What defines "left-wing" and "right-wing"?

Members of a lot of ideologies suppress dissent. That doesn't mean suppressing dissent is necessarily inherent to or a part of those ideologies.
 
caveman1917 said:
and pretty much every communist that stood in [insert current leader]'s way,. There aren't that many hardline communists around these days, hence my remark about socialists in general (most today are democratic socialists) respecting individual freedoms.
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Sure. They are not extreme left.
 
caveman1917 said:
Who are not extreme left? Socialists are generally considered on the extreme/far left.
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Not where I live. Farther left than social democrats, but not extreme, as in Marxist-Leninist, or even Stalinist.
 
Oystein said:
Not where I live. Farther left than social democrats, but not extreme, as in Marxist-Leninist, or even Stalinist.
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Where I live Trotskyists make up the greatest bunch of them, so still firmly Marxist and revolutionary. But the distinction between "extreme left" and "far left" is probably quite fluid.
 
"The communists, the fascists and the liberal democracies disagree on a lot of things but they agreed on one thing: we have to crush freedom." -Noam Chomsky ;)
 
What defines "left-wing" and "right-wing"?

I would say that depends on whether you are looking at the bird from the front or the back. :D
 
Think I'll take advantage of this R-L ideology thread for one or three pet peeves.

Regardless of ideology, public discourse regarding illicit behavior among those in power invariably suggests that such abuse or corruption is a function of sectarian beliefs. This of course opens the door to claiming that a change in the party in power will do away with that heinous behavior. Nonsense, at core it is a question of the interaction of basic human nature and the lesser restrictions on behavior that pertain to power. Only arguing for generic pragmatic steps to lessen such opportunities and increase transparency make any sense at all. Left? Right? Think that automatically makes for 'good'? Forget it. Think any alternate political/economic system will be free of a cadre of the nakedly self-interested attempting to run the show and skim the cream? You'll be disappointed (especially the anarchists).

A corollary to that is that there are no professions or occupations that should ever be afforded freedom from scrutiny for the same level of shenanigans as the general population: eg., police, priests, NSA overseers, the wealthy and successful, or TV 'doctors.' As for the idea of monarchies, constitutional or not, well, double-poo on that superstitious pining for supermen/women.

Another pet peeve has to do with confusing the power of distributed economic decision-making with the darker behaviors associated with the term 'selfish.' While distributed decision-making maximizes individual choice and is freedom-enhancing, one of its greatest benefits is derived from overcoming the insurmountable complexity involved in any centrally-planned alternative, and certainly not from the stipulation to think as short-term and wastefully as possible.

Pure markets are a fictitious animal never seen in the wild, only in textbooks, and the models contain so many ceteris paribus assumptions that to use them as overly broad policy models in the messy real world is equivalent to placing the Tooth Fairy in charge. More systems thinking! Taxation and anti-monopoly regulation, to take two examples, play an important role in guaranteeing sufficient flows in the system. Let the stock accumulate untouched in any area, and you get stagnation. Redistribution for justice's sake is one thing, but you always need to turn over the soil and plant the seed corn to continue to have crops. All this business about "hands off my stack" and "winners rightfully take all" is brain-dead nonsense that thinks of individual achievement as something occurring in a social, knowledge and infrastructure vacuum.

So, in spite of whatever right and left mean anywhere, they are tired old categories corresponding to two ancient views that need retiring: (1) Man is a sinner and needs control by better men or (2) Man is a noble savage and needs saving from society. Simplistic and outdated in light of neuroscience and psychology, and bad for clear thinking.

[And while allowing myself this rant, one last dig. Due to the enormous gap between geological and human time scales, to think that any natural resource fully and unrestrictedly belongs to the tribe currently sitting atop it at the moment it is utter nonsense. Resources, especially mineral and ocean-based, belong to all humanity, including future generations. Neither Right nor Left ever stop claiming the contrary when in power.]
 
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Obviously, the concept of what what constitutes "left" and "right" must vary from culture to culture, but the terms can only be meaningful if we posit there is such a thing as a "center". I would presume the "center" would normally be defined as the status quo.

In my experience, centrists are those who are predominantly accepting of the status quo. Those on the "wings" are necessarily those who believe there is a fundamental problem with the current state of affairs, and that change is required.

Left wingers tend to support a progressive model, in the sense that they are working to institute a society that they believe has never existed before. Right wingers tend to believe that the ideal society has already existed, and we have merely deviated from it. They are working toward a return to the "good old days" of their childhood, or their grandparents' time, or the way it was before everything went to hell.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Think I'll take advantage of this R-L ideology thread for one or three pet peeves.

Regardless of ideology, public discourse regarding illicit behavior among those in power invariably suggests that such abuse or corruption is a function of sectarian beliefs. This of course opens the door to claiming that a change in the party in power will do away with that heinous behavior. Nonsense, at core it is a question of the interaction of basic human nature and the lesser restrictions on behavior that pertain to power. Only arguing for generic pragmatic steps to lessen such opportunities and increase transparency make any sense at all. Left? Right? Think that automatically makes for 'good'? Forget it. Think any alternate political/economic system will be free of a cadre of the nakedly self-interested attempting to run the show and skim the cream? You'll be disappointed (especially the anarchists).

A corollary to that is that there are no professions or occupations that should ever be afforded freedom from scrutiny for the same level of shenanigans as the general population: eg., police, priests, NSA overseers, the wealthy and successful, or TV 'doctors.' As for the idea of monarchies, constitutional or not, well, double-poo on that superstitious pining for supermen/women.

