There is a difference between left and right. Whatever your position on government is–statist vs anarchist, for example–the motivating factor that determines where your stand can be graphed on a spectrum runs left to right. What is the basic nature of the difference? One’s choice as to the form of government, or a choice for no government at all, is incidental to the position one is in on this spectrum. That position is determined solely on the basis of the individual’s judgment about fairness.
Choices about the nature and style of government are means to ends. The question that matters is, what kind of society do you want to live in? What is more important to you? What types of injustices are more abhorrent? We will all suffer (or benefit) from injustice. That’s a basic fact of human existence. The question is, what is the responsibility of the individual? How do we characterize freedom? Is it freedom from or freedom to?
The person who tends to be to the left judges unfairness on the basis of outcomes. He or she sees the results of whatever the current structure is, and deems them insufficient. Something is out of whack.
The person who tends to be to the right observes the outcomes, but tends to view them as just desserts. Yes, there are inequities, but the exceptions prove the rule. With a little gumption, and sufficient desire, you can be a success. If you’re not, well that’s because you are either a) inferior or b) incompetent.
The person on the left embraces a radical view of equality that presumes and rationalizes all inequities to some form of environmental phenomenon that can be ameliorated by willful intervention (presumably by members of an educated class trained to identify such problems).
The person on the right tends more to a fatalist perspective and is more accepting of inequality insomuch as it is obvious that there are inferior specimens everywhere he or she looks. That they are less successful is not an environmental deficiency so much as a congenital one.
This is a curve, of course. And most people, to the extent they think about it all, fall somewhere in the middle. Sometimes they sense the injustice, particularly when identifying themselves with a class. Even the super-rich feel sorry for themselves sometimes, as strange as that seems to the rest of us. Their class suffers the indignities of being resented by the masses of poor.
The point is there is a mysterious weighing that goes on that determines where one falls down on this. Anarchism is agnostic about this. There are other reasons why most anarchists come from the left, and statist-libertarians come from the right. Something to think about.
