LEFT-WING AND RIGHT-WING.

1. 

What is the difference between left-wing and right-wing sides in politics? Is there one underlying fundamental idea that distinguishes them and which explains the content of each.

So, for example, left-wing opinions on various issues are as follows: progressive taxation, trade-unionism, the welfare state, in favour of controls of prices and rents and wages, anti-imperialism, pro-immigration, pro-abortion, anti-capital punishment, pro-Irish Republicanism, anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons and (more recently) belief in human-caused global warming.

Is there one basic idea from which all these follow in some sense?

2.

In the following I don’t think I get any kind of answer to this question. It’s not that simple. For example there is a distinction between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Latter will be anti-abortion but former probably won’t. By opposing anti-abortion the fiscal conservatives put themselves on the left-wing side. Similarly social conservatives might be in favour of government intervening in the economy but fiscal conservatives won’t. By supporting government intervention the social conservatives put themselves on the left-wing side.

If there were just one ‘underlying principle’ then this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

So the answer will probably be more like that there are a few ‘underlying principles’. Like maybe about four or five of them.

3. Equality.

The idea of equality seems to be the basic (but not the only) one in the distinction between LW and RW. But it is rarely precisely stated. LWP say things like “I’m in favour of equality” or “I think everyone should be equal” but what they mean exactly always needs to be clarified. Statements like those make no sense if taken literally and I'm surprised that such (on the face of it) rather silly sounding pronouncements have become so commonplace. For example does “everyone should be equal” mean that everybody should be the same height?

I think that a clearer expression of the point about equality might be something like the following. There is a process going on in the world the content of which is that things happen which lead to the outcome of material inequality (standard of living) between individuals and groups of people. If you believe we should interfere in that process with the aim of modifying the outcome so that it results in less material inequality. Then that means you believe in equality. The degree to which you think we should interfere determines whereabouts on the LW-RW continuum you are.

There's a big difference between trying to make people's outcomes more equal. And trying to eliminate the factors that cause people's outcomes to be determined by things other than their own efforts. With the latter you could still have lots of inequality.

The most extreme LW attitude would be equality of outcome. Which is to say that every individual should have the same material standard of living regardless of anything else. The problem with this is that it is extremely difficult (in the technical sense) to implement. You could identify traits in people that might cause their standard of living to be better than others. For example if I have a talent for making nice food. To make me equal with poor cooks who have to eat food of poorer quality my talents would need to be suppressed either by me or by some external agency.

Similarly the most extreme RW attitude would be that you shouldn't interfere at all with the natural way things happen to individuals. If I am weak and lazy (physically and mentally) then I will and should have a worse quality of life and will and should die sooner than everyone else. A weak and lazy person suffering and dying prematurely is not a bad thing. It should be celebrated as much as a strong and hardworking person thriving and living longer because both these incidents are manifestations of the process of life and nature as it is. That process with which we should not interfere. Even healthcare is an interference with this sacred principle. If you get ill you should face it and die and not interfere with the natural process. Because your illness is due to your weakness. (And you certainly shouldn't wish to not die at all: your death completes your life: do you want to live an incomplete life?) The problem with this RW position is that it relies on an assumption about what is a natural process.

Just to clarify these two extreme viewpoints as described are caricatures and not serious actual positions that anybody has ever held (I hope not anyway).

I get the feeling that most people don't want complete equality. They want the freedom to use their unequal talents to improving their own condition.

In many unequal societies it's not just that there is inequality between classes but also that the wealthy classes don't do any work. What if we had equality of condition but there were still some classes who did all the work and some classes who didn't. That would be odd.

4. Meritocracy.

There are plenty of more moderate positions on the issue of inequality. One simple way of moderating the extreme positions is simply to say that we should just reduce (not eliminate) the extent to which circumstances not in the control of individuals determine their outcome. A more sophisticated version of this would actually specify which sorts of circumstances we should allow to affect outcome and which ones we should not allow to do this. For example a standard version of meritocracy would say that it is OK for an individual's talent to determine their outcome but it is not OK for their birth situation to do so. So if you have rich parents or if you "know the right people" then that should not help you get along in life. Rather people should be able to access "the career open to talent". I think by 'talent' here they really mean talent got by 'hard work'. Because some talents (in the strict sense of the word) are innate aren't they? And so a part of 'birth'. The influence of which meritocracy opposes. Some people are 'naturals' at certain things. Whether it be mathematics or baseball.

Or even if they are not part of your 'birth' in the genetic sense, they are part of it due to your upbringing which is something not in your control. For example your talent may be being able to speak well. And this may have come from having parents who talked to you a lot as a young child. If you were someone whose parents (and other people) never talked to you at all then you would not have that talent. And it might be difficult for you to acquire it later.

So to really counteract the effects of 'birth' as per the idea of meritocracy I guess we need to remove children from their parents at birth and standardise their upbringing.

Rightwing people think that people are responsible for their own life outcome via their own efforts and they need to stop blaming others for their failures. But, at the same time, RW people also believe that capacities are innate. Like they believe certain "races" are better at stuff than other "races". There seems to be some kind of contradiction here. (I might have mentioned this elsewhere too.)

They say they believe in hard work getting you to better yourself. But, at the same time, they don't want to interfere in the 'natural inequality' which means people's position getting better through things other than hard work.

RWP insist that an individual's outcome is decided largely by themselves and their own efforts. They underplay the contribution of circumstances. Whereas LWP emphasise the latter. This shows in the differing views of criminality. LWP will tend towards saying that criminals are the product of their environment and so it is, in some sense, wrong to blame them as individuals. RWP are against equalising circumstances because they don't believe that an individual's circumstances contribute that much to an individual's outcome.

I don't think meritocracy is a leftwing idea. Certainly I have heard people conflating social mobility with equality. As if improved social mobility was a step towards equality. But the two are different things. But you could have a society where there was maximum social mobility by having a lottery for all the positions in it. But this could still be a society where there were massive inequalities between those positions.

Also: social mobility is linked with the idea of poor people "bettering themselves" and "getting out of poverty". But this seems selfish. It doesn't do anything about the level of inequality. It's the difference between a slave wanting to be free compared to them wanting to abolish the institution of slavery.

