K. Cronick
Published in Spanish here: https://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2026/06/derecha-e-izquierda-que-son.html
(Footnotes are at the end.)
I. INTRODUCTION
In this essay I
will explore the theoretical approaches that have been elaborated by thinkers
of the past and present to describe the two ideological positions called
"right" and "left".
They began to
appear in the nineteenth century. They have never been embodied in any real
regime in their original postulates in any of the great national scenarios
where political "revolutions" have occurred to install them. They
have always been modified to accommodate the interests of their political
leaders in power.
To defend this
claim, I will review some theoretical descriptions of such models, and then
compare them with certain key examples of countries that have called themselves
right-wing or left-wing.
The concept of
work
It is important
to contextualize these approaches by the history of work in the two senses of labor
and employment. Human beings have always worked. These words can refer to the
performance of any work. Today the word "work" tends to suggest a
paid activity (employment), but one can even work in the making of a painting
whose objective is limited to the enjoyment of the painter. It is something
that results when human activity produces something; it can be distinguished
from "play" and from activities such as sports, parties, rituals,
recreational reading and singing which do not leave any physical objects or
clear results. Activities such as cleaning a house, cooking and repairing one's
own car involve efforts and generate cleaning, food and a working car. For this
reason they can also be considered as work. [1]
When these efforts are paid occupations, they fall
into a category of activities that are part of an economic sector.
An economic
structure refers to how the different productive sectors relate to each other.
Human history has generated multiple systems for distributing labor and the
resources that come from it. First there were nomadic societies that lived by
hunting, fishing, and gathering. With the Neolithic revolution, agriculture
appeared, and with it exchange through barter. In ancient times, the Egyptians
and Greeks adopted dominant and even slave-dependent systems, where the product
of labor did not belong to the laborers, but to the owners of the farmers. Then
feudalism appeared, in which land ownership remained in the hands of noble
lords, and serfs received only some protection and a minimum of sustenance. The
economy was generally local, based on agriculture and a system of trade based
on markets and fairs. [2]
Work paid for with
a wage can be found in the salt that the Roman legionary received as a reward
for his dedication. At one time, salt had a lot of value and could be used as a
currency to purchase other goods. The concept of the modern wage (salary) originates
after the Industrial Revolution, when workers began to work in factories. In this
way, the reward for labor began to be separated from the product of labor.
This
distinction made the worker independent of a particular farm or workshop and
allowed him a certain freedom. But at the same time it made him anonymous, as
part of a labor force or a member of the “proletariat” who was subject to the
decisions of the factory owners. With this change he could not decide the price
he was going to charge to sell his product because he had to accept the
conditions imposed on all other employees.
These
conditions provided the basis for the birth of ideologies.
The birth of
ideologies
The
"invention" of the different economic approaches between the right
and the left was born after the debates of the Enlightenment and soon, the
appearance of the Industrial Revolution.
The
Enlightenment was a philosophical, scientific, and political movement that
developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and extended in some of
its aspects, until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is possible to
fix its beginning with the publication of René Descartes' "Discourse on
Method" in 1637, or with the books that make up Isaac Newton's
"Principia Matemática" in 1687.
John Locke was one of the founders of liberalism and
empiricism. He recognized the importance of culture in the formation of
thought. [3] The Enlightenment gave rise to much reflection on rationality, the
nature of freedom, and the problems of the distribution of wealth. It had a
great influence on the English parliamentary system, and the American
Declaration of Independence and its subsequent national Constitution. Its
political aspirations had to do with the abolition of absolute monarchies and
the will to create governments that could offer liberty, equality, tolerance,
and fraternity.
Political
leaders often use terms borrowed from their respective founding theories to denote
their administrative programs, even when these programs bear little relation to
the slogan used. In the end, these programs end up functioning more as
factional discursive exercises of power than actual attempts to reflect the
essence of these models. [4]
In this essay I
will argue that the problem underlying this phenomenon has to do with the
abandonment of the basic ideals of both socio-economic proposals. As we will
see, both the aspirations of the right and those of the left were born of
libertarian yearnings and the desire to increase the well-being of the popular
classes. In practice they have often served to strengthen the arbitrary and
ruthless use of power.
Even today there are those who occupy positions of
power, or aspire to do so, who use the typical vocabularies of their
ideological brand, as marketing strategies. Moreover, leaders are grouped in
alliances of countries that share the same discourses. Part of the reason for
these alliances is historical: the parties and regimes of the left have formed
diplomatic and industrial ties of interest, and these ties have a strategic
value for them. Similarly, those on the right also share economic structures of
production and marketing.
It is important
to note that the historical state has always controlled economies; the most
basic and formal difference between the right and the left comes from the
designation of who should exercise this authority. As references to historical
theories of doctrines, I have summarized their basic positions in the following
paragraphs. I will then consider how these approaches now influence the
management of world economies.
II. THE ESSAY AS A METHOD
The analytical
essay is a theoretical, exploratory, and non-experimental method that does not
intend to verify any hypothesis. It is an exploration of the history and
current affairs of a topic in order to develop new arguments and criticisms,
and propose new interpretations.
