How the French Revolution still shapes our politics
There’s a fair distance between late eighteenth century France and twenty-first century New Zealand, but one of the concepts born during their Revolution still shapes our politics today. It’s the concept of left and right, which is probably the dominant way of understanding not only the political contest but the visions animating our nation’s leaders. There’s a risk, though, that this influential concept distorts as much as it explains.
The left-right concept originates with the National Assembly, the governing body of the French Revolution. In debating a new constitution, the Assembly argued about the amount of power that a king should have in future. As Time says:
those who thought the king should have an absolute veto sat on the right of the president of the assembly, and those who thought he should not — the more radical view — sat on the left of the president of the assembly. In other words, those who wanted to hew closer to tradition were on the right, and those who wanted more change were on the left.
These days, “the right” is a broad umbrella covering those working from a more traditional understanding of the world as well as those, like ACT, who might champion decidedly non-traditional policies like euthanasia. “The left” is similarly broad, with many in Labour also supporting euthanasia while at the same time hewing to the statist status quo in abolishing charter schools. So, “left” and “right” are at best blunt tools, limited descriptors of what’s happening politically.
The problem with blunt tools is that they can do as much harm as good, and while we continue to use the left-right divide as our primary political compass, there’s a risk that it may not help us to understand the real sources of division in our society now. Louise Perry puts it like this:
We’re at a moment when political tribes are in flux across the Western world. We’ve got record numbers of ethnic minority Americans voting Republican and Tories taking working class heartlands in the North of England. The old division between Right and Left is breaking apart, to be replaced by — what? Somewheres and anywheres? Globalists and populists? It remains to be seen.
There are many candidates for division these days, including age (witness Chloe Swarbrick’s invocation of the ‘OK Boomer’ meme), ethnicity (as one form of identity politics), the urban/rural split (especially in light of coming regional stagnation), and the religious/secular divide (as seen in US politics).
All of this is natural, of course—there will always be disagreements about how to coordinate our shared life, and the content of those disagreements shifts over time. We’re fortunate that, in this day and age, politics provides a peaceful way to resolve those disputes without anyone needing to resort to, say, a Thirty Years’ War.
But while disagreements are inevitable, it’s also crucial to understand them properly if we’re to resolve them well. If we stick to the language of left and right, there’s a real risk that not only will we fail to understand the forces that really divide us, but also our opportunities for unity.