Striving to abstract politics from morality and to "rationally" debate different positions fails to recognize the fundamentally opposed moralism at the heart of Left and Right political ideologies
I absolutely agree. An 'agree to disagree' stance is nearly as bad as 'both sides are valid' stances where there's clearly a bad faith actor. It leads to non-political folk feeling that every politician is as corrupt as each other and they're all out to mislead us.
Thanks for this Ryan. I get so frustrated with the just-look-on-the-surface approach to political discourse that does not explore what gives rise to the policy preferences, nor the way they operate systemically. The worldview that sits underneath (and its moral orientation) is exactly what we need to understand, as its logic is what will give rise to different kinds of policies. It is in effect the paradigm that drives the system -the logic on which it is based. And that logic includes so many moral judgements about who deserves what (ladders of hierarchy and worth), and how the world works, and how power works, and how people work, and who should be included in our circle of concern. To ignore the worldview and believe we just have a collection of options to choose from is to be blind to systems (a big factor in the metacrisis we are in).
What I increasingly feel is the separation between those who are more inclined to wards an ecological view of the world (holistic, systemic, interdependent, living, relational), and those who treat it as a machine to be controlled and dominated (discrete independent components, highly manipulable, top-down force, standardised, instrumental, rigid…). Maybe those are the new left and right tendencies?
I would so love to see more public discussion of the worldview and logic and values that sit underneath the surface level politics - making that visible so we can be more discerning about what we are choosing between and how that equates with the reality of a complex changing world.
At the moment our collective understanding feels obfuscated by descriptions of the outcomes and behaviours those paradigms produce. This and this and this and this. Lots of disconnected things. Where are the patterns? Where are the discussions of nth order effects?
I agree about not demonising people for their political views, but that can coexist with understanding the moral and historical foundations of those views (even when those who espouse them may not), and the systemic outcomes of certain ways of looking at the world. And let’s definitely be clear about identifying harm when we see it.
When we believe we can dissect and discuss politics in the abstract realm of ideas (coolly and calmly), that takes it out of its embodied and lived context, and that is when it becomes easy to manipulate and exploit. We can even delude ourselves when we’re talking abstractly, and we are nicely distanced from the people over whom our ideas and decisions have real material consequences. The map is not the territory. Gregory Bateson talked about how easy it is to manipulate things when we take them out of their context—and this is the path to fascism. Thank you for re-embedding these positions back in their contexts. We need to understand the ecology of politics, not be presented with a set of branded options on the supermarket shelves.
I agree so much with everything you've said. Especially the bit about Left being about community and organic relationship and the Right being about mechanism and breaking down things and controlling them. This is a holdover from the Enlightenment when the goal was to break things into their component parts and control them. Control of nature was a big part of this. As Merchant discusses in her book The Death of Nature, this mechanization and abstracting of the world from an organic, divine relationship nicely served the needs of capital who needed at the time to justify extracting raw materials from the earth on a large, unprecedented scale. The moral frameworks developed ended up changing the earth from a mother who took care of us and who we owed care to to a woman to be dominated and violated for profit (see also Merchant).
So I agree that a "live and let live" politics of civility is not productive because we're not dealing with a buffet of possible policies. We're dealing with worldviews that have been shaped and justified over centuries and they've been shaped to justify the material conditions produced by social and economic systems. If we don't even admit that, how can we really change anything? And if we don't recognize that there is big money behind politics and the Right is funded by those who only care about profits, we can't even begin to understand the political discussions and policy reasons.
Yes. Yes. And yes. That is exactly what I think too. The Newtonian-Cartesian mechanomorphism, and the distancing of ourselves from the living world (including our own felt experience) and all the associated exiling of anything we could not understand by our human means. We are living the consequences of those shifts. I think a lot about how what we are seeing in the world is just the logical outcome of the systems that were built on that narrow paradigm. The right wing has in many ways become the natural progression of that outdated mental model, and we need to keep speaking to why that is a harmful one.
I will look this up. Thank you. It really does come down to the rise and foundations of individualism. So damaging in so many ways, to everything from mental health to the destruction of the earth. We really need one another in community and relationship.
