[joegibbs]

The western left-wing in general seems to have become quite a conservative (not Conservative as in right-wing) movement over the past few decades. A hundred years ago it was definitely extremely utopian - the communists were very much focused on the future - but modern left-wing movements are supportive of ecological conservation, reducing industrialisation, degrowth, buying local, opposing new infrastructure, and so on - all of which would have been considered conservative values in the 1950s and before. I think this is somewhat due to the way that upper-income, university-educated people (i.e. people with more interest in protecting what they own) have moved from the right to the left.