A reader says: "I always score "libertarian left" [on the Compass]… Libertarian because I believe in live-and-let-live, and left because I believe in social fairness and support…. I do think the two axis are independent, at least in the sense that the position on one is not a reliable predictor of the position on the other. If anything I think several other axis should be added."
But surely this is the very problem I was highlighting in my actual argument?
I don't agree that one can simultaneously not believe in fairness and yet claim to believe in "live and let live." What live and let live means in a world without fairness is that some will live at the expense of others. That is a straightforward right-wing anti-democratic attitude, an insight the Compass obscures very much to the benefit of the right.
The Compass is not so much demonstrating or responding to the "fact" that belief in one is not a predictor of belief in the other, in my view. Rather, the Compass is functioning to drive a wedge between these beliefs to the cost of understanding either of them in a properly democratic way. While the Compass presents itself as a richer accounting of politics than one organized by the distinction of Left and Right, it is better to say that the Compass disables any accounting of politics alive to that distinction. It is confusing people into misunderstanding the connection for democracy of belief in the value of general welfare to belief in the value of individual liberty.
It is quite true to say this connection isn't a seamless or static one for the left. As I said earlier in this discussion I think equity/diversity functions as a constitutive antagonism at the heart of the democratic end of the politically definitive left-right axis.
The antagonism between equity and diversity (equity = what the Comment calls "fairness" and diversity = what the Comment calls "live and let live") plays out in every democratic process, person, or order, such as they are, such as they play out in the world. Both equity and diversity are always valued in democratic politics -- that both are valued defines the democratic-left ethos -- but always one or the other will be differently weighted in relation to the other, and these different weightings will inspire different implementations, experiments, efforts.
This definitive antagonism is different in its confinement to the conversation of the democratic left from the larger antagonism of Left and Right that constitutes the single political axis that matters most in my view. This is the key fact obfuscated by the Compass. To deny or denigrate either equity or diversity is to step away from the Left and toward the Right. The Compass makes it easier to obscure this basic insight to the cost of clarity and sense and democratic politics.
As for adding other axes to our analytic models: As I already said earlier in the Moot, I can indeed imagine models that track many more variables than a straightforward Left/Right analysis does, or the two axes of the Compass does. I happen to think the key rhetorical work of the Compass is to make it harder for us to grasp the key difference between Left and Right politics through the addition of an axis that functions to drive a wedge into the heart of the definitive dynamic of the democratic left.
But models that introduced many more variables into the mix need not be introduced for such a nefarious purpose -- more likely they would be motivated simply by the desire for a finer-grained analysis that might make its predictions more useful. But, again, as I said, the problem here is the usual tradeoff in modeling between what is useful about generality and what is useful about precision.
I continue to think there are few things more powerful in political analysis than grasping that the very difference denied by the Compass, the difference between Left and Right, is a difference that makes a difference.
9 comments:
Re: "To deny or denigrate either equity or diversity is to step away from the Left and toward the Right."
I agree, and I agree with the rest of the post. But note that this is a redefinition of "Left" with respect to the common usage. A redefinition with which I happen to agree, but certainly a redefinition.
In Europe there have been some interesting redefinitions of Left = lower left quadrant of the Political Compass, for example the late lamented union of the Italian Socialist and Radical parties. Too bad these experiments did not fly very high due to deep mentality differences on both sides.
[T]his is a redefinition of "Left" with respect to the common usage.
I don't agree that this is true. I think it is a longwinded (I'm a theoryhead, it's what I do) way of accounting for common usage... I think the left means democracy and the right means anti-democracy. All the things the various lefts have in common, whether they stress equal opportunity, civil liberties, welfare programs or what have you represent efforts to ensure more people have more of a say in the public decisions that affect them (democracy), while all the things the various rights have in common whether they are royalist, aristocratic, oligarchic, investor-class-centric, technocratic or what have you represent efforts to ensure that certain incumbent/"elite" interests have more of a say in public decisions than others do (anti-democracy).
My discussion of the constitutive antagonism of the democratic values of equity and diversity isn't exactly common sense (I don't think it is really that idiosyncratic either to be honest, certainly it's not original), but it was a theoretical effort to capture what the Compass obscures. I really don't think I'm redefining anything, I think it's the Compass that's doing that -- to the benefit of the Right.
I agree, but:
Think of all the past and present antidemocratic stalinist regimes or, perhaps more to the point, to the antidemocratic stalinist governance in many political groups that are often called Left.
We do not call them Left. But they call themselves Left, the media call them Left, and a large majority of the public call them Left, despite the fact that they do NOT represent efforts to ensure more people have more of a say in the public decisions that affect them. The term "Left" has become sadly associated with stalinist governance practices. We may not like it but it is a fact, and redefining a popular term requires a huge effort.