People complain about their poverty. What do they want? Some of them just want a fair chance. They know that others, despite being less talented, have got a better life due to unfair advantages. But others in poverty want something else, which is that everybody should get a good life. Thus the anti-poverty party is split.

It’s like there was a situation where a group of people are fighting and some have better weapons. Some of the people who aren’t happy with this fighting just want it to stop. But there are some other people aren’t happy with the fighting only because it’s not a fair fight. They are OK with the fight per se, they just want everyone to have the same weapons.

Some proponent of women’s rights might say that women are being oppressed in the sense that they are being prevented from exercising their abilities in their interest. The current situation (patriarchy) is that men control women. For example women aren’t allowed to decide who to mate with. So you often get situations where one man will mate with many females who themselves don’t mate with anybody else. A feminist might say: women are being prevented from using their power (their attractiveness I assume). If they did they might get a situation where one female mates with many men who themselves don’t mate with anybody else.

By the way the ‘free market’ doesn’t properly deliver meritocracy. Certainly it ensures progression according to talent for some people. But not all. The free market is based on competition for positions so you will get situations where there’s more than one person with enough talent to progress to a certain point. But out of those only one person will.

5. Fortune.

So, is this all about countering the effects of fortune in life in general? The people who most want that are the unfortunate ones. Also what is fortune? If I am clever and have natural talents that make me prosperous is that fortunate? Should we modify the effects of my talents and cleverness. Effects like my consequent wealth. The assumption here is that me possessing those talents was good fortune the way finding a lump of gold might be.

5a. Something for nothing.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch" is a right-wing idea. The idea that you shouldn't get something for nothing. And this makes sense because right-wing people believe in the natural order of things where it is indeed the case that if you don't make any effort you don't get anything. If you don't grow food and build a house you won't survive. But I think the point is slightly different. It's more that you shouldn't rely on the natural order giving you something for nothing. Because it does sometimes. If you are living somewhere where food is naturally abundant. Or you have natural talent at something. Or if you have generous parents. So, in that sense, it's not true that RW are against "something for nothing". They believe strongly in the right of inheritance, for example. And you don't get a more clearly "something for nothing" than that.

The RW anti-“something for nothing” is clearest in their opposition to welfare style handouts to unemployed people. But I'm always struck that they never promote the reasonable alternative which would, instead of handing out money to them, to just hand out work. The thought being that poverty (especially but not only that which is due to unemployment) is not the shortage of money but the shortage of employment.

5b.

People who are either wealthy or strong or talented or hardworking think to themselves: why should I suffer the disadvantages of having obligations to others who are either poorer or weaker or more stupid or more lazy than me? But at the same time the people who say this kind of thing are happy to enjoy the advantages of what they can get from yet other people who are richer or stronger or more talented or more hardworking than they are. For example the advantages of technological advances which they would never have been able to come up with on their own.

6. Poverty.

Maybe it's not about inequality but about poverty. In other words not about ‘relative poverty’ which is just another name for inequality. But about real absolute poverty. You might be a LW person who only believes in eliminating poverty but not inequality.

So this means inequality is only bad when the people who end up with a lower standard of living are in a state which means their existence is one that is inhumane. For example if they are dying of starvation in the street. So imagine there is a basic standard of living, ie one which is above the threshold of absolute poverty. And we ensure the everyone enjoys at least that. But otherwise there is an enormous amount of inequality.

Compare two alternatives. State-1 where the difference in standard of living between the standard of living of the highest and lowest is 20%. But where the lowest falls below the absolute poverty threshold. And State-2 where the difference between the highest and lowest is 200% but where the lowest are above the absolute poverty threshold. Which one would preferable?

Maybe there is some kind of conceptual problem with LW thinking. In the past (19th century) inequality was the same as poverty. Or rather: inequality inevitably led to poverty and advocating equality largely meant wanting to eradicate poverty. But now this is not necessarily the case. But LWP overlook this and continue their previous promotion of equality. But now this might mean making sure that people have bigger TV sets rather than that they have don't die at the age of 20 because of malnutrition.

If you think poverty is relative then you think that it’s never possible for everybody to be wealthy. Or for everybody to be poor.

Neither does the idea of "justice" mean much. So suppose Mary owns a business employing 100 people all doing pretty much the same sort of job. And she pays them all a £60,000 which is a lot of money. It puts them in the top 10% of all incomes in the country. (Let's say they are all lawyers or something like that.) But she pays Jack £58,000. When Jack asks why she says: no reason at all. She thinks he does his job as well as all the others. Now Jack maintains a very very comfortable lifestyle on the £58,000 he gets. Certainly the word "unjust" applies to what Mary is doing. But it seems an unimportant fact. If he got the extra £2,000 it would result in only a very marginal improvement in his quality of life. If the difference had been between £6,000 and £5,800 then it would have mattered more.

In other words, if the focus of the left-wing idea is on anti-poverty then you could be left-wing without believing in either equality or justice.

7. Capitalism.

To the extent that Capitalism tends to cause inequality then LWP don't like it. By the way I'm not sure what Capitalism is exactly. I think there are two main parts. These are (1) free markets in deciding the prices of things and (2) private ownership of the means of production. Both these cause inequality. The first does so because if somebody is in possession of a scarce resource they can get more money for it from people that want it than they would be able to if that resource wasn't so scarce. The second does because the owner of a factory that makes some products gets some of the money from the sale of those products just for owning the factory. I mean even though all the actual work is done by the workers at the factory.

If you think capitalism is just what 2 says. Then you could have plenty of inequality (due to 1) after capitalism has been done away with.

8. Sorts of inequality.

Maybe we need to make distinctions between different sorts of inequality. One would be (as mentioned earlier when talking about meritocracy) to distinguish inequality depending on it's cause. Imagine inequality caused only by the difference in effort between individuals. Example Mary works twice as long as Jack and so is paid twice as much. It seems wrong to treat this sort of inequality in the same way as inequality caused by, say, inheritance.

Another important distinction is between inequality where the wealth of the wealthy person depends on the poverty of the poor person. (A simple example of this would be theft.) And inequality where it doesn't. (For example, again, difference in effort applied.) This difference could be described as 'zero sum' inequality and 'non zero sum' inequality.

