Origin of the Left-Right Political Spectrum
Many people want to discard the left-right distinction as a way to understand politics. Most of them are ignorant of what it means and that ignorance usually explains them. Discarding the prevailing schema sounds sophisticated, making the speaker sound wiser than ideologues caught up in tribalism. But all the "That's just like your opinion man" rhetoric actually does is dismiss clear thinking in favor of being shallow and uninformed by history. Clear thinking requires categories and definitions: ideally Aristotelian definitions.
Aristotle's definition of definition prescribes that an adequate definition will have two things: genus and species. While these are where the modern taxonomical terms come from, what Aristotle meant by them does not align with their usage in modern taxonomy, just as an "atom" cannot be split by definition, so that the act of splitting a so-called "atom" proves that it was never an "atom" to begin with because it can be split. It would be within reason to argue that any physicists claiming they have "split the atom" are just stupid and wrong no matter their practical results because "splitting the atom" is a contradiction in terms since any child can understand that an atom is defined as that which cannot be split.
What happened was that we got used to calling non-atoms by the name "atom" and didn't want to change their name even after we discovered, by splitting them, that we had always been wrong to have ever thought that they were ever true "atoms." A similar thing happened with "genus" and "species". They became part of a much larger taxonomical system which no longer resembles their original usage so that their original meaning faded away over time. I intend to revive their original ancient meaning here.
For Aristotle, the "genus" part of a definition must answer the question, "What kind of thing is it?" and the "species" part of a definition must answer the question, "What makes it different from other similar things?" It takes both to have a clear definition, which is one of the checks for whether you're thinking clearly about any given thing. Being unable to give an Aristotelian definition is a strong indicator that your thinking about a thing is unclear.
Unlike with the terms of atoms, genus or species, the definitions of the political left and right have actually stayed very, very consistent across time since their 18th century origins, despite extreme changes in governmental structure and geopolitical environment. They are clear, centuries-old tried, tested and battle hardened categories which very few, if any, policy frameworks ever manage to escape.
The terms “left” and “right” in politics originated with the French National Assembly during the French Revolution in 1789. The two opposing viewpoints physically sat together on opposite sides of the room and this physical seating arrangement is what gave rise to the political categorization used globally ever since. Thus, “left” and “right” were never a metaphor: the origin of these terms were instead completely literal and physical. The competing rumor that the terms originate from the apostles James and John sitting at Jesus’s left and right hands in the gospel according to Matthew is simply untrue. These are very modern, very political categories, not ancient religious ones.
The original right wing were the supporters of the French monarchy and the original left wing were the supporters of the French revolution. Since we don’t see our current political options as having an all-powerful king versus indiscriminately chopping people’s heads off, one might suppose that the left wing and right wing categories would no longer be relevant. But that would be a ridiculously shallow reading of the competing philosophies involved in that political moment.
What descends to us from 1789 is the idea that those on the Right side of the political spectrum are traditionalists who think of the past as good and of the tendency of the present to be negative, while those on the Left side of the political spectrum are progressives who think of the past as bad and of the tendency of the present to be positive. Thus, right wing and left wing do not connote any specific policies. They are instead descriptors of how the ideology or framework views itself in relation to political history.
So Left and Right have a shared genus: they each refer to meta-narratives concerning large scale political history. At the same time, they are separate species: where the Right specifically thinks of the past as good while the Left specifically thinks of the past as bad.
Some confusion often arises in international contexts because Left and Right are regionally and historically relative -- especially the Right. The ideas of the conservative movement or right wing of any particular country are always grounded in the specific local history of that country and do not reflect on right wing movements anywhere else in the world because every country is different. So if, for instance, an American right wing conservative condemns the right wing conservative movement within a Muslim country, that's not a contradiction because those two movements have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common except in the abstract and indirect way that they're both grounded in the local history of their respective country. Calling them both "conservative" in order to suggest that they are somehow linked to one another goes beyond the usefulness of the framework. They are each “right wing” or “conservative” only by being linked with the specific history of their particular region, not by being linked with each other.
In contrast, there is often some degree of connection between left wing movements globally. In the 20th century, this was largely through the International Communist Party, (although there were plenty of Leftists unwilling to admit any Communist ties in the latter half of the 20th century) but after the fall of the Soviet Union, this connection has either ceased or become much less formal.
The historical relativism of left vs right is also significant. Ideas which were left wing when they were new, if they succeed, always inevitably become right wing ideas later on when they become old.
Critically, the strength of the Left vs Right schema is that it does not prejudice the discourse or insult either side. It allows for acknowledging shared facts across the ideological lines without controversial evaluations. This, in turn, provides a shared set of common premises upon which political arguments can be based. Those demanding to discard the schema generally do not provide any new alternate schema to replace it, so that what they are really against isn’t “outdated” political categories from 1789 but is instead usually a rejection of clear thinking itself.
