WHAT'S LEFT OF WHAT'S RIGHT, PART 5
LEFT VS RIGHT SOCIALISM EXPLAINED
For a general introduction to this series, see here.
Now that we’ve started to grasp a more theoretically consistent and historically accurate understanding of how to apply these terms left and right, keeping in mind how Marx contributed to the subverting of right-wing socialism (as discussed, here), we’re left with the question of what exactly is the practical difference between left and right socialism? In answering this question, I want to propose an ideal-type solution. That’s to say, this argument isn’t to claim that any of those thinkers whom Michéa would claim as part of his anti-left socialist tradition would necessarily buy fully and directly into what I’ll suggest. However, in light of the analyses provided in the earlier instalments to this series, this seems to me like the logically consistent way to parse the sides.
I’ve no interest in setting up a purity test, and indeed it’s much more interesting to explore the different interpretations and variations of the thought of those who could be included under a wide umbrella. I’d just say that if one were to create a standard for a purity test, this seems to me like the correct delineation of how such a standard would be properly construed.
First, what do both kinds of socialism have in common? There certainly are things that distinguish them at a fundamental level. Right-wing socialism is focused on achieving its goals within the context of preserving family, community, even tradition and custom. Left socialism on the other hand would appeal to progress and universality. It would presume to describe a rational marshalling of resources – in keeping with its progressivism and universalism – and it would want to treat each individual as a discrete rights claimant, severed from what would be characterized as regressive, archaic associations and obligations. All that seems pretty predictable from our earlier discussions. The more interesting question is what do they have in common; what specifically is it that each would want to achieve and would identify them distinctly as being socialist – notwithstanding their obvious differences?
The answer to that question I believe is that both would want to reduce the Gini Coefficient. That is, both aspire to reduce the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in their society. In this regard, it is interesting that those who promote unfettered markets also often make a certain kind of cryptic-socialist argument. In their world of supposedly self-regulating markets, great wealth differentials are more likely to come when special interests use their political power to capture the coercive force of the state to tip the balance of the playing field in their favor. So, if such cronyism can be eliminated, so goes the argument, there would be less wealth disparity. And so, the unfettered market too is presented as a means of closing the Gini Coefficient.
Of course, as we saw in the last post, such an argument is special pleading, at best myopic to the fact that unfettered markets themselves are the product of the coercive force of the state. Furthermore, insofar as the space of unfettered markets is extended globally, the geo-arbitrage that becomes available encourages the wealthy to leverage wage and regulation differentials. This of course is the very logic of the supposed benefits of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the process, the wealthy vastly increase their own profit, at the expense of emptying the working-class regions of their origin country of the previously well-paying jobs. The classic example of this process of course is the U.S. “rust belt.”
So, if given free global rein, liberated from the purportedly anti-freedom market-constraining measures such as regulations, tariffs or subsidies – allegedly contributing to cronyism and so limiting the Gini Coefficient crushing virtues of unfettered markets – such unfettered markets in fact have the exact opposite effect of their ostensible cryptic-socialist benefits. Furthermore, such developments turn the ruling class into virtually an open enemy of the working class. Unlike the prior arrangement within national capitalism, as discussed frequently by Christopher Lasch or Charles Murray, in which, for all their tension and conflict, there was a symbiotic relationship between the ruling class and the workers, the globalization of the market society smites that symbiosis, as the ruling class comes to identify less with its own national working class and more with the economy and culture of a globalist pan-ruling class. That situation provides the cultural and psychological reinforcement of the economic exploding of the Gini Coefficient, further entrenching that exploding’s moral institutionalization.
So, clever as the argument may appear at first blush, the unfettered market as cryptic-socialism position is revealed as sophistry. So, the only legitimate claim the left has to any kind of socialism is the statist version of social engineering of values valorization and resource redistribution. The first thing to say about this version of socialism is that it is indeed subject to all the folly that free marketers warn about: it can indeed be captured by special, self-serving, interests, given the nature of concentrated benefits and distributed costs; the bureaucracy can become a self-dealing power unto itself, more focused on perpetuating its own power and resources, than serving the alleged socialist mission; even if an objectively correct distribution of resources could be identified, there’s no reason to think that any set of technocrats would be able to access all the information necessary to both know the correct distribution or achieve it; and finally there is no objectively correct distribution of resources.