What if we only opposed inequality caused by certain situations and not others. So for example if Mary works twice as hard building her house (all other things being equal) as Jack then this will cause inequality between them. Mary will end up with a better standard of living (a nicer house) then Jack. We might say we don't want to oppose inequality caused by this sort of thing. On the other hand if Mary has a better standard of living because she owns the factory that Jack (and his colleagues) works in. I mean while doing no work herself. Then we might say that we're not going to allow that.

But then the issue isn't about inequality. I mean what if there was a situation where factory-owner Mary has the same income as all the workers in her factory while doing no work herself. Would that be OK? There would be no inequality in this case.

Suppose we had a policy where we would prevent chance (like who your parents were) from causing inequality. But not anything else. Then there could still be lots of inequality.

9. The Welfare State 1.

There are a few things associated with the concept of a Welfare State. One is that services such as health and education are paid for collectively via some kind of proportional (or progressive) taxation. Where this is done for the purposes of making things more equal without actually equalising earnings.

Example. Imagine we all need cars. But there are some rich people and some poor people. Say Jack earns $400 per month and Mary earns $100 per month. Then (all other things being equal) Jack will be able to get a better car than Mary. Jack will buy the $800 model and Mary will be stuck with the standard $200 model. So what we do is we say that that the price of a car is dependent on earnings. Let's say it's 3 times the amount of the monthly salary. So Mary pays $300 and Jack pays $1200 but they get the same car. If we did this with all purchasable items then it would be like Jack and Mary had equalised earnings. Jack earns four times as much as Mary but he always pays four times as much so he might as well be earning the same as Mary.

This sort of proportional taxation produces equality applied at the point of money-spending rather than money-earning. In other words people can earn varying amounts but this fact is cancelled out by the fact that once it comes to them spending that money the prices are greater for people who earn more. The outcome is the same as if you equalised earnings.

There is also another equality drive happening via pricing. For example a lot of postal and parcel services charge the same amount for delivery regardless of distance. I could send a parcel 20km or 200km and it will cost the same. And yet the same principle does not apply to train passengers!

By the way I'm no expert on the Soviet Union but I think that they managed to reintroduce inequality using a similar principle. So wages were pretty much equalised thus giving the air of equality. But then when it came to spending there were shops for Party members only where the prices were a lot lower than at normal shops. Lower spending prices for Party members amounts to the same as higher earning wages for Party members.

10. Taxation.

To get closer to a position of equality LW advocates proportional (if not progressive) taxation. (From now on I will use PT to refer to proportional and/or progressive taxation.) But that seems too undiscriminating. It takes no account of the reason for the difference in income levels. It treats them all the same. Is that 'fair'? (That's the first and last time I will be using that word. I've got away without using it so far but at this point it's unavoidable so I had no choice.) PT is the key tool in what is rather imprecisely described as the "redistribution of income/wealth". The RWP will say that often PT will be wrong as it will punish effort by making certain people pay more, i.e. those people who earn more by working longer.

PT is an intervention to reduce inequality. Could we not have a different intervention which would be more discriminatory? How about one that targets inequality caused only by particular reasons. But which ones would they be? Is PT trying to reduce the inequalities of earnings that are due to people being of different professions? Surgeons are on higher salaries than waiters. Is PT there to right this wrong? But two wrongs don't make a right do they? Also can we not interfere in the process that causes the inequality rather than deal with it after the event which is what PT does? PT deals with the excessive inequality (in earnings) that has happened instead of stopping it happening in the first place.

What if you had an arrangement where there was full employment and wage differentials were regulated somehow. Then you wouldn't need tax to be PT. It would not even need to be a proportion of your income. It could just be a fixed sum per head (like a subscription fee).

By the way is there any difference between means-tested welfare benefit payments and PT? The former consists of the government paying money to some people who don't have enough income. The latter consists of the government discounting the tax bill of some people who don't have enough income. Either way the government is paying them some money. The latter is less conspicuous and so not criticised as a 'government hand-out' by agencies such as the right-wing media who often draw our attention to the that sort of thing when it is in the form of welfare benefit payments. But the tax discount sort of hand-out is worse than the welfare benefit payment sort of hand-out because the latter comes without any conditions attached. Most means-tested welfare benefits come with a condition. For example out-of-work welfare benefits require the claimant to be actively seeking work. Or sickness welfare benefits require the claimant to be demonstrably not well enough to work. But the tax discount payment which constitutes PT come with no such conditions attached. Even though, in terms of amount the government pays, that amount might be greater than the amount the government pays to an out-of-work claimant. ... This point is complicated by the fact that the tax discount can become negative. (At which point the term Tax Credit is then more appropriate.) In other words the government gives a discount to someone's tax bill which is more than their tax bill. So it actively pays them some money. But does not describe this as welfare benefit payment. Even though that's what it is. Confusing.

The main objectionable thing about progressive taxation (from a left point of view) is that it does not address the causes of inequality but only the outcomes.

11. The Welfare State 2.

Another part of the Welfare State is comprehensive insurance against loss of income due to unemployment or sickness. This is the 'safety net'. A consistent RW person would oppose all forms of insurance. Stated simply the argument is that a safety net of any sort will inevitably make you more careless. (If you are walking on a tightrope even if it was only about 6 metres above the ground you will be more careful if there is no safety net.) Is that what we want? To promote carelessness?

A thorough-going LW person would insist that loss of income insurance should pay out at the same salary the insured person had at the point at which they lost their income.

I've always thought there was a source of confusion in the fact that insurance in itself has a pro-equality left-wing principle feel to it. Everybody pays the same premiums and those who need the help most get it. (The Welfare State sort of descriptions apply: the insurers pay the cost of dealing with the incident that you're insured against and so it is "free at the point of use" and does not depend on your "ability to pay".) I guess the real LW element is the fact that the amount of premiums you pay depends on your earnings. This is implemented via taxation.

In the sense that the Welfare State is an insurance against unemployment I would have thought it would be very useful to have in a capitalist system. Because this requires people to do risky things like set up a business not knowing in advance if it will succeed. If they had the reassurance that failure would not result in them starving to death then that would encourage them to take the risk.

12. Fiscal and social conservatism.

These two often go together although there is no affinity between them. Many members of the Republican Party in the US strongly oppose abortion, they 'tut' at divorce, frown on unmarried couples and think homosexuality should be outlawed. At the same time they are in favour of minimal governmental regulation of the economy. But you could support the latter and be quite happy with abortions and gay rights. Imagine you were a homosexual in America and you passionately believed in small minimal government who would you vote for? Would you swallow your (gay) pride and vote Republican?

