Why You Should Stop Using the Concepts "Left-wing" and "Right-wing"

Just give me a chance! It's important.

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You are going to want to reject this notion ... may even have dismissed it already.  So is it worth trying to persuade you?  

Before I tell you the real reason, I'll warm up by trying to score some minor points against the concepts.  

(It is worse than you think too: I give "left- or right-wing" as exemplars, but the same probably goes for terms like "conservative", "liberal", "progressive" and so on)!  

Hear out my case: it could be interesting - you never know.  You may even agree with parts.

1   Misunderstood, because badly defined 

If you're using terms like "left-wing" and "right wing" you're having a political discussion.  You've already gone beyond the age-old advice to avoid "sex, politics and religion".  And why does that advice exist?  Because it's so easy to offend people.  So if you're treading on dangerous ground, it's a good idea to say things that they understand, even if they don't agree.  You don't want them thinking that you have some outrageous view that you don't actually have.  As anybody knows who has been to school, and studied maths or science or logic or law or ... anything that involves rigorous thinking, a basic step is define your terms.

Perhaps it's just me, but political terms all seem really badly defined.  In normal discussion people won't bother to define what they mean by "left-wing", so it's not just badly defined, but undefined.  And people mean different things when they say "left-wing".  Comparing the US and UK - in the US there seems to be a stronger association with Communism.  In the UK I'd say most people take “left-wing” to mean "people who put more emphasis than average on supporting the less fortunate"; whilst "right-wing" may be construed as something like "she puts more emphasis on doing something about making sure there is plenty of cake to be shared out, before sharing it"¹.  You cannot have a meaningful discussion when you think they mean the same as you by "left-wing", when in fact they mean something else.

2   Generalisations

Next - "left-wing" and "right-wing" are generalisations, and it's normally better to be specific if possible.

For example, take the statement "Hitler was evil".  There are times when this may be the best way to put it; but normally, whenever possible, it's better to be specific.   "Hitler did X, Y and Z; and X was a bad thing to do because it broke this principle.  Y was a terrible thing to do because it broke these principles ...”

Those latter statements are specific: they involve seeing things clearly, and communicating them clearly.  Merely generalising "Hitler was evil" adds nothing; it's often lazy: it avoids having to think about what you really mean.  It avoids facing the question "do I really know in what way he was evil, or am I just parroting an idea I've often heard.  It's quite possible that - for somebody - the subject is too emotional to do better than "Hitler was evil": well, fine.  If you are unable to think rationally about it - fair enough: but recognise that.  But was Hitler only evil? Was everything he did evil?   Does that mean all vegetarians are evil? Probably not.  Was it evil when he banned cigarette advertising and put health warnings on cigarette packets?  I'm not saying the answer to that question is "yes" or "no"; merely that ideally you should be clear in your mind about what you mean ... and preferably communicate it.  So that people don't guess, or jump to the wrong conclusion, and put the wrong construction on what you mean by a generalisation like “evil”, it is better to be clear, and specific.  

If you think - as most people would - that it would be a important to learn from the phenomenon of Hitler, then it would be a good idea to be aware of exactly where he overstepped the line, and why, and in what respects.  In saying "be aware of exactly where he overstepped..." I'm not implying that he just “put a toe over the line”, I'm saying that even if he stepped a mile over the line, "where exactly was that line?", and "how do you recognise it," so we can apply that knowledge as we look at the World today.

If you can be clear about exactly what it is you disapprove of, then those ideas can be applied to other situations.  "Hitler was evil" doesn't give anything useful that can be applied more widely.  So as a general rule, if you're trying to say something useful, be specific rather than use a generalisation (like left- and right-wing).

3  Prejudices: generalisations are at the root of prejudices (and I'm assuming we all disapprove of those).

Prejudices happen in two stages: reasoning from the particular to the general, then from the general to the particular. And both stages vary in how accurate and reliable they are. It’s easier to think of a concrete example.

