[Karrot_Kream]

Are you familiar with non-leftist thought? I've found when interacting with a lot of leftists that they became leftists first through their/others observations/feelings and then began to read leftist thought afterword, but aren't aware of how leftist thoughts fit into the general framework of political ideas. It makes it tough to discuss political thought with a lot of leftists because their only exposure to political critiques is through Marxist lenses, even though Marx himself was very well read in both philosophy and history.

Leftism and intersectionality is all about labelling folks into groups. Each person falls into an intersection of multiple groups (e.g. "African-American" and "presents female") and we can use this to have an understanding of their experience and the oppression that they face. Taken to absurdity, this reduces a person into a bundle of specific labels and doesn't make any distinction between the individual and their labels: well I'm a person of X race assigned Y gender born at Z time with immigrant parents who experienced A, B, and C event and therefore I feel Aleph oppression. The original critique was that, the "obsessive generalization" necessary to equalize the experiences of humanity paradoxically requires an obsessive amount of categorization.

> How is the idea of getting rid of class distinction "obsessive generalisation"?

There are many political philosophies that believe that some amount of class distinction is inherent to humanity. One can create a reductive 1D projection of political preferences by placing "classless, fully equal" society on the left as many leftist theories do and "hierarchical, predetermined classes for each individual" on the right as many fascist theories do. If you think that a "classless, fully equal" society is not extreme at all, then you're probably the one on the very left end of the spectrum.

[beaconstudios]

Yes I'm familiar with non leftist thought - I only really started to identify with leftism about a year ago, having been something of an amorphous socially progressive conservative beforehand (having liberal social views but also believing in personal responsibility as the primary way to fix any and all social problems). I didn't even come into leftism through a normal way - I started learning about cybernetics and systems theory, then encountered Deleuze and through him fell into critical theory and then rediscovered Marx's critique of political economy, which tbf I did already have some reasonable knowledge of.

Intersectionality is not saying that those categories are all a person is - it's saying that those factors are predictive of certain oppressive tendencies society may have towards the individual. A common misconception I hear about leftism is that it is against treating people as individuals; this is not true, but at the same time denying that black people are oppressed in the US because they have individual identity is a non sequitur at best. The leftist ideal is actually that all people are free to pursue their passions and creativity, which is not something an innately collectivist ideology (like fascism for example) would promote.

I do think that a classless society is extreme compared to our current system, I wasn't denying that - but that doesn't mean that leftists area engaging in "extreme overgeneralising"; I still have no idea what that was supposed to mean. Honestly I see a lot of people critiquing left wing ideas using these really vague descriptors and I don't get why. If somebody has an issue to raise they should raise it explicitly so we can discuss it! Political discussion helps us all to learn.

[closeparen]

The left’s key project in contemporary American life is to critique meritocracy. One of the most effective critiques of meritocratic ranking engines is disparate impact. Disparate impact analysis calls for an identity-group-aggregate perspective over a many-individuals perspective. Example:

Proponents of standardized tests emphasize that the grading of each booklet is fair. The multiple choice portion is unambiguous and graded by machine. The essay portion is graded blind and by several readers with high inter-rather reliability. We are fairly confident that no specific child is writing down the right answers and then getting a bad score because of her race.

Opponents argue that the test score distributions reproduce classic racial hierarchies. Lower scores lead directly to fewer students from marginalized backgrounds attending college, and from there to lower lifetime earnings. Therefore standardized tests are an obvious target for reducing the racial wealth gap.

[beaconstudios]

I think the idea that the tests are racist is stupid and full of liberalism, just like affirmative action: intent on treating the symptoms so they don't have to treat the disease. The root cause of the problem is that black people are still deeply affected by the historical racism that was applied to them (and the racism that still continues, but that's comparatively small compared to slavery, Jim crow redlining etc). Withdrawing hundreds of years of intentional discrimination doesn't balance the scales - you would have to push in the opposite direction to rectify the damage.

[Karrot_Kream]

I think you're viewing leftism too much through a proponent's lens. To understand this critique, zoom out a bit and place these tendencies and philosophies on a spectrum. Don't pick a side.

> A common misconception I hear about leftism is that it is against treating people as individuals; this is not true, but at the same time denying that black people are oppressed in the US because they have individual identity is a non sequitur at best

I'm not sure where you got the "denying" bit from. Again I think you're viewing this as a fight _against_ leftism when that's not what I'm going for. There are plenty of philosophies that decidedly accept the issue of historical discrimination _without_ buying into intersectionality. A good example of this is affirmative action or the Indian concept of Scheduled Classes. Both of these measures came from understanding historic discrimination without thinking about intersectionality at all. Leftism doesn't have a monopoly on the ideas of anti-discrimination.

> The leftist ideal is actually that all people are free to pursue their passions and creativity, which is not something an innately collectivist ideology (like fascism for example) would promote.

Do you have a source for this? This ideal is older than Marx, Rousseau's Social Contract first posits this idea I think.

> I do think that a classless society is extreme compared to our current system, I wasn't denying that - but that doesn't mean that leftists area engaging in "extreme overgeneralising"; I still have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Again I think you're too wrapped up in defending leftism. If you're having a hard time seeing your views as extreme then, I like to point to a thought exercise. An extreme position is one where there's very little more ideologically extreme than it. So in your case, what's _more_ Left than the classless society you're positing? If there's nothing more extreme than your position, then you're probably at the extreme edge of it.

[beaconstudios]

> Leftism doesn't have a monopoly on the ideas of anti-discrimination.

I know, I'm not disputing that (and appreciate that you point out that affirmative action is a liberal rather than leftist idea, many don't make the distinction).

> Do you have a source for this? This ideal is older than Marx, Rousseau's Social Contract first posits this idea I think.

Yes, the leftist ideal is that of the humanist/liberal (liberty, equality, fraternity): this goes back before Marx to the utopian socialists who established the ideals, where Marx was more interested in historical determinism and developing a science of political economy.

> If you're having a hard time seeing your views as extreme

I'm not, that's what I said.

[michannne]

>Honestly I see a lot of people critiquing left wing ideas using these really vague descriptors and I don't get why. If somebody has an issue to raise they should raise it explicitly so we can discuss it! Political discussion helps us all to learn.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this: I did explain further the context of obsessive generalization, but I'm not sure how, given you yourself say you're well read on leftist literature, you can't correlate how extreme egalitarianism requires doing away with individual characterization.

>The leftist ideal is actually that all people are free to pursue their passions and creativity

Wouldn't that imply that leftism cannot exist without allowing fascism to also exist? I don't see how you can juggle this with the view that leftism's goal is to reduce oppression, given that the definition you've provided here necessitates that opression must be possible for leftism to achieve its goals. In my mind, assuming I'm reading into this correctly, is that you've created your own "chicken vs the egg" paradox

[beaconstudios]

> but I'm not sure how, given you yourself say you're well read on leftist literature, you can't correlate how extreme egalitarianism requires doing away with individual characterization.

Because it doesn't? Leftism is about doing away with socioeconomic oppression, not erasing all character difference. Leftists aren't the borg, the whole point is to create an equal playing field so that people can be their best selves.

> Wouldn't that imply that leftism cannot exist without allowing fascism to also exist?

Under a socialist or communist system, people could still hold fascist beliefs for sure (though the material drivers of fascist beliefs would be gone so I doubt it would be common) - but what matters is the systems we live under (capitalism, patriarchy etc etc) not what everybody thinks about each other.