So we should perhaps call a democratic left where diversity is valued, or libertarian left, something else: newleft, nextleft, unleft etc.
The term "Left" has become sadly associated with stalinist governance practices. We may not like it but it is a fact, and redefining a popular term requires a huge effort.
I disagree that it is particularly difficult to convey the idea that the totalitarian dictator Stalin is an anti-democratic figure and not properly regarded as a figure of the left. The Cold War is over. Both sides lost. The days when the Stalinist USSR represented actually-existing socialism and the "hope" of the left in the dem-left imaginary are literally generations past at this point (and not everybody fell for that line of crap even back then), except for the mouthbreathing reactionaries of Fox News.
So we should perhaps call a democratic left where diversity is valued, or libertarian left, something else: newleft, nextleft, unleft etc.
"Unleft?" This shows you how the Compass confuses our perceptions. The democratic left is the political dynamic in which equity and diversity are both valued. I will continue to call this: The Left. No anti-democrats, authoritarians, elitists welcome, whatever they call want to call themsevles or get called by their detractors.
Let's make that very clear political picture the fact the rightwing water-muddiers have to deal with whether they like it or not.
Re "Let's make that very clear political picture the fact the rightwing water-muddiers have to deal with whether they like it or not."
Let's, indeed.
But how do you propose to deal with all these "left" monolithic nannystate bureaucracies that we have these days, overstaffed by overpaid idiots who always know better what you should eat, what you should read or think, whom you should sleep with, what products you are allowed to consume...
One more comment to make things clearer. Four years ago I and many others this side of the Atlantic applauded a certain European politician when he came to power. And his first moves were very good, in particular his government passed two very important laws for gay marriage and stem cell research.
And they have done other good things of course. But they have also demonstrated what in my opinion remains a flaw of "The Left": a certain tendency to favor a Big Brother nannystate that, of course with our best interest in mind, watches over and judges each and every single detail of our lives, even those with no impact on anyone else. I am all for a strong government able to manage real conflicts between concrete parts, but I can do without being told what to think or do on a 24/7 basis.
> [A] flaw of "The Left" [is]a certain tendency to favor a
> Big Brother nannystate that, of course with our best interest
> in mind, watches over and judges each and every single detail
> of our lives. . .
Surely that's a flaw of those **in power**, from whatever corner
of the political spectrum?
It is the party on "The Right" (in this country) that recently
went fishing for search-engine records, in order to amass evidence
to use in courts and legislatures to restrict access to
"naughty" material on the Web (all for the sake of Protecting
the Children, of course).
And you don't think **corporate** bureaucracies wouldn't want
to regulate "each and every single detail of [workers' **and**
consumers'] lives" if they could get away with it? You don't
think Microsoft, and the owners of Mickey Mouse, and the
other "entertainment" conglomerates wouldn't like to install
a gatekeeper on every blessed bit-transfer that goes on in
every computerish device in everybody's house, to make sure
that the cash register goes ka-ching every time any of their
"IP" is "copied"?
I **know** that every blessed piece of e-mail I send via my
employer's network has been examined at least by software (and
sometimes by human beings who are free to pass it around for
jokes), and I **assume** that every blessed piece of
e-mail I send from **anywhere** is potential fodder for software
at the FBI **and** the NSA. That particular style of "nannystate"
is far more a product of "The Right" than "The Left" in this
country, but in either case the worst abuses are usually simply
a matter of incumbent elites making damn sure they **stay** on the
top of the pile, whatever they call themselves.
If all popular liberal politicians have made the government bigger, future ones will do that too.
But conservative politicians also do the same thing, so it shouldn't matter as much.
But how do you propose to deal with all these "left" monolithic nannystate bureaucracies that we have these days, overstaffed by overpaid idiots who always know better what you should eat, what you should read or think, whom you should sleep with, what products you are allowed to consume...
[The] flaw of "The Left": a certain tendency to favor a Big Brother nannystate that, of course with our best interest in mind, watches over and judges each and every single detail of our lives, even those with no impact on anyone else. I am all for a strong government able to manage real conflicts between concrete parts, but I can do without being told what to think or do on a 24/7 basis.
Surely you are referring to corporations rather than states when you bemoan oppressive dictatorial bureaucratized organizations here? No? How interesting.
Again, the Cold War is over, people. Let's put its rhetoric to bed, too, shall we?
I have to wonder, though, before I direct myself to answering your question directly, just why is it that it is the self-proclaimed "futurists," of all the people I interact on a regular basis, very much including "futurists" who will insist on their lefty credentials (otherwise I would probably not be devoting any time to them at all, beyond what is necessary to make fun of them in public places), why are these the ones who inevitably sound politically the most like hawks from the Cold War era, robber barons from the McKinley era, or salon philosophers of the 18th century? Retro-futurism rears its ugly head so incessantly among the futurologically inclined, wso-called. Why is that? (The question is for you all to think about, I think I already know the answer.)
