Hitler: Right or Left

Submitted by Casey Strether (United States), Nov 15, 2002 at 22:55

This is a heroic effort to impose one's own admittedly privately created definitions of left and right wing. But if the discussion is to have any meaning at all it should be grounded within the context of the historical debate as it has been conducted across the broadest spectrum of discourse.

It would seem more appropriate to say that both "wings" impose a collective will upon the individual. In the Marxist "left" wing the collective imposes its will through the so-called welfare state -- redistributing the wealth, levelling the amassing of individual fortunes, etc. In the fascist "right" wing the collective imposes its will through the so-called police state -- characterized by the infusion of corporate power in the government, with the wealth being redistributed upward to the crown of the pyramid rather than downward to the base.

Both "wings" appropriate the freedom of the individual. The golden mean is as appropriate a standard now as it was in the time of Socrates.

--CS

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