And this is a good reason why I don't self-identify with any political label at all, because they have become too rigid, and too impractical for me to handle. So thus, I have no political ideology whatsoever. :-)
Sounds like you're on the road to helping us found our next parties and political debate. You have a political ideology (everyone does) you just haven't discovered its name yet!
@@FrankDiStefano Ummmm.......No, i don't have a political ideology, nor do i subscribe to any political party. They have just come across as too rigid for me to handle, though.
@@americanliberal09 I don't mean to sound like I'm telling you what you believe. I just meant most people have beliefs and values they want to see enacted politically. But that doesn't mean one of the parties on offer reflects those values, which may be a totally unique mix of values and issues and concerns. And I couldn't agree more that our current parties are broken and no longer serve a useful purpose. Which is exactly what I hope people realize through my videos.
@@FrankDiStefano "I don't mean to sound like I'm telling you what you believe." But it looks like it to me. "I just meant most people have beliefs and values they want to see enacted politically." Ummmm....nope. Not everybody is gonna have an ideology. Some people do have an ideology. But some people don't. The real reason why i'm not subscribed to any political ideology, because it just has come across as too rigid, and too impractical for me to handle. :-P
Are you aware of the 2022 book The Myth of Left and Right by Verlan and Hyrum Lewis? It has the same thesis as this video, it persuaded me, and I watched this to see if your argument is the same as theirs and it is.
In the four quadrants spectrum, left and right are tied specifically to economics. That seems pretty weird since American politics today is almost entirely cultural.
We do need a new nomenclature. I realized years ago that America was founded on "liberal" ideals, conceived of as a "conservative" republican-democracy, and defined at times by progressive, authoritarian, isolationist, and socialist movements. There is still a spectrum of state power vs private freedoms, but that doesn't really define the parties across time.
I agree on your basic premise. In fact, left vs.right stereotypes are completely toxic to discussion. I'm some type of progressive, but I agree with many liberals and even conservatives. The problem is integrity. We have a political system that is sold out to moneyed interests, irresponsible, and nonreflective of modern america. As you have mentioned, so many epochs of U.S. history fall into outright corruption. Also as your series has demonstrated, opinions on both sides of the isle are valid, but we like to fall into a childish 'winner take all mentality' in this country. It is sad and unamerican. As in everything in life, if we can't work together, our failure is inevitable.
@@FrankDiStefano the general concept of left and right , based on the groups that sat in the French assembly , is that the right wants more government control over people and the left wants less government control over people socialism and fascism were new concepts in the 1800's but they could still be categorized as left or right fascism is the easiest to place on the spectrum because it is another type of authoritarianism like monarchy so you just place it under the far right of today once socialism debuted in the mid 1800's people moved them into the left spot on the spectrum that's how the left became associated with anti capitalism libertarians were originally on the left
We know that people place political parties along a left-right spectrum and European parties actually sit normally according to this placement. From left to right, they are communists, left parties, social democrats, greens, liberals, Christian democrats, conservatives and radical right. Each party is more likely to work with their adjacent parties, which is why they choose this seating plan. Why they should arrange themselves in this manner, when they have distinct ideologies and are therefore qualitatively different may be a matter of debate. The fact they do however is not. Even in the U.S. today we can see this type of phenomenon, where "moderate" Democrats are more likely to vote with Republicans, which is why we call them moderates or centrists, which again is a reference to a linear spectrum. Meanwhile, progressive Democrats are least likely to agree with Republicans, which is why they sometimes called left-wing.
Right=Traditionalist Left=Non Traditionalist. Capitalist=Right. Socialist =Left. Right Entitlment for the wealthy. Left Entitlement for the poor. Left burns the flag. Right waves the flag. The Left Collectivism. The Right Individualism. The Left strong Central Federal Government. The Right strong State Governments.
@@owlnyc666 Except for socialism being left, those are typical rather than essential positions. There are for example more monarchists among the Canadian Left than the American Right.
@@nickd4310 I will agree that socialism is colloquially to the left and capitalism to the right. I do not think that in America there are any "monarchists" on the Left or the Right. I will assume that you know more about what is the story in Canada. It remains that both the left and right in Canada do have monarchist. .
@@williamcarter7977 Except that today socialists also generally support capitalism. What separates left and right is identification, both by themselves and their adversaries. You can list for example differences between Democrats and Republicans, the left and right of U.S, politics. But the actual definition is which party they belong to. Joe Manchin for example is a Democrat not because of his policies but because he caucuses with them. The same is true of the Left and Right.
It's actually very simple to define Left and Right. The Left is for more equality. The Right is for more hierarchy. You're absolutely correct about the French Revolution being the origin of the terms Left and Right. Your mistake is thinking that it was Monarchy vs the Republic.
He addresses this. Why does the right favor free market capitalism in the US, while in Germany it favored command economy? Or why does modern liberalism favor a strong authoritative federal bureaucracy?
@@jabezcreed Because free market capitalism creates its own type of hierarchy. Using hierarchy as the basis for a left-right divide; Left: To socialists, anarchists and communists, i.e "the left", hierarchy is something to be flattened as far as possible. They disagree about the method, but the end-goal is usually the same - to get as close as possible to a classless, moneyless, stateless society that meets everyone's needs. Right: By right-libertarians and fascists, i.e "the right", hierarchy is considered natural and good, but they disagree about how one's place in it is determined. Fascists tend to place people in a hierarchy based on an in-group out-group dynamic that can be racial, religious, gendered, the list goes on. Right-Libertarians think free-market competition, i.e "meritocracy" is how society ought to determine people's social status. Both fascists and right-libertarians want radical changes to the structure of society to allow the mechanism they consider "natural" to determine social hierarchy. Centre: Here you will find liberals and conservatives, people who generally regard the current system as good, if in need of modification in either direction. Liberals tend to favour reform that leans in the direction of flattening hierarchies, while conservatives tend to favour reform that leans in the direction of strengthening hierarchies, but neither want to change the fundamental structure of society. These are people who might regard hierarchy as neither good or bad, but simply a fact of life. Obviously these terms are relative to your place in history and the political climate. To use the french revolution as an example like in the video, free-market liberals were solidly on the left in those days, while nowadays they're placed on the center-right in most of the western world.
