좌 · 우파의 이분법적 구분의 상대성

Relativity of the dichotomous bisection between the left and the right

The defining historical events that caused the political division of leftism and rightism are, as well known, the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the French Revolution in 1788, the publication of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in 1848, the Bolshevic Revolution in 1917. Then the social democratic political movements in the early 1900s, and the collapse of communist hegemony in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the former USSR, and lastly the appearance of "the Third Way" in the late 20th century followed the way. Yet the dichotomous bisection between the two political leanings is not as strong as it might seem, since the contents of ideologies, being far from being absolute and final, have different assessments and implementation in the course of history. This paper examines the Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, Marxism, social democracy, liberalism and protectionism in trade, the ideas of equality and freedom, and nationalism, and tries to identify the ideological cleavages and differences between the rightist and leftist ideology, and traces the way how the two opposing ideas became to mirror each other and mixed together. The political opposition between Catholics and Protestants provided the very first identifying criterion for the leftist/rightist division in and out of religious domain. Since the publication of the Manifesto, however, the reigning criterion became theism/atheism. On the other hand, the social democratic movements in the early 20th century Europe, and the liberalist, reftist theologians' activities in South America in the middle of last century attenuated the ideological gap in religion. The French Revolution defined what was meant by "leftist" and "rightist" with whether to advocate the old regime or rebel against it. But after the revolutionaries abrogated absolute monarchy and feudalism, and established a republic, the achieved goals could not be viable criteria any more. Now, whether to revolutionize existing regimes and social arrangements, or to advocate traditions could be alternatively articulated in terms of progresivism and conservativism. Until the early 19th century, French Revolution's spirit of equality and freedom represented the leftist ideology. Yet, from the early 20th century, the value of equality became more of the leftist's voice, whereas freedom that of the rightist. Liberalism and protectionism in trade was the bequest of the mid 19th century when radical leftists/prestigious rightists division arose, whereas Neo-liberalism (Globalization) and the advocates of localism and anti-globalization, each conversely being rightists and leftists are the legacy of the late 20th century. The ideology of nationalism, also, belonged to the leftist wing in the early 19th century, but the late 19th centry represents the idea of the rightist wing. The values and contents of the leftist and the rightist are not absolute, but historical and relative in character. During the French Revolution, the diverse political factions found expressions in Royalists, Constitutional Monarchicists, Republicans. The latter two can both be classified as the leftists, but to put it more succinctly, only the republicans can be properly counted as the leftist, while the constitutional monarchicists more like the rightist. Since Lenin's establishment of Commintern in 1919, communists (Marx-Leninist) got drawn closer to the leftist wing than social democratic political movements did. And the latter were more obviously rightist than communists were. This shows that the constitutive ideological contents of the leftist and the rightist wings are not mutually exclusive. "The Third way" in the late 20th century makes it even more difficult to find opposition between Western leftism/rightism. Only extremists will be the exception.