Science is
philosophical inquiry based on doubt. The need for methodological clarity is
the most reliable way to generate knowledge. In the following pages I will
assess the current historical differences between ideological positions grouped
into the general categories of the right and those of the left.
III. HISTORICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC
DOCTRINES
I will make a
brief critical description of the doctrinal elements proposed by the great
ideologies that we call "right" and "left". These
ideologies are known by various names, which can designate certain theoretical
differences between their authors. For example, the right has been referred to
as economic liberalism, neoliberalism, conservatism, the market economy and
capitalism among other terms. These terms are not equivalent; in some cases
they can be considered antonyms, because liberalism defends individual freedom,
equality of opportunity and the limitation of state power. In this sense it
opposes authoritarianism in all its forms, while conservatism and neoliberalism
can include protectionist and even xenophobic projects in opposition to the
free market.
Terms such as
Keynesian economics[5], welfarism, socialism, communism[6], planned economy and
communitarianism, among others, are applied to the left. Again, it is a set of
descriptors whose values and projects do not always coincide.
The terms right
and left are sometimes used to discriminate between the main dictatorial
systems, for example, fascism is considered right-wing, while Bolshevik
communism tends to be located on the left. In a theoretical sense, this
discrimination is meaningless because historical examples of this type of
regime, such as Hitler or Stalin, employed similar absolute systems of economic
and social control. Their use of their political slogans did not necessarily
accord with their practical projects.
Next, I will
review the socio-economic issues of: 1) freedom, 2) the economic and social
condition of workers, 3) the value of the commodity, 4) the free or controlled
market, and 5) the division of labor. I will analyze how they have been
incorporated by the factions of the right and the left and make a few brief
reflections on them. Then, in the next section, I will consider how these
theoretical antecedents have been used in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries.
As I have
noted, the original proposals of the left and right were libertarian, and both
had roots in the debates of the Enlightenment.
The Birth of Libertarian Ideas in the Nineteenth
Century
The terms "left" and "right" were
born as ideological approaches during the French Revolution. These descriptors
come from the sides of the auditorium where the delegates of the National
Constituent Assembly in Paris would sit. Those who defended King Louis XVI sat
on the right side of the room, and were conservatives, while his opponents, who
proposed the abolition of the old system, sat on the other side. Those on the
left side of the National Assembly advocated the end of the monarchy and the
beginning of a government that would also represent non-aristocratic citizens.
These were the aspirations for creating create a
system based on popular sovereignty and equality before the law. The principles
of human rights were formulated, thus promoting individual freedom, equality
and the right to private property.
It is important to examine carefully in these
reflections the notion of "freedom" proposed by the French political
left at the end of the eighteenth century. The leadership of the movement fell
into the hands of Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Jacques Danton. They were “defenders
of liberty” who, paradoxically, accepted and promoted the reign of terror that
characterized the countless executions in the public squares of Paris at this
time. Both participated in the efforts to eliminate royalty and their nobles,
but these two delegates were also competitors for power in the Assembly. In the
end both died under the same guillotine they had used to eliminate their
patrician enemies.
Robespierre still remains in the popular imagination
as a tyrant and represents revolutionary terror, whose legacy reappears when
certain movements try to consolidate power.
It remains a
historical irony that these champions of freedom had tyrannical designs. And
the legacy of their exercise of power was just more tyranny. In fact, the
French Revolution ended in the imperial reign of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804.
The Second French Republic, after Napoleon, lasted only four years, from 1848
to 1852. Charles de Gaulle declared the beginning of the current system, the
Fifth Republic, on October 4, 1958. After the excesses of its Revolution, the
country had to wait more than 150 years to fulfill its ideals.
The
beginning of the idea of freedom as an ideology
After the
defeat of Louis XVI and his heirs, and the consolidation of English
parliamentary government, the political right began to adopt libertarian ideas
in the sense of a free market. Both Adam Smith and his followers later in the
twentieth century spoke of the need to protect nations and their populations
from possible limitations imposed by state power.
The free market
was considered by the right, not only as a means to promote economic
prosperity, but also as a cultural advance that was to have a high
civilizational value. Milton Friedman (1982, p. 11) said that "The great
advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or
literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from a centralized
government." [7]
He defends this
dubious claim by saying that these cultural innovators "were the product
of individual genius, of firmly entrenched minority opinions, and of a social
climate that allowed for variety and diversity" (ibid.). It is a curious
claim, and, moreover, it leaves out the history of the martyrs of science and
philosophy such as Socrates, Hypatia of Alexandria, Nicolaus Copernicus,
Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, and others who were condemned or severely
limited for having proposed new ideas.
