by John J. Ray
University of New South Wales, Australia
BASIC LEFTISM: The current Confusion
Most ordinary people do not fit very neatly into any political category and may hold to a mix of views that include what would usually be seen as both Leftist and Rightist ideas. Among professional politicians and in academe, however, there is perhaps generally clearer polarization. So what is it that makes any given view "Rightist" or "Leftist"? In contemporary North American terms, what is it that makes one an archetypal "liberal" or an archetypal "conservative"? What IS a Leftist or a Rightist position on any issue?
There does seem to be a divide there of considerable potency and generalizability and the demise of that great icon of Leftism -- the Soviet Union -- seems to have had little impact on the division concerned. Leftists may no longer have Communism to point to as a possible alternative system but they remain Leftists all the same. The banner proposal of Leftists since Karl Marx -- State ownership of the means of production or "socialism" no longer seems reasonable to all but a handful of diehards but Leftists are still Leftists and Rightists are still Rightists and never, it seems, the twain shall meet.
And the great rubric of "conservative" long fastened on Rightists seems equally moribund. "Conservative" is generally amplified as meaning "opposed to change" or "favouring the status quo" but from the Reagan/Thatcher years onward, Rightists have been the great advocates and practitioners of social and political change. Rightists have been almost revolutionary in tearing down the proud edifices of the Left -- with privatization, deregulation, welfare cutbacks, tax reductions etc. Judging by the politics of the last 20 years, Rightists LOVE change! Certainly, they have clearly and energetically changed what was once the status quo.
So what is going on? Again, what really IS Leftism/liberalism and WHY are people Leftist/liberal? What, if anything, do people have in common who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals"? However unsatisfactory and apparently simplistic the Left/Right division of the political world may be, there is any amount of research showing it to be a powerful, ubiquitous and perhaps inescapable way of identifying both people and political parties (e.g. Budge et al., 1987; Ray, 1982; Bobbio, 1996) so we do need to answer such questions.
Defining Leftism: Central proposal
The central proposal here may seem at first paradoxical but it is that attitude to the status quo characterizes Leftists rather than Rightists. It is proposed that it is not Rightists who are in favour of the status quo. They are in fact indifferent to it and may equally favour it or oppose it according to circumstances. Leftists, on the other hand, characteristically RESENT the status quo -- at least in the modern democracies. Whatever else the Leftist may be, the bedrock of Leftism is a strong dislike or even a hatred of the way the world is. They have a strong desire or even a need for political change, often extreme change. This does not, of course, mean that Leftists will favour all sorts of change equally. What sort of change the Leftist favours will depend on what it is about the world that the Leftist dislikes. It will depend on the needs that drive his/her desire for change. And there are even times when those needs dictate a defence of the status quo -- as I discuss later.
The Rightist, by contrast, generally has no need either for change or its converse. If anything, Rightists favour progress -- both material and social. So most Rightists are conservatives (cautious) not because of their attitude to change per se. On some occasions they may even agree with the particular policy outcomes that the Leftist claims to desire. They resist change, then, mainly when it appears incautious -- and they are cautious (skeptical of the net benefits of particular policies) generally because of their realism about the limitations (selfishness, folly, shortsightedness, aggressiveness etc.) of many of their fellow humans (Ray, 1972b, 1974 & 1981). So it is only vis a vis Leftists that the Right can on some occasions and in some eras appear conservative (cautious about proposals for social change).
Few writers have a better claim to representing historic conservative thought than Edmund Burke yet note this summary of what Burke said: "Far from opposing all reform, Burke insisted, "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." The issue was not reform versus no reform; it was between the view that reform was a simple matter that could be engaged in sweepingly and the view that it required prudence and was best approached incrementally". So conservatives have NEVER opposed change per se and it is little more than a calumny to say that they do. Caution certainly characterizes conservatives but attitude to change does not.
