Many have long described variation in political opinion in terms of two key dimensions, described either as economic freedom and personal freedom, or via rotated axes as left vs right and libertarian vs authoritarian.
I understand that Robin's views on libertarianism have evolved but I'm not connecting how this article (which feels correct to me) directly maps to a myth of authoritarian vs libertarian. I suppose its declaring that a "libertarian" once in power will use their authority in non-libertarian ways. While likely true, I'm not sure that means that there is a myth that the world views are different. I think its reasonable to say there is a world view that coercive authority needs to be used to prevent the spread of wrong think or people interacting in ways one doesn't like. And there is a world view that of free flow of ideas and humans free to interact as they see fit.
I came here to comment very much along the lines of what Matt B said. I don't think that makes left/right auth/lib mythical; rather I would say that there's an incorrect perception of parties sticking to their prescribed ideologies once in power. Purity/consistency of left/right or auth/lib in practice may be mythical but the concepts aren't. The reason for divergence could be an interesting area of study. Reasons could range from practical difficulties with implementation of policy all the way to pure hypocrisy.
I think the difference between these labels is how much weight they get in a decision model.
“Right” and “left” is mostly descriptions of parties, so, like you write, they can lose meaning once power is involved.
However, libertarian points more directly to a value weighting, and says how much freedom is prioritized relative to other concerns. That makes it less about specific political actions and more about underlying preferences.
How this plays out in practice is fuzzy, but the concept still has a concrete meaning and at least some predictive power, and for sure way more than “right” or “left.”
Not sure if this is in disagreement to your article or not, but regardless, I think it's an important distinction.
I agree with the Lewis brothers and you that the political terms “left” and “right” have no consistent meaning over time and place. They'd be better replaced by “collectivist” and “individualist,” respectively. However, the terms “libertarian” and “authoritarian” are different. The most extreme versions of the former and the latter are anarchist and totalitarian, respectively. There can be no greater political division than that between no government and total government. In the US at least, libertarianism tends to be associated with individualism and authoritarianism with collectivism. However, the four terms have different meanings, and those associations don't always obtain.
I believe the most nearly adequate political typology chart would be a square divided into quadrants by two axes: the x-axis running horizontally from left to right and the y-axis running vertically from bottom to top. In the center is a circle large enough to divide the chart into five equal areas. The top half of the chart represents degrees of authoritarianism, the bottom half degrees of libertarianism. The left half of the chart represents degrees of collectivism, and the right half represents degrees of individualism. The circle represents centrism. Anarcho-individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism) occupies the bottom right corner, anarcho-collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism) the bottom left corner, totalitarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism) the upper left corner, and totalitarian individualism the upper right corner--whose closest real-world approximation seems to be the Chilean regime of Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s and 1980s. That chart is similar to, if not identical to, versions of the Political Compass. I believe it includes all political ideologies—and all versions of political thought except nihilism, which doesn't seem to be an ideology because it denies the existence of moral or political “oughts” and therefore cannot generate any principles for how society should be organized.
In my view, these political tendencies along with their very real manifestations, naturally co-exist in a dynamic, influencing one another - in any given society. Sometimes, the libertarian is merely a guise for the shy, but libertine authoritarian.
The concepts of libertarian and authoritarian are absolutely crucial to maintain. That bad actors try to abuse and change the meanings of important words to score political points does not mean we should get rid of those words.
You're saying both sides are guilty of authoritarianism so it's okay for "our side" to be as authoritarian as they can. This rhetoric is very appealing to the more authoritarian side, which is why you hear it from them often.
Such rhetoric neglects the concept of degrees. All governments have authoritarian elements, but there is a huge difference between Nazi Germany, the USSR, or North Korea, and the Western world. Some parties and movements embrace authoritarianism to a much greater degree, and some embrace it to a much lesser degree.
What we often hear from the right is that freedom is the right of businesses to do as they wish, with regard to hiring, firing, setting labor conditions, pollution, environmental damage, etc. The left prefers to talk about the right of workers to be free from unjust termination or discrimination, to form unions, to enjoy the natural world and breathe clean air. Freedom for the right is freedom for the "big guys": the powerful corporations. Freedom for the left is freedom for the "little guys": the workers.
Only one of these is really authoritarian. Authoritarianism is when the big guys - the authorities - do what they want to the little guys.
