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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (68004)	12/22/1999 10:24:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I certainly agree,Charley, that in political discourse, "right" and "left" have "deteriorated into mere catchwords, more useful as epithets than proper designations." I would only emphasize that "left" is used as an epithet just as frequently as "right"; and, in a forum like SI, more frequently than "right." That is one reason that I personally am not comfortable with these terms, except when they are used in a limited historical context. In other words, when someone is talking about, say, "the French Right at the turn of the century," I know specifically what is under discussion. But general pronouncements about "rightists" or "leftists" usually strike me as unhelpful, to say the least. Another reason I am not happy with them is because they are of the either/or variety. You are either "right" or "left", period. Okay, there is also the "center" -- but that implies a position in between the two; you move a little bit here or there, and you're right back in the "right" or the "left." That does not allow for the fact that in reality there can be third, or fourth, or fifth positions on an issue that are not centrist (i.e., half-way between left & right) but different. Concretely: in some countries in 19th century continental Europe, for example, the Right was as anti-capitalist as the Left; the former, because its base was the aristocracy, still hostile to the capitalist bourgeoisie that had "usurped" its primacy; the latter, because it represented the working class, "oppressed" by the bourgeoisie. No way, then, could the spokesmen for the bourgeoisie be seen as representing a Center, a "moderate" position in between two "extremes." In the US, it seems to me, the terms "left" and "right" are even less appropriate, because of the peculiarities of our political and social evolution. Another way at looking at 20th century political movements has been to divide them into "totalitarian" and "non-totalitarian", a la Karl Popper. The problem with this approach, IMO, is that is often marred by reductionism (e.g., Plato as Totalitarian). The advantage of it is that it allows one to view the political spectrum in a completely different way, with the "democratic" Right and Left on one end, and the "undemocratic", or "totalitarian",Right and Left at the other. Joan