If you follow political issues, you will probably often see references to the “left” and the “right.” These terms are ubiquitous. But what do they really mean? Do they capture some systematic distinction that crosses time and space, or are they just arbitrary labels of convenience, perhaps even ones that oversimplify and mislead.
Over the years, there have been various attempts to develop a systematic theory of the left and the right. Recently, the prominent liberal political commentator Matt Yglesias wrote an article in which he argues that the main differences are that the right supports religion and hierarchy, while the left is secular and egalitarian. He argues that this distinction unifies all or most left-right conflicts from the French Revolution to the present.
Libertarian economist Bryan Caplan (my colleague at George Mason University) has been promoting his “simplistic left-right theory” for several years. As he sums it up:
- The left is against the market.
- The right is anti-left.
Both Yglesias and Caplan offer interesting insights, and I’m a big fan of their writing on a variety of other issues. Yglesias’ article is a useful overview and summary of many conflicts between the left and the right. And Caplan’s position captures some authentic dynamics.
But ultimately, neither theory really works as a general classification system. Many movements do not agree with the two theories, or openly contradict them.
Let’s take Yglesias’ theory of religion/hierarchy first. If the religion is right-wing, it is difficult to explain explicitly left-wing religious movements such as Liberation Theology, which combines Catholicism and Marxism. Worse still, it is difficult to explain the position of the traditional Catholic Church!
Pope Francis is socially conservative on issues such as abortion. But he also takes positions usually considered left-wing on economic regulation, migrant rights, welfare and environmental policy. Although the current pope has taken some of the Church’s “left” positions further than his recent predecessors, the general idea of combining interventionist positions on economic issues with social conservatism is one that the Catholic Church has long supported .
If your religion-centered left-right theory has serious difficulty explaining the leadership of the world’s largest religious denomination, this seems like a significant problem for the theory. And Catholicism isn’t the only denomination that doesn’t fit well with the theory. Many Protestant, Jewish and Muslim movements, for example, are also anomalies in Yglesias’s framework.
The hierarchical side of the theory also presents problems. Consider the fact that communist regimes are characterized by rigid hierarchies, with power concentrated in a small elite at the top of the ruling party. Does this make communist regimes “right-wing”? Are their opponents therefore necessarily left-wing? What if they were religious conservatives or traditionalists, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn? A theory that Stalin and Mao are right-wing and Solzhenitsyn is left-wing seems problematic. At the very least, it’s highly counterintuitive.
Yglesias’ hierarchical pole also creates other anomalies. For example, he notes that a radical Islamic citizen of Israel would be considered leftist under this theory, presumably because such a person opposes the dominant hierarchy in his country. If radical Islamists can qualify as leftists despite their extreme sexism, homophobia, intolerance, and rejection of secularism, this is yet another problem for the theory.
Caplan’s approach presents problems of its own. There is some truth to the idea that many right-wingers are more “anti-left” than anything else. For example, it sometimes appears that right-wing Twitter influencers prioritize “owning the bookstores” over any other goal, including consistency with previously professed values. It is also true that many people generally considered left-wing are deeply anti-market.
But the theory still has problems. If the right’s primary goal is to be anti-left, and leftists are defined by their hatred of markets, one would expect rightists to be strongly pro-market! In such a context, being pro-market would be the most anti-left position possible.
Yet, throughout history, there have been many right-wing movements that are themselves strongly anti-market. Consider, for example, the Nazis, fascists, and a variety of other nationalist movements, up to and including today’s “national conservatives” in the United States.
Furthermore, there are important right-wing movements that focus primarily on their own agendas, not just opposition to the left. This is true of many of the aforementioned nationalists. This is also true of many religious social conservatives. These people – at least many of them – sincerely believe that abortion is murder, or that same-sex marriage will erode the foundations of Western civilization. If they are anti-left it is because the left supports these things they hate, not because being anti-left is itself their main motive.
Caplan’s conception of the left also has flaws. Some left-wing movements are indeed characterized by their hostility to the market. This is certainly true, for example, of most varieties of socialism. Others, however, clearly prioritize different issues, such as promoting racial and gender equality or strengthening bodily autonomy. Those who focus on the latter issues sometimes even advocate radicalism reductions in government regulation of the market (as in the case, for example, of efforts to abolish the war on drugs, end immigration restrictions, and so on).
Caplan, Yglesias, or both could potentially respond to my criticisms by saying that they are advocating a different way of using “right” and “left” than is common today. If the correct left-right theory concludes that communists are right-wing and radical Islamists are left-wing (at least in Israel), then we should get used to calling them that! But such linguistic revisionism is unlikely to succeed, and it is unclear what value it would have if it did.
Ultimately, I lean towards the argument of Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis in their recent book The myth of the left and the right, that “left” and “right” are ultimately arbitrary classifications that denote very different things in different times and places. For example, the US right today tends to be anti-abortion, but this is not true of most of their European colleagues, and was not necessarily true of their predecessors in earlier eras of American history (e.g., Ronald Reagan was pro-choice as governor of California in the late 1960s).
I still use “right” and “left” sometimes, because the terms are hard to avoid. But I don’t think they’re referring to a deep underlying continuity in time and space, dating back to the 18th century. At best, they refer to the grouping of positions on the political spectrum at a given time and place. When this grouping changes (for example, in recent years the right in the United States has become much more hostile to the free market), the use of the terms also changes – or starts to become confusing.
In contrast, there are deep continuities when it comes to more specific ideologies, such as socialism, libertarianism, liberalism, and nationalism. Today’s socialists have much in common with their 19th century predecessors, such as advocating state control of the economy and economic egalitarianism. Today’s libertarians have much in common with forefathers such as John Locke and Adam Smith (for example, support for strong property rights and strict limits on government power over a wide range of issues). Libertarianism is just a branch of liberalism. And today’s liberal movements still have much in common with their Enlightenment roots (e.g., trust in reason, skepticism of tradition, support for a set of strong individual rights). Finally, today’s nationalists have much in common with those of a century ago, including Nazis and fascists.
Supporters of libertarianism, socialism, liberalism and nationalism in different countries also have important commonalities. For example, socialists in many different societies favor similar economic policies. Bernie Sanders’ positions on most economic issues are similar to those of his European colleagues. The same goes for libertarians. For example, much of the economic policy agenda of Javier Milei, the libertarian-leaning president of Argentina, is immediately recognizable to US libertarians (myself included).
Obviously, there are considerable internal disagreements between libertarians, socialists, and adherents of other specific ideologies. But they tend to be much narrower than those often encountered in the nebulous categories of “right” and “left.”