To put it another way, when big-guy A oppresses and constrains little-guy B, then A is being authoritarian. When bigger-guy C prevents big-guy A from oppressing and constraining little-guy B, then C is being the opposite of authoritarian; C is protecting the freedoms of the little guy.
In a democratic political system, if a party is truly "libertarian" it is at a big disadvantage because it is less inclined to punish opponents when in power. I think this explains a lot of Trump; Republicans are tired of being the losing libertarian party and go in for these dramatic shows of punishing their opponents.
Clearly a libertatian society can be highly effective/adaptive at the country level, but it has to be generated and maintained by norms or consensus across parties or factions, rather than by one faction advocating for it.
I would encourage you to read the recent literature in political science on the supposed myth of left and right. That book isn't taken seriously in the discipline and IMO it's because they don't engage very seriously with all the quantitative work on spatial ideology, spatial voting and mass+elite scaling more generally. I mean this is a huge literature! Most of us think the basic downsian view ~correct, a simple 1D left right structure describes most voters fairly well and of course describes elites well (see Fowler et al, hare et al, etc. recently). I'm surprised you would be hostile towards this, it has a solid formal basis. I think of the things we "know" as a discipline this is up there with the median voter theorem, fennos paradox, etc. The 1D scores derived from these kinds of approaches are often highly predictive of behavioral outcomes for voters and elites. I don't know anyone who would say this means left and right are some indelible package of issue positions, sure, but that doesn't mean the whole conceptual structure isn't useful or predictive. More generally, the spatial metaphor is extremely useful and just seems to fit the data well in many contexts.
I have a PhD in formal political theory, so yes I am well aware of the empirical lit on 1D representations of political choices. The point is that the 1D that describes a particular place at a particular time doesn't generalize much to other places and times. That is the key claim of Myth of Left & Right.
To me, that's a significant retreat from the more general claims I have heard them make. But OK. Even still, I think the claim the structure doesn't generalize at all over time and space is clearly overbroad. Surely the structure from the Senate in say 2002 is similar to the structure in 2005. You can use ideal points estimated in earlier periods to predict behavior in the next period, often quite well. If you look at ANES panels and scale voters, they tend to look relatively stable over several year periods. And there are papers that bridge legislatures across countries and seem to find similarities in the 1D representations that align well with packages of issue positions. I guess I'm just not sure who (that's serious) has claimed the 1D structure is generalizable across all of time and space, or that this point about context and bridging is somehow a novel critique. I apologize if I'm coming off as grumpy here but I often hear this book mentioned by (non-formal) theorists as if it's some great takedown and I just don't think this is where the bodies are buried.
Something that holds 95% of the time is still highly informative - and it seems trivially easy to find propositions that distinguish left vs. right 95% of the time.
Maybe the most obvious is egalitarianism vs. belief in natural hierarchy (across individuals and groups). Now you might say that this has led to different "policy positions" on something like immigration over time (for a period the western left opposed immigration due to concern for native working class populations) but why should that mean the labels are meaningless?
Fascists (the "right") all split off from far-"left" movements, and progressives considered fascism and communism as equally good alternatives until 1933. The terms "left" and "right" were very rarely used in English for political purposes until the 1920s. Then, "left" meant socialists who wanted a bloody revolution, and the "right" was socialists who wanted gradual change. The term "right-wing" didn't become more-associated with conservatives than with socialists until the mid-1970s.
The terms left and right originated with the seating pattern in the French Convent. I don't think there is too much difference between current US Progressives and the 1790s Sansculottes (who had representatives on the extreme left of the convent).
I can't swear that the terms "left" and "right" weren't used that way in English, because I can't usefully search huge databases of books for the term "right". I can swear that the terms "left wing" and "right wing" were not used in English that way until very recently. I don't believe that the usage of "left" and "right" for political parties in English derives from the French Revolution, although that seems to be the case for French and German.
How would you otherwise characterize the political gradient between Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties immediately after WW1 in the UK? To me, it's a classical left to right...
Actually you made me think on something Phil, I've never considered the term right and right-wing synonymous but you imply many, maybe most, do there. Curious on that now.
Do you think it nevertheless makes sense to attach such labels, with degrees, after the fact, eg the government of XY was more liberal/conservative than the preceding?