Other things associated with social conservatism are capital punishment, corporal punishment, anti-technology, monarchy, anti-feminism.

The terminology gets confusing here. I was going to say: you might be a social conservative and be the opposite of a fiscal conservative. But what is the opposite of a fiscal conservative? Would it be 'fiscal liberal'? Where that would be someone who is in favour of state regulation or control of the economy. But how can a liberal be someone who believes in state control?

13. Nature.

There are hippy sorts of people who want to live in harmony with nature. But Nature is notorious for letting the weak and lazy die. In fact that's how it works. That's a large part of the process of evolution by natural selection. Face it: Nature doesn't care about you! So there is an affinity between conservationists and conservatives in this sense maybe.

Green conservationists say things like "nature wastes nothing". They point to the harmony of usage of matter, scavengers eat garbage and bones decompose to replenish the earth. But actually Nature wastes a great deal. Evolution selects a few and throws the rest away like it's eating the fruit and throwing away the peel.

14. State power.

People say that RW is authoritarian and LW is more liberal. But Soviet communism was authoritarian. On the basis of this fact people will then say that these two doctrines have some kind of (moral) equivalence. But that is not correct because they are being authoritarian about completely different things. A RW conservative authoritarian would be strict about people, for example, not doing homosexual doings or whatever. (They want to stamp out that kind of thing!) A LW authoritarian would be strict about capitalists not exploiting workers. Hitler's regime had millions killed and so did Stalin's.

Slight digression here: these two might well both be authoritarian and harsh but at the very least is there not this difference that Stalin's aim was 'nicer' than Hitler's. (Is that a controversial thing to say?) Stalin's aim was a just and equal society (admittedly as he saw it). Hitler's was some kind of German dominated empire with the Eastern Europeans as their slaves and all Jews thoroughly exterminated. There's nothing nice about that no matter how you look at it. The left wing extreme is aggressive righteousness which is not the same as right wing aggressiveness. Though it can be just as destructive.

In fact there is a kind of asymmetry about the LW RW distinction. (And this is more of a general point not just one about State Power.) It's as if the things that make LW what it is aren't just simply the opposite of what makes RW what it is. So if LW is about wanting us to care about each other, RW isn't saying no we shouldn't care about each other.

But anyway, the state power issue is largely not relevant to the LW-RW issue. Any system that has some kind of organisation will require state power over people. (Even if it's something as basic as which side of the road you should drive on.) And people shouldn't object to it surely! They should say like Louis the nth: "the State, that's me that is". You might not agree with it all the time but if you're living with other people you often have to follow rules you're not entirely happy with. Being able to handle that is called maturity. Accepting that someone might know better than you about how to do things. Even personal things like how to bring up your children.

RW supports the principle of no governmental interference in free market principles. But you might need a government to prevent people getting together to subvert the free market principles (monopolies, cartels etc). So you still need state power!

The LW idea is that we give power to a government to regulate people to stop them abusing their powers in a free market (eg by exploiting workers). But then do we need some other people power to regulate the government to stop them abusing that power we've just given them. And then we need to regulate these other people. And so on.

15. Anarchists.

From what I understand about Anarchists (which isn't much), they are against all forms of authority. Especially governmental or state authority. So I instantly put them in the small government RW group. But many of them claim to be LW. Is this because they think that all authority has the consequence of inequality, ie where the person with the power uses it to put themselves in a better material condition than the person over whom they have power? But would it not be possible to have a population where there was a distinct class of rulers. But they weren't any wealthier than anybody else?

Anyway I think it's not just the consequent inequality that Anarchists disapprove of. The actual state of being in someone else's power is bad for you as a human being they will say. Because you are submitting to some form of slavery no matter how mild a form of slavery it might be. (Maybe they also mean that having power over somebody else is as bad for you as someone else having power over you. To be exploited or to exploit: both should be avoided!) So, I would have thought that to be consistent Anarchism would eliminate all forms of authority of anybody over anybody else. This would be an extreme individualism. Which would mean a prohibition on marriage and all forms of economic exchange and cooperation. Cooperation is something like: we both need bread and wine so you make the bread and I'll make the wine. The cooperation happens when we exchange. But how do we decide what the terms of exchange are going to be? How do I know that the terms are not exploiting me? It might take you 10 minutes to make your bread and it might take me hours to make my wine. That's why an Anarchist might oppose cooperation. Collaborative and cooperative activity makes exploitation possible. Two people cooperating with each other have power over each other.

Being an employee is a form of slavery. People like being employees because it gives them some security (admittedly not very much in most cases). But they lose their freedom to work for whoever they want and by giving this up they are enslaving themselves. When you are an employee you are a slave in the sense that you have sold your skills to your employer for them to use and benefit from as they wish. In exchange for this they just pay you for the time you spend being thus used. (This is partial slavery where full slavery would be you selling your whole self (ie not just your skills) to your employer to use as they wish.) To remain free you should have kept your skills and used them to benefit yourself.

Cooperation also involves giving up freedom in the sense that I have to promise someone I will do something in exchange for them doing something for me. So I say to you I will make you a chair by Friday. Once that is done I have bound myself to do what I have said I would do. Which is a restriction on the freedom I would otherwise have had to do whatever I want between now and Friday.

The parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's 'Brothers Karamazov' is also about freedom vs security. But that was more about moral and psychological freedom vs security.

16. Human nature.

LW and RW have different conceptions of human nature. Is the LW view that people are naturally good? Certainly RWP have a lower opinion of people. On the other hand maybe LWP do too as they think we all need to be regulated via the so-called Nanny State. LW people say they believe in the innate goodness of people but if that were so then why is the LW position always include regulating and controlling people (capitalists) to stop them exploiting each other!

Really it should be the RWP who believe in regulation. But they don't. Their position seems to be that people are naturally not nice and we shouldn't try to alter that too much. The RW position is that people are inherently selfish? But what does that mean? They only care about themselves? (But RW people are happy to pay insurance premiums which is kind of helping other people. So not entirely selfish then?)

If you set up a system based on the assumption that people will behave selfishly then they will do that even if they weren't selfish before that. They would be fools not to!

