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While it is indeed true that progress is an ideal dear to most people on the left, Weißmann does not say how the right, or those said to be on the right, themselves evaluate progress. This is regrettable, for different perceptions of what progress means is arguably characteristic of underlying differences between right and left world views. The right tends to be more skeptical of the notion that progress is desirable in itself. René Guénon described the idealization of progress as a hallmark of modernity and an ideological illusion. Conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk (not mentioned in Weißmann’s book) stress the importance of always placing progress in a specific and well-defined context.
Weißmann offers the work of the conservative writer, Roger Scruton, to serve as a contrast to Bobbio’s book. Scruton laid out an undogmatic and modest view of conservatism in How to be a Conservative. For Scruton, no individual or political group of individuals grasps reality in its entirety, and every political ideology contains valid insights. Scruton welcomed an interplay of different political beliefs as creative. He urged tolerance for different political world views because he believed that debate made it possible for true elements in different world views to become apparent. Scruton believed that the interplay of ideas enhances wisdom and refines the art of political decision making. Weißmann then concludes his introduction by stating that his approach is “marked by the historian’s method” and promises that Right or Left will “test the significance and resilience of the terms left and right.”
The chapter after the introduction is called German Prelude: What’s right, What’s left? It begins with a blunt assertion:
The last serious attempt to clarify the meaning of the terms left and right was undertaken by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the beginning of the 1990s.
The newspaper invited politicians, scientists and journalists to respond to the question What’s Left? (What’s Left? in English, and the pun intended.) Weißmann was invited to an exchange of ideas by the then editor, who subsequently invited him to provide a follow up survey called “What’s Right”? In What’s Right? Weißmann argued that the New Right in Germany was not a conspiracy, as the left maintained (and still maintains), but a quest to restore normality to the German republic in the period following German reunification.
The chapter continues with a review of diverse writers and journalists, the great majority of them German. It ends with a point made by Panajotis Kondylis in the wordily titled Der Niedergang der bürgerlichen Denk und Lebensform. Die liberale Moderne und die massendemokratische Postmoderne (The Decline of the middle class way of thinking and way of life. Liberal modernism and the mass democracy of post-modernism). The point, which was made by many writers before Kondylis (Jean-Claude Michéa for example) is that the modern left, or what today would be called “woke” left, is not opposed to modern capitalism, but supportive of it. Its mission is to destabilize the points of attraction which work as a counter force to the expansion of a global economy, for example direct democracy, national autonomy, the nuclear family and other examples of cultural, racial or social identity. It has long been an argument of the French “New Right” that the global market economy benefits from the erosion of such identities.
In the broad sense of the term “socialism”, a modern left which acts in this way might be described as non-socialist, (and non-left?) because it has adopted the cause of minorities and neglects, even scorns, the left’s traditional base: those who are weak and most vulnerable to exploitation by capital. Might this be an analysis shared by people on both the left and right, one which cuts across right-left divides and invalidates them? David Goodhart’s “people from somewhere” versus the “people from anywhere”?
It might be argued in reply, that a deconstruction of the political left, the argument that the left in the twenty-first century is loyal to the globalist system and has thereby abandoned its defining revolutionary mission, is itself a characteristically “right” critique. Is the left which interpreted social phenomena in terms of class struggle, dialectical materialism, and anti-capitalism different in essence to the modern left of minority rights, or does “left” remain “left”, only manifesting itself differently under changing economic and social circumstances? To what extent has modern society realized the aspiration of the left? Are left or right definable terms, defined through the fulfillment of certain objective criteria or are they subjective terms, dependent on how they are perceived? The latter question may also be put in relation to other terms reflecting allegiance and belief, for example, “terrorist” or “racist” . If someone is accused of being x and denies it, should we not first seek to establish whether accuser and accused are at least on the same page? Do they agree on the definition of x in the first place? What does the radical shift in the socio-economic categories now associated with left and right mean for the validity of a right-left polarity? These questions are essential to a debate on the validity of the terms “right” and “left” today, yet Weißmann ignores them all.
