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Left–right political spectrum

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Left-Right politics are traditional terms that represent a broad dialectical interpretation of diverse and competing political viewpoints. Usually the terms are understood to be polar opposites, although the exact meanings have evolved over time (and take on different meanings depending on the part of the world in which they are used), and are sometimes contradictory. Despite an apparent lack of consensus as to their definitions, widespread acceptance has kept them in use.

George Orwell once argued that the difficulty in classifying Left versus Right is due in part to the propensity for nascent factions of an ideology to be disavowed and labeled as being on the opposing side of the left-right divide by their erstwhile comrades — or they may so choose to label themselves to highlight their disagreement. This results in incremental or evolutionary doctrinal distinctions being placed in opposition in the popular perception of the left-right political spectrum.

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:

  • 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.
  • Specifically, acceptance of the inequalities in wealth and income which result from the free market (right), or redistribution of wealth and income, normally through government intervention funded through taxation (left). Generally, the political debate is about the extent to which the government should (left) or should not (right) intervene in the economy in order to benefit the relatively poor.
  • In general, 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. However, some types of intervention such as most government intervention on behalf of business interests are more opposed by the left than the right.
  • Preference for a larger and more interventionist government (left) versus a smaller government (right). However, this formulation would be disputed by many who, noting the existence of the authoritarian right, would place the general dichotomy between government passivity and government authority along an entirely separate political axis perpendicular to the left-right one. Other possible reasons for the second axis for this dichotomy include the libertarian socialists, 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 [1]. 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 behavior is determined by nurture or nature. This was proposed by Thomas Sowell.
  • Whether human beings are naturally good and happy, and evil and suffering are the product of an "unfair" society (left), or human beings are naturally bad and unhappy, so evil and suffering are inescapable elements of the human condition (right).
  • Whether the government should promote secularism (left) or religion (right). This distinction is highly relevant in the United States, India, the Catholic countries in Europe, (where anti-clericalism characterises the left), and to some extent in the Middle East.
  • 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.

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." [The Outline of History, New York, Garden City Publishing Company, 1931, p.527].

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Evolution of the terms

The meaning of the terms Left and Right has evolved over time; it has also spread from a specifically French context to a European (or at least continental) context to a worldwide context.

Europe in the early nineteenth century found itself with a variety of political outlooks that were easily fit into a left-right model of a political spectrum. As described by historians like Michael Broers, we see on the far right the forces of Reaction, who hoped for a wholesale restoration of the ancien régime, including traditional privileges and limits on central authority. Although governments to retain support frequently used these elements, in only a few cases (most notably the Kingdom of Sardinia) were reactionary policies actually put into effect. To the left of the reactionaries came more moderate conservatives who were willing to accept some of the outcomes of the French Revolution, in particular those elements which led to greater state power, and favored autocratic central control - whether at the expense of traditional estates or liberal parliaments. To their left appear the liberals, who hoped for representative governments and respect for civil liberties. In practice, though, the distinction between liberals and conservatives could be vague - notably, in states with parliaments, conservatives were willing to work with representative government when necessary. To the left of the liberals came various stripes of radicals and republicans, who favored the overthrow of monarchies and the establishment of universal suffrage either on the model of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 or the French one of 1793.

Over time it became clear that there was something to the left of that "left": the precursors of socialism and communism. The original left, and their radical or republican descendants, had stood for a certain abstract equality of rights, but this emerging socialist left stood for a more radical notion of equality: in its more extreme forms, for an absolute leveling of wealth and a willingness to use the power of the state to achieve that postulated "equality". The traditional right views civilized society as existing primarily to defend property rights.

As late as 1848, even with the participation of socialists in the European revolutions of that year, many liberals, with essentially the same politics as the Girondists of 1791, and certainly the radicals and republicans, remained considered unequivocally part of the Left. However, the increasing importance of socialist, anarchist, and especially Marxist Communist politics over the next century would steadily move the scale farther to the left, so that by the time of the Russian Revolution, many would confine the use of the term Left to Communists, or at least socialists. Increasingly, and especially in economics, the laissez-faire views that once defined the Left came to be characterized as a rightist position. The right wing of absolutist monarchism or theocracy became increasingly rare, and is practically non-existent in the west today.

The Bolsheviks were certainly "of the left", and the advocates of Stalinist, Soviet-style communism considered themselves to be "leftist". Most Western leftists would now dispute at least the Stalinist claim to Leftism, due to the general suspension of even non-economic liberties and the gross inequities created by Stalinists and Maoists in practice, though many leftist parties in Europe still will ally with Communist parties (see also eurocommunism) in order to oppose the Right.

In different countries at different times, Left and Right have been differently understood, and the farther one gets in time and space from late 19th-century Europe, the less likely there is to be clear consensus on the use or even the applicability of the terms. For example, in speaking of 1930s Europe, there is little consensus on what is meant by Right beyond an opposition to Bolshevism. Although Adolf Hitler in Germany and Winston Churchill in the United Kingdom were both characterized in their own countries as right-wing, there was obviously a tremendous difference between the two leaders' policies, and even their anti-communism was expressed in radically different ways.