Now, to be very clear: "Nanny-state" is a right-wing frame. You are participating in an anti-democratizing discourse when you deploy it, a discourse with an easily trackable actually-existing history of anti-democratic advocates and effects. Since I doubt of course that you would intend such effects yourself, I thought I would do you the public service of reminding you of the context for your text so you would be more careful in deploying a tool you may imperfectly understand.
To say that "nanny-state" is a right-wing frame is not to deny the truthy kernel of the actual problem it calls our attention to. The kernel of truth is the engine that lends the anti-democratizing aspiration of the right-wing frame its actually mobilizing power.
This is generally true of effective anti-democratizing rhetoric, especially the ones that must disseminate in notionally representative (what Foucault would call disciplinary/biopolitical) orders. One must be always be on the alert for this mechanism.
Of course, the Compass dulls our capacity to do this very thing, by muddying our sense of the relevant players, the sides they're on (indeed we lose track of the sides and find ourselves slumbling around in "quadrants" drifting inward and outward from a "core" of altogether questionable import), the outcomes they are actually fighting for, and so on.
Anyway, the kernel of truth in the "nanny state" worry, are the problems of bureaucracy and corruption that inhere in organization as such. This is a worry that rarely seems to extent in those who mouth it to the even more bloated corrupt corporations they tend to prefer to the governments they would dismantle for it, but that of course is neither here nor there, eh?
And, let us be honest here: To the extent that one seeks to implement the democratic values of equity and diversity through organizational efforts (legal and electoral and apparatuses, health, education, and welfare administration, for example) these projects will indeed be vulnerable to bureaucracy inefficiencies, to corruption, and so on.
The point is that the problems of these vulnerability is indifferent to the question what is left versus right but inheres in organization as such, whether made recourse to in the service of the projects of the left or the right. This vulnerability is the farthest imaginable thing from "the flaw of the left" as you put it. It offers no insight to help us understand the strengths of democracy as apposed to anti-democracy as such to pin this vulnerability on the left in particular, nor does it offer us the guidance we want to think how the solutions we will propose to deal with this general organizational vulnerability will reflect our democratizing or anti-democratizing politics.
For three decades neolib/neocon incumbent interests have flogged the frame that government is inherently bloated and corrupt as a way of justifying their looting of its accomplishments and their shifting of postwar authority back into ever fewer, ever more secretive, ever less accountable hands.
Tools like the Compass facilitate such operations by confusing people as to whose side these critics are on.
It is very different to fight corruption to ensure that institutions are accountable to the people, to empower the people (as democrats do), as opposed to fighting government of the people, by the people and for the people in favor of privatization schemes that empower incumbents helming sluggish, secretive, inefficient, feudal corporate organizations (as anti-democrats do in the name of incumbent interests, financial or social or cultural).
These differences that make a difference are clear when one remembers the key distinction is democracy versus anti-democracy, but less clear if one is skipping down this and that axis of the Compass, imagining one's neoliberal free market reforms give one the "lefty" cred of opening up spontaneous orders in the name of civil liberties (they don't: they make one the dupe of the right).
There is, by the way, a special vulnerability to corruption in government organization, inasmuch as it must be empowered with a legal monopoly on the use of violence to acquire the legitimacy through which it provides a nonviolent alternative recourse for the solution of disputes in a finite world of peers with diverse interests and aspirations. The democratic-left tends to seek to overcome this vulnerability through the separation of powers (including an independent press), through the universalization of the franchise, through rights discourse less susceptible to democratic contestation than other aspects of governance, and through the yoking of taxation to representation. And now, of course, in the emerging technoprogressive mainstream we have the unprecedented proliferation of p2p formations to facilitate the dem-left project as well (surveillance, wealth concentration via automation, robot weapons are the incumbent-right face of these developments).
The left opts for these sorts of solutions because they facilitate the larger project of the left to provide ever more people ever more of a say in the public decisions that affect them, the desire that animates the left and inspires the democratic values of equity and diversity the implementation of which drives the history of the left.
The right, on the other hand, tends to overcome this vulnerability to governmental corruption and violence through the retroactive rationalization of its violences as serving a natural order of which they are its natural representatives and beneficiaries.
These things become very clear very clearly when one looks at them this way (other things, I fear, become much harder, but that is life). The Compass makes these simple truths of left versus right, of democrats versus anti-democrats, of people powered politics versus incumbent interests much harder to see. That is its purpose.
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