However, a major exception would be proposals for alternate or complementary schema which retain the benefits of the Left vs Right schema of being clear, non-insulting and constructive while allowing for more precision and nuance. We shouldn’t be forever chained to 1789 as the sole criteria for political thought for no reason, but we should be constrained by the principle of Chesterton’s Fence: “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.” This conservative principle is so inherently reasonable that even the most progressive thinker who wants to tear down every fence in existence should still be able to accept it.
Also, now that we know why we have this schema from the above explanation, it should be obvious why we need a schema like this. No matter their flaws, Left and Right will and should persist in our language and our thinking until a superior schema is available to replace them.
Note: I have not read H.J. Eysenck's The Psychology of Politics (1963) and Samuel Brittan's Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma (1968) which the Googling I have done to write this essay indicates that I should be reading if I want to eventually turn it into a better researched, more polished paper. I see this post as soliciting feedback on an early draft.
Aristotle's definition of definition prescribes that an adequate definition will have two things: genus and species. While these are where the modern taxonomical terms come from, what Aristotle meant by them does not align with their usage in modern taxonomy, just as an "atom" cannot be split by definition, so that the act of splitting a so-called "atom" proves that it was never an "atom" to begin with because it can be split. It would be within reason to argue that any physicists claiming they have "split the atom" are just stupid and wrong no matter their practical results because "splitting the atom" is a contradiction in terms since any child can understand that an atom is defined as that which cannot be split.
What happened was that we got used to calling non-atoms by the name "atom" and didn't want to change their name even after we discovered, by splitting them, that we had always been wrong to have ever thought that they were ever true "atoms." A similar thing happened with "genus" and "species". They became part of a much larger taxonomical system which no longer resembles their original usage so that their original meaning faded away over time. I intend to revive their original ancient meaning here.
For Aristotle, the "genus" part of a definition must answer the question, "What kind of thing is it?" and the "species" part of a definition must answer the question, "What makes it different from other similar things?" It takes both to have a clear definition, which is one of the checks for whether you're thinking clearly about any given thing. Being unable to give an Aristotelian definition is a strong indicator that your thinking about a thing is unclear.
Unlike with the terms of atoms, genus or species, the definitions of the political left and right have actually stayed very, very consistent across time since their 18th century origins, despite extreme changes in governmental structure and geopolitical environment. They are clear, centuries-old tried, tested and battle hardened categories which very few, if any, policy frameworks ever manage to escape.
The terms “left” and “right” in politics originated with the French National Assembly during the French Revolution in 1789. The two opposing viewpoints physically sat together on opposite sides of the room and this physical seating arrangement is what gave rise to the political categorization used globally ever since. Thus, “left” and “right” were never a metaphor: the origin of these terms were instead completely literal and physical. The competing rumor that the terms originate from the apostles James and John sitting at Jesus’s left and right hands in the gospel according to Matthew is simply untrue. These are very modern, very political categories, not ancient religious ones.
The original right wing were the supporters of the French monarchy and the original left wing were the supporters of the French revolution. Since we don’t see our current political options as having an all-powerful king versus indiscriminately chopping people’s heads off, one might suppose that the left wing and right wing categories would no longer be relevant. But that would be a ridiculously shallow reading of the competing philosophies involved in that political moment.
What descends to us from 1789 is the idea that those on the Right side of the political spectrum are traditionalists who think of the past as good and of the tendency of the present to be negative, while those on the Left side of the political spectrum are progressives who think of the past as bad and of the tendency of the present to be positive. Thus, right wing and left wing do not connote any specific policies. They are instead descriptors of how the ideology or framework views itself in relation to political history.
So Left and Right have a shared genus: they each refer to meta-narratives concerning large scale political history. At the same time, they are separate species: where the Right specifically thinks of the past as good while the Left specifically thinks of the past as bad.
Some confusion often arises in international contexts because Left and Right are regionally and historically relative -- especially the Right. The ideas of the conservative movement or right wing of any particular country are always grounded in the specific local history of that country and do not reflect on right wing movements anywhere else in the world because every country is different. So if, for instance, an American right wing conservative condemns the right wing conservative movement within a Muslim country, that's not a contradiction because those two movements have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common except in the abstract and indirect way that they're both grounded in the local history of their respective country. Calling them both "conservative" in order to suggest that they are somehow linked to one another goes beyond the usefulness of the framework. They are each “right wing” or “conservative” only by being linked with the specific history of their particular region, not by being linked with each other.
In contrast, there is often some degree of connection between left wing movements globally. In the 20th century, this was largely through the International Communist Party, (although there were plenty of Leftists unwilling to admit any Communist ties in the latter half of the 20th century) but after the fall of the Soviet Union, this connection has either ceased or become much less formal.
