What are the Left and Right Actually?
"You're a far-right Neo-Nazi Racist Commie who is also secretly a McCarthyist!"
"No! You're a transphobic alt-right neo-con libtard who's turning the freaking frogs gay!"
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I was having a very interesting discussion with a Reddit user the other day about political scare words and their uses. These scare words are what used to be legitimate political identifiers but have now become mere insults. You know them when you hear them; things like Nazi, Fascist, Commie, and SJW are good examples. Towards the end of this discourse it was pointed out that “far-right” is one of the most concerning examples of this phenomenon. It is an especially egregious example because it doesn’t just misrepresent the views of many people, it harms our ability to actually place people and groups on the political map—an ability that is absolutely essential in politics.
This discussion made me curious. I began to question what exactly the defining aspects of the Left and Right are. I set out on a deeper inquiry into the distinctions between these opposing side of the aisle, and I would like to share my conclusions.
To understand what exactly is meant by the Left and Right we need to look at the origin of these terms—that is, the French Revolution. During the days of the French National Assembly supporters of the French Monarchy sat to the right of the king, while supporters of the revolution were seated to the left. While this does help explain the original meanings of the terms, it does little to help us understand them in a modern context.
Now we need to look at how the original meanings of these words translate into modern usage. It can be clearly seen that nobody of any political clout in America is supporting Monarchy. Does that mean nearly the entirety of America is left-wing? No, it does not.
People will say that being right-wing does not mean you strictly support Monarchism, but rather that you are a Traditionalist wishing to conserve the old dominant ideology. However, this is perhaps an even worse definition than the earlier one. Using this logic, would a socialist in Russia be right-wing?
A related attempt to define these terms is to say the Left wants change and progress, while the Right wants to conserve the way things are. But this is equally incorrect. First off, what is progress? What a Republican calls progress may not be what a Democrat calls progress. Secondly, right-wing politicians are constantly calling for changes and reforms. We cannot define these terms in a subjective way. Saying the Right equals Traditionalism and the Left equals “progression” and change is not only wrong but subjective and useless.
Let’s take a look at the second most commonly used axis for mapping political beliefs—the Authoritarian-Libertarian axis. The Left-Right axis could learn a thing or two from this. While not perfect, it is far easier to compare ideas along this spectrum because it’s two extremes are comparatively easy to define. A spectrum of more to less government control is a much more identifiable tool than trying to measure things on how “Right” or “Left” they are.
There are fundamental problems with our current understanding the Left and Right. When Milton Friedman and Adolf Hitler are being simultaneously labeled far-right then we need to rethink our understanding of these labels.
How then can we define the Right and Left? The short answer is that we may not be able to in an objective and agreeable manner. The long answer is that any streamlining of these terms will require a change in how people perceive the political landscape and, no matter what, this will make someone unhappy.
Perhaps we should abandon these labels all together and adopt new terms. That would certainly make things simpler, but people are stubborn. A more realistic idea would be to marry the Left and Right with a set of easier to compare words like Collectivism and Individualism.
This is my proposition. We must realize that language is imperfect and that in its imperfection approximations must be utilized. Using Collectivism as the common identifier of what is left-wing and thus Individualism as the commonality on the Right may be the only way to save political discourse in a time where reaching common ground is becoming increasingly challenging.
This new Left-Collectivist Right-Individualist understanding is the best method at our disposal for sorting out what has become an unorganized mess of a political landscape. With this new methodology we may get closer to making heads or tails of the world of politics.