BEDI: Defining liberal or conservative values is not as simple as it seems
Column: Through a Glass, Darkly
Anyone familiar with any level of political discourse is aware of the terms “Left” and “Right." It is politics 101. But more often than not, these terms are applied to movements and people in a wildly incorrect manner. Language matters.
And it is important to be aware of the historical significance of the categorical terms we use. After all, ignorance of what these words mean result in silly back-and-forth arguments, and endless incidences of Godwin’s Law.
It may be hard, if not impossible, to find a universal definition of “Left” and “Right.” Since the nature of politics changes over time, many may be quick to say that there can only ever be a relative Left and Right by time period. But treating the terms this way hinders any kind of historical analysis of them.
By dismissing them as relative labels, we rob ourselves of the ability to track these tendencies over time, hence the need for unearthing at least some underlying tendency behind the Left and the Right.
The simplest definition, the Dictionary.com answer to the question, is that “Left” refers to liberals and “Right” to conservatives. This is a less than satisfactory answer. It just pushes the question back another step. If Left and Right refer to liberal and conservative, then what precisely do those latter phrases mean?
An immediate response would sound somewhat like the following. The Right, or conservatives, are preoccupied with conserving or upholding conditions as they are, and the Left, or liberals, want to affect change in society. Though, this definition too runs into a roadblock.
Are radical Right-wingers who want to overthrow the government "liberals" just because they support revolutionary change? Are socialist parties who want to preserve welfare protections and labor laws "conservatives" because they want to uphold an already-existing system?
Instinctively, it seems wrong to put social democrats and French aristocrats in the same political category merely based on their attachment to the systems of their respective times. Preference for change then is not robust enough to ground these categories in.
We then might say that Left and Right properly refer to that political side that supports equality, and that side that supports inequality. John Weiss noted in his “Conservatism in Europe, 1770-1945: Traditionalism, Reaction and Counter-Revolution" that Austrian conservatives often chanted the slogan, “The human race begins with barons."
It is undeniable that conservatism was born as the politics of the aristocracy, as opposed to liberalism’s more subaltern appeal. The term “equality,” though, suffers from the same vagueness “conservative” and “liberal'' do.
What does it mean to broadly support “equality” over “inequality”? Does “equality” refer to equality of opportunity, or of outcome? When 19th century aristocrats showed solidarity to those in their class, were they expressing a Left-wing sentiment? When Vladimir Lenin stumped for a vanguard party to lead the revolution, was he turning to the Right?
In any human society, it seems as though there will inevitably be a degree of stratification and hierarchy, as well as equality, and both Left and Right ideologies have recognized and worked with this fact.
Maybe, then, to take a literary turn, we can say that the Right is the party of tragedy and the Left is that of comedy. There seems to be some kind of universal tendency amongst Right-wing thinkers, from Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville to Juan Donoso Cortés and Arthur de Gobineau to Oswald Spengler and William F. Buckley Jr., to see human nature as locked in perpetual decline, unfixable and prone to disaster.
Every generation’s conservatives cry out about the pathetic nature of their cohort. On the other hand, Leftist thinkers, like Karl Marx, Murray Bookchin, Michel Foucault and others, while acknowledging temporary setbacks and periods of decline, see human civilization as inexorably proceeding to an ever more enlightened state. The whole thrust of historical materialism is, after all, that history will inevitably end in socialism.
This definition applies even to fascism, despite its more triumphalist character. As the mid-century French politician André Malraux noted, “A man who is both active and pessimistic is a fascist or will be one.”
While there may be some thinkers who elude even this classification, like the late Marxist Mark Fisher, they may serve as exceptions that generally prove the rule, or herald a change in attitudes in the 21st century.
At the end of the day, "Left" and "Right" will remain terms shrouded in controversy and debate. The complex history of political conflict between these two sides has a great weight to it that forces political actors to rancorously dispute their opponents’ characterizations of them. The unfortunate byproduct of this is a public sphere that produces far more heat than light.
Sumit Bedi is a School of Arts and Sciences first-year majoring in philosophy. His column, "Through a Glass, Darkly," runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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