However, it is
clear that in an environment of political freedom, sociocultural advances
thrive more openly. Our ideas about freedom are closely linked to the concepts
of justice. Steiner and Vallentyne (2009) refer to how the requirements of
justice in its various meanings shape what is ultimately allowed:
The term 'justice' is commonly used in a
number of different ways. It sometimes designates the moral permissibility of
political structures (such as legal systems). It sometimes designates moral
fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations relevant to moral
permissibility). It sometimes designates legitimacy in the sense that it is
morally impermissible for others to forcibly interfere in the act or omission
[...] Finally, it sometimes designates what we owe each other in the sense of
respecting the rights of all. Of course, these notions are closely related.
What we owe each other may, but does not need, be based in part on issues of
justice. The legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely,
though perhaps not entirely, determined by the rights that individuals have of
non-interference (Steiner and Vallentyne, 2009).
What would be
allowed or denied because it is just or unjust affects the freedom of each
person and each group, and these various ideological positions point out the legitimate
limits, authorizations and licenses. Even moral and religious systems that go
beyond ideologies are linked to what we allow ourselves and what is allowed by
our culture. Each culture is different in this regard.
Morality often
permeates the same ideological ideas. José Rafael Herrera (2026) opens his
article "The moral supremacy of leftism" with this apt paragraph:
One of the characteristic features of certain
sectors of the contemporary left is the presumption of possessing a moral
superiority that seems to give them an advantage over their adversaries. It is
no longer a question, as in other times, of holding certain ideas about social
justice, equality or human rights. Now it is a matter of something much deeper
and sublime: the belief that they occupy a privileged position – a kind of
invisible pulpit – from which it is appropriate for them to judge and pass judgment
on the rest of society.
The author
distinguishes between, on the one hand, "a critical force against
established forms of domination" and, on the other, "doctrine"
and "dogma." It is necessary to recognize that in the end, the
foundation of all ideologies has moral traits. Herrera speaks of "a moral
and intellectual energy that refuses to accept political, economic, or cultural
hierarchies as natural" as the basis of a productive critique. But when
they become dogmas, moral demands, they "often end up demanding
obedience," which no longer allows for questioning. Herrera continues:
Hegel analyzes
the figure of the abstract moral conscience and of the so-called
"Beautiful Soul" (die schöne Seele), a kind of conscience that sees
itself as the repository of moral purity. Its problem does not consist in a
lack of principles, but in an excess of spiritual self-indulgence. It is so
convinced of its own goodness and its unequivocal convictions that it loses the
ability to recognize itself in its real contradictions with the world. The
beautiful soul lives in the distance between its ideals and its actions. It
preserves its "purity" intact, precisely because it avoids
confronting the actual consequences of its actions. It does not stain itself.
[…] It is, in essence, a reflexive exercise that explains why some of the most
questioned regimes in the contemporary world continue to claim themselves as
ethical models of emancipation”.
This phenomenon
also appears in ideologies and all dogmas. [8] As I have mentioned, doctrine
can end up as the support of vested interests. Political leaders and their
followers, when they come to power, have access to resources and privileges
that they do not want to lose, and in order to resist uprisings and
accusations, they do not allow deviations in the socio-political-economic
theories that brought them to power. Sometimes they have engaged in illegal
acts, and even in crimes against humanity, and they fear being judged if the
ideological environment that brought them to power is changed or questioned.
The economic
and social condition of workers
The Industrial
Revolution
The influence
of the Enlightenment extended from science to technology. In the eighteenth
century it began to influence the means of transport, the manufacture of
domestic and industrial goods, and medicine. This time began to be called the
"Industrial Revolution". It began in Great Britain and from there it
spread to Europe, America and the rest of the world.
The Industrial
Revolution not only transformed the production of goods, but also radically
altered the way societies were ordered. This process affected the production of
goods and how work was organized. It marked a change in the very generation of
wealth. Societies ceased to be founded on rural and agricultural economies, and
productive and industrialized systems driven by machinery and mass production
began to appear.
One of the
transformations was a new awareness of the social distribution of economic
goods. The cheap labor of serfs under the control of the medieval lord, and the
use of slave labor ceased to be an advantage. Demand began to require skilled
labor to produce, handle, and repair mass-produced products. This new employee
required other conditions of living and civil rights.
The History of
Work and the Concept of Poverty
Since societies
abandoned tribal life, there have always been differences in social class.
Slavery has existed for almost all these millennia, and its official abolition
has been both gradual and very recent. In general, individual countries have
been eliminating it only since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Brazil
was the last American country in 1888, but it was not until 1981 when
Mauritania made it illegal, that it finally ceased to exist (legally) in the
world.
Awareness of
the need for these changes came through the mouths of new economic theorists.
In some cases, such as Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations (1996),
published in 1776, there were proclamations about the general welfare as if it
were a "fait accompli":
The great multiplication of the production of
all the various trades, derived from the division of labor, gives rise, in a
well-governed society, to that universal wealth which extends to the lower
classes of the people. Each worker has a large quantity of the produce of his
own labour, over and above what he himself needs; and as the other labourers
are in exactly the same situation, he can exchange a large quantity of his
goods for a large quantity, or, what is the same thing, for the price of a
large quantity of the goods of others. He provides them abundantly with what
they need, and they amply supply him with what he needs, and a general fullness
diffuses through the different strata of society (Smith, p. 41).
