What is the left-right political scale? I've asked around and the answers were always concrete - communism is left, capitalism is right, the US is right, China is left. How do they know? What is the criteria based on which one can give a clear, objective answer? No one seems to know.
The Internet knows of course everything, but it still depends on who you ask.
Wikipedia says - the left wing is characterized by an emphasis on "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism" - the right wing is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism". But then it considers communism as being left, and it would be very hard to argue that communism emphasizes freedom or rights.
A paper published in the British Journal of Political Science states that the left and right "stand at opposite end of the familiar left–right continuum on many issues" such as social welfare or economic equality, but that they "also resemble each other in the way they pursue their political goals" such as censorship of their opponents. A list of several concrete examples ensues, providing no abstract principle to help distinguish them.
Unifrog makes an attempt at identifying the principle(s). It claims that the left advocates for big government in order to achieve an equal society, while the right advocates for small government in order to protect individual freedom. Maybe once upon a time, maybe in theory, or maybe it's just wishful thinking. Fascism, defined by Oxford Dictionary as "An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization", and embraced and practiced by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, has never been about small government and individual freedom.
Others give up and conclude that there is no such distinction, that it's all artificial.
So, I gave it some thought, and, as expected, I found the answer. The distinguishing characteristic of social systems which places them on the "familiar left–right continuum" is ... drum roll ... EQUITY!!! A big thank you to Wokeism for coming up with this term. Equity (according to ChatGPT which keeps being amazing) is "The concept of fairness and justice in the distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges within a society." Excellent answer! Now let's see how Equity lays the foundation of the left-right political scale by looking at a few social systems.
At the extreme left stands the uncontested leader in Equity, Communism. "To each according to their needs" all but guarantees its supremacy. Communism provides all the needs of its members by equally distributing all goods and services produced by society. Equally, because each individual needs exactly the same things, since they are all humans: water, food, shelter, clothes, education, health, and that's about it. If the society manages to produce more than these basic needs, such as furniture, they are all distributed equally. Since each member receives the same amount of stuff, they all end up looking about the same. The ones who are too fat lose weight, the ones who are too sick die. Absolute Equity achieved, well done Communism! In practice, of course, Communism has never been implemented, because all the members of the societies who tried it have either starved or frozen to death in the late stages of socialism. North Korea is the closest to this ideal, still surviving, but only thanks to the alms provided by less equitable societies.
Socialism is second. Socialism is essentially Communism which allows for limited private ownership such as of clothes, patches of land, and cows. To the extent that ownership does not extend beyond what The State deems obscenely rich, such as two cows, private property is considered a right and is recognized and protected by The State. But virtually the entire production of goods and services is centrally planned and controlled by The State which then distributes it equally among its members. Equity pretty much everywhere, with the possible exception of an extra cow. Not bad. Well done Socialism! Examples of socialist societies are plenty. Soviet Union and its Eastern European Block, Mao's China, Sweden in the 80's, 70% of South America, 90% of Africa. Some socialist societies, such as The Soviet Union, have chosen to fearlessly continue their march towards Communism, achieving the expected results of economic collapse, starvation, wars, and mass death. Others, such as Sweden in the 90's, have decided to move to the right, away from Equity, and not only survive, but thrive. Most are still struggling to decide.
Somewhere in the middle there is Democracy. Democracy means the majority of voters decide on all social issues. Who the voters are ranges from the Dead White Men of Ancient Greece to Absolutely Everybody in the movie Voyagers (don't watch it, it's bad). The results differ based on the voters' mood, the weather, the severity of current diseases and the alignment of the planets. They range accordingly from let's kill Socrates to let's empower Hitler. Either way, Equity is very well respected since all votes are equal, regardless how bad. However, the distribution of resources, opportunities, etc. is restricted to whomever the voters designate, usually the voters themselves, and does not apply on principle to the society at large, which is a big letdown. In modern democracies however, all adults are eligible to vote, regardless of their [fill in the blanks]. In Brazil, for instance, all adults decide whether to rob the rich or enslave the Natives. Thanks to this universality of the electoral system, which equitably includes the rich and the Natives, Democracy gets a passing grade.
A big step to the right, and on a much lower rung from the Equity perspective is Social Democracy. Social Democracy introduces the concept of individual rights. Centuries of trials and errors of classic democracies have inseminated in the minds of intellectuals the doubt that Democracy has any value. Robbing, enslaving and killing people just because other people vote yes might actually be bad. The individual, John Locke said, has a natural right to its life. Nobody, not even if every other single adult wants it, has the right to kill, enslave or rob another individual. Woohoo! said everybody feeling safe for the first time in history. But then some of them went and abused the system. They increased productivity and the division of labor, made voluntary exchanges with others, creating value in the process, and, driven by evil, selfish motives, kept some of that added value for personal use and enjoyment. All this while most, now rights-endowed, individuals kept repeating the same old motions that barely kept them alive all those centuries before. The unjust difference between the rich and the poor was now apparent. Equity was gone. The masses revolted. The Social Democrats surrendered and amended the right to life by adding "if permitted by law", law which was democratically approved. Equity was indeed restored, but only to the extent that the law permitted. Thumb down, Social Democracy! It is you who makes it possible to the Musks and Bezos-es of the world to own private jets and yachts, while the poor live in social housing, with access only to heating, A/C, refrigerators, subsidized food and transportation, and Internet browsing cell phones.
