The mere presence of Capitalism does not itself define the left/right spectrum. How capitalism interacts with the spectrum is actually pretty nuanced. The actual solid foundations of what defines left versus right is whether the system should preserve old institutions of heirachy. Originally they were monarchists but facing that they became simply the gentry and then the investor class. The core conceit of the whole thing that is public facing is that some people earn power and power should only be weilded by those who earn it (As far as actual meritocracy goes it’s something of a grift. What counts as “earned” counts as the amalgamation of what your predecessors owned and hoarded and passed down). What it generally means is upholding a sort of empire building conqueror mentality where past gains can be seen as nothing but legitimate - it presupposes there is a correct and incorrect weilder of power. The rich deserve their influence and the poor should suffer. Anything that “artificially” attempts to correct this curve is not just unnatural but going to stir up some sort of rot that will cause social weakness. “Conservatives” are generally conserving this aristocrat structure. Every generation basically changes their presentation to seem more appealing to the masses but that’s it’s underlying structure.
Leftist structures tend to look at the dissolution of those structures. It asks to create something like a universal humane. It presupposes that we try and upset and disolve the mindset that any one person deserves either incredible misery or perfect comfort backed by power. It looks at lateral ways of looking at things like wealth and minority inequalities as being to the injury of a true meritocracy. Existing inequalities are flaws in need of correction or at least some form of gentle leveling off to allow equal participation in society where those of merit can actually succeed. It concerns itself with the idea of “public goods” and tends to be pro-democratic but it isn’t always. The meditations on things like money and capitalism run a gamut between communist ideas of manual state manipulation of assets with very little independently held property existing at all, to socialist worker lead co-op structures where businesses are democratically steered and profits divided amongst the producers… To just a highly regulated version of capitalism where capstones create enough incentive to motivate but not to snowball. Wealth is redistributed via programs or things like a universal income to alleviate issues poverty holds for society. It’s actually called Market Socialism and technically speaking it is on the leftist spectrum.
What ties each era’s incarnation of the left/right spectrum into a continuity is the relationship of heirachy to social structures. Basic rule, if it attempts to scatter existing power it’s left if it tries to consolidate existing power it’s right. If a regulation stops food producers from being able to put sawdust and alum in food for instance that is removing a choice from someone to allow a consolidation of money at the expense of the health and wellbeing of others. It stems from a leftist notion that there exists a baseline public responsibility that outweighs a personal right to exert your position’s advantages against that good. It is working in inside a capitalist structure but it’s still left.
That’s more of a philosophical, vibes-based approach than a practical, structural, economic outlook, and since it must be applied to each case individually within the context that it was applied, it ceases to be a universal measure.
The commonly accepted Socialism/Capitalism divide, ie anti-hierarchy/pro-hierarchy, is more practical for day to day analysis.
Practical perhaps for a taxonomy… But politics are philosophy really. The history shifts. John Locke’s conception of liberalism is both foundational to the law of the land which is both oppressive but also a radical dissolution of the powers of monarchy… And also created from observations of things that already existed. Our concepts of right and left flow from a history where those where once very physical positions in relationship to powerful people and what individual philosophies of political structure were at play change in their relationship to those points. Libralism was once left when in opposition to monarchism or autocracy…now it is right as the shift of power makes those old power structures obsolete.
The common day to day analysis that places these things in strict opposition to each other is perhaps helpful shorthand for navigation of the very basics… Or a sort of surface level conversion. But every short hand is always somehow wrong because realities hold too much nuance to be really useful. Every topic or study has it’s point where you have to discard that riddled with contradictions but easily accessable shorthand given to the beginner because at some point it simply stops being useful. The “commonly accepted” tends to just lend itself to arguments of divisions and sharp delineations where really spectrums exist. Why would one need a universal measure? That lends itself more to tribalism. Economic theory and history has a plethora of words describing many different individual forms societies use to divy up resources. Is the Haudenosaunee confederation’s idea of land and favor trading culture Socialism? Or is that simply applying a framework made from a retrospective where a Eurocentric idea of property ownership muddies the waters and crunches everything down into a palatable shorthand we made up to something that it really has no business being applied?
The political spectrum is philosophy but it is also history. Focusing the lens onto the most popular take in the present does a disservice to the idea of a fixed point to really navigate.
