A workable spectrum

Posted by Guest Blogger on Saturday, 05 February 2005 03:42.

Is there a way to make sense of the political spectrum? I think there is. The terms “left” and “right” do make sense as distinctions within mainstream liberalism.

It works this way. All liberals start off with a belief that the individual should be self-created by their own will and reason. This means that liberals have to clear away unchosen impediments to individual will, such as race, gender and class.

But this leaves a fundamental problem. How can you possibly regulate a society made up of millions of individual wills, each pursuing their own selfish desires? This is the question asked by Australian liberal Clive Hamilton, in his essay The Disappointment of Liberalism. He writes that,

“this essay is a prelude to answering the question of how we can reconstruct the social in an individualized world. In a world where we are no longer bound together by our class, gender or race, why should we live cooperatively?”

Mainstream liberals have given two basic answers to this question. Right-liberals (classical liberals) believe that society can be regulated by the “hidden hand” of the free market. In this theory, people can pursue their economic interests selfishly, and yet still generate positive outcomes for society as a whole. Right-liberals therefore have a focus on Economic Man and would prefer that the state didn’t interfere with and distort the operations of the market.

Left-liberals reject the idea of the market as a means of regulating society. They see the market as generating unequal outcomes, and they want a more deliberately rational regulation of society. They therefore prefer society to be regulated either by the state or by local communities.

So, the most basic left / right distinction is between those on the right who prefer market regulation and those on the left who prefer state / community regulation.

There is, however, another important distinction to be made. If you were to imagine a pure liberalism, in which individuals were entirely autonomous and unimpeded, a centralised state would have little role. Therefore, the more radical liberals, of both right and left, who want to achieve a pure liberalism straight away, will be “small state” or “no state” liberals.

So the political spectrum goes like this. On the right you have those wanting regulation by the market and on the left those wanting more deliberate regulation by the state or local community. In the middle you have those accepting a larger role for the state and on either radical end you have those opposing a large role for the state.

So, on the far left you have anarchists (left-libertarians), then on the centre-left you have social democrats (left-liberals), then on the centre-right you have mainstream right-liberals like the American Republicans or Australian Liberals and on the far-right you have Ayn Rand type right-libertarians.

Notice that the opposite ends of the spectrum have something in common in virtue of their radicalism, namely a libertarian opposition to a central state.

All that remains to be explained is where conservatives, communists and fascists fit in to the spectrum. As noted, the terms “left” and “right” refer to a distinction within liberalism. Therefore, conservatism doesn’t fit within this spectrum at all. That’s why conservatives will sometimes find themselves agreeing with left-wing criticisms of an unregulated market, but at other times with right-wing criticisms of an interventionist state.

Marxist communism is an interesting case. I reserve judgement, but I expect it fits on the spectrum as a form of radical leftism. It’s true that Marxists want to establish an authoritarian state (the “dictatorship of the proletariat”) to achieve their aims, so this might seem to go against the idea that the more radical liberals want a small state. However, Marxists believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will only last for a limited time and will then give way to the end of history in which there will be no state. So ultimately Marxism does seem to fit in well as a form of radical leftism.

I reserve judgement too on the exact place of fascism within the polical spectrum. However, I expect that it doesn’t fit on the spectrum at all, as it’s not a part of the liberal mainstream. Fascists don’t follow the mainstream liberal belief in a society made up of millions of atomised wills, each following its own desires. The triumph of human will, its highest realization, for fascists, seems instead to be the practical assertion of a collective will, itself embodied in the will of the leader.

Perhaps the idea that fascism is “off the spectrum” explains why it seems at times to incorporate aspects of both left and right wing politics.

I have outlined this view of how the political spectrum works in greater detail here.

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Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 05 Feb 2005 08:58 | #

A characteristically subtle and skilled analysis, Mark. I am particularly interested by your assignation of libertarianism within the spectrum. I wonder if any libertarian reading this would like to comment.

Being a tidy person I think a place has to be found somewhere for fascism. There are practising psychologists in Italy applying a set of techniques called Transversal Psychology, in which the patient can, with time, visualise a self triumphant over his difficulties. He can work his way into this self when in need and live more effectively.

Similar ideas are gaining ground elsewhere around the edges of practising psychology, as it is being realised that existing psychologolical methods have not thusfar been universally productive - and the old “pull yourself together” dictum might have a bit more to it than previously thought!

But the leading advocate of TP in Italy - a very personable and intelligent guy, incidentally - is a self-avowed fascist (his grandad marched on Rome with Mussolini). He seriously contends that TP has the potential to deliver a triumph of the will, either to the population at large or for specific individuals marked for leadership.

So we are back to a self-selective path to full humanity - liberalism again. OK, it’s a liberalism that self-selects for the collectivism of race. But it isn’t a collectivism dealing in reality. It has been “transversalised” into faux triumph and splendour - something no more real than the dictatorship of the proletariat.

There is something in the Anglo-Saxon that baulks at this sort of gross inflation of the fact. We seem to be psychologically innoculated against it. Of course that doesn’t stop the left-liberals among us from bellowing “fascist!” at anyone who defers to the boundless and unchanging dominion of Nature.

One other minor suggestion for you to consider. Your spectrum is not the political spectrum but the ideological spectrum. The only exclusion should be Conservatism, which is Natural politics - not an ideology at all.

