What are Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies?
And what core moral assumptions do they share?
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In recent articles, I have frequently used the term “Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies” but I never really define it. This article is my attempt to do so.
Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies are a collection of ideologies that:
Arose in popularity in the late-1960s or afterwards and
Had very little popular support before that date.
By using the term “Post-Modern” I do not mean to imply that they all stemmed from Post-Modern philosophy (although they were clearly influenced by it). I use the term to distinguish them chronologically from earlier Left-of-Center ideologies.
Core Moral Assumptions
Virtually all Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies are opposed to or at least very skeptical towards:
Material progress (which is what I write about)
Christianity
Nationalism
Traditional gender roles
Marriage
Having children
Supporters of these ideologies typically see all the above as constraints on individual choice or sometimes even deliberate means of oppression of others who are less fortunate. Most specifically virtually all Left-of-Center ideologies are based to a large extent on the following assumptions:
The quest for Equality is the prime moral goal.
A state of Equality is a sign of a just society. A state of Inequality is a sign of an unjust society.But everywhere in material reality, one sees rampant Inequality.
Those inequalities are because someone (or some institution) did something bad to the less fortunate who have less. Those bad actions may have been in the past, or they might be in the present.
It is the moral duty of all caring people to take a stand against that Inequality and rectify it, by
Using the power of the government to create a state of Equality, or, at the very least, make important strides towards that goal within our lifetime.
The morality of a person should largely be judged by the extent to which they publicly embraces the above principles.
Because all the above is self-evident, anyone who does not publicly embrace the above principles is either uninformed, ignorant, immoral, corrupt, or stupid. An intelligent, informed, and moral person could not possibly have a fundamentally different viewpoint.
The key assumption is the sixth: Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies concatenate morality with the identification of problems, goals, and the means to achieve those goals. This means that those who adopt Left-of-Center ideologies typically accept it as a key part of their moral identity. It makes them a good person in their own mind.
This makes Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies very similar to faith-based religions but without a God. Whether you consider them an actual religion, the functional equivalent of a religion, or an ideology with strong religious overtones does not matter. Those are just different ways to explain the same thing and rely heavily on contested definitions.
So the above list are not just empirical assumptions that can be disproven by evidence, argumentation, observations, or experimentation in reality. The above are moral arguments more akin to a religious faith. One either upholds that faith or one does not.
If you enjoy this article, you should read my From Poverty to Progress book series.
Mass support
What is particularly distinctive about Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies is that their core mass support is among the college-educated professional class. This is a huge change from before 1970 when Left-of-Center ideologies had their mass support from the working class.
This creates a fundamental class conflict between:
the supporters of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies and
the supporters of Pre-1965 Left-of-Center ideologies, particularly on which issues to emphasize.
This forced all Left-of-Center parties in the Western world to make a choice: which should we represent in our platform and implemented policies? In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, they successful bridged the gap, but in the 2000s the differences became unbridgeable.
Forced to make a choice, Left-of-Center parties in the Western world:
stopped representing the interests and values of the working class and
transitioned to representing the interests and values of the college-educated professional class.
Pre-1965 Left-of-Center ideologies
To fully understand Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies, we must first cover what came before them. Before the late 1960s, there were a large number of very influential Left-of-Center political ideologies. During the late 1960s and afterwards, they were often characterized as the “Old Left.”
The following are not Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies (though they share some characteristics with them).
Marxism, which by 1920 had split between the following two ideologies:
Social Democracy - the dominant Left-of-Center ideology of the 20th Century in the Western world. In this group, I include:
Social Democratic parties in Europe
Labor parties in Anglo nations
New Deal Democrats in the USA (1932-1968)
Liberals in Canada
Fabians in UK
Communism - the second-most dominant Left-of-Center ideology of the 20th Century.
Socialism / Democratic Socialism (an attempt to bridge the two above ideologies)
Radical Liberals of the 18th/19th Century
Radical Republicans of the 18th/19th Century
American Progressivism (early 20th century)
Many anti-colonial nationalist movements in former European colonies.
Many Agrarian Socialist movements outside the Industrialized West. These movements had a strong regional element that combined nationalism and revolutionary socialism:
Russian Populism (Narodniks and Socialist Revolutionaries)
Latin American Socialism/Revolutionary Socialism
Maoism (an Agrarian form of Communism)
Many less influential ideologies:
Typically, these ideologies shared:
Material focus: Economic inequality and class power were central problems.
Universalism: Emphasis on shared human rights and progress, not identity or culture.
