4 The rise of the modern state

system (1776–1945)

The opposition between the left and the right did not emerge spon-
taneously. The debate as we know it took shape gradually, out of the
protracted conflict over the construction of the modern state system.
With the rise of liberalism, a world of overlapping hierarchies was
gradually challenged by a new one defined by the intrinsic equality of
all able-bodied adult men. Disagreements about the exact meaning of
this newly affirmed common citizenship were unavoidable, however,
and they became inherent in most, if not all, public deliberations.
This chapter retraces the evolution of the opposition between the
left and the right over the period between the American Revolution in
1776 and the end of the Second World War in 1945. In this long era of
transition, the modern state as we know it, a legitimate bureaucratic
and political apparatus presiding over a relatively vast territory, came
into being. So did the modern state system, conceived as an inter-
national arrangement of stable relationships between sovereign units.
The period encompassed here is rich in events which obviously cannot
be analyzed in any exhaustive manner. Our aim is simply to offer a
better understanding of the ubiquity of left–right debates, by showing
how they shaped political views over a range of critical questions
across the world. Four themes, central to this period when the modern
state and state system were built, are considered: democracy, peace
and war, capitalism and socialism, and the colonial enterprise.
The first theme concerns democracy. Long despised as an unwork-
able and dangerous political regime, the rule of the people became a
powerful rallying cry in the wake of the American and French Revo-
lutions, at the end of the eighteenth century. How this new political
system would be organized remained, however, far from clear. Con-
flicts, revolutions, and counter-revolutions gradually determined the
institutional contours of democracy in the Western world. At the
same time, ongoing debates defined two sides: one continued to
privilege hierarchy and order; the other put more faith in equality and

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