Posted by John Ray on Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:00 | #

Dave
Mussolini did not march on Rome
He took the train after the march had arrived

Mark’s anaysis quite amazes me. The huge number of Christians who vote for GWB because they share his belief in a “fallen” human nature are not conservatives?

Marks’s definition of conservative will have him as the only member soon

Posted by MD on Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:35 | #

Communism is hyper-rationalism and hyper-materialism (“scientific materialism”), so it must fall on the left. The state within communism is perfectly justifiable as the rational manager of the social and economic New Man.

I see fascism (at least as expressed in Germany) as essentially collective enthnicism. Blood and soil. Germany was, above all else, racialist.

National Socialism is a different animal, and survived the fall of fascism. National socialism is pretty much what its name implies, and falls along the center-left spectrum.

Posted by MD on Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:38 | #

An interesting question is why both fascism and communism degenerated into totalitarianism, an entirely new event in history. Or even if totalitarianism owes its parentage to either fascism or communism. Perhaps other factors brought it forth out of hell.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Sun, 06 Feb 2005 05:14 | #

John, it’s quite possible that the Christians who voted for GWB are conservatives. I just don’t think GWB himself is.

Nor am I alone in this belief. Leading “neocon” Robert Kagan wrote a Washington Times article recently about GWB’s foreign policy which included the following lines:

“This is where Bush may lose the support of most old-fashioned conservatives. His goals are now the antithesis of conservatism. They are revolutionary.”

Anyway, as I wrote in an earlier comment, an organised conservative movement is only now slowly emerging. Time will tell whether it can successfully carve out a place in the political landscape.

It’s quite possible that Melbourne conservatives will lead the way.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 06 Feb 2005 10:37 | #

On Bush and Conservatism, this quote from Steve’s site (a reader’s letter) has been doing the rounds. I think it’s interesting, though only the outer shell of the argument:-

While trawling through the reactions to the SOTU, it occurred to me that Bush has made clear his agenda: That he himself replace FDR and FDR’s welfare state. That welfare state will be as large or larger and more intrusive than ever, BUT, the rich guys will be in on the take. Thus the Republican party will displace the Democratic party. So, the speech’s overt intent is for Republican party elite to displace the old left-liberal elite, a much better deal for rich people, with assorted bribes to the Unwashed Masses to consent to a somewhat worse deal, BUT the covert intent (what the Germans call the schwerpunkt, ‘the main thrust of the battle’) is actually the elimination of the CONSERVATIVES, that is, the sort of people (actually) in favor of a constitutional republic and smaller government, not to mention American nationalism…

John,

Mark can answer for himself. For me, it’s clear that the political medium in which we operate can only accomodate Conservatism as a series of recalcitrant instincts, beliefs and reactions to the advance of liberty. It is this fragmented Conservatism by which we have come to understand the nature of the beast. But, actually, Conservatism is also a political medium in its own right, indeed the original - and one in which (surprise, surprise) liberalism cannot exist except as a series of progressive beliefs and reactions.

Conservatism and liberalism do not exist on a contiunuum. The one is productive of stability, continuity, independence, freedom. The other is productive of anomie, equality and totalitarianism (which, to answer MD’s question, is the inevitable outcome of a state-led quest for liberty).

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 07 Feb 2005 00:56 | #

“The other is productive of anomie, equality and totalitarianism (which, to answer MD’s question, is the inevitable outcome of a state-led quest for liberty).” —GW

To “anomie, equality, and totalitarianism” one can add genocide, the liberal solution to the chronic inequality we see all around us between certain groups, inequality which the liberal mind, unable to conceive as inevitable, one-hundred percent innocent, and due to inborn differences which nobody caused, bitterly blames whites for perpetuating despite their having been sternly warned for decades now to please stop inflicting on society.

Hey, after all, who can find fault with liberalism if, acting out of utter desperation, its patience finally exhausted with recalcitrant, ineducable, terminally mean white people who simply will never give up their racism, never give up their evil holding-back of other races from advancement to a status of full equality by all known measures—who can blame liberalism if, faced with white-race criminals of this ilk who simply will not learn, it undertake the solution of last resort, genocide of whites. As all the world knows, Stalin had to get rid of the Kulaks, because they just wouldn’t get with the program and kept resisting the confiscation of their farms, so between eight and fifteen million of them had to be starved to death or shot, and Pol Pot and Khieu Sampan had to do the same with any Cambodians who actually had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to wear eyeglasses, know how to read, have few or no calluses on their hands, or have been to high-school and a couple million of those, a third of the country’s population, had to be disposed of by starvation or hacking to death with machetes and garden hoes since bullets, as Khieu Sampan said to reporters, were too expensive for the Khmer Rouge to waste on that particular job. Well, holding back Negroes in the United States from arriving at full equality by all measures with whites is as bad a thing to do in this country as knowing how to read, wearing eyeglasses, or having been to high-school was in Cambodia, if not worse. And since U.S. whites still despite years—nay, decades—of fair warning, decades of others’ bending over backward to be patient with them and give them a second chance, continue to hold U.S. Negroes back from achieving full equality, getting rid of U.S. whites seems the only solution. Therefore the scheme undertaken by Presidents Clinton and Bush to replace whites in this country entirely with a mixture of Mexicans mainly but also other Latin Americans and with African Negroes, Orientals, and Subcontinentals is not only right but the only alternative—everything else has been tried and failed, and whites have only themselves to blame because they refuse to give up their racism despite fair—more than fair—warning for the longest time.