More to the right and still farther away from Equity is Capitalism. This is where Equity is out the window and the political scale clearly leans right. Capitalism is Social Democracy without the democracy part. Capitalism holds individual rights as absolute and fundamental to the fabric of society. Rights are inviolable by anyone, whether by other individuals or The State. The right to freedom is guaranteed. Success, however, isn't. Some individuals do reach their goals, some don't. Most reach only some of them, if any, or only partially. All this leads to unequal results, which leads to unequal opportunities, which leads to unequal privileges. Therefore, Equity says, Capitalism is evil to its roots. Not only because inequality is simply accepted, but accepted as natural. The promoters of Capitalism claim that it is natural that some individuals are more hard working, more talented, smarter, more beautiful, more enterprising, more courageous than others, and that this naturally leads to those unequal results. How naive, selfish, and un-progressive! Big thumb down, Capitalism! Let's take a look at some examples of Capitalist societies, see how they fared. There aren't. Capitalism has never been implemented. The closest came The United States of America at the end of the 19th century. Individual rights have never found a place to be seen as inviolable, and individuals have never been truly free.
Even more to the right (hard to believe it is possible) is Fascism. Fascism attempts to hijack the economic success of Capitalism, while discarding individual rights. Individuals, Fascism says, must not be selfish. Instead they must strive to create the greatest possible value in order for the higher, nobler goal defined by The State to be achieved. The trick Fascism employs is to give the entrepreneur the illusion that he is the master of his enterprise, that he will run the business as usual and get rich in the process. In fact, it is The State that dictates the products it must produce (usually tanks), their beneficiary (usually The State) and their purpose (usually war). The means by which these goals are to be reached are beyond the preoccupation of the Great Leader. Let the entrepreneur worry about that. If slaves are needed, The State will provide them. If the slaves are Jews, even better. If thousands, or even millions are to die, fine. The State's higher goal is way above all that. Obviously, Equity is inexistent in a Fascist society. At least Capitalists claim inequity is natural, Fascism creates it artificially, on purpose. Can't get any worse than that. Hitler, Mussolini and Franco are just classic examples. Putin's Russia, with its higher goal of world dominance by The Great Russian Soul, is one that is developing before our eyes. China in the past five years or so has steered away from freedom and towards the ways of Fascism by taking more and more control of its seemingly private enterprises. The same is happening, to various degrees, in Hungary, Italy, Brazil. The US Conservatives would love to go down the same path if they could have it their way.
Many other isms have been devised, implemented and tried throughout centuries of human history, from the divine dictatorship of the Absolute Monarchy, to the complete void of rule and law of Anarchism. I would place Absolute Monarchy to the right of Fascism, but that's open to debate. Anarchism on the other hand is hard to tell. It is possible that by chance Equity is actually achieved in an Anarchy, if they massacre each other to extinction and only two individuals remain, equally scared, hungry and exhausted.
===
So, there you have it! Equity is the unit of measure on the left-right political scale. The greater the Equity, the more on the left the society is. Six days and three pages later, QED! Bravo me! I would pat myself on the shoulder if this wasn't, almost all of it, completely and utterly useless. Because, really, now that we know this, what do we do with this newly acquired information? Does this left-right distinction really matter? Unifrog says yes, it does, because we need to be aware of people's bias, including our own. Bias?! Really? Bias means non-objective. Bias means inability or unwillingness to identify reality as it really (sorry, I couldn't find a better word) is. Do they consider that the left-right orientation might be objective? If so, by what standard? Can't be equity, it would mean that the Left is right and the Right is wrong. Yes, Hitler was evil through-and-through, but Stalin wasn't exactly an angel. Is Biden so much better than Trump? Or any better? Since Equity is not an objective standard, then there can be no bias in the left-right orientation. It's all a matter of opinion, of preference. Therefore, from a political standpoint, we seem to be stuck in a permanent, irreconcilable and self-feeding conflict among personal whims. Even at an individual, internal, level this conflict is apparent, slowly, constantly and stealthily eroding our self-confidence and self-esteem. We cannot rid ourselves of our own subjectivity. Our political credo keeps on shifting inside us. When our children finish school we shift from left (the government should help families with children) to right (we are taxed too much). As we get older, we shift from right (we are taxed too much) to left (the retirement age should be lowered).
So, are we doomed? Is there an escape from this continuous loop? Yes, there is, and "loop" is a keyword. In fact, and as the paper mentioned above notices, practically there is no difference between Communism and Fascism. It doesn't matter if members of the society are robbed, enslaved or killed for the glory of one supreme leader or for the welfare of each and every other member. The left-right scale is not really a scale, but a vicious circle, with the two extremes harmoniously closing the loop embracing each other in a nihilistic dance of destruction and death.
To escape the loop we must find an objective standard based on which to evaluate and sort social systems. If we look at the five political systems above through a pragmatic lens, Capitalism is by far the best. Everybody wants (or at least used to) to come to America and nobody wants political asylum in Cuba. When China adopted just a slightly more Capitalist policy at the beginning of the 21st century they experienced an unprecedented economic rise which brought millions from abject poverty to never dreamed riches, and established China as a world economic power. The more a society leans towards Capitalism the better life gets for every single one of its citizens. Even though Capitalism doesn't even mention welfare as one of its principles, it beats all others systems at it, hands down. Why, then, isn't Capitalism accepted, at least by default, as the best system, and implement it, even without knowing why? It's precisely because of the wrong standard of evaluation. The moral standard which was drilled into our brains centuries ago, was accepted without hesitation, has never been questioned since, and is now a fundamental, universal, axiomatic truth: Altruism. By this standard Capitalism, the unwavering promoter of selfishness, is definitely bad. The brainwashing of our consciousness is so thorough, that instead of questioning the moral standard, we'd rather refuse to see the evidence in front of our eyes. With self imposed horse blinders we look at the growing inequality between the rich and the poor and refuse to see how much richer the poor really are. We'd rather accept altruistic systems which inevitably lead to equitable poverty, than the one based on selfishness which inevitably leads to unequal prosperity for all. The proper, objective moral standard is indeed Selfishness, and the only moral social system is indeed Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal.
