Left and Right: Part II

As mentioned in the last post,  the two world views differ essentially with regards to the perceived role and ideal size of government.   The difference is this:  People on the left tend to envision a larger role for government than those on the right, who tend to favor more limited government. This gives rise, naturally, to a whole spectrum of positions on this topic.

On the extreme left are totalitarian Marxists, who believe that government must have total power over its citizens in order to force the transformation of society into their vision of utopia, a vision based on an egalitarian view of society, i.e., a society in which there is no inequality with regards to rights and possessions. 

A number of nations have tried this approach to governing and the results have not been very successful. The Soviet Union was established by a leftist revolution in October 1917 and lasted until 1991. It was without a doubt a very totalitarian state in which the citizens enjoyed very few freedoms and millions of those who were opposed to or were perceived to be opposed to the regime were systematically murdered or sent off to prison labor camps. Despite its exercise for 74 years of unlimited, authoritarian government power over every aspect of  its citizens' lives, the Soviet regime failed to bring about anything resembling the utopia that Marx predicted.

 

On the other hand, folks on the extreme right tend to be very libertarian and favor a very limited form of government that has no claim at all on a person’s property.  Government intrusion of all kinds is abhorred.  The emphasis here is generally on economics with libertarians preferring that the government stay out of commerce altogether and generally not get involved in the private lives of citizens. They generally acknowledge, however, that a certain limited form of government is necessary in order to "ensure domestic tranquility" and to protect a nation (i.e. via armed forces such as police and armies) from enemies domestic and foreign. Thus, they tend not to be anarchists in the sense of preferring no laws and no government whatsoever.

Some would like to claim that the Nazis of Hitler's Germany and the Fascists of Mussolini's Italy are the prime example of right wing extremism.  However, this assertion is factually incorrect.  Both Nazi and Fascist regimes were totalitarian in nature, giving supreme power to the state.  In fact, the full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.  It is true that Nazi appealed more to nationalist sentiments than did the more internationalist Communists, and it is also true that the Nazis allowed some limited private property ownership.  But without a date Nazis and Fascists did not advocate a limited role for government.  They were more like the Communists in their basic beliefs about the role of government.  Their utopian visions for the end game may have been different, but their means and methods were quite similar.

Thus, when viewed from the aspect of the role of government and the limitations put on government, the left / right distinction comes down to the distinction -- at the extremes -- between total government and no government.   Total government that acknowledges no rights of the individual has always been a failure in history.  They have never endured.  The 20th century saw the annihilation of over 200 million people as an outcome of several experiments in totalitarian government.  On the other hand, it can be argued that the extreme right wing solution of no government at all is also failure, being nearly impossible to implement because human beings are social animals in need of each other and naturally gravitate to form social units such as the family, towns, cities, states, nations and so on.  Extreme laissez-faire economics without regulation has usually resulted in some groups (the wealthy) exploiting others (the less wealthy).  It is no more desirable than extreme left wing approaches to total government.