I think that many leftist philosophies involve collectivism, but is not uniquely leftist. Sorry it takes so long to explain why I think that, maybe it's worth the read.
The traditional one-dimensional line where everything falls on a line from center left, and center right, is a horribly inaccurate representation of the political space. Imagine your TV picture as a straight line and what it would look like if all the information that comprises the image were crammed on that single line. When you cram all the information that makes up the real political spectrum onto a straight line, we get the distorted idea that "leftists" must believe a certain way, "rightists" must behave a certain other way, or they're not true leftists or rightists.
The reality of politics is a multidimensional space which is difficult to graph. But at least a two-dimensional graph better resolves the space between political views than the line does. You've probably seen the political spectrum graphs where one axis, usually x, is progressive/conservative and the other is totalitarian/libertarian. That still does not properly resolve the space, but at least it can much more accurately place the outliers that seem to defy the left-right paradigm.
Collectivist vs individualist cannot be mapped to the left-right line. The concept of government has at least some collectivist components. The more government, the more collectivist it is. Complete anarchy would represent the most extreme individualism, while complete government control represents the most extreme collectivism. I'm not saying that totalitarianism and collectivism are the same thing, just that there is a high coherence between them.
It doesn't matter where you fall on the left/right scale, because you can be very conservative and still favor more government. Just ask G.W. Bush about his "compassionate conservatism" and ask his dad about the "1000 points of light" and his "new world order". Those are all collectivist ideas, but they came from the right. Certainly many leftist ideas do favor collectivism. Communism and socialism are most definitely collectivist. But what about post modernism? Not really right wing, yet it has individualistic components above collectivist.
So Republicans are traditionally viewed as being the conservatives, the individualists, while the Democrats are traditionally the liberals, the collectivists. But that doesn't explain the outliers, like John McCain, Bush 41 or 43, or Chris Christi because when compressed onto a straight line, they appear to be in the middle. But on the 2-d graph, they're more to the right, and towards totalitarian. The civil rights movement was individualistic in nature, yet it was a "progressive" movement. Collectivists have since essentially stolen it and appended collectivist elements to it, such as positive rights.
Politics are a complicated enterprise, and we keep trying to pigeon hole each others' political philosophies into manageable constructs like the left/right line. It helps us to separate "us" from "them" and to label "us" and "them". And we find reasons to accept "us" and reject "them". Sometimes that's appropriate. But the Libertarians are the logical extreme of that. They try to so accurately define themselves that they end up alone. But since reality is what it is, and not the one-dimensional line we imagine, we need to form alliances with others who share a closer political proximity to where our point in political space is, to have enough power to make a difference. Some people call that compromise.
The traditional one-dimensional line where everything falls on a line from center left, and center right, is a horribly inaccurate representation of the political space. Imagine your TV picture as a straight line and what it would look like if all the information that comprises the image were crammed on that single line. When you cram all the information that makes up the real political spectrum onto a straight line, we get the distorted idea that "leftists" must believe a certain way, "rightists" must behave a certain other way, or they're not true leftists or rightists.
The reality of politics is a multidimensional space which is difficult to graph. But at least a two-dimensional graph better resolves the space between political views than the line does. You've probably seen the political spectrum graphs where one axis, usually x, is progressive/conservative and the other is totalitarian/libertarian. That still does not properly resolve the space, but at least it can much more accurately place the outliers that seem to defy the left-right paradigm.
Collectivist vs individualist cannot be mapped to the left-right line. The concept of government has at least some collectivist components. The more government, the more collectivist it is. Complete anarchy would represent the most extreme individualism, while complete government control represents the most extreme collectivism. I'm not saying that totalitarianism and collectivism are the same thing, just that there is a high coherence between them.
It doesn't matter where you fall on the left/right scale, because you can be very conservative and still favor more government. Just ask G.W. Bush about his "compassionate conservatism" and ask his dad about the "1000 points of light" and his "new world order". Those are all collectivist ideas, but they came from the right. Certainly many leftist ideas do favor collectivism. Communism and socialism are most definitely collectivist. But what about post modernism? Not really right wing, yet it has individualistic components above collectivist.
So Republicans are traditionally viewed as being the conservatives, the individualists, while the Democrats are traditionally the liberals, the collectivists. But that doesn't explain the outliers, like John McCain, Bush 41 or 43, or Chris Christi because when compressed onto a straight line, they appear to be in the middle. But on the 2-d graph, they're more to the right, and towards totalitarian. The civil rights movement was individualistic in nature, yet it was a "progressive" movement. Collectivists have since essentially stolen it and appended collectivist elements to it, such as positive rights.
Politics are a complicated enterprise, and we keep trying to pigeon hole each others' political philosophies into manageable constructs like the left/right line. It helps us to separate "us" from "them" and to label "us" and "them". And we find reasons to accept "us" and reject "them". Sometimes that's appropriate. But the Libertarians are the logical extreme of that. They try to so accurately define themselves that they end up alone. But since reality is what it is, and not the one-dimensional line we imagine, we need to form alliances with others who share a closer political proximity to where our point in political space is, to have enough power to make a difference. Some people call that compromise.
