Left wing, Right wing, Chickenwing with Buffilo Sauce PART I

1. The Twins

I have always been suspicious of the consensus terminology which describes all political factions as being points along a spectrum running from the progressive “Left” to the reactionary “Right”.

I have never understood, and always opposed, the most absurd and historically inaccurate feature of this so-called spectrum, which puts Nazis and Fascists on the “Far Right” and Socialists and Communists on the “Far Left”, when, in fact, even a cursory glance at the economic theory and economic policies of the National Socialist People’s Worker’s Party or the National Fascist Party are indistinguishable except in metaphysical niceties from the economic theory and policy of socialists.

The fascist has no carefully-demarked political theory. The ideology is a rough coalition of popular economic errors, romanticism, nationalism, and so on. But one theme runs through the fascists of Spain, Italy and Germany: the theme of unity. Above all, fascists are collectivists. Fascism (which takes its name from the bundle of rods that can be broken only separately, never when together) promised an end to class struggle, and promised strength through unity: all society was to be put on a military footing. The unity involved central economic planning, which, in turn, of necessity involves contempt for Enlightenment concepts of private property and rule of law, private conscience, privacy.

Fascism is at its root a totalitarian ideology, for the state takes as its concern all aspects of life. It is at its root a dishonest ideology, for it takes the Party to be more important than the truth: Orwellian nonsense-talk and censorship are its hallmarks.

Socialism likewise promised a class struggle that would end on bloody victory for the proletarian class, after which they would enjoy an end to class struggle, world unity. It is also totalitarian, as control of the economy of necessity implies control of all aspects of life. It is also a dishonest ideology, for it takes the Party to be more important than the truth: as with Fascism, Orwellian nonsense-talk and censorship are its hallmarks.

Fascism is also a conspiracy theory, based in the politics of paranoia, seeking out enemies to national unity, racial enemies, capitalist enemies, all disloyal elements, or inventing such enemies when none are conveniently at hand. Socialism is likewise a conspiracy theory, the most complete, and, to be blunt, the most idiotic conspiracy theory in history: socialists regard private property and the free market, loaning capital at interest and the joint-stock corporation, as evils directed against the working man; whereas, in truth, the workingman has no greater friend, no more generous fountainhead of wealth and opportunity, than a free market system.

Of these two paranoid political movements, it must be noted that the enemies on the enemy’s list of the Socialists overlap, with few exceptions, those of the Fascists. Both are on the enemy lists of the other: The Jews were the witches hunted by the German fascists, but not by the Italians, but also hunted by the Socialists under Stalin in Russia. The only big difference between the two is that each appears on the enemy list of the other.

So far, at first glance it seems the twins should be placed next to each other on any honest spectrum (by which I mean, one that actually measures something or means something). What are the reasons why they might be placed apart?

2. Some Objections

2A: Antithesis

An objection I have heard is that the Fascists must be placed on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Socialists, because Fascism’s core value is anti-Socialism. Fascism is designed to oppose Socialism at all points. This is a misleading, indeed, trivial feature of the political philosophy. As if we were to place all religion on a spectrum, and place the Jesuits in the same camp as the Atheists on the grounds that the Society of Jesus was designed to oppose the Reformation at all points.

In reality, the opposition of Fascists and Socialists has the typical ferocity, the Odium Theologicum, of Orthodox toward Heterodox; it is the hatred of brothers, Cain and Abel, not the hatred of strangers.

2B: Reaction

Another objection I have heard is that the fascists were “reactionaries”, and sought to preserve the old order of things, the free market, democratic suffrage, the privileges of the aristocracy, the military and the state-run church, against the radical changes promised by the Socialists.

The difficulty with this line of argument is threefold: (1) the Fascists sought radical changes to all these institutions, demanded their subordination to the state, plotted their destruction, use them and abused them; (2) The fascists promoted a political economic policy only mildly less radical than the Socialist, promising to control and militarize the industrial class rather than liquidate and replace it; (3) the list of institutions the fascists are said to be “reacting” to protect from Socialism is a random list.

