manny_ramirez
04.02.05, 15:10
...zainteresowanych dyskusja o lewicy i prawicy
The end of left and right
Is Osama bin Laden left-wing or right-wing? How about Robert Mugabe? Who has
a more left-wing approach to women’s sexuality: Pope John Paul or Hustler
magazine? Consider Fidel Castro. He persecutes homosexuals, crushes trade
unions, forbids democratic elections, executes opponents and criminals, is a
billionaire in a country of very poor people and has decreed that a member of
his family shall succeed him in power. Is Castro left-wing or right-wing?
Explain your answer.
The great intellectual curse of the French Revolution, which has crippled
political thought for more than two centuries, was the reduction of all
discourse into ‘left’ and ‘right’. From the beginning it was an infantile
notion that replaced rational argument with a playground division into two
gangs who understood nothing clearly except how much they hated each other.
Despite the fact that nobody has ever been able to define the beliefs
of ‘left’ and ‘right’ or the differences between them, this has not stopped
political humanity joining these sides and facing each other with all the
fury of Lilliput and Blefuscu fighting over whether to break eggs at the big
end or small end. The resulting feuding has been sterile and idiotic. It has
stymied political philosophy. It must end if we are to progress with rational
politics, and I believe the only way this can happen is if some major actor
enters the world stage with such gigantic contradictions that he throws
political analysis into confusion and breaks the moulds of ‘left’
and ‘right’. I believe this saviour has now arrived.
Before announcing him, I should like to spend a paragraph or two grinding out
the illogic of ‘left’ and ‘right’. Take the notions of privilege and
equality. Is rule by a privileged elite right-wing? If so, communism, which
always results in rule by a tiny governing group that has exclusive power and
privilege quite unknown to the rulers in capitalist countries, must be very
right-wing. Is the proletariat more left-wing than the aristocracy and
bourgeoisie? For example, are the views of a London taxi-driver on
immigration and homosexual marriage more left-wing than those of Prince
Charles?
What is the meaning of ‘He is to the right of Attila the Hun’? Was Attila
right-wing because he was violent and cruel? Lenin was more violent and
cruel. Is Lenin to the right of Attila the Hun?
Some owl, from the Economist, I think, wrote, ‘The right believe in economic
freedom, the left in personal freedom.’ Very well, a key economic freedom is
free movement of labour and a key personal freedom is the right to own a
firearm. So, does a right-wing Englishman believe people from Africa should
have unlimited right to enter Britain looking for work, and does a left-wing
Englishman believe all Britons should have the right to carry revolvers?
What about the free market and state control? Are regimes left-wing or right-
wing when the economy is heavily controlled by the state, such as the Soviet
Union, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba and apartheid South Africa? Is it left-
wing or right-wing to believe in free trade, like Adam Smith and Karl Marx?
When the movement of citizens within a country is controlled by internal
passports, such as in the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa, is this a
measure of the left or the right? Is it left-wing or right-wing to hate
capitalism, like Hitler, Lenin and the fathers of apartheid?
Is internationalism more right-wing than nationalism? Internationalist people
and organisations include Adam Smith, Coca Cola, Karl Marx, McDonald’s,
Trotsky, Microsoft, the United Nations, Toyota and the World Trade
Organisation. Those opposed to internationalism include Hitler, the anti-
globalisation demonstrators, Verwoerd, Stalin and Naomi Klein. I was in
England for the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should stay in Europe. On
the No side were Enoch Powell, Tony Benn, Ian Paisley, Michael Foot, the
Communist party and the National Front. On the Yes side were Harold Wilson,
Edward Heath and grandees from the Labour and Conservative parties. Which was
the left-wing side?
How about attitudes towards the weak and the strong? Does the left or the
right protect the strong but not the weak? Take the extreme examples of each —
an unborn baby and an adult murderer. Is it very right-wing to allow the
killing of the innocent baby but not the killing of the guilty adult?
Would you classify as left or right the Englishman in the last century who
urged a massive increase in public spending and made the most radical
proposal for a national health scheme that Britain had ever seen? I refer, of
course, to Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader.
Is racism left-wing or right-wing? Pol Pot established an extreme version of
communism in Cambodia and proceeded to slaughter the minority races,
including the Vietnamese. His genocide was proportionally on a par with
Hitler’s. Was he an extreme left-winger? Was Hitler too? Is it left-wing or
right-wing to legislate to reduce the representation of a minority race in
the professions, as was done by Hitler in Germany against the Jews and by the
ANC in South Africa against the whites? The 1922 slogan of the Communist
party in South Africa was ‘Workers of the World Unite, and Fight for a White
South Africa!’ Was this a left-wing slogan?
When the forces of radical change meet the forces of ancient privilege, which
side is left and which side is right? The most revolutionary British prime
minister of the 20th century was Margaret Thatcher, who brought sweeping
changes and confronted forces of tradition, the trade unions, that had
privileges going back to the Middle Ages. Who was left-wing — Thatcher or the
unions?
Is it left-wing or right-wing to rebel against imperialism? Was Paul Kruger,
who led the most serious armed rebellion against the British empire, a left-
winger? Consider personal habits. Is it left-wing or right-wing to be a
vegetarian, teetotaller and animal lover (Hitler)? To enjoy boxing and
shooting animals (Nelson Mandela)? What about authority versus
permissiveness? Nazis and communists love ‘discipline’. Is this an attitude
of the right or the left? What about censorship versus free speech? Is it
left-wing or right-wing to believe strongly in censorship; say, wanting to
prevent publication of a report that suggests that certain races have higher
IQs than others?
I could go on and on. The fact is that the terms ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’
are meaningless. When people fail to define these terms, they sometimes
resort to the foolish argument, ‘You cannot define an elephant but you know
one when you see one.’ Of course you can define an elephant: an elephant is a
mammal with a trunk and an average adult weight of over three tons. People
can neither define ‘left’ and ‘right’ nor recognise left-wing or right-wing
philosophies when they see them, because they never see them. They do not
exist.
All that exists is a bogus division into two groups who lay aside the effort
of thought for the lazy indulgence of hatred. The terms of abuse each side
hurls at the other are the same, and so are the terms of affection each side
reserves for itself. ‘I’m a right-wing bastard’ means exactly the same
as ‘I’m a left-wing bastard’. It means, ‘I’m an adorable brute.’
There seems to be some inherent flaw in the human brain that encourages
people to fissure into two groups who loathe each other. Almost a
