Right Left And The Autonomy Of Politics In The Face Of The Economy
The distinction between right and left should not be reduced to a banal opposition of electoral programs, but should be understood as the expression of two different ways of conceiving man, society, and historical time. These are two political and cultural paradigms that, while transforming over the centuries, continue to represent the fundamental poles of public debate.
Reviewed by Beatrice
17. August 2025
The distinction between right and left ultimately comes down to a different assessment of the principle of equality.
— Norberto Bobbio
— Norberto Bobbio
To explain what it means to be on the right or the left, it is necessary to distinguish between the historical and the current level, because the meanings have changed over time.
Historical Origin
- The term emerged after the French Revolution: in the Assembly, those who sat on the left supported radical change, equality, and the expansion of rights; those on the right defended the existing order, the monarchy, and tradition.
In General Terms
The distinction between right and left should not be reduced to a banal opposition of electoral programs, but should be understood as the expression of two different ways of conceiving man, society, and historical time. These are two political and cultural paradigms that, while transforming over the centuries, continue to represent the fundamental poles of public debate.
The distinction between right and left should not be reduced to a banal opposition of electoral programs, but should be understood as the expression of two different ways of conceiving man, society, and historical time. These are two political and cultural paradigms that, while transforming over the centuries, continue to represent the fundamental poles of public debate.
The left arises from an emancipatory impulse: it sees social and economic structures as the source of inequality and believes that the role of politics is to intervene to correct them. Its idea of freedom is never purely individual but collective: no one is truly free if material conditions deny others the same opportunities. Hence the focus on redistribution, social rights, universal access to education, healthcare, and employment. The horizon is the future, transformation, the possibility that the given order can be questioned to open spaces for greater justice. In this vision, we recognize the legacy of Marx, who saw history as class struggle and a process of emancipation, but also thinkers such as Norberto Bobbio, who clearly distinguished the left as the “side of equality” opposed to the right as the “side of inequality.”
The right, by contrast, starts from a trust in differences as constitutive elements of social life. Hierarchies, merit, and traditions are not necessarily injustices but often the foundation of cohesion and stability. In this view, freedom is primarily individual responsibility, the exercise of one’s autonomy without excessive interference from the state. Absolute equality is considered a dangerous abstraction that risks leveling and stifling talent. Its temporal horizon is continuity: preserving what has ensured survival, identity, and roots. Here we find references to Edmund Burke, father of conservative thought, who saw tradition as a form of accumulated wisdom, and to Carl Schmitt, who identified the defense of order and community identity as the heart of politics.
These two political stances imply a different conception of the relationship between the individual and the community. The left sees the individual as a social being, who finds fulfillment only within a network of shared rights. The right sees the individual as an autonomous person, bearer of duties and responsibilities that precede any claim for redistribution. This leads to two fundamental ethics:
- The ethics of the left is the ethics of solidarity. It insists on the moral duty to reduce injustice and to offer everyone the opportunity to develop their potential. It is a universalist perspective that questions privileges and borders and views humanity as a community of destiny.
- The ethics of the right is the ethics of responsibility and continuity. It emphasizes the value of rootedness, merit, personal sacrifice, and the defense of cultural identities. It is a particularist perspective, focusing on belonging, the transmission of values, and order as a condition of freedom.
- For the right, responsibility is primarily individual: the individual must answer for their choices, take the risks of their actions, and provide for themselves and their primary community (family, nation). Here the ethic emphasizes autonomy, merit, and personal duty. Responsibility is, so to speak, centripetal, directed toward what is near, immediate, and rooted.
- For the left, responsibility is understood in a collective and social sense: one cannot claim to be responsible if others are left to live in conditions of deprivation or injustice. The individual is responsible not only for themselves but for the society in which they live, and even for future generations. This is the responsibility that emerges, for example, in authors such as Karl Marx (toward the oppressed class) or in Hans Jonas with his “principle of responsibility” applied to ecology and humanity as a whole. Here, the ethic is centrifugal: it extends beyond the self, including the neighbor, the different, the stranger.
