Left and right

Left and right are two opposing political factions, sometimes also called left and right respectively. Due to history and national culture, these two terms do not have clear and accurate definitions, and their meanings vary in different regions and historical stages.

In reality, most people and political parties have political views of both left and right, and it is difficult to clearly distinguish whether a person is left or right.

Source

In June 1789, at the Constituent Assembly of the French Revolution, most clergy and nobles sat on the right side of the assembly, while the bourgeoisie, urban civilians, workers and peasants Sit on the left. As a result, "right" or "right wing" has become synonymous with conservatives and those who oppose social change, while "left" or "left wing" supports liberalism and revolution, and sometimes refers to radicals.

After that, conservatism or reform became the source of division between left and right, but in practice this was not the case. Once the reform or radical proposition was realized, the original conservative proposition required changing the status quo, but the terms left and right were still retained. Down, such as the post-reform period of the People's Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. The expansion of political views is also related to the left and right. The leftists who advocated change initially put forward many expansionary political demands. However, over time, the offensive and defensive trends of these demands have completely reversed. The earliest ideas of communism were expansionary, requiring "overthrow of the old world and system." After World War II, Europe and the United States strengthened their defenses against communism. In the 1950s, the United States began to fight against communism. active suppression, and its proponents are called the far right.

Due to the ambiguity and variability between left and right, people with the same views are opposite in different countries and periods. Common hawks often refer to leftists in China, while they are rightists in Japan. Terms like left and right are general concepts and will not be used to study specific political opinions, values, or schools of thought. Generally, clearly defined constitutionalism, liberalism, communism, socialism, democratic socialism, and Nazism are used. wait. Since left and right have clear contexts in a specific country, region, and at a specific period, they are still widely used terms.

Due to the broad reference of left and right, according to the degree of their political opinions, they are also divided into ultra-left, center-left, center, center-right, extreme right, etc. There are no unified standards and titles for these classifications.

Criteria for dividing left and right in the West

The slogan of the French Revolution was very beautiful, called "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". But any exciting slogan has a drawback: it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Freedom and equality may seem irrelevant. In fact, after a truly in-depth inquiry, we find that there is a fundamental contradiction between the two. Everyone's talents, abilities, backgrounds, and living environments are different. If everyone is allowed to " "Free" development, then their wealth and status cannot be equal. If we want everyone to be "equal" in terms of economy, status, and power, then the freedom of the strong will inevitably be restricted to protect the weak. The left and right groups originated from the French Constituent Assembly, but soon formed into two groups that had nothing to do with the original meaning. Among them, the left is more supportive of equality, emphasizes the construction of a welfare state, and uses more state intervention to help the weak. The left is naturally more concerned with establishing a strong government. The right is more emphasis on freedom, opposes excessive welfare, supports competition, opposes state intervention, and emphasizes the establishment of " "Weak" government and oppose excessive restrictions on the strong. But the difference between the left and the right is based only on the emphasis on equality and freedom. The left favors equality, while the right favors freedom. They all have the same awareness of basic rights to equality and freedom.

Leftists believe that the political power and the country are the parents of the people, and the change of political power is as inconceivable as the change of a relative. The right believes that the country and the government are the servants of the people. Changing the political power is no different from changing the servant. If you feel it is not good, you should change it. In fact, both the left and the right are anti-government to varying degrees, because the left believes that many of the government's actions - such as diplomacy - do not satisfy them; the right believes that the current system cannot satisfy them. At this point, there is basically no possibility of reconciliation between the two. The reason is that the left believes more in the power of the collective and believes that a strong collective can bring the greatest fairness and protection to individuals, while the right believes in the power of the individual and believes that a strong individual can make the collective more free and progressive. The left believes that China's modern decline and various modern problems were caused by the invasion and intervention of foreign forces. The right believes that it was China's decline that led to foreign aggression, and that the predicament after the founding of the People's Republic of my country was due to the wrong actions of our government. The debate between "external cause theory" and "internal cause theory" is just like whether to crack the small head or the big head when eating eggs. It is a relatively boring dispute. Both factions are only thinking after the fact, and both factions have their own reasons.

The left is accustomed to politicizing all issues, from the Gang of Four’s opposition to Premier Zhou and Vice Premier Deng’s purchase of foreign ships during the Cultural Revolution to the current situation where tens of thousands of people signed signatures to boycott the “Shinkansen” – you must never buy things from your enemies. The right believes that economic interests take priority and national development is important - why spend 10 yuan to make it yourself instead of buying something from outside that costs 5 yuan? Both the left and the right claim that their views are most in line with China’s interests. As for which one is correct, time will tell!

No one, whether left or right, can represent the Chinese people, because the people are all centrists.

A centrist put it well: "The angry youth are bored and the traitors are sentimental.

What is the extreme left and what is the extreme right?

The so-called extreme left means pushing the left's thinking to the extreme and breaking through. "The bottom line of freedom". In order to obtain indiscriminate justice, most of the freedoms must be eliminated. In order to eliminate most of the freedoms, an extremely powerful state machine must be established to bring all activities of the people under the control of the state. . The so-called extreme right, if the right's thinking is pushed to the extreme, breaks through the "bottom line of equality" and deduces opposition to the state's restrictions on the strong into asking the strong to control the country and bully the weak, claiming that "the state exists for the strong" (Stow Lei Ping), implements an oligarchic dictatorship and eliminates all protections and freedoms for the weak.

Why is the ultra-left system falsely fair?

The purpose of the ultra-left is to gain economic benefits. Indiscriminate justice, but because everyone has different abilities and backgrounds, to suppress everyone's personality and seek justice, totalitarianism must be implemented. In this way, although everyone is basically equal economically, totalitarianism will cause inequality in power. Those with high authority can do anything, while those with low status cannot even protect their lives. Those who are eliminated in the struggle for power are often in miserable situations. We have been living under this system for a long time.