Left Wing/ Right Wing Rulers?

[A Random Person]

I researched about the definitions of right wing and left wing but I'm still very confused as to how you would determine whether rulers like Stalin/Mussolini/Hitler are left wing or right? Thanks!!!

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to be asking.

[bomaha]

I researched about the definitions of right wing and left wing but I'm still very confused as to how you would determine whether rulers like Stalin/Mussolini/Hitler are left wing or right? Thanks!!!

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to be asking.

Mussollini and Hitler are "right-wing" extremists. However, Stalin is considered to be a left wing totalitarian leader.

Read this: http://www.remember.org/guide/Facts.root.nazi.html

You'll get your answer and more.

[Slovakov]

Right-wing rulers are usually nationalists, often connected with religion in a way, whereas the left-wing ones are simply communists. Of course not always so extreme, but generally they stem from the working class and base on the support of working calss, while right-winged leaders originated from higher classes.

[Proletariat]

When you talk about economic Right/Left, you're essentially talking about the extent of the role government plays in the economy. The far-right advocate extremely limited role of government, while the far-left believe the government should control the entire economy.

When you talk about social Right/Left, you're talking about societal progress. The far-right typically want to roll back the clock in a sense, perhaps return the society to a previous time from the perspective of moral and social issues. The far-left, of course, want extreme and rapid societal change.

Mussolini and Hitler are classified as far-right because of their Nationalist policies. Nationalism in the 20th/21st centuries is a regressive policy, since it is tied to traditional and perhaps religious values. However, Nationalism in the 19th century would have been seen as quite liberal when compared to the Monarchists that pre-dated it.

Stalin is classified as far-left because of his position on Communism. As mentioned above, Communism brought the entire economy of the Soviet Union under the government's control. Communism was also an extremely huge jump from the monarchist system that Russia was operating under, which is why Communism was seen as such a radical societal change.

What trips up some students is that all three leaders, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, are totalitarian dictators. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that politics is really a lot more complex than the one-dimensional right/left scale that one first learns. They are all total Collectivists when measuring individualism/collectivism, but the huge differences in other areas mentioned above really Stalin quite different from the other two.

[Drake Glau]

Just to stress something semi-related to this. LEARN THIS DIFFERENCE. Your paper2 question will say blahblahblah and refer to left or right spectrum allowing you to pick a leader to write about. However you need to make sure you pick a right wing leader if it says right wing and not confuse the two and completely miss the question because you didn't answer it.

[bad1-992]

Right-wing rulers are usually nationalists, often connected with religion in a way, whereas the left-wing ones are simply communists. Of course not always so extreme, but generally they stem from the working class and base on the support of working calss, while right-winged leaders originated from higher classes.

I don't agree, left-wing leaders are often very well read (university educated) and come from relatively high class families, you shouldn't use the fact that they come from a poor background in an essay as it is often not the case.

[Proletariat]

For the record, most world leaders are pretty well educated, regardless of ideology and historical period.

I think Slovakov is trying to say that the left has traditionally enjoyed support from the working class, while the right is highly popular with businesses and corporations. This of course is a severe over-simplification, since it only looks at a one-dimensional political spectrum of economics, although not inaccurate.

[An Almost Graduate]

I researched about the definitions of right wing and left wing but I'm still very confused as to how you would determine whether rulers like Stalin/Mussolini/Hitler are left wing or right? Thanks!!!

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to be asking.

Stalin by all accounts is left-wing.

Many people say that Hitler and Mussolini were right-wing. It's funny how people come to believe a myth like that when it is repeated so often. In reality, Hitler and Mussolini were left-wing. They knew economic equality would be deadly, so they developed a hierarchy of authority, which was enforced through violence. However, they stood for full employment, state ownership, massive regulations, and government intervention.

I guess they're right-wing compared to Stalin, but compared to the current rulers of Germany and Italy, they are VERY left-wing.

[Proletariat]

I researched about the definitions of right wing and left wing but I'm still very confused as to how you would determine whether rulers like Stalin/Mussolini/Hitler are left wing or right? Thanks!!!

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to be asking.

Stalin by all accounts is left-wing.

Many people say that Hitler and Mussolini were right-wing. It's funny how people come to believe a myth like that when it is repeated so often. In reality, Hitler and Mussolini were left-wing. They knew economic equality would be deadly, so they developed a hierarchy of authority, which was enforced through violence. However, they stood for full employment, state ownership, massive regulations, and government intervention.

I guess they're right-wing compared to Stalin, but compared to the current rulers of Germany and Italy, they are VERY left-wing.

