The Socialist Standard and The Morning Star are only classed as left wing. What does it take to be classed as Extreme Left?
Anything to the left of Clinton here in Amurica!
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But if left of Clinton is extreme, what would a newspaper that used to be funded by the Soviet Union, or a magazine made by a far-left political party who uses the ballot box for revolutionary purposes be?
On closer inspection, they seem to be including availability of references in the left/right score, with the most reliable being in the centre. I don’t think that is useful in measuring bias, as trustworthiness has little to do with the left/right spectrum.
I’m going to flag this to be split into a separate thread as I’m going off topic here.
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How left/egalitarian/revolutionary/progressive the USSR was would be a whole can of worms in itself. The debate about whether or not totalitarian countries have ever actually had anything to do with communism is an unfortunate digression that still dominates many attempts at discussion.
So I find it far more useful to use for examples actual ideals and practices than countries.
My criteria would be how hierarchical versus egalitarian the framing and solutions are. To what extent it recognizes people’s right - and even responsibility - to organize.
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That would be The Morning Star, which until 1991 was part of the Soviet propaganda machine. For example, initially their journalists published pro WW2 articles, viewing it as another front in the war against fascism. The USSR forced the replacement of the Editor with someone who was in favour of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and the pro war articles stopped. They also called Trotsky a gangster when he was murdered. They portrayed the USSR as they wanted to be seen by Britain, as a communist workers paradise, not how it actually was. Since 1991 they have become relatively more moderate, but they are still very left wing. Jeremy Corbyn still writes articles for them despite being leader of the Labour Party, I don’t know if he still will in the unlikely event of him becoming Prime Minister.
The Socialist Standard on the other hand is the magazine of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, an impossibilist party (similar to De Leonism). They were one of the first far left groups to be highly critical of the Soviet Union, although they didn’t state this within hours of the October revolution, despite the legend. They still hold the political beliefs that they held 113 years ago.
There are arguments about whether anarchists should join the SPGB. The SPGB welcome them (as long as they pass the membership exam, they aren’t happy with Trotskyist entryism), but some anarchists (probably most to be honest) don’t think that they should vote for anyone, even if the party wants to abolish government.
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Yeah, I agree. I was mostly joking on that. The whole overton window thing, has moved so much political discourse so far right, but the right wing still thinks that Clinton/Obama are extreme left wingers, which if you know much about these political ideologies is completely absurd.
Quite true.
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