Left-Right politics

Left-Right politics are traditional terms that represent broad competing political visions, whose meanings have evolved and can sometimes be contradictory, yet widespread acceptance has kept them in use.

Meaning of the terms

Despite the prevalence and durability of these terms, there is little consensus on what it actually means to be Left or Right at the present time. There are various different opinions about what is actually being measured along this axis:

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• Support for the economic interests of the less privileged classes (left) or of the more privileged (right). As discussed in the next section, this issue of class interests was the original meaning of the dichotomy.
• Fair or outcomes (left) versus fair processes (right). All classic liberalism is process-based, the free market is the best example. Robert Nozick is one of the 20th century theorists who emphasised this distinction between "historical" and "end-result" principles (see Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, pp. 153-155). Among the politicians who support this distinction is Australian Labor Party ex-leader Mark Latham.
• Specifically, acceptance of inequalities in wealth and income as a result of the free market (right), or redistribution of wealth and income, normally through taxation (left). Generally, the political debate is about whether inequalities can best be remedied by taxation-based income transfers to the poor (left) or by job creation through greater economic activity (right).
• Whether the government's policy on the economy should be interventionist (left) or laissez-faire (right). For example, the Nolan chart proposes this as one of its axes of distinction between left and right. State intervention does not necessarily imply redistribution of wealth, or egalitarian policies. In practice, all modern governments have enormous influence on the economy, because they control a large share of GNP.
• Preference for a larger and more interventionist government (left) versus a smaller government (right). This does not take into account such leftists as the libertarian socialists, or anarchists, or the old right. Large and small here refer to policies and attitudes, although the number of government employees is often used as an indicator.
• Whether the state should prioritise equality (left) or liberty (right). Two writers who characterise the distinction along these lines are Norberto Bobbio in Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (ISBN 0226062465) and Danielle Allen http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041220&c=7&s=forum. Note, however, that both the left and the right tend to speak in favour of both equality and liberty - but they have different interpretations of each of the two terms. There have been many governments opposed to both liberty and equality, but which are nevertheless characterized as "left-wing" or "right-wing".
• Whether human nature and society is malleable (left) or fixed (right), or whether human nature is determined by nurture or nature. This was proposed by Thomas Sowell.
• Whether the government should promote secularism (left) or religion (right). This distinction is highly relevant in the United States, and also in the Catholic countries in Europe, where anti-clericalism characterises the left.
• Collectivism (left) versus individualism (right). However, emphasis on personal freedom was one of the hallmarks of the 1960?s counterculture, which is often seen as ?left?. In religious-secular conflicts, it is usually the secularists who emphasise individual liberty as against collective religious values ("our Christian heritage").
• A preference for innovation and change (left) or a preference for conservatism and an insistence that innovations must be justified (right). Although in some countries 'right' and 'conservative' are used as synonyms, this aspect gets surprisingly little attention in discussion of the left-right axis. The American left writer Eric Hoffer was one of those who emphasised it.
• Whether law creates and subordinates culture (left), or culture creates and subordinates law (right). This formulation was put forward by US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
• Support for national independence, autonomy and sovereignty, especially for smaller groups (left), as opposed to support for legitimate states and governments (right). The expression "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" illustrates the usual conflict of attitudes. However movements of the right usually support the sovereignty of their own state, and oppose its erosion. In Europe, support for the European Union came traditionally from the left, and defence of national sovereignty from the right. Euroscepticism is now so common, that it can no longer be identified with left or right.
• Support for internationalism and cosmopolitan attitudes (left), as against "narrow" national interest (right). However, economic nationalism is found on left and right.

Writers have also been known to use the term more loosely and perhaps anachronistically, as did H. G. Wells's when, writing of the Jews of the Roman Empire, he refers to the Pharisees as "on the right" and Hellenised Jews such as the Sadducees as "of the left." .

Related Topics:
Jew - Pharisees - Sadducees

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Historical origin of the terms

The terms Left and Right to refer to political affiliation originated early in the French Revolutionary era, and referred originally to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.

Related Topics:
French Revolution - Various legislative bodies - France - Legislative Assembly - 1791 - Feuillant - Montagnard

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Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was attitudes towards the ancien régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal, or clerical interests, while "The Left" implied opposition to the same. At that time, support for laissez-faire capitalism and free markets were regarded as being on the left whereas today in most Western countries these views would be characterized as being on the Right. But even during the French Revolution an extreme left wing called for government intervention in the economy on behalf of the poor.

