What does left wing really mean?

An article by Ian Powell last week had an interesting slant on left/right debate. Here’s a portion of the article:

“Being left-wing is about wanting to end, or even significantly curtail, the dynamic of wealth accumulation as a driver of societies. This might be through evolutionary or revolutionary means. But what it does require is transformational change.

Transformational is what the current Labour Party in government is not. It is a political party not of the left but instead of social liberal technocrats with some collectivist impulses.

Social liberal values are good and the political left benefits from sharing them. In fact, many people on the political right also share these same values (or at least some of them).

Beyond social liberalism

But social liberalism of itself does not transform a society which, more than anything else, has wealth accumulation as its dynamic.

Bryce Edwards highlights this well with his observation about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ruling out any capital gains tax while she held that office.

The political left needs to expressly differentiate itself from social liberalism in order to overtly focus on economic (as well as social) justice and protecting nature from the ravages of wealth accumulation.

If the term ‘left-wing’ is to mean anything other than not being right-wing or just having some collectivist impulses, then this needs to happen.”

Here’s the article https://politicalbytes.blog/2023/04/30/what-does-being-left-wing-really-mean/.