I understand that Robin's views on libertarianism have evolved but I'm not connecting how this article (which feels correct to me) directly maps to a myth of authoritarian vs libertarian. I suppose its declaring that a "libertarian" once in power will use their authority in non-libertarian ways. While likely true, I'm not sure that means that there is a myth that the world views are different. I think its reasonable to say there is a world view that coercive authority needs to be used to prevent the spread of wrong think or people interacting in ways one doesn't like. And there is a world view that of free flow of ideas and humans free to interact as they see fit.
There are also coherent concepts of left vs right available. Its just that policy doesn't much respect them.
I came here to comment very much along the lines of what Matt B said. I don't think that makes left/right auth/lib mythical; rather I would say that there's an incorrect perception of parties sticking to their prescribed ideologies once in power. Purity/consistency of left/right or auth/lib in practice may be mythical but the concepts aren't. The reason for divergence could be an interesting area of study. Reasons could range from practical difficulties with implementation of policy all the way to pure hypocrisy.
In other words, power corrupts. 🤣
I think the difference between these labels is how much weight they get in a decision model.
“Right” and “left” is mostly descriptions of parties, so, like you write, they can lose meaning once power is involved.
However, libertarian points more directly to a value weighting, and says how much freedom is prioritized relative to other concerns. That makes it less about specific political actions and more about underlying preferences.
How this plays out in practice is fuzzy, but the concept still has a concrete meaning and at least some predictive power, and for sure way more than “right” or “left.”
Not sure if this is in disagreement to your article or not, but regardless, I think it's an important distinction.
I agree with the Lewis brothers and you that the political terms “left” and “right” have no consistent meaning over time and place. They'd be better replaced by “collectivist” and “individualist,” respectively. However, the terms “libertarian” and “authoritarian” are different. The most extreme versions of the former and the latter are anarchist and totalitarian, respectively. There can be no greater political division than that between no government and total government. In the US at least, libertarianism tends to be associated with individualism and authoritarianism with collectivism. However, the four terms have different meanings, and those associations don't always obtain.
I believe the most nearly adequate political typology chart would be a square divided into quadrants by two axes: the x-axis running horizontally from left to right and the y-axis running vertically from bottom to top. In the center is a circle large enough to divide the chart into five equal areas. The top half of the chart represents degrees of authoritarianism, the bottom half degrees of libertarianism. The left half of the chart represents degrees of collectivism, and the right half represents degrees of individualism. The circle represents centrism. Anarcho-individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism) occupies the bottom right corner, anarcho-collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism) the bottom left corner, totalitarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism) the upper left corner, and totalitarian individualism the upper right corner--whose closest real-world approximation seems to be the Chilean regime of Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s and 1980s. That chart is similar to, if not identical to, versions of the Political Compass. I believe it includes all political ideologies—and all versions of political thought except nihilism, which doesn't seem to be an ideology because it denies the existence of moral or political “oughts” and therefore cannot generate any principles for how society should be organized.
In my view, these political tendencies along with their very real manifestations, naturally co-exist in a dynamic, influencing one another - in any given society. Sometimes, the libertarian is merely a guise for the shy, but libertine authoritarian.
The concepts of libertarian and authoritarian are absolutely crucial to maintain. That bad actors try to abuse and change the meanings of important words to score political points does not mean we should get rid of those words.
You're saying both sides are guilty of authoritarianism so it's okay for "our side" to be as authoritarian as they can. This rhetoric is very appealing to the more authoritarian side, which is why you hear it from them often.
Such rhetoric neglects the concept of degrees. All governments have authoritarian elements, but there is a huge difference between Nazi Germany, the USSR, or North Korea, and the Western world. Some parties and movements embrace authoritarianism to a much greater degree, and some embrace it to a much lesser degree.
What we often hear from the right is that freedom is the right of businesses to do as they wish, with regard to hiring, firing, setting labor conditions, pollution, environmental damage, etc. The left prefers to talk about the right of workers to be free from unjust termination or discrimination, to form unions, to enjoy the natural world and breathe clean air. Freedom for the right is freedom for the "big guys": the powerful corporations. Freedom for the left is freedom for the "little guys": the workers.
Only one of these is really authoritarian. Authoritarianism is when the big guys - the authorities - do what they want to the little guys.