The historical relativism of left vs right is also significant. Ideas which were left wing when they were new, if they succeed, always inevitably become right wing ideas later on when they become old.
Critically, the strength of the Left vs Right schema is that it does not prejudice the discourse or insult either side. It allows for acknowledging shared facts across the ideological lines without controversial evaluations. This, in turn, provides a shared set of common premises upon which political arguments can be based. Those demanding to discard the schema generally do not provide any new alternate schema to replace it, so that what they are really against isn’t “outdated” political categories from 1789 but is instead usually a rejection of clear thinking itself.
However, a major exception would be proposals for alternate or complementary schema which retain the benefits of the Left vs Right schema of being clear, non-insulting and constructive while allowing for more precision and nuance. We shouldn’t be forever chained to 1789 as the sole criteria for political thought for no reason, but we should be constrained by the principle of Chesterton’s Fence: “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.” This conservative principle is so inherently reasonable that even the most progressive thinker who wants to tear down every fence in existence should still be able to accept it.
Also, now that we know why we have this schema from the above explanation, it should be obvious why we need a schema like this. No matter their flaws, Left and Right will and should persist in our language and our thinking until a superior schema is available to replace them.
Note: I have not read H.J. Eysenck's The Psychology of Politics (1963) and Samuel Brittan's Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma (1968) which the Googling I have done to write this essay indicates that I should be reading if I want to eventually turn it into a better researched, more polished paper. I see this post as soliciting feedback on an early draft.
Comments (75)
In my opinion the left/right political spectrum is largely hokum. The idea in English is little more than the 20th century exaggeration of Thomas Carlyle’s loose accounting of the The Constituent Assembly in revolutionary France, a time and place so unrelated to here and now that one is forced to wonder at its significance.
If one looks hard enough he can witness the lights go out precisely when these distinctions are used. The spectrum, for example, as linear as it is, may aid in self-serving expediency, but only to absolve one from spending the effort to learn about others. Speaking of ignorant, that’s why the function of these ideas is that of [I]social categorization[/I], the process through which some people organize their thoughts and beliefs about a myriad of other people, while at the same time remaining wholly ignorant about them.
Maybe worst of all is the tendency to create divisions and affinities between human beings where none exist, as if each of us were still looking for our seats in the National Assembly. It isn’t long before people who have never met, nor have had any opportunity to judge the merits of their compatriots and enemies, each of them individually, are walking arm-in-arm in “solidarity” against an equally as uninformed group.
As for a schema, I much prefer Carlyle’s original accounting:??
- The French Revolution: A History
This account puts nearly every political ideology of today within the conservative camp, and rightfully so, because the goal of each is to grasp the reigns of power, hold on to them as long as possible, and steer it to this and that end. All of them seek to maintain the servile hierarchy of those who have power and those who do not. In this they are the same, in instinct, goal, and action. The destructive ideologies, rather, are those that would see the reigns of power fall and that we live without them. Statism versus anti-statism, conservative versus destructive, would be a superior schema in my opinion.
A second axis? is it going to be named Up/Down? Top/Bottom? Can't wait to read it.
I use "left" and "right" as sometimes somewhat useful terms, less to describe than to 'place' very general political 'positions', persons, or 'groups'.
Political discourse would be impossible if left and right were the only terms that we had at hand. Some individuals politicians and groups are authoritarian or libertarian to some degree. Some are pro-socialist, others pro-capitalist, often measured in degrees. There are internationalists and nationalists. Some are religious partisans, some are secularists, and so on.
I would much prefer that politics would fit into nicely defined boxes, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Or the old box labels are often wrong.
How does one map "Democrat" and "Republican" onto other dichotomies? Are these two party names any more helpful than left/right, liberal/conservative?
One can call a plague on both their houses, IF one sets up one's position outside the usual arrangement. Communists, actual socialists, libertarians, and so on can do that, because in the United States at least, they are politically irrelevant. I know this from experience as a socialist. We may be 100% correct and virtuous, but we we don't win elections, and we don't have any power. So mostly nobody cares about what we say. True, some Democratic Socialists have won some local elections, lately. It remains to be seen how their office-holding will work out.
I think you completely misread the meaning of left and right. It has next to nothing to do with loving the past or the present.
Nor is the meaning of the right culturally relative. The right favors and serves the elite, in practice if not always in rhetoric. This can come in two forms: the reactionary right, which services the existing elite. And the revolutionary right, which aims to dominate it completely replace the existing elite. This is coupled with cultural conservatism: this is not a preference for the past as such. Rather, it is a preference for an idea of the cultural past, coupled with the notion that this cultural ideal ought to be predominant. The more radical the right, the more hallucinatory this idea can be.
Notice that this explains the incompatibility of the Western and Muslim right wings. While both favor the elites, these are not the same elites. And while both promote their brands of cultural conversatism, these are not compatible, especially as they both incorporate fundamentalist versions of their religions.
