Right, Left, and Imperialism-1

October 16, 2003

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The words “right” and “left” are used rather a lot, especially in the realm of the more opinionated. I would like to venture a definition of the word and see if my definition helps clear the air. My notion is that societies generally tend to be dominated by “social relations of production.” What I mean by this is that, depending on the way production is organized, there will be certain associations about what is a legitimate power relationship. In the time of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, it was usually assumed that the landed gentry represented a safe pair of hands. Smith was rather alarmed at the ascent of a class of merchants known as “projectors,” or later, “capitalists.” Smith’s term “project” was then quite pejorative, rather close in meaning to a “scheme” or a “hustle.” Later, after the Reform Bill of 1834, there was more evidence that the merchants and projectors had become grudgingly respected as the dynamo of British might. In America, different breeds of these fellows flourished different regions; a general flavor of the times can be gathered in the work of Mark Twain. There was enormous uncertainty and sang froid about fortunes, and that was the sort of person unto whom the fortunes of the nation were supposed to be entrusted. By the1950’s, the new managerial class was large, highly regimented and ultra-rational.

When these major shifts came in composition of managers and their credentials, the attitudes about who was suited to making decisions, and to who was a reliable stakeholder, changed somewhat. Notionally the country had been a republic the entire time; but the laws tended to restrict labor unions or trusts; sometimes corporations and their managers were highly regulated; banks were initially laden with regulations out of well-deserved scorn (in the 1930’s) but later rehabilitated. These changes came after people had come to accept a certain matrix of power relationships and social liabilities in their communities economy. After citizens were accustomed to being dependent on a middle manager, the concept seemed like the definition of normality.

During their revolution in 1789, the French began using "droit" ("right") to refer to those who sat on the king's right (that is to say, the left-hand side of the National Assembly as one entered the room). Part of the reason the right favored the king during the Revolution was a sense of affection and honor. They had served him when it was handsomely rewarded, and felt they should when it was less so. But another reason was that they knew if the bourgeoisie won the upper hand, their great privileges and tax-exempt income would be lost. It must be pointed out that the reforms which the "left" demanded in the period 1789-1793 put them on a collision course with the peasants and the urban poor. The left were, in the Constitutional Monarchy, demanding an end to all the old restrictions, prohibitions and orthodoxies. They were undeniably in favor of greater freedom, including emancipation of slaves (in the overseas empire), the end of internal tariffs, the control of schools by the clergy, and so forth. They were also intensely nationalistic, and this was a strand which would later infect the resurgent French right after the 1814 restoration.

The Left, therefore, were the people who believed the social relations of production were less important than the aspirations of the people, or of the nation. Whose aspirations mattered, did not change very much over time. Initially it was the French nation, because the alternative was the aristocracy. But the leftist nationalism of the French revolution was not exclusive in character; the radicals hoped that this sentiment would spread to Germany and Italy, which of course would have meant loyalty to the community rather than an ambitious elite within that community.

The Right were the defenders of the social relations of production. The people that the Right defended—aristocrats, various categories of managers (as time progressed), and ideological elites—were seen by the Left as a small group whose interests were outweighed by the multitude of others. The claims on social product by the conservative classes were seen to be less important than those of the greater number, as far as the Left was concerned. But the Right refused to acknowledge some greater set of mankind existed, whose claim on the social wealth trumped theirs. Both sides framed the argument in different ways; Carl Menger, Herbert Spencer, Nassau Senior, et al.argued that the claims of the Right (to paraphrase) were based on justice, or on universal social utility; their opponents, such as Henry George, the Christian Socialists, Fabians and American reformers, argued that they were depriving the great majority of humanity a place at the table.

(Much as I would like to, I can't go ino the philosophies of any of these people very deeply right now.)

Other countries, like the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Japan, China and Persia, had curious flirtations with civil reforms Usually there were emperors eager to see the nation's relative decline checked by modernization, but they were foiled by elites worried about their own privileges. This isn't exactly a "right" versus "left" dispute, but the rationales were fairly similar: the reformers (who varied dramatically in emphasis and ultimate goals) saw their measures as benefitting the largest group of people, and they believed this was more important than the preservation of the social relations of production. In all of the countries I just mentioned, the aristocracy had risent o power as part of the evolution of that country's contemporary economy. Now they argued that the reformers, instead of really modernizing the nation, would shatter old bonds of trust, inflict unworkable projects on the treasury, and violate the sacred rights of the old guardians of society. The emancipation of serfs or of women would ruin a time-honored social contract and leave the people rootless, since society rested on a vast hierarchy of reciprocal obligation and honor. In many cases, such as in the Ottoman Empire, it is true that the "reforms"—when they occurred—merely made the expropriation of empire more efficient. In such cases this was because the ruling aristocracy was over powered by its own "bodyguards," who had more energy and professionalism. This is why I say that such episodes as the "Young Turks" coup of 1908 aren't really examples of right-left dispute.

During the 20th century, the intellectual giant behind the left was Karl Marx (1818-1883). He adopted a logical system and extended it to every aspect of life. His writings and thoughts provoked a furous response from virtually the entire range of economic professors and philosphers. A large share of the views of Carl Menger were actually conceived explicitly to rebut those of Marx. While Marx's broad vision of the collapse of coercive states never came about, many of his views on the shortcomings of capitalist societies were taken to heart and later used to develop corrective measures. Marx's views are rightly seen to capture the essence of the Left, in its purest and most committed formulation. In my next posting, I'll write about the search for the anwer to the question, "What do people want?"