violent enough to resist destruction, and like I have already said without strong systems such movements were doomed to turn totalitarian. Much like right-wing economics was doomed to turn into this current mess of cronyism, de facto oligarchy, and murder for profit.
But, again, understanding that would require engaging in good faith and recognising that there are multiple factors that influence this topic, which you seem somewhat loath to do.
You are hyper focused on that one word that I used, when that wasn't really my main point. If you don't like that word, then how about I'll rephase. So how about this: "You did not provide any examples of a major leftist government that did not go horrible wrong, and have lots of problems."
> I'm making stuff up
By "making stuff up", I was saying that you were not referencing actual examples that I can look at, that exist in the real world, and are instead talking about hypotheticals that do not reflect how those hypotheticals exist in the real world.
> to this very moment: the UK, France, the Western world in general
And I am going to say that I would much rather live in any of these countries, than any real life examples of leftist governments.
Based on that, and based on comparing real world examples, I am going to say that I would deal with less problems by living in a western country.
> My proto-ideal society did exist, and fragments of it still remain. But then the British came.
Sounds like your ideal society didn't work out so great then and has a lot of horrible problems. If all the leftist governments implode because they can't defend themselves, then it sounds like that is a pretty big problem, and I would never want to live in such a society.
> Much like right-wing economics was doomed
Well at least it is a lot better to live in than the alternative leftist governments! I would still much prefer living in the right wing economies than in any of the leftist ones.
> NPR is right-leaning
Yes.
> bernie/AOC are 'centrist'
Yes. Though I would describe Sanders as left-of-centre (apart from her stance on the environment, Ocasio-Cortez is quite the centrist).
> am I correct in your assessment that basically just about only bolshevism counts as 'left'?
No. There is an entire range of actual leftist politics and economics that Americans tend to utterly refuse to engage with in good faith - the Cold War really did a number on that country's collective sense of a political spectrum. Left/right are instead essentially reduced to only being about social issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, with some lip service paid to the environment.
"Imperialist capitalism, but make the marginal tax rate somewhat higher and appoint more minorities" is not leftism.