This is a summary of contrasting viewpoints where some views and theories on one side of an issue are laid out and examined and some reasons suggested for them, and then some objections to those views are considered. And then later an opposing viewpoint on the other side is laid out and explained, and treated in the same way.
As endpoints of the political spectrum, the Right and the Left haven't always been clear on what it is that they stand for and why. This problem has been made all the worse due to the fact that the issues on which they disagree have changed over time.
In the early part of the historical period called the Enlightenment (which would be from the late 1600’s to the early 1700’s) the political spectrum was divided according to different views as to how government gets its authority to act as a government, to make laws and enforce them. What that means is that the big question of the day was: Where does a government’s authority come from? There were two main sides on that question, and those two sides defined what it meant at the time to be on the Right or Conservative, or on the Left or Liberal.
The Right/Conservatives of that time said: We subscribe to the long established view called the Divine Right of Kings, where legal sovereignty, the authority to make and enforce laws, is located in one person, a monarch, and this person has that authority by means of God's imputation of authority on that person. Or in short: God gives a king the authority and responsibility of being the king.
The Left/Liberals of that the time said: We subscribe to a different long established view called democracy in a special sense of that term, where democracy involves the idea of popular sovereignty. This is the view that there isn’t one person who has legal sovereignty, but rather that such sovereignty is located in the people. Now this notion of sovereignty being in the people works out in two different ways. On one hand, there's the sense of the people as a whole being the source of the authority of law; that the people give a government its power to do what needs done. (Note of course that this can mean we can have a king, just so its clear that a king’s power comes from the people.) On another hand, there’s the sense of the people as individuals being each necessary parts of the process, which in the end represents the idea of the consent of the governed; there is no whole that consents to be governed, instead its each person in that whole whose consent must be secured and respected.
Over time, the big idea of democracy in the sense of legal sovereignty being with the people is the idea that won out. So from then on it was pretty much accepted that legal sovereignty lies with the people, and most everyone pretty much accepted the necessity of securing and respecting the consent of the governed.
But then in the later part of the Enlightenment (mid-to-late 1700’s) a different issue arose regarding the best way to implement, satisfy, and respect popular sovereignty, and that issue had people taking at least two distinct sides on it. Those two sides then came to be called Right or Conservative, and Left or Liberal too.
The Right/Conservatives of that time said: Popular sovereignty is best implemented through what might be called a balanced governmental format, where interests of one group are balanced with interests of other groups, and no group has pre-eminence over others, even if that group happens to be in the majority. Furthermore, the goal may be best achieved by making use of some traditional formats of government, even formats that some may call aristocratic. A prime example of this idea was represented in the original U.S. Constitution regarding the makeup of Congress: The members of the House were to be elected by direct election by the people of each district, but the members of the Senate were to be elected by the State legislatures; not directly by the people, but only indirectly. One idea behind this seems to be that this mixed format would result in a balance of interests and concerns within the Congress, with one chamber being focused on people’s immediate concerns and another chamber being focused on “long-term” or “bigger” concerns, by not being under the direct control of the people.
The Left/Liberals of that time said: Popular sovereignty is best implemented by direct changeover to a new governmental format as close as possible to pure participatory democracy, and there is no need for any intermediate steps. (Pure participatory democracy is that specific form of government where all laws are passed based on majority vote from all and by no other processes.)
Over time, both the views of the Right and of the Left of this period had some points in their favor, though when it came to the issue of dramatic change and the effects of dramatic political change on a society, the French Revolution put a damper on enthusiasm for these views of the Left. That Revolution involved a lot of chaos and in the end produced just another monarchical dictatorship not much different from one it overthrew. Another result of that Revolution was that it suggested that pure participatory democracy may only work well on a small scale, or that even if it is a worthwhile goal to try to reach eventually, most societies need to gradually work up to it.
Now even if these issues in the past have been worked out and settled, that of course does not mean that people no longer have things to disagree about. What marks the political Right and the political Left of today has just changed to a different subject matter. What we have today is a difference of views centered around the function of government, rather than the source of authority of or the form of government.
The Right of contemporary times says: The function of government is maintaining a background framework for public interaction, so that each person or each group, however it is that people want to act, whether on their own or in a group, can act as they wish with a minimum of conflict with each other. With a common framework of interaction, people can go about doing what they have to do to take care of their needs, carry on with their lives, and follow their own goals. Or in short: The function of government is to provide a level playing field so that everyone plays on the same terms.
The Left of contemporary times says: The function of government is to provide for the needs of the people, to assure that the needs of the people are met.
Now these two views on the function of government each have strong motivations and significant consequences.
For the Right there is this:
(1) There’s good reason to favor the view that the function of government should be that of providing a framework for interaction.
Whether you agree with people’s views, opinions, and goals or not, you have to respect them anyhow. At bottom, people have their own lives to live and are responsible for themselves, and the best way to respect this freedom and responsibility is to have government helping the process of people going on about their lives and guarding against them adversely affecting others. So we need government to be doing this, providing a level playing field for everyone.
(2) Furthermore, there’s good reason why the function of government should not go beyond the basic goal of providing a level playing field, in that there are really bad things that happen if the function of government is to provide for people’s needs, or assure them, or however it is stated.
There is a famous line from a famous book (Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto) that goes: “. . .the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” And then another famous line from one of his less-famous works (Critique of the Gotha Program) that goes: “. . .From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” These statements embody the basic idea of a concept that to us has come to be called economic redistribution.
