The piece in the Telegraph today, suggesting that left wing people move right as a pack as they age, without realising it, so they are less left wing than they think, is interesting so far as it goes. But there’s a lot of confusion about right and left, as terms, and this piece might just be representative of that confusion. What if, allowing that people’s views change over time, most of the “left” were never left wing at all?
The confusion, I think, comes from the desire of Marxist socialists to be considered of the left. Leaving them aside, temporarily, there’s a very simple definition of right and left available. These positions reflect tendencies or broad positions and constitute a spectrum rather than two neat boxes. But we could say that the right tends towards the support of institutional authorities exercising absolute power, and is concerned with grouplets – nation, race, religious identity – whereas the left tends towards human universalism and is suspicious of institutional power, seeking to limit it.
That makes the Papacy right wing and secularists left. It makes Monarchists right wing and republicans left. So far so good, that makes instinctive sense.
So what of Marxist socialism? It’s plainly right wing. It obsesses about grouplets (class mainly, but there’s a tendency for Marx’s anti-semitism also to be emulated). It seeks to institutionalise complete, totalitarian power. Both the BNP and the SWP show up as right wing under this definition, which seems right. The Greens are right wing, as any glance at their aristocratic leadership would suggest.
This would mean that most of the (socialist) middle class the Telegraph piece is talking about started on the right. They might have shifted a bit, but they remain on the right. Which isn’t nearly so remarkable as the piece suggests.
“the left … is suspicious of institutional power”
I don’t agree.
The left is suspicious of the power only of institutions that don’t share leftist aims. You won’t find any lefties complaining about the power of the bbc and its statist biases, or about the unaccountable power of the quangoes or fake charities. This is because those institutions further the desires of the left.
This is not unique to the left, it’s a normal factor in the behaviour of any political group; both left and right are more or less authoritarian now, in their own ways, which is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between them.
I meant, I define the left as those suspicious of institutional power.
By my definition, BBC-supporting “lefties” are in fact right wing, as is the BBC.
To me, there is a definite moment that “left-wing” ideals begin to transform into “right-wing” pragmatism.
Parenthood.
At that point (or shortly thereafter) there is a moment of sudden comprehension as traditional views on Law and Order, Education, Sexual Morality and so on suddenly make sense.
Those seem to me to be more conservative than left wing. You find social conservatives all along the political spectrum.
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