Another pet peeve has to do with confusing the power of distributed economic decision-making with the darker behaviors associated with the term 'selfish.' While distributed decision-making maximizes individual choice and is freedom-enhancing, one of its greatest benefits is derived from overcoming the insurmountable complexity involved in any centrally-planned alternative, and certainly not from the stipulation to think as short-term and wastefully as possible.

Pure markets are a fictitious animal never seen in the wild, only in textbooks, and the models contain so many ceteris paribus assumptions that to use them as overly broad policy models in the messy real world is equivalent to placing the Tooth Fairy in charge. More systems thinking! Taxation and anti-monopoly regulation, to take two examples, play an important role in guaranteeing sufficient flows in the system. Let the stock accumulate untouched in any area, and you get stagnation. Redistribution for justice's sake is one thing, but you always need to turn over the soil and plant the seed corn to continue to have crops. All this business about "hands off my stack" and "winners rightfully take all" is brain-dead nonsense that thinks of individual achievement as something occurring in a social, knowledge and infrastructure vacuum.

So, in spite of whatever right and left mean anywhere, they are tired old categories corresponding to two ancient views that need retiring: (1) Man is a sinner and needs control by better men or (2) Man is a noble savage and needs saving from society. Simplistic and outdated in light of neuroscience and psychology, and bad for clear thinking.

[And while allowing myself this rant, one last dig. Due to the enormous gap between geological and human time scales, to think that any natural resource fully and unrestrictedly belongs to the tribe currently sitting atop it at the moment it is utter nonsense. Resources, especially mineral and ocean-based, belong to all humanity, including future generations. Neither Right nor Left ever stop claiming the contrary when in power.]
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You make some good points. Except this part:
... corresponding to two ancient views that need retiring: (1) Man is a sinner and needs control by better men or (2) Man is a noble savage and needs saving from society. Simplistic and outdated in light of neuroscience and psychology, and bad for clear thinking.
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The rest of what you said had more truth in it while this has none that I can see. Your logic went somewhere here that doesn't match the rest of your observations. I can't even follow which side of the isle you put these two POVs on.

I don't think people have this kind of rationale behind government vs free market, or behind individual vs community rights.
 
I judge by the attitude to inherited wealth and status. The right are fer it, the left are agin it. By those terms the early great men of the Industrial North-East were bloody insurgents, which suits me.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
You make some good points. Except this part:
The rest of what you said had more truth in it while this has none that I can see. Your logic went somewhere here that doesn't match the rest of your observations. I can't even follow which side of the isle you put these two POVs on.

I don't think people have this kind of rationale behind government vs free market, or behind individual vs community rights.
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What I meant as (1) is the authoritarian view that there are unquestionable truths needing enforcing and protection (values, beliefs), and as (2) the idea that individuals would all play nice if they were not corrupted by society (cf purges of capitalist inroaders under Pol Pot or Mao in re-education camps). If you flesh out these underlying views, you get the support arguments normally advanced for right or left leaning economic and social policies (although I oversimplify for convenience, of course).

Or in other words, people are held as esteemed noble beings by the left, and shortcomings are downplayed, while the right plays up cookie-cutter non-solutions to those same short-comings. Translated, eg that means social programs ought to be strongly designed to prevent the fraud the left ignores, but the fraud should not be cherry-picked by the right to delegitimize the entire concept. The messy, ambiguous and uncertain middle is what we should strive for, imo, each small policy and program step taken to advance pragmatically, without ideologically-driven formulae mandating conformity with some sweeping and eventually harmful vision.
 
bit_pattern said:
Structure v. agency
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Way too simplistic. It begs too many questions. I can give you Left/Right versions of either of those.

Skeptic Ginger said:
You make some good points. Except this part:

Quote:
... corresponding to two ancient views that need retiring: (1) Man is a sinner and needs control by better men or (2) Man is a noble savage and needs saving from society. Simplistic and outdated in light of neuroscience and psychology, and bad for clear thinking.
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The rest of what you said had more truth in it while this has none that I can see. Your logic went somewhere here that doesn't match the rest of your observations. I can't even follow which side of the isle you put these two POVs on.
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Because you can't. BOTH PoVs can be found at BOTH ends of the spectrum.
 
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CapelDodger said:
I judge by the attitude to inherited wealth and status. The right are fer it, the left are agin it. By those terms the early great men of the Industrial North-East were bloody insurgents, which suits me.
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They didn't try to transmit their wealth and status to their own children? Also you pay no attention to the conditions of work, and the levels of pay, to which these "insurgents" subjected their employees. That too is a preoccupation of the "left".
 
cornsail said:
"The communists, the fascists and the liberal democracies disagree on a lot of things but they agreed on one thing: we have to crush freedom." -Noam Chomsky ;)
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Noam Chomsky spouts Anarchist nonsense. What a surprise.
 
Craig B said:
They didn't try to transmit their wealth and status to their own children?
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Not all of them, no, and it wasn't in the main their motivation. A man does right by his family, of course, but their ambitions weren't dynastic. They created companies, enterprises, cathedrals of industry to house their egos, centres of power. All for their own satisfaction in their own lifetimes. A man proving his worth by what he did not who he was. A dynasty just served to perpetuate their greatness, and perhaps their power for a while. Broad brush, but there it is.

Also you pay no attention to the conditions of work, and the levels of pay, to which these "insurgents" subjected their employees. That too is a preoccupation of the "left".
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It is now. Back then being of the left meant breaking the hold of inherited privilege on wealth and society. It's up to people to take advantage or not. Where "not" implies being taken advantage of. It was ever thus.
 
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