Good well-written article.

Yes the left/right dichotomy generates more heat than light, for several reasons.

The basic problem is that the political gamut is not in a one-dimensional line. A better concept is in two dimensions like this.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php

Where do you see yourself, people?

In 1789 "the original leftists wanted to abolish government controls over industry, trade, and the professions. They wanted wages, prices, and profits to be determined by competition in a free market, and not by government decree. They were pledged to free their economy from government planning, and to remove the government-guaranteed special privileges of guilds, unions, and associations whose members were banded together to use the law to set the price of their labor or capital or product above what it would be in a free market."
http://mises.org/daily/3425
"The First Leftist" by Dean Russell

However since then the left is identified with the party in favour of common ownership or control of the means of production: socialism. In practice this means *State* ownership and control of anything and everything: the opposite of liberty.

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Adolf Hitler, May 1, 1927.
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/

How appropriate. In order to implement the idea that the State should control and direct the means of production, you need a creed of unlimited government power. Your rights will be whatever the government says they are, your freedoms will be whatever is left over after the government has taken and done whatever it wants, which is exactly what the major parties and the Greens think, isn’t it?

The ambiguous term “right wing” is only ever used confusedly or dishonestly, because it refers to two completely inconsistent philosophies: fascists on the one hand who believe in unlimited government power and are really national socialists, and libertarians who believe in small government or even none.

while I agree with problems of left-right divide, I do not share any view of Chinese innovation is compared to complications within democracies.

If you really want to take it up, you could argue that fascism was the ultimate expression of corporatism in the early 20th century when obstacles to progress were not tolerated and quashed with force.

Key always balance, and don't think building 30 story buildings in a matter of weeks means much when plenty of chinese bravely point to the perils of earthquakes killing many through shoddily and rushed construction, now hushed up by authorities.

So I reject following: 'China is of course not bound by the messiness of democratic conventions and has avoided the ideological polarization witnessed in established democracies, which, as we see currently in the USA, is causing extraordinary disruption to the both the adaptive and generative shifts to accommodate globalization and technological advancement'.

It only avoids this through coercion and force.

I will concede that political freedom has improved in China to some degree, but remains far inferior to what is expected in any half decent society.

Sure economic innovation is important to prosperity, but so is the right to express an opinion and organise into key interest groups, both altruistic and/or adversarial.

Problem for west, and I don't read much about the problems in the 'lucky' country of Australia who now wants to kiss China's ass, is how do we innovate without reverting to the style of society in many booming developing countries, at least in economic terms.

“You could argue that fascism was the ultimate expression of corporatism“

You could argue that, but only if you don’t understand:
1. Corporations, and
2. National socialism.

The Crown is a corporation. Dean and chapter are a corporation. A municipal council is a corporation. And of course so is the modern commercial corporation.

Although corporations are a creation of government, and of statute, the corporation’s revenue does not intrinsically require the use of aggressive violence. Taxation being a compulsory impost, the State’s revenue is intrinsically based on aggressive violence. The same doesn’t apply to other corporations, for example monasteries who are supported by alms, or commercial corporations whose revenue is from market – i.e. voluntary – transactions.

Therefore your argument that national socialism is the ultimate expression of corporatism is flatly incorrect. There is nothing about the nature of the corporation that intrinsically requires or indicates the use of aggressive violence for any purpose (except its constituting legislation).

Secondly, the corporatism that we witness in all forms of national socialism – including Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, and modern America’s – is a logical outcome of trying to implement socialism.

The national socialists recognised that trying to achieve socialism by government directly owning the means of production – communism - doesn’t work, and causes total economic and social collapse. So, since free markets are anathema to socialists by definition, they fall back to the compromise position that constitutes all socialism. Private property will be permitted to exist in nominally private hands; only the State will dictate any and every aspect of prices, wages, interest rates, production, producers, consumers, and so on.

It is this ugly fascist amalgam of nasty totalitarianism and government-favoured corporations which the socialists are too stupid to understand is the logical outcome of their own belief system.

Chris Lewis is a perfect example of the modern Australian fascist. He has been asked repeatedly to define the “balance” which is the key desideratum of his political refrain, and every time resiles, only reposing open-ended faith in unlimited arbitrary government power to do good for society.

jardine, don't talk bs.

My view is in line with what we live in (the US, Aust and soon).

I support a balance between individual and economic freedom, with govt intervention decided through interaction with public opinion and interest groups. It is called Western society.

We elect people to represent us, and we help shape and temper the agenda. All sorts of entities contribute.

You in contrast, ramble on about a dreamland society free of govt intervention.

As if that is ever going to happen, not now, not in the past, not in the future.

Dhead.

again, apologise for poor grammar, I hope jardine is smart enough tto understand what I meant, but probably wrong gives his lunatic far right economic thought process.

Interesting article.

I agree that left-right labels are losing their analytical and descriptive power as the world gets more complex. My own politics seem quite right wing on some issues (usually economic policies) and quite left wing in others (social), but to me the two perspectives are ideologically coherent as (small-‘l’) liberalism.

I don’t think the common etymological roots of “conservation” and “conservative” are just linguistic oddities, though. Many conservationists are in fact deeply reactionary, unwilling to tolerate most form of environmental change and economic growth. Environmentalists might self-describe as “radical”, but even this is telling – the word implies a return to the root of an issue or principle, itself a quite reactionary idea in some ways.