Thank you for this. I have recently been hit with the stark realization that different people see "left" and "right" in completely different ways, which makes trying to communicate using those terms completely unhelpful, and worse than that divisional. Let's STOP using these ill-defined terms and talk about our actual values ... then maybe we'll be able to actually come together and get somewhere in society!!
Another common definition for the scale is small vs big government, particularly in regard to economics - often used to suggest one's opponent is moving toward being a Nazi (as if the key problem with Nazi ideology is economic?!). When combined with an Authoritarian axis (political compass), it does make something more useful, but is still flawed and Frank's explanation here makes it wonderfully clear why. I guess each issue could have its own scale, which may or may not be between two points and may or may not be associated or dependent on other issues and scales. I think that understanding the concepts laid out in this video are vital to constructive political conversation. This is the best left-right political video I've come across - great job!
Good job covering this. It's really difficult to come up with a definition that can be applied both globally and historically but I'd also add one the lines up with the experience of reality. The problem with perhaps the modern bog standard Communism to Fascism version that tries to argue the existence or enforcement of hierarchy is the main factor for instance is that repeated Communist experiments have either fizzled out quickly or repeatedly without fail led to totalitarian regimes virtually indistinguishable from something like Fascism. The tools for their very survival, like the decisive hyper-centralization necessary to putting together and carrying out the grandiose long-term plans or the massive military for defense and extending the revolution, themselves being the things that consistently lead to the shedding off of the features that were supposed to distinguish it. More often than not becoming statist, nationalistic, militaristic, hierarchical, dictatorial and even what most would call socially conservative in several respects. You have to be relying purely on abstractions rather than the real world expression of these ideas to organize politics and that's never felt practical to me. Frankly, I don't have much time for those kinds of arguments rooted in next to nothing tangible. Though of course on the flip side the big government versus small government one has its own issues but at least there's a basic objective metric to find rather than trying to make both sides giant conflations of ideas that don't necessarily have to go together. But of course it is also pretty reductive. But it seems like the people most dedicated to the concept are the ones who want to transpose some arc on history and that's the basis for the placement of ideologies. It's easy to just make the Right the bad guys and the Left the good guys or vice versa along that line of thinking.
@ I'm not thinking in terms of the French Revolution. I'm thinking in terms of what American Conservatives view it through, though many don't really realize it. We stand for as limited government as possible and as much personal freedom as possible without drifting into anarchy. We stand for the American form of government as it was established at the beginning. Libertarians go a bit too far, and centrists drift too easily into socialism. Therefore, on this more modified modern spectrum of actuality, political reality becomes much easier to quantify.
I know this channel seems to be inactive but i figure some people will still watch the videos and read the comments. I definitely think there are issues with the left-center-right spectrum for sure but I think it's a little disingenuous to say it's not at least pretty vaguely defined. For at least the last century or so the left has been more associated with individual autonomy and collective needs, freedom, equality, solidarity, justice, internationalism, participatory self-governance and economics, social progressivism and acceptance of differences, science/education, etc, (more simply put socialism, direct democracy or consensus methods, and social egalitarianism). While the right has been more associated with centralized power (liberal nation states, monarchism, fascism, theocracy, etc), rigid hierarchical social/ruling/economic formations, reactionary/conservative views, nationalism, ethnic supremacy, anti-intellectualism, traditionalism, strict social order and rigid social norms, upholding class distinctions, simultaneously demanding hyper-individualism in some scenarios (bootstrap, no safety net, every man for himself, etc) and hyper-conformity in others (submitting to those in power without resistance or question be it all to the state, woman to man, child to parent, etc, punishing anything perceived as "different" even when its something natural like same-sex relationships or pushing against gender norms, generally pushing for cultural hegemony, etc, etc, etc), religious dominance, etc. And the center being those who attempt to blend these things in some way and generally tend to have an incoherent worldview. However, there are those that defy all of these things like the U.S.S.R which was a wild blend of left and right and in many ways undermined itself constantly by doing so creating the very contradictions that lead to it's collapse. They claimed to want peace, freedom, and prosperity for all yet were almost fascistic in their approach, institutionalized violence in a way that was no different from a right-wing state and engaged in imperialism just the same, largely replaced the party with the aristocracy and the state with the bourgeoisie leading to little change in social relations (state capitalism and party dominance instead of semi-feudal mercantile and liberal capitalism and royal/aristocratic rule), etc. They claimed to be internationalists while constantly undermining socialist movements that didn't align with them and taking over the ones that did and being closed off to much of the world. They were just as prone to bigotry and patriarchal norms. All that and more which has lead to mamy viewing them as a right-wing deviation and even "red fascism", or fascism with a red paint job because their rhetoric, symbols, and stated ideals, intentions, and goals were typically dramatically different from their actions and results. Prior to Lenin very few accepted that level of authoritarianism and centralization as having anything to do with socialism (which they never achieved in all those years despite having it prior to the October Bolshevik Coup 🤦🏽♂️), Marx woulda been jumping off bridges. There are also states that are technically monarchies that have some of the most egalitarian and free living situations and places like the US that are a complicated mix of things that rarely makes sense. There's