This broad idea that what Leftists basically want does not have to be the exact opposite or mirror-image of what Rightists basically want -- and vice versa -- may seem at first surprising but does have some precedents. Kerlinger (1967) suggested that Leftists and Rightists have different "criterial referents" and even thought that he had found in his survey research a complete lack of opposition between Leftist and Rightist attitudes. Kerlinger's reasoning is interesting but that he misinterpreted his research results has previously been shown in Ray (1980 & 1982 -- online here and here). Whether Leftist and Rightist objectives are opposite or just simply different, how Leftists and Rightists go about achieving their different basic objectives certainly generates plenty of conflict and opposition between the two sides.
Whatever Rightists might want, however, wanting to change the existing system is the umbrella under which all Leftists meet. Even at the height of British socialism, for instance, British Leftists still wanted MORE socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the society they live in is the one thing that clearly identifies all Leftists. That is the basic thing that they all have in common. In deciding where they go from there, however, they are extremely fractious and can even be murderous towards one-another (e.g. Stalin versus Trotsky). It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin himself spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests" (Lenin, 1952). He could hardly have spoken more contemptuously of the Tsar. This divisiveness of the Left does not however stop them from generally having some identifiable broad policy themes in common. There was great hatred and antagonism between Russian and Chinese regimes in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, for instance, but they were nonetheless both Communist.
We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the love of change is the claimed need for "equality". And the belief in "equality" also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily "progressive" income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Leftists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favour abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling and religious observance in various ways.
How Left is Left?
Leftism is however a matter of degree and we need to remember that there are many extreme Rightists who would regard more moderate conservatives as Leftists. So who really is a Leftist?
In answer, I think the basic guide is that the further Left we go, the more government intervention in people's lives is demanded and practiced. All governments exercise power over people's lives in one way or another but the more Leftist you are, the more pervasive and all-encompassing you will want that government meddling, influence and direction to be. And, by that criterion, note that so-called "Rightists" such as Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis were FAR to the Left.
We will see in more detail later how this love of big government is related to the Leftist's love of change and his/her underlying personality needs.
Note, however, that the intrusiveness of government into our lives is now very well advanced worldwide. ALL modern governments are more interventionist than they were 100 years ago. The 20th century was broadly a century of ever-advancing Leftism and we live at the end of that process. Government meddling and regulation CAN be rolled back -- Reagan and Thatcher showed us that -- but so far we have seen only a small amount of such rolling back. And, for all the Reagan/Thatcher efforts, the Western world is now more regulated and bureaucratized than it ever has been in history. Part of this is the work of the "Greens" -- who have managed to get an utter torrent of fresh regulation unleashed upon us. At least, however, government is not yet all pervasive and all-powerful in the modern-day Western world -- the way it was in extreme Left regimes such as Stalin's, Hitler's, Mao's and Mussolini's.
Although all the authoritarian governments that were responsible for megadeaths in the 20th century were Leftist, it must be noted that not all authoritarian governments are Leftist. Most governments throughout human history have in fact been authoritarian. They were usually called Kings or Emperors. And they were all pretty ferocious with those who were a challenge to their power. And they often came to power via military means. But, with very few exceptions, nobody would ever call them Leftist. Why not? Because it is WHAT THEY DO with their power that makes them Leftist or not. If they are just happy to stay in power they are neither Right nor Left but simply historically normal. But if they want to use their power to transform the whole of society and vastly reorganize everyone's lives, however, they are Leftist.
Such military-based governments still pop up in the modern world too. The regimes of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, for instance, had a security apparatus that ensured that they stayed in power regardless of what their people might want but, aside from that, they just let people get on with their lives as before and in fact resisted change of most kinds.
Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia were also undemocratic, military-based regimes that were unscrupulous in protecting their power but many of their other policies were more like Western conservative governments: They encouraged gradual and cautious change. They used their power to free up their economies --- thus extending the liberties of their citizens in important respects. Thus they were clearly not Leftists either.
Both the static Franco/Salazar type of regime and the progressive Pinochet/Suharto type of regime are often referred to as conservative but that simply reflects the fact that both opposed the large-scale forced reorganization of society that is associated with Leftism. Neither type of regime shows much respect for human rights and individual liberties or any other of the philosophies that characterize conservatives in the Western democracies.