I’m not sure that adaptive and generative fit the bill though. Economic compasses like the one Jardine links to pick up an important dimension of political worldviews related to use of state power and the importance of collectivism or individualism. Statist can be left (e.g. marxists) or right (fascist); individualists can be right (libertarian) or left (anarchist).

Virginia Postrel made an interesting attempt to create new political labels encompassing these differences: “stasists” and “dynamists”. Her term “dynamist” would include both adaptive and generative elements. Not necessarily a better system, but food for thought.

http://vpostrel.com/future-and-its-enemies

What a breath of fresh air to find Colin James confronting the obscurantist “left-right” twaddle brayed by knuckledraggers to make lies look like truth. “Left wing” and “right wing” are found routinely presented as a “scale” on which (other) people can be placed in order to comment on what they say or write. Pterosaur politics - wings and scales. “Left” and “right” are not descriptors, they are dog whistles, a conflated copout from evaluating and comparing statements or standpoints multidimensionally in real terms of true vs false, just vs unjust, moral vs immoral, likely vs unlikely.

I wouldn’t dismiss the terms left-wing and right-wing so easily, Emperor Julian (although I do agree with you that they are bandied around a tad too much). There is now a fairly extensive body of neuro-cognitive research that shows left and right political values are not just a rhetorical convenience, but are more than likely biological fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation

http://lcap.psych.ucla.edu/pdfs/amodio_natureneuroscience07.pdf

http://blog.psico.edu.uy/cibpsi/files/2011/04/brains.pdf

I also agree with Rhian’s arguments. Left and Right political values overlap and co-exist within individuals, organisations and countries, without having to attach themselves entirely to any specifically defined political system.

If the neuro-cognitive research above is correct, then Left and Right (or Liberal and Progressive) thinking is just nature’s way of providing built-in checks and balances to keep societies healthy and functioning. A bit like a bird needing both its left and right wings to stay in the air.

Correction: 'Liberal and Progressive' above should have been 'Progressive and Conservative.

Yes, left-right is inadequate, as there is "social" left-right and economic left-right, making at least 4 categories.
And even within those categories, some people will deviate on particular issues.

Today's "right" is often opposed to the status quo, as the status-quo is leftist.
So the Right are now the Revolutionaries, who want to chop off the (Green Left) king's head.

But your proposed solution?
Both your terms imply support for change.
Change is presumed to always be necessary, desirable and inevitable.

There is no option to *oppose* change.

And again, people will oppose change in some areas, and support it in others.

There is no solution, except for parties to clearly explain to the public what their policies are, instead of allowing the media to dumbly pigeonhole them.

Of course there is ambiguity and overlap in "left" and "right" which makes them mischievous.

For example, right after I said they can only be used confusedly or dishonestly, Chris Lewis accuses me of “lunatic far right thought processes” without saying what that refers to.

But either he must be accusing me, by being “far right”, of fascism, of totalitarianism, which obviously is wrong because I only ever argue in favour of liberty and *against* big government.

Or he must be saying I’m libertarian, in which case, he has never given any reason why defending the principle of liberty is bad. Nor has he been able to defend my argument that any other political stance is irrational in being self-contradictory. So it’s a classic example of Julian’s “obscurantist braying”.

Obviously the left wing wants to conserve any of the gains they have made. And the right wing wants to progress towards the changes they want, so the terms are really quite meaningless; apart from the fact that everyone is agreed that left wing always refers to socialists. The only thing “progressive” about so-called progressives is that they envisage the progressive enlargement of government over every field of human existence.

I'm sure that conservative and thieving tendencies do have counterparts in brain psychology, but there's no use considering political descriptors like "stasist" and "dynamist" or "adaptationist" or whatever, without considering the nature of politics itself.

Politics means the process of making decisions about the direction of the State, so the question resolves to the nature of the State.

Whether democratic or not, the State always means that group in society claiming and exercising a legal monopoly of the use of force and threats. The law against misleading and deceptive conduct applies "in trade and commerce", it doesn't apply "in government or politics".

This means that the State is literally a legal monopoly of violence and fraud; as is shown by the fact that, but for its own acts of legislation exempting itself from liability, almost everything it does itself defines as a crime for everyone else, i.e. society.

Therefore the ethics of using violence and threats are always and necessarily implicated in any question of politics, which is what all the fuss is about.

So there can be no presumption that a party promoting liberty and property, and one promoting theft and fraud under cover of law, stand on an equal moral footing, or are both necessary to keep "societies healthy and functioning". And it is not okay to confuse society and State: the issue is precisely the conflict of interest between them.

To say that there is a need for a "balance" between liberty, property and the productive class on the one hand, and thieving, fraud, and parasitism of the political class on the other; but that this balance is to be decided by the political process, i.e. by the State, is to say that your rights to freedom are nothing but the State says they are. It is a creed of unlimited state power, i.e. totalitarianism.

It's this creed:
"Fascism is for liberty. And for the only liberty which can be a real thing, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. Therefore, for the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State."
Mussolini

The so-called progressives are in truth nothing but fascists. They stand only for the freedom to obey.

That’s why they are incapable of any concept of social order that does not resolve to the State ordering people around. They think the State is the fountain of all moral and economic goods. It’s an irrational belief system, and the way we know that, is that their argument always rests on assumption which, when elucidated, prove self-contradictory, for example Chris Lewis's as I have just demonstrated.

The same cannot be said of libertarianism which is consistent in preferring voluntary relations over relations based on violence and fraud. And ultimately, that’s why full socialism doesn’t work but always either collapses, or falls back to parasitising an underlying capitalist system.

“Human Action” by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf