A view from the right… sort of.

Tony Allwright is back in the Irish Times. The last sighting was in November. Then there were missives in rapid succession in July, August, September and October. Then a hiatus in April, May and June prior to which there were twice monthly articles. Allwright would cleave to a… well… conservative view of the world.

For him the great concerns of the day are, to pick a selection from his writings in order to give a flavour, Zimbabwe (intervene), Corporate Homicide (Don’t do it! Don’t introduce it as a crime), Climate Change (scam – well, look below), Obama (shallow), Rugby… (I have nothing to say). And why not? As I’m always saying, let a thousand flowers bloom… But what is interesting is that he’s never shy to opine on the territory beyond that country of the mind. What we call the left. And so Allwright is convinced that, as he put it in 2008…

Left-wingers, or socialists, favour state intervention, with its inevitable inefficiency, plus the crushing of personal liberties. This has proven to be a truly wicked philosophy, which found its true soul in the murderous regimes of Stalin’s Soviet Union and in Mao’s China.

Hmmm… seems to me that there’s, what’s the word again, a ‘spectrum’ between these different and distinct poles. Is Scandinavian, or European social democracy (original form) ‘a truly wicked philosophy’? British labourism? Are the gulags its ‘true soul’. Do we wish to crush personal liberty? Are we besotted with but a single model of socialism and eager to introduce inefficiency? News to me.

Right-wingers, or capitalists, simply favour freedom for all to act, coupled with free markets, with minimal state interference in people’s pursuit of wealth and contentment.
That’s why it’s wrong to be Left and right to be Right. And why it’s an honour, not an insult, to be labelled right-wing.

An interesting thesis, which also posited that:

Socialism, on the other hand, is predicated on the decisions of central planners, who decide how industry, employment and wealth are to be distributed. They are few in number compared to the population, and are necessarily the authority in the land, as otherwise their decisions cannot be enforced.
The populace on whom these decisions are imposed have little freedom to make choices. And since the central planners do not themselves usually suffer directly the effects of poor decisions (as the hoi polloi do), there is little incentive to improve on them. So you have a climate in which the choices are few, and made by only a handful of brains – rather than by the millions in the population – while on the other hand the absence of disciplinary feedback ensures a steady deterioration in the quality of those choices.

Now you might think that that was a near parodic view of socialism. And you would be right.

And he does himself no favours with the unfortunate example used, that of China, which he has decided is:

Remarkable for the effect of the transition from socialism to capitalism… where an explosion of new-found wealth (250 per cent in a decade) is occurring due to the introduction of a limited amount of capitalism.

Yes, but no limited amount of centralised state political power, or as PJ O’Rourke once put it – and I paraphrase, he always got nervous when he saw strong parties and business elites combining. Which, when you think of if does O’Rourke no discredit at all, and hardly surprising given that he is a libertarian (US) Republican.

Which perhaps is why in his latest piece he’s decided that…

 Left-wing politics has the monopoly on shouty protests because of a lack of intellectual rigour

SOME TIME ago I wrote something supportive of Israel and critical about the behaviour of Arabs towards Palestinians. This elicited some threatening if anonymous responses from people who were clearly left-leaning. This has me thinking.
What is the common thread when you see, in the West, demonstrations, marches, violence, threats concerning this or that? With the exception of football hooligans and a few neo-Nazi groups, they always seem to come from the left.

You know, there’s no small element of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s fear of the mob here, I’d have thought… but continue…

Those “Not in Our Name” thousands who demonstrated against the Iraq war formed the centrepoint of the left’s campaign. Yet was it not odd that right-leaning supporters of the war did not also stage demonstrations under banners such as “Free the Iraqi People”?

Actually some did. But what ‘violence’ was associated with those Not in Our Name marches?

The demonstrations during the UN climate conference were all in favour of anti-global-warming action. Yet where were the counter-protests to “Stop wasting taxpayers’ money on a scam”?

Well, putting the now – for the Irish Times – modish anti-climate change jibe aside, has he actually looked closely at the demonstrations? I seem to recall that there were small counter-protests. But, I guess that noting that would be to undermine his argument (and on a related matter, I’m always perplexed by the idea that improving efficiencies and moving towards sustainable use of resources is somehow a bad thing, whether climate change pans out the way I suspect it will – badly – or not. I mean isn’t one of the great cries of the right about efficiency, about using what we have in a better way? And yet on climate change it’s as if they undergo a collective nervous breakdown and can’t see that this is an opportunity for commerce… very odd).

People who object to multinationals such as McDonald’s or Shell under the rubric of anti-capitalism are the ones who see fit to smash up their premises or physically obstruct their projects. Why don’t rightists smash up icons of leftism such as trade union offices?

