[Peace-discuss] Left and right

[C. G. Estabrook]

Why not accept a consistent usage for the terms?  We might ask, whose 
interests are served by keeping their meaning "amorphous"?  Let's say 
what we mean.

It makes sense, e.g., to say that the Left (those who favor democracy) 
want to promote democratic control of the economy, while the Right 
(those who favor authoritarianism) want the economy kept in private 
hands.   --CGE

==============

In a letter to Henry ("Light Horse Harry") Lee, the father of R. E. Lee, 
   Thomas Jefferson wrote shortly before he died that people are 
"naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those who fear and distrust the 
people, and wish to draw all power from them into the hands of the 
higher classes; and (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, 
have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest 
and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests."


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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>