I have been watching a lot of Yaron Brook videos recently and I noticed a pattern lately. The insistence that Objectivism is neither left nor right. That a free society is neither a rightist or leftist government. His view being that right and left are no different with rightism supporting Donald Trump or being the home of reactionaries/white supremacists and the like . Rightism meaning somehow just as an authoritarian of a vision as leftism. However,
this is a major fallacy as mentioned by Craig Biddle in The Objective Standard.
" You’ve heard the claims:
- “The whole political spectrum is statist.”
- “One end is communism, the other end is fascism.”
- “One end is socialism, the other is nationalism.”
- “One end is progressivism, the other is conservatism.”
- “The political spectrum is all just variations of collectivism.”
And so on.
Such claims are rampant. But they make no sense. And understanding why they make no sense is vital to the defense of individual rights, freedom, and capitalism.
Many people (including some advocates of capitalism) claim that the political spectrum consists of communism at one end and fascism at the other. But, as Ayn Rand noted, this claim is “fraudulent,” its origins are “shameful,” and its implications disastrous:
Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis—with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.
It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left.”
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This fraud may have collapsed in the 1940s, but it has been resurrected in recent years.
In terms of logical fallacies, the notion that the extremes on the political spectrum are variants of statism is, among others, a false alternative. It omits the possibility of a political system that recognizes and protects individual rights. It omits the possibility of freedom. It omits capitalism.
That is as clearly erroneous as a false alternative gets.
What are the practical implications of this false alternative? What happens when otherwise freedom-loving people accept the idea that the political extremes are variants of statism? As Rand pointed out, when people are faced with such alternatives, they tend to choose “the middle of the road”:
The safely undefined, indeterminate, mixed-economy, “moderate” middle—with a “moderate” amount of government favors and special privileges to the rich and a “moderate” amount of government handouts to the poor—with a “moderate” respect for rights and a “moderate” degree of brute force—with a “moderate” amount of freedom and a “moderate” amount of slavery—with a “moderate” degree of justice and a “moderate” degree of injustice—with a “moderate” amount of security and a “moderate” amount of terror—and with a moderate degree of tolerance for all, except those “extremists” who uphold principles, consistency, objectivity, morality and who refuse to compromise.
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This false alternative not only drives otherwise good people toward the unprincipled middle; it also empowers the truly committed statists by creating the appearance that they have a monopoly on principles, consistency, objectivity, morality. It makes everyone else look morally compromised.
That is not a good spectrum for advancing truth, justice, and the American way.
Despite being so logical on so much and an amazing Objectivism proponent I find
the facts support Objectivism and Objectivistish politics to be the proper definition of right or right-wing, or rightist. Along side the better Classical Liberals; supporters of true Constitutional Republicanism, and the rest of the individuals that are for Global Capitalism, Freedom and Individual Rights. In the further words of Craig Biddle below;
The essential issue in politics is not the size but the function of government; it’s not whether government is big or small but whether it protects or violates rights.
The proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights by banning the use of physical force from social relationships and by using force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. A properly conceived political spectrum must reflect this fact. Whatever terms are used to identify the positions of political ideologies or systems must be defined with regard to the fundamental political alternative: force vs. freedom—or, more specifically, rights-violating vs. rights-protecting institutions.
Because the term “left” is already widely used to denote social systems and ideologies of force (e.g., socialism, communism, “progressivism”), and the term “right” is substantially used to denote social systems and ideologies of freedom (e.g., capitalism, classical liberalism, constitutional republicanism), the best approach for advocates of freedom is not to develop new terminology for the political spectrum, but to define the existing terminology with respect to political essentials—and to claim the extreme right end of the spectrum as rightfully and exclusively ours.
Indeed, we should speak in terms of individualism vs. collectivism and freedom vs. force. We should also speak in terms of capitalism vs. statism, egoism vs. altruism, honesty vs. dishonesty, reason vs. mysticism, and various other opposites. Such pairs identify and differentiate concepts that are essential to clear thinking and effective communication.
But the idea that the entire left-right political spectrum is statist is not merely wrong; it is disastrously wrong.