No one party could sensibly defend each institution on the list, unless it actually had no political philosophy and was a pure alliance of convenience. The aristocracy and the established church of the ancient regime are innately antithetical to the free market and universal suffrage of the classical liberal: no one (except in sophistry) can claim to be protecting both these institutions. In reality, one must suborn, corrupt or destroy the other. A nation cannot be both a true republic and a true monarchy.

2C: The Extremes Meet

The most common objection I have heard, is that the political spectrum is not a spectrum at all, but a hoop, like the dial of a clock, where the most extreme of the Left, Communism, is found at the noon position, 12:00, and the most extreme of the Right is found at the midnight position, also 12:00. While this seems to answer the main objection (that alike political philosophies should be placed in like positions on a spectrum purporting to measure the alikeness of political philosophies), in fact it renders the spectrum meaningless.

The political “clock”, by this interpretation, runs from the totalitarians rest at High Noon, the ‘Near Left’ at Nine o’clock, the ‘Near Right’ at Three o’clock and the ‘Centrists’ at Six o’clock. As the hand sweeps around the dial, the Six o’clockers favor mild regulation of  business, the nine o’clockers favor nationalization and regulation of major sections of the economy, more and more as the hour gets later.

At twelve, we turn into totalitarian mass-murderers, and then at one o’clock we suddenly, somehow, find ourselves allegedly in the company of Washington, Jefferson, John Locke, and all those thinkers who favor small government, free enterprise, strong but private religion; and yet, (since these are also on the so-called “Right”) we are supposed to find populists, the Progressives who favor Eugenics, the Progressives who favor sterilization of lesser races, but not (for some reason) the Progressives who favor racial quotas and set-asides and special grievance laws. That group is on the other side of the clock.

Then as the hand drops toward six o’clock, all these small-government Jack Kemp types blend into their so-called near neighbors, the Welfare Statists who also (somehow, impossibly) favor tax money going to Big Businesses and the support of the Military-Industrial Complex. One would think these were two opposite groups, but let us put that aside. So what happens at one o’clock that makes the totalitarian anti-capitalist racists suddenly and shockingly blend into the libertarian capitalist individualists? What is the halfway position between these two positions that places them adjacently on our “clock” of political theory?

Where do political theories such as Libertarianism, Anarchism, Aristocracy, Christian Socialism, Populism, Nationalism, Isolationism, Imperialism, Plutocracy, and Militarist Police-Statism fit on this dial? Are they all somehow crammed into the angle between one o’clock and four o’clock?

2D Objections Not Answered

In order to place Fascists and Socialists at opposite sides of the spectrum, the spectrum has to be meaningless, at least as far as politic economic policy or theory is concerned. The political theory (totalitarianism) of Fascist and Socialist is the same; their economic theory (a state-run centrally-planned economy) is the same. They two differ in metaphysics only: the excuses they use for their legal depredations and economic foolery differ. The gangland tactics used to assume power, and the secret police tactics used to maintain it, are the same. They merely excuse the mass-murders in terms of a different collective that demands total obedience: one, the nation or a fictional race, the other, the people or a fictional economic class interest.

3. Fascist Socialism

History makes no secret of the Bismarckian nature of the welfare state the fascists erected. Unless the term has no meaning, they were “Progressives.”

The fascists in Italy demanded wage and price controls, government control of business, abolition of profit on capital investment, land reform, New-Dealesque public works programs, state-run welfare programs, and so on. The Nazis in Germany had an even more invasive and extensive program of welfare-state industrial collectivism. Control offices for every bureau of industry issued directives and collected raw materials by fiat, independent of any price structure. Losses did not result in a factory ceasing production; the control offices made sure that it got the raw materials and that the workers got rations of necessities.

Again, by late 1935 Hitler’s centralized agricultural policy created food shortages, due to near-elimination of food imports and restrictive government controls. By 1937, Goring’s Four Year Plan for economic self-sufficiency had created an endemic food shortage, and shortages of raw materials needed for rearmament. Hitler had to invade his neighbors, both to distract the people from their economic woes, and to seize sources of raw materials and finished goods the Hitlerian economic policy, i.e., Socialism, would not allow him to acquire by market trade.

