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.