WHAT IS POLITICS?

5. How Do We Know What Left and Right Mean? Who’s who on the left and right: 1789-1917

Sep 10, 2020

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Quick takeaways

The left-right political spectrum is defined by one's stance on equality and hierarchy, with the left advocating for equality and the right supporting hierarchies.

Historical classifications show that the left challenges existing power structures for equality, while the right reinforces hierarchies and power structures.

Deep dives

Class Conflict and the Left-Right Political Spectrum

The organization of human societies into political hierarchies over the past 12 thousand years has led to the emergence of the left-right political spectrum. This spectrum is defined by one's stance on hierarchies and class conflict; support for inequalities places one on the right, while opposition to inequalities aligns with the left. Hierarchies can be political, economic, cultural, or international, with the left aiming for equality and the right advocating for governmental reinforcement of hierarchies.

Markets and Capitalism in the French Revolution

05:38

The French Revolution and Its Response to the Ideology

04:17

The Left vs the Right Is Mis Bibble

02:41

Introduction

2min

Why Is Communism on the Far Right?

4min

The Hierarchy of Power in the Middle Ages

2min

The French Revolution and Its Response to the Ideology

4min

The St. Culot and the French Revolution

2min

Markets and Capitalism in the French Revolution

6min

Which Definition of Left and Right Makes Sense?

4min

Socialism in the Late Nineteenth Century

4min

The Socialist Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century

2min

10.

The Left vs the Right Is Mis Bibble

3min

11.

Socialism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentynth Century

2min

12.

The Right Is on the Left, Right or Right?

2min

This episode is for everyone who keeps writing to me to insist that one or the other wrong, incoherent, popular definitions of Left and Right is actually the correct one.

How do we know the left and right refer to equality and hierarchy?

To answer this, we look at who was considered as being on the left and on the right in three different time periods:

The early French revolution in 1789, which is what the whole left-right political spectrum is an analogy to.
The 3^rd republic in France where seating in the National Assembly was first purposefully arranged on a left-right spectrum, analogous to the early French Revolution.
The different branches of late 19^th and early 20^th Century socialist movement: Anarchism, Revolutionary Party Socialism and Parliamentary Socialism.

And we apply all of the junk cold war definitions – the market vs. the state, the individual vs. the collective, big vs. small government, equality vs. liberty – and we watch them all crash and burn, leaving only the equality vs. hierarchy / class conflict paradigm left standing.

Apply this exercise on your own to any historical period from 1789 until the rise of the USSR and the cold war, and you get the same results.

Now can everyone accept it and move on?

Bonus episode to follow shortly to explain why Fascism is on the far right and Communism is on the far left when Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR are both archetypical “totalitarian” societies.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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