Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
LEFT AND RIGHT AND LIBERAL
It is not such
an absurd question as it seems.
Here we are in
the French national assembly in 1792 or thereabouts. The constitutional
monarchy that we’ve developed since 1789 seems to be breaking down, the
conservative monarchies of Europe are now at war with us and trying to stifle our
revolution and our king seems to be complicit in their efforts. Why, he even
tried to run away and join them, but some of our national guard managed to
arrest him at Varennes.
So now we’re
gathered here and we’re debating what we’re going to do about it.
On the Speaker’s
extreme left sit those who say we should chop off the king’s head forthwith and
declare a republic. Centre-left of the Speaker are those who say yes, let’s
declare a republic but why baptise it in blood? Surely it would provoke less of
a reaction if we continued with the king under house arrest, rather than
executing him, and so denied extreme conservatives the excuse for an uprising.
On the Speaker’s centre-right are those who say no, don’t get rid of the king –
the people need a unifying figurehead. But let’s limit the king’s powers a bit
more and ensure we have a really good constitution for a constitutional
monarchy. And on the Speaker’s extreme right there are a few – but only a few –
who say this revolution has gone far enough and the king should be retained
with full powers. (Secretly, but without declaring it in the assembly, some of
them would like the whole system of absolute monarchy to be restored).
So there, in the
French national assembly, and related to time-and-place-specific issues, and
coming about simply because of the accident of where factions were seated in
relation to the Speaker, we have the origin of the political terms “left” and
“right”, both of which can be further qualified with the words “extreme” and
“centre” (or “moderate” if you prefer).
And this was the
point of the question I put to that audience.
At that
revolutionary time and in that place, the terms “left” and “right” meant
something specific. But the connotations of those political terms are now so
vague that they have come to mean a great variety of very contradictory things.
So I was challenging the audience to define what they really meant now by
“left” and “right” in the political sense. If they couldn’t define what they
meant, then they might as well be using the terms to signal what they thought
about the execution of Louis XVI.
I was being
facetious, of course. (You know me by now.) I am aware that for many years
there was a sort of meaning to the
political terms “left” and “right”. By and large, the Right were conservatives
who hankered after a settled and traditional order and (in their extreme
version) would impose it by authoritarian means. In whatever European country
you were, you could expect the Right to support king-and-country and probably
also to support the teachings of the church (i.e. whichever church was dominant
in that country – Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox), especially on
matters of private morality. By and large the Left were opponents of the
traditional order, and were those who spent most of the early nineteenth
century limiting or opposing the power of monarchies, seeking a broader
franchise and defying the authority of the church. Sometimes they too wished to
impose their agenda by authoritarian means – though in their case this meant
revolution.
But even early
in the history of political “left” and “right”, the terms become confused.
Remember, ALL political terms are slippery and are capable of multiple
interpretations. “Conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “reactionary” etc. –
they are all really relative terms. When we say “left” or “right” we always
have to ask, “left” or “right” in relation to whom or what?
And with the
genesis of Marxism and socialism, the earlier meanings of “left” and “right”
were hugely modified. Hitherto, many on the “left” had been liberals – that is,
those who promoted individual freedoms and sought to limit the powers of the
state as represented by bad old authoritarian and absolutist monarchies. Now,
most on the “left” wanted a greatly enhanced role for the state as an
interventionist economic arbiter.
I’ll skip by one
very obvious paradox – the paradox that in their most extreme forms Left
(Communism) and Right (Fascism) have very little to distinguish them from each
other. One-party states with little tolerance for civil rights, massive
surveillance of the population, oppressive censorship and frequent violent
repression are very like one another, regardless of whether their theoretical
origins were on the Right or the Left.
But talking of
their less extreme manifestations, Left and Right are now terms foxed by that
other pesky term, “liberal”.
I’ve noted that
often “liberal” is used as if it is a vague synonym for “Left” –especially by
Americans. “Those damned pinkos and
liberals just want more Big Government” – that sort of thing. Lefties and
liberals are also supposedly at one on issues of private morality – gay
marriage, legalised prostitution etc.
But the reality
is that the left-wing and liberal agendas are more often in conflict than
collusion. In the last forty years throughout the Western world, it has been
governments that are labelled “Conservative” (and therefore, according to the
older terminology, right-wing) that have successfully promoted the neo-liberal
doctrines of the supremacy of the market, privatisation and limited government
spending, supported by the myth of creating the “level playing field”. Yes,
many Social Democrat and Labour governments have also supported these policies
(as New Zealand knows), but it has been their most “left-wing” members who have
resisted them.
Whether or not
we like them, these neo-liberal policies, identified with the New Right, really
are the direct descendants of the first wave of pre-socialist liberalism after
the French revolution, when they would have been supported by the original
“left”.
I should make
another obvious point here. Those issues of private morality are (with the much
diminished influence churches now have in Western societies) no longer markers
between “left” and “right”. Supposed “conservative” parties are just as likely
to support gay marriage etc. as supposed “progressive” ones. And why not? Isn’t
liberalism mainly about having as little control over people’s lives as
possible?
So where do we
end up with “left” and “right”? If the terms have any political meaning at all
now, it has nothing to do with issues of private morality or what is vaguely
(mis)called “social policy”. It has to do with economics. It has to do with how
wealth is or is not shared. My sincerest apologies to feminists or gay rights
activists who thought that their agendas were the most fundamental with regard
to the human governance, but the brute fact is that wealth and poverty are the
most essential features now separating political parties.
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