On this final point, to think otherwise is to lapse into the world of the naturalistic fallacy; all technical decisions must be executed on the assumption of a values basis. Social engineering is always social engineering toward some objective. That objective though privileges one set of values over any other. Sometimes those values are explicitly stated, but often these values are merely implicit, sometimes entirely unconscious even to the social engineers.
However, even if there were ways to resolve all those problems with socially engineered socialism, through the administrative state, which is a mighty big arguendo, we still are left with the problems inherent in the left’s intrinsic hostility to organic community. For left socialism to achieve its Gini Coefficient smashing agenda, it must also smash the communal bonds, traditions, customs, and concrete institutions of the organic community, which stand as obstacles to the left’s aspirational progressivism, universalism, individualism, and rationalism.
It's in this context that Michéa’s insight into what I’ve called right socialism becomes relevant. The right, as I’ve clarified the term over this series and in other recent posts, looking back more to the Scottish than the French lineage of the Enlightenment (see here), is concerned with protecting organic community, with its traditions, customs, and Schmittian concrete institutions. Michéa observed that the early socialists leaned much more in this direction, railing against the destruction of such communal bonds resulting from the destructive effects of the industrial revolution – which as we’ve seen (in the last post) has been a product of the triumph of the left, with its social marketizing and social engineering symbiosis. Certainly, one can (as I suspect Polanyi would) defend this as “socialism” in the sense of defending society against the socially corrosive effects of either left wing strategy – much less their symbiotic corrosiveness. In this way, one might then argue that right wing socialism is the only real socialism. But I want here to stick with my original framing, assessing socialism as a means to reduce the Gini Coefficient.
In earlier posts, we saw how the French peasants (the original right?) revolted against the revolutionaries’ interventionist state’s marketization and commodification of their culture and land (here). Likewise, in England, with Polanyi’s historical review, we saw how centuries long legal and extra-legal battles were fought by especially peasants, but later also deracinated urban workers, to protect their communities, families, and way of life, from marketization and commodification that overthrew centuries of common law, tradition, and social norms (here). The arguments that the left (particularly promoters of unfettered markets) make against such a right-wing position is that such traditions and customs create obstacles to the most efficient deployment of resources. Though the instalment on the original right also emphasized the perplexity of the revolutionary central planners at how the peasants were so resistant to the former’s self-evident efficiency improvements1 in peasant life.
To reiterate from above, whether in the form of unfettered markets or central planning, such claims simply paper over the (pretty much inevitably self-serving) values uncritically operating within any specific efficiency claim. But, more to our point, here: if we contrast Polanyi’s description of how markets were constrained by communities prior to the achievement of the market society, with the world of geo-arbitrage by global capitalism, discussed above, we can see how community constraints upon unfettered markets (or the social engineering projects necessary to create such markets) actually reduce the Gini Coefficient.
It's certainly true that tariffs and community regulation of markets and goods or capital flow may well reduce the overall prosperity of a given community. That seems likely. However, when such prosperity occasions vast increases in the Gini Coefficient, than it hardly serves the entirety (likely not even the majority) of the population, and so defending the enforcement of such “obstacles” to rational planning or market allocation do reduce the Gini Coefficient and so are indeed a form of socialism. Call it right-wing socialism.
And to be clear, for those who’d dismiss such a communitarian conservative position – as so boringly common in libertarian circles – as the poor’s craven envy of the worthy wealthy, such an apologia is tellingly blind to the immense social damage done by the class realignments which result: discussed briefly above, but the source of much of the most profound insights of the likes of Charles Murray and before him Christopher Lasch. But then of course, as should be obvious by now, such unfettered market libertarians are left-wing ideologues who are fixated on the individual at the expense of preserving organic communities.2
I hope by now, it is clear that the phrase “right socialism” refers to not only a conceptually legitimate and coherent position, but one that provides a radical alternative to the left socialism which is usually proffered by both those self-identifying as left or right as the only meaningful use of the noun. (Of course, as should be obvious by now as well: very many people who self-identify as right are objectively of the left, while certainly some who self-identify as left are objectively of the right.)