Rationalism and optimism: Belief that reason, science, and cooperation could build a just society.
Another key characteristics of these ideological movements is that, while their leaders and intellectuals came from affluent families, their mass support came from the working class. Outside of the industrialized West, the mass support typically came from the peasantry and small farmers. The less influential ideologies stayed that way largely because they never appealed to the working class. Other Left-of-Center ideologies essential “stole their thunder.”
Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies
Here is a list of the modern important Left-of-Center ideologies in the Western world and movements that arose since 1965. Very few of them had any real popular support before that year, so 1965 is useful line of demarcation:
American Progressivism since the late 1960s (as distinct from earlier Progressivism
Highly focused single-issue movements:
A few influential attempts to moderate these movements to win election:
Technocratic Progressivism / Evidence-Based Reform
More recent movements:
From the late 1960s to the very early 21st-Century, the movements tended to focus on one issue. This created tension within the Left as many of these issues conflicted with each other or at least competed with each other for attention. But more recently all those single-issue movements have all fused together to form one big “Meta-Cause.”
Now it is rare for influential Left-of-Center political leaders or intellectuals to disagree with each other on fundamental issues. They focus mainly on how fast and far to push their favored policies.
In other words, few on the Left disagree about:
Increased spending on social programs
Implement more regulations to constrain the rich and corporations
Increase taxes on the rich and corporations
Abortion
Using the power of government to address climate change
Using the power of government to help women, racial minorities and gays.
And most importantly, the goal of Equality.
And a whole host of other issues..
Social Democrats shift to the Left
In addition to the emergence of new ideologies since the late 1960s, the dominant Social Democratic parties in the West (including Labour, Democrats and Liberals as explained above) absorbed many of policy stands of these Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies. This has created great tensions within the parties between their previous working-class base and newer policy stands that appeal to activists further to the Left. The result has been a mass defection of working-class voters from Left-of-Center parties and a gradual decline in their electoral support.
In addition, most Western “Democratic Socialist” or “Socialist” parties are actually far more influenced by Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies despite keeping the same name as the Old Left. Together with the Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies and movements that I listed above, the represent the Left-flank that constantly threatens more traditional Social Democratic parties.
More radical ideologies
In addition to these Left-of-Center ideologies and mass movements, there are many more radical ideologies and political philosophies that are influential but lack a mass following. These ideologies were more directly influenced post-modern philosophy and emphasizing identity, power, and language rather than economic class or material production as the primary sources of social inequality.
These ideologies/philosophies share several traits:
They reject Enlightenment universalism, objective truth, and the idea of steady material progress.
They interpret society mainly through hierarchies of power and oppression tied to identity categories (race, gender, sexuality, etc.).
They view language, culture, and discourse as tools that shape and sustain these hierarchies.
They generally advocate redistributive or regulatory policies justified by moral or cultural rather than economic reasoning.
Before the mid-1960s, these approaches had almost no mainstream support; the Left was dominated by modernist, materialist, and class-based ideologies such as social democracy and Marxism.
Here are a few examples with a brief description for each:
Post-Modernism (the philosophical foundation)
– Developed by thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard.
– Rejects Enlightenment universalism, absolute truth, and linear progress. Emphasizes language, power, and subjectivity as the sources of social order and oppression.Critical Theory (Second-generation Frankfurt School)
– Expanded classical Marxism into cultural critique (Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas).
– Focus shifted from economic exploitation to domination through culture, media, and ideology.Radical Feminism / Second-Wave Feminism
– Rose from the late 1960s women’s movement.
– Framed patriarchy—not capitalism—as the central system of oppression; sought liberation through gender equality, reproductive rights, and the critique of social norms.Post-Colonialism
– Inspired by Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak.
– Argues that Western imperialism persists through culture, knowledge, and representation; challenges Eurocentrism and advocates decolonization of institutions and discourse.Multiculturalism and Identity Politics
– Emerged in the 1970s–1980s in Western democracies.
– Prioritizes group identity (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality) and representation; seeks recognition and equity rather than class-based redistribution.Critical Race Theory
– Originating in U.S. legal scholarship (Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw).
– Holds that racism is systemic and embedded in laws and institutions; emphasizes lived experience and standpoint epistemology.Intersectional Feminism
– Introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989).
– Explores how overlapping identities (race, gender, sexuality, class) create unique forms of discrimination.Queer Theory and LGBTQ+ Activism
– Drawing from Foucault and Judith Butler.