Whereas, the left favors and serves the broad population, in rhetoric if not always in practice. Instead of upholding an idealized past, the left relishes revising established cultural tradition, if they believe the revision serves a positive ideological outcome.
Hmm.. I am quite unsure this is the case. I think this is the caricature of the right/conservatism. But I also know, for sure, that supporting elites is at least a reckless by product of most right-wing policy that would otherwise be probably quite uncontroversial.
This position is not grounded in the research. I suggest you read The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt
Rather, whether you lean to the Left or the Right of the political spectrum is determined by your moral framework – which determines the moral foundations of your politics.
In Chapter 6 of his book, Haidt lays out these five foundations of morality –
1. Care < > Harm
2. Fairness < > Cheating
3. Loyalty < > Betrayal
4. Authority < > Subversion
5. Sanctity < > Degradation
In Chapter 7, he concludes (based on research) that the two ends of the political spectrum – Left/Right – rely upon each foundation in different ways, or to different degrees –
The Left relies primarily on the Care and Fairness foundations
The Right uses all five foundations.
***
Highly recommended reading.
As for a counterexample to your claim that the Right serves the elite, take immigration. Mass immigration is slave importation, which is being done with the specific intent to drive down labor costs (wages and benefits) in order to serve the elite. So, on this issue, we have the Left serving the elite. Or this argument is at the very least within the realm of rational discussion, which the definitions of Left and Right should not be interfering with by pre-judging.
Common terms should build bridges that make meaningful debate and negotiation possible. That's what they're for: not to score points for your own side.
Haidt is attempting to psychologize the motivations behind political ideology. I'm merely categorizing political ideologies by content. While I do not go out of my way to endorse Haidt in the points I make here, I see these endeavors as attempting to explain different things and so as potentially compatible rather than definitely incompatible.
Also, Haidt's argument pre-supposes Left and Right as coherent categories so that he even can psychologize their motivations. He can't do that without first defining them as a basic assumption for, and not a result of, his research.
Well, no when you state -
Quoting Questioner
- you are entering the realm of motivations, and I suggest what you state here is wrong. Not only is it inaccurate, it presents as prejudicial.
Besides, I am not sure how you would separate motivations to ascribe to an ideology from the ideology itself.
My model just says, "Here's what they think" and then Haidt can come along and say, "Here's why they think that" without a total flat irreconcilable contradiction as far as I know. But I must confess that, while I was aware of "The Righteous Mind" before today, I only got a "cliff notes" summary of Haidt rather than reading the book for myself so he may be bolder than I am aware of.
Even handedness is not a strength of a model that is supposed to be rooted in fact.
Quoting BenMcLean
I was asking for a right wing party or government that is oriented toward popular, not elite interest, not an individual policy. Seeing the immigration policy of our present government through this lens would be bizarrely incongruous with their other policies. As I'm sure you know, this is the wrong lens.
Which leads to another very consistent feature of the right wing: outgrouping. By the nature of the right, they have little of substance to offer to the general population. The right therefore offers "protection", from the dangerous external enemy, and the dangerous internal enemy. Migrants straddle that line beautifully.
This "protection" from the internal enemy often takes the form of performative terrorization and abuse, so visible right now.
But this is not true. the division between left and right is not thinking the past is good or bad.
Quoting BenMcLean
With all due respect, if you ignore the research about moral foundations supporting the left and the right position, your analysis will be shallow indeed.
what......This seems a patent example of the types of biases being spoken about. There's no reason to think this unless you think that, conceptually, things like fiscal responsibility, military protection, law and order etc.. are not offers to the general pop. You can argue with effectiveness etc... but clearly there's a lot being offered to the general population on paper at the very least.
Quoting hypericin
This may explain.
No. This follows from my premise, that the nature of the right is a political orientation towards elite interests. You may think that is bias. I think it is systematically true, and thus far I haven't seen a counterexample.
Quoting AmadeusD
If you're going to discuss politics you have to at least distinguish rhetoric and substance. Rhetorically, that these are offered is beyond dispute.
I could simply repeat my comment. You've not furthered hte position - just stated an opinion again. I gave you a reason why it appears to be bias.
Quoting hypericin
Then you should have clarified, huh? :joke:
Quoting QuestionerI was being polite. Psychology is fundamentally not a legitimate science in the modern sense, having more in common with theology. That's not an insult because I actually respect theology within its proper scope and am here merely categorizing it as non-scientific. Psychology gets closest to a modern natural science when it incorporates aspects of neurobiology, but to a large extent, it heavily depends on ideological framing which blows away as soon as the political winds shift.
