Hey David, can you delineate the factions that exist on the left right now?
So I'll try to do this.
No, I don't think that anyone will agree about the different factions on the left that exist.
Right.
Everybody would delineate it a little bit differently, but I'll give you my take on
it and you know with the caveat that there is overlap between some of these groups and
there is some fluidity between some of these groups.
So you have what is called third way politics, which exists in both the democratic and the
Republican party.
But it is in a sense it is, it is sort of a center left centrism you could argue that
like bill Clinton, uh, personified this to some degree.
There is third way we can call it third way centrism which is a faction on the left.
It's a pretty establishment faction of the left.
Some of you might call these establishment shills although that's a pejorative term.
So that's kind of one faction of the left.
And I, and I know that that one can be characterized in a, in a few different ways.
There is what I call modern progressivism and another way to sort of call that would
be true social democracy.
Okay.
So these are definitely capitalists.
These are people who don't want to destroy the system that we have are buying large incremental
lists, who have seen the successes of social democracy in other countries and they want
to move in that direction on the basis that there are specific policy ideas, which if
we elect the right people, the system that currently exists can be tweaked and we can
go in a direction that would be often more like the Scandinavian economic and social
model.
That's what I call modern progressivism, which takes into account, um, things like Medicare
for all or some other way of getting to universal coverage.
We're talking about, um, in many cases, housing subsidies, we're talking about maybe like
Bernie's plan to make tuition of at state and local state a, um, uh, schools, uh, tuition
free.
Uh, you're talking about paid maternity leave, you're talking about a democratization of
the workplace to different degrees.
Still capitalism.
Modern progressivism is sort of like true social democracy.
You then have actual democratic socialism.
Okay.
Which is a smaller subsection.
Um, in the immediate, a lot of their goals are very similar to those of the modern Progressive's
in that the next steps are very similar.
They may want to totally socialize the means of ownership of the means of production, but
for the most part the democratic socialists will often agree that the next step for their
cause is the same one as for social Democrats, which is we need to make sure that we are
supporting um, uh, workers rights and labor when it comes to health care.
Modern Progressive's and democratic socialists for the most part want something like Medicare
for all.
Although they may disagree about the way to implement it.
And this is actually going to relate to our next audience question, which is about, is
the debate between social Democrats and democratic socialists one worth having right now.
But I'll get to that later.
So that's your democratic socialists.
And this is a term that's often misapplied.
You will often have people who call themselves democratic socialists who really aren't, they're
just modern progressives.
They're social Democrats.
They don't want to socialize the means of production.
They don't want the government as involved as an actual Democrat democratic socialists
might want.
Then we get to, and this is where it starts to get a little tough, we get to what I believe
are some of the fringe groups and I want to be careful about what term to use.
I'm not trying to be pejorative, although I think that these groups often have a lot
of bad ideas.
You have a sort of, you've got what sometimes is called the Leninist left.
You have what sometimes are called tankinis and I know that that's a pejorative term.
I'm trying to find a non pejorative.
There is sometimes overlap with a sort of more anarchistic movement within the left.
These are relatively fringe and you will find that they have overlap with some of these
other groups on foreign policy.
You will sometimes see overlap between the Leninist left tanky types, uh, and democratic
socialists, although maybe for different reasons.
For example, you might have isolationists and non interventionists who are actually
different politically that sometimes we'll agree on what the policy should be.
In a particular foreign policy situation.
You will have Leninist left tanky types and social Democrats who might agree on how should
education and healthcare be dealt with for example.
Um, but there are definitely some framing differences where the Lennon is left tanky
side and I, if somebody has a better now I want a non pejorative term for that group,
please tell me what one would be.
Um, if there are times where when you get into conversations of very basic things like
the concept of a nation state, um, should militaries exist where you will get to like
some pretty stark differences.
There are, there is also a strong actual socialist communist component, um, within the Leninist
left as the name probably suggests to you.
Um, that is how I see the divisions on the left right now.
And I think for the most part think that it's great to have these different factions.
You know, the Republican party ha prior to Trump did not suffer greatly because of the
three way split between the tea party types, religious conservatives and pro-business Republicans.
They had all three, they won thousands of seats at the local level and up.
Um, and it did not do damage to them.
And I see no problem with having all of these different groups included in the context of,
uh, the left when it starts to become toxic.
And we've talked about when it does, I think it does start to do damage to the movement.
If you disagree with how I see the modern left being divided up, let me know and please
do let me know some other way to refer to the Lennon.
It's left tanky types.
Uh, I don't want it to be pejorative.
It also can't be gushing right, because I do think that there are major problems with
that, with that movement