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| Liberaliste en ander wesens [boodskap #5464] |
Fri, 26 January 1996 00:00 |
Johan de Villiers
Boodskappe: 67
Geregistreer: January 1996
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Na aanleiding van die bespreking van wat 'n liberalis nou eintlik
is, het ek hierdie uitstekende artikel nou pas in die hande gekry.
Dis geskryf deur Andrew Kenny, en het in "Frontiers of Freedom",
wat deur die Instituut vir Rasseverhoudings uitgegee is, verskyn.
Die artikel is helaas in Engels, maar ek hoop ek sal die heiligskennis
vergewe word nadat mense die artikel gelees het. Kenny sê alles
wat ek graag sou wou sê, net beter. :-)
------------------------------------------------------------ --------
What Labels Really Mean
-----------------------
by Andrew Kenny
What do the terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" mean? Tell me
whether the following people are left or right: Fidel Castro who
has suspended elections in Cuba for 35 years, banned trade unions
prosecuted homosexuals and is arranging to hand over power to his
brother; Mother Teresa, who is an extreme opponent of abortion;
Louis Farrakahn, the anti-semitic black American leader, who
believes men are superior to women; Oswald Mosley, British
fascist leader, who proposed a revolutionary universal national
health scheme; Bernard Shaw, socialist Irish playwright, who
admired Hitler; Winnie Mandela, an ANC politician who drives
around in a large Mercedes; and Ayatollah Khomeini, the
fundamentalist Islamic leader.
Is nationalism left-wing or right-wing? Most communist
governments, including those of Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's
Cambodia, Mao's China and communist North Korea, are extremely
nationalist. On the other hand the capitalist multi-national
companies are completely internationalist: they care nothing for
nation and simply move where wages are lowest and profits are
highest. Does this mean communism is right-wing and
multi-national capitalism left-wing? Or does it mean it is left-
wing to be nationalist and right-wing to be internationalist?
How about racism? Is racial discrimination left-wing or
right-wing? If a government believes that a minority race, say
the Jews in Nazi Germany or the whites in South Africa today,
have wealth and power in disproportion to their numbers, is it
left-wing or right-wing to have institutional racism against
them, such as affirmative action with racial quotas? Of course
Hitler's measures were immeasurably more extreme. Does this mean
he was an extreme left-winger or an extreme right-winger?
Who is more right-wing, the working classes or the privileged
classes? In 1922 the South African Communist Party staged a
workers' rebellion against the capitalist mining houses under the
slogan "Workers of the World Unite Behind a White South Africa!"
The capitalists wanted to open mining jobs to blacks; the
communists wanted to keep them for whites only. Should a
left-winger have backed the workers or the bosses? After 1948,
the white workers were overwhelmingiy in favour of apartheid and
white opposition to it came almost entirely from the bourgeoisie.
Does this mean workers are right-wing and the bourgeoisie is
left-wing? Or does it mean that if you supported apartheid you
were left-wing and if you opposed it you were right-wing?
Take art and literature. Nadine Gordimer's novels have a tiny
readership of middle-class, mainly white people; Wilbur Smith's
novels are read by a huge number of people of all races and
classes. Only the bourgeoisie attend film festivals which
feature foreign (that is, non-American) films showing sensitive
portrayals of the human dilemma - the workers like action-packed
American films starring dinosaurs or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does
this make Gordimer and cerebral foreign films right-wing and
Wilbur Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger left-wing? Or are the
artistic tastes of the toiling masses right-wing and of the
privileged classes left-wing?
Does a left-winger believe that decisions affecting everybody
should be taken by all people or just by a small elite? =
Consider, for example, capital punishment. Opinion poll after
opinion poll shows that the majority of people of all races are
in favour of the death penalty but in South Africa it has been
abolished by the decision of a handful of highly paid lawyers in
the Constitutional Court. Does a left-winger believe that this
decision should have been taken instead by the masses in a
referendum?
Take censorship. Is it left-wing or right-wing to be in favour
of censorship? Feminists and religious fundamentalists believe
girlie magazines should be banned. Are they left or right? Take
the problem of drugs. Some people believe in harsh laws against
suppliers and dealers; others, such as the champion of the free
market, Milton Friedman, believe that all drugs should be
legalised. Does this make Friedman a left-winger?