Similarly, during the Cold War in the United States, there was no significant socialist presence in electoral politics, and very little overt social democratic presence. Instead liberalism in the United States, blending elements of classical liberalism with elements of social democracy, came to constitute the electoral left. The Right, in its original European sense, was associated with the defense of a traditional political order that had never existed in the United States. Virtually every elected official during this period in the United States took a stance of anti-Communism; it was not until the mid-1960s that the New Left arose and, in some cases, proclaimed its "anti-anti-Communism", without, for the most part, actively embracing Communism.

Meanwhile, in Western Europe, social democratic parties often participated in, or even led, governments; in several Western European countries, Communist parties remained an important part of the political landscape, to the point where what constituted the "left" of U.S. electoral politics would be considered "centrist" in Europe.

The late 1970s and especially 1980s saw a dramatic fall in the support for Communism, not only in the developed capitalist countries, but also increasingly in less developed world and ultimately in what had been the Communist world. Today, and especially since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, in very few places does "left" connote support for the type of communist states that so dominate China, Laos, and North Korea. While it can still refer to any of a number of varieties of socialism, it often refers to advocacy of some form of participatory economics or even green politics rather than statist socialism.

As with Left, the meaning of Right changed over time. By the late 19th century, virtually no one in Western Europe advocated a return to the societal organization of the Ancien Régime; instead, Right generally came to refer to those who wished to uphold any form of monarchy or aristocracy, those who held conservative religious views, or those who merely wished to defend the now-entrenched interests of that same bourgeoisie that had been coming into its own in 1789. The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of revolutionary right-wing populist and nationalist currents, notably fascism, that were distinct from the older right-wing political currents that continued to exist alongside them. Right is still used by some to refer to extremist nationalist or racist politics.

In recent years, with the rise of globalism and neoconservatism on the right, the term paleoconservative (the "old right") has emerged to describe the localism, isolationism and classical liberalism of the right wing of years recently passed.

Modern American use of the terms

These terms are widely used in the modern United States, but as on the global level, there is no firm consensus about their meaning. The only aspect which is generally agreed upon is that they are the defining opposites of the American political spectrum. "Left" and "right" are associated with "liberal" and "conservative," respectively, although the meanings of the two sets of terms do not entirely coincide. Depending on the political affiliation of the individual using them, these terms can be spoken with varying implications. The terms "left" and "right" have been coming into wider use again in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration, mostly due to their use in the context of controversial issues which the citizenry is divided over (e.g., the left supports abortion, the right does not).

The contemporary left in the United States is usually defined as a category including social democrats, socialists, communists, and some anarchists. Liberals are also commonly seen as being on the left (see Liberalism in the United States for more on this issue). Due to the extensive pejorative use of the term liberal, some parts of the American left decided in the 1980s to begin using the term "progressive" instead.

In general, left implies a commitment to social equality, support for the class interests of the less privileged, support for a 'liberal' social policy and multiculturalism. In contrast to the original meaning of "left", the contemporary left is usually characterized as promoting government regulation of business, commerce, and industry, and government intervention on behalf of the poor, and the racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. In recent years, even some representatives of the anarchist tradition have argued that government regulation may be a lesser evil than what Noam Chomsky characterizes as the "private tyranny" of the corporations.

The contemporary right in the United States is usually defined as a category including Republicans, classical liberalists, Christian democrats, and some libertarians. It is [variously] defined by its opposition to violations of constitutional law, to removal of fundamental rights, to excessive governmental regulation and income redistribution, to open border immigration policies, and to reverse discrimination. This opposition usually arises from the [percieved] importance of traditional values (conservatism), from the importance of freedom and the rights of private individuals (libertarianism), or from doubts about the benefits of governmental regulation.

Doubt about the contemporary relevance of the terms

See main article political spectrum.

Some contemporary political positions, such as the position known in the US as "libertarianism", are very hard to characterize in left-right terms. These libertarians are socially liberal, but reject the leftist advocacy of government regulation of business. Arguably, their politics are the most similar to those of the classical liberalism of the old left of 1789.

Many modern thinkers question whether the left-right distinction is even relevant in the 21st century. After all, in most countries left-right appears more a matter of historical contingency and local politics than any coherent statement of principle. After World War II, in order to remain politically relevant, the Western European right embraced most "leftist" aspects of government intervention in society. Similarly, many on the left went along with privatization and anti-communism of the Reagan-Thatcher era; more recently, in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe, even the parties of the left all seem to advocate a relatively limited state role in the economy. We also see the emergence of movements such as the Green party and feminism which certainly have more in common with the traditional left than the traditional right, but are defined largely by their rejection of the leftist tendency toward reductionist economics.

However, the nature of politics implies that there will always be polarizing issues, and at least on a regional basis the parties will likely find it expedient to display a dichotomous option, if only to exclude other options. There will also always be the temptation to tag opponents as right-wing or left-wing "extremists" in order to clarify one's stance or to portray one's opposition. Thus, even if the terms aren't as meaningful as they might have been, they are likely to remain part of political vocabulary for the foreseeable future. The left-right distinction will certainly be criticised by groups advocating what they call consensus-oriented approaches, such as radical centrist politics, Ordoliberalism, and the Third Way. Such groups often claim to 'transcend' the historic polarization, and insist that they are neither left nor right. Nevertheless, they too are usually classified by others as part of the political spectrum which they reject.

See also

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