Suppose you meet your first man from village B.  He is very tall.  The next man you meet from there is also pretty tall.  Then you meet a woman from village B and she is tall.  You might then reason or conclude - even subconsciously - that "people from village B are tall".  You have reasoned from the particular to the general; from those three particular instances, to a generalisation.  You have effectively taken a sample of three, and assumed that it is a representative sample.  I don't have the book with me at the moment, but I think Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow makes clear that humans - even those with PhD level training in statistics - instinctively use far too small samples from which to make good conclusions.

The second half of the mechanism of prejudice is to reason from the general to the particular.  You've arrived at the generalisation that people in that village are tall; now you assume that the particular person you are about to meet - whom you know to be from that village - is tall.  This is the part that is normally wrong to do; it is prejudice - pre-judging an individual on a generalisation.  You are not going to do that unless you have first made the generalisation.  

I don't think we can do without generalisations, in fact they are useful, probably essential.  What I am saying is that it's better to be specific if you can.

I won't explore any further here; although this footnote² is an interesting and important exercise to do.  I simply note that generalisations are at the root of prejudices.  What assumptions are you going to make about a particular individual based on someone's generalising assessment of them as "left-wing" or "right-wing" or "moderate" (or whatever you call the middle)?  Whatever those assumptions are, they are based on a generalisation, and so they are prejudices, and probably on the flimsiest of grounds.

4  The REAL reason why "left-wing" and "right-wing" are destructive concepts to use

OK, I've had three swipes at the concepts - badly defined, generalisations and producing prejudice.  Now let me try and explain the real reason why they are destructive concepts to use.

A little while ago, when I was about 14, there was a sixth-former who was doing a maths project as part of his A-level or scholarship studies.  His very progressive teacher has arranged for a few promising mathematicians to be able to go into the nearby city's university and use their computer.  At this time only a few universities can boast that they have a computer!  You will probably not appreciate this, but a computer is a device that takes up several rooms, filled from top to bottom with glass valves ... and is usually inoperable due to having to find the valve that has recently stopped working, out of the hundreds there.  (You can imagine my confusion when I was first confronted with people referring to a small box as a computer).  Eventually the sixth-former succeeded in using the computer to do some number-crunching.

His project involved getting volunteers to answer surveys of about 30 multiple-choice questions which were designed to assess your attitudes based on two scales.

One scale was how liberal or authoritarian³ you are; the other was how left- or right-wing you are.  He had an algorithm which assigned a weighting to each question on what it said about your attitude along both these variables.

After you had completed the questions, he (aided by the computer) could mark your position on 2 independent axes, drawn at right-angles.  The x-axis was increasingly "left-wing" to the left, and "right-wing" to the right.  The y-axis was a preference for an authoritarian government going upwards, and valuing freedom going downwards.  So in the top-right area of the graph you would be characterised as right wing (preferring the incentives of getting what you work for) and authoritarian (preferring order, and orders; organisation over chaos).  In the bottom-left you would be "live-and-let-live" on the liberal-dictatorial scale, and generous with your help to those less fortunate (the x-axis).  I'm sure you can work out the other 2 quadrants.  Top left would be people who like to have someone in charge and have them create order, whilst as an individual they were generous with their help to the less fortunate.  Bottom right would be those like the San bushman culture - live and let live and no hierarchy, and recognising the time when the tribe can no longer support a particular aged person.

Since I did this exercise at a time when I was still learning the concepts of left- and right-wing, I have never taken seriously the idea that there is such a thing as a "political spectrum".  In that instance there was not just one axis (the "political spectrum"), but two axes! But you can come up with as many axes as you like, based on any attitudes you choose.  Your attitude to any issue you can think of does not have to be determined by your approach to a different issue.

Suppose you would like to know my opinion on issue X.  Would it be better to ask my opinion on issue X or issue Y?  The answer is obvious.  It is unreliable to conclude my position on issue X from what I say about Y.  But this is what you are doing when you label someone "left-" or "right-wing".  Suppose you do ask me about issue Y instead, and I tell you how I feel about it.  If your reaction to my answer is "oh, that is a right-wing opinion" what you are saying is that you you are ascribing to me a bunch of other opinions on other subjects, opinions that you have labeled "right-wing".  That includes the "right-wing" stance on issue X.  But you don't really know my opinion on issue X, because I am free to have any opinion I like on it.  You are making an assumption based on your groundless generalisation.  There is an infinite number of issues on which I can have any opinion I like.  And for each issue there isn't only a pair of opposite opinions; I could come up with a completely new solution J, to a problem which has polarised a group of people into those who prefer K, and those who want L.