It is
interesting to contrast Adam Smith's view of the welfare of workers in the
eighteenth century with other appraisals of the distribution of economic
benefits. Laurence Fontaine, in an interview with Nicolas Gastineau (2024)
said:
[…] poverty was [considered rather as] a risk
[in the eighteenth century], whereas today it is mostly considered a state of
being. Poverty as a risk affected all the lower classes, not just those who had
fallen into a state of destitution. Being poor meant relying solely on one's
own work to survive, which meant that, at the first misfortune, the slightest
illness, there was no safety net provided by the state.
Concern about
these risks, and about the existence of poverty in general, grew, and a century
after the publication of Smith's book, in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo would
describe a harrowing portrait of poverty in France. In 1890 Alfred Marshall
described the primary motive of the physiocratic school as "diminishing
the suffering and degradation caused by extreme poverty (Gastineau, 2024).
In the 19th and
20th centuries there was growing concern about certain discriminatory
practices, particularly in the United States, in part because of the need to
incorporate immigrants, slaves who had been freed by the Civil War, and
eventually women into the economy. Also after World War II, the elimination of
persecution of Jews and other minority groups in Nazi Germany led to worldwide
concern, especially in Europe.
Milton Friedman
(1982) says that these calls for recognition and equal civil rights must come
from the same groups discriminated against because:
"The
interests in the preservation and strengthening of competitive capitalism
concern above all those minority groups because they can more easily become the
object of distrust and enmity of the majority [.... These would be] blacks,
Jews, foreign-born, to name only the most obvious" (p 26).
Equality
There have always been social classes. With the
industrial revolution another phenomenon began, the "production
surplus" (when workers generate more than is necessary for their own
survival). This surplus is usually appropriated by the ruling class – even when
its members have been the leaders of so-called "communist" countries.
Modern theorists of the left promote common economic
equality. Apart from schools such as "socialist anarchism" (Spangler,
2011) that oppose even the legal limitations of electoral parliamentarism,
there is a kind of left-libertarianism similar to classical liberal concepts of
private property (Richman, 2000). Its proponents argue that it is illegitimate
to claim property when this action may harm others. Instead, natural resources
could constitute common property. The appropriation of private land can only be
accepted if all involved can own an equal amount of land, or if taxes are
levied to compensate those who are excluded from the transaction. The proposal
also supports some state social welfare programs and the general idea of equal
opportunity.
3. The value of
the commodity
According to
the dogmas of the free market, the seller who offers his products at a lower
cost would be more successful in his business. This means that in order to make
a profit the cost of production must be reduced.
According to
Milton Friedman, this is achieved in the environment of freedom of exchange.
One of the dangers for the establishment of these conditions would be the
presence of monopolies that control the prices of some products. Monopolies
have no reason to lower their prices.
According to
the author, it is an economic diversion, which "usually arises, although
not generally, from government support or collusive agreements between
individuals" (p. 31). Friedman considers monopolies as aspects that must
be controlled and even eliminated by state laws. He observes, however,
"monopoly can also arise because it is technically efficient to have a
single producer or firm [...] A simple example is perhaps the provision of
telephone services within a community. I will refer to these cases as a
"technical" monopoly (Ibid).
Friedman saw
three economic options for monopolies, and he disagreed with all of them. They
were either private monopolies, public monopolies, or those that are controlled
by legal regulation. He considered the first option to be the least dangerous.
However, this position can be criticized. Private monopolies tend to set prices
as much as the market tolerates. A private monopoly can set prices and limit
competition because it owns patents or distribution channels. Its main
objective is to maximize its own profits. But these are not usually distributed
among all levels of the organization. Examples today are the large Internet
technology companies, whose owners include the only billionaires in history.
The
workforce
There are two
easily identifiable factors that have contributed to changes in the
appreciation of the value of foodstuffs and manufactured objects. The first is
the change in the status of the worker since the Industrial Revolution. The
other is the ease of commodity production that resulted from the same
historical process. These changes forced manufacturers and merchants to include
the value of labor in the price of commodity exchange. Karl Marx, in the first
chapter of his book Capital (2020) offers a very tangled and convoluted explanation
of the relationship between prices and the value of labor required to produce
the goods in the sales process. He says:
The general
form of value, which presents the products of labour as a mere mix of
undifferentiated human labour, shows in its very structure that it is the
social expression of the world of commodities. It thus makes visible that
within this world the general human character of labour constitutes its
specifically social character (p. 82).
The whole of
the first chapter requires interpretation because of its vague wording. In
general it can be said that for Marx the value of objects, which are produced
by labor, must take into account the effort and time of the worker. Thus, in
order to calculate the exchange price, one must include the materials necessary
for their production and, in addition, the effort (wages) of the worker who
prepared them.