A RW political party is often seen as The Nasty Party and rightly so. They are pessimistic about human nature. They think people are naturally selfish and uncooperative. (This is what Margaret Thatcher meant when she said "there's no such thing as society".) They are so keen to emphasise this fact it's almost as if they are condoning that sort of behaviour which gives rise to their pessimistic view. But they would say they are just facing facts. That's the way the world is. Making people endure it is good for them. It's tough love. The fact that they (the RWP) have to endure abuse (by being called the Nasty Party and suchlike) while performing this valuable service for their fellow man only adds to the value of their service.

The fact that phrase "caring capitalism" exists means that capitalism (unqualified) is not caring. There’s no such phrase as “caring socialism”. (Rather you would have “uncaring socialism”!) This means that it's an accepted part of the meaning of capitalism that it is not caring. But what is it about capitalism that is not caring?

And do we want caring anyway? We don't want caring we want justice! LW people talk about it as if it was more moral in the sense of people being nice to each other. But isn't it just about fairness? If someone treats people fairly then they are not being good. Anymore than if they refrain from murdering and robbing people.

RWP tend to believe that an individual's character is determined by hereditary (genes). While LWP think that we are more malleable than that. Oddly RWP believe in punishing people for who they are and LWP don't. It should have been the other way around. Also RWP are big on people taking responsibility for their lives. Which, again, contradicts the idea of genetic determinism. But this thought about responsibility is also inconsistent with other parts of RW beliefs. Because RWP often defend the social order. But this includes lots of instances of people not having to take responsibility for their lives: for example inheriting wealth.

So LW believe that we are more determined by nurture not nature. Which would suggest that they believe in personal responsibility more than RW who believe that we are more determined by nature (genetics) than nurture. If your situation is due to nurture not nature then you are more likely to be able to do something about it. If you are feeble because of your genes that’s hard to do anything about, but if it’s just because you weren’t looked after well as a child you can reverse that by looking after yourself now. - Of course it is true that some examples of bad nurture are more difficult to remedy than some examples of bad nature. If you are starved of some psychological need at an early age this might result in effects that are more ingrained than if your genes make you less able to run fast than others.

16a. Nasty

Often it gets said the extreme left-wing is as bad as extreme right-wing. But surely, all other things being equal, RW extremism is worse. Because, right-wing positions, by the admission of their own adherents, don't believe in aiming to make people behave nicely to each other. By which I mean justly and fairly. (They say: "life's not fair".) But LW positions, no matter how horrible, do have this at their heart. Stalin was responsible for bad things but his aim was a just and fair society wasn't it? (Actually I should read up about this because I don't know exactly what his deal was exactly.) Whereas Herr Hitler was responsible for bad things but his aim was also bad. He was aiming at a society which consisted of the brutal subjugation of the "lower races".

17. War.

LWP tend to oppose war and be pacifist in tendency. (Could you have a right wing pacifist?) But there is no reason for this. Surely if you are LW you should support any war that deposes fascistic (RW) dictators? Christopher Hitchens supported the Iraq war. Napoleon exported the (radical) revolution through war.

In general neither LW or RW implies anything about the use of force. The issue is neutral surely. If there was a situation where there was an option of the use of force that would result in a LW system in some country then a LW should choose that option.

The only viewpoint that might imply a thorough-going anti-war attitude is fiscal conservatism. Free market capitalists believe that the market and supply and demand should be the only economic relation between people. You should never use force. Historically many wars have been over trade. But the RW would say that's wrong: if your trade is poor then you shouldn't use violence to remedy that. Just reduce your prices and be more efficient in your production.

18. Freedom and justice.

It's often said that LW believes in social justice. And sometimes I hear LW people say: "I can't vote right wing because I've got a social conscience". So does this mean that RW believe in social injustice? And that they've got no social conscience? I'm sure RW people won't accept that: they'll admit that they believe in a less equal outcome but they'll say that that's still a just outcome nevertheless. Although they realise that they have a problem here. (Witness Theresa May acknowledging that the Conservative Party are known as 'The Nasty Party').

It's often said that RW believe in freedom but LW doesn't. But I'm sure LW people won't accept that: they'll say that they believe in less freedom but that, just like RW, they believe in freedom within moral limits (eg RW don't believe in the freedom to steal or to commit violence to further your ends) it's just that what they think the moral limits are is different to what the RW people think the moral limits are.

Do we want unlimited economic freedom or should we restrict that for the sake of preventing poverty and/or inequality? That’s a basic LW vs RW question question. But the freedom issue is still about standard of living the way that the equality issue is. People want freedom so they have got the freedom to become wealthy. Or to stop being poor.

I suppose that for everyday life (the bottom line) the actual difference between left and right wing for ordinary people is about how they can earn money. What restrictions are there on their freedom to do this.

18a. Caring and justice.

There's the idea that LW belief is more humane and caring than RW. But I think LW is more about economic justice. And that's not the same as caring.

You can have caring without justice. For example parents will provide more for their children than for others.

You can have justice without caring. It might make Jack very happy to have more cake than everyone else but you can't give it to him because that would be unfair.

19. Cooperation and competition.

Any advanced material civilisation requires a division of labour. I can't produce all the things I need/want to live my life. So I cooperate with others. I do my bit and they do theirs. The only issue then I guess is how do we decide who does what.

The LW position favours cooperation amongst people. Whereas the RW likes competition. I'm not sure what this means exactly though. Is it something like the following. Say we all need cars. So we can either get together and make cars. Or we could have two separate car making operations competing with each other and the people who want the cars can choose which one they get their car from.

But cooperation or competition in this sense has got nothing to do with the issue of equality has it? You could have an economic system based on cooperation and an extensive division of labour in which there is as much inequality as in any other sort of system. And you could have a system whereby people compete to decide who does certain tasks. Where the ones best at doing it get to do it. But where there is still equality.

In fact when RW says competition surely they are talking about the sort of competition you get in a population where the setup is simple enough not to require very much cooperation. So imagine a place where everyone does everything for themselves. The output that results from their input (talents and effort) will depend only on their input. For RW the problem with cooperation is that it interferes with this straight-forward relation between input and output. If there were no division of labour and all the output that I needed was the result of my input only then the extent of the output would depend only on the extent of my input. Once you have cooperation then I am relying on other people and the extent of the output will also depend on the extent of their input. So competition in a population otherwise based on cooperation and a division of labour is something completely different from competition in a population that had very little division of labour. Maybe the distinction is that in a cooperative system competition results in inequality that is 'zero sum', see above.