Consider attitudes towards different cultures. Is it the left or
the right that believes European culture must be imposed on
Africa? Take the examples of female circumcision and polygamy.
Does a left-winger believe that whites must respect these African
practices or condemn them and persuade blacks to stop them? If
so, is it characteristic of the left to believe that white
culture is superior to black and of the right to believe they are
equal?
The point about all of these questions is that nobody can answer
them. The terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" are meaningless. I
once tried to find such meaning from a Christian fundamentalist
who proudly described himself as right-wing. I asked him to
classify Hitler and Mother Teresa. He replied that Hitler was a
left-winger and Mother Teresa a right-winger. His superficial
reason was that Hitler was godless and revolutionary, and Mother
Teresa was devout and apolitical. His deeper reason was that he
did not like Hitler and he did like Mother Teresa, and for him
"right" was good and "left" was bad.
This is the heart of the matter. "Left" and "right" are not
terms of political category but of approval or disapproval. When
a sociology lecturer at Wits University calls you a right-winger
or a white boilermaker at Vanderbijlpark calls you a left-winger,
what both really mean is "You bastard!" Silly inventions like
"the New Left" and "the New Right" mean nothing more than "Fat-
head" or "Baldy". On the other hand when a lecturer calls
himself a left-winger and the boilermaker calls himself a
right-winger, what both mean is "Hurray for me!" The former
wants to be regarded as intellectually superior, the latter as
macho.
If you want to find consistent political categories, the first
step is to disregard all claims of noble intention: every tyrant
in history claimed to be acting for the good of the people and so
does every evil ideology ever devised.
The next step is to recognise that facism and communism do not
represent opposite ends of the political spectrum but the same
end. They are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Fascism, or National
Socialism, is a derivative of Marxism, and apartheid is a
derivative of National Socialism.
Stalin and Hitler resembled each other, admired each other, used
the same methods of state terror and made a deal for the invasion
of Poland that started the Second World War; both hated
capitalism, trampled on human rights and slaughtered millions of
people.
The most important question in politics is over the size of the
state (By the "state" I mean the monopoly powers of government).
And here the political categories are clear. On one end of the
range are anarchists, who believe there should be no state at
all. Then come liberals, who hold liberty as the highest
political good and believe the state should be as small as
possible to ensure rule of law. Then come socialists, who
believe the state should be large: the mild socialists, the
Social Democrats, believe in democracy and a degree of liberty;
the extreme socialists, the fascists and communists, despise
democracy and seek to destroy liberty. A crucial difference
between the liberal and the socialist is that the liberal is
always suspicious of power and the socialist admires it.
Capitalism is just liberalism with warts.
Then there are other clear categories between nationalists and
internationalists, between countries with open borders and
countries with closed borders, and between conservatives who wish
things to stay as they are (things like the British monarchy,
African culture and Amazon rain forests) and revolutionaries who
wish to overthrow them.
But all of these categories overlap in complicated ways because
individual people are unpredictable and inconsistent in their
political and aesthetic preferences. No man is all of a piece.
What we need to do is recognise this variety and uncertainty.
In South Africa, unfortunately, there is a tendency to tribalise
political ideas. We do not ask a man what he thinks about this
or that issue but what ideological tribe he belongs to. We use
labels like "left" and "right" because it saves us from having to
think and comforts us by dividing people into friends and
enemies. But this is the mentality of the kindergarten, and we
are actually adults in a complicated society of changing ideas.
If you simply refuse to use the terms "left" and "right" in a
political discussion, you will see that you begin to think about
real political divisions and to reason like an adult.
--
Reinier de Vos Internet: de...@aqua.ccwr.ac.za
Computing Centre for Water Research Tel: Int+27 331 260-5179
c/o University of Natal, P/Bag X01 Fax: Int+27 331 61896
Scottsville, South Africa, 3200 http://www.ccwr.ac.za/
------------------------------------------------------------ -----------
Ons spaar die duiwel baie moeite
- C J Langenhoven
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