What we today call economic redistribution is a process by which goods, income, property, and so on, are intentionally transferred from one person to another for no other reason than to move those from one person to another in order to make someone better off than they were before. This transfer is not for a public purpose, but a private one. Obviously not all transfer of something from someone is economic redistribution. Taking of something from someone, through taxation for example, for the purpose of fulfilling basic government functions is not economic redistribution. Here is a case in point: Taxes on the retail sale of gasoline for the purpose of raising funds for road maintenance is done on the grounds of the government’s responsibility for roads, not for any other purpose like making someone better off.
The fundamental problem with the goal of the Left is that, in order to carry it out, economic redistribution has to be done on a massively wide and deep scale. To say that government is here to assure that people have what they need is to say that the primary job of government involves economic redistribution for the purpose of assuring that needs are met. However, what is required to make this redistribution happen will have severe adverse consequences, and this is because of the controls that government must have to achieve it.
If government is to provide for or assure people’s needs, then that means that government must be responsible for those needs. In other words, to say that government is to be charged with making sure that needs are met is right away to say that it has responsibility to see that it happens that needs are met. But if government is to be responsible for the needs of the people, then there are two things that it must do to carry out that responsibility, and it has no choice but to do these two things:
(a) Government will have to be in control of the assets and processes involved in the provision of needs. (Note that this is explicitly affirmed in Marx’s Manifesto at least in relation to production of food and any goods needed for living.)
For example in agriculture and food: Since government must make sure that people have enough food to eat, and of the right kinds, it has to be in control of farmlands, food processing, food distribution and storage, food stores, and so on, everything involved in the food that people need.
For example in housing: Since government must make sure that people have adequate housing, it has to be in control of houses, apartments, construction, renovation, building supplies, utility supplies, water and sewer service, and so on and on.
For example in health care: Since government must make sure that people have adequate health care, it has to control hospitals, doctors, nurses, health aides, medicines, medical research, medical tools and equipment, and so on.
(b) Government will have to be in control of the behavior of each and every person, and this means you too; and you and you and you, and me. Responsibility requires being able to control, you can’t be held responsible if you have no control, and so there must be control over all factors involved in needs. But that means that there must be governmental control over each person’s behavior, since behaviors are linked with needs. Many times your needs are not addressed by your behavior; you are not doing what is necessary for your needs. And many times you need something “artificially,” or only because of what you do; it only happens that you become in need of something because of some behavior you have had. The necessity of this control over behavior can be seen in considering again the examples used above.
For example in agriculture and food: So you want to eat or drink something, maybe because you like it. The problem is that this is not up to you. Government must be the one to figure out what you need and then decide what you will get, as it is government who is responsible for assuring your nutritional needs. Responsibility for your nutritional needs requires control over what you eat and drink.
For example in housing: So maybe you want to live in a particular house in a particular neighborhood, as your friends or relatives live near, or don’t live near. The problem is that this is not up to you. It is up to government to make that choice for you, to first determine what you need relative to what other people need, and then to put you in there or remove you from there as your needs and other’s needs change. With government responsible for your housing needs, government must have control over what housing you have.
For example in health care: So maybe you want to eat this or drink that or do this work or go there; it is not up to you to make those choices. As government is responsible for your health it has to have control over your behavior that affects your health, which is a whole lot of your behavior. So government will decide what you will eat or drink or do or where you will go, and so on, as all these things will affect your health.
There is an end result of these two consequences of governmental responsibility: The goal of the Left in terms of the function of government necessarily requires extensive economic and personal controls by government and thus necessarily requires a government that is both intrusive and totalitarian. It isn’t just that government must be in control of the production of goods involved in people’s needs. The consequences of that extent of control, just by itself, is bad enough, and history has shown it is bad. But its also that people’s fundamental behaviors must also be under its control, since personal behaviors are necessarily entwined with needs.
Now the Left may respond to this in the following way:
Consider again the view posted above about the function of government: The function of government is to provide for the needs of the people, to assure that the needs of the people are met. The way that this goal is being interpreted in the views of the Right is that this goal requires that all needs of all people must be under the auspices of government. Now its easy to see why someone would think this way. In Marx’s Manifesto for example, he clearly thought that there was a fundamental choice between two and only two outcomes with regard to the assets and processes involved in the production of the goods necessary to life: Either they would be owned privately or they would be owned publicly, and there is no in-between. So today it is easy to think something similar, that with government being responsible for needs, then it must be that government is responsible for all needs, that there is no in-between.
But this really is not a necessary consequence; there is always an in-between position to take. There’s a way to re-cast this fundamental view on the function of government in a different and more precise way that may have two big advantages: It may be able to avoid the adverse consequences of the control problems in government, and it should allow room for some good reasons in its favor.
We can state instead: The function of government is to assure the needs of the people, but assuring needs just means establishing and maintaining a basic minimum of need satisfaction. There is a different sense here to assurance of needs than what was found in the interpretations of the Right, in that doing so just means keeping up a minimum, not controlling all levels of needs. In other words, we can accept that government is going to be charged with some economic redistribution, but its charge to do so is only for the purpose of assuring a basic minimum coverage of living needs. But that means government shouldn’t have to have that much control over people or their economies, and this may avoid the problems with the extent of government control.
So for the next stage: We can consider some reasons in favor of the position of the Left, and also some objections that may be raised to it.
(published 11/15/19)
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