My idea here doesn't necessarily conflict with Haidt's but Hadit's idea is in fact not hard natural science. But then, neither is mine. The kind of work I'm doing here is definitional: it would define what "Left" and "Right" would mean first, so that someone like Haidt could come along later and ask, "Why do people adopt Left or Right leaning political views?" based on a pre-existing understanding of what those terms mean so that they even can be researched. You can't even ask why people hold Left or Right leaning views without already knowing what Left and Right means.
It's not in the interests of my specific political goals to bring up these facts other than to demolish the Left, as I normally don't find these facts especially relevant to my goals, but noticing them at all is fundamentally incompatible with Leftist political goals.
And if we want to totally abandon even-handedness for partisan insult then of course two can play at that extremely stupid game.
How do you make the leap that being progressive means you hate the past?
Quoting BenMcLean
This is not accurate. Psychology is widely considered a science because it uses objective, empirical methods (observation, experimentation, and data analysis) to study human behavior and mental processes. It is recognized as a science by the US National Science Foundation.
https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/people-society
Quoting BenMcLean
But it doesn't
Quoting BenMcLean
Haidt's "ideas" are not unsupported conclusions, which yours seem to be.
Quoting QuestionerAnd where does the NSF get its funding? Oh that's right, from taxes, which means that any pronouncements it makes blow away as soon as the political winds shift. What the NSF says is a function of what the government wants people to believe.
Quoting QuestionerHaidt's research must presuppose some definitions in order to be able to do research. All research must, not just some. This is not a criticism of Haidt: it's an unavoidable part of the nature of research. Look in his early chapters. You will find that he either presupposes the definitions of Left and Right or else he presupposes the definitions of some other terms that are then later used to define Left and Right. I know this not beacuse I have read his particular book, but because I can read.
If I was claiming Haidt is wrong here, then I'd definitely have the burden of proof on that claim, but I'm not. I think you're dogmatizing Haidt's framing as the only way to look at things rather than merely adopting it as a useful model like that how kind of research should be applied.
"Progressives" often laud the pasts of indigenous peoples: matrilineal and egalitarian Native Americans, for example. Personally, I dislike the label "Progressive", because it implies "progress" toward a predetermined goal, and marching in lockstep to reach the goal. I picture jackboots stomping in progressive unison down the street. The old-fashioned "liberal", on the other hand, suggests open-minded generosity, acceptance of new ideas and differing opinions, and a willingness (but not a necessity) to change.
Quoting EcurbI have argued before that, in the politics of the United States, the conservatives have been the only liberals.
Perhaps the past admired by progressives is "mythical" -- but so is the past conservatives admire. Both pick and choose. "Make America Great Again" worships a mythical past of working class prosperity, but African-Americans and Hispanics did not share in it.
The "liberal" individual rights proponents the modern right admires (Locke, Mill, Rousseau, etc.) borrowed "liberally" from Native American philosophers. One Jesuit missionary wrote, "They (the Montagnais-Naskapi) imagine they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage anyone whomsoever, except when they like."
This was anathema ot Europeans, trained on the Divine Right of Kings, and obedience to authority. Hence the reference to "ass colts".
Father Lallemant wrote of the Wendat, "I do not believe that there is any people on earth freer than they.... so much so that fathers have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the laws of the country over any of them, except in so far as each is pleased to submit to them."
The Jesuits, who believed in submission to law, were shocked by this liberty -- especially the right of women to control their own bodies leading to sexual liberty for the unmarried and at-will divorce. (Lallemant apparently thought many Wendat women were out to seduce him (his own secret desires may have led to these delusions).
A book about the Wendat by Gabriel Sagard was popular among European intellectuals, and although Sagard disapproved of the libertine Wendat ways, he praised their powers of eloquence and reasoned argument.
Of course "freedom" is not admired by some factions of the left wing -- "Progressives" long for the lockstep they admire to be enforced. Communism and anarchism are both features of the left wing, although they are about as different as they can be.
(The Native American philosophy and its European influence is gleaned from "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. HIghly recommended.)
Ultra-patriarchal ways of life are characteristic primarily of settled, agricultural, and urban societies that have property, inheritance, surplus production, and institutional hierarchies. If by indigenous we mean societies that have a lot less of that, including hunting and gathering societies, then it seems to be the case that they are and were mostly more egalitarian and less patriarchal.
Quoting EcurbNeither did Austrailian aboriginees or the theoretical inhabitants of distant galaxies but when the majority population of a society prospers then that is, without qualification, a historically massive achievement for any society to ever be able to claim anywhere. Most societies cannot justifiably claim this: they can only claim prosperity for a minority population.
Quoting EcurbThe modern Right does not admire Rousseau and it's questionable the extent to which they can be claimed to admire Mill. Also, none of those guys ideas were genuinely based on American Indians. They projected the theological ideas they wanted to believe in onto them.
