Are the Results of Far Left Governance the Same as Far Right?

Are the political aims of far left the same as those of far right?

Do left or right politics differ?

All things have both negative and positive aspects. Call it yin and yang, positive and negative, left and right or even good and bad, everything contains both.

Water gives life and it can kill. Ideas all contain both benefits and costs. Every good idea can be used to harm as well. Democracy can be a force for good but it can be manipulated to end up as harmful.

Politics is just the same. Every good policy has within it the potential for misuse and so harm. For example; the welfare state, which was designed initially to provide for the destitute and the “deserving poor.” Society and the government needed to prevent starvation in those social groups who, through no fault of their own, had lost their incomes. A noble and worthy objective and also pragmatic, as it would also prevent the starving, who would have nothing to loose, from becoming lawless and destructive. The growth in the bureaucracy set up to provide this safety net, meant that the provisions became wider and the administration became far more complex. It became an opportunity for politicians and and lawyers to exploit and gain control of people. It also enabled the feckless and lazy to claim benefits intended only for the disadvantaged and deserving.

The politicians had the intent to use the poor as a means of gaining power and the bureaucracy a way of perpetuating and enlarging itself. This is expected normal human behaviour. Give humans a good idea and some will seek to abuse it for their own gain.

Consider the simple things. Rain falls on a desert, Nature accepts and receives this rain without thought, without prejudiced and without attempting to manipulate.

Humans collect the water and store for their personal use. This benefits those who collect it but denies others and the natural world their expected share of the rain. Some humans benefit, other creatures die.

In politics, at the extremes, most consider the far left to be the crazy socialism of Pol Pot and to the right, the fanatical fascism of Hitler. Are they actually any different or is it the perception, the attitude people have towards them, that makes them seem them to be different? Both ended up totally destructive to their own indigenous people and also destructive to nations around them. Both sought domination over all they came in contact with. Both were willing to kill on a vast scale to enforce their own personal views on the rest of the world.

Both fascism and communism disregard the individual (except for the individual who is the leader). Both claim they will improve the lives of the masses and yet both end up causing starvation and deprivation on bigger scales than previously thought possible. Both claim they are going to right wrongs, redress inequality and benefit the majority. History shows neither achieves any of these worthy aims. The evolution of communism in Russia and China has been similar to each other. A worthy claim, to wish to end exploitation of the poor, to stamp out undeserved privilege and to establish a meritocracy etc., both ended up as one party states with effective dictatorship. Both suffered famine and war, both gradually had to modernise and that meant allowing inequality, since those with education and intellectual ability gained relative to the rest. So both are still one party states with socialism as the claimed governing philosophy, both have capitalism as the expanding force within their economies. Both have and always have had inequality, since the party officials and bureaucrats have always had better material lives than the people they controlled; both have political career paths to material gain. Both have buried unrest and discontent. So they are the same as every other nation on this planet.

This brings us back to the principle consideration. Are far left and far right politics the same? They seem to end up having the same effect on the people they govern and they both have to change in reality, if not in the publicity hand outs, to modernise.

The extreme far right governance is rule by a king. Britain had this for well over a thousand years, but the power of this ruler was gradually reduced by the needs to change from man power to machine power. The need came into existence as the populations recovered from black death epidemics and gradually enlarged the population beyond the ability of the hand worked strips of land to feed everyone. Warfare became mechanised and that demanded educated people to work the war machines. Thus the power of Kings and Emperors gradually decayed and over hundreds and hundreds of years a form of democracy evolved. But within this worthy evolution has come the inevitable distortions. “Party” politics has gained control. Individuals with altruistic aims and humanitarian ideals have been submerged into a “party unity” that requires obedience, not individual brilliance.

So who should voters vote for? Far left and far right are ideologies that end up being the same destructive and wasteful ego trips for their leaderships. When political ideology is ruled out, we could turn to honest pragmatism. This has the merit of being adaptable to meet changing situations, it is not prejudging any situation causing a refusing to adapt. Can party politics get out of their addiction to outdated political ideologies? Can they get beyond the adherence to past rhetoric?

Two bigger questions are, will the voters allow them to change? Will the Media accept the change? If voters examine the candidates and question those practical policies that will directly affect their lives (if any practical policies with evaluation and explanation are offered) and then vote for the one that suits them best, ignoring all the headline philosophies and grand headline-grabbing lies, then we may progress. If no candidate offers pragmatic realism, expressed as actually thought-through policies for dealing with real life issues, then protest by marking the ballot paper “none of the above.”

Beware of electoral promises, especially the vague generalisations, such as no increase in tax, we will reduce the costs of education, etc. These disappear like smoke in a wind once the votes have been cast.

One of the oldest jokes recorded is the one that asks how do you know when a politician is telling lies? Answer: When they speak.