been able yet to solve the heated controversy over the right- or left-
wing character of Nutella!^59
On one side, then, we have the right, which is pessimistic about
human nature, sees life as a tough competition among individuals,
seeks security against the ever-present possibility of violence, and
defines equality in terms of personal rights. On the other side is the
left, which is more optimistic about humanity, considers that com-
munities can successfully cooperate, wants the state to protect people
against social risks, and hopes to achieve what it sees as real equality.
Expectations differ accordingly. Given its pessimistic outlook on
human motivations and collective potential, the right tends to be
satisfied with the state of the world. Considering where we started and
where we could be, possibly back in a Hobbesian state of nature, life
is not so bad after all. In any case, trying collectively to do too much is
likely to fail and to create, in the process, all kinds of “perverse
effects.”^60 At the end of the 1980s, American economist John Kenneth
Galbraith described his country, governed for a decade by the right, as
driven by a “culture of contentment.”^61 The left, on the contrary, is
ever unsatisfied, even when it is in power. Confident in the potential of
all human beings and in our societies’ capacity to transform them-
selves for the better, leftists tend to find progress too timid and too
slow. This is why the adjective “critical” is often understood as just
another word for left.
What about authority? Many authors argue that, being more con-
cerned by violence and insecurity and more positive about hierarchies
based on merit, the right is also more likely to be authoritarian than
the left.^62 Favorable to discipline and law and order, the right would
be more tolerant of strong leaders. This may be true, but one should
recognize that authoritarian, even violent, tendencies also exist on the
left, as the history of communism makes perfectly clear. The cleavage
over authority is simply not the decisive one.
(^59) E ́ric Jozsef, “De gauche ou de droite, le Nutella?,”Le Devoir(Montre ́al),
60 February 4, 2005, p. A1.
Albert O. Hirschman,The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy,
61 Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1991.
John Kenneth Galbraith,The Culture of Contentment, Boston, Houghton
62 Mifflin, 1992.
See Roger Eatwell, “The Rise of ‘Left–right’ Terminology: The Confusions of
Social Science,” in Eatwell and O’Sullivan (eds.),The Nature of the Right,
pp. 51–52.
24 Left and Right in Global Politics