The closer people get to the harsh, brutal realities of survival in nature, being unsupported by large scale institutions, the less egalitarian they get. Hobbes was right about the state of nature and it's frankly amazing that Rousseau lived before air conditioning because otherwise you have to be on a hell of a lot of laudanum to believe some of the stuff he said.
Anthropologists treat it as an empirical question, not a thought experiment. The evidence from many small-scale foraging societies is that they're relatively egalitarian compared with most agricultural state societies, though of course there's variation. If you think that’s wrong, I think you should point to anthropological research showing the opposite. Simply asserting that closer to nature = less egalitarian is unconvincing.
I disagree. A society in which 51% prosper and 49% starve does not represent a "massive achievement", nor did the U.S. of the '50s and '60s. Besides, the well-paying working-class jobs of that era were well-paying by dint of the efforts of unions, which were all leftist. Also, the global economy and computerization have made such working-class jobs obsolete.
Wengrow and Graeber argue persuasively that the liberal, individual rights European philosophers of the 17th century were influenced by Native American philosophy. I won't bother to repeat their arguments; if you're interested, get the book. IN general, the book is an anti-Neo-Marxist approach to anthropology. It argues that instead of being shaped by class conflict or the economic infrastructure, simple cultures (like our own) are more intentional. People (philosophers?) think about the society they want, and work to achieve it.
This is.... not the case. there's some vague, unfounded assumptions in Braeber among others, that travel reports were somehow assimilated as philosophically serious, and adapted to enlightenment thinking. That doesn't seem to be particularly well supported, although, the previous denial of any influence is also apparently not well supported.
Not only were simple societies more egalitarian, but they were also healthier. Average height (a reasonable measure of health) decreased by 3-4" with the advent of civilization. Why? Probably a diet based on single grains, disease caused by increased population density, and polluted water supplies were the culprits. Of course the elites were healthier than the hoi palloi, but they constituted a small percentage of the population.
If nothing else, the age of exploration exposed Europeans to cultures with which they had previously been unfamiliar -- including pre-civilization societies. This doubtless influenced Hobbes and Rousseau to speculate about the essential nature of humans. Both notions -- that of the Noble Savage, and that of the brutish savage -- were called into question by reports (often confused and contradictory) about actual cultures. Graeber and Wengrow suggest that the popularity of the travel reports, as well as the information from actual Indians who travelled back to Europe, could very well have influenced philosophy (although it's not certain).
But if you take "egalitarian" you mean, "actually treating each individual other person approximately the same" then hell no, there is no way in which hunter-gatherers are egalitarian.
Quoting EcurbWhich means that this wasn't an achievement. (according to your standard stated immediately previous to this) Labor unions, by ensuring that white men got well paid, were nothing but tools of oppression, which didn't achieve anything as per your own standard from the previous sentence. Labor unions are thus bad instead of good.
Racial minorities in the United States in the 1950s-60s obviously weren't en masse starving. They certainly weren't eager to migrate to any other country, I notice.
Nothing I wrote implied that labor unions were tools of oppression, or that white men getting paid is a bad thing, although those unions that denied membership to minorities certainly were oppressive. My 49% starving comment is simply a hypothetical demonstrating the error of your previous comment that "if the majority prospers...that is a massive achievement."
Actually, black people were eager to migrate to different states -- legal segregation of schools, busses etc. still existed in many states in the '50s and '60s. Is that the era MAGA longs for? It seems so.
This is far from the case. The only calls for segregation recently (serious ones, anyway, rather than social media schlock) have been from the Black community.
When was the era of America/s 'greatness" to which the acronym refers? And weren't the pictures of the Obamas as apes posted on Trump's Truth Social by MAGA supporters?
The Russian Communists after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Then, before the Putin dictatorship, the "left" and "right" were spoken about in Russia in opposite to the West, meaning that the communists were on the right and the liberal Pro-Western reformers were spoken to be the left.
This example shows how with generalizations of a universal "right" and "left" doesn't actually tell so much. When we disregard the unique developments in various countries and the unique historical situations where political movements operate, the conclusions are usually quite bland and basically leave us with stereotypes that aren't actually very useful.
In 1918 The Finnish Social Democratic Party was attempting a similar Bolshevik revolution as had happened in Russia few months earlier and now in the 2020's the same Social Democratic party, leading a left-center coalition with a female prime-minister rushed Finland to join NATO alongside Sweden, which had also a female social-democrat prime minister. So a lot has happened to the "leftism" of the Finnish Social Democrats, just as happened to the "conservatism" of the Republican party between Lincoln and Trump. (So much, that the latter obviously didn't know that Lincoln was a Republican president.) Hence it's questionable what we really get with generalizations of the "left" and the "right".
This is absolutely nothing to do with the previous two comments.