To put it another way, when big-guy A oppresses and constrains little-guy B, then A is being authoritarian. When bigger-guy C prevents big-guy A from oppressing and constraining little-guy B, then C is being the opposite of authoritarian; C is protecting the freedoms of the little guy.
In a democratic political system, if a party is truly "libertarian" it is at a big disadvantage because it is less inclined to punish opponents when in power. I think this explains a lot of Trump; Republicans are tired of being the losing libertarian party and go in for these dramatic shows of punishing their opponents.
Clearly a libertatian society can be highly effective/adaptive at the country level, but it has to be generated and maintained by norms or consensus across parties or factions, rather than by one faction advocating for it.
I would encourage you to read the recent literature in political science on the supposed myth of left and right. That book isn't taken seriously in the discipline and IMO it's because they don't engage very seriously with all the quantitative work on spatial ideology, spatial voting and mass+elite scaling more generally. I mean this is a huge literature! Most of us think the basic downsian view ~correct, a simple 1D left right structure describes most voters fairly well and of course describes elites well (see Fowler et al, hare et al, etc. recently). I'm surprised you would be hostile towards this, it has a solid formal basis. I think of the things we "know" as a discipline this is up there with the median voter theorem, fennos paradox, etc. The 1D scores derived from these kinds of approaches are often highly predictive of behavioral outcomes for voters and elites. I don't know anyone who would say this means left and right are some indelible package of issue positions, sure, but that doesn't mean the whole conceptual structure isn't useful or predictive. More generally, the spatial metaphor is extremely useful and just seems to fit the data well in many contexts.
I have a PhD in formal political theory, so yes I am well aware of the empirical lit on 1D representations of political choices. The point is that the 1D that describes a particular place at a particular time doesn't generalize much to other places and times. That is the key claim of Myth of Left & Right.
To me, that's a significant retreat from the more general claims I have heard them make. But OK. Even still, I think the claim the structure doesn't generalize at all over time and space is clearly overbroad. Surely the structure from the Senate in say 2002 is similar to the structure in 2005. You can use ideal points estimated in earlier periods to predict behavior in the next period, often quite well. If you look at ANES panels and scale voters, they tend to look relatively stable over several year periods. And there are papers that bridge legislatures across countries and seem to find similarities in the 1D representations that align well with packages of issue positions. I guess I'm just not sure who (that's serious) has claimed the 1D structure is generalizable across all of time and space, or that this point about context and bridging is somehow a novel critique. I apologize if I'm coming off as grumpy here but I often hear this book mentioned by (non-formal) theorists as if it's some great takedown and I just don't think this is where the bodies are buried.
Something that holds 95% of the time is still highly informative - and it seems trivially easy to find propositions that distinguish left vs. right 95% of the time.
Maybe the most obvious is egalitarianism vs. belief in natural hierarchy (across individuals and groups). Now you might say that this has led to different "policy positions" on something like immigration over time (for a period the western left opposed immigration due to concern for native working class populations) but why should that mean the labels are meaningless?
Fascists (the "right") all split off from far-"left" movements, and progressives considered fascism and communism as equally good alternatives until 1933. The terms "left" and "right" were very rarely used in English for political purposes until the 1920s. Then, "left" meant socialists who wanted a bloody revolution, and the "right" was socialists who wanted gradual change. The term "right-wing" didn't become more-associated with conservatives than with socialists until the mid-1970s.
The terms left and right originated with the seating pattern in the French Convent. I don't think there is too much difference between current US Progressives and the 1790s Sansculottes (who had representatives on the extreme left of the convent).
I can't swear that the terms "left" and "right" weren't used that way in English, because I can't usefully search huge databases of books for the term "right". I can swear that the terms "left wing" and "right wing" were not used in English that way until very recently. I don't believe that the usage of "left" and "right" for political parties in English derives from the French Revolution, although that seems to be the case for French and German.
How would you otherwise characterize the political gradient between Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties immediately after WW1 in the UK? To me, it's a classical left to right...
Actually you made me think on something Phil, I've never considered the term right and right-wing synonymous but you imply many, maybe most, do there. Curious on that now.
Do you think it nevertheless makes sense to attach such labels, with degrees, after the fact, eg the government of XY was more liberal/conservative than the preceding?