Life On The Left

Seen from anywhere other than the United States, or indeed in terms of that country's own history, the idea of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris as remotely left-wing is too ridiculous for words. 

For example, their views on crime would place on the Outer Right of the British Conservative Party, their views on healthcare would place them beyond even that, and their views on absolutely everything else would place them well within that party's mainstream. They are of course supported by numerous Republican Party figures from the 1990s and even from the Dubya years.

Marxists? It is America that has abortion on demand, up to and including partial birth. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, in one of her last legislative acts, so has Britain, where, although individual members of Labour and other parties can be a different matter, no Marxist party, as such, has returned a Member of Parliament since 1945.

But American-style abortion laws do not exist in numerous European countries where such parties are always to be found in Parliament, and not uncommonly to be found in governing coalitions. Nor do such laws exist in Venezuela. They do in Cuba, but that is culturally so American that they even play baseball rather than football. Not even Britain is culturally as American like that. It is not that the pro-life arguments against the Democratic Party do not stand up. It is that they apply equally to the Republican Party.

The Marxist Left are also among the strongest critics of identity politics in general and of gender self-identification in particular. Britain is known internationally as the principal centre of such criticism, and the principal such critics have deep, deep roots in working-class consciousness and in dialectical materialism. 

Now, there is plenty to criticise about dialectical materialism. But the bewilderment of American feminists at the British gender-critical movement is precisely because they have never even read much, if any, of it. The problem there is not Marxism, but the lack of it, even in order to transcend it. There are better ways of upholding material reality. But Marxism often gives the wrong answers to the right questions. And here, it is still asking the right questions.