It’s why we need to be open much more to indigenous knowledge systems, rather than treat them as some interesting “alternative” adjunct to Western epistemology. We’ve got things arse about face. What so many still perceive as “primitive” is in fact so much more able to meet the dynamic complexity in which we dwell.
100%. Indigenous cultures the world over have already solved a lot of these problems. Hell, most of them even have sophisticated mental health therapy in some ways more advanced than contemporary medicen, in the form of psychedelic trips guided by shamans lol. Something contemporary medicen is only just beginning to take seriously.
Another example from Te Ao Māori is community based rehabilitation instead of carceral punishment, as advocated for by People Against Prisons Aotearoa.
Something that we've already begun implementing and normalizing is riperian planting for managing the health of freshwaterways, which is essentially rooted in the understanding of Mauri, even if its usually translated through western scientific language.
This was a really enlightening article. My understanding has always been based on that French Revolution origin, though a simple definition has always been on the understanding that the Right/Conservatives have always been for the individual, and the Left/Socialists have been for the group. Also, we have to remember the meaning of 'conservative'. The idea is to conserve, or to protect traditions and values, whereas an opposing view will be to rip them up, or move away from them.
Maybe it's my existential side, but I also look to the fact that all things are finite. On this point, being conservative is a futile mindset to exist in, even if the aim is to "conserve" things for as long as possible. But the same, of course, is true of all political ideologies. The point I'm trying to make, and the what I'm interested in getting your thoughts on, is that none of the definitions on what is right-wing and left-wing are fixed. They say you can't kill an idea, but ideas do eventually die or, if not entirely, they can evolve or merge with other ideas in accordance with a changing world. Could it be that we need a new definition, or a new understanding? Could it be that the confusion between what is Left and Right is the result of a blurring of the lines. In my life, I have met many people who share conservative views on certain things, whilst also holding views that can be described as left-wing. I also think about the infuriating, and total lack of understanding as to what left-wing politics are.
None of this is to challenge your argument, by the way. Just interested in your opinion.
Thanks for reading and for the comment. I agree that these ideologies are always changing. I guess I would argue that since the rise of capitalism in the 15th and 16th centuries and then the full-blown Industrial Revolution and the last 200 years, the social and economic systems have largely dictated the kinds of politics that have developed. As you say, the Right has adopted an individualist ethos while the Left has come to stand for community, but again this has been, in my view, in the service of the perpetuation and justification of a social and economic system. And I agree that these ideas evolve, and I think one of the reasons why things are getting so polarized is that capitalism is really reaching a point where it just extracts as much as it can from people, and more and more people are reaching a point where they really feel it is unsustainable or at least that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way society is organized.
I agree that a new understanding would be good, I guess what I'm arguing for is that rather than viewing Left and Right as a grab bag of policies or positions in a culture war, we need to get back to the economic and material origins of these positions. Then, as you say, people will become clearer (hopefully) on what Left and Right really stand for. Hopefully then people will see the modern Right for what it really is, which in my view is an ideology that works to support and sustain capitalism by blaming the problems created by capitalism on its victims.
I think you've nailed it there, actually. Everyone knows that there is something fundamentally wrong, something that can't be allowed to go on. Then you have the largest propaganda machine the world has ever known in social media, and all the misinformation you get across various platforms, and the result is a chaotic kind of politics.
One example of this kind of mish-mash of left and right from the UK, by the way, is the renationalisation of British Steel after decades of mismanagement by Chinese company Jingye. The Party calling loudest for nationalisation is the right-wing Reform UK, whereas Labour, supposed left-wing, insist that private investment is sought long-term.
But yes, you're right in what you're saying, we have all these bad actors like Elon Musk polluting the narrative and manipulating people into thinking capitalism is the answer.
I think if anything sums up what we're up against more than anything, is Trump promoting Douglas Murray's new book. Murray was on the BBC this week referring to Trumps victory as one for the counter-culture! This is what people are believing. That someone like Trump, a nepo baby property tycoon, and Douglas Murray, an old Etonian of the upper class, are somehow anti-establishment! I've no idea how we even begin to fight back against this kind of media control.