Left-wing and right-wing are made-up caricatures.  Real people are not like that.  All normal people have empathy for their fellow man (not just those you label "left-wing").  All normal people respond to a reality which incentivises them to achieve useful things (not just those you label "right-wing").  In the US for example, it may feel as if "left-wing" and "right-wing" are real; after all everybody knows what you mean by them, and you may indeed be able to make some predictions about how someone feels on a number of topics.  True - but only because people watch television and become tribal - they join the left-wing tribe or the right-wing tribe, and surround themselves with people who tend to have a characteristic set of opinions, and who watch the same TV pundits who caricature the opposite tribe with ridiculous, reprehensible attitudes, attitudes which sometimes they don't have, and sometimes are very reasonable attitudes based on information that you are unaware of, as you don't mix so much with that tribe.

If you want to understand how somebody thinks the best thing to do is ask them; and if you want to know how a group of people think it's best to ask some members of that group.  For example: if you want to understand what people get out of fishing or playing golf, ask the people who do that, not the people who think that they are a waste of time.  If you want to understand why somebody thinks fascism is a good thing, ask a fascist, not a liberal.  The same goes for Catholics and Muslims: don't listen to to what all the Protestants around you say on those subjects.  If you ask an anarchist why they think as they do, you (may) discover that you’re suffering the misconception that anarchists believe there are no rules, or that there shouldn't be rules.  No!  On the contrary - anarchists are fine with rules, but believe we'd be better without rulers.  It's not "no rules", but "no rulers"!  (Who have you been listening to)?  

The left - right political spectrum is a fiction.  A spectrum occurs when a single variable varies⁴; but people are able to have an infinite variety of independent opinions on different subjects, not a linear range.  Their opinion on X does not determine their opinion on Y ...  not those who think for themselves anyway.

It's a fiction that gets in the way of you understanding how the World works, every time you use it.  Stop using it.

Example 1  Revolution!

Think of a historic "left-wing" revolution.  Presumably the French, Russian, Chinese or Cambodian revolutions come to mind.  What happens?

1. A small group of people want to take power, so that they can run society to their advantage.

2. They create disruptive problems, including terrorism, and blame a section of society (the aristo's e.g.) for those problems.

3. Each section of society is induced to fear and therefore hate the other section.

4. The power-seekers take the side of "the working class" against the "middle class" (or "upper-class", depending which example you're thinking of).

5. Then they offer solutions if you just put them in power.

6. You put them in power to get solutions to the desperate problems - (problems created by the power-seekers).

7. They give the victim class (the upper class) a very hard time: lots die.

8. Society continues with the power-seekers in power, and all of society (that remains) is very restricted and cowed.

A "right-wing" revolution on the other hand is just the opposite - COMPLETELY different!  Think Chile or Salazar's Portugal. Here’s how that goes.

1. A small group of people want to take power, so that they can run society to their advantage.

2. They create disruptive problems, including terrorism, and blame a section of society (the malcontent poor) for those problems.

3. Each section of society is induced to fear and therefore hate the other section.

4. The power-seekers take the side of the"middle class" against the the "working class".

5. Then they offer solutions if you just put them in power.

6. You put them in power to get solutions to the desperate problems - (problems created by the power-seekers).

7. They give the victim class (the working class) a very hard time: lots die.

8. Society continues with the power-seekers in power, and all of society (that remains) very restricted and cowed.

OK, so the patterns are not so different.  Now, while it feels completely different to the two classes involved - whether they are the victim class or not, and whether lots of them are murdered - as far as the power-seekers are concerned, I would suggest that the choice of which class to back against the other is a detail of little concern.  They will not be in either class.  I would further suggest that they did not really have in mind the welfare of the class they backed, and to whom they promised support or a future Utopia.  They didn't have any "left-" or "right-wing" values.

Example 2 The Current Coup

How about the current coup?  Would you characterise it as left-wing or right-wing?