Thus, for Marx, the cost of a jacket includes: a) what
the tailor charges to sew it, b) the cost of the fabric (and thread, needles,
etc.) used to make the jacket, c) this in turn would include the linen, hemp or
cotton necessary to produce the cloth and d) the salary of the worker who wove
the cloth. We could go on: the materials to weave the cloth come in turn from
agricultural fields and represent a recognition, both for the farmer and for
the one who took them to the weaver and eventually, the cost of storing them if
they were not used immediately. The price of each product includes the value of
the labor of the one who produced, modified and transported it. But the chain
does not end with the time and sweat of the worker, because, in addition, it
includes the cost of his lifestyle and the need to protect his well-being.
4. Free or
controlled market
In general,
today the ideology of the political right is referred to as economic
liberalism. It is based on the idea of the "free market", which can
be developed and corrected without state restrictions, due to the
interrelations - considered spontaneous - between producers and consumers.
According to this approach, the ideal is a system of private property in which
everyone limits himself to defending his or her own interests. Authors such as
Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus have laid the foundations for this approach.
Adam Smith in
his book, The Wealth of Nations (1996), argues that the pursuit of
self-interest by economic actors will lead to general welfare, because the
market is self-correcting.
However, Smith
did not consider that the market should lack any supervision because he thought
that there should be certain ethical rules that limit the behavior of economic
actors. These rules were the moral limits of the actors themselves. He said in
his book, Theory of Moral Sentiments (2020), that even the most selfish man has
some principles that move him to be interested in the fate of others. We would
always have family ties, friendship, neighborliness, nationality.
These limits
are, above all, personal, but according to Smith, the structures of the State
that promote social peace also influence individual selfishness. This implies
that the invisible hand that regulates the economic progress of nations would
have the support of a State that guarantees peace and justice. However, the
ideal market would operate on the basis of a "natural freedom" in
which competition between suppliers and consumers would always be superior to
monopolies and state interference.
On this point in
the twentieth-century Milton Friedman agrees. He says that the scope of a government
should be limited to the protection of individual liberties from
"enemies" who might come both from home and abroad. It also has an
obligation to "preserve law and order, enforce private contracts, and
promote the free market" (1982, p. 10-11).
In these
reflections on market control we have referred above all to the control
exercised by the state. There are private controls as well, and above we have
referred to the example of monopolies whose control enters only partially into
the concerns of free market theorists. Although Friedman names them as possible
brakes on the free development of economies, he asserts that private companies
that become monopolistic can be tolerated.
John Maynard
Keynes (2014), considered a theorist of the economic “left”, did not agree with
these approaches. Basically, he thought that state intervention was an
important resource to alleviate crises. He thought that it was necessary to
stimulate the demand that was in the economy. He proposed that government
spending, even in the face of the public deficit, was a tool to achieve this.
For Keynes, the main problem was unemployment. This is insufficient demand for
commercial activities, and for this reason in a crisis there would be surplus
workers.
In short, two crises coincide: the first is
unemployment with the difficulties that it represents for people who are left
without monetary income. This factor would lower the demand for new products
because it reduces demand. If wages do not fall and prices do, that would mean
that workers would earn more in real terms, they would be able to buy more
things for the same amount.
The solution to
insufficient demand would be to increase state spending. Keynes, being a
supporter of an interventionist fiscal policy, thought that, when consumers
spend their income, they add this value to the economy. Since public debt does
not reduce workers' incomes, the public deficit would increase demand.
By disutility must be understood any motive
that induces a man or a group of men to abstain from work rather than accept a
wage that represents a profit for them below a certain limit (p 33).
The problem lies more in the usefulness of employment
than in the cost of living. For this reason, for this author, it is important
to keep the labor market functioning.
Every union
will put up some resistance to a reduction in nominal wages, no matter how
small; but as no one would think of declaring a strike whenever the cost of
living rises, they present no obstacles to an increase in the total volume of
employment, as the classical school pretends (p.38).
5. The division
of labor
Smith (1996, p.
28) observed that production systems are instituted "naturally between the
different [social] classes and conditions of man in society." In this
regard, the division of labor into multiple distinct but coordinated tasks is
important. In addition to the division of tasks in the manufacture of a product
(for example, the different stages in the production of pins) there is the work
of the "philosophers", the term used by Smith to refer to those who
do not have practical jobs in the manufacture of goods, but who analyze the
work donde by others. They are in a position to suggest new processes and even
invent machines to speed up production processes. The result of this increase
in production would result in general welfare, according to Smith (1996).
On the other
hand, the political and economic “left” proposes that the state should intervene
and control the economy. Its initial doctrine posited that the free movement of
the market has produced disparities and inequalities, and that it is only
through redistribution promoted and directed by a state controlled by "the
masses" that wealth can benefit the population in general.
The
dictatorship of the proletariat
In its first
state incarnation, in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the left proposed the
nationalization of some of the productive sectors. According to this approach,
control should be exercised by "the proletariat", that is, the social
classes of workers who have always been excluded from participation in the
planning of economies by both the aristocracy and the mercantilists. The term
that began to describe this control was the "dictatorship of the proletariat",
which, in its beginnings, referred to a change in which the working classes as
a whole would come to run the entire economy. In practice, the Bolshevik
revolution was a despotism that became control over the proletariat in the
times of Lenin and Stalin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
that lasted in Russia for almost 70 years between 1922 and 1991.