also the issue of the "Overton Window", or the acceptable range of discussion in a given area. What's called "left" in the US is dramatically different than what is viewed as "left" in a place like Cameroon which will be a little different from Laos which will be a different from Uruguay, and so on. So it's definitely mushy in that way. There is no perfect spectrum, always exceptions, a lot to consider and factor in, and better ways to discuss these things imo, but to act like left and right are just totally vapid and ill-defined just isn't the case. Just cause so many in the US are historically, politically, economically, and socially illiterate doesn't mean the whole world is. But again, I agree that it's a weak tool and at best a shorthand that only really tells part of the story. And democracy doesn't naturally split the population into 2 groups. Ideally it would split the population into many groups that work towards a compromise. So, the fatal flaw in your analysis is you're not separating what these groups want in the immediate term compared to their end goals and it's really those end goals that you'd judge left vs center vs right on. Pretty much no one is happy with the way things are and would like to see some dramatic change, thats not really a factor. A traditionalist/ conservative/ reactionary doesn't wanna keep things as they currently are, they're tryna retain some mythical lost past most of the time, they want radical change just like pretty much every other group. It's really where they're trying to go (and how they want to get there) that tells you where they stand. Libertarianism historically was a shorthand for libertarian socialist or anarchist or something along those lines, it wasn't til the Rothbard/Friedman era of the mid 20th Century and later that they stole the term and abused it to the point that it slowly became associated with right-"Libertarianism" despite them openly admitting they weren't actually libertarians at all. And they're right not because of their love of the power of the state but because capitalism is right-wing by pretty much every standard and they believe it should be the ruler of society with all the inequality and coercion that comes with it. Power comes in many forms, the state is just one. Again, I absolutely think it's a flawed method but it's not as complicated as you're making it out to be imo.
Love your content, but can't get behind this one... Liberal is left, Conservative is right. If this is the case - there's no such thing as Democrat or Republican, no one completely agrees 100% across issues.
Frank asks, why would the Right be for markets and "chaos" and "unpredictability" if being on the Right means being for authority? The reason is because being for markets means advocating property rights over nearly all other rights. That is, creating a hierarchy based on who has legal possession of property. Left and Right don't necessarily mean being for or against STATE hierarchies. The Left is for more of an absence of hierarchies (especially pathological and unreasonable hierarchies) of ALL types. That includes WORKPLACE hierarchies and other PRIVATE hierarchies. By focusing on State power vs private power, you are obscuring and hiding a very simple and historically accurate view of Left and Right.
While I get your point, I think you could have touched on one other definition, Equality vs Hierarchy, what do a totalitarian absolute monarchy, liberal conservatism, and anarcho-capitalism have in common? Both support some sort of "natural" Hierarchy. Both view have the view that orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural" law", economics, and authority. Both aswell have skepticism of "the masses" and democracy. What does Stalinism, Social Democracy, and left anarchism have in common? All support the idea that society needs to progress to become more equal. Wether in practice or not. Is this flawed? Yes. But I think you should have explored that more.
I've been trying to make this case for years. Everyone seems to agree, but then they immediately go back to using "left" and "right" as though it means anything. Of all of the dumb ideas perpetuated by the "media", this one is the dumbest and most destructive. When your basic underlying premise is nonsensical, it's no wonder the results are garbage.
Left and right are easily defined in a historically and contemporarily coherent way. It is a spectrum of hierarchy, with the left supporting a flattening of it while the right supports strenghtening them.
@@Fusseliko I'd say that's not bad, but something like Soviet Communism is considered "far left" even with its extreme totalitarian hierarchy, in practice. We'd be better off using words that have clear meanings that are generally agreed upon. "Authoritarian" -- there's a good one. Not much confusion there (certainly very little confusion compared to "left" and "right", which are directions in space, not concrete political ideas).
@@3dumb1smart It makes sense if you read about how marxist-leninists conceptualize the existence of their states. The soviet state apparatus was, according to them, just a stepping stone, not the ultimate end goal. Communist society is stateless, classless and moneyless, which they obviously never achieved, and they didn't pretend they did either. They themselves preferred to call their system "socialist" (in a leninist sense). The idea was that the state could be eliminated once certain (poorly defined) conditions were met and that until then, the soviet state only existed to "defend the revolution" and steer things in the direction of meeting those conditions. Now, one can argue about how sincere soviet leadership ever was in their pursuit of that goal (I personally think any sincerity died with Lenin, but many people think even he wasn't), or if achieving communism their way is even possible at all (many marxists disagree with their interpretation of historical materialism), but this doesn't change that in the mind of your average marxist-leninist, flattening the hierarchy remains the goal, hence why they categorize themselves as far-left and are often categorized as such by others.
@@Fusseliko The "hierarchy flattening" idea is about the closest explanation I've seen. I guess what I would like to see is 100 random people explaining what "left" and "right" mean. I do not think you will get anything approaching a consensus. I also don't think the political universe should revolve around this axis. The real battle is authoritarian, superstition, and arbitrary justice (all 3 go together seamlessly), vs self-governance, reason, liberty on the other side (these 3 naturally go together as well). This is essentially what the 1789 convention was all about. "Left" and "Right" should be used only to refer to spatial directions. The ambiguity allows too much room for influencers to claim "The Left wants X", etc. Who can argue against this type of thing when no one can agree what the words mean?
