A general argument for the left

Or at least the broad outline of such

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

- Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Thanks to Adam Piovarchy for his stimulating discussion on these issues. This is not a statement that Adam would agree- or disagree- with any particular statement in this post, or the post overall.

Why have a general argument for the left

Why have a general argument for the left? Why indeed? Why not just argue for the left’s position on each issue, or at least the major ones?

The challenge to this approach comes from Joshi (2020):

The American political landscape exhibits significant polarization. People’s political beliefs cluster around two main camps. However, many of the issues with respect to which these two camps disagree seem to be rationally orthogonal. This feature raises an epistemic challenge for the political partisan. If she is justified in consistently adopting the party line, it must be true that her side is reliable on the issues that are the subject of disagreements. It would then follow that the other side is anti-reliable with respect to a host of orthogonal political issues. Yet, it is difficult to find a psychologically plausible explanation for why one side would get things reliably wrong with respect to a wide range of orthogonal issues. While this project’s empirical discussion focuses on the US context, the argument generalizes to any situation where political polarization exists on a sufficiently large number of orthogonal claims.

To strip down the argument Joshi presents greatly:

1. If one side believes many independent propositions and the other side believes many contradictory independent propositions then, absent an explanation why one side should be right about all or a large majority of the propositions, it would be surprising if one side was right about all or a large majority of the propositions.

2. No such explanation is forthcoming.

3. Therefore, it would be surprising if one side of politics was right about all, or a large majority of the propositions they stand for.

This is the general challenge- this is why we should think we need a story vindicating the left as a whole. If, like me, you think there’s a responsibility to try to be accurate in your views about politics, it seems like an important challenge to meet.

But there’s another reason as well. Such stories are useful. They are useful for selling the ideas of the left. They are useful for clarifying our ideas so we can make them more persuasive. I know a lot of people seem to have forgotten that the point of politics is to persuade and build alliances, but I try to remember.

Throughout most of history, Joshi’s questions would have seemed very strange. Politics was seen as linked to concrete social groups or at least philosophies that made it seem like the propositions under debate were far from orthogonal. After the death (or hibernation) of class consciousness, politics increasingly seems like abstract floating coalitions connected, at most, by a vibe, and possibly by nothing at all.

Does the Marx & Engels quote I started with hold? Political polarization in the great arc of history is hard for me to evaluate, right now, it seems pretty high- Marx and Engels got the “two great camps” bit right about the present moment. If, though, our political polarization in some deep sense represents a clash of the classes, that reality is very opaque to the actors themselves- and even to the sociologists looking on doing the stats. Income is obviously not a perfect proxy for Marxist class, but its connection to voting patterns is increasingly tenuous. More and more the left and the right- much to my chagrin- look more like straw bundles of arbitrary sentiment. But I think there is a reality underlying that.

It’s not unusual historically for one side to have been vindicated by history- particularly movements of the underdogs

My first response to Joshi’s challenge is that it’s not unusual, historically, for one side to get at least the gist of what they stand for right. Of course, this doesn’t establish that either side has it right in modern times, let alone that the left has it right, but it’s a start and might give us a clue.

Consider for example the demands of the English peasant rebellion of 1381:

Removal of the poll tax, an end to the cap on labour wages, redistribution of the Church's wealth and the total abolition of serfdom.

I’ve read elsewhere they also demanded more lenient criminal justice, had protofeminist elements including many women leaders, etc. I’m sure their modern elements have been exaggerated, and I’m sure there were some issues they were wrong on, and maybe a handful of issues which, with the benefit of hindsight, we would say the lords were maybe right on. Nevertheless, they seem in an overall sense to have been right from the point of view of a great majority of everyone active in politics today. I could draw many more examples like this from history.

In general, what these movements had in common was that they were on the side of the weak, and against the strong.

The left tends to favor the weak over the strong, whereas the right takes the opposite position

I think that the left favors the weak over the strong and the right favors the strong over the weak- where strong means socially powerful, and weak means the opposite. This is likely not a total description of everything the left and right stand for, but it’s a good chunk- well over half I’d say- of the variance.

Some of you (leftwing and rightwing!) will accept this at face value- indeed a lot of the far right are proud of it!- but a lot of people, in the center and on the soft right, will resist the conclusion. I suspect, though, that at some level, you already know I’m right. I know, I know, psychoanalyzing your readers is bad manners, but I’ll try to back it up.

Consider the following questions:

1. Some groups of people are just more worthy than others.

2. In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.

3. It's OK if some groups have more of a chance in life than others.

4. To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups.

5. If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems.

6. It's probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom.

7. Inferior groups should stay in their place.

8. Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place.

9. It would be good if groups could be equal. (reverse-scored)

10. Group equality should be our ideal. (reverse-scored)

11. All groups should be given an equal chance in life. (reverse-scored)

12. We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups. (reverse-scored)

13. Increased social equality is beneficial to society. (reverse-scored)

14. We would have fewer problems if we treated people more equally. (reverse-scored)

15. We should strive to make incomes as equal as possible. (reverse-scored)

16. No group should dominate in society. (reverse-scored)

This is a measure of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO).

Two things are interesting about this to me, viz:

A) A high score on these questions predicts voting for one side of politics after the other.

B) If you’re being honest, you already know which side, don’t you? It’s the conservative side, but again you already knew that.

Crowson and Brandes find a correlation between their overall Social-Dominance orientation scale and voting for Trump of R=0.45, and strong correlations for the two subscales they consider as well. With regards to correlations between personality variables and behavior, this is, by social-scientific standards, an enormous relationship. Once the relationship was de-attenuated for unreliability- which on a short scale like this will be considerable- the correlation will be even bigger.

