There's no such thing as left and right anymore...

[yield]

It's not "for whatever reasons," it's because the terms no longer apply to the real situation.

If they did, someone would be able to define them in a way that would make sense of today's politics.

But nobody can--not just here, anywhere. Meanwhile, there is a large and growing number of political phenomena which do not clearly fit into either category.

I think the question might be looked at another way: what is to be gained by retaining those terms?

The left represents equality, inclusiveness, freedom, justice and morality

The right represent inequality, exclusivity, control, elitism and immorality

 

[Dr_Herbz]

In light of Labour's shift to a more right-wing stance than Maggie would have ever been allowed to get away with, I don't think we should look at it as Left and Right any more... Port and Starboard would be more appropriate.

 

[phildwyer]

i wish hed just call capitalism capitalism, and shut up about usury and all the rest .

"Usury" means something different from "capitalism" though.

As it was used until the C18th, the term "usury" includes psychological and social phenomena as well as economic phenomena.

That makes it more clearly applicable to the C21st, when the "economy" has ceased to be an identifiably separate sphere of experience.

 

[phildwyer]

So thats why I get the heebie jeebies when i hear this sort of no left or right argument advanced . It gets worse when I hear this usury and international finance stuff said alongside it . Honestly Phil, I find it a bit unsettling .

That's understandable, but this is too important to be left to Fascists.

We can argue about the degree of the change, but there's no doubt that capitalism is moving from being based around production to being based around exchange, as it was in the ancient and medieval eras--this is the "financialization" of the economy.

There's no point in ignoring that just because Fascists have noticed it too. On the contrary.

 

[phildwyer]

like i said this what tends to happen when you suffer catastrophic defeat .

But you also need to ask why you've suffered such a defeat.

I think anticapitalism's commitment to Left/Right politics goes a long way to explaining its defeat.

 

[phildwyer]

Years ago I picked up a dvd containing the original nazi propaganda , called Germany Awake. It pretty much advanced aspects of this argument too. It had one sequence were a communist worker giving the clenched fist salute morphed into a scumbag giving the nazi salute, the argument being his ideological position was simply askew, and his anti capitalist desire for change and revolution not in any manner incompatible with nazism . Hence neither left nor right being a traditional nazi trope . Indeed a mechanism for sucking in the working class .

Everyone is basically offering some variation of this argument. "The Fascists said it, so it must be wrong." That's illogical (and insulting, but we'll leave that aside for now), and takes no account of the changes that have taken place over the last 70 years.

I suppose you could argue that the "Right" have deliberately engineered a situation where Left/Right dichotomy no longer applies, through the deliberate destruction of class-based politics and production-based industry. I'd be more sympathetic to that case. But it wouldn't change the current facts on the ground, which simply do not offer an objective situation in which the Left/Right metaphor can be usefully applied.

 

[phildwyer]

I think the "Left's" involvement in identity politics has caused all sorts of problems in this regard. We can see it all over these boards, and all over every similar discussion group or political movement: everyone furiously scrutinizing each other's words for some verbal slip-up that might reveal them as "really" on the "right" because of some secret or unconscious prejudice or other. And pretty soon we're in a situation where "Left-wing" just means "tolerant" or "nice" or "decent" (as people here tend to put it). The term loses all significance.

like i said this what tends to happen when you suffer catastrophic defeat . The nazis did something similar when their defeat was staring them in the face, running about furiously hanging traitors on the slightest whiff of provocation and suspicion and the more irrelevant they were and more defeated they were the more they turned inwards on imagined enemies. While their actual enemies trampled all over them and swept them into historys dustbin.

Can you do me a favor, and make it clear that you're quoting from me here--in the first paragraph, but not the second.

People tend to misattribute quotations in this debate. Ta.

 

[phildwyer]

The left represents equality, inclusiveness, freedom, justice and morality

The right represent inequality, exclusivity, control, elitism and immorality

Again, this would put Stalinism on the Right. Arguably Leninism too.

In fact the problem here is that you're using value-laden terms. No-one would ever say that they stood for "immorality." And we need terms that can be defended objectively.

Back to the drawing board. Can anyone offer a definition of the terms "Left and "Right-wing?" If they're stil valid, someone should be able to do this ffs.