@@Fusseliko I thought of an analogy to explain why I don't agree with any of this. Pretend I just told you God wanted me as your ruler and he wants you to give me 50% of everything you have. I'm guessing you won't comply. Is it because you have an inner desire to "flatten hierarchies", or do you just think I'm full of shit and that's not the way anything works in the real world? "Flattening Hierarchies" is not a political rallying cry. Self-Governance, Liberty, Reason, etc are the meaningful principles that people care about and understand and we should focus the discussion there. Retroactively figuring out what "Left" and "Right" supposedly have in common is a pointless exercise and isn't going to do anything to promote progress.
Myth! It was a metaphysical term coined in 1789 by William Belsham to mean you believe in free will instead of determinism (the in between would be then known as compatibilism).
@@crumbtember I'm hardly part of the upper classes now. Yes, I have a higher standard of living than a lower class person back in the 1200s or even the 1800s, but that's not because I live in a republic but because I live in a more technologically advanced society.
I'd like to challenge the views expressed here. I feel this analysis falls short in many ways of providing useful tools for political analysis, and tries to direct the thought of the viewer towards an incomplete conclusion of "it's out of habit, arbitrary, and doesn't make much sense". If that is the case, why completely ignore the better tools of analysis such as the political compass, or even talk briefly about how political scientists use the left/right spectrum when it's relevant, and when they include other variables? There is already solid relevance to the left/right divide when looking at policies around wealth redistribution in the US. On that issue, the spectrum holds very strong, with the left consistently pulling toward more egalitarian and the right fighting back against it. It's the haves VS the have nots, and so long as inequality remains a fact of life, that divide remains relevant. Having more is also a good predictor of one's position in hierarchies, so the left/right divide becomes even clearer by overlaying itself strongly onto the hierarchy / anarchy divide. Libertarians in the US aren't really anarchists, in that they believe in the hierarchies that markets enforce. I know it's very tempting to see a popular term and finding some good reason to distance oneself from it, I get it, it's how we signal each other that we are smarter than "most people". But on this topic, maybe real wisdom would be to study the question in itself and not just find the reasons that run contrary to "the popular narrative" to hold a contrarian view.
What you're saying here is the left-right spectrum is predictive of the beliefs of the two team working in politics in America during the modern age since the New Deal. Which as arbitrary descriptions attached to each political coalition, they should! As this series explains, New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism, the ideologies of our parties since the New Deal era, are consistent philosophies. What the left and right are not, however, are consistent ideologies for human politics across time and place. No one who has tried has ever successful defined what those words even mean outside the context of a certain era's politics. Left and right are words we attach to whatever current coalitions are working in politics, calling one left and the other right. When the coalitions change, what we label and right then changes too.
@@FrankDiStefano hey, thanks for the thoughtful reply! I agree with you on how those terms are malleable. What I disagree with, is a suggestion that they can't be useful. I find them very useful to the unitiated, to start thinking about politics. Also great to get a quick and clear picture of any political landscape whatever the time or place. You set down where the left/right "poles" are to help you orient your instruments but you don't zoom in on the poles themselves. And that's way before we start using 'the political compass' or real schnoozy scientific quantitative analysis. Anyhow, please have a good day, and if you can, send my regards to your local punks and anarchists.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against it's existence. The Left-Right paradigm is a cultural phenomena with antecedents in human biology and evolution.
I wouldn’t say that, depending on what you mean by left and right. Because those are terms we continually redefine. The twentieth century left and right were stable for a while so that was an understood cultural phenomenon. But at other times those terms meant completely other things and to this day there’s hardly disagreement in what either of those terms mean. What makes something in the abstract left or right? No one knows or can agree. So they are temporary descriptions we define and redefine as politics continually changes. Not something hard coded in our biology
@@FrankDiStefano Do voters really think abstractly when casting their vote? I don't think they do. I could be wrong but I think that voters are motivated much more by emotions, instincts and unconcious drives. Politics is not a modern phenomena, and so I believe that voters are motivated by the same instincts and drives that motivated our early ancestors when we didn't have political parties, governments, etc.
Wow, so much wrong right off the bat. Firstly, you’re talking about economic spectrums, not political. Theres a massive difference. Most people refer to modern politics in economic terms, which absolutely has a measurable spectrum. Left are progressive/revolutionary, right is conservative. You can be all over the place with your world views, but parties tend towards either left or right. The ‘political’ spectrum measures left to right in terms or governance, so left is anarchy and right is totalitarian. So, economically the left is communism, socialism, nazism, fascist etc, the right are capitalists. Political spectrums reverse that, so the communism, socialism, nazism and fascism are all far right ideologies. Capitalism is centre left.
And this is a good reason why I don't self-identify with any political label at all, because they have become too rigid, and too impractical for me to handle.
So thus, I have no political ideology whatsoever. :-)
Sounds like you're on the road to helping us found our next parties and political debate. You have a political ideology (everyone does) you just haven't discovered its name yet!
@@FrankDiStefano Ummmm.......No, i don't have a political ideology, nor do i subscribe to any political party.
They have just come across as too rigid for me to handle, though.
@@americanliberal09 I don't mean to sound like I'm telling you what you believe. I just meant most people have beliefs and values they want to see enacted politically. But that doesn't mean one of the parties on offer reflects those values, which may be a totally unique mix of values and issues and concerns.
And I couldn't agree more that our current parties are broken and no longer serve a useful purpose. Which is exactly what I hope people realize through my videos.
@@FrankDiStefano "I don't mean to sound like I'm telling you what you believe."
But it looks like it to me.
"I just meant most people have beliefs and values they want to see enacted politically."
Ummmm....nope. Not everybody is gonna have an ideology. Some people do have an ideology. But some people don't.
