Politics Defined - Source for Political Termonolgy Analysis and Defintions

Left Wing Politics

In politics, left-wing, political left, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the United States sense of the word), or with opposition to right-wing politics. Communism (as well as the Marxist philosophy that it relies on) and anarchism are considered to be radical forms of left-wing politics.

The terminology of Left-Right politics was originally based on the seating-arrangement of parliamentary partisans, during the French Revolution. The more ardent proponents of radical revolutionary measures (including democracy and republicanism) were commonly referred to as leftists because they sat on the left side of successive legislative assemblies. As this original reference became obsolete, the meaning of the terms has changed as appropriate to the spectrum of ideas and stances being compared.

The term is also often used to characterize the politics of the Soviet Union and other one-party "communist states", although many (perhaps most) on the political left (including many Marxists) would not consider their own politics to have anything significant in common with any of these states.

Political groups on the left
One might normally characterize the following groups as on the political Left in their respective countries, though they might have relatively little in common with other Left-wing groups beyond their opposition to the Right.

Naturally, in all cases "left" and "right" are relative. For example, the Democratic Leadership Council (in which Bill Clinton was active) is generally considered to form the right wing of the U.S. Democratic Party, but in terms of the whole country he was generally perceived as being on the moderate left.

History of the term
Although it may seem ironic in terms of present-day usage, the original "leftists" during the French Revolution were the largely bourgeois supporters of Laissez-faire capitalism and free markets. As the electorate expanded beyond property-holders, these relatively wealthy elites found themselves clearly victorious over the old aristocracy and the remnants of feudalism, but newly opposed by the growing and increasingly organized and politicized workers and wage-earners. The "left" of 1789 would, in some ways be part of the present-day "right", liberal with regard to the rights of property and intellect, but not embracing notions of distributive justice, rights for organized labor, etc.

The European left has traditionally shown a smooth continuum between non-communist and communist parties (including such hybrids as Eurocommunism), which have sometimes allied with more moderate leftists to present a united front. In the United States of America, however, no avowedly socialist or communist party ever became a major player in national politics, although the Social Democratic Party of Eugene V. Debs and its successor Socialist Party of America (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) and the Communist Party of the United States of America (in the 1930s) made some inroads. While many American "liberals" would be "social democrats" in European terms, very few of them openly embrace the term "left"; in America, the term is mainly embraced by New Left activists, certain portions of the labor movement, and people who see their intellectual or political heritage as descending from 19th-century socialist movements.

The "New Left" has had varying degrees of unity since its rise in the 1960s, and can be seen as a coalition of numerous distinct movements, including (but not limited to) feminists, Greens, some Labor unions, some Atheists, some Gay rights activists, and some minority ethnic and racially oriented Civil Rights groups. Many Greens deny that green politics is "on the left"; nonetheless, their economic policies can generally be considered left-wing, and when they have formed political coalitions (most notably in Germany, but also in local governments elsewhere), it has almost always been with groups that would generally be classified as being on the left.

Leftism and the Soviet Union
Much as fascism is generally included in "the right", despite important differences from other rightists, Soviet-style state communism is generally included in "the left", despite important differences from other leftists. Some argue that (in spite of its use of socialist rhetoric), Soviet-style communism should be viewed independently of the conventional left-right spectrum: this case has, perhaps, been made most eloquently by Karl Popper, through his development of the concept of totalitarianism. Critics of democratic socialism or of left-liberalism have often used the association of communism with Soviet-style politics to tar the political left with the perceived crimes of Stalinism, but these accusations are usually little more than rhetorical devices (similar to the ones used by some critics of conservativism or other right-wing ideologies in associating the political right with fascism).

In the days of the Soviet Union, leftist movements worldwide had different relationships with Moscow-line communist parties, ranging from enthusiastic support to outright opposition. Even today, some parts of the radical left extol all or some aspects of Soviet-style communism or that of Maoist China, while others loathe the perceived crimes of those regimes and denounce them at every turn. For example, most Trotskyists adhere to some variant of Leon Trotsky's view of the post-Lenin Soviet Union as a "degenerated workers' state" and denounce Stalin as a traitor, while the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA takes the opposite view and continues to praise the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Some critics of the left claim that leftist movements lost their moorings – or their rationale – after the collapse of the European communist states (beginning in 1989 and ending with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991). However, large segments of the left never took inspiration from the Soviet model and actually rejoiced to see the USSR's system collapse -- as Michael Albert of Z Magazine put it, "one down, one to go" (referring to Stalinism and capitalism).

Leftism and postmodernism
A few self-described leftists also subscribe to postmodernism, including deconstructionism, a philosophical point of view that claims that every text "contains the allegory of its own deconstruction" and thereby questions the possibility of rational discourse. (Most postmodernists see themselves as leftists, but most leftists are not postmodernists.) Critics on the right have generally seen this as an indication of the poorly thought-out, fashionable nature of academic leftism. However, there are many on the left who say that postmodernism makes no sense and offers no useful political lessons.

Some critics of the left also suggest that deconstructionism is not the only Nietzschean element in contemporary leftism, pointing to Nietzsche as the font of moral relativism and the "God is dead" philosophy, both of which they see as characterizing the perceived nihilism of modern leftist politics. On the other hand, most leftists consider such accusations to be completely baseless and incorrect; this is especially true of religious leftists, many of whom hold Nietzsche's philosophy in less than low regard.

Leftism and Neo-leftism in China
The 1949 victory of the Chinese Revolution brought to power the then ultra-leftist Chinese Communist Party of Mao Zedong, who, over the next quarter of a century attempted the radical transformation of society through the Great Leap Forward and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After Mao's death, it became the conventional wisdom among China's leadership that these attempts had been a disaster. Although it has retained its name, the Chinese Communist Party today has abandoned Communism in its economic policies, pursuing instead an agenda of economic liberalization, beginning in the 1980s with the Four Modernizations of Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese government, however, has remained rigidly authoritarian; socially and politically, it is still commonly viewed as repressive, though far less so than in Mao's time. Most leading Chinese dissidents are political and social liberals.

In contrast both to the government and the liberal dissidents, Chinese neo-leftism, embracing postmodernism and Chinese nationalism, and opposed both to democracy and to what they see as a return of China to the capitalist world, arose as a political idea during the mid-1990s. Neo-leftism is seen as being more appealing to students in China today than liberalism, as problems faced by China during its modernisation such as inequality and the widening gap between the rich and the poor are becoming more serious.