Left Wing, Right Wing, People and Power
by Douglas Giles
Genre: Nonfiction / Politics
ISBN: 9781735880860
Print Length: 106 pages
Reviewed by Warren Maxwell
This work of political theory hammers out the brass tack definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, in order to revitalize partisan debates.
“Political conflict is far less about a clash of political ideologies than political theorists and the corporate media portray.”
Setting one’s sights on good faith political discourse may appear near utopic today, yet that’s the aim of Left Wing, Right Wing, People, and Power.
By delving into etymologies, historical developments, and contemporary distinctions within the broad umbrella of conservative and liberal, this book shifts the center of political argument away from sports-style party competitions toward pragmatic questions of power and what makes a good society.
Arguing that short-hand terms like “right” and “left” obfuscate the basic political questions of “who has power, how power can be exercised, and how it can be abused,” this is an analysis of where the so-called right and left fall in response to these questions—and further, an outline of how to leverage this information to litigate these questions in a way that is productive.
“Right-wing movements are characterized by their desire and efforts to concentrate power more. In contradistinction, social and political structures that circulate power among a large number of people or institutions are left-wing structures.”
Broadly defining left and right through their solution to the problem of political power, this book argues that the left is dedicated to dispersing power and increasing individual rights to act while the right is dedicated to concentrating power and increasing individual rights from interference .
From this core difference, the book draws out distinctions between conservatives and libertarians, liberals and the fake leftwing. Liberals are described as vesting power in law while conservatives vest it in the will of leaders. These and other heady concepts are threaded through a philosophical genealogy that moves all the way from Plato and Edmund Burke through 20th century giants like Isaiah Berlin, Carl Schmitt and up to contemporary theorists such as Byung-Chul Han and Corey Robin.
“The political issue for conservatism is less about governmental power than it is about economic power.”
This is a rare work of political theory that stands out for its conversational style and readability. Its persuasion relies on easy to follow arguments and logical conclusion in order to repaint the intractable modern political landscape as a vast misunderstanding of what is important in politics.
A great deal of depth is sacrificed in service of this accessibility—philosophers are invoked and woven together in a hybrid manner than smooths over nuances and sometimes ignores finer points of thought (a single sentence lumps Machiavelli, Weber, and Foucault together and then discards them all as having too simplistic a conception of power). Still, the clarity of language and overall charismatic tone makes this an entry-way into political theory that will appeal to general readers and shake up preconceived ideas about politics.
“People on the left wing and the right wing can have different opinions but still all be primarily interested in bettering their community— in seeking the ethical good—and open to dialogue and cooperation. The right-wing reactionaries and the fake Left are not.”
A double bind at the center of Left Wing, Right Wing, People, and Power is its apparent favoritism for left-wing politics. While the book is admirable in promoting mutual understanding and pushing for a politics of communities rather than divisions along party lines (even identifying the root of “politics” in the Greek word polis, city), its predisposition toward the liberal dream of expanding political power often shines through. This cracks the depictions of both sides being of equal merit and also gestures towards a more central dilemma.
Both liberalism and conservatism are defined in terms of politics, yet conservatism is often diminished as being more interested in economics and thus less genuinely political than liberalism. Unfortunately, counter-arguments to such broad claims are not entertained—when articulated, they are refuted out of hand without argument. Even though these shortcomings keep the book from being fully convincing, it nonetheless breaks down and reframes the question of politics and contemporary ideology into a fresh and accessible form.
An entertaining glance into the inner workings of political theory, Left Wing, Right Wing, People, and Power takes political action and ideology out of vague dogmas and reforms it into a vital part of social life.
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