A truly big question. What aligns all leftist causes, organizations, ideas and individuals?
In a broad sense, political ideologies that seek to empower the working class
An opposition to inequality and hierarchy.
Likewise, I see right wing ideology as an allowance or encouragement of inequality and hierarchy for some end.
In theory, a vague umbrella term denoting allegiance to ideologies that seek to empower, recuperate, or liberate the working class
In practice, it's a term largely defined and co-opted by social liberals
People's liberation, nothing more nothing less. Everything else is semantics.
Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.
Unsure why people dismiss it so casually.
That aside, I largely agree with your conclusion.
Unsure why people dismiss it so casually.
Are you really?
People dismiss debates that have no effect on action.
ok, call it cosmetics. Don't get hung up on words, you knew what I meant don't you?
People saying Semantics and meaning Cosmetics is exactly why we need Semantics.
There's a difference between a semantic discussion and one with operational relevance.
When does summer start? / When should we harvest the corn?
I increasingly dislike the term"leftist", but generally if I want to use it meaningfully, I use it to mean "anti-capitalist" in the broadest sense, since that's the thing they have in common. Or at least it's supposed to be. Note that my definition excludes social democrats and other rad-libs who are often (in USA discourse at least) considered to be "on the left", or at least would self-identify as leftist, because they are not actually opposed to capitalism itself, but reformists of capitalism.
No. Single words mean little out of context, and the context for "leftist" is so broad as to be effectively meaningless. Everyone from leftcoms to MLMs to slightly progressive democrats that want to melt the unhoused call themselves leftists. If it has any actual meaning that can be defined in a way that resists being able to play Wittgensteinian word games, it is solely a term meaning "opposed in rhetoric to self-identified non-progressive politics, whatever that means in context." Pretty much every other definition you could give will end up in some sort of no true Scotsman race to the bottom of increasingly radical people saying that some other person "isn't a real leftist."
"Progressive opposition to the current status quo," compare to reactionaries, who are also often opposed to the current status quo, but who want to retract the gains that have been made by the progressives - while the progressives want to take more gains. Centrists, I would say, are those who fight on behalf of the current status quo, believing that any sort of change is bad.
The major difference between the anti-capitalists and the capitalists is that the anti-capitalists generally feel that any advocacy for capitalism is centrist opposition to change, while the capitalist progressives feel that they can take more gains within the capitalist system. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with Stalin's opinion on the social democrats, but within their own self-perception they are a progressive, and therefore leftist, force.
And then for thoroughness I would define progressivism as flattening hierarchies, and reaction as creating and reinforcing them - and importantly I would say that intent trumps result here. In the 18th and 19th centuries, liberals certainly believed that they were flattening hierarchies by eliminating Divine Right and replacing it with the market, and it wasn't until the socialists came along with their critiques of capitalism that it became clear that the market the liberals thought would liberate everyone was actually making an all-new even-more-unequal hierarchy instead.
advocacy for a more equitable distribution of power across society.
"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality"
I would define leftism simply as "Humanist".
You advocate to overcome instincts and fear for the fairness and solidarity of human beings, and humane treatment of the world we live in. It is essentially love.
it's a broad term, so i think an effective definition should be brief, and if necessary, vague... hm...
Personally, I'm fine with the social democrat slogan of "people before profit."