The mere presence of Capitalism does not itself define the left/right spectrum. How capitalism interacts with the spectrum is actually pretty nuanced. The actual solid foundations of what defines left versus right is whether the system should preserve old institutions of heirachy. Originally they were monarchists but facing that they became simply the gentry and then the investor class. The core conceit of the whole thing that is public facing is that some people earn power and power should only be weilded by those who earn it (As far as actual meritocracy goes it’s something of a grift. What counts as “earned” counts as the amalgamation of what your predecessors owned and hoarded and passed down). What it generally means is upholding a sort of empire building conqueror mentality where past gains can be seen as nothing but legitimate - it presupposes there is a correct and incorrect weilder of power. The rich deserve their influence and the poor should suffer. Anything that “artificially” attempts to correct this curve is not just unnatural but going to stir up some sort of rot that will cause social weakness. “Conservatives” are generally conserving this aristocrat structure. Every generation basically changes their presentation to seem more appealing to the masses but that’s it’s underlying structure.
Leftist structures tend to look at the dissolution of those structures. It asks to create something like a universal humane. It presupposes that we try and upset and disolve the mindset that any one person deserves either incredible misery or perfect comfort backed by power. It looks at lateral ways of looking at things like wealth and minority inequalities as being to the injury of a true meritocracy. Existing inequalities are flaws in need of correction or at least some form of gentle leveling off to allow equal participation in society where those of merit can actually succeed. It concerns itself with the idea of “public goods” and tends to be pro-democratic but it isn’t always. The meditations on things like money and capitalism run a gamut between communist ideas of manual state manipulation of assets with very little independently held property existing at all, to socialist worker lead co-op structures where businesses are democratically steered and profits divided amongst the producers… To just a highly regulated version of capitalism where capstones create enough incentive to motivate but not to snowball. Wealth is redistributed via programs or things like a universal income to alleviate issues poverty holds for society. It’s actually called Market Socialism and technically speaking it is on the leftist spectrum.
What ties each era’s incarnation of the left/right spectrum into a continuity is the relationship of heirachy to social structures. Basic rule, if it attempts to scatter existing power it’s left if it tries to consolidate existing power it’s right. If a regulation stops food producers from being able to put sawdust and alum in food for instance that is removing a choice from someone to allow a consolidation of money at the expense of the health and wellbeing of others. It stems from a leftist notion that there exists a baseline public responsibility that outweighs a personal right to exert your position’s advantages against that good. It is working in inside a capitalist structure but it’s still left.
That’s more of a philosophical, vibes-based approach than a practical, structural, economic outlook, and since it must be applied to each case individually within the context that it was applied, it ceases to be a universal measure.
The commonly accepted Socialism/Capitalism divide, ie anti-hierarchy/pro-hierarchy, is more practical for day to day analysis.
Practical perhaps for a taxonomy… But politics are philosophy really. The history shifts. John Locke’s conception of liberalism is both foundational to the law of the land which is both oppressive but also a radical dissolution of the powers of monarchy… And also created from observations of things that already existed. Our concepts of right and left flow from a history where those where once very physical positions in relationship to powerful people and what individual philosophies of political structure were at play change in their relationship to those points. Libralism was once left when in opposition to monarchism or autocracy…now it is right as the shift of power makes those old power structures obsolete.
The common day to day analysis that places these things in strict opposition to each other is perhaps helpful shorthand for navigation of the very basics… Or a sort of surface level conversion. But every short hand is always somehow wrong because realities hold too much nuance to be really useful. Every topic or study has it’s point where you have to discard that riddled with contradictions but easily accessable shorthand given to the beginner because at some point it simply stops being useful. The “commonly accepted” tends to just lend itself to arguments of divisions and sharp delineations where really spectrums exist. Why would one need a universal measure? That lends itself more to tribalism. Economic theory and history has a plethora of words describing many different individual forms societies use to divy up resources. Is the Haudenosaunee confederation’s idea of land and favor trading culture Socialism? Or is that simply applying a framework made from a retrospective where a Eurocentric idea of property ownership muddies the waters and crunches everything down into a palatable shorthand we made up to something that it really has no business being applied?
The political spectrum is philosophy but it is also history. Focusing the lens onto the most popular take in the present does a disservice to the idea of a fixed point to really navigate.