Firstly let’s note that violence against multinational outlets is conducted by a tiny minority of those who march or are active. And these attacks are more notable by their exceptional nature, particularly in this state, than their frequency. In other states with different traditions of political activity they may be more or less frequent.
Secondly all depends on context and societal strength. In a society where the centre right has unassailable power, as in this one, such actions are rare (and his thoughts would raise a wry smile amongst many on the left in countries across Europe where political violence initiated by the right is far from unknown and where it’s not just a ‘few neo-nazi’s’ but large embedded formations who in some instances have shared state power). But not entirely so. In this state during the 1920s onwards and into living memory attacks on left-wing political party premises were far from unknown and most memorably in the case during the attacks on the CPI offices where said offices had to be protected ineffectively by the Gardai. And what of the infamous, and Allwright will like this as a rugby fan, 1970 Springboks Tour – as noted by Brian Hanley here – in the wake of which, or rather protests against the Tour, there were attacks, including arson and gunshots, directed against a small Maoist bookshop in Limerick. I’m sure that many of us can give examples of smaller, but for those involved hardly less serious, incidents over the years until recently.

Individual threats of physical harm are invariably directed against right-leaning individuals. Think, for example, of the movie or video game depicting the assassination of George Bush. By contrast, rarely do you hear that, for example, raging lefties like George Galloway need bodyguards, except for perhaps intrusion by the press. Left-wingers know they can express their views without fear of intimidation from their opponents, which cannot be said for the pro-capitalism camp.

Hmmmm. Let’s consider that a casual perusal of right wing websites will demonstrate that hostility towards the current incumbent of the US Presidency, often in the most pointed (and racist) terms is far from unusual. One can see reflections of this on some major media outlets in the United States.

The fascistic dictators Franco, Mussolini and Hitler were responsible for perhaps 10 million non-combat deaths. Yet they are vilified far more than the Soviet communist despots whose tally was around 36 million, or Mao Tse Tung, responsible for a further 50-70 million.

Hmmm… isn’t it time we had a version of Godwin’s law introduced that covered Stalin and Mao, because from this rhetorical intervention he suddenly resiles… damage done, linkage created… with the rather mealy mouthed…

It is utterly wrong to suggest that modern righties or lefties should be compared with those evil, blood-drenched tyrants, other than in aspects of ideology. But on a street level, the left does seem more inclined to direct action than the right.

The problem is that this is such a narrow, parochial view, that it – of necessity – must ignore other contexts. Firstly he elides events that more commonly happen elsewhere with Ireland. Off the top of my head I can’t recall when a McDonald’s was smashed in in Dublin. Or a Starbucks. And I’ve been more likely to be found in the latter than protesting outside it. It’s a hot chocolate thing.
Then he must of necessity, for it would seriously dent his argument, avert his eyes from the US, and at a hugely motivated right there with significant tranches entirely happy to provide numerous examples of violence, threats and marches. He should perhaps consider the Tea Party protests last year against taxation. No end of vitriol expressed against the Obama administration.
What about the Town Hall protests that characterised one element (small, but publicity attracting) of the right-wing discourse on the health debate.
Then we can survey the grim history of anti-abortion activism, which whatever ones views on the issue of abortion surely go no small way to undermining genuine ‘pro-life’ approaches. Murders of doctors and other health staff not enough? Let’s move on to the more egregious examples of militarised right wing factions in the US in the form of various militias, most of whom it must be admitted are entirely law-abiding citizens exercising their Constitutional rights, but a small rump of which shade into very disturbing philosophies. And then beyond all that are the actual neo-Nazis, the racial supermacists in all their forms and so on…

Is it just that lefties are more sure of themselves, more courageous, more outspoken, more correct, and thus prepared to be more physically assertive? While righties can do no more than cower in the corner, in a fog of shame? Or is there something deeper at work? Some would maintain that the atheistic left lacks the constraints of a more Christian right. But I believe there is a more prosaic explanation. Logic is overwhelmingly on the side of the right, or as Margaret Thatcher once pithily observed, “the facts of life are conservative”.

Hmmmm… redux. As a leftwinger I’ve got to be honest. I doubt they’re either… opportunity and effort will wrest outcomes one way or another. But to think that a single statement is sufficient to justify that… well… go on…

For example, it is logical that if you give people the freedom to improve themselves, that is what they will generally do. With freedom to chose their own leaders, it’s logical that they’ll try to select ones who have their constituents’ best interests in mind. If everyone has such freedoms, then society as a whole will improve.

That’s one big ‘if’. In human history the present period in some countries is but a moment. And a far from perfect one too. So when did this ‘virtuous cycle’ first manifest itself? But the thesis ignores the reality that societies aren’t just about ‘improving oneself’, that other forces and dynamics come into play. Let’s take a small example. Having worked for multi-nationals I’m not particularly paranoid about them, but I am aware of their distorting effect, and that of business, upon public discourse, upon polities and so forth. Which makes the following seem so sanguine as to be almost utterly complacent…

If you enforce people’s property rights and contracts, and protect them from crime, they will be even better able to improve themselves. If you provide rewards for particular behaviour, you will get more of it, whether it is benign (think of hard work fostered by low taxes), or less desirable (such as long-term unemployment encouraged by generous welfare). If you provide services or benefits completely free of charge and without regard to their costs (eg medical, schooling, subsidies) we have seen how you get unlimited demand and unlimited complaint.