You've claimed MAGA want to go back to a segregated society. It is vanishingly rare to find anyone asking for this, except in the Black community. And I'm not admonishing that here (although, I am of the mind that its extremely distasteful and hypocritical - and infantalizing fwiw). I am just pointing out that the Black community is far more likely to fight for segregation than MAGA, albeit from totally incommensurate/orthogonal angles.
That's not what I "claimed", although I think both Trump and many of his MAGA supporters are racists. What I claimed was that the era many MAGA supporters see as "great" (and want to return to) was the '50s and '60s. Racial segregation was legal in many states back then -- MAGA supporters may be ignoring it, they may have forgotten, they may find other aspects of American society (the Viet Nam war?) back then "great".
So it is your posts (not mine) that have absolutely nothing to do with my comments.
There's not a single invention or innovation that would exist without someone holding a significantly different view than that of their given majority. It's not that complicated.
What I said about Communism was an accidental property of the Left. Look at what I said the essential property was.
Somehow this type of discussion, in truth, is underpinned by a singularity, a basic term reasoned, a byword to peer from, wherever this elaborate rumination proceeds to hold the fore.
Quoting AmadeusD
If this isn't what you're saying, it's possible this is the single worst-faith post I've seen along race conversations since joining this forum.
But then, and htis is not a disparagement:
Quoting Ecurb
If this is true, I'm unsure why you'd shy from it. That's a fine position. I just don't think that about him or them.
I explained myself in my next post, which you quoted in part. What era do you think MAGA supporters consider "great"?
MAGA is largely a nostalgia project, isn’t it? I guess they would most like the post-war period, but their view is likely not to be grounded in a realistic account of life back then; more an idealised, romanticised one.
We have something similar here in Australia with One Nation and sometimes the Liberal Party (our half-arsed Tories). There’s a lingering view among these groups that there were “good old days” and that we need to turn the clock back to recreate them. They don't seem to mind a lot of the bigotries that underpinned those times, it seems. Perhaps the most prominent cliché available to us now is the idea that the current era is especially awful and that everything: politics, education, retail, food, cars, architecture, music, used to be so much better.
Yeah. I think that might indicate I don't think you did?
In any case, no particular era. That's a pretty egregious mis-reading of what that cohort means.
That's not to say some members are probably exactly as you describe. But its pretty damn small, as best I can tell. As with the general population... There's probably a higher incidence of like 75+yr old men who claim MAGA though.
Quoting Tom Storm
The exact bloody opposite my friend.
It's grounded in the national pride of the time. Not the political climate. None of them want Jim Crow (well, read above: I'm sure its not zero), none of them want to lynch anyone and none of them want to redline black neighbourhoods. That's just lazy.
I've pinned down more than one, and while they are long-winded to get there the picture tends to basically be pre-Vietnam American pride, with the rather extreme difference that it embraces every legal citizen regardless of origins., And I've heard nothing which would displace that type of claim. I've just heard different (i.e more or less articulate) iterations of it.
It certainly isn't nostalgia. That's... a really weird way to frame a political position which is decidedly future-looking.
Let's see: Trump granted refugee status to white South Africans, but denied it to people of color who were far more in need. Trump wants to kick Ilhan Omar (a legal citizen) out of the country. ICE persecutes people of color -- regardless of their citizenship. "Great Again" implies an Edenic past to which America should return.
Why is my take an "egregious misreading"? "Make America Great Again" certainly suggests my interpretation. You're the one who claims (against all linguistic evidence) that it's "future looking". Is an America that despises its traditional allies and is the laughingstock of the world going to restore "American pride"? Is a President who abuses the Constitution making "America Great Again?
So even before the Civil Rights Act, even under Jim Crow, the United States was still a land of opportunity for them better than what they'd find if they had repatriated to Africa.
I support Dr. King's argument in Letter from Birmingham Jail. So it is not my goal to bring back any anti-black policies we used to have. But trying to pretend that it wasn't already a relative privilege (compared to most other times and places in history) to get to live in the United States for American blacks in the 20th century before the Civil Rights Act is reality denial. It was still better to be here than most other places.
They weren't legally treated as equal, which was bad, but they got to live in a country where it was normal for them to own a television set before that was normal in most places on Earth. A country where, during WW2, American navy ships would throw away more food than Japanese ships of similar compliment got in rations.
You can call it evil all you want but the physical facts of American economic success in the 20th century are, within reason, undeniable.
Quoting EcurbThat is not the case, but even if it was, that would be preferable to any place governed by you.
Back before the civil war, slave owners used to claim that slaves were better off than Africans who had remained in Africa. Did that make it true? Did it excuse slavery, even if it was true? Slavery (and other forms of bigotry) harm both the victims and the oppressors, as Abraham Lincoln clearly knew.
Quoting BenMcLean
Well, in that case, I retract everything! But what if there aren't any good shows on TV?