THE RIGHT
AND THE LEFT IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
In this section
I will make a brief description of how the socio-political-economic
orientations that we have called ideologies have been adapted and used in real
and current scenarios.
I have
described how ideas that became the ideologies of the right and the left were
born in parallel to Enlightenment thought, obeying the different concerns of
thinkers such as René Descartes and John Locke. I have mentioned how the
various ways of appreciating "reality" and advocating for social
change originated in libertarian concerns. Their main differences have to do –
above all – with their different opinions about who should be freer.
In some cases,
ideologies have contributed to the resolution of real, albeit changing,
problems. There is no doubt that they have influenced the creation of modern
democracies and welfare programs. Raúl Rojas (2025) has described how religious
ideologies and dogmas run parallel today among local community organizations to
produce changes and resolve issues of health, recreation, employment, access to
food, transportation, and others. Cronick and Llorens (2026) describe how
sports teams generate rules of coexistence and protection for participants, and
it could be argued that the idea of rules that are born from mutual agreements in
communities and even sporting events can be traced back to the Enlightenment.
I have mentioned
how, in some cases, ideologies have been used to justify tyrannies. I have
mentioned how there are governments in the twentieth century that have used
ideologies that were previously libertarian to justify totalitarian regimes.
This has happened for both the doctrines of the right and the left. Historical
examples of tyrannical ideologies of the right can be found in the
dictatorships of Hitler in Germany, Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina, Augusto
Pinochet in Chile, Juan María Bordaberry in Uruguay and Humberto de Alencar
-among other military men- in Brazil. For the left we can mention the
dictatorships of Stalin in Russia, Mao Tse Tung -Mao Zedong- in China, Fidel
Castro in Cuba and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, among others.
I have already
referred to Herrera's (2026) reflections on how social critiques and new
proposals have been converted, from affirmations that originated in rational
formulations of thought, to questionable statements of faith. This
transformation has two origins. The first is the need for believers to sustain
themselves existentially on foundations that they can consider solid. The
second is that this need is useful for totalitarian leaders when they want to
justify their aspirations for domination.
We have
examined this phenomenon in Cronick and Rojas (2026); we analyze several
factors: a) the cultural mechanisms that generate these explanations, b)
criteria for judging their veracity, c) their adoption and durability in
democratic and totalitarian systems, d) the role of empathy in their generation
and maintenance, and e) the possibilities of dissidence in these systems. In
the reflections I make in the current pages, I will not revisit these issues,
except to consider the permeability or intransigence they acquire with the
passage of time.
Some
ideological manipulations that derive from obvious exercises of power have to
do with control over which ideas and ideals will be allowed. The strategies of
control are multiple, for example, creating a permissible body of beliefs and
ideals of change, outlawing political demonstrations contrary to these beliefs,
controlling unauthorized publications and television programs, prohibiting
criticism of the government of the day and its leaders, imprisoning dissidents,
and creating situations that emphasize the xenophobic distinction between
"us" and "them."
Other
manipulations have to do with the use of symbols of ideological positions that
are assimilated to the idea of "homeland". All governments,
regardless of their ideological adherence, use patriotic symbols. All
governments, democratic or totalitarian, use symbols with clear references to a
basic ideology. Americans use the Statue of Liberty whose ascendancy to the
libertarian values of the French Revolution is evident. The British recognize
Big Ben, the bell of the Palace of Westminster in London, as a reference to
their history and their parliamentary system. Among the most nefarious are the
Nazi swastika, and the Soviet hammer and sickle; they indicate both the power
of the leaders and a supposed ideological adhesion.
There is not a
single country in the world that does not have a flag, although some, yes,
exclude the color red from its emblem due to its reference to the bravery of
war and the blood shed for freedom, the homeland or the great leader. This
exclusion also has ideological value, for example, in Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, green represents Islam, while in Jamaica and Nigeria, it represents
natural wealth and hope
Changes in
needs and ideological changes
Socio-economic needs
are changing, and with them, the ways of understanding them. Today there are
ideological modifications that respond to current problems such as gender
identity, feminism, social exclusion based on race or religion,
environmentalism (which involves the industrial use of virgin land, air and
water pollution by industrial waste, the use of insecticides in agricultural
fields, and recently, the construction of huge digital data centers to feed the
Artificial Intelligence industry). These emerging projects require ideological
adaptations that affect the construction of common values and identities. It is
clear that, for the defenders of the oil industries, those that manufacture
products such as insecticides or those that offer resources from the internet, references
to some variant of the ideology of free trade are convenient. In some cases,
those who oppose these projects appeal to concepts related to community control
over resources that have their origin in leftist doctrines.
This essay is
not the place to analyze these dangers. For now, I will limit myself to
pointing out how they are ideologically collected. I am referring to the
economic bases that promote them. Team Zeteo (2026) describes how companies
such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle offer new jobs and tax
revenues to communities that will ultimately suffer ecological damage. Their
market message is far from the real physical effects. Resistance to these
investments is growing around the world, and although investors are clearly
aligned with their own version of the economic “right”, opponents emerge from
community and environmental groups, and even from legislators from both major
parties in the United States, along with spokespeople in China, Spain, France,
Germany, and several Latin American countries.
