What the Left-Right Political Spectrum is Really About | What is Politics?

Since the French revolution, the fundamental divide in politics has been between the "left" and the "right", yet very few people today know what these important terms mean, including journalists, politicians and academics. This makes everything dumb.

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[comradefreedom]

The people at the top of the hierarchy never want their subjects to question why the hierarchy exists to begin with.

[Mark-zkgu]

Fantastic video. I've been telling people this for years and people are still stuck on markets vs state as right vs left. it's embarrassing to see.

[SCRAAAWWW]

Great video! The brevity and clarity of explanation was impressive. I've subscribed.

[Robespierre.]

Finally, I found someone who understands the meaning of left and right. This is amazing. One time I asked my teacher what is the measure of left and right. He said economics. I was desperate for an answer.

[BruceWaynesaysLandBack]

Nice summary video. This is a good way to intro people who aren’t ready to commit to a podcast

[royashton]

I’ve been posting a link to your video in comments to other videos about this topic — yours are the best

[nebojsag.]

Lenin's critique of Left Communism is really more of an attack against their not being willing to engage in parliamentary politics, for not being tactically flexible, and - in some cases - for being too rigidly economic.

[MrZevers]

Great, great, really great short video! Thank you!

[pucklian]

initially i just wanted to leave a crumb for the algorithm, but i have to applaud you for engaging with -clearly bad faith- critical comments in such a constructive way. kudos!

[Liliquan]

I imagined I was injured and then left.
Because you did that to me.

[PapaSmurfnd]

I’ve left several comments on other videos but these are so helpful. I’ve watched them 2-3 times and learn something new every time.

Speaking of which, even the idea of the left being progress and the right being conservative - as in not changing - isn’t always helpful. That’s where your example of equality vs. hierarchy is so helpful

[gwho]

but good channel and good points laid forth to advance productive discussion! subscribed!

[Carmine]

Have you read Bob Altemeyer's essential book on Authoritarianism? He doesn't quite language it the way you do, but he's not far off. Thanks for all your work on these issues. Brilliant - and really helpful! :-)

[LuckyBlackCat]

Hello, fellow bread-crumb! This is a really good video. I think you are technically correct in what you're saying, but I wonder to what degree these words have evolved to the point that the original/historic truth is no longer true?
That said, I will fight anyone who says that the USSR = communism or that capitalism without a state = anarchism, so I guess I don't always go along with the evolution of language. I think it's a bit different in these cases, though, because we're talking about coherent ideologies. The concepts of "left" and "right", on the other hand, are more wishy-washy. Or at least that's my perception as someone who doesn't really know what they're talking about. :P Please correct me if I'm wrong!
Subscribed and belled

[breathlesskneeger]

I personally don't understand how any social order can be egalitarian without authoritarianism.

[gwho]

A key conceptual gap in the possibilities:
there can be voluntary, competence based hierarchy, where the teenager submits to the veteran craftsman, because the craftsman knows how to craft better, and is giving the knowledge to the kid.
That's voluntary and that's still a hierarchy, but not based on any coercion, only actual superiority to the proper extent warranted (expertise in crafting, no further).

Hierarchy isn't limited to just the socio-economic dimension.
Also, why do we conflate the social and economic status as if they were one and the same, not two separate things that happen to coincide under certain conditions?

Both the conflation of the social and the economic, as well as the ignoring of non-coercive competence hierarchies, are neglectful of valid possibilities that serve as counterexamples to your thesis in the video here. only after addressing and rebutting the possibilities you ignored can you claim that your thesis remains the "king of the hill" (how hierarchical), intellectually speaking.

good day.

[gwho]

5:13 no, a much more realistic and concrete reason is that left and right aren't self-descriptive. they're symbols of symbols, instead of just a symbol. Just a symbol would be calling them "equality vs hierarchy", just like we do for the other political dimension authoritarian-libertarian.

To reiterate the point via computer science terms, left and right are pointers. pointers to what? to the sides of a room. which room? french. when? during their revolution. and what values/demographics/immediate french pragmatic priorities did they divide themselves by? well, that's up for interpretation, and there are many valid ways to view this division, not just "hierarchy vs flatness". And it gets very messy from there. But notice how even to get to that point of messiness where we can't really definitively trace it any further without arbitrarily picking one line of reasoning as the supreme over the others, we had to follow references so many steps, as opposed to just one direct single step like in "authoritarian-libertarian".

THAT is why left and right get riddled with more and different meanings, as they are vague to begin with, and people will fill in the gaps according to what they've been exposed to when the term left and right were used, and abstract the meaning of left and right to as general as their exposure to those terms have been...

NOT because of a cherry picked conspiracy theory that the it's against the interest of people on top for you to be thinking about them.
There are far more efficient and many other more effective ways to do that.

At the end of the day, you'll have to judge for yourself which theory is more likely.
I personally bet on the one with a solid pragmatic theory that can be replicated and where other examples of it can be found...
over one conspiracy theory incentive among many incentives that do and don't get acted upon.

[joshkar]

Good video full of useful information, love books and need to read more (clearly) Where does raising the minimum quality of life for the most citizens fit with the hierarchy vs equality paradigm ? a IF a majority of rational humans of all political sides agree to some version of this, then maybe we can focus on this more and perhaps work towards a system that fosters incremental movement towards this.

[mistressedenswitch]

Thanks for reading all those booooks so I don’t have to. *phew* JK (sort of), and I did appreciate this.

[masscreationbroadcasts]

And yet, there can still be improvement because Hierarchy vs Equality still doesn't explain why the Right chooses Hierarchy and the Left chooses Equality. These are conclusions, not orientations.