As a libertarian, I deplore all government meddling in people's everyday lives but conservatives have always realized that it is a matter of degree. And while all governments are tyrannical to some degree, Rightist governments are intrinsically less so. A Rightist philosophy does embody respect for the individual and his rights and choices. The mass murders of Stalin, Mao and all of the many other Communist regimes show us, however, how much respect for the individual is built into a Leftist philosophy. Once they obtain absolute power, Leftists have no respect for other people at all.
Why does it matter to us? Centrism and its implications
The sort of absolute power that the Communists often obtained in the 20th century now seems to be a thing of the past, so why should we worry now about Leftism? Do we in fact have any really Leftist political parties any more?
There is a good article on "Slate" by Mickey Kaus puts very convincingly the well-established view that the major political parties in a democracy both have to stay very close to the centre.
Excerpt:
Think of it in ... well, cheap Darwinian terms. Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?
This is particularly marked in Australia where the policy differences between the two major parties are so minute that even a dedicated anti-Leftist like myself would not see it as an important change if the Australian Labor Party got control of the Australian Federal government.
The really interesting implication of centrism, however, is that you can only get big change by moving the whole political agenda in one direction or the other. This happened very markedly after the implosion of the Soviet Union --- after which socialism went out the window worldwide and market-based economic arrangements (particularly privatization of former government-owned businesses) were brought in by parties of every political stripe from Britain to Bangladesh -- not even excepting "Communist" China.
This rightward shift in the economic management agenda has been enormously beneficial -- with world poverty now becoming steadily "Africanized" (i.e. with India and China both rapidly becoming more prosperous under their new, more capitalist arrangements, populations stuck in poverty are now very largely restricted to Africa).
So the job of conservative/libertarian writers like myself is now to try to expose the destructiveness of government activism in ALL spheres. If we can convince enough people of that, we will have moved the political agenda in a way that the major political parties (whether Right-leaning ot Left-leaning) will have to follow.
University of New South Wales, Australia
BASIC LEFTISM: The current Confusion
Most ordinary people do not fit very neatly into any political category and may hold to a mix of views that include what would usually be seen as both Leftist and Rightist ideas. Among professional politicians and in academe, however, there is perhaps generally clearer polarization. So what is it that makes any given view "Rightist" or "Leftist"? In contemporary North American terms, what is it that makes one an archetypal "liberal" or an archetypal "conservative"? What IS a Leftist or a Rightist position on any issue?
There does seem to be a divide there of considerable potency and generalizability and the demise of that great icon of Leftism -- the Soviet Union -- seems to have had little impact on the division concerned. Leftists may no longer have Communism to point to as a possible alternative system but they remain Leftists all the same. The banner proposal of Leftists since Karl Marx -- State ownership of the means of production or "socialism" no longer seems reasonable to all but a handful of diehards but Leftists are still Leftists and Rightists are still Rightists and never, it seems, the twain shall meet.
And the great rubric of "conservative" long fastened on Rightists seems equally moribund. "Conservative" is generally amplified as meaning "opposed to change" or "favouring the status quo" but from the Reagan/Thatcher years onward, Rightists have been the great advocates and practitioners of social and political change. Rightists have been almost revolutionary in tearing down the proud edifices of the Left -- with privatization, deregulation, welfare cutbacks, tax reductions etc. Judging by the politics of the last 20 years, Rightists LOVE change! Certainly, they have clearly and energetically changed what was once the status quo.
So what is going on? Again, what really IS Leftism/liberalism and WHY are people Leftist/liberal? What, if anything, do people have in common who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals"? However unsatisfactory and apparently simplistic the Left/Right division of the political world may be, there is any amount of research showing it to be a powerful, ubiquitous and perhaps inescapable way of identifying both people and political parties (e.g. Budge et al., 1987; Ray, 1982; Bobbio, 1996) so we do need to answer such questions.