Quoting BenMcLean
The only place I've ever "governed" is my own home, which, by all reports, is quite a pleasant and peaceful environment. It may not be the fanciest or cleanest, but the food is good, and so is the company. Also, I have cable.
Did you ever hear of Marcus Garvey (or other back to Africa movements)?
Quoting BenMcLean
Neither was the U.S., despite the rose-colored glasses through which MAGA seems to view it.
Quoting EcurbI don't even want your Marxist utopianism: I was just pointing out that Africa has never aligned with it because everything about your entire view of history is utter garbage.
But even if that's true, there most certainly isn't any less to history than the stories of great men.
Let's see: you've never heard of Marcus Garvey, but it is MY view of history that is "utter garbage"? Did I get that right? Also, you appear to think anyone who disagrees with you is a "Marxist". Where do you come up with this nonsense? I assure you I am not a "Marxist" -- but most of those who are probably know more about history than you do. Which is evidently no great mastery.
As a public educational service (which you apparently need) , here's a link:
https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/14736?login=false
"Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem in 1917. By the early 1920s, his program of African liberation and racial uplift had attracted millions of supporters, both in the United States and abroad."
So we're not going to come to terms here. I think you're alarmist and in doing so, saying things that are patently lacking nuance. There's simply nothing here that suggests anything about returning to a segregated society. But plenty of evidence shows black communities may want this. That is what we're talking about. And that is what I have given responses to. To give a flabour of how I'd deal with the issues you're bringing up, though (and to further show we can't see through this daylight) Whether Ilhan Omar should be in the country - i don't care. She seems like a shitty politiician who does not represent Americans, so yeah, fuck her. But i don't give a shit she's black or Somali insofar as they are facts about her. If she actually is there via fraud, that's what would matter. He may well believe that.
Maybe it's not so easy to move back to Africa. The boat fare costs money. Besides, just because people don't move doesn't mean they aren't oppressed. "Love it or leave it" was always asinine..
This is what you're talking about. I never said MAGA supporters want to return to a segregated society -- I said they seem to think America was "great" when segregation was in vogue.
Yet they stay. It is bizarre. You can leave the US. It's easier than coming to it. Its dull, but there's something to it imo.
I've already gone over that you directly intimated this, or else said nothing of any real substance. You seemed to accept the former, so I went from there.
I tried to give you the nuance you seem to be lacking in that assessment (although, its not way off point or anything, it's just crucially off point). It seems this didn't land - as I say, there may be too much daylight. As someone in another thread recently pointed out - it is hard to get truth. People will see waht they want, read what they want and assume what they want about others.
One can love one's homeland and be critical of it, and object to its policies or leaders. Leaving is cowardly. The lack of "nuance" and seeing "what they want" is all on your side of the coin.
Me thinks you've simply ignored most of what's relevant here. In any case, the point was that you are giving a bogus, strawman of what "maga" might want. That makes sense, because you aren't one and are bent against.
You are the one giving a bogus, strawman explanation of my position. I don't "continually deride" my country; I don't claim it is beyond help, and I don't claim it is fundamentally immoral. Where have I done any of these things?
You, on the other hand, are fundamentally immoral in that you misrepresent my position for your own nefarious purposes. Adios.
I suggest you read this exchange carefully. You have (willfully, it seems) misread me at every single turn, despite my putting you right. You are objectively wrong on these claims. At any rate, intentional or not, you are clearly wrong on what I've tried to say.
"No you" is not an argument, mate.
This cultural change may embrace some of the aethetics of American black culture as it has so far existed like maybe hip hop or whatever. Or it may not: it may need to abandon those things as too closely tied to the historical degeneracy. But either way, the underlying philosophy or worldview of American black culture needs a radical readjustment. The problems of the past are not genetic: they're cultural, which means that they can be solved: it's just very hard to do.
Civil rights was never going to be enough by itself. In the 1960s, it could be argued that what was needed was a combination of civil rights policies together with this cultural change, but we have the civil rights policies now and a white population which has overwhelmingly accepted the premises of the civil rights consensus, which leaves only the prescribed radical change within American black culture that definitely hasn't been done to hopefully achieve the dream of integration.
I believe in American whites and American blacks becoming one American people. But for us to become one people, whites aren't the only ones who needed to change -- both sides needed to change. From my perspective, whites have changed (since the 1960s) and blacks haven't. So, at this point, blacks need to change.
And the activist culture which prescribes that we aren't even allowed to say so needs to go the hell away.
That is the default right winger insult for anyone who says anything against USA USA USA. The agenda is very clear from the posts. They were on a witch hunt to 'punch down' on 'wimpy Lefties'.
Exact same argument white supremacist Richard Spencer makes in his interviews 'the blacks are better offer here so slavery was a good thing and they should stop whining'.
Maybe dont do:
Quoting unimportant
This in reverse. It's unhelpful and dishonest.