Yes!! Perfect example. The reactionary Right blame trouble on immigrants and an amorphous Deep State or China or Russia or globalization. These tend to be fundamentally racist arguments. The solution is nationalism and so you get all of these blends of protectionist and populist campaigns and policies but as evidenced by Starmer, Trump, and Luxon, once in power they govern for the wealthy. And I think the nominal Left and Right swap rhetoric to appeal to voters but at the end of the day most Left and Right parties have been captured by neoliberalism and so no matter who is in power the balance of policy favors the wealthy regardless of tinkering around the edges.
The tragedy is, it's so predictable. I didn't vote in last year's election. There's no difference between the Tories and Labour. As you say, they all rule for the wealthy.
Spot on, and your last sentences sum it up perfectly. The contemporary right broadly stakes its position on a theoretical faith in unfettered freedom of choice while ignoring the objective facts on the ground (ironic, since thats what they accuse the left of doing). Its advocating for ideology over and above tangible reality, and to me that is very telling.
Furthermore, if you boil the differences down to their extreme, your left with one side that favours isolationists who hold themselves more important than anybody else, and the other side that puts the needs of others on an equal standing with oneself.
Self interest vs cooperation. Its morals all the way down baby.
And yes again! Thank you for the article, and thanks to all for the incisive comments. I think that there is a massive gap between the minority who think deeply above why things happen in society and the ordinary citizens who just survive at a superficial level. It is easy to fool the shallow voters because they tend to read the brochures rather than the Consumer reviews…
The piece you're responding to could have been perfect if the content was just: "we could all approach political conversations with more humility."
Beyond that sentiment, you're right, our political projects are inherently moral. I just wrote about how nice people often cause great harm as insurance adjusters and consultants who seek profit over supporting communities. People often act out their positive values on a personal level at home and with their neighbors, but when in the workplace either by hierarchical order or by financial incentive will cause wide-ranging harm.
Whenever we look to the actual impact of policies and actions, it makes good intentions pale in comparison.
Thanks for the clearly-worded explainer Ryan. More than the concepts and respective morals of left and right, what do we do when both sides embrace libertarianism?
My understanding is that those on the left are oriented around developing communal health and those on the right are oriented around maintaining their individual status quo. These are outcomes with clear moral distinctions, so clear that the question of morality/materiality is moot.
There are answers out there …in the UK, Wales is in the process of legislating to prevent autocracy with a simple but innovative and quietly radical legal solution...
This is such a crucial critique. The attempt to sanitize political ideologies of their moral foundations feels increasingly like a rhetorical sleight of hand, one that ultimately protects entrenched power.
It was a good food for thought, and actually gave me good arguments against technocratic governance since it obscures who benefits and who suffers.
Keep making these vital connections between ideology, morality, and material consequences. Thank you for sharing.
Great article, thanks for sharing. I agree with your initial point about the fallacies in Albert's amoralism. But I think it's worth going a little further. Once you've identified the moral stance in, say, rich people wanting to limit redistributive policies and less well-off people wanting to extend them, you need to look at how this goes beyond a moral position and becomes an identity. There's been so much political psychology research into the ways that social identity underpin our political identities, that it becomes hard to take the moral assertion (redistribution = good/bad) as primary. Just look at how political communities can switch between opposing moral assertions (free trade = good for GOP members in 2010, but free trade = bad for some of the same GOP members in 2025). In the end, politics ends up mapping better on social groupings than ideological ones. I'm going to publish an essay on this next week at https://equanimity.substack.com/ I'd really love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you for reading. I will look forward to your article. I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that the moral aspects was primary in the reasoning for people's political beliefs. I was mostly trying to discuss the historical evolution of Left and Right politics as having a moral foundation and not just being a difference of opinion about governing. Being a psychologist myself, I am somewhat familiar with social identity theory and agree that this can go a long way to explaining how people seem to alternate wildly between very different political/moral positions. Will be interested to read your take on it.
I think there are some interesting perspectives all round. I can't agree that politics is detached from morality, simply because that isn't possible (unless the AI really does take over one day). On the other hand, any suggestion that one side or the other inherently has the moral high ground can quickly become a distraction from the realities of the individuals involved and the policies in question.