The real reason why i'm not subscribed to any political ideology, because it just has come across as too rigid, and too impractical for me to handle. :-P
Are you aware of the 2022 book The Myth of Left and Right by Verlan and Hyrum Lewis?
It has the same thesis as this video, it persuaded me, and I watched this to see if your argument is the same as theirs and it is.
In the four quadrants spectrum, left and right are tied specifically to economics. That seems pretty weird since American politics today is almost entirely cultural.
I came to UA-cam looking for information on the Party Systems. Despite being underviewed, these are great. Thank you.
Thanks, I really appreciate that. Spread the word and share the channel on social media so others can jump on board!
We do need a new nomenclature. I realized years ago that America was founded on "liberal" ideals, conceived of as a "conservative" republican-democracy, and defined at times by progressive, authoritarian, isolationist, and socialist movements. There is still a spectrum of state power vs private freedoms, but that doesn't really define the parties across time.
Exactly, I view that the real battle is libertarianism versus authoritarianism.
@@megauser8512libertarianism isn’t the opposite of authoritarianism
Politics is pro wrestling, but with more ridiculous scripts.
I agree on your basic premise. In fact, left vs.right stereotypes are completely toxic to discussion. I'm some type of progressive, but I agree with many liberals and even conservatives. The problem is integrity. We have a political system that is sold out to moneyed interests, irresponsible, and nonreflective of modern america. As you have mentioned, so many epochs of U.S. history fall into outright corruption. Also as your series has demonstrated, opinions on both sides of the isle are valid, but we like to fall into a childish 'winner take all mentality' in this country. It is sad and unamerican. As in everything in life, if we can't work together, our failure is inevitable.
THANK YOU!! _Why_ doesn't this have more views??
Thank you, Charles. Spread the word.
Coz it's not populist. Sadly. It's not pandering to populism. A lot of people are just blind followers, these days.
@@FrankDiStefano you can fit all political positions on the one line spectrum
name a position that you believe can not be placed on that spectrum?
@@FrankDiStefano the general concept of left and right , based on the groups that sat in the French assembly , is that the right wants more government control over people and the left wants less government control over people
socialism and fascism were new concepts in the 1800's but they could still be categorized as left or right
fascism is the easiest to place on the spectrum because it is another type of authoritarianism like monarchy
so you just place it under the far right of today
once socialism debuted in the mid 1800's people moved them into the left spot on the spectrum
that's how the left became associated with anti capitalism
libertarians were originally on the left
Because it’s wrong. ua-cam.com/video/2UlCw3cvatQ/v-deo.html
We know that people place political parties along a left-right spectrum and European parties actually sit normally according to this placement. From left to right, they are communists, left parties, social democrats, greens, liberals, Christian democrats, conservatives and radical right. Each party is more likely to work with their adjacent parties, which is why they choose this seating plan.
Why they should arrange themselves in this manner, when they have distinct ideologies and are therefore qualitatively different may be a matter of debate. The fact they do however is not. Even in the U.S. today we can see this type of phenomenon, where "moderate" Democrats are more likely to vote with Republicans, which is why we call them moderates or centrists, which again is a reference to a linear spectrum. Meanwhile, progressive Democrats are least likely to agree with Republicans, which is why they sometimes called left-wing.
Right=Traditionalist Left=Non Traditionalist. Capitalist=Right. Socialist =Left. Right Entitlment for the wealthy. Left Entitlement for the poor. Left burns the flag. Right waves the flag. The Left Collectivism. The Right Individualism. The Left strong Central Federal Government. The Right strong State Governments.
@@owlnyc666 Except for socialism being left, those are typical rather than essential positions. There are for example more monarchists among the Canadian Left than the American Right.
@@nickd4310 I will agree that socialism is colloquially to the left and capitalism to the right. I do not think that in America there are any "monarchists" on the Left or the Right. I will assume that you know more about what is the story in Canada. It remains that both the left and right in Canada do have monarchist. .
@@williamcarter7977 Except that today socialists also generally support capitalism. What separates left and right is identification, both by themselves and their adversaries. You can list for example differences between Democrats and Republicans, the left and right of U.S, politics. But the actual definition is which party they belong to. Joe Manchin for example is a Democrat not because of his policies but because he caucuses with them. The same is true of the Left and Right.
@@nickd4310 Not only do Socialists support capitalism but so does Communist China.
It's actually very simple to define Left and Right. The Left is for more equality. The Right is for more hierarchy. You're absolutely correct about the French Revolution being the origin of the terms Left and Right. Your mistake is thinking that it was Monarchy vs the Republic.
He addresses this. Why does the right favor free market capitalism in the US, while in Germany it favored command economy? Or why does modern liberalism favor a strong authoritative federal bureaucracy?
I would disagree, the right wants small gov. Not big gov.
@@jeffbalog5161not true because the right wants to ban lgbt that is big government
@@jabezcreed Because free market capitalism creates its own type of hierarchy. Using hierarchy as the basis for a left-right divide;
Left:
To socialists, anarchists and communists, i.e "the left", hierarchy is something to be flattened as far as possible. They disagree about the method, but the end-goal is usually the same - to get as close as possible to a classless, moneyless, stateless society that meets everyone's needs.
Right:
By right-libertarians and fascists, i.e "the right", hierarchy is considered natural and good, but they disagree about how one's place in it is determined. Fascists tend to place people in a hierarchy based on an in-group out-group dynamic that can be racial, religious, gendered, the list goes on. Right-Libertarians think free-market competition, i.e "meritocracy" is how society ought to determine people's social status.
Both fascists and right-libertarians want radical changes to the structure of society to allow the mechanism they consider "natural" to determine social hierarchy.
