George Rebane

In a recent Sandbox commenters brought up thoughtful questions and critiques that deserve more light of day than to be immersed in some post’s comment stream.  One commenter questioned, “If totalitarianism is on the far extreme right of the political system (à la North Korea) and on the far left of the political spectrum is anarchy (no internal or external chains on individual behavior or passions), can a political system’s place on that spectrum be quantified? If so, what data points would one need in order to determine where on the spectrum and whether such controls derived from internal factors (morality or religion) or from external factors (government control)?”

I responded by defining anarchy – “Anarchy is a society or state without rulers, formal government, or hierarchical authority.” – and asserted that totalitarianism is NOT on the extreme right, it is the inevitable and stable form of collectivist (extreme left) governance.  Both conservative (free market capitalist) and collectivist (e.g Marxism, communism) acknowledge anarchy as their potential and/or desirable endpoints of governance.  The two types of anarchies are culturally cohesive and culturally incoherent.

Human nature neither promotes nor permits a culturally cohesive anarchy like that sought as the ultimate goal of organizing a communist society.  The road to that goal always ends in a stable tyrannical totalitarianism.  The desired (not guaranteed) goal of conservative ideologies is a minimally stable governance of sufficient cultural cohesion that is based on universal observance of the Bastiat Triangle of Rights (see right column).  That not being achieved will plunge society into a ‘Mad Max’ anarchy which may well also end up in a stable tyrannical totalitarianism.  The Left’s road is to a certain dystopia, the Right’s destination has a good likelihood of halting with the stable minimal form of governance.  And there you have the Great Divide.

I provided a more detailed look at the Great Divide in a previous post, ‘E Pluribus Unum – Still? Really?’ which contains a link to a definitive dissertation on the differences between the Right and the Left which are mostly overlooked in today’s heated and hateful debate between the two sides.

Another commenter (of the Left) criticized my characterization of the forms of governance, specifically rejecting my “utopian dream” of the aspirational form sought by the Right that is based on a Bastiat-style minimal government.  The commenter is of the typical leftwing persuasion that if a perfect ideal is not yet achieved, then it is a fool’s errand to keep seeking it.

Specifically, he stated that “no large state has stably reached a Bastiat-style minimal government to test that claim. If you compare records instead, the right-leaning side includes Franco, Salazar, Pinochet, and the fascist regimes, and market economies coexist comfortably with authoritarianism today (Singapore, and China’s hybrid system).”  And then citing Claude, he added –

“What the evidence best supports is something like: regimes that seek to remake society through concentrated, unchecked power tend toward tyranny, and anarchy tends to collapse into rule by whoever is strongest. Both are fairly well supported. The “Great Divide” is then less about left versus right than about institutional design: whether a society has checks on power, a rule of law that binds rulers, and enough social trust to need little coercion. Many people on both sides would accept that framing, and the real disagreements (how big the state should be, how to weigh equality against liberty) mostly happen inside it, not across it.:”

In response I posited that all of this kind of differentiation is moot when you consider the litmus test between conservetarian and collectivist governance.  If an ideology demands the unlimited growth of government, the conformation of behavior toward a common state-dictated standard, and the ratcheting loss of private property, then it by definition is leftwing and collectivist.  All fascist governments have been leftwing, and mis-designated as rightwing only by Marxist propaganda seeking to promote a global collective.  And that is the basis for our current Great Divide, correctly framed by Claude as resulting from “institutional design: whether a society has checks on power, a rule of law that binds rulers, and enough social trust to need little coercion.”

The Left (socialist, communist, Marxist, fascist, …) has a demonstrated history of violating these tenets.  That neither side has reached its stated goal of governance (communism’s ultimate absence of government, conservetarian’s minimalist government based on Bastiat’s rights) is a moot point in this debate.  All social goals have been and are aspirational, and therefore serve to guide the organization of societies in the pursuit of such goals.  Today we are no different.

To illustrate the structure of vatious forms of governance, and their evolution guided by right/left ideologies, I posted this hopefully revelatory piece some years back – ‘Ideologies and Governance – a structured look’.  This dissertation also serves to more completely answer the first commenter above.