[Peace-discuss] Left and right

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's a commonplace that the distinction between Left and Right is 
fraught with ambiguity. (When the Democratic party is spoken of as on 
the Left, it's gotten pretty silly.) And it's also generally accepted 
that the terminology arose from the seating arrangements in the French 
National Assembly of 1789.

But if we want a consistent usage for the Left/Right distinction, we 
might think of political parties ranged along a line according to how 
authoritarian or democratic they are. The further Right one goes, the 
more authoritarian the parties, and the further Left, the more 
democratic. (At the far Left end are the socialists, who want not just a 
democratic polity but a democratic economy as well -- investment 
decisions made not by corporations but by elections.)

Lenin's Bolsheviks, then, must be seen as a right-wing Marxist party, as 
must all twentieth century communist parties in the Marxist-Leninist 
tradition, owing to their authoritarianism. (And they were indeed so 
described by left-wing Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek.)

The commitment to democracy and an ever-widening franchise means that it 
has been the Left under this definition that has called attention to 
marginalized groups in the modern West. The historic task of the Left 
has been to include in political and civil society groups formerly 
excluded on the grounds that their full humanity was denied -- e.g., 
Africans, Amerindians, and women.

<http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook01172003.html>