Centre:
Here you will find liberals and conservatives, people who generally regard the current system as good, if in need of modification in either direction. Liberals tend to favour reform that leans in the direction of flattening hierarchies, while conservatives tend to favour reform that leans in the direction of strengthening hierarchies, but neither want to change the fundamental structure of society. These are people who might regard hierarchy as neither good or bad, but simply a fact of life.
Obviously these terms are relative to your place in history and the political climate. To use the french revolution as an example like in the video, free-market liberals were solidly on the left in those days, while nowadays they're placed on the center-right in most of the western world.
None Dare Call it Conspiracy by Garry Allen is the book that woke me up to the left and right deception.
Thank you for this. I have recently been hit with the stark realization that different people see "left" and "right" in completely different ways, which makes trying to communicate using those terms completely unhelpful, and worse than that divisional. Let's STOP using these ill-defined terms and talk about our actual values ... then maybe we'll be able to actually come together and get somewhere in society!!
These videos are great. I especially like the examination of politics from a completely non partisan perspective.
I guess the furthest right you could go for ice would be back to The free American revolution era where a king George was still in charge
why does everyone now pronounce "neither" as neye-ther?
Another common definition for the scale is small vs big government, particularly in regard to economics - often used to suggest one's opponent is moving toward being a Nazi (as if the key problem with Nazi ideology is economic?!). When combined with an Authoritarian axis (political compass), it does make something more useful, but is still flawed and Frank's explanation here makes it wonderfully clear why. I guess each issue could have its own scale, which may or may not be between two points and may or may not be associated or dependent on other issues and scales.
I think that understanding the concepts laid out in this video are vital to constructive political conversation. This is the best left-right political video I've come across - great job!
Left = supports more equality
Right = supports more inequality
Center = supports neither
Good job covering this. It's really difficult to come up with a definition that can be applied both globally and historically but I'd also add one the lines up with the experience of reality. The problem with perhaps the modern bog standard Communism to Fascism version that tries to argue the existence or enforcement of hierarchy is the main factor for instance is that repeated Communist experiments have either fizzled out quickly or repeatedly without fail led to totalitarian regimes virtually indistinguishable from something like Fascism. The tools for their very survival, like the decisive hyper-centralization necessary to putting together and carrying out the grandiose long-term plans or the massive military for defense and extending the revolution, themselves being the things that consistently lead to the shedding off of the features that were supposed to distinguish it. More often than not becoming statist, nationalistic, militaristic, hierarchical, dictatorial and even what most would call socially conservative in several respects. You have to be relying purely on abstractions rather than the real world expression of these ideas to organize politics and that's never felt practical to me. Frankly, I don't have much time for those kinds of arguments rooted in next to nothing tangible. Though of course on the flip side the big government versus small government one has its own issues but at least there's a basic objective metric to find rather than trying to make both sides giant conflations of ideas that don't necessarily have to go together. But of course it is also pretty reductive. But it seems like the people most dedicated to the concept are the ones who want to transpose some arc on history and that's the basis for the placement of ideologies. It's easy to just make the Right the bad guys and the Left the good guys or vice versa along that line of thinking.
I like looking at it as:
Left= more government control
Right= less government control
Far left = tyranny
Far right = anarchy
far right = anarchy? get yourself a book maybe?
@ I'm not thinking in terms of the French Revolution. I'm thinking in terms of what American Conservatives view it through, though many don't really realize it. We stand for as limited government as possible and as much personal freedom as possible without drifting into anarchy. We stand for the American form of government as it was established at the beginning. Libertarians go a bit too far, and centrists drift too easily into socialism. Therefore, on this more modified modern spectrum of actuality, political reality becomes much easier to quantify.
Most helpful!
Please, go here people: 5. How we know what Left and Right actually mean: who’s who, 1789-1917.
I know this channel seems to be inactive but i figure some people will still watch the videos and read the comments.
I definitely think there are issues with the left-center-right spectrum for sure but I think it's a little disingenuous to say it's not at least pretty vaguely defined.
For at least the last century or so the left has been more associated with individual autonomy and collective needs, freedom, equality, solidarity, justice, internationalism, participatory self-governance and economics, social progressivism and acceptance of differences, science/education, etc, (more simply put socialism, direct democracy or consensus methods, and social egalitarianism).
While the right has been more associated with centralized power (liberal nation states, monarchism, fascism, theocracy, etc), rigid hierarchical social/ruling/economic formations, reactionary/conservative views, nationalism, ethnic supremacy, anti-intellectualism, traditionalism, strict social order and rigid social norms, upholding class distinctions, simultaneously demanding hyper-individualism in some scenarios (bootstrap, no safety net, every man for himself, etc) and hyper-conformity in others (submitting to those in power without resistance or question be it all to the state, woman to man, child to parent, etc, punishing anything perceived as "different" even when its something natural like same-sex relationships or pushing against gender norms, generally pushing for cultural hegemony, etc, etc, etc), religious dominance, etc.
And the center being those who attempt to blend these things in some way and generally tend to have an incoherent worldview.
