On 2010-03-15, at 5:34 PM, ken hanly wrote:
> Lots of former leftwingers such as Trotskyists have become right wingers. Why is it impossible to go the other way.
=======================
It isn't, and individuals have moved to the far left from the other side. Many, especially those in the armed forces, did so in the final stage of revolutions as the disintegration of the old order became apparent.
But this is not how new parties are built in the normal course of events. A new right wing third party in the US would recruit primarily from the Republicans; a left wing third party would be primarily composed of ex-Democrats, whose political trajectory would be similar to the one traced previously by most on this list. No right winger would propose building a new party by concentrated organizing in liberal milieus, and the suggestion that the tea partiers are a fertile recruiting ground for a new left wing party is equally far-fetched.
This confusion on the left arises from the assumption that tea party anger against Wall Street bankers, Beltway politicians and "elitist" intellectuals is somehow anticapitalist in nature. It isn't. It is traditional right-wing populism tinged with white racism directed against Big Capital in the name of Small Capital, its utopia is libertarian rather than socialist, and its direction would be further to the right rather than to the left in any deepening crisis, with very rare exceptions.