In Brief:
- The right emphasizes personal responsibility: “Everyone is responsible for themselves and their own destiny.”
- The left emphasizes social responsibility: “We are responsible for one another.”
Both are forms of the ethics of responsibility but applied to different spheres — one more rooted in proximity and personal duty, the other in justice and universal solidarity.
Today, in a complex and globalized world, these categories intersect: right-wing parties claim social protection, left-wing parties accept the competitive market. Yet the tension between the two remains alive because it expresses an anthropological conflict even before a political one: on the one hand, the hope to transform the world in the name of justice; on the other, the desire to preserve what already gives meaning and cohesion to common life.
As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, democracy thrives on the balance between equality and freedom, between passion for the new and respect for tradition. It is this dialectic, more than the definitive victory of one pole over the other, that constitutes the heart of politics.
In this sense, right and left are not merely historical labels but represent two complementary forces, always in dialectic. One reminds us that nothing is immutable and that the future can be more just; the other, that the fragility of human order requires roots and continuity. Their conflict, far from being an anomaly, is what keeps politics alive as a space of choice and collective responsibility.
1. The Autonomy of Politics in the Face of the Economy Today
Today we live in a context where the global economy — financial markets, large multinational corporations, supply chains, artificial intelligence, network technologies — strongly limits the autonomy of national politics. Government decisions are often conditioned by:
- the pressure of financial markets (spreads, ratings, mobile capital);
- fiscal and productive competition between countries;
- the rules of supranational institutions (EU, WTO, IMF);
- new technologies that escape the control of individual states.
In other words, politics no longer enjoys the same degree of sovereignty it had in the postwar decades when the nation-state was the almost exclusive center of decision-making. Globalization has shifted the balance toward an economy that appears more “autonomous” relative to democratic power.
2. The Position of the Right
The right tends to interpret this condition in two possible ways, often coexisting but sometimes in tension:
- Liberal line: accepting the primacy of the global economy and favoring the free market, reducing state intervention to better compete internationally. Here, politics must adapt and not obstruct capital and investment flows.
- Sovereigntist line: asserting the primacy of politics against globalization, defending economic sovereignty, and protecting national production through tariffs, incentives, and industrial policies. Here, the economy must once again be subordinated to political decision-making, even at the cost of conflicts with international rules.
3. The Position of the Left
The left, also with varying nuances, moves along two lines:
- Social-democratic reformist line: accepting global interdependence but regulating it through stronger and more democratic supranational institutions (EU, UN, multilateral organizations). The goal is to make the economy compatible with social rights, decent work, and welfare.
- Radical/critical line: questioning whether politics can still be “autonomous” within global capitalism and proposing a more radical transformation (new forms of democratic control over the economy, reduction of market power, post-capitalist experiments).
4. Philosophical-Ethical Node
The real division is not between those on the right and those on the left, but between those who think and those who do not.
— Umberto Eco
— Umberto Eco
The fundamental question is: who truly decides our future?
- If the economy prevails, democracy risks being reduced to an administrative margin, incapable of addressing inequality, environmental emergencies, and exploitation.
- If politics prevails, there is a risk of falling into excessive protectionism or nationalism that reduces global cooperation.
In this sense, right and left interpret the relationship between politics and economy differently:
- The right often sees market freedom as the natural space for growth and individual responsibility, but at the same time, in some forms, asserts the political community’s right to protect itself.
- The left sees the global economy as a risk of inequality and exploitation and proposes to “domesticate” it through rules and institutions or even to overcome it with alternative models.
In summary: today, the autonomy of politics is limited, but the difference between right and left lies precisely in how each accepts or challenges this dominance: the right tends to integrate or react by defending the particular (nation, identity, free market); the left tends to regulate or transform, seeking a more universal dimension of justice and sustainability.
I am against the right and against the left because both have betrayed their origin.
— Pier Paolo Pasolini
— Pier Paolo Pasolini