• When you read the website of the WEF (World Economic Forum - the think tank that is orchestrating the coup), you see that for them this involves increasing the "Public-Private Partnership".  I.e. they will transfer yet more power and decision-making from democratically elected bodies to corporations.  Who was it who invented Fascism again?  Oh yes, Mussolini.  How did he define it?  In one word - "Corporatismo".  The Corporation has been the legal construct used to effect the fascistic takeover, over the last 130 years or so.  So if it's a fascist takeover: that makes it right-wing, hm?

• But the WEF agenda involves the end of property rights.  You will "own nothing and be happy".  (Don't tell me you haven't read the WEF website)?!  Ownership will be by the state: you will rent everything ... if you behave yourself.  You don't have to know all the tenets of communism to hear that this shouts "communist" takeover - so left-wing. ⁵

• Oh, but this will be rule by "experts", all the decisions will be made by people who know better than poor stupid little you.  Who was it who made the decisions to "lockdown", to mask, to exercise "social distancing" - the “experts” or the government?  Well, the government and the "experts" are buck-passing: the government says "I'm just following the advice of the experts"; the "experts" say "we can only advise; governments decide".  In theory both these are true; but can you imagine Boris Johnson getting up and saying "my advisors say this is so serious that we should drop our plans for coping with pandemics, that we refined over decades, and we should quarantine the healthy; but I say "no, do what you like - pay no attention"?  No, of course he can't ignore the "experts".  It wasn't just the UK who abandoned scientific protocols for dealing with pandemics, but virtually every country.  Clearly it is the WHO (a political body, not a medical body) which has dictated actions, using "nudge" techniques devised by psychologists, and war-gamed in Event 201, a few weeks before roll-out.  Well, rule by "experts" is called "technocracy", not communism or fascism.⁶

So which is it - left-wing, right-wing or technocratic?

Climb out of that rut between left-wing and right-wing, and look around.  It's not left-wing or right-wing as these concepts are flawed distractions.  Whilst you are still trudging in that muddy rut, they are instigating their plan: giving power to corporations, removing property rights, and saying "follow the experts".  Those three features are tools characteristic of power-seeking organisations - nothing to do with left- or right-wing.   

Check the agenda for the current revolution on the WEF website: they don't hide it!  People just don't bother to inform themselves.  Rosa Koire⁷ amongst others has been doing her utmost to bring this agenda to your attention for years.  Look for videos of her.  It was set out for all to see at the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, but most people haven't read it - quite understandably.  But it's high time to pay attention to those who have, and who say "just look at  this WEF agenda"!

This coup has all three characteristics above - giving power to corporations (like fascists), removing all property rights as communists espouse; and using "technocratic experts" to monitor every detail of your energy expenditure, and say that the government knows best.⁸ 

It is difficult to see this if you are thinking that "left-wing" is the "opposite" of "right-wing" in some way, rather than a tribal collection of ideas. 

Thinking in terms of left-wing and right-wing does not help you see what is going on in the world: it impedes you.  Inform yourself about what really goes on.  

There is no such thing as a "political spectrum": stop parroting that nonsense.  There are people in power, who think differently from people not in power:  that is the significant difference in society.

The more power people have, the more dangerous they are.  In the twentieth century totalitarian governments - the ones with the most power over their citizens - killed vastly more of their citizens than more moderate societies.  Governments killed more of their citizens than wars did!  Six times as many, actually!  

Compliance (with the callous sociopaths in power) is tantamount to complicity.  

Even sitting and doing nothing is.  

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So that’s the end of my argument in favour of ditching … and … - you know - those two ridiculous and destructive concepts we’re not going to use any more!

But having mentioned “the current coup” a couple of times without clarification, now seems a good time to explain, just in case there is still somebody who does not recognise it. I'm talking about the world-wide power grab that was implemented in March 2020, as the next major step in The Great Reset.  This is a change in how society works similar in scale to "Year Zero" in the communist revolution in Cambodia (1975), but very different in character.  (Do watch the excellent movie "The Killing Fields" - a true story - to get a feel.  It's on YouTube, at time of writing).  

