Submit to reality, take no action and apply no pressure.

I dont rate this advice.

Expect nothing, demand it anyway.

Your detector is very broken, send it in for repair.

Marxism isn’t non-objective by definition. Your interpretation isn’t objective simply because it’s Marxist. You’re applying a particular theoretical framework to determine what these institutions “really” function to do, then treating that conclusion as proof that other frameworks are invalid.

And I’ve never claimed left and right are a simple spectrum. Something can be multidimensional and still permit relative comparisons along particular dimensions

I comprehend your point. I dispute the premise. You’re asserting that the purpose of unions in imperialist countries is to placate workers and maintain imperialism, and therefore their function can’t meaningfully be described as left-wing. That’s your Marxist interpretation of their systemic role, not an objective property that follows from their existence within imperialism.

But that’s the premise I keep asking you to establish. I haven’t analysed anything as though it exists outside the system. You’re defining any analysis of form as necessarily doing that, then using that definition to prove that it does. That’s circular.

The fact you cant explain this must be telling you something about your premise?

That explains why context matters, but it still doesn’t explain why analysing or comparing a part necessarily divorces it from that context. I can consider both the form of a policy and how it functions within the wider system. Where’s the contradiction?

Why do you believe that?

Dont give another example with the premise baked in, put it into words.

But nobody is divorcing it from the system. Analysing a characteristic within its context and identifying its political orientation is entirely possible. You’re repeatedly equating distinguishing something analytically with pretending it’s independent, and those aren’t the same thing.

As I said at the time, those examples demonstrate that context matters, which I’ve never disputed. They don’t demonstrate that characteristics can’t also be described independently. Saying a kibbutz has a communalist economic structure doesn’t erase its settler-colonial context. Both facts can be true and analytically useful simultaneously.

You’re treating acknowledging one as necessarily obscuring the other, and that’s the part you haven’t established.

Ultimately, you could have saved us both a lot of time by acknowledging that what you really mean is: “I don’t think Europe should be described in terms of leftism because its underlying capitalist and imperialist structure disqualifies it.” That’s an opinion, and a reasonable one, but not an objectively correct conception of left and right.

But “it obfuscates reality” is the conclusion you keep asserting, not something you’ve demonstrated. Identifying one dimension of a system doesn’t prevent analysis of the others. Calling stronger organised labour relatively left-wing tells us something specific; we can then separately analyse how that labour movement relates to capitalism and imperialism.

At this point, calling my framework “weaker” because it doesn’t adopt yours is just circular.

But again, that’s your definition of left and right, not an argument for why mine is invalid. You’re defining them exclusively by which class ultimately benefits from the system; I’m using them to describe political characteristics that can vary within a system. That’s the disagreement we’ve been having all along. You can’t objectively establish your conception as the correct one here, because there isn’t a single objectively correct conception to establish.

But your example assumes what you’re trying to establish. You’re defining whether something is left or right entirely by the system it serves. That’s precisely the conception of left and right that we disagree on.

A redistributive policy doesn’t cease to be relatively left-wing simply because it operates within capitalism, any more than every policy within a socialist state automatically becomes left-wing.

I haven’t said they’re independent. Being able to distinguish and compare an element of a system doesn’t require pretending it exists independently of that system. If it did, you couldn’t meaningfully analyse individual policies or institutions at all?

So this ultimately comes down to our different conceptions of what “left” and “right” describe. You treat them as classifications of the underlying system; I’m also using them as comparative descriptors of individual policies and institutions, but i don’t see how the latter inherently obfuscates the former.

That analogy doesn’t establish your point though. A kibbutz can have left-wing internal economic structures while simultaneously participating in an oppressive or colonial system. Calling those structures left-wing doesn’t require calling the settlement as a whole left-wing.

That’s exactly the distinction I’ve been making?

Dependence doesn’t imply equivalence though? A domestic policy can be enabled by imperialism and still be meaningfully further left than another domestic policy. You’re arguing that its origin disqualifies the comparison, but I don’t see why that follows.

It feels like this comes from a concern that identifying any small part of our society as left-wing somehow means accepting it as sufficiently left-wing. But refusing to locate anything on that spectrum doesn’t help us understand or progress it either.

Sure, but I haven’t “boiled them down” to left and right. I’ve used left-right as one axis of comparison. Acknowledging that Europe is relatively further left on that axis doesn’t require ignoring imperialism, capitalism or any other dimension of the comparison.

Then we agree that the differences are meaningful. I’m describing those differences using the conventional left-right spectrum. You’re arguing that doing so obscures their shared capitalist and imperialist structure. That’s a disagreement about the usefulness of the framework, not whether the comparison itself is accurate.

But I’m not separating them. I’m saying that even accounting for imperialism, meaningful political differences still exist between capitalist states. If “left” and “right” are useful descriptors, they should be capable of describing those differences rather than collapsing every capitalist imperial power into the same category.

I understand your argument. I just don’t accept that being capitalist and imperialist makes left-right comparisons within capitalism meaningless. If two capitalist societies differ substantially in redistribution, labour power, public ownership and market regulation, those differences can still be compared politically. Your framework choosing not to recognise them as left-right differences is seemingly arbitrary, and doesn’t make the comparison incoherent.