There's something odd about competition in an otherwise cooperative system. It's like people are fighting each other for the chance to be helpful. For example competing with other people to be a doctor.

The other thing to note here is that the division of labour causes inequality directly because it allows for some people to specialise in menial tasks.

In capitalism a lot of time and effort is wasted with people being competitive which is just fighting about who gets to do what things. It would be more efficient if you could just use that time and effort to do things instead. And instead of competition about who does what just sit down and agree. This latter is the hard bit! They won't agree, everyone wants the "good jobs".

RW people want the freedom to compete with others always. So they absolutely don't like any rules which try to say what constitutes a fair transaction. To them a fair transaction is whatever transaction they can obtain, by any means necessary. They want the freedom to make these sorts of transactions.

In general RW people seem to have missed something here. In the old days, when there wasn’t enough stuff to go round, people had to fight over what there was. But now, what with advancements and machines, there is enough for everyone. But the RW people still want to fight over it. It’s like they’re attached to an old way of doing things which doesn’t make sense anymore.

20. Terminology (Politics).

If I ask someone what their political viewpoint is they might reply that they are a socialist. And I would angrily point at them and say: "no! you are wrong wrong wrong!". Because the word 'socialism' is not the name of a political system, it's the name of an economic one. Words that refer to political viewpoints are things like: 'democrat', 'aristocrat', 'monarchist'. That kind of thing.

21. Eugenics.

A good way to counteract the natural inequality of human existence is to interfere with the variation as it appears in the reproduction process. So LWP might be interested in schemes to biologically engineer all people to be equal.

22. Land.

LWP believe things like that "the land doesn't belong to any group of people". They can't put a fence round it and say "this is mine". The same applies to all natural resources. So LWP should arrange a military invasion of Saudi Arabia to stop them monopolising all that lovely delicious oil those people over there have found themselves accidentally sat upon.

23. Organisation.

If you are organised then you are more efficient in doing whatever you are doing. This applies on an individual personal level and on a larger scale too. (For example it is the reason why train tickets purchased in advance are cheaper.) The RW position doesn't seem to like organisation. The free market system is essentially a disorganised one and so less efficient than an organised economy such as the Soviet style Command Economy. I might be making widgets one day but when demand falls I'm out of a job. The Command Economy has everything planned out so this can't happen. It will have planned for the eventuality of a fall in demand and have something else lined up for me to do.

And yet it is commonly accepted amongst economists that free-market systems are better at delivering prosperity than Command Economies. Certainly here in the UK where the left-wing Labour party are thought of as always screwing up the economy whenever they get in power. And about the USSR everyone says that it failed because it was inefficient, it didn't deliver the goods to the people.

But the free-market system is one that consists of deliberate lack of management of the economy! So how is that right-wing parties claim a reputation for "sound management" of the economy? And for being better at running the economy efficiently. By "running the economy efficiently" I guess they mean: no massive unemployment, inflation, debt.

I can't see any association between "sound management" and any typical characteristic of right-wing policy, for example the one which says that we shouldn't place too many restrictions on people getting rich. Meaning that we should have low taxation. Why is this latter a part of "sound management". What is the (purported) association between low taxation and an efficient and prosperous economy.

I often hear it said that business and the markets like stability. So why don’t they just have a planned economy? That’s the obvious solution but they want this disorganised free market thing instead! Would you ever get a company that had employees for whom it could not guarantee employment? But paid them anyway?

Right-wing people are often keen on order (as in "law and order") and yet they support free markets which is the epitome of disorder. Nobody knows from one day to the next whether they will sell what they make and how much they will get for it. Or if they might get made redundant.

So LW systems really ought to oppose things like unrestricted immigration and similar freedom of movement as this is not planned. But note that this issue of organisation isn't just about inequality because there could be plenty of inequality in a Command Economy. The Command Economy is just about organisation. It could still be capitalistic.

The RW says that the Command Economy gives too much power to a small group of people. If we want everything to be organised then first we are going to have to decide collectively what the terms of the organisation are going to be. A mammoth and unwieldy task. Then second, we are going to need to put some people in charge of that organising. I.e. give them the power to do that. But Power corrupts etc.

RW people say the Command Economy is inefficient because it isn’t as good as the free market at dealing with problem of knowledge. Which is that no organisation can know what needs producing and when. It’s better to leave this to the free market, to the decisions of lots of individuals buying and selling things. But what about all the large corporations which were, and still are, the essence of capitalism. They organise their production inside their large businesses. Some of which are the size of all of the economies of small countries. Also the problem of knowledge isn’t as difficult as it used to be, what with the massive increase in computer power that is available.

I constantly find myself thinking why aren't things more organised! And the answer I guess is that there must be some people in whose interest it is that things be not organised. This is because if things were organised this would involve allocating economic activity to whoever. And it would be difficult to get rich then. Although in an organised economic system you could include the ability for people to get rich if that's what they wanted.

The book 'People Of The Abyss' (by Jack London) is an utterly harrowing description of grinding poverty in London (yes! in London the wealthiest country in the universe) about the year 1902. (Yes, harrowing poverty in the richest country in the world.) I do not advise you to read it because it is too depressing. But read the final chapter, which is chapter 27. The author's settled conclusion is that the basic cause of the problem of poverty is mismanagement!

There's a bit in Robert Tressell's novel 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' where Frank Owen's organised socialism is disparaged by his colleagues. They say: if you want to be organised just leave us alone and go away and be organised on your own somewhere. And he responds: I can't be organised on my own! That doesn't make sense.

What is the relation between the LW idea of an organised economy and the LW idea of less inequality? Is there any? Lack of organisation means a large minority of people don't get the opportunities to be useful. The majority aren't bothered by this even though having things more organised would not affect their wealth. And might actually make them wealthier.

Another thought about freedom. (And this point might well be the main point of this whole essay!) RW people talk about wanting freedom, particularly economic freedom. But isn't this just plain naive? They think they are living in some rudimentary pre-industrial society but they are actually living in a very complex structured economy where people are utterly dependent on each other. In such a system freedom is, of necessity, seriously limited. If they don't like that they should just go and live in a hut in the woods.

