[Peace-discuss] Left and right

[Morton K. Brussel]

All this seems simplistic. The "left-right" distinction does not seem  
to me to be one dimensional. There is no non-amorphous delineation.  
In addition to the democratic distinctions Carl alludes to, there are  
others. Customarily attributed to these adjectives is a social  
dimension, ("socialism", "communism",  political and economic  
egalitarianism [not simply reducible to democracy]), and, of course,  
there is the issue of capitalism, which Marx in particular brought  
into play, although I don't remember whether he used "left-right"  
terminology. All that said, "it is a demarcation fraught with  
ambiguity", and I'm afraid not resolved here.

(I really didn't want to get into this… A debate could last  
indefinitely. )

--mkb

On Jul 15, 2007, at 11:04 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> 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>
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