In the third chapter of the book titled Weltanschauung (world view) the reader might expect a review of psychological and sociological interpretations of right and left, that is to say analyses based on the belief that there is an inherent disposition for certain human groups, biological or sociological, to adhere to certain views of the world which are believed to be characteristically left or right-wing. Such a psychological review is not provided. Instead, the chapter begins as a continuation of the observation based on the history of the post-war West German republic that opposition has moved from “left versus right” to “democratic versus anti-democratic.” The current political polarity of friend and foe acknowledged in society, or at least propagated by the political mainstream, is between upholders of the democratic consensus (“our democracy”) and the enemies of that consensus (the mob, the populace, the poorly educated, the negative, the abusive, the conspiracy theorists).
As an example of a political polarity which might be dubbed “our democracy versus the unenlightened”, Weißmann quotes from a book published under the name of the president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (“probably written by a ghost writer” opines Weißmann) which stresses “the need for the majority to identify with our We (sic) and to do so by supporting robust institutions to defend the liberal democracy of emancipated citizens against its foes.”
Weißmann writes,
The polarity of left and right is not apparent here, or at best in a concealed form, where the writer conjures up a right-wing danger in the form of populism, extremism, terrorism, a danger which is posed to the consensus of the democratic center, which is in fact left-wing[…]The opposition between left and right appears in Steinmeier’s book only indirectly, presented as the consensus of the democratic middle,which middle is left-wing, and the (right-wing) danger of populism, extremism, terrorism.
For the “defenders of our democracy” disruption, anti-social discord, social division, negativity and hate is caused by anti-constitutional and anti-establishment hostility towards a centrist democratic consensus. The switch from “left versus right” to “democracy versus hate” is recent but far reaching. Are the defenders of the status quo now “left” and the rebellious and underprivileged “right”? In this simple paradigm, the “left” (now increasingly called “center”) believes it is synonymous with legitimate politics. It anathematizes those opposed to it.
Weißmann returns to the idea of the creative power of the dialectic, in this case of dissent versus consensus in human society, citing Georg Simmel and Immanuel Kant’s paradox of ungesellige Geselligkeit (unsociable sociability) which Weißmann unfortunately misquotes as gesellige Ungeselligkeit, (sociable unsociability). Weißmann points out that when under threat, liberal democracy will take very “illiberal” measures to defend itself, drifting away from accepting “unsociable sociability” towards an exclusive world view. For Weißmann this is an ominous trend. He warns,
The secessio plebis [recourse to the will of the people] makes it clear how necessary but also how vulnerable the solidarity of any human community actually is. It will never reach the unquestioned coherence of a termite state or a wolf pack, because man, unlike the animal, can decide against the community.”
The traditional liberal argument is however that the totalitarian temptation is to challenge the “never.” Does Weißmann believe that there is something inherently human which is guaranteed to prevent the complete totalitarian state from being realized? And does he think that man is not an animal because man can “decide against the community”?
An example Weißmann could have given of the democratic consensus lauded in Steinmeier’s book acting very illiberally is that of Michael Ballweg, the leader and organizer in Germany of mass protests against the covid lockdowns. “Legitimate” political opinion and legacy media condemned Ballweg on two counts, firstly for organizing anti-consensus demonstrations against covid policies at all, and secondly for not excluding right-wing groups from them. Ballweg was subjected to a house search and confiscation of goods, endured forty days of trial and nine months imprisonment on grounds of embezzlement and tax evasion (a familiar charge against government opponents when authorities do not wish to be seen to be acting politically) before his sentencing was finally overturned on appeal.
In Weißmann’s view, the left in Germany is striving to become not simply a school of thought or creator of a political agenda, but the voice of fundamental legitimacy in society, thereby taking the first steps towards a totalitarian dispensation.