Defining Leftism: Central proposal
The central proposal here may seem at first paradoxical but it is that attitude to the status quo characterizes Leftists rather than Rightists. It is proposed that it is not Rightists who are in favour of the status quo. They are in fact indifferent to it and may equally favour it or oppose it according to circumstances. Leftists, on the other hand, characteristically RESENT the status quo -- at least in the modern democracies. Whatever else the Leftist may be, the bedrock of Leftism is a strong dislike or even a hatred of the way the world is. They have a strong desire or even a need for political change, often extreme change. This does not, of course, mean that Leftists will favour all sorts of change equally. What sort of change the Leftist favours will depend on what it is about the world that the Leftist dislikes. It will depend on the needs that drive his/her desire for change. And there are even times when those needs dictate a defence of the status quo -- as I discuss later.
The Rightist, by contrast, generally has no need either for change or its converse. If anything, Rightists favour progress -- both material and social. So most Rightists are conservatives (cautious) not because of their attitude to change per se. On some occasions they may even agree with the particular policy outcomes that the Leftist claims to desire. They resist change, then, mainly when it appears incautious -- and they are cautious (skeptical of the net benefits of particular policies) generally because of their realism about the limitations (selfishness, folly, shortsightedness, aggressiveness etc.) of many of their fellow humans (Ray, 1972b, 1974 & 1981). So it is only vis a vis Leftists that the Right can on some occasions and in some eras appear conservative (cautious about proposals for social change).
Few writers have a better claim to representing historic conservative thought than Edmund Burke yet note this summary of what Burke said: "Far from opposing all reform, Burke insisted, "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." The issue was not reform versus no reform; it was between the view that reform was a simple matter that could be engaged in sweepingly and the view that it required prudence and was best approached incrementally". So conservatives have NEVER opposed change per se and it is little more than a calumny to say that they do. Caution certainly characterizes conservatives but attitude to change does not.
This broad idea that what Leftists basically want does not have to be the exact opposite or mirror-image of what Rightists basically want -- and vice versa -- may seem at first surprising but does have some precedents. Kerlinger (1967) suggested that Leftists and Rightists have different "criterial referents" and even thought that he had found in his survey research a complete lack of opposition between Leftist and Rightist attitudes. Kerlinger's reasoning is interesting but that he misinterpreted his research results has previously been shown in Ray (1980 & 1982 -- online here and here). Whether Leftist and Rightist objectives are opposite or just simply different, how Leftists and Rightists go about achieving their different basic objectives certainly generates plenty of conflict and opposition between the two sides.
Whatever Rightists might want, however, wanting to change the existing system is the umbrella under which all Leftists meet. Even at the height of British socialism, for instance, British Leftists still wanted MORE socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the society they live in is the one thing that clearly identifies all Leftists. That is the basic thing that they all have in common. In deciding where they go from there, however, they are extremely fractious and can even be murderous towards one-another (e.g. Stalin versus Trotsky). It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin himself spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests" (Lenin, 1952). He could hardly have spoken more contemptuously of the Tsar. This divisiveness of the Left does not however stop them from generally having some identifiable broad policy themes in common. There was great hatred and antagonism between Russian and Chinese regimes in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, for instance, but they were nonetheless both Communist.
We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the love of change is the claimed need for "equality". And the belief in "equality" also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily "progressive" income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Leftists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favour abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling and religious observance in various ways.
How Left is Left?
Leftism is however a matter of degree and we need to remember that there are many extreme Rightists who would regard more moderate conservatives as Leftists. So who really is a Leftist?
In answer, I think the basic guide is that the further Left we go, the more government intervention in people's lives is demanded and practiced. All governments exercise power over people's lives in one way or another but the more Leftist you are, the more pervasive and all-encompassing you will want that government meddling, influence and direction to be. And, by that criterion, note that so-called "Rightists" such as Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis were FAR to the Left.
We will see in more detail later how this love of big government is related to the Leftist's love of change and his/her underlying personality needs.
