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Left/Right in Politics
Apr. 24th, 2021 07:01 pmA while back I wrote about trying to understand what left/right actually means regarding politics, because despite the fact that I would identify as a leftist, and despite the common usage of these terms, it has been kind of difficult to get a handle on what their core defining features are. There are so many, and so many types of either, after all.
But I think I have, if not a complete understanding, a considerable improvement on my prior attempt to understand this divide, which I knew was lacking in some way, but for which I couldn't quite articulate how or why.
My previous understanding was based on the conservative focus on tradition, which would mean that leftism would focus on breaking with the status quo while conservatives focus on maintaining it. There are certainly many instances where this dynamic plays out, but seeing it as the whole picture seems incomplete. After all, new laws and social structures can make society more conservative at times, and conversely, leftists are not necessarily preoccupied with abandoning all traditions, even if they are more likely to be critical of such things.
However, I do think there is something that really gets at the root of the core difference between leftists and conservatives: class stratification. For conservatives, class stratification is seen as good, and the only question is who is the 'right' class (or classes) to be on top. Class here can refer to race, caste, gender, economic class, intelligence, physical ability, or anything else that denotes a division of people into different groups whose societal value is determined primarily based on their division into those groups. Thus, when conservatives want to preserve tradition, what they want to preserve are the benefits of the top social classes that those traditions foster, to the detriment of anyone not in those groups. What they want to preserve are the traditions that say 'yes X group is inherently better than Y group and should be treated as such'. Thus, conservatives can disagree with each other as to *which* groups should be on top, but what they all have in common is the core goal to maintain a hierarchy of value for people. Whereas being a leftist means to reject the idea that some types of people are inherently worth less than others.
So that's how I'm conceptualizing the left/right political division now.
But I think I have, if not a complete understanding, a considerable improvement on my prior attempt to understand this divide, which I knew was lacking in some way, but for which I couldn't quite articulate how or why.
My previous understanding was based on the conservative focus on tradition, which would mean that leftism would focus on breaking with the status quo while conservatives focus on maintaining it. There are certainly many instances where this dynamic plays out, but seeing it as the whole picture seems incomplete. After all, new laws and social structures can make society more conservative at times, and conversely, leftists are not necessarily preoccupied with abandoning all traditions, even if they are more likely to be critical of such things.
However, I do think there is something that really gets at the root of the core difference between leftists and conservatives: class stratification. For conservatives, class stratification is seen as good, and the only question is who is the 'right' class (or classes) to be on top. Class here can refer to race, caste, gender, economic class, intelligence, physical ability, or anything else that denotes a division of people into different groups whose societal value is determined primarily based on their division into those groups. Thus, when conservatives want to preserve tradition, what they want to preserve are the benefits of the top social classes that those traditions foster, to the detriment of anyone not in those groups. What they want to preserve are the traditions that say 'yes X group is inherently better than Y group and should be treated as such'. Thus, conservatives can disagree with each other as to *which* groups should be on top, but what they all have in common is the core goal to maintain a hierarchy of value for people. Whereas being a leftist means to reject the idea that some types of people are inherently worth less than others.
So that's how I'm conceptualizing the left/right political division now.