The final point I want to address in this instalment is whether there is a distinction between right socialism and right populism, or left socialism and left populism. A thorough treatment is beyond the space constraints here, nor have I done sufficiently in-depth exploration to claim anything definitive on the subject. A few thoughts though seem in order.
First, if we look at the history of North American populism, it is full of ideas such as imposing constraints on the free market actions of major companies and industries, such as the banks, the railroads, and the private grain companies. It also promoted the creation of combinations of farmers or artisans, in the form of producer cooperatives, to level the playing field. This was precisely the kind of anti-individualizing practice, Polanyi notes, that the regulatory, social engineering state sought to eliminate in the name of ensuring unfettered markets. While contemporary populism – let’s focus on the U.S. for now – isn’t always this ambitious, it does promote the use of instruments like tariffs, to force companies which sell to Americans, to likewise produce in America, returning previously off-shored jobs back to, what would become, a revitalized industrial heartland.
So, such projects on the part of populism do indeed resonate with how we’ve described right socialism. Once we rid ourselves of the confused ideas of what constitutes left and right, it becomes increasingly clear that populism is in large measure an organic North American tradition of right socialism, a la Michéa. Whether the development of that nomenclature was a product of a North American aversion to the perceived corruption of European ideas; founded in a confusion about what socialism could be, due to the oversized, deleterious influence of Karl Marx (see here); or simply a manifestation of a reality that wherever left strategies begin to erode organic community a communitarian response arises, under whatever name makes organic sense within that cultural context; it does seem that North American populism and right socialism are regionally different expressions of common impulses to protect human community from the impacts of left-wing strategies.
What’s less clear to me is how left populism fits into this puzzle. If we take Bernie Sanders as an emblematic case, my understanding is that while he has self-identified as a man of the left, he has also promoted standard populist and right socialist measures such as tariffs and market regulation. Of course, not all regulations are equal; we wouldn’t want to ignore the role of regulation as a rent-seeking barrier to entry. But neither should recognizing the risk of regulatory capture blind us to the potential benefit of market regulation in the protection of organic communities from the corrosive effects of marketization and commodification. So, it may well turn out that left populism is a blend of right and left socialism.
I’d argue that that blend is itself incoherent once we understand the underpinning values of the historic right and left. Be that as it may, though, if that’s true, the existence of such a blend does present the prospect for at least some level of strategic common cause between right and left populism in the current political context, around a communitarian populist strategy and agenda. As you might imagine, I’ll have more to say on these topics in the months to come. Though, as may not be as obvious, all this has been a prelude to my promise, back in the one-year anniversary post, to turn to the topic of how a theory of federalism fits into the discussion of contemporary populism.
And that will be the next major job (assuming I don’t get sidetracked again). But before that, there is one more instalment to this series, which will ponder what all these recent insights about the nature of the left, the right, and their historic struggle, suggest to me about the nature of political commitment, particularly for managerial class dissidents such as myself.
All that is still to come! So, if you haven’t yet, please…
And if you know someone that you think would enjoy these discussions, please…
The more I read about this period, the more it becomes clear to me that “improvement” served then the rhetorical function that “democracy” does today: a catchy term to veil the self-serving actions of the ruling class as a disinterested pursuit of some nebulous common good.
A topic for another time, which I don’t want to digress on here: libertarians will claim to support communities as long as they’re intentional and voluntary. This social contract assumption (again concealing basic values propositions) though is still the privileging of deracinated individuals over organic communities. Organic communities are, by definition, grown, not constituted as social contracts. This is an understanding that many Americans, due to the unique history of the U.S., with its questionable nationalist ethos, may be at a disadvantage to fully appreciate. I’ll have more to say on this situation in the weeks to come.