The political axes (left and right)

In a previous article I dealt with the wrong thing to understand the ideology as a fixed system of categories that determine the perception of reality. Today I am dealing with another common mistake when it comes to understanding the concept of political ideology: the fact that define it according to contingencies, arbitrariness, take the part for the whole.

To do this, it is useful to talk first about the political spectrum, or rather the political spectrum. The bipolar dimension of political axes such as that of left-right It's a good example.

The political axes: right and left

The conceptualization of political positions on the left and right builds a continuum between two poles with a central point. It is historically linked to the times of the French Revolution and served to distinguish physical and political positions: in the National Constituent Assembly, Republicans sat on the president's left, while royalists sat on the right. Thus, this polarity is linked to an assumption of the existence of progress. It's mostly about distinguishing between progressives and conservatives. Unfortunately, we cannot know what is the essence of two categories that are

characterized by their temporary mobility: at each moment the conservative answer is one, and the same happens with the progressive: both are linked to the development of history.

Thus, faced with certain political questions, the answers given from different ideologies can be aligned from left to right, one extreme being a determined position and the other being its opposite position. It is a quantitative analysis and as such it is quite more descriptive than explanatory. And yet it is currently very difficult to speak of politics in non-axial terms. Pau Comes, on his blog Independence is Llibertat, proposes the following to avoid this simplistic approach: “As many people have written lately -for example Xavier Mir, from his blog-, Catalan politics can be explained with more than one axis, not only Left Right". It refers, in effect, to the inclusion of the Spanish-Catalan axis.

Substantive ideologies and relative ideologies

According to this vision, Catalan politics can be explained con the more axes the better. However, this is not a way to understand ideologies as something substantive, but limit oneself to giving an account of the different manifestations that may have a place in each of them. The explicit demonstrations carried out by a series of political agents stereotypically related to certain ideologies are transformed into the ideology itself, and therefore the ideology is transformed into something purely explicit. Political analysis uses axes as ideological positions become a degree of agreement in the face of certain facts, something easily measurable. We have found a relationship between this and what it explains Herbert Marcuse on The One-Dimensional Man:

Thus arises the one-dimensional model of thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations and objectives, which transcend by its content the established universe of discourse and action are rejected or reduced to the terms of that universe. The rationality of the given system and its quantitative extension gives a new definition to these ideas, aspirations and objectives.

This trend can be related to the development of the scientific method: operationalism in the physical sciences, behaviorism in the social sciences. The common characteristic is a total empiricism in the treatment of the concepts; its meaning is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behaviors (Marcuse, 2010, p. 50).

Marcuse also quotes Bridgman to explain the operational point of view and its implications in the way of thinking of the whole society:

Adopting the operational point of view implies much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand the "concept"; means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, because we will no longer allow ourselves to use as instruments of our thought concepts that we cannot describe in terms of operations (Bridgman, 1928, p. 31).

The game between the quantitative and the qualitative

The axis that goes from left to right becomes significant pseudo-qualitative, when it really only serves to establish quantitative differences. In other words, what determines the political position of an entity is the type of response given to a given problem. Political ideology becomes simple convention, regardless of subtleties such as the philosophical source from which each position draws, its conception of democracy, etc. This given problem, of course, has been raised on the political agenda. Three things to highlight:

• What the axis that goes from left to right measures is totally arbitrary and referring to attitudes towards different sociopolitical aspects set by the media agenda: attitude towards religion, promotion of a type of health, importance given to the environment, etc. In reality, neither of these dimensions explains an ideology by itself. If the way of measuring positions on a specific issue is rational, the approach to these questions responds to pure propaganda intentionality.

• Part of the defining aspects of a political ideology become directly folkloric expressions typical of the context historical and social: attitude towards certain nationalisms and towards the Catholic religion, type of international allies that search, etc. For example, the orthodox communist symbology does not have the same significance in Spain as it does in Russia today. Propaganda and the media are responsible for incorporating these features into the sphere ideological to gain power, because the defense of certain measures generates acceptance or even grants authority. On Catalonia, for example, the conventional political left is defined simply by its opposition to centralist Spanishism, although in the economic and social spheres they are practically indistinguishable from the right-wing parties.

• Due, the dominant ideology normalizesand. This is perhaps the most relevant consequence of the existence of the political axes: despite the apparent freedom of the one that western man enjoys to create his own future, for the moment it only seems to return the past over and over time. Revolutions are rare and when they occur they are not the fruit of rationality and the creative spirit but of desperation to break an unsustainable framework. In the words of Marvin Harris (p. 324):

I contend that it is perniciously false to teach that all cultural forms are equally probable and that the mere willpower of a inspired individual can at any time alter the trajectory of an entire cultural system in a direction convenient to any philosophy. Convergent and parallel trajectories far outweigh divergent trajectories in cultural evolution. Most people are conformists. History repeats itself in countless acts of individual obedience to cultural norms and models, and desires Individuals seldom predominate in matters that require radical alterations in deeply held beliefs and practices. conditioned.

Stereotypes and common sites

The analysis of ideology based on these political axes has as raw material stereotypical and really insignificant themes of what constitutes a worldview. Starting from the ordering of positions in the face of relatively treatable topics from the hegemonic ideology, it is creates a range with very specific categories of what are possible political ideologies. The consideration of non-questionable issues (such as the possibility of the use of violence from the popular classes) can be cynically associated with political positions “from the extremes”. See the speech "the extremes touchWhich serves to equate and discredit two or more alternative worldviews for transgressing the norms that govern the political axis by taking similar measures from different ideologies, an analysis that once again focuses on the measures taken and not on their true background ideological.

It should be remembered how useful this polarity is. It never hurts to give credit to the promoters of the "center" policy, because the order of things proper to the The state system requires a certain stability and, of course, the immobility of the majority of the civil body suits it.. In a very graphic way, if alternative worldviews are cornered at the ends of the axis, they are marginalized, while at a given moment the center may be nurtured by sympathizers from both one half of the continuum and the other.

Bibliographic references:

• Comes, P. (2006). Independence is Llibertat, consulted on 06/08/2013 at 8:00 p.m.

• Marcuse, H. (2010). The One-Dimensional Man. Barcelona: Planet.

• Harris, M. (2011). Cannibals and Kings. The origins of cultures. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.