*The Myth of Left and Right*: Verlan Lewis Responds

Now Verlan Lewis reacts to last week’s interview on The Myth of Left and Right.

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I think Hyrum did an excellent job responding to the subsequent questions posted, so I will just pick up a few strands from the conversation that I feel like we did not adequately articulate or emphasize.

A common misconception about our argument, that we should have done a better job in the book clarifying, is the perception that we do not believe that humans are able to engage in coherent abstract political thought that ties together multiple political issue positions. This is not our view. We do believe people are capable of thinking about politics philosophically. As you say in the interview, some people come to their issue positions based on belief systems like Aristotelianism, Christianity, and libertarianism. Our argument is simply that these various belief systems have nothing to do with “left” or “right.” The terms “left” and “right” have become so entwined with alternating party control of various governments over the centuries that the terms have become meaningless from a philosophical standpoint. They give us social, but not ideological, information.

Another common misperception is that we do not believe that any issue positions have any logical connection to each other. This is also not our view. We do believe that issue positions can have a logical connection. There are some issue positions that do naturally correlate by virtue of nature and logic. For example, being in favor of free markets domestically is logically connected to being in favor of free trade internationally. It makes sense, on that micro level, that those positions would go together. However, that has nothing to do with “left” and “right” because those are tribes rather than philosophies: the issue positions and values of those two tribes are constantly evolving. As you well know, sometimes “liberals” have been more likely to take those two positions simultaneously (mid-19th century England) and sometimes “conservatives” have been more likely to take those two positions simultaneously (mid-20th century America). Sometimes “progressives” have held one position and not the other, and sometimes “conservatives” have held one position and not the other. The fact that some issue positions, absent social conformism, will naturally correlate by virtue of logic may be true, but that has nothing to do with a “left-right” uni-dimensional spectrum where these hundreds of naturally correlating issue clusters—logical on their own on a micro level—get crammed together on either side of  a uni-dimensional “left-right” spectrum.

A great question you raised in our interview (paraphrasing) was: “Isn’t the stark dichotomy you present between the essentialist theory and the social theory as false as the stark left-right dichotomy you criticize in the book”? In other words, why does it have to be all or nothing? Can’t the social theory usefully explain, for example, 85% of the political behavior we observe and the essentialist theory usefully explain a mere 15% of the political behavior we observe?

I don’t think the essentialist theory of left and right explains 15% of the political phenomena we observe in the world for the same reason that I do not think the geocentric theory of the universe explains 15% of the astronomical phenomena we observe. Yes, the geocentric theory can purport to give an explanation of the phenomena we observe each day (including why the sun rises in the east horizon and sets in the west horizon), but that does not make the geocentric theory 15% true. It is 100% false. The fact is that the earth revolves around the sun and the fact is that there is more than one issue in politics. It is not 15% true that the sun revolves around the earth or 15% true that there is only one, overarching, essential issue in politics.

In the interview, you pointed to some amount of issue position correlation as evidence that the essentialist theory is partly (although not fully) true. This is a common response we hear: When we point out that there is no essence to “left” or “right,” people often respond that there must be some essence because survey data shows correlation between people identifying with Tribe Left or Tribe Right and certain issue positions (e.g., someone who identifies as “liberal” today is, on the margins, more likely to be more in favor of abortion rights, less in favor of capital punishment, more in favor of income taxes, less in favor of import taxes, more in favor of regulating big oil, less in favor of regulating big tech, more in favor of military intervention in Eastern Europe, less in favor of military intervention in the Middle East, more in favor of restrictions on gun sales, less in favor of restrictions on marijuana sales, more in favor of the free movement of people and goods across international borders, less in favor of the free movement of goods across state borders, and more concerned about the character of elected officials than someone who identifies as “conservative”). The person who points this out is not saying that these issue positions are 100% correlated, but they are saying that there is a greater chance that someone identifying as a “liberal” will hold one or more of these issue positions than someone identifying as a “conservative.” We recognize that is true, but the question is why? Many people assume that if the survey data shows x amount of correlation between these issue positions (above no correlation at all), then the essentialist theory must be x% true. We disagree that this x amount of correlation has to be the result of an essence that ties issue positions together. We point out that this correlation appears to be entirely the result of socialization (after all, the correlation does not exist among those who do not know what currently flies under the banners of “left” and “right”). The evidence we discovered in testing these two different theories points to the social theory as far better at explaining the correlations we see than the essentialist theory (in the same way that the Copernican theory is a far better explanation for why we see the sun rise and set each day than the geocentric theory).

Your time-traveling conventions thought experiment goes from the realm of current correlations to historical correlations. I liked that because it helped us think through the correlation vs. causation difficulty even more. You say that if we gathered into two camps everyone who has ever identified as “left-wing,” and put them in a convention, and everyone who has ever identified as “right-wing,” and put them in a convention, then we would see a lot of diversity within each convention but, on the margins, some views that are more common to the “left-wing” convention than the “right-wing” convention. You conclude that this must be the result of an essence binding together these core issue positions. But remember, correlation is not causation. It seems to me that historical contingency is a better explanation of any correlations you might discover (if you even could discover them).

For example, you posited that Tribe Left is defined by an “anti-market” essence and pointed to the supposed agreement we would find in the time-traveling “left-wing” convention around the position of being anti-market. I pointed out that Team Left was first created in Paris in the 1780s by people who were opposed to monarchy and who were pro-market. You responded that it took a few years, but eventually, the French sorted themselves out and the people who were anti-monarchy finally came around to their natural position of being anti-market. But why should we think that nature binds those two issue positions together? Isn’t it more likely that the left-hand side of the National Assembly went from being pro-market to anti-market not because nature dictates that people who are against monarchy are also against markets but because those people happened to take control of the government and became pro-state? I think the logical reasoning of Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson are good examples of the fact that being anti-monarchy is not naturally tied by logic to being anti-market. As far as I know, you are both anti-monarchy and pro-market (like the French Left of the 1780s). I don’t believe the original French Left had to become anti-market because that was their “essence.” I think they became anti-market because they were a political group that took control of the state and wanted to start regulating markets to their own advantage. This seems to be entirely explained by historical contingency (those in control of government want the government to be powerful) rather than some "left-wing” essence forcing together the issue positions of democracy and anti-market.

Once again, I found the discussion thought-provoking and interesting, and I hope to keep the conversation going.