 

[phildwyer]

The left represents equality, inclusiveness, freedom, justice and morality

The right represent inequality, exclusivity, control, elitism and immorality

Tbh, I think this is how most people use the terms today.

"Left-wing" just means tolerant, or nice. "Right-wing" just means nasty. Not good enough.

 

[phildwyer]

And finally (for now), perhaps the biggest problem with the "Left/Right" metaphor is that it suggests that political views can be either "moderate" or "extreme," and that "moderate" views are closer the the "center" than extreme ones.

This obviously favors conservatism: few people like to think of themselves as "extremists." So the metaphor contributes to the view that radical politics are "out there," loony, unsensible etc.

 

[brogdale]

Tbh, I think this is how most people use the terms today.

"Left-wing" just means tolerant, or nice. "Right-wing" just means nasty. Not good enough.

Face it Phil, folk aren't biting.

Seems like you're just going to have to accept that you appear to hold a minority view on this issue; the majority of posters, despite the obvious limitations of the linear spectrum, appear to be comfortable using the terms left and right to 'short-hand" ideological positions. I reckon you'll just have to work around this 'problem' exhibited by your fellow posters.

 

[SpineyNorman]

So where does that put Hitler?

I don't think state ownership vs private ownership is a useful way to look at the left/right divide (IMO more workers control = left, less = right). But you're talking out of your arse if you're claiming that the Nazis were all about state ownership.

 

[rubyblue89]

 

[butchersapron]

Oh god.

 

[Obnoxiousness]

Oh god.

I'd put god on the authoritarian end of the scale.

 

[cesare]

Oh god.

Political Compass lifted it from Meltzer anyway

 

[nino_savatte]

I often find it's right-wingers who say that the terms right and left are "outdated" or, alternatively, those whose knowledge of political ideologies is rather limited.

 

[nino_savatte]

The Revolutionary Communist Party recon there is no left and right any more as everyone is too afraid. Not sure many other people have taken up the idea. Some fascists claim to be beyond left and right and New Labour claimed to be a third way between left and right but that's not quite the same as denying left and right. I'm not sure who we are talking about.

That's the RCP as in the Cult of Furedi?

 

[cesare]

I often find it's right-wingers who say that the terms right and left are "outdated".

Rebranding innit

 

[nino_savatte]

Rebranding innit

Exactly. Quite often, in the next sentence, they'll claim to be 'libertarian'.

 

[stupid dogbot]

This explains why so many people don't indicate anymore.

 

[phildwyer]

Face it Phil, folk aren't biting.

Did I start this thread?

Seems like you're just going to have to accept that you appear to hold a minority view on this issue

Oh noes wottle I do now?

 

[phildwyer]

I often find it's right-wingers who say that the terms right and left are "outdated"

If you don't mind me saying so, this illustrates another problem with the terms.

I've noticed recently that, when an unfamiliar political position is advanced, people's first response is generally to debate whether or not it comes from the "Right" or from the "Left." Only once they've decided that can they decide whether they agree with it.

So deeply engrained is this habit that it extends even to the idea that Left and Right are no longer useful terms. The first thing that occurs to people is: is that a Leftist or a Rightist position?

Seems a bit mad to me.

 

[Obnoxiousness]

Old Testament God = Right Wing Totalitarian.
New Testament God = Left Wing Totalitarian.

At least there has been some progress in heaven.

 

[Dogsauce]

I often find it's right-wingers who say that the terms right and left are "outdated" or, alternatively, those whose knowledge of political ideologies is rather limited.

Probably the same people who fill local newspaper comments section with statements like 'The EDL & UAF are two sides of the same coin' or 'The UAF are just as bad'. Tends to be middle-class UKIP types embarrased by a load of 'football hooligans' fighting for their cause and having a desperate need for there to be some bad 'lefty' characters too.

 

[Remus Harbank]

There's nothing worse than outdated political language (and Left/Right terminology is just that).

 

[butchersapron]

There's nothing worse than outdated political language (and Left/Right terminology is just that).

Loving the substance here remus.

There are many things worse than outdated political terminology - Massimo Cellino, starvation, Miranda, not understanding terminology...

 

[butchersapron]

All in it together - no enemies to the right.

What disarming bollocks.

 

[butchersapron]

Prats:

 

[Pickman's model]

There's nothing worse than outdated political language (and Left/Right terminology is just that).

auschwitz? kolyma? abu ghraib?