I’ll note that we’re only looking at the first-order correlation here. I’m not interested in modeling the causal contribution of SDO- as an independently existing attitude- to voting, or controlling for factors like race. My immediate contention is just that the actually existing right- for whatever reason- prefers the strong over the weak.

Crowson and Brande’s finding is, as best as I can tell, absolutely typical. I don’t think there’s serious disagreement with the claim that SDO has a big relationship with the rightwing of politics, at least in America. Thus, on a psychological level, the left is much more interested in backing the underdogs than the right.

There are of course going to be many cases in which the conservative and progressive will skirmish over who is representing the strong and who is representing the weak no doubt. Consider:

Abortion: “We’re defending the most voiceless of all, the unborn” VS “No, you’re trying to control women’s sexuality and prop up a patriarchal vision of family”

Guns: “We’re trying to defend the individual against the state” VS “*Generic liberal line on guns”.

Laws on hate speech: “We’re trying to defend the individual’s right to voice their opinions” VS “We’re trying to defend vulnerable minorities against attacks on their right to exist”.

Perhaps there are even some issues in which, due to other forces or accidents of history, the conservative ends up backing the weak over the strong and the leftist vice-versa. Nor is any of this to portray the left as saintly or perfectly directed towards its political end. I think that the left often does quite poorly at recognizing and sympathizing with the low-status and otherwise downtrodden, but there are good reasons, I take it, to think this is the overall thrust of the struggle between left and right is a struggle over oppression.

I’ll admit, in a longer review I’d like to provide more evidence for this. I suppose there are numerous ways you could try to get out of my conclusion, for example:

“It just so happens that the right prefers the interests of the weak to the strong, but this is an artifact and doesn’t relate to their actual policy positions”.

I can’t rule this out here, but I find it implausible special pleading. So, as with any treatment of a major issue in a blog post, I’m going to have to concede I can’t cover all bases. It very much seems to me though that the balance of evidence supports the conclusion that the left back the weak and the right back the strong.

The demands of the weak are prima facie more urgent, from a utilitarian perspective than the demands of the strong

For me, once it was clear- even unconsciously- which was the side of the weak and oppressed, I knew which side I was interested in supporting. But perhaps this isn’t enough for you. What about a very hard-nosed utilitarian?

There’s a good, general case for the interests of the weak in utilitarian terms. It goes like this:

In general, your first dollar matters much more to you than your hundred thousandth. This is true all the more so of specific purchasable goods. I suspect it’s also probably true of more abstract goods that cannot be purchased, or are difficult to purchase- like status, procedural fairness, free time, security from violence, and so on. Because I’m not just talking about declining marginal utility in income, this is not just economism, it also concerns, for example, who is in prison, who is assaulted, who is treated with respect and so on.

Towards a philosophy of left and right

Too often, philosophy has regarded itself as above partisanship and related phenomena. The articles on John Rawls, Democracy and Property and Ownership- chosen at random from the political philosophy articles on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy- do not contain the words “leftwing” or “rightwing”.

But really existing political polarisation, political parties, and the ways through which ordinary people think about politics surely raise philosophical questions. We need a philosophy of left and right and of partisanship. This is my modest contribution to that.

Just who are the strong? A rant about the left.

In clarifying that I’m generally pro-weak, I think it’s important to be clear who the weak and strong are. This, for me, isn’t just about the actually existing left- which isn’t perfect- but about the left I would like to exist.

One of the big problems with the modern left is that it has a view of power that is primarily fragmentary, discursive, and interpersonal, as opposed primarily to structural, material, and implemented through state and corporate power. This is linked to the idea that power is a kind of free-floating, sourceless miasma- a vibe, and that most of us are oppressors and oppressed in different ways. I’m not denying that there’s some truth to this way of interrogating the world, we are all implicated in this scheme in different ways, but a lot of the miasma-of-guilt view of oppression just reflects professional class neurosis.

I don’t think that a median-income straight white dude is “the strong”. Certainly, I think the strong tend to support, in a broad, structural, and collective sense- the power of men over women, of white people over people of color, and so on. The real strong ones benefit from the oppression of women, of people of color, etc- but to think that some random dude is, in any sense “on the inside” of this scheme is not only silly, it’s perfect for keeping this system going. Look at those social dominance orientation questions- to answer yes, you not only have to believe that the strong should rule over the weak, you almost have to- implicitly at least- put yourself in the position on the strong.

I never liked the framework of privilege. For one thing, it seemed like a kind of lowering of expectations. What is called privilege is, for the most part, the bare minimum we should expect for everyone. When the police don’t bash a white man but do bash a black man, I wouldn’t call that white privilege, I’d call that first and foremost oppression. Read this “privilege checklist” for example- with a few exceptions, it’s almost all stuff we should all see ourselves as entitled to. I think it’s no coincidence that, during a period of rising inequality and working-class stagnation we’ve come to frame basic entitlements as privileges.

If I kick Job three times and kick Rob once and then try to recruit Rob into maintaining my kicking scheme because he’s only getting kicked once, I think saying that Rob is privileged is wrong. But more than just wrong, it’s exactly the view that I, in maintaining my empire of kicking, want Rob and Job to believe. I want Rob to believe he’s getting a good deal in only getting kicked once! The idea of privilege is the idea that, for example, white supremacy wants whites to (covertly) hold about themselves. In reality, only very rich people are in any sense really ‘privileged’ by the system.

In the future, we will look back in astonishment at the idea that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to tell white straight men that they were the winners of oppression in order to try and get them to participate in abolishing it!