It's ironic that you should make such erroneous statements with such bravado and self-assuredness. You do realize that political spectrums are not just about economics? I'm pretty sure that I've said the exact same thing in this exact same thread above, but for your benefit and the other students that your post stands to mislead, I'll say it again:

Economic fascism is a centrist policy, or what fascists themselves like to call "the third way." It combines private enterprise with state direction, meaning it's equally a rejection of the free market as it is of communism. For example, Hitler interferred in large ways in the macroeconomics of Germany through debt flotation, the removal of the Reichsmark from the Gold Standard, and the massive deficits created to sustain public works projects, but he allowed the maintenance of private enterprise; instead of nationalizing all the heavy industries as Stalin and communist regimes would do, he instead implemented state contracts along with heavy profit taxes to encourage these companies to take them. So you are right that, economically, fascists are left of modern economics, largely because of the global shift towards market-economics in the 70s following the rejection of Keynesian economics and the rise of the Chicago school of thought.

Where you are oh so terribly wrong is in the social scale of politics, the one that is defined by individualism vs. collectivism. On that spectrum, Hitler is right up there rubbing shoulders with Stalin, because both instigated totalitarian regimes that advocated for the collective good of the nation while undermining individual rights. In addition, fascism is characterized by ultra-nationalism; everyone knows about Hitler's aryan Reich and the policies he pursued to achieve it (T4 euthanasia, Nuremberg, etc) but Mussolini also was enamoured with the idea of a glorified Italy. What cements fascism as the ultimate reactionary ideology is when you look at what each strove to be: von Metternich in the early 19th century had just wanted a return to Monarchy, which at the time was more or less turning back the clock 50 years to pre-Revolution periods, and everyone considers him to be very reactionary; Hitler wanted the glorified Germany of the pre-unification German philosophers, the Germany of Wagner's music, a leap of at least two centuries, and Mussolini wanted to re-create the Mediterranean Roman Empire, which is turning back the clock for millenniums.

I really cannot understand how anyone would say Fascism is anything but an extreme right-wing ideology, unless they've never heard of the Holocaust. If you define fascism as anything but that in any social/history/politics course from now until graduate-level studies you will be mocked, then failed. Even arguing on the economics of fascism alone, it is nigh impossible to define it as a completely left-wing ideology. Fascists themselves reject that classification, as most poli sci proffs, on the grounds I briefly outlined above. It is left of the current economies of those respective nations (although saying "VERY left" is rather a stretch), but by the same definition so would be FDR, along with every single European nation following WWII (with the exception of Luxembourg? I don't know the history of Luxembourg >_>) The way that you are defining what is left-wing and what is right-wing is arbitrarily jumping across vast swaths of time, and if an IB student who knows nothing about politics follows your definition, they're going to get into a lot of trouble on their exams.

If you use Hitler on a P2/P3 essay asking for left-wing rulers, you're going to fail that paper.

[daxx]

I researched about the definitions of right wing and left wing but I'm still very confused as to how you would determine whether rulers like Stalin/Mussolini/Hitler are left wing or right? Thanks!!!

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to be asking.

Stalin by all accounts is left-wing.

Many people say that Hitler and Mussolini were right-wing. It's funny how people come to believe a myth like that when it is repeated so often. In reality, Hitler and Mussolini were left-wing. They knew economic equality would be deadly, so they developed a hierarchy of authority, which was enforced through violence. However, they stood for full employment, state ownership, massive regulations, and government intervention.

I guess they're right-wing compared to Stalin, but compared to the current rulers of Germany and Italy, they are VERY left-wing.

I don't want to sound rude, but Seriously?

Although the Nazis certainly employed some 'populist' rhetoric, their economic policies for the most part supported big buisiness. While they did centralize heavy industry, they still enabled the heads of corporations to maintain their autonomy as well as enjoy big profits from remilitirization. The Nazis economic policies were 'wishy-washy' at best, and there's definitely an arguement that Hitler did not care about economic policies provided he could attain his nationalist and military goals.

He also quickly purged the 'populist' faction of the party (SA) only a year after gaining power.

Hitler was certainly right-wing.

[SuperFrench]

It might settle the debate to state that simply classifying political ideologies on a left / right scale is fundamentally simplistic.

It is much more appropriate to plot leaders and ideologies on a left / right axis symbolizing the economical control, and an up / down axis symbolizing the liberties.

It is much easier to visualize it as such:

http://www.educationforum.co.uk/sociology_2/Political_chart.jpg

Then you end up with both Hitler and Stalin at the top of control over the liberties (thus at the highest point in the vertical axis), Stalin at the uttermost left, and hitler at the center, due to his well known social economics (benefits to large families, protectionist policies, etc...)

Just my two cent...

[Hexa]

That's a very simplistic way to look at things, but since the IB exams unfortunately do use this terminology, the closer you get to the left, the more liberal you get, and the more communist you get. The more right you get, the more conservative you get, and the more fascist you get.

This is a very simple way of looking at a very complex problem, but it should be enough to understand the questions on the exams.

This is basically what my teacher told us, because he too didn't like using this terminology, but it was on the exam last year, and several of his students wrote about Stalin, Mao, etc. when they were asking for right wing leaders.

Edited September 14, 2011 by Hexa

[Haari]

Just wanted to let you know, it's not a stupid question to be asking because I didn't know either, and I'm predicted a 7!

Thank you so much for asking, reading this thread has saved my life!