I agree we should always keep people first. But I disagree that there is no inherent moral high ground in Left politics. We can debate about whether classical liberalism was ever about actual equality and freedom for everyone not just the wealthy but these values and terminology have been wholly captured by wealthy interests in the modern day libertarian Right. To the extent that Left politics has also been co-opted by these interests it is indefensible but at its core Left politics is a working-class politics that struggles against the capitalist class. For me, this is the ultimate moral struggle of our modern age.
Let's assume you are correct that the left has the moral high ground, the issue I see is that stating that can be counter productive. It is natural for most people to assume that they hold the moral high ground, for if they don't believe that, why do they hold to their overall beliefs? So if you make the battle 'my morals are better than yours', then you run the risk of automatically closing people off from the details of your arguments. The really sad part is, that in that straight up slanging match, the right have been dominating recently. The left needs to up its game, either through smarter 'politics', or by taking morals out of the firing line and winning on practical policies.
You are correct that the Right is running roughshod over the Left in terms of winning the battle of words and ideological framing. I'm not sure that "practical" policies can change that without a shift in the way that most voters view society and out obligation to one another.
Perhaps it comes down to trust. I suspect the flexible voters near the centre would be much more inclined to lean towards policies that are more supportive of wider society if they believe that those policies can be implemented without undermining the overall economy and delivering negative impacts to all. There is definitely some trust to be regained thanks to the execution failures of the previous government.
This is the whole issue. We’ve got 40 years of the right succeeding in framing hugely damaging policy as being “common sense” when it benefits the wealthy. So this framing is very hard to shift. The Labour government didn’t do enough policy-wise but again the right still framed them as socialist and the public has a knee-jerk reaction against that due to the libertarian propaganda that has dominated the west for at least 40 years. I’m not sure what the best strategy is but we can start by tracing the morals and history behind different political positions for people.
Hi Matt, I'm on a computer now and find typing and thinking a little easier :-)
I agree with you and Ryan that politics is inherently imbued with values, (which Ryan calls morality)
The reason why I said it's about consequences is because that's an objective measure and undeniable.
But when we look at the consequences of policies, I think values come quickly into play (Ryan labels it morality, because I suppose, is one comfortable making billions while others fail to make the next meal because one pays little to no tax? Hard to say it isn't morality, although I usually try to steer clear of the word in discussions)
Anyway, I realise that I agree with you and Ryan - really just a matter of fleshing it out....and also agree on positioning is key.
That makes perfect sense, and thank you for finding the time to come back to this conversation. I do value when people can find common ground and progress discussions, even if they don't align on every single little detail.
And I would argue that what you view as good consequences indicate where your morality lies. Policies that continue to make the rich richer and the poor poorer are only "successful" if you prioritize the rich, which to me means your morality is suspect. The practicality of a policy is still a question of who will benefit most from it.
The original post was about morality, hence that being the focus of my comments. That aside, if your point is that morality only matters if the outcomes to match get delivered, then yes, I agree.
Answered above, but want to add: this is a great point you make because this is my issue with what the "right" do - they advertise X but the outcomes are antithetical to that. One could say that these values ("morality") is imbued in every step of the process. Anyway a great discussion, thanks for helping me to dive deeper into it.
I absolutely agree. An 'agree to disagree' stance is nearly as bad as 'both sides are valid' stances where there's clearly a bad faith actor. It leads to non-political folk feeling that every politician is as corrupt as each other and they're all out to mislead us.
Thanks for this Ryan. I get so frustrated with the just-look-on-the-surface approach to political discourse that does not explore what gives rise to the policy preferences, nor the way they operate systemically. The worldview that sits underneath (and its moral orientation) is exactly what we need to understand, as its logic is what will give rise to different kinds of policies. It is in effect the paradigm that drives the system -the logic on which it is based. And that logic includes so many moral judgements about who deserves what (ladders of hierarchy and worth), and how the world works, and how power works, and how people work, and who should be included in our circle of concern. To ignore the worldview and believe we just have a collection of options to choose from is to be blind to systems (a big factor in the metacrisis we are in).