– Challenges binary gender norms and heteronormativity; emphasizes social construction of identity and fluidity of sexuality and gender.Deep Greens / Deep Ecology / Degrowth (a more radical version of Green Politics)
– Gained strength after the 1970s environmental movement.
– Links capitalism and industrial modernity to ecological destruction; advocates sustainability, degrowth, and environmental justice.Cultural Marxism / Gramscian Left
– Derives from Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of cultural hegemony.
– Focuses on transforming cultural institutions and norms to achieve political change rather than seizing economic power directly.Social Constructivism and Discourse Theory
– Associated with thinkers like Foucault and Ernesto Laclau.
– Argues that reality and identity are socially constructed through discourse; political struggle centers on redefining meanings.Critical Pedagogy
– Developed by Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968).
– Education as liberation from structural oppression; teaches students to challenge power hierarchies.Global Justice / Anti-Globalization Movement
– Late 1990s onward.
– Opposes neoliberal globalization; calls for fair trade, global equity, and environmental sustainability.Wokeism / Contemporary Social Justice Activism
– The popular synthesis of earlier ideologies (CRT, feminism, queer theory, intersectionality).
– Centers moral politics on identity recognition, anti-oppression language, and cultural reform rather than material redistribution.
Just as previous Left-of-Center movements started as single-issue movements, and then they all fused into one Meta-Cause, Woke is the Meta-Cause of Post-Modernism.
The main cleavage within Left-of-Center ideologies
While there is clearly an important concept with the term “Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies,” but there are also cleavages within the ideology. In the past, it was a cleavage as to which issue to focus on (environment, race, gender, immigration, etc).
More recently the main cleavage within Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies is between those who:
Advocate for incremental change now so as to win governing majorities in the next election. This group typically focused on winning the next election and educating the masses.
Advocate for much more rapid change and are willing to lose the next election, if necessary, rather than abandoning the more moral position. Typically, they did so by focusing on how bad current conditions were at the time, so an immediate and radical jump to something else was necessary. Incremental reform with the electoral process was simply not enough. Street actions, violence, and even revolutionary action were preferred methods.
Do not let the rhetoric and heated discussion fool you.
Both groups shared the same Core Moral Assumptions of Left-of-Center ideologies (explained above), they just advocated for differing rates of change towards the desired goal (incremental or fast change now) and the proper method to implement those changes.
Everything else is downstream of the moral goal of Equality. Once you remove the moral goal of Equality or concede that government or political activism cannot create anything like the level of Equality that supporters demand, then the entire edifice collapses.
There is an alternative
I want all my Left-of-Center readers (and everyone else for that matter) to know that there is an alternative, and it is not conservatism. Unfortunately, many supporters of Left-of-Center ideologies have a binary view of the world where only their ideology and “immoral and uncaring” conservative ideologies are the only two options.
I am here to tell you that there is an alternative, but it starts by abandoning the core moral goal of Equality. It is a goal that cannot be achieved, and attempts to do so cause more harm to society than good.
The Left must swap Material Progress + Upward Mobility in and Equality out. Until they do, so they will not be able to help the very people who they claim to care most about.
A key point of my Substack and book series is to argue for a Progress-based perspective that is both radical and pragmatic.
The Progress-based perspective is based on:
Promoting long-term widely shared economic growth (among both wealthy nations and developing nations). I call this “Progress,” and I wrote two books about the topic.
Promoting a prosperous working class.
Promoting a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter that prosperous working class. I call the last two points “Upward Mobility,” and I wrote a third book on the topic.
Focusing relentless on Results.
I have also written about the above in dozens of articles, so I will not not into detail here. I will state that, as opposed to Equality, these goals:
Are achievable, and they
Will offer far more material benefits to the working class, poor, racial minorities, women and developing nations than current policies of the Left (or the Right).
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See also my other articles on Ideologies:
Understanding ideology:
A few podcasts and videos on the topic:
Understanding Totalitarian ideologies:
Why Left-of-Center ideologies are the main threat to continuing material progress:
How ideologies undermine Upward Mobility for working class and poor:
How ideologies undermine mental health and human flourishing:
If you enjoyed this article, you should read my From Poverty to Progress book series.
That is an excellent summary Mike. I like how it still keeps the real world complexity without getting lost in the weeds.
Very useful essay when contemplating the likely policies of elected Socialist/left wing politicians such as Mamdani in New York or Katie Wilson in Seattle. What they will try to do in office and what the real-world consequences of their actions will be should they succeed - as opposed to what they expect them to be.