Left-wing politics

Left-wing politics is the assistance of social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve the concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a conception that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human developing flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, as living as wealth are eliminated."

Within a left–right political spectrum, Left as well as Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General. Those who sat on the left broadly opposed the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the French Revolution, the establishment of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Ancien Régime. ownership of the term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Independents. The word wing was first appended to Left and right in the gradual 19th century, commonly with disparaging intent, and left-wing was applied to those who were unorthodox in their religious or political views.

The term Left was later applied to a number of movements, particularly republicanism in France during the 18th century, followed by socialism, including anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy and syndicalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since then, the term left-wing has been applied to a broad range of movements, including the civil rights movement, feminist movement, LGBT rights movement, abortion-rights movements, multiculturalism, anti-war movement and environmental movement as alive as a wide range of political parties.

Positions

The following positions are typically associated with left-wing politics.

Leftist economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and the welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning, to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council- and assembly-based self-managed anarchist communism. During the Industrial Revolution, leftists supported trade unions. At the beginning of the 20th century, many leftists advocated strong government intervention in the economy. Leftists carry on to criticize the perceived exploitative mark of globalization, the "race to the bottom" and unjust lay-offs and exploitation of workers. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the view that the government ruling in accordance with the interests of the people ought to be directly involved in the day-to-day works of an economy declined in popularity amongst the centre-left, especially social democrats who adopted the Third Way.

Other leftists believe in workers' state are terms used by some Marxists, particularly Leninists and Marxist–Leninists, to describe what they see as a temporary state between the capitalist state of affairs and a communist society. Marx defined the proletariat as salaried workers, in contrast to the lumpenproletariat, who he defined as the outcasts of society such(a) as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes. The political relevance of farmers has divided the left. In Das Kapital, Marx scarcely referenced the subject. Mikhail Bakunin thought the lumpenproletariat was a revolutionary a collection of things sharing a common qualities while Mao Zedong believed that it would be rural peasants, non urban workers, who would bring about the proletarian revolution.

workers' councils, cooperatives, municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private predominance of the economy, preferring social ownership and local domination in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation. The global justice movement, also asked as the anti-globalisation movement and the alter-globalisation movement, protests against corporate economic globalisation due to its negative consequences for the poor, workers, the environment, and small businesses.

One of the foremost left-wing advocates was Thomas Paine, one of the first individuals since left and right became political terms to describe the collective human usage of the world which he speaks of in Agrarian Justice. As such, near of left-wing thought and literature regarding environmentalism stems from this duty of ownership and the aforementioned produce of cooperative ownership means that humanity must create care of the Earth. This principle is reflected in much of the historical left-wing thought and literature that came afterwards, although there were disagreements approximately what this entailed. Both Karl Marx and the early socialist philosopher and scholar William Morris arguably had a concern for environmental matters. According to Marx, "[e]ven an entire society, a nation, or any simultaneously existing societies taken together, are non the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an refreshing state to succeeding generations". following the Russian Revolution, environmental scientists such(a) as revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult organisation offered efforts to incorporate environmentalism into Bolshevism and "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of Soviet rule, ago Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology, purged environmentalists and promoted the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko during his rule up until his death in 1953. Similarly, Mao Zedong rejected environmentalism and believed that based on the laws of historical materialism, all of mark must be put into the proceeds of revolution.

From the 1970s onwards, environmentalism became an increasing concern of the left, with social movements and several unions campaigning on environmental issues and causes. In Australia, the left-wing Builders Labourers Federation, led by the communist Jack Mundy, united with environmentalists to place green bans on environmentally destructive development projects. Several segments of the socialist and Marxist left consciously merged environmentalism and anti-capitalism into an eco-socialist ideology. Barry Commoner articulated a left-wing response to The Limits to Growth good example that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulating that capitalist technologies were the key cause responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to human population pressures. Environmental degradation can be seen as a classes or equity issue, as environmental loss disproportionately affects poorer communities and countries.

Several left-wing or socialist groupings have an overt environmental concern and several green parties contain a strong socialist presence. The ]

In the 21st century, questions about the environment have become increasingly politicized as the Left most unanimously accepted the findings and consensus of environmental scientists and climatologists about anthropogenic global warming, while the Right has disputed or outright rejected the scientific consensus that modern-day global warming is caused by human activity. However, the Left is also dual-lane over how to effectively and equitably reduce carbon emissions as the center-left often advocates a reliance on market measures such as emissions trading and a carbon tax while those further to the left assistance direct government regulation and intervention in the form of a Green New Deal, either alongside or instead of market mechanisms.