What I increasingly feel is the separation between those who are more inclined to wards an ecological view of the world (holistic, systemic, interdependent, living, relational), and those who treat it as a machine to be controlled and dominated (discrete independent components, highly manipulable, top-down force, standardised, instrumental, rigid…). Maybe those are the new left and right tendencies?
I would so love to see more public discussion of the worldview and logic and values that sit underneath the surface level politics - making that visible so we can be more discerning about what we are choosing between and how that equates with the reality of a complex changing world.
At the moment our collective understanding feels obfuscated by descriptions of the outcomes and behaviours those paradigms produce. This and this and this and this. Lots of disconnected things. Where are the patterns? Where are the discussions of nth order effects?
I agree about not demonising people for their political views, but that can coexist with understanding the moral and historical foundations of those views (even when those who espouse them may not), and the systemic outcomes of certain ways of looking at the world. And let’s definitely be clear about identifying harm when we see it.
When we believe we can dissect and discuss politics in the abstract realm of ideas (coolly and calmly), that takes it out of its embodied and lived context, and that is when it becomes easy to manipulate and exploit. We can even delude ourselves when we’re talking abstractly, and we are nicely distanced from the people over whom our ideas and decisions have real material consequences. The map is not the territory. Gregory Bateson talked about how easy it is to manipulate things when we take them out of their context—and this is the path to fascism. Thank you for re-embedding these positions back in their contexts. We need to understand the ecology of politics, not be presented with a set of branded options on the supermarket shelves.
I agree so much with everything you've said. Especially the bit about Left being about community and organic relationship and the Right being about mechanism and breaking down things and controlling them. This is a holdover from the Enlightenment when the goal was to break things into their component parts and control them. Control of nature was a big part of this. As Merchant discusses in her book The Death of Nature, this mechanization and abstracting of the world from an organic, divine relationship nicely served the needs of capital who needed at the time to justify extracting raw materials from the earth on a large, unprecedented scale. The moral frameworks developed ended up changing the earth from a mother who took care of us and who we owed care to to a woman to be dominated and violated for profit (see also Merchant).
So I agree that a "live and let live" politics of civility is not productive because we're not dealing with a buffet of possible policies. We're dealing with worldviews that have been shaped and justified over centuries and they've been shaped to justify the material conditions produced by social and economic systems. If we don't even admit that, how can we really change anything? And if we don't recognize that there is big money behind politics and the Right is funded by those who only care about profits, we can't even begin to understand the political discussions and policy reasons.
Yes. Yes. And yes. That is exactly what I think too. The Newtonian-Cartesian mechanomorphism, and the distancing of ourselves from the living world (including our own felt experience) and all the associated exiling of anything we could not understand by our human means. We are living the consequences of those shifts. I think a lot about how what we are seeing in the world is just the logical outcome of the systems that were built on that narrow paradigm. The right wing has in many ways become the natural progression of that outdated mental model, and we need to keep speaking to why that is a harmful one.
Keep writing these. It is so helpful!!!
I discuss a bit about the relationship of the Enlightenment and domination of Earth here
https://open.substack.com/pub/weareunderused/p/witches-women-and-the-death-of-nature?r=464u8m&utm_medium=ios
It’s part of what we explore in The Pākehā Project!
I will look this up. Thank you. It really does come down to the rise and foundations of individualism. So damaging in so many ways, to everything from mental health to the destruction of the earth. We really need one another in community and relationship.
It’s why we need to be open much more to indigenous knowledge systems, rather than treat them as some interesting “alternative” adjunct to Western epistemology. We’ve got things arse about face. What so many still perceive as “primitive” is in fact so much more able to meet the dynamic complexity in which we dwell.
Love this!
100%. Indigenous cultures the world over have already solved a lot of these problems. Hell, most of them even have sophisticated mental health therapy in some ways more advanced than contemporary medicen, in the form of psychedelic trips guided by shamans lol. Something contemporary medicen is only just beginning to take seriously.
Another example from Te Ao Māori is community based rehabilitation instead of carceral punishment, as advocated for by People Against Prisons Aotearoa.