Note, however, that the intrusiveness of government into our lives is now very well advanced worldwide. ALL modern governments are more interventionist than they were 100 years ago. The 20th century was broadly a century of ever-advancing Leftism and we live at the end of that process. Government meddling and regulation CAN be rolled back -- Reagan and Thatcher showed us that -- but so far we have seen only a small amount of such rolling back. And, for all the Reagan/Thatcher efforts, the Western world is now more regulated and bureaucratized than it ever has been in history. Part of this is the work of the "Greens" -- who have managed to get an utter torrent of fresh regulation unleashed upon us. At least, however, government is not yet all pervasive and all-powerful in the modern-day Western world -- the way it was in extreme Left regimes such as Stalin's, Hitler's, Mao's and Mussolini's.
Although all the authoritarian governments that were responsible for megadeaths in the 20th century were Leftist, it must be noted that not all authoritarian governments are Leftist. Most governments throughout human history have in fact been authoritarian. They were usually called Kings or Emperors. And they were all pretty ferocious with those who were a challenge to their power. And they often came to power via military means. But, with very few exceptions, nobody would ever call them Leftist. Why not? Because it is WHAT THEY DO with their power that makes them Leftist or not. If they are just happy to stay in power they are neither Right nor Left but simply historically normal. But if they want to use their power to transform the whole of society and vastly reorganize everyone's lives, however, they are Leftist.
Such military-based governments still pop up in the modern world too. The regimes of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, for instance, had a security apparatus that ensured that they stayed in power regardless of what their people might want but, aside from that, they just let people get on with their lives as before and in fact resisted change of most kinds.
Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia were also undemocratic, military-based regimes that were unscrupulous in protecting their power but many of their other policies were more like Western conservative governments: They encouraged gradual and cautious change. They used their power to free up their economies --- thus extending the liberties of their citizens in important respects. Thus they were clearly not Leftists either.
Both the static Franco/Salazar type of regime and the progressive Pinochet/Suharto type of regime are often referred to as conservative but that simply reflects the fact that both opposed the large-scale forced reorganization of society that is associated with Leftism. Neither type of regime shows much respect for human rights and individual liberties or any other of the philosophies that characterize conservatives in the Western democracies.
As a libertarian, I deplore all government meddling in people's everyday lives but conservatives have always realized that it is a matter of degree. And while all governments are tyrannical to some degree, Rightist governments are intrinsically less so. A Rightist philosophy does embody respect for the individual and his rights and choices. The mass murders of Stalin, Mao and all of the many other Communist regimes show us, however, how much respect for the individual is built into a Leftist philosophy. Once they obtain absolute power, Leftists have no respect for other people at all.
Why does it matter to us? Centrism and its implications
The sort of absolute power that the Communists often obtained in the 20th century now seems to be a thing of the past, so why should we worry now about Leftism? Do we in fact have any really Leftist political parties any more?
There is a good article on "Slate" by Mickey Kaus puts very convincingly the well-established view that the major political parties in a democracy both have to stay very close to the centre.
Excerpt:
Think of it in ... well, cheap Darwinian terms. Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?
This is particularly marked in Australia where the policy differences between the two major parties are so minute that even a dedicated anti-Leftist like myself would not see it as an important change if the Australian Labor Party got control of the Australian Federal government.
The really interesting implication of centrism, however, is that you can only get big change by moving the whole political agenda in one direction or the other. This happened very markedly after the implosion of the Soviet Union --- after which socialism went out the window worldwide and market-based economic arrangements (particularly privatization of former government-owned businesses) were brought in by parties of every political stripe from Britain to Bangladesh -- not even excepting "Communist" China.
This rightward shift in the economic management agenda has been enormously beneficial -- with world poverty now becoming steadily "Africanized" (i.e. with India and China both rapidly becoming more prosperous under their new, more capitalist arrangements, populations stuck in poverty are now very largely restricted to Africa).
So the job of conservative/libertarian writers like myself is now to try to expose the destructiveness of government activism in ALL spheres. If we can convince enough people of that, we will have moved the political agenda in a way that the major political parties (whether Right-leaning ot Left-leaning) will have to follow.
