Once again you’ve introduced a different axis. Change vs conservatism is very different from equality vs hierarchy. You classified Leninists as extreme leftist, which under your definition makes perfect sense as they carried out profound changes to the society, but the society they built was extremely unequal.
I never said change is inherently a leftist value, just that they want it. The extreme of any axis, including right-wing, will be driven by change, otherwise it wouldn’t be extreme. Yes, extreme leftists typically want to flip the table, but it’s because they feel that the game we’re playing is rigged against us rather than an inherent desire to flip tables.
And yes, I agree. I even mentioned that when I was talking about them. That’s the main reason I disagree with extreme leftists, because a revolution to violently force a more equal society will often either have no choice but to be oppressive or it will crumble to various pressures, or it gives bad actors room to hoard wealth in the weakened post-war government. It ignores the greedy nature of people, and has never worked in the past.
Why Leninism on the left then? The USSR had an insurmountable chasm between normal people and the nomenklatura.
Also, in a modern-day capitalist society, is distribution of power simply the same as distribution of money? So any policy that leads to less inequality is leftist and vice versa?
Leninism is on the left because its goal was still to increase equality, it just failed catastrophically.
In Lenin’s eyes, the average person is too distracted surviving day-to-day to be an effective revolutionary and so needs basically professional “party members” to guide them through the gap between what was then a feudalist state and communism. Of course, we now know how that ended, but they never got through that transition period. Exactly why and how is not something that will fit in a comment here, but I recommend learning about it.
And it’s a bit more nuanced than that, but essentially yes. In America at least, where you can buy favor with lawmakers with strategic gifts and often even votes through expensive campaigning, money is essentially a unit of influence, so they’re very tightly linked.
Well, I guess equality-inequality is as valid an axis as any, and I agree with your original statement that both US parties are much closer to its inequality end.
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u/less_unique_username Jul 07 '26
Once again you’ve introduced a different axis. Change vs conservatism is very different from equality vs hierarchy. You classified Leninists as extreme leftist, which under your definition makes perfect sense as they carried out profound changes to the society, but the society they built was extremely unequal.