However, there are those that defy all of these things like the U.S.S.R which was a wild blend of left and right and in many ways undermined itself constantly by doing so creating the very contradictions that lead to it's collapse. They claimed to want peace, freedom, and prosperity for all yet were almost fascistic in their approach, institutionalized violence in a way that was no different from a right-wing state and engaged in imperialism just the same, largely replaced the party with the aristocracy and the state with the bourgeoisie leading to little change in social relations (state capitalism and party dominance instead of semi-feudal mercantile and liberal capitalism and royal/aristocratic rule), etc. They claimed to be internationalists while constantly undermining socialist movements that didn't align with them and taking over the ones that did and being closed off to much of the world. They were just as prone to bigotry and patriarchal norms. All that and more which has lead to mamy viewing them as a right-wing deviation and even "red fascism", or fascism with a red paint job because their rhetoric, symbols, and stated ideals, intentions, and goals were typically dramatically different from their actions and results. Prior to Lenin very few accepted that level of authoritarianism and centralization as having anything to do with socialism (which they never achieved in all those years despite having it prior to the October Bolshevik Coup 🤦🏽♂️), Marx woulda been jumping off bridges.
There are also states that are technically monarchies that have some of the most egalitarian and free living situations and places like the US that are a complicated mix of things that rarely makes sense.
There's also the issue of the "Overton Window", or the acceptable range of discussion in a given area. What's called "left" in the US is dramatically different than what is viewed as "left" in a place like Cameroon which will be a little different from Laos which will be a different from Uruguay, and so on. So it's definitely mushy in that way.
There is no perfect spectrum, always exceptions, a lot to consider and factor in, and better ways to discuss these things imo, but to act like left and right are just totally vapid and ill-defined just isn't the case. Just cause so many in the US are historically, politically, economically, and socially illiterate doesn't mean the whole world is. But again, I agree that it's a weak tool and at best a shorthand that only really tells part of the story.
And democracy doesn't naturally split the population into 2 groups. Ideally it would split the population into many groups that work towards a compromise.
So, the fatal flaw in your analysis is you're not separating what these groups want in the immediate term compared to their end goals and it's really those end goals that you'd judge left vs center vs right on.
Pretty much no one is happy with the way things are and would like to see some dramatic change, thats not really a factor. A traditionalist/ conservative/ reactionary doesn't wanna keep things as they currently are, they're tryna retain some mythical lost past most of the time, they want radical change just like pretty much every other group. It's really where they're trying to go (and how they want to get there) that tells you where they stand.
Libertarianism historically was a shorthand for libertarian socialist or anarchist or something along those lines, it wasn't til the Rothbard/Friedman era of the mid 20th Century and later that they stole the term and abused it to the point that it slowly became associated with right-"Libertarianism" despite them openly admitting they weren't actually libertarians at all. And they're right not because of their love of the power of the state but because capitalism is right-wing by pretty much every standard and they believe it should be the ruler of society with all the inequality and coercion that comes with it. Power comes in many forms, the state is just one.
Again, I absolutely think it's a flawed method but it's not as complicated as you're making it out to be imo.
Love your content, but can't get behind this one... Liberal is left, Conservative is right. If this is the case - there's no such thing as Democrat or Republican, no one completely agrees 100% across issues.
Frank asks, why would the Right be for markets and "chaos" and "unpredictability" if being on the Right means being for authority? The reason is because being for markets means advocating property rights over nearly all other rights. That is, creating a hierarchy based on who has legal possession of property. Left and Right don't necessarily mean being for or against STATE hierarchies. The Left is for more of an absence of hierarchies (especially pathological and unreasonable hierarchies) of ALL types. That includes WORKPLACE hierarchies and other PRIVATE hierarchies. By focusing on State power vs private power, you are obscuring and hiding a very simple and historically accurate view of Left and Right.
While I get your point, I think you could have touched on one other definition, Equality vs Hierarchy, what do a totalitarian absolute monarchy, liberal conservatism, and anarcho-capitalism have in common? Both support some sort of "natural" Hierarchy. Both view have the view that orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural" law", economics, and authority. Both aswell have skepticism of "the masses" and democracy. What does Stalinism, Social Democracy, and left anarchism have in common? All support the idea that society needs to progress to become more equal. Wether in practice or not. Is this flawed? Yes. But I think you should have explored that more.
I've been trying to make this case for years. Everyone seems to agree, but then they immediately go back to using "left" and "right" as though it means anything. Of all of the dumb ideas perpetuated by the "media", this one is the dumbest and most destructive. When your basic underlying premise is nonsensical, it's no wonder the results are garbage.
Left and right are easily defined in a historically and contemporarily coherent way. It is a spectrum of hierarchy, with the left supporting a flattening of it while the right supports strenghtening them.
@@Fusseliko I'd say that's not bad, but something like Soviet Communism is considered "far left" even with its extreme totalitarian hierarchy, in practice. We'd be better off using words that have clear meanings that are generally agreed upon. "Authoritarian" -- there's a good one. Not much confusion there (certainly very little confusion compared to "left" and "right", which are directions in space, not concrete political ideas).
@@3dumb1smart It makes sense if you read about how marxist-leninists conceptualize the existence of their states.
The soviet state apparatus was, according to them, just a stepping stone, not the ultimate end goal. Communist society is stateless, classless and moneyless, which they obviously never achieved, and they didn't pretend they did either. They themselves preferred to call their system "socialist" (in a leninist sense). The idea was that the state could be eliminated once certain (poorly defined) conditions were met and that until then, the soviet state only existed to "defend the revolution" and steer things in the direction of meeting those conditions.
Now, one can argue about how sincere soviet leadership ever was in their pursuit of that goal (I personally think any sincerity died with Lenin, but many people think even he wasn't), or if achieving communism their way is even possible at all (many marxists disagree with their interpretation of historical materialism), but this doesn't change that in the mind of your average marxist-leninist, flattening the hierarchy remains the goal, hence why they categorize themselves as far-left and are often categorized as such by others.
@@Fusseliko The "hierarchy flattening" idea is about the closest explanation I've seen. I guess what I would like to see is 100 random people explaining what "left" and "right" mean. I do not think you will get anything approaching a consensus.