Something that we've already begun implementing and normalizing is riperian planting for managing the health of freshwaterways, which is essentially rooted in the understanding of Mauri, even if its usually translated through western scientific language.
So much yes. In all the spheres! Right there in front of our eyes ♥️
All of the above <3
That ecological way of framing it all is brilliant.
Totally agree
This was a really enlightening article. My understanding has always been based on that French Revolution origin, though a simple definition has always been on the understanding that the Right/Conservatives have always been for the individual, and the Left/Socialists have been for the group. Also, we have to remember the meaning of 'conservative'. The idea is to conserve, or to protect traditions and values, whereas an opposing view will be to rip them up, or move away from them.
Maybe it's my existential side, but I also look to the fact that all things are finite. On this point, being conservative is a futile mindset to exist in, even if the aim is to "conserve" things for as long as possible. But the same, of course, is true of all political ideologies. The point I'm trying to make, and the what I'm interested in getting your thoughts on, is that none of the definitions on what is right-wing and left-wing are fixed. They say you can't kill an idea, but ideas do eventually die or, if not entirely, they can evolve or merge with other ideas in accordance with a changing world. Could it be that we need a new definition, or a new understanding? Could it be that the confusion between what is Left and Right is the result of a blurring of the lines. In my life, I have met many people who share conservative views on certain things, whilst also holding views that can be described as left-wing. I also think about the infuriating, and total lack of understanding as to what left-wing politics are.
None of this is to challenge your argument, by the way. Just interested in your opinion.
Thanks for reading and for the comment. I agree that these ideologies are always changing. I guess I would argue that since the rise of capitalism in the 15th and 16th centuries and then the full-blown Industrial Revolution and the last 200 years, the social and economic systems have largely dictated the kinds of politics that have developed. As you say, the Right has adopted an individualist ethos while the Left has come to stand for community, but again this has been, in my view, in the service of the perpetuation and justification of a social and economic system. And I agree that these ideas evolve, and I think one of the reasons why things are getting so polarized is that capitalism is really reaching a point where it just extracts as much as it can from people, and more and more people are reaching a point where they really feel it is unsustainable or at least that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way society is organized.
I agree that a new understanding would be good, I guess what I'm arguing for is that rather than viewing Left and Right as a grab bag of policies or positions in a culture war, we need to get back to the economic and material origins of these positions. Then, as you say, people will become clearer (hopefully) on what Left and Right really stand for. Hopefully then people will see the modern Right for what it really is, which in my view is an ideology that works to support and sustain capitalism by blaming the problems created by capitalism on its victims.
I think you've nailed it there, actually. Everyone knows that there is something fundamentally wrong, something that can't be allowed to go on. Then you have the largest propaganda machine the world has ever known in social media, and all the misinformation you get across various platforms, and the result is a chaotic kind of politics.
One example of this kind of mish-mash of left and right from the UK, by the way, is the renationalisation of British Steel after decades of mismanagement by Chinese company Jingye. The Party calling loudest for nationalisation is the right-wing Reform UK, whereas Labour, supposed left-wing, insist that private investment is sought long-term.
But yes, you're right in what you're saying, we have all these bad actors like Elon Musk polluting the narrative and manipulating people into thinking capitalism is the answer.
I think if anything sums up what we're up against more than anything, is Trump promoting Douglas Murray's new book. Murray was on the BBC this week referring to Trumps victory as one for the counter-culture! This is what people are believing. That someone like Trump, a nepo baby property tycoon, and Douglas Murray, an old Etonian of the upper class, are somehow anti-establishment! I've no idea how we even begin to fight back against this kind of media control.
Yes!! Perfect example. The reactionary Right blame trouble on immigrants and an amorphous Deep State or China or Russia or globalization. These tend to be fundamentally racist arguments. The solution is nationalism and so you get all of these blends of protectionist and populist campaigns and policies but as evidenced by Starmer, Trump, and Luxon, once in power they govern for the wealthy. And I think the nominal Left and Right swap rhetoric to appeal to voters but at the end of the day most Left and Right parties have been captured by neoliberalism and so no matter who is in power the balance of policy favors the wealthy regardless of tinkering around the edges.