Both Italy and Germany sought economic “autarchy” which is the erroneous notion that tariffs and trade barriers increase production by refusing the take advantage of the specialization of labor across national boundaries. (According to “autarchy” theory, the people in Banana Valley should not trade their bananas for ice cubes with the people of Icy Valley, but should instead create the ice locally in special refrigeration units at great expense; and likewise the people of Ice Valley should put up greenhouses to grow bananas locally, at absurd cost, rather than swap ice cubes for bananas cheaply.)

But enough. The nature of the fascist and Nazi economic policies is clear enough to any with eyes to see. They fell short of Communism only in that the leaders of industry were not liquidated, and the industries not nationalized de jure. They were only nationalized de facto.

4. Left and Right as a Measure of Change

So we can see that the Left-Right spectrum is not a spectrum measuring economic policy, from non-interventionist to interventionist to total state control of the market. It is not as if we put Free Marketeers to one side and Socialists to the other. Anyone who wishes to argue that Nazis are an extreme form of Free Market libertarianism has to explain away the long list of interventionist theory and law the National Socialists embraced. He also has to explain away the name “National Socialist.”

Perhaps the Left-Right spectrum measures something else? In its original and uncorrupt use, in the National Assembly of France, those who supported the ancient regime, the privileges of the possessing classes, the throne and altar, the traditional establishment, sat to the right of the aisle; the progressives, who sought to overthrow the monarchic system, and introduce wider franchise, equality, egalitarianism, rule of law, sat on the left. In other words, the Dukes in their lace cravats and the Cardinals in their red hats sat on the right, and the revolutionaries in their tricolor cockades sat on the left. In Spain, the two parties similarly seated were called the Servile, those who served the throne, and the Liberal, the free men.

Now, it would take a very shallow observer of the political scene indeed not to notice what is essential and what is accidental in this scheme. The non-essential is this: at that time, the Left urged rapid change and the Right urged caution. Some writers think this is the very definition of the Left-to-Right spectrum. Whoever urges change is Left; whoever opposes change is Right.

But this definition would change with any change in background.

George Washington before 1776 would be considered “Left” because he was a radical, indeed, the leader of a revolution, who sought the overthrow of monarchic government in the colonies and the establishment of a form of government absolutely new. After 1776, with no change of policy and opinion whatsoever, he would be considered “Right”, because he would then be opposing change and fighting to preserve the government in its then-current form, a democratic republic of limited powers.

For the same reason, Franklin Delano Roosevelt before the “New Deal” would be called “Left”, because he urged change, and after, with no change of policy, would be “Right” because he sought to maintain the New Deal policies, and the new form of government.

Likewise, if Washington and Roosevelt were spirited across the Atlantic dropped into the middle of the England or Germany contemporary to them, they would both be “Left” because they would oppose the monarchic or fascist regime ruling the nation in which they found themselves.

Someone living in the post-New Deal America who seeks a radical change and a return to the constitutionally limited government of Washington, would be “Left” since he sought fundamental change; and opposition seeking to keep the New Deal policies in place would be “Right”, or even “Reactionary.”

A modern Russian seeking to return to the days of the Soviet system of government would be “Left” since he favored change, but then again, with equal justice, could be called “a conservative” since he sought the return of institutions traditional in his tyranny-haunted land, and on that ground would be called “Right.”

Spider Robinson, in his book VARIABLE STAR, has one character voice the opinion that conservatives are fearful, slothful creatures, because they only seek to cling to the institutions they know, whereas the radicals are brave and blessed, superior forms of life, because they boldly go where no man has gone before. This is perhaps the stupidest political analysis of Left and Right that can be imagined.

Again, and for the same reasons, if “Left” and “Right” allegedly measure “Out” and “In”,  then the same objection applies. On the Left are those who support and seek to help the groups left out and left behind by the current power structure, and on the Right are those who seek to conserve and protect the current power structure. But if the “left” claim to represent the minority, the poor, the slow-footed in the Rat Race, then this claim changes as the background changes. In the Media, the Academia, in the Entertainment Industry (in the Science Fiction field, indeed) those who favor small-government, and profess the Christian Religion, are in the minority, and routinely snubbed and insulted, denied opportunities, disparaged, discouraged, and made to feel unwelcome. We are the “Outs” and the liberal conformity is “In.” The Christian Right is practically unknown in European politics: they cannot possibly be said to be the conservative defenders of the current EU political-economic power structure. They are so far “Out” that in places to voice Christian traditional teachings (such as, say, concerning sexual morality) is a hate crime. To preach chaste monogamy is risible. These are not the voices heard without dissent in the halls of parliament or the court of the monarch, the pages of the press, the groves of academia.

