right vs left wingers, page-21

Frantic,
I respect your right to be leftist and your strength in acknowledging it. I have good friends who are very nice people who hold 'leftist views' and will be so aligned until they die.

Seems to me the remaining leftists (and rightists) fall into sub groups which used to, sometimes uncomfortably, come together to be catagorised as left or right.

I suggest that the old left/right dividing of the subgroups is a fading historial legacy.For instance the left of Australian Politics used to contain groups;

a)wishing to replace free market economics with a central controlled economy.
b)wanting state ownership of the means of production (eg powerstations), distribution (eg railways) and finance (eg state banks).
c)Since the close of WWII anti americanism.
d)seeking a wefare state providing according to need and taking according to ability to pay.
e)In recent decades a basket of minority group interests.
f) seeking 'class warfare'.
g) resentful of people with more money.
h) seeking the redistribution of wealth.

The right used to contain groups;
a)believing in unbridled capitalism
b)avoiding protection for their vulnerable workers
c)believing in individual rights
d)class wariors
e)resisting the redistribution of wealth.

but these subgroups now don't logically belong to the Lib or Lab. Those simple days finished with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Current Lib and Lab politicians are career politician/ bureaucrats who merely use these subgroups to further their own interests, they have no 'Light on the Hill'.

It is hard to see True Believers Leading either side. In particular Rudd, Keating, Nelson or Turnbull could bat for either side.
Bacci