Do the concepts of left and right still make sense? Less and less.
The terms arose in pre-revolutionary France, when they were geographically precise. Representatives of the nobility and clergy, who defended the most conservative theses, sat to the right of the king; those of the bourgeoisie, who had ideas of change, sat to the left. It was therefore possible to predict a deputy’s positions simply by knowing where he sat. Since then, the world has become more complex and more confusing.
Just look at how the economic platform of the National Rally, the bastion of the French far right, is very similar to that of France Insoumise, the radical left. Vladimir Putin finds supporters on both the right and the left. The defense of freedom of expression, which was once a leftist banner, has become a rightist one.
We classify who is what by combining, in a somewhat inconsistent way, the positioning on key issues, such as privatization, abortion and immigration, with a genealogical criterion. Parties that were born as left or right carry this mark even if they move away from the original ideology.
Are there more scientific ways to make this classification? Yes. I like the system devised by Jonathan Haidt, based on a core of six basic moral sentiments: protection, justice, freedom, loyalty, authority and sanctity (purity). The ideological profile of each individual would be the result of the different proportions of these “ingredients”. What we normally call the left emphasizes the first two. The right would make a mixture of all six.
The problem with this system is that it hasn’t caught on. It generates granular diagnoses that, while gaining in precision, lose out by leaving aside the delights of binary framing, whose intrinsic imprecision allows us to use the terms right and left as a compliment or insult, according to the preferences of our tribe.
helio@uol.com.br
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