I’m not sure if this is an accurate observation, but it seems to me that advocates of free market economics, including:
-less regulations
-lower taxation
-less government services
-general opposition to unions
are to the right of the political spectrum, at least in the dimension of economics.
Is there a reason why these positions are considered, or in fact are “right wing” and their opposites left-wing? The conflation of free markets and capitalism and conservatism seem to be somewhat incidental and arbitrary. After all, couldn’t capitalism and free markets be considered radical and liberal (and were they once not so?)
Because unrestricted “free capitalism”, at least as practised around the turn of the century*, not only was supported by the right wing at the time but was what gave rise to left wing movements and ideologies (i.e. unionizing, strikes, communism etc…). Modern right wing protests against the minimum wage, government regulations of industry & monopolies, welfare, etc… all have strict parallels to turn-of-the-century opposition of same.
It is at least partly a question of history. The meanings of conservative vs. liberal, right-wing vs. left-wing, etc. are different in different countries.
Conservatives tend to support the status quo. In a country with a history of free-market economics, like the US, this means conservatives will tend to support the free market, and the dominant social traditions.
Liberals tend to support whatever they think is best for the country at the moment, regardless of history. In a country where the dominant system is free-market economics, they will tend to advocate change in areas where the outcomes of the free-market system are less than ideal, and disavow any preference for dominant social traditions.
In a country with a different history, the meanings of the terms are different. The term “liberal” in Europe is generally used to refer to political groups that support free-market policies.
Trying to infer some rational basis for the political positions taken by major parties anywhere in the world is pointless. They all have baggage of intellectually inconsistent positions adopted for political expediency at one time or another that they now must carry around, and most of them have even deluded themselves into not seeing the hypocrisy.
Further to this, in the 19th century, classical liberals supported free markets and conservatives favoured various kinds of protectionism and government intervention. I’m not certain that European liberals are always the free marketers but in some circles the term neoliberal is used to describe extreme free market beliefs.
Now, of course, the ideas have changed hands and small-government, classical liberalism is a conservative idea while modern liberals see a broader scope for government action.
Right and left wing originally referred to seating in the French Estates General before the Revolution. Supporters of the monarchy sat on the right and supporters of a republic sat on the left. Influential philosopher Edmund Burke wrote against the French Revolution in his treatise “On the Revolution in France” because it sought to overturn all of the established order. Meanwhile after the Revolution the Jacobins took over France and chaos ensued.
Thus the defining characteristics the right wing is respect for tradition and slow change from the bottom up. The defining characteristic of the left wing is trying to remake society using government power.
Free market economics is change from the bottom up and has little role for the government to change society, thus it is right wing and not left wing.
The Right Wing supports the rich and powerful. The “free market” is a way of saying “let the rich and powerful do as they please, strip all protection from the common people, and use the government to crush anyone who dares defy them”. They support the “free market” because they want a new feudalism; with the rich as lords, the fundies as a state religion, and the rest of us as serfs. And they want the only domestic purposes of the government to be to impose that state religion, and to crush any serf who defies his betters.
The right wing concept of free markets is simply unmodified capitalism which we know doesn’t work. In practice it’s the opposite of free markets, it’s a system of anti-competitive regulation.
I’m calling straw-man on both these remarks. They represent how some on the left perceive a free market and advocates thereof, but not the reality.
A free market can only exist with a certain amount of state regulation, such as enforcement of contracts and prosecuting fraud. This is undisputed, the issue is how much regulation and what sort, not whether to have any.
As to Der Trihs…if you intended “the Right Wing” to mean “Republicans”, you are disconnected from the reality of what the vast majority of Republicans believe and desire.
Don’t call me the left. If you have some way to show what I’ve said is wrong, go ahead, but it’s not a straw man. We have regulated markets already. If there is to be a change, it has to be away from that in some direction. The right wing loves anti-competitive regulation while espousing a policy in the opposite direction.
That view exists on the left, but not universally so and not only on the left. I’ve no desire to lump you into any groups, I apologize.
You’re pre-supposing that all regulation is beneficial, are you not? Moving away from specific regulations isn’t a call to abandon all regulation. That view may exist among anarchists, but not libertarians, right-wing conservatives, or really anyone else.
Just so I understand, you are seriously suggesting that the broad base of Republicans, (the 60 million or so that voted for Romney, for instance), endorse this position:
Not as unintended consequences of policies or anything like that, but rather these are the goals, as summarized by you?
No I am not. I am supposing that there is regulation that is beneficial to free enterprise, and regulation which is not. The free markets slogan is just a cover for blocking regulations that make companies take risks and provide value in order to profit, and to implement regulations which stifle competition.
ETA: And the left is in love with stupid regulations which effectively do the same thing. I’m an equal opportunity hater on this issue.
Most of them yes. Of course, most of them are sure that they’ll get to be the “lords” and not the “serfs”, and are sure that it’s their particular version of Christianity that will get rammed down the throat of everyone else. That self-deluding arrogance is a common characteristic of the right wing mind.
Agreed. I think most everyone believes this, they just differ on which regulations are which.
I may have misread you before. Are you saying that the right-wing claims to desire free markets, but actually acts to prevent them?
Or that the right-wing interprets fee markets as being completely unregulated, and is trying to enact that policy?
Or neither?
I’m with you there; the Republican party is, at best, marginally closer to actually wanting free markets than the Democrats. Nobody likes being competed with, after all.
I see. This represents a gulf between your reasoning and experiences and my own that is so vast, I’ve no idea how to bridge it. Thanks for clarifying, by the way.
I’m saying the right wing claims to desire free markets, but their actual efforts concentrate on anti-competitive regulation. They simply want to insure that those who have amassed wealth through the markets continue to do so free of risk.
I see. I took “The right wing concept of free markets is simply unmodified capitalism which we know doesn’t work” to mean that the right wing desired totally unregulated capitalism. That’s a straw-man I’ve seen before and wished to confront, as in no way do they actually advocate unregulated capitalism.
Well I don’t think they desire it, but I do think they try to sell it that way. It appeals to the Libertarian crowd who desire a return to feudalism. (Please note the upper case L in Libertarian).
Free market capitalism, by its very nature, concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small, arbitrary minority. The rich get richer and the poor, in relative terms at least, get poorer. The political left holds it as a central moral principle that every human being is of equal worth and equally deserving of the good things of life. Therefore they see social and economic inequalities of the sort that capitalism produces (that capitalism requires in order to function) as great evils that need to eliminated or at least much reduced. In the context (which we are in) of a capitalist society, this means that they want to change society radically, thus they are anti-conservative. Conservatives, by definition, are those who wish to resist change, or, at any rate, they think it is always foolish to try to deliberately improve society, because they think all such attempts must fail, or, at any rate, have unintended bad consequences that will outweigh any improvements. Inevitably, this brings them into conflict with leftists who are trying to change society to make it more equal, a conflict exacerbated by the fact that many conservatives do not think equality is a very important value (or even a good thing at all) in the first place. (For obvious reasons, most of the people who think the latter are among those in whose hands wealth and power have already become concentrated, or who, reasonably or unreasonably, expect themselves to become wealthy and powerful.)