Left vs. Right, or Same-Same?

[Simple Minded]

The political philosophical differences but behavioral similarities between Mr. Perfect and Zack Morris have caused the ranks of the Triangulators to swell in recent years.....

vaguely reminiscent of Spy vs. Spy in Mad magazine.


mK3xRUbnBUw

[noddy]

thats not very diverse, it needs more one legged transexual lesbian poc's.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The overwhelming and widespread approach to the left-right spectrum is to shoehorn the two poles (but particularly the right, since its character has always been more oppositional than of stating a positive proposition) into timeless and ahistorical essences, to create a definition of “right” that unites Carlists and volkisch populists, Bonapartists and regional separatists, libertarians and Christian integralists, etc. etc.

This is a fruitless endeavor, but it is sustained by both sides for obvious reasons. The left is interested in having this timeless definition so that it can look back and say “Look at all the enemies I have vanquished, and that still need to be eradicated.” This is the siege mentality of a career revolutionary, whose job is never done.

The right is interested in this so that it feels itself the torch-bearer of a long tradition. “Look at my ancestors whose work I am continuing.” The stated mission is that we are preserving Western civilization, the European gene pool, the Church, something or other — knocking down this pretense crashes morale.

Alright, then. Here is my definition:

Right-wing movements seek the preservation of fixed, hereditary and stratified class distinctions in society with the concomitant privileges attached to them. Left-wing movements seek to abolish these distinctions or reform them to the point of becoming negligible.

“But isn’t this the Marxist definition?”

No, but before I get to this, some comments on the strength of this definition.

First, it supplies an ideal “ur-conservative” type that to varying but reasonable extents fit the first modern conservative movements — Carlism, ultra-royalism, legitimism, capital-T Traditionalism as ruled out by Vatican I (not to be confused with Guenon/Evola/etc.), Prussian pietist conservatism, Hallerian restorationism, the Metternichian system and its advocates, etc.

This ur-conservative type begins to water down significantly after the social dislocations of the belle epoque, with the rise of e.g. Boulangisme and the Ligue des patriotes, the anti-Dreyfusard elements in the Action Francaise, the Freikonservativen (high/patrician, but themselves negations of the higher restorationism of the Kreuzzeitung, as anticipated by the reformist Wochenblattpartei, or by liberal cameralists, see also “Alter und neuer Konservatismus”, etc.) and the volkisch movements (low/plebeian) in Germany, “one-nation conservatism” in England, etc.

With the Conservative Revolution, fascism and the myriad of yellow socialisms and third positionisms afterward, the bastardization becomes acute to the point of losing most reference to the origin point. The Nouvelle Droite, Neue Rechte and the various so-called “neo-fascist” movements have been beating this dead horse ever since, and today the European right consists of awkward coalitions of small-n national socialists with what are basically New Liberals (think Mill, not Gladstone) with centre-right social views.

This dynamic is at the forefront of our definition rather than being obscured by tangled up accommodations.

This definition doesn’t strive to posit a universal divide in human psychology, as that would be too overloaded.

As a beneficial side effect of our implicit ur-conservatism being linked specifically to high conservatism, we totally exclude all forms of populism. This has two desirable properties: a) we avoid the fragile apologetics needed to “traditionalize” right-wing populism which we discussed above, and instead identify it as the deviation it is, b) we acknowledge that all modern political formations are tainted by leftism without throwing our hands in despair about the impossibility of figuring out what “right” is beyond “non-left.”

Note I am not saying populism is necessarily bad. In normal circumstances it is, but we don’t live in normal circumstances. Too many people are emotionally invested in carrying the “right-wing” label that they take any questioning of this to be an insult. Now, on the political arena, the left-right spectrum is taken for granted to segregate positions and smear opponents — this is an unavoidable part of the game. But in a more intellectual setting, I don’t need to consider you right-wing to agree with say, your immigration-restrictionist platform, nor do I need derive any emotional unease from voting for people I don’t consider right-wing if I consider their policies worthwhile.

But back to the question of whether this is the Marxist definition restated. It is not. Economic “classes” are not really classes. Income brackets are not classes. Income sources (rentier, profiteer, wage-earner, etc.) are not class distinctions, especially not in advanced capitalism where the so-called “middle classes” can serve several roles simultaneously. Making more money than someone else does not make you of a different class from them.

The way political economy uses “class” is quite separate from the way an older jurist like Charles Loyseau (1564-1627), who spoke of “ordres et simples dignites.” Here, excerpting in detail, is what an order (or traditional class) is, as opposed to how it is used now....

It should therefore follow clearly that modern societies do not have classes as such. They are classless societies, and liberalism is the means by which classless societies are governed.

We do have social networks, clubs, professional associations and subcultures, but these aren’t classes. The “power elite” is not passed on as a station, it is an ever-shifting network of meritocratic entrants. I still use the term “class” myself in a new-school sense out of convention, but they should by no means be conflated.

August Wilhelm Rehberg (1757-1836), a contemporary critic of Kant and a corporatist conservative (though a reform-minded one), once defended birthright like this: “Human beings in civil society must be compelled to honor what their parents promised and began. No state could exist for long if children and other heirs were not made to take the place where the deceased once stood. Who would want to enter into commitments when the uncertain death of one of the committed parties released them of all obligations?”

Such an ethic is nonexistent in liberal societies, and it shows the classless nature of them.

Now, I was speaking to Benjamin Welton, and he made an objection. Does a rightist have to defend class distinctions if they are arbitrary?

My response to him was that there could be no other. Though, more substantially, any pathological configuration of “class hegemony,” such as say Bioleninism (I’m not sure if I agree with that theory, but regardless) isn’t “classful” in any traditional sense as I just described. All of these things require some form of civic equality, liberalism and other class-liquidating mechanisms.

But I also think such objections are rooted in this dumb feel-good theory of a “natural aristocracy.” That there exist some sort of well-defined social prerequisites by which people will assume the “true,” “fair,” and “organic” ranks and orders in a society on basis of their hereditary endowments without some “arbitrary” impediment. And that any ranks achieved through other means are parasitic. This is a populist and producerist rhetorical technique. Natural aristocracy is codeword for meritocracy, and all it does is overproduce elites.

That’s about it. I’d suggest that if you can avoid using the left-right spectrum in favor of something more expressive, go for it, but it’s useful to have this “hochkonservative” definition at hand as an analytical device that I think addresses the deficiencies of other meanings. And as far as I can tell, it is the original definition to begin with…

The Left-Right Spectrum Put in its Proper Meaning and Context

[noddy]

Id say their are classes but they are still more fluid than proper , hereditary based ones.

the reasons for that could cynically be put down to the explosions in numbers of humans as much as any alleged social evolution.,

yeh olde regions could keep track of the noble families and who married who, modern cities couldnt even dream of such things so the signifiers of high class become more open to emulation by outsiders, a degree of fake it till you make it becomes possible.

the permanent records of the modern internet may undo this quality, with everyone fully searchable it will become more possible to form strict classes again.

[Doc]

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