Left, Right, No Centre

Labels coming unstuck

OK, thing are all so screwed up, all I can do is lay it out as I see it. Not that I expect people to agree, mind, but that’s part of the fun, right?

Ideas are sticky. They roll through peoples’ heads and pick up a lot of other stuff which doesn’t actually have anything to do with them. So, systems of running an economy, such as capitalism and socialism/communism, accumulate around them ideas about government and society that actually have no logical or causal relationship to them.

There is no reason, in logic, why an economically socialist country should not be racist or sexist in its social structures and behaviours. Equally, there is no reason for a capitalist society not to be tolerant and open. Both socialism and capitalism can operate in either dictatorship or democracy.

BUT, we take one set of economic and social ideas, which become have stuck together by historical accident, and label them Left. We take another set, equally accidentally associated, and label them Right. Then expect them to remain always in these opposed stances.

But if we follow the logic proposed by both sides, without pre-choosing a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, we find that, according to the adherents of the other side, both must end in totalitarianism, so we do not have a spectrum, but a circle which leads to the same place whichever direction you go in.

So let’s look at it another way.