Microsoftie Software Engineer, Chinese culture enthusiast, wheelchair user.
It was something very much like a revolution. For whom? Not just for a few groups in society. But for everyone. You see, a left that is not for everyone will not really connect with anyone — especially in a time of growing poverty and rage which cut across social strata like this. The freedoms and rights and social contracts that this left won yesterday were crucial — the world had never seen their like before. And though we take them for granted today, if we are European or Canadian, things like healthcare, …
Once upon a time, the left was concerned with with transforming the life of the average person, for the better, often radically so. It was devoted to really, significantly, genuinely changing the world, society, it’s structures and institutions — the material reality of human lives, in other words. Where did that left go? The old left built a new world — no, really. In Europe and Britain and Canada, it gave everyone, for the first time in human history, healthcare, childcare, retirement, incomes, and so on. These are the things that average people need and want — that is why they are all too happy to be seduced by fascism, too, when societies fracture — as primary things: it’s hard to live a decent life without them. In other words, that left — the old left, the classical left if you like — won genuinely new, truly groundbreaking, and authentically life-chasing freedoms, rights, and social contracts.