(Let it not be said that the Left do not CLAIM to be eternally the rebels eternally defending the ‘Little Man’ against the evils of ‘Big Man’— it is merely that this claim has outlasted any reasonable reality in certain contexts.)

Political allegiance has very little to do with whether one is changing or staying the same, whether one is ‘In’ with the ‘In-crowd’ or ‘Out’ in the cold: indeed, in real life, due to the constant corruption of manners and morals, institutions must be revisited and revised constantly in order to remain the same. A red stop-sign, in order to remain red, must be repainted periodically with new red paint, lest it soon be a brown sign. It is, so to speak, the Red Queen’s Race.

5. Left and Right as a Measure of Related Characteristics 

So let us not even consider the definition which identifies Left with change and Right with reaction. It is not a serious definition.

A more sober definition might be this: “Left” and “Right” include a rough coalition of political philosophies and interest groups that bear a “family resemblance” to each other. There is not one essential characteristic that defines membership at any particular part of the spectrum, but, rather, a group of related characteristics, interests, or even mere historical accident, that builds up, over time, and in an organic fashion, a coalition or web of alliances that we identify as “Left” and “Right”.

Now this is a more practical definition, because it says how the words are actually used, as oppose to how they would be used if they were accurate. Unfortunately, it will not serve. Between European politics and American there is a gulf that this terminology cannot cross.

By this definition, the coalition correctly called “Right” in, let us say, 1930’s Germany, consisted of populist economic errors, violent anti-Communism, Wagnerian-Nietzschean romanticism, racism, and elements of the military as well as privileged aristocrats and landowners with strong ties to industry and labor, not to mention a national, established church. The Right in 1930’s Germany was collectivist to the point of madness: no individual rights, no individual privileges, no individualism at all, was meant to stand in the way of the great fascistic union of all elements of society into a common brotherhood, without division and without rank. The Fascists promised to stop class warfare and put the economy on a state-controlled footing.

The coalition correctly called the “Right” in, let us say, 1980’s America is violently and absolutely opposed to each and every one of the political points. That coalition consists of free-marketeers, law-abiding anti-Communists (America never had blackshirt thugs beating redshirt thugs in the streets), strongly anti-racist (the party of Lincoln, and one which opposes set-asides and opposes reverse discrimination). No American party of any description has ever held the military power to be independent of or superior to the civil power. Our leaders never wear uniforms to make speeches: they wear silk hats and not brass hats. We have no privileged aristocracy and no laws or customs supporting them. The Right in America (and also our Left, but for different reasons) is suspicious of industrial ties to the state, and prefer deregulation and the loss of special privileges for industry. There is no class warfare to stop in America: we have no class system, no laws and no customs preventing upward social mobility.  Indeed, we expect and demand our rich be self-made men, and we scoff at those layabouts who inherited their wealth. We are suspicious of talk of the collective, of unity and brotherhood, when it impinges on personal liberty and freedom of conscience.

So, a “family resemblance” list of what features coalitions of the “Right” have in common show the word is meaningless across the scope of how it is used. These two camps have no “family resemblance” in common; they are not allies (indeed, the one destroyed the other in World War II) and they are not an organic union historically related: Mussolini did not credit John Locke with forming his early political thought; he credited socialism.

If you wanted, nonetheless, to use the terminology this way, you would have to be careful to say which nation and era you meant by the term, and no writer ever does this. Anyone who was serious about describing a political faction would not bother saying “Far-Right-Wing German from A.D. 1930.” He would say “Nazi.”

Likewise, a serious thinker would define the various political faction in history by their real nature, origins and interests: monarchists and Whigs, Tories, and democratic-republicans, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, Reformationists and Counter-Reformationists, Guelphs and Ghibellines, Imperialists, Napoleanists, Federalists, Optimates, Populists, Orange and Green factions in Ireland, Blue and Green factions in Byzantium, and so on.

Grouping disparate political ideologies and factions together who have nothing to do with each other is misleading. Why not merely use the real name of the party or faction or movement involved?