I also don't think the political universe should revolve around this axis. The real battle is authoritarian, superstition, and arbitrary justice (all 3 go together seamlessly), vs self-governance, reason, liberty on the other side (these 3 naturally go together as well).
This is essentially what the 1789 convention was all about. "Left" and "Right" should be used only to refer to spatial directions. The ambiguity allows too much room for influencers to claim "The Left wants X", etc. Who can argue against this type of thing when no one can agree what the words mean?
@@Fusseliko I thought of an analogy to explain why I don't agree with any of this. Pretend I just told you God wanted me as your ruler and he wants you to give me 50% of everything you have. I'm guessing you won't comply. Is it because you have an inner desire to "flatten hierarchies", or do you just think I'm full of shit and that's not the way anything works in the real world?
"Flattening Hierarchies" is not a political rallying cry. Self-Governance, Liberty, Reason, etc are the meaningful principles that people care about and understand and we should focus the discussion there.
Retroactively figuring out what "Left" and "Right" supposedly have in common is a pointless exercise and isn't going to do anything to promote progress.
Actual libertarians are left,the US kind are right because of there support for radical capitalism(corporatism and anarcho-capitalism).
Myth! It was a metaphysical term coined in 1789 by William Belsham to mean you believe in free will instead of determinism (the in between would be then known as compatibilism).
"Nobody in any republic democracy wants to go back to a monarchy and kings." Speak for yourself, I certainly do.
Odds are you would be a peasant/surf, why would you want that?
@@crumbtember I'm hardly part of the upper classes now. Yes, I have a higher standard of living than a lower class person back in the 1200s or even the 1800s, but that's not because I live in a republic but because I live in a more technologically advanced society.
@@princeire7486 hmm I don't understand? Why would you want to go back to a monarchy with kings? :O
I'd like to challenge the views expressed here. I feel this analysis falls short in many ways of providing useful tools for political analysis, and tries to direct the thought of the viewer towards an incomplete conclusion of "it's out of habit, arbitrary, and doesn't make much sense". If that is the case, why completely ignore the better tools of analysis such as the political compass, or even talk briefly about how political scientists use the left/right spectrum when it's relevant, and when they include other variables?
There is already solid relevance to the left/right divide when looking at policies around wealth redistribution in the US. On that issue, the spectrum holds very strong, with the left consistently pulling toward more egalitarian and the right fighting back against it.
It's the haves VS the have nots, and so long as inequality remains a fact of life, that divide remains relevant. Having more is also a good predictor of one's position in hierarchies, so the left/right divide becomes even clearer by overlaying itself strongly onto the hierarchy / anarchy divide. Libertarians in the US aren't really anarchists, in that they believe in the hierarchies that markets enforce.
I know it's very tempting to see a popular term and finding some good reason to distance oneself from it, I get it, it's how we signal each other that we are smarter than "most people". But on this topic, maybe real wisdom would be to study the question in itself and not just find the reasons that run contrary to "the popular narrative" to hold a contrarian view.
What you're saying here is the left-right spectrum is predictive of the beliefs of the two team working in politics in America during the modern age since the New Deal. Which as arbitrary descriptions attached to each political coalition, they should!
As this series explains, New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism, the ideologies of our parties since the New Deal era, are consistent philosophies. What the left and right are not, however, are consistent ideologies for human politics across time and place. No one who has tried has ever successful defined what those words even mean outside the context of a certain era's politics.
Left and right are words we attach to whatever current coalitions are working in politics, calling one left and the other right. When the coalitions change, what we label and right then changes too.
@@FrankDiStefano hey, thanks for the thoughtful reply!
I agree with you on how those terms are malleable. What I disagree with, is a suggestion that they can't be useful.
I find them very useful to the unitiated, to start thinking about politics. Also great to get a quick and clear picture of any political landscape whatever the time or place.
You set down where the left/right "poles" are to help you orient your instruments but you don't zoom in on the poles themselves.
And that's way before we start using 'the political compass' or real schnoozy scientific quantitative analysis.
Anyhow, please have a good day, and if you can, send my regards to your local punks and anarchists.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against it's existence. The Left-Right paradigm is a cultural phenomena with antecedents in human biology and evolution.
I wouldn’t say that, depending on what you mean by left and right. Because those are terms we continually redefine. The twentieth century left and right were stable for a while so that was an understood cultural phenomenon. But at other times those terms meant completely other things and to this day there’s hardly disagreement in what either of those terms mean. What makes something in the abstract left or right? No one knows or can agree. So they are temporary descriptions we define and redefine as politics continually changes. Not something hard coded in our biology
@@FrankDiStefano Do voters really think abstractly when casting their vote? I don't think they do. I could be wrong but I think that voters are motivated much more by emotions, instincts and unconcious drives. Politics is not a modern phenomena, and so I believe that voters are motivated by the same instincts and drives that motivated our early ancestors when we didn't have political parties, governments, etc.
Please don't wear that shirt again in a video, almost gave me a seizure! 🤣
Wow, so much wrong right off the bat. Firstly, you’re talking about economic spectrums, not political. Theres a massive difference. Most people refer to modern politics in economic terms, which absolutely has a measurable spectrum. Left are progressive/revolutionary, right is conservative. You can be all over the place with your world views, but parties tend towards either left or right. The ‘political’ spectrum measures left to right in terms or governance, so left is anarchy and right is totalitarian. So, economically the left is communism, socialism, nazism, fascist etc, the right are capitalists. Political spectrums reverse that, so the communism, socialism, nazism and fascism are all far right ideologies. Capitalism is centre left.