Europe.view: Who's left? Who's right?

Thu, 04/23/2009 - 03:32 EDT  in
 

The enduring uselessness of traditional political labelsTHE terms “left” and “right” and right don’t mean much in politics anymore and in the ex-communist world they are particularly confusing. Last week’s report in The Economist on Moldova described that country’s ruling Communists as a “centre-right” party, which attracted some sharp feedback. At first sight the idea of centre-right communists sounds as odd as “moderate Trotskyites” or “secular jihadists”. But most other conventional labels would fit the ruling crowd in Moldova worse.The lamentably crude but sometimes convenient conventional political spectrum counts “left” (or sometimes “liberal”) as egalitarian, and thus sceptical of bankers and rich people, pro-social spending, pro-gay and dovish in foreign policy. “Right” (or sometimes “conservative” is pro-business, pro-family, and patriotically hawkish on defence and foreign affairs. That misses out whole chunks of the political debate. Are civil liberties a “left” or “right” issue? Cynics would say that it depends who’s in jail: Nelson Mandela drew most (but not all) of his support from one crowd, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from another. ...

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