Why try to classify dictatorships as right-wing or left-wing?

[Boojatta]

For a long time in Romania women had no freedom of reproductive choice. One could try to use that information to support the thesis that Romania had a right-wing government. However, this can get confusing rather quickly.

What difference does it make? Is one kind of tyranny better than the other?

[Richard Steele]

1. That's a good question. Never occurred to me to wonder why that is.

Betcha some smart DUers have good answers;
I'm looking foreward to them.

[cool user name]

2. I don't see why it would be classified as rightwing either ...

... the world is not two-dimensional. We need to stop thinking in such a way. We need to start thinking in more than two dimensions when trying to explain things.

Dictatorships are just that. It makes no sense, except for descriptive purposes regarding economy, to label something rightwing or leftwing. If it's a nationalistic authoritarian dictatorship, it's still fascist, and that in and of itself should warrant condemnation - not its economic preference.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. I thought Jeanne Kirkpatrick made a big deal about this during the Reagan years.

Calling "RW" dictatorships "authoritarian" (i.e. "our friends" like Saddam) as opposed the lefty enemy.

It's not a construct that is fundamentally derived from the political left, I think it comes more from the right, to justify our support and coddling of abhorrent regimes when it's perceived to be in "our" interest.

[DURHAM D]

4. How did Jeanne (god rest her miserable soul)

see Castro?

[originalpckelly]

5. I think the political spectrum is kind of a circle...

with left and right on opposing sides and libertarianism/liberalism on one side with totalitarianism on the other.

The libertarians have this little test, on which scores are organized in a diamond shape similar to the way I outlined my theory of politics:


Only I think liberalism and libertarianism are practically the same, because you'll find right wing libertarians agreeing with left wing liberals all the time. Some try to call it "civil libertarianism" on the left, but the root of the word "libertarian" and "liberal" are the same.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/libertarian (this routes to the one listed below)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberty

[Boojatta]

11. Does the Libertarian position deserve so much honor and respect

that it should form a key element in conceptualizing basic political categories?

According to Libertarian dogma, isn't it necessary to blame China for the Opium Wars on the grounds that the Chinese government of the day tried to enforce laws against "free trade" of opium?

Presumably there are many advocates of globalization who would be treated with cold politeness or open contempt on DU, but who would not blame China for the Opium Wars!

[Hissyspit]

6. They are all totalitarian - authoritarian on all social issues...

What makes them left-wing or right-wing authoritarian is the economic approaches, so there is a difference. Some are left-wing totalitarian and some are right-wing totalitarian (or a combination of both, so it can be nuanced.)

[originalpckelly]

8. Yes, that's very much it.

Left-wing authoritarians usually seek to gain control over the economy from the position of government. Right-wing authoritarians usually seek to gain control over the government from the position of the economy.

[krispos42]

7. No, but they are different

Right-wing tends towards Nazism, left-wing tends towards Communism.

Doesn't mean that left-wing is freer or more oppressive than right wing, just different.

Wikipedia gives the basic ideas here and here.

[originalpckelly]

9. And I should also note, that in certain circles of the Nazi party...

homosexuality was flaunted openly, that is until the night of the long knives.

[The Straight Story]

10. I call it the flat earth reason

You walk to far one way or the other and you end up falling off the edge.

I see folks on the left and folks on the right trying to control my life more and more, each while claiming it is best for us all.

I just want our government to do it's fucking job and leave me the hell alone :)

[otherlander]

12. All ideologies are dangerous.

Was Pinochet so different from Mao?

[Crunchy Frog]

13. I don't classify them that way myself, and frankly think it is a

meaningless exercize. A dictatorship is a dictatorship is a dictatorship.

[Doc_Technical]

14. A quote from Robert A. Heinlein

"Political tags-such as royalist, communist, democrat,

populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth-

are never basic criteria.

The human race divides politically into those who want

people to be controlled and those who have no such desire"



There are thoughts from a "classical" conservatives

that sometimes give me pause.

[Boojatta]

19. The key word there seems to be "controlled."

If laws were to list all things that are permitted and everything not specifically permitted were forbidden, then an entire society would seem to be limited by the level of imagination of the legislators.

[Hosnon]

15. Because the rise of Hitler depended, to a large degree, on whether he was right or left.

According to a BBC series I saw, WWI destroyed the middle class of Germany (and, consequently, the political middle) and polarized the people. Most were either extreme right or extreme left.

Hitler was extreme right.

The businessmen of Germany did not want a ruler that was far left because that would mean nationalization of the economy (and the loss of their wealth). As a result, they encouraged Hindenburg to support Hitler.

It may not matter whether a dictatorship, fully in power, is right or left but whether or not a rising dictator is right or left definitely seemed to matter in Germany.

[Boojatta]

18. "Most were either extreme right or extreme left."

Do you mean that when the extreme right and extreme left joined forces they constituted the majority or do you mean that each of them was larger than those who supported constitutional, parliamentary democracy?

[MrPrax]

16. ???

Tags:

dictatorships Romania reproductive choice thesis tyranny classify freedom

:shrug:

[LeftishBrit]

17. I think that all dictatorships are right-wing in many crucial ways

Being left-wing implies a belief in equal protection and rights for all; and a dictatorship definitely implies that 'some are more equal than others', and that those who oppose or sometimes just those who are irrelevant to the dictator(s) can be trodden on.

To me, the fundamental distinction between right and left is between those who consider that the 'strong' (economically, physically or socially) in society should have the right to enhance their strength at the expense of the 'weak', versus those who believe that it is crucial to look after the 'weaker' members of society, even if this means some restrictions on the opportunities of the 'stronger'. By definition, dictatorship implies enhancing and protecting the position of the 'strong': a fundamentally right-wing position, though the details may certainly vary according to whether the 'strong' in that particular society are feudal lords, generals, or Stalinist-type apparatchiks.

Having said all that, it is true that on average a 'left-wing' dicatorship will be more concerned than a 'right-wing' dictatorship with reducing poverty and establishing some form of economic equality and protection. Though even that is not always true - there was plenty of poverty in Ceaucescu's Romania.

[HamdenRice]

20. It has to do with class interests

You can classify governments by two completely different metrics: (1) how do you govern and (2) in whose interests do you govern.

Ever since the French Revolution, western politics have largely turned on the question of "in whose interests do you govern" -- the rich, the nobility and other elite interests; the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie and farmers; or the working class and the poor. A fourth constituency is the statist option -- a government that governs primarily on behalf of the government itself (an example would be current day Burma/Mynmar.) A democracy or a dictatorship could be committed to any of these constituencies, although a democracy that governs on behalf of a rich minority has to mask and lie about what it's doing -- ie, the Bush administration's folksy, populist, "social issues," pretenses compared to its governing solely for the rich -- or it would be voted out of office.

Castro is a dictator, for example, but he has always said that the purpose of his dictatorship is to improve the well-being of the working people of Cuba. He has, in fact, done so, especially compared to other Latin American countries (good health care, high literacy, etc). Communism provided ideological support for the idea that the working class wants bread, shelter and economic security, not individual political expression, and hence a dictatorship in support of providing economic benefits would be tolerated or even embraced by the working class. This led to excesses of political repression of the working class supposedly in favor of the interests of the working class, such as was seen in Eastern European communist dictatorships.

By contrast, a dictator like Franco governed on behalf of the rich, the church and other vested elitist interests in Spain. Similarly, P.W. Botha governed a dictatorship for Black South Africans and a democracy for White South Africans, but it was self-consciously about protecting the interests of well off whites, not the poor.

Castro is a left wing dictator. Franco was a right wing dictator.