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by orwin 531 days ago
Not really, historically far-left is the revolutionary left, the one you see organize global strikes (they don't believe in representation democracy, only in direct democracy, bottom up, so it is _very_ rare to see them participate in elections). Since global strikes are forbidden in the US, you'll have to define it by its negative: anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist always, anti-globalist sometime.

You have some groups who have a far-left affects in the US, but honestly since the BPP and the Rainbow Coalition they are either ideologically weak or ineffective.
2 comments
paulddraper 531 days ago
So I can understand the distribution of this definition, what % of governments in world history have been far-left?
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orwin 530 days ago
Practically, no government, at least not long-lasting one. Far leftist see the state (and government) as innately oppressive. So some will say Russia from 1917 to 1921, I kinda disagree. Some communes were far-left though (communes are a better echelon for far-left ideas in general), the oldest were the platformists in Ukraine, they fought against Germany (Lenine sold Ukraine to them, Ukrainian anarchists disagreed), then the Russian white army, then lost to the Russian red army. Way more recently, some far-left adjacent communes debuted in Mexico, because Mexico constitution allows them to exist, but they're still within a state (they mostly self-organized to repel cartels extortion). Think Israeli kibbutz.

Imho this is 'normal'. Far-left ideals do not seem to work at large scale.

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wqaatwt 531 days ago
> only in direct democracy,

I thought far-left is typically vanguardist and doesn’t believe in any type of [real] democracy? Dictatorship of the proletariat and all that stuff..

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orwin 530 days ago
Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be in theory a transition period. In practice, once you get the power, you keep it.

Other on the far left will rather go a more local route, destroying state structure (as state is oppressive by nature) in the beginning to create a collective bottom up.

I'm not saying any of this is a good idea btw, it's just that far-left has fled the US a long time ago. If you aren't revolutionary, you aren't far-left.

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