You have probably heard a number of terms having to do with the political spectrum. From political quizzes charting your ideology, to debates in Congress, to news featuring Antifa, there seems to be a need for a handy heuristic to solve the problems of partisan politics. Enter the Left-Right political spectrum. But before we dive into the subject a warning: it is important to remember that human beings are complicated and contradictory animals that cannot be mapped on anything as simple as a political spectrum, let alone one with a single axis. Furthermore, there are plenty of voices that would argue that it is an outdated or overly simplistic idea. Nevertheless, we will take a look at the Left-Right Spectrum, its history, its uses, and its complications in order to make more sense of this political moment and the partisan groups that inhabit it.
Why Right and Left?
The use of the terms left and right date back to the French Revolution. In 1789, the National Assembly convened to address the grievances of the people of France. Those loyal to the King and traditional values of religion sat at the right of the President, whereas the most fervent supporters of Revolution sat to the left. This precedent was followed into the subsequent Legislative Assembly, which produced a constitution for France, where it was cemented. As the politics of France drastically changed, the tradition of change-oriented politicians sitting on the left and traditional, conservative politicians sitting on the right remained the same. The use of Left and Right as political identifiers became popularized in the early 20th century with the rise of radical and extreme political movements of Communism and Fascism and has been adopted for standardizing shorthand to describe various political systems in the world without having to understand the particular nuances of history for each country and region.
Though the terms Left and Right are slippery, they are much more useful than terms like Republican or Democrat, which can mean wildly different things in different parts of the world. Traditionally, the Left and Right break down on opposite ends of spectrums of concepts that are not necessarily mutually exclusive but are in conflict with each other. For example, the Left more often values social freedom where the Right might value social order more. The Left prioritizes progress over tradition and the Right traditionally backs the authority of business owners over labor rights. Internationalism is associated with the Left, whereas the Right supports nationalism in whichever country it happens to be in. A left-wing government seeks to support and secure freedom for its citizens through social programs and a right-wing government would look to unfettered free-markets to provide opportunity for people to move through the class hierarchy of its country. In short the Left-Right divide is one about hierarchies. The further left you move, the fewer and smaller the hierarchies become. Likewise, the further right you move the more entrenched and solid the hierarchies become.
The Left includes (in order of most extreme moving toward the center):
Anarchists (those that wish to destroy all hierarchies)
Communists (those interested in common control, not necessarily state-owned, of the means of production)
Socialists (those interested in control of the means of productions by various social groups like employees of a company or the public at large)
Democratic Socialists (those that seek the maintaining of a democratic political system, in direct contrast to authoritarian socialists, and the addition of democratic workplaces)
Progressives
Social Liberals
The Right includes (in order of most extreme moving toward the center):
Fascists (those interested in a highly regimented society and economy under the control of a hyper-nationalistic government)
Reactionaries (those who seek to return to a previous political era)
Imperialists (those that seek to extend rule of a country over other countries)
Neoconservatives (those who responded to the Left of the 1960s and seek to use military might to control international relations)
Right-Libertarians (those who support capitalism and property rights but reject state authority)
Conservatives (those interested in promoting strong traditional social institutions).
Though we often think of Authoritarian and Fascism as synonyms, it is worth pointing out that the Right’s preoccupation with authority does not mean that all right-wing groups support Authoritarianism. Nor does it mean that the Left is free from authoritarian practices. To the same point, many, if not most, Socialists and Communists of today would not favor an Authoritarian government and would consider such to be antithetical to their political goals. This is not true of Fascism. All Fascists, definitionally, seek an authoritarian state. Still to suggest that either part of the spectrum is free from control or violence would be a mistake.
In the next article on the Left-Right political spectrum we will look specifically at the political history of the United States (and Delaware) to see where we fit. In the meantime feel free to look at the resources below for more information about the political ideologies of Delaware.
https://delawarestatenews.net/government/a-mostly-true-blue-tale-of-delaware-politics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Delaware
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