Related Topics:
Ancien régime - Laissez-faire capitalism - Free market

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In Great Britain at that time, Edmund Burke (now generally described as a conservative) held similar economic views to this first French "Left," although he strongly criticized their anti-clericalism and their willingness to turn to mob violence for support and to overturn institutions of long standing.

Related Topics:
Great Britain - Edmund Burke - Anti-clericalism

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During the French Revolution, the definition of who was on the left and who on the right shifted greatly within only a few years. Initially, leaders of the Constituent Assembly like Antoine Barnave and Alexandre de Lameth, who supported a very limited monarchy and a unicameral legislature, were seen as being on the left, in opposition to more conservative leaders who hoped for a more British-style constitutional monarchy, and to those who opposed the revolution outright. By the time of the convening of the Legislative Assembly in 1791, their party, now called the Feuillants, had come to be seen as on the right due to its support for any form of monarchy, and for the limited franchise of the 1791 Constitution. By the time of the convening of the National Convention only a year later, the Girondins, who had been on the left in the Legislative Assembly due to their support for external war to spread the revolution, and strong dislike for the king, had themselves come to be seen as being on the right due to their ambivalence about the overthrow of the monarchy, their opposition to Louis's execution, and their dislike for the city of Paris, which had come to see itself as the heart of the Revolution.

Related Topics:
Antoine Barnave - Alexandre de Lameth - Legislative Assembly - 1791 - Feuillant - National Convention - Girondins

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It should be emphasized that in these years there was little in their views of economic policy to distinguish the various factions of the French Revolution from one another. Both Montagnards on the (1792-1793) left and Monarchiens on the (1789) right were essentially orthodox liberals on economic matters, although the Montagnards proved more willing than other groups to court popular favor in Paris by agreeing to (temporary) economic controls in 1793, and there were indeed economic radicals to the left of the Montagnards who insisted on genuine economic redistribution to achieve the Egalité promised by the revolutionary slogan.

Related Topics:
Montagnard - Orthodox

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Instead, the focus of ideological differences during the revolution had much more to do with attitudes towards the Revolution itself - whether it was a horror against God and Nature to be turned back and destroyed, a necessary rupture with the past that must (at some point) be brought to a close so order and good government could be restored, or a necessary and permanent feature of French political life. For the most part, nearly all of the political figures of the Revolution itself held the middle position, and disagreed largely on at what point it was time to call the Revolution fulfilled.

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After the revolution settled down in 1794 following the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, a more clear-cut political spectrum began to emerge - on the left were Jacobins, former supporters of Robespierre and the Terror, who longed to see the restoration of the democratic Constitution of 1793; on the right were the monarchists, who hoped to restore a monarchy, whether constitutional or absolute; and in the center were the Thermidorians, who wrote the Constitution of 1795 and hoped that the limited republic of the Directory would stand in the middle position between these two extremes. The failure of the Directory did little to change these basic political alignments - Jacobins and Monarchists remained, and most of those who had initially supported the Directory came to support the dictatorship, and eventually the rule as emperor, of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Related Topics:
1794 - Robespierre - 9 Thermidor - Constitution of 1793 - Constitution of 1795 - Directory - Napoleon Bonaparte

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It was during this period of retrenchment in France itself that the idea of the left-right political spectrum began to be exported to the rest of Europe. As the French conquered and annexed lands beyond the French border, it was again the issue of attitudes towards the French Revolution, which largely determined political alignment. With the rise of Napoleon, though, matters became more complicated, as those outside France who had supported the Revolution were forced to decide whether this also meant supporting Napoleon's dictatorship. At the same time, the traditional rulers of the other states of Europe - whether Napoleon's enemies in Austria and Prussia, or dependent rulers in German states like Bavaria, often came to a nuanced position on Napoleon and the Revolution's legacy, hoping to import many of the centralizing reforms which had brought the old regime to an end and allowed, it seemed, Napoleon's great victories, without opening the way for the chaos and violence of the Terror.

Related Topics:
Austria - Prussia - Bavaria

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It was in this spirit that the statesman of Europe came together after Napoleon's defeat in 1814 to reconstitute Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Rather than restoring the old regime wholesale, the conservative statesmen at Vienna (men like Prince Metternich and Lord Castlereagh) hoped to arrive at the best system to maintain order, if necessary through judicious use of the reforms of the French Revolution. In France itself, as well, a similar spirit prevailed in the person of the restored Bourbon Louis XVIII, who realized that a full restoration of the Old Regime in France was impossible.

Related Topics:
1814 - Congress of Vienna - Prince Metternich - Lord Castlereagh - Louis XVIII

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