In alternative and dissident left circles, I've noticed a roughly comparable trichotomy, based on the what seem to be three core political passions. The names I've given them are my own, and I think that they best encapsulate the core principles driving each of them. These are, in no particular order:
- Enlightenment Rationalism: This correlates to the classical liberal tendency. It is most concerned with individual rights, limited scope and power of government, an elevation of reason, rationality, skepticism and the scientific method and is opposed to collectivism and is put off by dogmatism and fanaticism.
- Cultural Communitarianism: This correlates to the classical conservative tendency, and its presence on the alt-left is what makes it the alt-left, and not the mainstream left. It is concerned with ideas, relationships and institutions that foster social stability and cohesion. This is the soft spot many of us have for religion, tradition, family, nationalism and the like.
- Materialist Political Economy: This correlates to the classical socialist tendency. Without it, we'd be paleoconservatives, libertarians and neoreactionaries. It sounds Marxist, and certainly can be, but doesn't have to be, but it rejects neoliberal capitalism. It's concerned with social regulation or ownership in part or in whole of the means of production, with workers rights and social welfare, as well as with a view of society that emphasizes class antagonisms and structural social injustice. And yes, it does pay attention to marginalized people and victims of discrimination also, and as well it should.
What is crucial is a comprehensive theory of liberation, which classical liberals, libertarians, reactionaries, socialists or social justice warriors have all thus far failed to deliver. This is because the main camps in our current political divide tend to consist of, at most, two of the three core political passions. One tends to be disdained all together. This leads to problems, and to backlash from people who rightly value whichever core passion is disdained by whatever movement or ideology is under consideration.
Focus exclusively on enlightenment rationalism, and one loses sight of the fact that the individual is nested in and sustained by a network of broader social structures and traditions that enable him to function most effectively. It also ignores the positions that individuals occupy within power hierarchies, how these hierarchies themselves operate and how these factors can determine an individual's propensity to success.
Enlightenment rationalism not tempered by cultural communitarianism and materialist political economic considerations becomes a recipe for a Dickensian hell of dark Satanic mills, sweat labor, horrendous wealth inequality, a get ahead by any means necessary kind of mindset, so probably a lot of crime, antisocial behavior and deviancy also. In the end, this kind of society fails even in its core mission of upholding the individual. Individuals can't thrive in this kind of environment.
Focus exclusively on cultural communitarianism and become a fascist or a theocrat. It's not just that individual rights are trampled, it's that individuals are not free to think and act as they will within mutually beneficial relationships and exchanges. This leads to economic, technological and societal stagnation. It also doesn't care for the rank injustices and flagrant cronyism and rent-seeking that can become embedded in ossified traditional social structures. Abuses of the marginalized at the hands of the privileged simply become accepted and commonplace.
Cultural communitarianism not tempered by enlightenment rationalism and materialist economic considerations causes the society that embraces it to descend into a dark age wherein new ideas and different kinds of people are eschewed, and dogmatism and a cult like atmosphere runs rampant. The rights of individuals are trampled and the rankest of injustices are tolerated, so long as the supremacist patriarchs at the top are the beneficiaries. In the end, this kind of society does not uphold its best traditions and ideals. Healthy and functional social norms break down.
Focus exclusively on materialist political economy and the politburo and the gulag sooner or later are what you end up with. Ideological systems that categorize some groups as oppressors and other groups as victims become deterministic. Individuals who thrive and succeed are assumed to be doing so at the expense of some minority or impoverished group and punished accordingly. Institutions and relationships that fulfill vital social and cultural functions are denounced as being exploitative or discriminatory in some way or another.
Materialist political economism not tempered by enlightenment rationalism and cultural communitarianism begins to stagnate, due to a lack of incentive to excel, produce or stand out in any way. These societies also become increasingly dysfunctional socially, as relationships and social norms of all kinds are denounced and attacked as being oppressive somehow. In the end, this society becomes stratified in its own cruel way, and the elites who lord power - oblivious to the irony of their so doing - perpetuate the worst systemic abuses against the most vulnerable members of the society, rationalized on the grounds that it is their victims are "oppressors" or "privileged."
So you can see now that a good society doesn't arise out of rejecting either liberty, equality or social order. People love to adopt political labels, it seems, and to clash with those who adopt rival types of labels. While that is tempting and amusing, it will also lead to a failure to achieve a comprehensive theory of liberation. That isn't easy to do, since it involves reconciling sets of ideas with natural tension between them.
Minimize enlightenment rationalism, and you end up with the kinds of collectivst dystopias science fiction writers so enjoy to depict. Mussolini was probably the main theoretician of this kind of social order. It didn't turn out too well, if I recall. Less perhaps need be said here. The history of totalitarianism speaks for itself.
Minimize cultural communitarianism, and you're in the realm of the contemporary progressive. These are the sorts of people who don't grasp why despite gaining more freedoms and liberties, or more equal rights, more equity, more representation in the media and so on, why people are getting more rather than less angsty. People have in inborn need to belong to something bigger than themselves, something with lasting worth or significance outside wealth accumulation. Families, nations, religions, shared systems of mythology and meaning - this is what the cultural communitarian tendency deals in. Moreover, if ignored, cultural communitarianism's own concerns will bleed into the ideologies of the enlightenment rationalists and the materialist economists, and so libertarianism and social justice alike take on increasingly romantic and religious qualities.