One can even
mention the political tendency to solve international problems with wars, even
with threats of nuclear conflicts. The Clarín Newsletter (2026) referred very
recently to some catastrophic predictions made by astrophysicist David Gross:
"Currently, I spend part of my time
communicating to people that the chances of them living 50 more years are very
small," says Gross. This statement is striking as a dose of reality based
on statistics and probabilities. David Gross is not just any scientist; he is a
key figure who helped unravel the most intimate workings of matter, which gives
him considerable authority in the debate about the future. The reflection,
collected in an interview with Live Science, points directly to the growing
risks facing the world. […] According to him, there is approximately a 2%
annual probability of nuclear conflict, which would reduce the global survival
expectancy to about 35 years.
Nationalism as an ideology
Love of one's
homeland (kingdom, empire, etc.) has been an almost universal value since the
beginning of history. It is an identity value that surpasses many of the local
loyalties, even those of the subcultures within the great homeland. However,
national borders have been mobile and change with the regime of the moment.
Although the Celts resisted Caesar[9], the Romans ended up conquering a large
part of their territory. After the resistance to the Romans in the British
Isles, and after the collapse of the Empire, local kings defended Roman culture
as valuable civilizational remnants against the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the
seventh century. They are ever-changing loyalties and borders.
The conquest
and incorporation of new territories constitute a very long history and are
part of imperial and nationalist motives. Accounts of these events appear in
the Old Testament, in the accounts of the Greek city-states, in medieval
histories, in the colonial conquests and in invasions that have occurred in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When the Russians try to incorporate
Ukraine, when the Israelis annex Palestine and when the Chinese occupy Tibetan
territories, they call it "liberation", as if it were the recovery of
lost provinces. It does not occur to the leaders of these countries to ask the
inhabitants of the territories "in dispute” if they want to be part of the
conquering nation.
Despite the
influence of the great homeland, local loyalties often remain intact, and when
they can, they emerge with renewed demands. On current history, Anderson (2006)
observes:
The United Nations admits new members almost
every year. And many "old nations," which thought they were fully
consolidated, are challenged by "sub" nationalisms within their
borders, that is, nationalisms that naturally dream of shedding that suffix
"sub" one fine day. The reality is clear: the "end of the era of
nationalism," announced for so long, is not even remotely in sight.
Indeed, nationality is the most universally legitimate value in the political
life of our time (p. 19).
Despite the
changing values of loyalty to one's homeland, nationalism is a form of
conservatism that any political leader who knows how to use it could support.
It is an amalgam of religious creed and cultural trends that in the United
States were never truly examined or overcome. In Cronick (2024) I have analyzed
how American democracy has coexisted since the nineteenth century with the
discriminatory residues of slavery and the near extermination of aboriginal
populations. This disastrous coexistence was never resolved, and the result is
a continuation of a fundamental racism that has not allowed the assimilation of
the values of freedom that say: "all men are created equal". [10]
Religious
groups that rely on nationalism
Religious
nationalism combines patriotic affections with a particular religious
affiliation. This relationship has several implications: on the one hand, it
can have a polarizing effect within the country where it exists; on the other
hand, if it is a religion with many adherents, it can function as a platform
for the political rise of its leaders; finally, the cult can function as an
ideological support for political leaders who already occupy power. One of the
dangers of the combination of nationalist and religious sentiments is that it
can lead to expressions of xenophobia and the social exclusion of those who do
not accept this dogma. Examples of this combination are Christian nationalism
in the United States, Hindu nationalism in India, Muslim nationalism in the
Middle East and Pakistan, and Jewish nationalism in Israel.
Michael Luo
(2026) describes American Christian nationalism as follows:
[…] a river of belief closely tied to the
election of President Donald Trump in 2016, and again in 2024, which eludes
strict definition. It is less a coherent ideology and more a collection of
attitudes and impulses, rooted in nativism and racial intolerance, that has
seeped into white evangelicalism. Its muscular approach to faith and politics
now holds sway over much of the country.
This type of
nationalism feeds on exclusionary identities such as racism and xenophobia.
FINAL THOUGHTS
To conclude
these reflections, I will briefly consider two themes: a) the need to create
cultural and socio-political environments that allow ideological questioning
and b) the need for empathic values to guide this questioning.
Frank (2025) uses the term "ontological
incompatibility of the person" to refer to "his unique and
unrepeatable character, [which] is also the reason for the special dignity that
we recognize him" (p. 15). The noun "incompatibility" has the
purpose of pointing out both the uniqueness of each person and what all people
share. The author says that the particular and unique experience of each person
can be taken as a starting point to affirm his dignity. With reference to
Hegel, he is based on:
[…] their rationality, a common feature of
human nature that would be the source of self-awareness, moral capacity, the
possibility of transcending, etc. [... This] would not be exclusive to any
person, but this is an incommunicable individual, he has something that belongs
only to him, and without attending to that unique and proper to each one, his
dignity would not have been sufficiently founded." (p. 16).