Right wing people oppose an organised command economy. I'm not sure exactly why. One reason will probably be that (as stated above) it gives undue power to a few people. But this will depend on the details of the organisation - you could design it so that this problem is dealt with. A second reason is that if the economy is co-ordinated then this removes the opportunity of people (entrepreneurs) to exploit demand to their advantage. I can't get rich making widgets when there is an increased demand for them if the government’s organised economy has already lined up an increase of production. But I'm not sure this follows. I think that, even in a command economy suppliers can get rich supplying things just maybe not as much as they could in a free market economy. I need to think more about this point. Maybe it's because RW people want every outcome to be decided by a competition. For example who is going to build this wall here? We will have different people offering their services and then we will choose one out of all these. But then this requires there to always be more people able to do the job than we need to do that job. Which is inefficient. On the other hand this doesn't directly go against the idea of organisation. You could have organisation which incorporates this somehow? But I think RW people want something more than that anyway. It's something rather more nebulous. Like they want everything to be a fight all the time with a winner and a loser. I get the impression that they really like winning in a fight. They want to be top dog. So they need a setup to be based on fighting.

When RW complain about the Command Economy aspect of socialism. Namely that it gives arbitrary undue power to a few people. About which I think: but if you are subject to the workings of the free market then this is also something that limits your freedom. It gives arbitrary power to lots of people who decide about buying from and selling to you. This is a tyranny too? You might rather have the arbitrary power concentrated in the hands of few known people so that it would be easier to influence them somehow. For example via elections.

Generally RW people don't like organisation because it states rules for behaviour, usually according to ideas of fairness. But what if it is to your disadvantage? For example queueing. Why should I queue when I can force my way to the front? In fact maybe queuing is a perfect microcosmic illustration of exactly what the difference between right and left wing is. Imagine there was somewhere where there was no queueing. And someone say: “We should have queuing instead of people just turning up and there being pushing and shoving. It would mean less stress for everyone and make for a more pleasant experience of life in general.” And the opponents of queuing would say: “what? why this is just letting the weak dominate the strong by trickery, letting the weaker position appear the stronger. That way lies the degeneration of society.”

(This paragraph mentions queues again but with an entirely different significance.) Long queues for products and services are seen as typical in a command planned economy. For example in 20th century communist societies. Even now, in the UK, where there is an non-free market health service you get queues in the sense that when you need a particular healthcare service you first get put on a waiting list where you can wait for months. But there is also private healthcare where you pay directly. And here there are no waiting lists, you can get seen straight away. The thing I don’t understand is why this should be the case. I would have thought it was the opposite, that a planned economic service would be more efficient.

In an organised system, if you are being mistreated, you can (at least in principle) go and see "the person in charge". In a system without organisation, like a free market system, there is no "person in charge"!

24. Free markets.

Sometimes there is a story on the News about the fact that employers want to have more freedom with hiring and firing people. Maybe they should have that freedom. I mean what if an employer finds out that Mary is somebody who is looking for a job doing X and that she can do the job better than their current employee Jack. Should they be allowed to instantly fire Jack and hire Mary instead? That seems wrong. Maybe RW people would see that as an unjust restriction on the freedom of the employer that they can't do that. All they are doing is denying Jack employment which is what they would have done if Mary had applied at the same time as Jack.

On the other hand it would be unfair to Jack if they could just fire him like that. After all he might have been working for them for years. Being fired will lumber him with the hassle of having to find a new job which would cause considerable disruption to his life. To fire him like that seems like an all-round nasty thing to do.

What if there were a system where there was no such thing as employers and employees. Instead people worked for other people as 'self-employed' so they did work for someone and then submitted an invoice to be paid. In other words all workers would be 'freelance'. That way they would never be hired or fired as such. If someone did not want them to do any further work they would just simply not ask them again. I think workers prefer more certainty than this scenario would provide. Although in this scenario what they lose in certainty they gain in freedom. But they don't lose just certainty. They also lose the feeling that you can rely on people. If Mary could just fire Jack at any time then them two can't be friends really can they?

But this sort of fluidity in economic relations is definitely the trend here where I am. Consider things like 'zero hours contracts' instead of a proper employer-employee relationship. And 'licence to occupy' instead of a proper landlord-tenant relationship.

The RW position is that nothing should interfere with the free market. That's why they don't like the minimum wage. If it was up to them there would be a perfect free market in labour. At the moment there is no such thing as shown by, for example, the fact that when a position is advertised I can't say to my prospective employer that I will do it for less than they are offering to pay.

The very idea of proportional and progressive taxation is a gross interference in the free market! But there are other similar interferences. For example the cost of a postage stamp is the same regardless of how far your mail is going. Why isn't it like a train ticket where you pay more if you are going further?

25. Choice and waste.

RWP think freedom of choice is important. But all choice implies waste. If I have the choice between two things and I choose one of them then the other one just gets destroyed yes? (Or have I misunderstood how this works in practice?) This fact becomes even more horrifying when the choice is between two people. I want a widget maker and I insist on a choice. So Jack and Mary both learn the fine art of widget making and present themselves to me. And I choose Mary. But that means Jack wasted all that time he spent learning how to be a widget maker!

26. Advertising and other interferences.

To be perfectly consistent RW should oppose advertising because it interferes with the free operation of supply and demand in the market. Jack might make better widgets than Mary but because Mary spends more money on advertising her sales are better. This means that advertising has prevented free market processes from doing what they would otherwise have efficiently done: ie to deliver the best product to the customer and to reward the producer of the best product.

Also: imagine Jack makes better widgets than Mary and he can make them cheaper as well. If someone comes to Mary to buy a widget and they don't know about Jack then she should tell them. As a firm believer in the principles of the free market she would be being inconsistent if she failed to do so.

27. Immigration, racism, sexism.

A basic principle of the free market is free movement of labour. Therefore a consistent RW position would be against any sort of border control. Also, being thoroughly meritocratic, the RW position would outlaw all forms of discrimination (racial or otherwise) in employment because this prevents the full exploitation of all the resources available. If an economy fails to employ talented people simply because they are the wrong colour or gender then that economy will suffer as a consequence. (See JS Mill's book On The Subjection of Women.)

The only time you could restrict free movement of labour is if you were LW and you thought this free movement interfered with your organised Command Economy (see previous on Organisation). Or if you thought that immigration was resulting in people being exploited (cheap labour).

