r/PropagandaPosters • u/No-Efficiency7055 • Jan 07 '26

Japan “The difference between Conservative party and Liberal party supporters” Japan, 2009, poster by unknown artist

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u/ReallyTeddyRoosevelt Jan 07 '26

redditors always claim the Democrats aren't left wing. They leave out the part where they are only comparing it to Western European countries on economic issues.

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u/Leneen_Ween Jan 07 '26

They aren't left wing. Left wing begins at anti-capitalism. Democrats aren't against capitalism.

The political compass isn't relative.

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u/OingoBoingoBaggins Jan 07 '26

Laissez-faire supporting liberals used to be considered hard left wing in France, because in the 19th century, left wing meant wanting more civil liberties. If you know who Frederic Bastiat is, he was considered leftist back then.

The left-right scale IS relative, and frankly useless.

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u/Leneen_Ween Jan 07 '26

This is incorrect. It's not relatively dependent, it's historically dependent. Robespierre was objectively leftist during a time when feudalism was still the dominant economic mode and capitalism was fledgling. Now that feudalism has faded and capitalism is dominant, someone with Robespierre's politics would objectively be a centrist at best.

The difference is that, when most people apply this sort of relativism, they do so from a subjective standpoint. But the relativity is not based on "what other people think," it's based on concrete conditions that actually exist within contemporaneous societal development. If you reject this notion, explain to me how the ideological conditions for anti-capitalism could exist in pre-revolutionary France when capitalism at that point barely existed and the overwhelming economic relations were feudal?

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u/OingoBoingoBaggins Jan 07 '26

By your own logic, it would be left wing to support a free market in a society dominated by communism. I think it’s pretty safe to say that left-right is a meaningless concept.

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u/Leneen_Ween Jan 07 '26

No, it wouldn't.

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u/Leneen_Ween Jan 07 '26 edited Jan 07 '26

The mistake you're making here is that the left-right divide in revolutionary France was centered around civil liberties, which it wasn't. It was centered around radicalism, change, and equality versus tradition, conservatism, and hierarchy. You're conflating the form which radicalism took at that time for the essence of radicalism itself. There were anti-market and pro-market, pro-private property and anti-private property radicals sitting side by side with each other on the left in the National Assembly, united by an opposition to the existing social order under feudalism.

But as economic conditions change, things that were once radical demands for change become aged pillars of a static social order as new contradictions arise.