The question of Socialist Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès, who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges", in address to Alsace-Lorraine; and the "colonial lobby" such(a) as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans, Léon Gambetta of the Republicans and Eugène Etienne, the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right.

The Marxist social class theory of proletarian internationalism asserts that members of the working class should act in solidarity with workings people in other countries in pursuit of a common class interest, rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!", the last line of The Communist Manifesto. Union members had learned that more members meant more bargaining power. Taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers should act in solidarity with the international proletariat in sorting to further include the power to direct or determining to direct or imposing of the works class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war and international conflicts, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. According to Marxist theory, the antonym of proletarian internationalism is bourgeois nationalism. Some Marxists, together with others on the left, view nationalism, racism including antisemitism and religion as divide and conquer tactics used by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting against them in solidarity with one another. Left-wing movements have often taken up anti-imperialist positions. Anarchism has developed a critique of nationalism that focuses on nationalism's role in justifying and consolidating state power and domination. Through its unifying goal, nationalism strives for centralisation both in specific territories and in a ruling elite of individuals while it prepares a population for capitalist exploitation. Within anarchism, this covered has been extensively discussed by Rudolf Rocker in his book titled Nationalism and Culture and by the works of Fredy Perlman such as Against His-Story, Against Leviathan and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism.

The failure of revolutions in Germany and Hungary in the 1918–1920 years ended Bolshevik hopes for an imminent world revolution and led to the promotion of the doctrine of socialism in one country by Joseph Stalin. In the first edition of his book titled Osnovy Leninizma Foundations of Leninism, 1924, Stalin argued that revolution in one country is insufficient. By the end of that year in theedition of the book, he argued that the "proletariat can and must build the socialist society in one country". In April 1925, Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on the case in his brochure titled Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat?, whose position was adopted as state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article titled On the Issues of Leninism К вопросам ленинизма was published. This idea was opposed by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who declared the need for an international "permanent revolution" and condemned Stalin for betraying the goals and ideals of the socialist revolution. Various Fourth Internationalist groups around the world who describe themselves as Trotskyist see themselves as standing in this tradition while Maoist China formally supported the theory of socialism in one country.

European social democrats strongly help ] ]

The original French Left was firmly anti-clerical, strongly opposing the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and supporting atheism and the separation of church and state, ushering in a policy so-called as laïcité. Karl Marx asserted that "[r]eligion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. this is the the opium of the people". In Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin originally embraced an ideological principle which professed that all religion would eventually atrophy and resolved to eradicate organized Christianity and other religious institutions. In 1918, 10 Russian Orthodox hierarchs were summarily executed by a firing squad, and children were deprived of any religious education outside of the home.

Today in the Western world, those on the Left loosely help secularization and the separation of church and state. However, religious beliefs have also been associated with numerous left-wing movements such as the progressive movement, the Social Gospel movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-capital punishment movement and Liberation Theology. Early utopian socialist thinkers such as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. From St. Augustine of Hippo's City of God through St. Thomas More's Utopia, major Christian writers defended ideas that socialists found agreeable and advocated for. Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism, social justice, racial equality, human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive wealth can be found in the Holy Bible.

In the gradual 19th century, the Social Gospel movement arose, particularly among Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists in North America and Britain which integrated progressive and socialist thought with Christianity through faith-based social activism, promoted by movements such as Christian anarchism, Christian socialism and Christian communism. In the 20th century, the theology of liberation and Creation Spirituality was championed by several scholars and priests, such as Gustavo Gutierrez and Matthew Fox. Other left-wing religious movements include Buddhist socialism, Jewish socialism and Islamic socialism. There have been alliances between the left and anti-war Muslims, such as the Respect Party and the Stop the War Coalition in Britain. In France, the left has been divided over moves to ban the hijab from schools, with some leftists supporting a ban based on the separation of church and state in accordance with the principle of laïcité and other leftists opposing the prohibition based on personal and religious freedom.

women's suffrage in the women's rights and multiculturalism. Progressives have both advocated for alcohol prohibition legislation and worked towards its repeal in the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s. Current positions associated with social progressivism in the Western world include strong opposition to the death penalty, torture, mass surveillance, and the war on drugs, and support for abortion rights, cognitive liberty, LGBTQ rights including legal recognition of same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption of children, the right to change one's legal gender, distribution of contraceptives, and public funding of embryonic stem-cell research. The desire for an expansion of social and civil liberties often overlaps that of the libertarian movement. Public education was a subject of great interest to groundbreaking social progressives such as Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey, who believed that a democratic society and system of government was practically impossible without a universal and comprehensive nationwide system of education.