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By the Left, the Right or in the Mire PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 24 April 1995 16:33
 April 1995

I was enjoying an after-dinner debate in Hamilton when a university lecturer declared "We are all Marxists here!" Then pointing to me, he added "Except him. He's way off to the right." "Not so!" I replied "I belong to the historical left."

I leapt into the short silence which followed to explain my position.

The terms Right and Left had their origins in the Assemblies of the French Revolution. The deputies who favoured a Constitutional Monarchy with less centralised government sat on the right of the President while those representing the interests of the "little people" (menu-peuples) sat on the left.

Almost everyone on both sides of these Assemblies shared the economic beliefs of the French Physiocrats and their Scottish ally Adam Smith. They believed that the free-market, free-trade economy which had proven so successful in England should be introduced to France. The French reformist 'Lefties' were firm advocates of free trade, market economics, less government intervention in the economy and the guiding principle of laissez faire.Like those who sat on the Right they, too, attacked the tariffs, monopolies and other privileges which characterised the establishment of the Ancien Regime.

As their name suggests, the economic Physiocrats of both the Left and Right took their lead from physicists such as Newton who had discovered that the world of men was governed by universal laws which existed independently of monarchs and priests. The Physiocrats believed that 'natural law' would govern the economy better than laws made by men ­ no matter how wise or well intentioned those men might be. During the early stages of the revolution almost everyone in the Assemblies ­ on both the Left and the Right ­ accepted the idea that a laissez faire economy would allow France to match England's economic success.

But ominously, many of those on the Left belonged to the Jacobin Club and were committed to the centralist ideals which led to the infamous Reign of Terror. These radical Jacobins dedicated alters to the fatherland. They proclaimed that French Citizens owed everything to the nation. Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a radical Jacobin who, like some early edition of Pol Pot, found genuine delight in the concept of terror, and declared "There is something terrible in the sacred love of the fatherland. It is so exclusive as to sacrifice everything to the public interest, without pity, without fear without respect for humanity. ... What produces the public good is always terrible." Such bloody thoughts lubricated the shafts of the guillotine. Political 'clubs' with similar ideas were to commit even greater crimes against humanity in the twentieth century. They are still with us.

The benches on the left of the French assemblies accommodated advocates of English laissez faire but at the same time nurtured those who emerged as the enemies of all open societies; those who believe that a centrally planned society must be superior to one allowed to emerge more gradually out of the more English process of 'muddling through'.

Then, in the nineteenth century, Karl Marx claimed that the poor would find their salvation only through the vehicle of a nation state which was not only centrally planned, but which would own the means of production, distribution and exchange ­ which at the end of the day means everything.
The Marxists presented their total socialism as the cure for those who remained disadvantaged under the new capitalist economies of the time. Because the new establishment of the right defended capitalism against Marx's extension of Jacobin ideology the term 'right' soon became synonymous with capitalism itself.

On the other hand, Marx's ideas were so powerful and so attractive to so many, that his proposed solution to the problems of the 'little people' on the Left became synonymous with his economic solutions for the 'little people' ­ and 'left economics' was born.

As the idea that socialism is the only cure-all for poverty fades into oblivion ­ except in intellectual theme parks such as Waikato University and Auckland University's Economics Department ­ the terms Right and Left may possibly regain their original meaning.

For example, Sir Roger Douglas and his supporters within the 1984 Labour Government were sworn enemies of the privileged establishment ­ our very own ancien regime. They waged war on corporate welfare and farm subsidies. They removed import licensing and high tariffs and so destroyed a whole class of privileged cost-plus manufacturers. They unwound massive central bureaucracies through the corporatisation of whole departments.

Those Rogerrnomes were maintaining the traditions of the historical Physiocratic left.

On the other hand Jim Anderton and his friends want to carry on coddling the regimes of the civil service, and the health and teaching professionals, while using licensing and tariff barriers to re-crown the kings of cost-plus corporate welfare. Hence they represent the interests of the privileged class and belong to the historical Right. But these new interventionists, who also believe that a few wise men and women, wielding massive central power, know better than the host of people who drive the economy, share the centralist beliefs of the Jacobin Left.

Old style Jacobins like Sir Robert Muldoon and the new breed like Jim Anderton love inflation coupled to progressive taxes because fiscal drag provides an ever-increasing supply of tax revenues to subsidise the privileged classes without any need for Parliament to increase the actual rate of tax. For years high inflation transferred wealth from the savers to the borrowers and massively increased the tax take from the poor ­ a genuine 'crime against the masses'. If taxation is theft then this deadly combination of inflation and progressive taxes is sneak-thievery on a grand scale. Which is why Jim and Pam and their fellow Jacobins just love it.

Which means that to uphold the traditions of the original reformist Left we have to believe in the fiscally responsible principles of the monetarist Right.

Does this mean the centre-left or centre-right is the ideal political territory? Hardly. The political centre attracts those who want to promise all things to all men, all women, all whales, all minorities, all victims, all trees, and any other pressure group that comes along. They proudly and loudly proclaim the benefits of their programmes. But they never count, or even consider, the costs of their well intentioned but destructive laws.

Hence the centre delivers nothing ­ except stagnation and the mind-numbing slide into bureaucratic tyranny.

By the time of the Reign of Terror those Jacobins who dominated the Left of the Assembly were called the Montagne or the Mountain. Those who supported the English model on the Right were called the Gironde or the River. Those left in the middle occupied the Plain.

The French populace called it the "Bog".

It's where you found the National Coalition.
 

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