The tragedy is, it's so predictable. I didn't vote in last year's election. There's no difference between the Tories and Labour. As you say, they all rule for the wealthy.
Electoral politics feels so hopeless
Numerically smaller the right vote with their heads while the left, if they can be bothered, vote with the heart.
Spot on, and your last sentences sum it up perfectly. The contemporary right broadly stakes its position on a theoretical faith in unfettered freedom of choice while ignoring the objective facts on the ground (ironic, since thats what they accuse the left of doing). Its advocating for ideology over and above tangible reality, and to me that is very telling.
Furthermore, if you boil the differences down to their extreme, your left with one side that favours isolationists who hold themselves more important than anybody else, and the other side that puts the needs of others on an equal standing with oneself.
Self interest vs cooperation. Its morals all the way down baby.
And yes again! Thank you for the article, and thanks to all for the incisive comments. I think that there is a massive gap between the minority who think deeply above why things happen in society and the ordinary citizens who just survive at a superficial level. It is easy to fool the shallow voters because they tend to read the brochures rather than the Consumer reviews…
And capitalism works best when the populace only has time to work rather than read and consider the social and economic causes of their misery
The piece you're responding to could have been perfect if the content was just: "we could all approach political conversations with more humility."
Beyond that sentiment, you're right, our political projects are inherently moral. I just wrote about how nice people often cause great harm as insurance adjusters and consultants who seek profit over supporting communities. People often act out their positive values on a personal level at home and with their neighbors, but when in the workplace either by hierarchical order or by financial incentive will cause wide-ranging harm.
Whenever we look to the actual impact of policies and actions, it makes good intentions pale in comparison.
Thanks for the clearly-worded explainer Ryan. More than the concepts and respective morals of left and right, what do we do when both sides embrace libertarianism?
Glad you found it useful. As to your question, I think we have to work to expose it for the hollow corporate propaganda it is.
My understanding is that those on the left are oriented around developing communal health and those on the right are oriented around maintaining their individual status quo. These are outcomes with clear moral distinctions, so clear that the question of morality/materiality is moot.
There are answers out there …in the UK, Wales is in the process of legislating to prevent autocracy with a simple but innovative and quietly radical legal solution...
https://open.substack.com/pub/justhinkin/p/has-wales-found-the-solution-to-autocracy?r=3cs2wr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Thanks for sharing. This would indeed help with the rampant misinformation in politics right now. I touched on this issue here https://open.substack.com/pub/weareunderused/p/political-science-theater-3000?r=464u8m&utm_medium=ios
So glad people are thinking of pragmatic solutions.
This is such a crucial critique. The attempt to sanitize political ideologies of their moral foundations feels increasingly like a rhetorical sleight of hand, one that ultimately protects entrenched power.
It was a good food for thought, and actually gave me good arguments against technocratic governance since it obscures who benefits and who suffers.
Keep making these vital connections between ideology, morality, and material consequences. Thank you for sharing.
Great article, thanks for sharing. I agree with your initial point about the fallacies in Albert's amoralism. But I think it's worth going a little further. Once you've identified the moral stance in, say, rich people wanting to limit redistributive policies and less well-off people wanting to extend them, you need to look at how this goes beyond a moral position and becomes an identity. There's been so much political psychology research into the ways that social identity underpin our political identities, that it becomes hard to take the moral assertion (redistribution = good/bad) as primary. Just look at how political communities can switch between opposing moral assertions (free trade = good for GOP members in 2010, but free trade = bad for some of the same GOP members in 2025). In the end, politics ends up mapping better on social groupings than ideological ones. I'm going to publish an essay on this next week at https://equanimity.substack.com/ I'd really love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you for reading. I will look forward to your article. I certainly wasn't meaning to imply that the moral aspects was primary in the reasoning for people's political beliefs. I was mostly trying to discuss the historical evolution of Left and Right politics as having a moral foundation and not just being a difference of opinion about governing. Being a psychologist myself, I am somewhat familiar with social identity theory and agree that this can go a long way to explaining how people seem to alternate wildly between very different political/moral positions. Will be interested to read your take on it.