We could affirm
that the uniqueness of the person is not limited to his capacity for
rationality, because it involves his capacity to love. Frank says:
It could be said that the uniqueness of the
person is first of all for himself, that is, that his irreplaceable being is
both a cognitive and affective self-possession, not a simple brute fact, and
that it is so by virtue of rationality. Hence, the love of another presupposes
the love of self [...] (p. 25).
Respect for the
individuality of the Other could be considered an initial stance, which would
be a grassroots ethical stance, and a message that could be taught in schools
and other places of formation such as community groups and legal systems. It
would be a derivative of empathic capacity, which can also be formed in
educational systems.
Once the
culture has developed a posture of interpersonal respect, we can also speak of
rules that protect individuals against the group. On a legal level, these rules
would be guarantees, such as the right to free expression and equality before
the law. This clearly derives from the Enlightenment.
Santiago Díaz
(2025) also mentions the combination of individuality with
"relationality": "[...] maximum individuality ― and therefore,
incommunicability ― presupposes maximum relationality. Hence, it is precisely
our incommunicability that underlines and makes possible the deepest forms of
interpersonal life" (p. 43).
Man seen as a tabula
rasa in Locke's sense does not exist. His incommunicability, mentioned by
Frank and Diaz, refers to his essential ability to evaluate and decide for
himself what his beliefs and actions will be. Almost all the appreciations of
modern psychology affirm that the individual being is raised within an
interpersonal context, and that the child raised in isolation cannot exist. At
the very least, he needs food, but he also needs models, affections, language
and other socio-affective inputs to become a person.
So, yes, each
being is, in itself, a unique and unrepeatable being, and worthy of respect.
But its "in itself" has necessarily been nourished by the
interpersonal, the cultural and by shared resources. For this reason each
person is inseparable from his or her family, his or her community and his or
her culture. People raised within more than one particular culture, such as
immigrants, are not uneducated; rather, they develop wider worlds. However,
each person is, by definition, a unique being and at the same time immersed in
the world.
Empathy is a
capacity shared by almost the entire animal kingdom. It has to do with the
ability to feel the emotions of other beings. Proposing a culture based on
empathy is a utopian statement, because if it were fully manifested, something
like this would include the idea of understanding and compassion for all other
people in the world.
By combining
recognition and respect for each person's individuality with the ability to
understand it empathetically, tolerance for differences, and the ability to
carry out productive conversations with others can be developed. The goal would
be to reach agreements, but also the ability to defend oneself and assume
dissident positions. This is the ideal of a parliament and a house of
representatives. It even refers to conversations in neighborhood meetings, political
parties and families.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Interestingly, hunting of animals by nomadic
tribes is not considered to be work. They always call it an
"activity". Also, women's domestic activities were excluded from this
category.
[2] In the Americas there have been various economic
systems. The Aztecs and the Inca used slave labor. With the arrival of European
colonialism there was also slavery and also peasants employed in mining and
agriculture with the encomiendas. After its political independence from Europe,
the hacienda system continued. In Mexico, industrialization began during the
Porfiriato; and later reforms such as the nationalization of oil. Similar
processes occurred in other countries such as Venezuela.
[3] John Locke wrote his Essay on Human Understanding
in 1690; he is a central figure of empiricism and the father of classical
liberalism. He proposed the idea of the child's mind as a "tabula
rasa," containing nothing until experience fills it.
[4] I am not going to examine here the factors that
facilitate the adoption of these ideologies by the populations affected by
them, because Cronick & Rojas (2026) have published a reflection on this
topic.
[5] John Maynard Keynes was opposed to the idea that
free markets would provide full employment.
[6] Communism can refer to different economic
conceptions. It is possible to find antecedents of this model in Plato's
Republic and in the first Roman groups of Christians. The communist doctrine
was presented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as an economic and
utopian project, but it became the support of a dictatorship whose
communitarian roots were lost.
[7] But Friedman offers as examples of these advances
references that were born precisely in monarchical and centralized times. In a
strange way he mentions the system that financed Christopher Columbus, and the
regimes in which "Newton and Leibnitz; […] Shakespeare, Milton and
Pasternak [...]" and others" (p. 11).
[8] The same can be said about religions that were
born as a response to cults and cultural practices that promoted injustices,
such as Christianity versus Roman power. After its inception as a proposition
of love and justice, it became the spiritual mainstay of Roman emperors and
medieval monarchs.
[9] The Celts, the Arverni, the Helvetics, among many
others defended themselves against Caesar (n.d.). These tribes united to resist
him, and according to him they were brutal warriors that he was able to conquer
successfully.
[10] In 1689 in his Second Treatise of Government,
John Locke said that, in their natural state, before the formation of
governments, all men were created equal. The phrase also appears in the 1776
American Declaration of Independence. Similarly, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948), Article 1 states: "all human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights... “.
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