Although the terms originated in 18th-century France (where they referred to seating arrangements of legislators), “left” and “right” in America have come to represent the basic sides of our political debates. Boiled down to essentials, “left” refers to advocates of statism, “right” to advocates of capitalism, and the middle area to advocates of mixed ideologies and systems. (For elaboration, see “Political ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ Properly Defined.”)1The problem is that few people think in terms of essentials. And many treat the term “right” not only as representing capitalism, but also as representing ideologies such as conservatism, fascism, and nationalism. This is an instance of what Ayn Rand called the fallacy of package-dealing, which consists in conceptually packaging together things that are essentially different and thus logically do not belong together.
It makes no sense to package capitalism with those other ideologies because capitalism is fundamentally different. Whereas capitalism holds that the individual’s life belongs to him and that government must protect his rights and leave him fully free to act in accordance with his own judgment, the other ideologies hold that the individual’s life belongs to the state and that the state may force him to act against his judgment for an alleged “greater good”—whether the will of “God” (conservatism), or some racial or economic group (fascism), or the nation (nationalism), or some mixture thereof. (For more on such differences, see “Capitalism and the Moral High Ground.”)2This package-deal is a serious problem for advocates of capitalism because it blurs the distinction between capitalism and statism. The solution, however, is not to label the right as “statist,” but to define the relevant terms objectively—as when addressing other such package-deals.
You can read the rest of the facts underriding freedom and capitalism to be rightist
in the article from which the above section is taken. Finally, I want to leave you with the final paragraph of the fallacies article I linked to above. (No IP or Copyright infringement intended.)
"One way in which people commit this fallacy is by assuming that we can abandon the left-right political spectrum and speak strictly in terms of a statism-capitalism spectrum or a collectivism-individualism spectrum without correcting misconceptions about the left-right spectrum. That may sound great—until we think about it, reflect on the broader context, and realize that a two-pole spectrum
by its very nature has a left side and a right side.
10 No matter which words we place on the opposite ends, the spectrum will still have a left side and a right side; thus, people will still think about it and refer to it in terms of left and right.
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Because the terms “left” and “right” are so deeply embedded in political thought and discourse, and because any two-pole spectrum has a left side and a right side, attempting to abandon the left-right spectrum and establish a “different” one is futile. What is fruitful is to embrace the terms “left” and “right,” define them objectively (in terms of force and freedom), and help people to understand why such definitions are essential to clear thinking.
As long as people conceive of political left and right in terms of undefined (or vaguely defined) words, package deals, false alternatives, frozen abstractions, or stolen concepts, their thinking about the political spectrum will be discombobulated. The only solution to this problem is to establish and promote clear, objective definitions.
Ayn Rand wrote in 1971:
Since, today, there are no clear definitions of political terms, I use the word “rightist” to denote the views of those who are predominantly in favor of individual freedom and capitalism—and the word “leftist” to denote the views of those who are predominantly in favor of government controls and socialism. As to the middle or “center,” I take it to mean “zero,” i.e., no dominant position, i.e., a pendulum swinging from side to side, moment by moment.
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Those provisional definitions and that usage made sense at the time. And with the refined definitions we have today, that usage makes all the more sense. A rightist is an advocate of individual rights, freedom, and capitalism. A leftist is an advocate of government controls, the initiation of force, and statism. Those in the middle are confused and/or unprincipled, and they ought to do the necessary thinking and choose a side.
Our alternatives are to use the terms “left” and “right” and define them rationally (which fosters clarity and thus advances capitalism), to refrain from using the terms (which is nearly impossible and condones conceptual chaos), or to use the terms without defining them (which is non-objective and irresponsible).
Of course, if someone doesn’t want to use the terms “left” and “right,” that is his prerogative. And it is possible (albeit exceedingly difficult) to speak about politics without using the terms. But to claim that the whole left-right spectrum is statist (or collectivist) is to commit a host of logical fallacies, to perpetrate a fraud, and to harm the cause of capitalism.
A great deal is at stake here. Let’s do this right."