Hi Ryan, thanks so much for your reply and interest. I just published my post now, I'd love to hear your thoughts: https://equanimity.substack.com/p/the-100-day-pretender
I just finished reading about Trumps "anti-christian in govt" ruling. If thats not "Right" what is it?
I think there are some interesting perspectives all round. I can't agree that politics is detached from morality, simply because that isn't possible (unless the AI really does take over one day). On the other hand, any suggestion that one side or the other inherently has the moral high ground can quickly become a distraction from the realities of the individuals involved and the policies in question.
I agree we should always keep people first. But I disagree that there is no inherent moral high ground in Left politics. We can debate about whether classical liberalism was ever about actual equality and freedom for everyone not just the wealthy but these values and terminology have been wholly captured by wealthy interests in the modern day libertarian Right. To the extent that Left politics has also been co-opted by these interests it is indefensible but at its core Left politics is a working-class politics that struggles against the capitalist class. For me, this is the ultimate moral struggle of our modern age.
Let's assume you are correct that the left has the moral high ground, the issue I see is that stating that can be counter productive. It is natural for most people to assume that they hold the moral high ground, for if they don't believe that, why do they hold to their overall beliefs? So if you make the battle 'my morals are better than yours', then you run the risk of automatically closing people off from the details of your arguments. The really sad part is, that in that straight up slanging match, the right have been dominating recently. The left needs to up its game, either through smarter 'politics', or by taking morals out of the firing line and winning on practical policies.
You are correct that the Right is running roughshod over the Left in terms of winning the battle of words and ideological framing. I'm not sure that "practical" policies can change that without a shift in the way that most voters view society and out obligation to one another.
Perhaps it comes down to trust. I suspect the flexible voters near the centre would be much more inclined to lean towards policies that are more supportive of wider society if they believe that those policies can be implemented without undermining the overall economy and delivering negative impacts to all. There is definitely some trust to be regained thanks to the execution failures of the previous government.
This is the whole issue. We’ve got 40 years of the right succeeding in framing hugely damaging policy as being “common sense” when it benefits the wealthy. So this framing is very hard to shift. The Labour government didn’t do enough policy-wise but again the right still framed them as socialist and the public has a knee-jerk reaction against that due to the libertarian propaganda that has dominated the west for at least 40 years. I’m not sure what the best strategy is but we can start by tracing the morals and history behind different political positions for people.
I can certainly get behind that. Thanks for a good discussion.
Hi Matt, I'm on a computer now and find typing and thinking a little easier :-)
I agree with you and Ryan that politics is inherently imbued with values, (which Ryan calls morality)
The reason why I said it's about consequences is because that's an objective measure and undeniable.
But when we look at the consequences of policies, I think values come quickly into play (Ryan labels it morality, because I suppose, is one comfortable making billions while others fail to make the next meal because one pays little to no tax? Hard to say it isn't morality, although I usually try to steer clear of the word in discussions)
Anyway, I realise that I agree with you and Ryan - really just a matter of fleshing it out....and also agree on positioning is key.
That makes perfect sense, and thank you for finding the time to come back to this conversation. I do value when people can find common ground and progress discussions, even if they don't align on every single little detail.
And very often even if we disagree it’s because we are using different assumptions or words - but often will agree on the fundamentals!
It’s not about morality at all Matt - it’s about consequences
And I would argue that what you view as good consequences indicate where your morality lies. Policies that continue to make the rich richer and the poor poorer are only "successful" if you prioritize the rich, which to me means your morality is suspect. The practicality of a policy is still a question of who will benefit most from it.
Yes values invariably come into play
The original post was about morality, hence that being the focus of my comments. That aside, if your point is that morality only matters if the outcomes to match get delivered, then yes, I agree.
Answered above, but want to add: this is a great point you make because this is my issue with what the "right" do - they advertise X but the outcomes are antithetical to that. One could say that these values ("morality") is imbued in every step of the process. Anyway a great discussion, thanks for helping me to dive deeper into it.
I’m not good typing on the phone so will elaborate later - thanks for your patience. Cheers