by One of the successes of the right is their identification of the left with a sorry pastiche of ‘woke’. But the left is more than outspoken, individual awareness of the role of identities, however constructed and defined, whoever constructs and defines them and whatever role they plays in group dynamics of power and in- and exclusion. Which leads us to the question: What’s Left? I’ll state some points. Some points (many of which are related to social , economic and political in- and exclusion): One person, one vote and universal unrestricted suffrage (incarcerated people should have the right to vote too, for instance). Voting rights should not be tied to income, wealth, property, race, gender or education (all of these variables have been used to restrict voting rights). Universal
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One of the successes of the right is their identification of the left with a sorry pastiche of ‘woke’. But the left is more than outspoken, individual awareness of the role of identities, however constructed and defined, whoever constructs and defines them and whatever role they plays in group dynamics of power and in- and exclusion. Which leads us to the question: What’s Left? I’ll state some points. Some points (many of which are related to social , economic and political in- and exclusion):
- One person, one vote and universal unrestricted suffrage (incarcerated people should have the right to vote too, for instance). Voting rights should not be tied to income, wealth, property, race, gender or education (all of these variables have been used to restrict voting rights). Universal voting rights have been a huge success of ‘la gauche’.
- The eight hour working day. There’s a nice wikipedia entry about this
- Free, accessible and high quality education for everyone until at least 16 years of age
- Cheap, accessible and high quality health care for everyone
- Affordable, high quality, energy producing but not necessarily detached housing with access to running clean water, sewage systems, clean air and green surroundings and within walking or at least cycling distance from schools and sports facilities and designed to foster interactions with neighbors and to enable community care
- Healthy, non-polluted environments outside, at work and in these houses
- Full employment
- Care free retirement (the age at which this starts might be over 65…)
- Policies aimed at enabling people raising children to manage the financial and practical burden of the combination of paid labour and family responsibilities
- government ownership of natural resources like oil, natural gas, aquifers and the like – let’s say anything more than 40 meters beneath the surface
- Taxes on unearned wealth, like the value of unimproved land and inheritances
- A long term environmental strategy (climate, biodiversity, nature). This is about survival.
- free speech, fee unions and other non-profit organizations
- thriving businesses which, however, have to be bridled in the political arena and which have to follow the rules (labour, environment, food safety, quality, liability – the list is long). Sensible patent policies.
- A state which does not care about gender or race and which can be sued if it does
- Which brings us to mechanisms of in- and exclusion. Many of these mechanisms will be countered by the combinations of full employment and access to education, health care and housing. But we will have to fight for this. Hard and long and mean fights.
Let’s be woke about that.