This is not to say that I think they are equally bad or that there should be a “united front” or some non-sense like that.
It just seems like the traditional left / right distinction, even when extended by the authoritarian / liberal axis doesn’t seem to reflect political opinions a very well anymore (and maybe never did).
As a shower-thought I recently considered “rooted” Vs. “mobile” as less ideologically loaded and more descriptive terms of the actually different mind-sets people seem to have. This seems to fit to many aspects of the ideological divide found in today’s world.
Any other suggestions?
P.S.: of course just inventing new terms & definitions doesn’t change anything (and NewSpeak is certainly a danger), but keep using outdated and overloaded terms is also not the solution.
Sorry for the long response, TL DR is left is for new model of society that never existed, right is for wanting to keep the system as it is or going back to a real or fantasized past.
I love the way tzi, a french video-maker, puts it. So If you understand french, I really encourage you to check his videos on the subject : https://tube.aquilenet.fr/w/eAKCNAU98Y854wGkkw6y9g https://tube.aquilenet.fr/w/mYKrkYq4KgSguEoWJ9RQ3b
For english-speakers, I will do my best to try and explain what I think :
Historically, in France, Left/Right distinction comes from the french revolution, where the representatives of the bourgeoisie gathered in an semi-circular chamber in front of the king. There was a division between hardcore royalists, faithful to the king symbolically sat to the right of the king, the “reliable side” as in “right-hand man”, and those who wanted to balance power between the king and representatives of the bourgeoisie, to his left. As the debate shifted, there where even people that promoted to overthrow the king, and created a republic. They sat even more to the left, the “far-left”.
And this logic kept on going. As the hardcore royalists lost more and more influence, they got squished to the far left, pushed by the growing number of soft royalist and republican grew. Later socialism began to appear, creating a new far left, pushing the liberals to the right.
So if we what to try to understand why it was such a strong distinction that people brought those words to the global political vocabulary, I think a definition of left and right that can still be useful today would be :
Left : People who think we should try new models of society that never existed before. They are against the current regime and economic structure and do not want to go back to a regime that already existed. In that way, communists or anarchists are to the left, they are “progressive anti-libertarian”.
Right : People who think we should stick to the political regime and economic structure, or go back to an ancient one, that did exist, or that they fantasize. Conservatives are to the right, European royalists are also to the right, and fascists and nazi are obviously to the right, wanting to get back to mythical values of white racist ethostates that only ever existed in their dream.
This definition has the advantage to be relevant through time because it is relative to the point of history we are in. That explain why republicans where once “far left”, and are now clearly to the right of the spectrum. The whole “left and right doesn’t mean anything anymore” is true since the republican went from left to right decades or even centuries ago if we do not account for the society evolution that makes the progressive ideas for yesterday becoming conservative ideas as they won. Yesterday, royalists were the right and the bourgeoisie was the left, today the bourgeoisie is the right and socialists are the left, tomorrow hopefully the socialism will be to the right of the political spectrum, and new critics will emerge to the left of it. The lucrative property will disappear from the political debate as feudalism has before and will be a thing of the past ! We will be able to focus our political energy around other subject that will divide us once again, and hopefully this social progress will keep on going !
I can’t say I fully agree with this evolutionary definition. It kinda implies that things necessarily move towards a more open society, while it is perfectly conceivable that new people with clearly right-wing ideas push the progression in the other direction. Take for example the socialists in the post-soviet eastern European states… by your definition they are already “right-wing”, while the neo-liberal reformists that took over would be the current “left”.
It is also a bit too one dimensional… take for example the ecological parties (“greens”). Objectively they are in every sense of your definition “right” as they strive to preserve the ecology or (mostly) want to go back to an imagined past of a health nature. Yet in praxis they are usually very much against the established right-wing thinking (although a certain co-opting has taken place in recent years).
Ok, I agree with your criticism, but my defense is that I tried to be short (I know it’s not obvious…)
To me, the USSR failed to build the socialism I defend. I don’t want to return to the society as it was during USSR. So to me, absolute defenders of the USSR model are closer to ring-wing than in many people definition. But I assume this view. I think this defense is build around a dreamed and glorified past, that I don’t think really existed as they present it. I defend a socialism that assume the error of the past attempts, and try to create new solutions. But I understand this is a controversial position.
Concerning the ecologist, I think they are a great example ! I think there are two very different way to think ecology. There is a very right-wing ecology, the defend a return to a dreamed past where man and nature lived in harmony, and this is bullshit to me. Survivalists communities are full of that kind of people. They are often against social progress because it is “against nature”, so anti-abortion, often racist because race differences are “natural”, etc. There is another ecology, left winged, that do not dream of a better past, but want to build a viable future. They do not care about retrieve a lost past state of society, and are willing to build a new society because they think that it is needed to save our environment. I agree with them.
About the one-dimensional aspect of it, I don’t deny it. I think left-right distinction are a one-dimensional notion by design, and it would be absurd to try and give a multidimensional meaning to words that literally mean to opposite direction. But I do not think the left-right notion should be the only notion to discuss politics. I think it is a very useful one, so I defend it’s pertinence, but would never be stupid enough to think this is the only useful notion. Anarchy and Communism are both to the far-left of my spectrum, but build very distinct propositions for the future. Left-Right discussion are therefore much less useful when discussing their differences. (On the other and, the proposition to the right is much less diverse, because it mostly limit itself to what exist or has existed. That explain why the left is much more diverse and disagree much more, there are more imaginable future than imaginable presents or past !)
Thanks for reading, sorry for the long answers… Love this discussions, thanks for the post <3