28. Trade Unions.

If you are RW then you oppose Trade Unions because they interfere with free markets. If you are LW then you think that a LW government will ensure workers get what they are due. So either way it seems TUs are redundant.

It always surprises me that RW governments allow Trade Unions. They are giving workers the right to do illegal things (like not show up for work) if they (the workers) are not happy with something, eg wages. That must mean that really the government think the workers are right!

29. Consumers (buyers) and producers (sellers).

If I buy something from the supermarket Sainsburys then at that point I am the employer and they are the employee. I am employing Sainsburys to get me a loaf of bread.

What if the rule was that wages were unregulated and that employers could pay employees whatever they wanted. This wouldn't matter because at some stage in the process my employer is my employee, ie at the point when I buy from them whatever they are making. So say Mary employs Jack (as an employee) to make her a table. Later Jack (as a customer) might want to buy the table from Mary. If Mary has paid Jack low wages for making the table then Jack can retaliate by paying her a low price. If he insisted on high wages from Mary and at the same time insisted on a cheap price for buying he would be being inconsistent.

In general a consumer insisting on the cheapest price is the same as an employer insisting on the lowest wage. (After all a wage is just the price of labour.)

30. Beautiful places.

What if there were a system where everybody received the same wage. Or the variation was minor, say 10% difference between highest and lowest. Or there was some other arrangement whereby everyone in a population had more or less the same material standard of living. I mean not under duress but with that population being agreeable to the setup. Not submitting to it under protest in any way. That would be a more pleasant place to live. More beautiful.

RWP would say that this would make everybody the same and would quash individuality. On the contrary surely equality would would promote individuality because so many people would not have to spend so much of their time toiling for subsistence wages. They would have more time to express their individuality. (This argument from Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'.)

Also if you equalise people's standard of living this would mean there would be less boundaries between people. At the moment a very rich person can't make friends with a really poor person even though they might want to. Like Holden Caulfield said: "it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs".

31. Motivation.

The motivation of RWP for their opinions is fairly clear. They don't want anything to get in the way of them getting on and becoming rich and suchlike. The motivation of LWP is less clear. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that they are doing it out of the love of justice and their fellow man because (as I think David Hume said) there is no such thing. I find myself suspecting their motivation to be some kind of showing off about how good they are. A kind of virtue vanity. Love of righteousness. They feel good about being so magnanimous.

The motivation commonly ascribed to LWP is envy.

32. The Working Classes.

Traditionally left-wing parties have been the parties of (and for) the lowest classes. And yet there's plenty of reason for the lowest classes to be very right-wing in their opinions. To the extent that right-wing policies are about the individuals being free to exploit the strength and skills to their advantage. Then that is something that a a strong, skilled person who found themselves born into a lower class family would want.

In fact right-wing ideas should be more popular amongst people born into the lower classes. If you are born into a wealthy family then it doesn't matter if talent isn't rewarded because you've inherited a comfortable life regardless.

33. Taps.

In the UK water taps are labelled red for hot and blue for cold. The red is on the left and the blue is on the right. Red is also used to denote leftwing and blue for rightwing.

34. Law and order.

RW are the party of law and order.

And yet (following on from 'Competition and Co-operation' see above) they like the idea of unfettered competition. But that is, essentially, a conflict situation. So they are encouraging conflict. Which is a form of disorder.

And they like 'unfettered'. They don't like lots of rules regulating how people (especially in business) must relate to each other. Say like rent control or health and safety (duty of care) laws. But that's all the opposite of order.

35. Kitsch.

I seem to recall Milan Kundera (in his novel 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being') saying something like that every society or political view has its 'kitsch'. This is a kind of naive, sentimental view of what humanity is about and where it is going. LW viewpoints seem particularly susceptible to this. They are heavily optimistic and say that universal peace (and that sort of thing) is achievable. The kitsch of the LW is the Grand March: "The Grand March is the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness". But, says Kundera, this kitsch involves a 'denial of shit'.

RW views can have similar kitsch in their content. But at root they are more realistic (as they would say). RW views are less optimistic. For them there is no peace to be attained. Conflict and struggle is inherent in life. Not in the sense that we don't have the practical know-how of how to get rid of struggle but more that it is the essence of existence. Conflict ends only when life does. Isn't this what Karl Marx says in 98% of his work? This 98% being just a detailed description of how the struggle plays out in history. The remaining 2% of what he wrote (ie about how lovely Socialism etc is going to be) is the 'denial of shit' and it is also the source of that peculiar secular soteriological eschatology which so many people seem fond of.

To the genuine authentic RW person the life that you struggle with is like the Terminator: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

36. Climate change.

Right-wing people are more likely to deny there is any human-caused climate change.

37. Community.

Right-wing people claim to be pro-community (which is a good thing) where people care about each other. The opposite of which is individualism. But they believe in the free market (and capitalism) which is extremely hostile to the idea of community. In a free market you are in a constant state of hostile competition with everyone else in your community. Competition regarding the price they buy to and sell from you.

38. Patriotism.

RWP claim to be more patriotic but free market capitalism is about the individual pursuing their own happiness. A left-wing system which is about you having obligations to a group of people, where that group is a country, sounds like it would be more conducive to patriotism.

If you buy cheaper foreign products that's RW. If you are happy to buy the slightly more expensive nationally produced stuff that's LW.

39. Conclusion point 1.

So maybe the essence of the distinction is something about freedom. The basic right wing idea is about a situation where, say, Jack relies on Mary for something (say some food) and so he agrees to do something for her in exchange for her giving him food. The RW point here is that he should not enter into this obligation. This is him giving up his freedom. Instead the deal should be the bare minimum that is the free market. He buys food from Mary but he hasn't entered into any agreement to do so. So he retains his freedom and could tomorrow decide not to. In general relying on others is subjecting yourself to tyranny.

40. Conclusion point 2.

Both sides are wrong. Left-wing people care about equality. Right-wing people care about freedom. Both are wrong. People are not equal, some are more beautiful or more clever. And they don’t like being forced to be equal when they don’t want that. Also people aren’t free, we are subject to the constraints of many things including geography, biology etc. Why object to some further relatively minor constraints from other people. Like being forced to pay some taxes.

[January 2014]

[Last amended October 2020]