The planning for this coup started in the nineteenth century or earlier; and more detailed planning occurs later.  Think-tanks are the bodies which do finer degrees of planning.  E.g. the think tank called "The Club of Rome" made some seminal decisions, including publishing its report "Limits to Growth" in 1972.  Here is a well-known quotation from that report.

"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused [they think] by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."

This was when the decision was agreed to use climate change and pandemics to manipulate society.  These could be the "common enemy against whom we can unite".  (We still have Famine to look forward to, and water shortages to a degree; but we won't have long to wait).  

At first "climate change" was used to mean "heading for an ice-age" i.e. global cooling.  Unfortunately it was hard to hide the fact that the temperature was rising, since we were still coming out of an ice-age.  

So then it was changed to "global warming".  Add in the contribution of CO2 and pretend man's contribution is significant in size.  This was wonderful (for them) as it also gave the rationale for shutting down society, as modern societies use lots of energy.  Read John Perkins' "Confessions..." to get a subjective feel for the importance of energy expenditure for the standard of living. That drop in living standards is the change your children are going to live through - if you don’t do something about it.

Unfortunately (for them) the global temperature stopped rising in about 1998.  So now it's undefined "Climate Change". Somehow, although the temperature doesn’t change, they say “extreme weather events are increasing” (they didn’t if you look at the data) but since they have the ability to influence the weather, and adopt dangerous forestry practices, it is easy to convince people, especially the young, and those who wouldn't recognise Science if it walked up to them wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm Science", and punched them on the nose.

1. I’m not sure I’m being very clear here. Cakes are often used illustrate how things can be divided up and shared out. I’m trying to show empathy for the “right-wing” view, saying this is somebody who is making sure there’s a big cake, so that more can be shared.

It’s not meant to be alluding to “let them eat cake” often mis-attributed to Marie Antoinette” (as the propaganda of the day had it)!

2. It's a useful exercise to indulge in a little dialectic in our heads, and jiggle the variables.  At what point does it become unethical to make an assumption about the particular individual?  Can it ever be reasonable to pre-judge them?  How accurate and reliable does the generalisation have to be?  Does it make a difference how significant the judgement is? Does it make a difference if you have to make an assumption?

You can invent your own scenarios to investigate.

We could make the generalisation part (going from the particular to the general) more accurate and reliable.  How would that then affect the reasonableness of making an assumption about the particular human?

Instead of our pathetic sample of 3 individuals, how about the generalisation "women are shorter than men".  Well now we have very good data about the heights of men and women.  Their respective bell curves overlap, and the mean is not in the same place.  Nevertheless you can make slightly paradoxical-sounding statements like "99.999% of men can say that there are women who are taller than them".  You cannot safely assume that a particular woman that you haven't met yet is shorter than a man you haven't met yet.

Imagine a woman doling out military kit for an incoming group.  She has to get their kit ready for the members to come in, grab it and leave as soon as possible.  She has to put out a sleeping bag, either the Long size or the Short for 2 members she doesn't have much information about other than their names e.g. Jim and Susan.  Would it be unethical, showing prejudice, to allocate a short sleeping bag to Susan?

Factors: accurate and reliable data for the generalisation;

              no stigma to needing either size of sleeping bag;

              she cannot (let's assume) leave the option open, but has to plump for a size.

Make up your own examples.  Let’s not outsource our ethics, but explore them.

3. The meaning of "authoritarian" is not so much that YOU want authority over others, or are part of a group or institution like that, which is how it's often used, but includes the belief that there is such a thing as justified authority, and that it is widely useful. Someone who has no power, but thinks authority is a good thing is authoritarian.

4. you can’t count concomitant variables - like wavelength and frequency; distance and closeness.

5. In fact they propose to go further than any communist government so far: they are going to "own" the Commons - not just all the land, but air, and water.  You will not be allowed to collect rainwater, or to have a bore-hole or well.  You will have to buy all the water you drink.  

6. Look up the history of Technocracy Inc., and read "Between Two Ages". 

7. Rosa Koire is pronounced “Korry”.

8. If you really think governments know best, see What's Wrong with "The Greater Good".