Minimize materialist economism and the concern for social justice, and you're in the realm of the contemporary conservative, and of reaction in its various forms. These kinds of people don't grasp why the bulk of the population doesn't heed their ongoing prattling about the supremacy of western civilization or of free markets. And that's because they're blind to how systems of power operate, how they perpetuate themselves at the expense of an underclass, which people quite understandably don't want to be a part of.
Sure, your free market capitalism creates a lot of wealth, but the bulk of the population doesn't want to slave away in sweat shops for a living, and be reduced to begging in the streets should they lose even that. It will fail due to its mistaken belief that personal and cultural greatness are the sole causes of success, and that rent seeking, various bad business practices and surplus value production have nothing at all to do with it.
Sure, western civilization has done great things, but women, ethnic minorities and others don't want to be subordinates in a patriarchal social order. Tiresome as SocJus dogma can get at times, I can't say I blame them. And on a related note, who decides who the master race and the one true religion turn out to be? What if it isn't 4chan or a reactionary blogosphere that decides this, and it ends up being the black Hebrew Israelites, Wahhabi Islamists or Dianic Wiccans who end up calling the shots? Not so good then, isn't it, Mr. western civilization uber-alles?
Even if it were true that wealth and power stemmed entirely from moral character, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The upper class, be it in a government bureaucracy, a military junta, a feudal aristocracy or among corporate CEOs can be expected to act in their own immediate class interests, not in accordance to some abstract notion of loyalty to the white race, western culture or Christian morality. Doubly so if no mechanisms to hold leaders accountable exist. Autocratic social systems have a remarkable tendency to enrich their elites at the expense of their host populations, and since they've been allowed to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power, their capacity to do harm is truly vast.
To assume they'd do otherwise is breathtakingly naive. Not that they'd achieve desirable results if racism and/or religious fundamentalism were what they were truly aiming for in any event. Either way, dictatorship and concentration of productive resources are the greatest threats the west faces. They're what got us here, they won't save us.
Sure, western civilization has done great things, but women, ethnic minorities and others don't want to be subordinates in a patriarchal social order. Tiresome as SocJus dogma can get at times, I can't say I blame them. And on a related note, who decides who the master race and the one true religion turn out to be? What if it isn't 4chan or a reactionary blogosphere that decides this, and it ends up being the black Hebrew Israelites, Wahhabi Islamists or Dianic Wiccans who end up calling the shots? Not so good then, isn't it, Mr. western civilization uber-alles?
Even if it were true that wealth and power stemmed entirely from moral character, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The upper class, be it in a government bureaucracy, a military junta, a feudal aristocracy or among corporate CEOs can be expected to act in their own immediate class interests, not in accordance to some abstract notion of loyalty to the white race, western culture or Christian morality. Doubly so if no mechanisms to hold leaders accountable exist. Autocratic social systems have a remarkable tendency to enrich their elites at the expense of their host populations, and since they've been allowed to accumulate vast amounts of wealth and power, their capacity to do harm is truly vast.
To assume they'd do otherwise is breathtakingly naive. Not that they'd achieve desirable results if racism and/or religious fundamentalism were what they were truly aiming for in any event. Either way, dictatorship and concentration of productive resources are the greatest threats the west faces. They're what got us here, they won't save us.
Finally, the right can't seem to realize why it ultimately loses every significant political and social conflict it engages in, given enough time. This is because they've blinded themselves to how power is institutionalized and concentrated. Be a good person and you'll achieve great things, and so rich and powerful people must be good, talented and fair-minded. Or so they tell themselves and others when justifying existing levels of wealth inequality and hierarchy. So this leaves them incapable of explaining ideological feminism's ascendancy in Hollywood, academia and much mainstream media. What they can't explain or understand adequately, they can't effectively fight against. So the ultimate irony is that in their ongoing denial of social injustice, they've now all but guaranteed that they will be the victims of it - radical libertarian and traditionalist voices getting shut down on social media being a classic case in point.
These three supraordinate political tendencies are not easy to reconcile with one another. Achieving social equality jeopardizes individual rights and long term cultural and social viability. Achieving individual rights jeopardizes social equality and social stability. Achieving social order through a unicultural identity jeopardizes the human flourishing on an individual level and threatens to lock in unjust social orders based on inherited privilege.
A conservative culture devoted to strong social norms will fail if it exports its industry. A progressive culture devoted to social equality will fail if it doesn't have functional and sustainable cultural norms - if it eschews having families in favor of some or another flavor-of-the-month sexual deviancy. And both will fail if they don't allow for individual freedom to question the party line, just as a libertarian society won't be free if its full of poverty, alienation and social deviancy.
Yet as we've seen, each needs some elements of the others to achieve its better goals. We can't be led to believe they're incompatible.
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