Note that everything, everything, is couched in a political approach. There’s no effort made to reach for a broader political, social or economic framework within which left and right can be placed, or even to localise the analysis. We are, as it were forced to live under the shadow of the gulag even if we find the gulag indefensible and even if we’re only talking about the most reasonable of social reforms. As pointless and deceitful an exercise as my arguing that European Christian Democracy can only be understood through the prism of Treblinka.

What about the European broadly traditional social/christian democratic model which underpinned through higher taxation and… yes… generous welfare provision… and even health and school care (I mean what’s happening here that free schooling is suddenly up for grabs in this discussion?) extremely strong economic and societal outcomes?

Clearly these counter examples don’t exist. Nope, political reality so obvious, so self-evident, so unamenable to challenge that it is one that is hardwired practically into our very universe… a ‘reality’ of low taxes, fee charging health, education, low welfare…

No mention by the way of the more than generous reliefs and subsidies to business and those on higher wages.

Thus it is very difficult for the left to develop a coherent basis for countering policies that are guided by such flights of reason. That is why it must resort to waffly arguments such as what is “fair”, what is “compassionate”, what is “hurtful”, the implication being that everything on the right is heartless. Such terms are intrinsically emotional while presenting no logic. Therefore to push them you have to put your own emotion into play. This in turn leads to the shouting.

And so, an entire literature on socio-economic and public policy matters spanning centre to further left is discarded with absolutely no evidence that it has been considered even in the slightest. From right social democrats, to left environmentalists their words are nothing. From Marx onwards to Gramsci to Harold Wilson to Gorz, in all the different circumstances those leftists faced…nothing. Left wing governments experiences and approaches – even those in Europe – are not addressed. Instead we are presented with a parody of what leftwing thinking is, where emotions are ascribed as if they are the actuality of many many different political policy platforms from various points on the left. This is truly remarkable stuff.

One might, at a push, as some were suggesting on the CLR yesterday about this piece, say that in Ireland the left is unable to present a rigorous and coherent worldview, but while true I think that that is more a function of how small the Irish left actually is rather than a functional problem of the left in general. The Green Party has been won over, perhaps not a hugely difficult task, to orthodoxy. Labour has sort of kind of dissented from it over the past twelve months. Sinn Féin, bar occasional wobbles, has more forcefully done so. The further left actually probably agrees more than disagrees on some aspects of an approach, but is too distant from power to have more than minimal impact. But none of these in any way diminishes the fact that there are left of centre governments across Europe and further afield, social democratic or democratic socialists governments, whose approaches are very clear and are fundamentally rooted in one or other approach generated on the centre left. Even the great apostates of British Labour have rediscovered Keynes in the past year. There’s little, whatever else about it, that is waffly about Brown’s economic policy. We may agree or disagree with it, but it is an exercise in the power of the state.

And again, these statement can only be made by ignoring the reality of life as it is in that state, literally a border away in one instance. By way of example, one of the most significant steps under social democracy, a National Health Service, so influential that it encouraged the zeal of Clann na Poblachta in the 1940s for state intervention in a minor key and opened the door to a series of half-steps in Irish health policy that were at least slightly progressive, was established on the island to our east. To ignore that, and other aspects of left wing history is entirely illogical.

Pitting right-wing logic against left-wing passion is a contest that no side can really win, because neither can comprehend the other, nor wants to. But on a brighter note, left-wing passion goes a long way towards explaining the undoubted superiority of the left when it comes to the modern arts. This may be because the right use the left-side of the brain, which is the part that is strong on reason, whereas the left use the right-side, where artistry lies. Left, right, it’s all very confusing. But at least when the left are singing they’re not doing damage.

The ‘superiority’ of the left in ‘modern arts? What on earth is he talking about? I’ve known one or two or maybe more people involved in that area, for one reason and another, and I can tell you that in the main they’re actually a pretty ordinary bunch when it comes to their politics. This though reads like someone is channelling a parodic view of 1950s beatnik culture. Hip.

You have to ask yourself, if you or I were to set about writing an analysis of the right which was so detached from ideological moorings, that didn’t bother to reference any – y’know, ideological or philosophical strands, or figures such as Strauss, von Mises, Buckley, Kristol, Powell, Joseph or so on, or indeed given that no article can set sail without him, Burke – all of whom I and most of us have read a portion of, that sought to reduce the right and conservatism down to a hodge podge of say… ‘selfishness’ and Thatcher… how far would we get?