this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Left wing policy seeks to distribute political power as far and wide as possible. In a (hypothetical) ideal, every member of a society would have exactly the same amount of political power.
It tends to move slowly, which sucks when families are in crisis.
Right wing policy aims to consolidate power, again with a hypothetical of a single point. Right wing systems move quickly, but do whatever the rulers want, ignoring the needs of the commons.
Given Aesop's fable about the frogs who wanted a king and chose between king Log and king Heron (or watersnake or stork) this is a paradigm that has been around for a while.
Rather than right vs left, I reckon this is caused by the other axis, authoritarian vs liberty.
I forget if it's English parliament or French estates in which those who agree with the king sit on the right and those who disagree with the king sit on the left, which comes down to pro-monarchy and against monarchy.
We have plenty of autocrats who assert they are pro-liberty, pro-equality and pro-popular-rule, but to the last, they all want to only give the rights they like, want all the power and want to hand it to friends and (preferably immediately descendant) relatives. Even the DPRK calls itself a democratic people's republic.
Stalin liked Leninism so long as it didn't do anything he disliked (at which point he ignored it). Valid criticism of Soviet communism is in the swiftness that it became susceptible to corruption -- contrast US democracy which was corrupt (had its own mechanisms for stratified power) coming out of the gate.
Thanks for sharing that story, I love it!