Is it left-wing to endorse the abolition of the state? Right-wing?
The left wants to use the power of the state to solve society’s problems. The right wants to use the power of the state to preserve society. What if you don’t want to use the power of the state to do anything? Doesn’t that mean you’re not left-wing or right-wing?
Maybe I have incorrect definition of left and right. Are there better definitions?
You’re exactly right.
The dichotomy is a culturally one, the thing is that the culture of left wing statists in one that can only occur in the context of the state. Even the politically right will often tend to espouse values that would be promoted within a stateless society (low time preference, responsibility), they just have the wrong means of acheiving those ends.
The left and right wing are just two wings of the same organization, the state. They are not anarchists by definition.
I’ll cast my vote with Stranger.
Identification of ideologies through the use of labels tends to trap us in a sort of mantra (in my opinion). I have no idea how “Left Anarchism” differs from “Right Anarchism”, but I can point you to a website or two where the bloggers are very dogmatic in that endeavor. I rather like Harry Brown’s take:
Conservatives say the government can’t end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can’t make people moral, but they believe it can end poverty.
Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.
~Harry Browne, “Liberty A-Z” p 35
Eh ?
Perhaps he meant a “freeze” society from becoming more dynamic (which could tie in with conservative worship of traditionalism, the past, & status-quo) & become more static.
I think he means “preserve society” in a Hobbesian sense of the phrase, i.e. that without the state’s supervision everyone would run wild and kill each other.
The very first use of the left-right dichotomy, during the French Revolution, opposed the monarchists (on the right) and the montagnards (on the left, all the way to the proto-communist babouvists). The liberals were stuck in the center. Nothing has really changed.
Yeah, I was over-thinking that. [Y]
Ah, thanks. That makes sense.
Well, conservatives (at least some conservatives) do have a desire to use the state to preserve existing hierarchies regardless of changes in economic conditions. Surely you fans of Hoppe are familiar with the chapter on “Conservative socialism” in his Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (incidentally the only Hoppe book I could find in my university’s library).
It’s a false paradigm. Reject it.
Left wing = Communists / Marxists (International Socialism)
Right wing = Fascists / Nazi’s (National Socialism)
Literally 5 letters of difference.
I don’t know a single conservative on here that would wish to preserve the current hierarchy.
Yes, I am. So what? He talks of conservative socialism, not libertarian conservatism.
Rothbard described the history of the terms in this essay: http://mises.org/daily/910
I would change that a bit
Left wing = Socialists / Marxist-Leninists / Other Marxists (International Socialism)
Right wing = Economic and Political Liberals / Free Markets and Private Property advocates / Defenders of Individual Rights (Classic Liberalism)
Third Way (Anti-Marxism) = Fascists / Nazi’s (National Socialism)
Classical liberalism is not right wing.
I find the revision more than ironic considering it’s been suggested the labels of right-wing * left-wing are utilizes by the State to help perpetuate the lesser of evils condition of voting and political discourse.
Technically, it makes little difference to The State, as an institution, as to which tribe get’s power & which tribe loses.
This is why re-analyzing statist intellectual & political rhetoric from the standpoint that The State is not legitimate is such a threat, that the most stealthily & intelligently employed propaganda is employed (or generated, unconsciously via social means, if you want to get memetic) to combat it.
Free-Market & Private Property are not inherently representative of the “right-wing” of the State; they are however, representative of the ideals of the constitution and/or the beginning of the United States of America. Thus, imo, it’s far more accurate to re-label “Right-Wing” as “Original Wing”, or some variation thereof, while maintaining that the current “Right-Wing” in no way represents what it used to be (The Old Right, etc.).
Additionally, you could also revise the “right wing” to be traditionally (pre- Neo Conservatism) Constitutionalist & Minarchist, as from my memory, it was the Left Wing that was the deviation (which could’ve started with the “progressive’s eventual embrace of imperialism, which was directly against the traditional or classical liberalism that had started the US”- paraphrase; Arthur Ekrich)
Republicans (or all mainstream politics, for that matter) have deviated so far to the left that they belong on a separate axis that measures the “more left” and “less left”, or “more collectivist” or “less collectivist”.
The consistent use of their language to outcast “extremists” (while brilliantly drawing upon the absurdity of The Red Scare, & other such moments in history) cements their ideologies legitimacy, with most arguments ending up being a variation of “You’re either with us, or against us.”, with relative tones of arrogance & ignorance.
Just as while, socially, Republicans & Democrats appear to differ, politically, economically, & philosophically, the difference is little to an outside viewpoint, in which case would be the Non or Anti-Statist minded individual.
From a economic point of view I cannot find any other way to see it… or am I using the term “right wing” in a different way to that it is supposed to be used?
At least from my experience the political right has always been in the side of classic liberalism.
Interesting, just one thing to clarify, I was talking of the universal “right wing” (beyond the scope of American politics) that was borned from the principles of classic liberalism of the french revolution from opposition to the tyranical monarchies and the absolute state.