Who has hegemony, the right or left?

My pal Luke and I were recently arguing at the bus stop about which political ideology has a stronger stranglehold on society — that of the right or left.

Now Luke is some sort of socialist hipster grad student, so naturally it was his position that the unquestioned dominance and celebration of the capitalist system in modern Canada — even among nominally left-wing political parties — proves that we are living under a right-wing hegemony. I, in contrast, being an anti-elitist social conservative apologist, argued that social policy was much more powerful than economic policy in shaping modern society, and in this realm, liberals unquestionably held hegemonic control.

It’s a back-and-forth argument that I’m sure you’ve heard a lot, though not often in the mainstream media, which tends to shy away from philosophical chatter of this sort. Luke later emailed me his critique in more elaborate detail, and I sent a reply of my own, which you can read below. Who makes a stronger case?

Luke says:

In regards to our previous discussion, I read this today, and I think it sums up why I don’t think you can say the hegemonic order is currently owned by the left:

“[Slavoj] Zizek makes a similar point about the difference between the political left and right. It is not just that they disagree about this or that particular point but about the whole terrain of politics. This is why he argues the idea of the ‘middle ground’ or ‘Third Way,’ which has been advocated by leaders of the political left such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton is the death-knell of politics. The ‘Third Way’ is an acceptance by the left of the first principle of the right, i.e. the necessity of capitalism. It is not a neutral form of politics, mediating between left and right; it is, for Zizek, simply right wing politics.”

Obviously, you contend that the social — those particular points mentioned above — is more determinant than the material, but I think you’re wrong. What ‘the right’ has done is act as if they are under seige on those particular social points precisely so that no one questions the bigger material picture. And the failure of the left has been to accept this shift and agree to delineate themselves on issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, and — rarely, if ever — the best form capitalism should take. The fact that the term ’social conservative’ is considered a political stance is evidence that the political has been shifted towards issues that can be freely contested without challenging the status of elites.

Which brings me to my second point: the elites themselves. I find it difficult to argue that the social realm holds greater significance than the material/economic realm in a world where vast differences of opinion about social issues exists among the elites themselves. Those who hold power — in any exercisable form — may be pro-life or pro-choice, black, white, brown, Muslim, Christian, gay, straight, racist, tolerant, etc., but they are all united in their belief in capitalism.

I guess the point is that if you want to see what structures really matter in how we shape our reality, you’re better off looking at what isn’t being contested, rather than what is. That’s the truth behind hegemony…

As well, social issues fail to cut across cultural lines, and can therefore not be said to be as effective an ideology as materialism. So, sure… maybe there is a hegemony of the liberal left at play in the social realm in France, or Canada, or America, but the global hegemony is undeniably capitalism, and only capitalism.

I know you argue that capitalism is not necessarily the sole domain of the right. And in some ways, this can be true, but only in a world where capitalism reigns unchallenged and the left and right must be content to duke it out over particular points. Thus, those who espouse the notion that capitalism exists outside of hegemony and ideology are — in reality — espousing the very hegemony and ideology they claim does not exist.

J.J. replies:

It’s important to concede that we don’t live in a “pure” capitalist economy any more than the USSR or whatever was a “pure” socialist economy. It’s true that the capitalist system is distorted less and less by explicitly leftist economic policies than ever before (ie; the decline of things like price controls and high corporate taxes) but it is still severely distorted by liberal social policies. So in many ways, the style of capitalism we practice today is heavily colored by the social-liberal ideological hegemony, even if no one is contesting the overall legitimacy of capitalism in the abstract.

For example, things like blind immigration (especially refugee and family-unification based immigration), national bilingualism, regional transfer payments, politically-expedient public sector jobs (and their unionization), environmentalism, and various nationalistic/patriotic/protectionist initiatives to defend “Canadian culture,” are all manifestations in which capitalist common-sense is directly subjugated and distorted by a need to serve the social-liberal ideological goals. (And that’s without even broaching the more brazenly socialistic relics of the left-wing welfare state).

So, in many ways, the style of capitalism we practice today is just as much an extension of liberal social theory as it is an extension of right-wing economics. The fact that leftist economic theory has lost relevance I believe has more to do with general left-wing incompetence in this field, and their persistent inability to provide a clear and viable alternative. Leftists are much more skilled in the realm of social policy construction; and indeed, the pervasive influence of liberal social thinking in the management of the modern capitalist economy has gone a long way towards eliminating the need for a workable leftist economic model altogether.

I would also contest your point that “vast differences of opinion about social issues exists among the elites themselves.” These days, the way you achieve power in our society is largely through “qualification,” which usually means education. And the modern education system, is, without fail, almost exclusively devoted to imposing a sort of class-conscious goodthink upon students, a key element of which is the understanding that social conservatism is a mark of the ignorant, uneducated, and socially immobile. So elite consensus is established among the vast majority of members of what conservatives sometimes call the “new class,” the subset of people in our society trained to be social leaders through educational qualification, such as journalists, lawyers, academics, bureaucrats, politicians, and (significantly) business leaders and economists. Socially conservative politicians and populist media types sometimes make it through, but mainstream elite opinion almost always considers their existence a blight, and evidence that there is “still much to be done” in terms of imposing the correct ideological hegemony on society.

Leftists will argue that the mere survival of our capitalist economy presupposes that all politics, aside from those aggressively devoted to destroying the system, will be “right wing” in some form. But there are lots of people on the right who would say the dominance of liberal social values in all realms of journalism, education, organized labor, popular culture, the therapy industry, and public sector, and the persuasive, deeply-entrenched influence of these social values on the capitalist system, guarantees that all modern politics will be “left-wing” in some way.

There is a very good book about this kind of stuff called The Closing of the American Mind written by a socially conservative American author named Allan Bloom. One of his points is that liberal cultural hegemony has stigmatized legitimate conservatism to the point where the only acceptable way to be anti-left in this day and age is to be some sort of libertarian. And libertarianism, he says, because of its complete indifference to social policy and cultural questions, is basically just the “left-wing form of right-wing politics.”

The very fact that the only way many leftists are capable of discussing conservatism is via a materialistic critique of radical, free-market capitalism (which is not our system, anyway) is in itself a symptom of liberal success. The left-wing criteria required to concede the mere existence of leftism in our society is set so irrationally and impossibly high, with the knowledge that this standard helps mask the prevalence of a much more powerful, thriving left-wing hegemony.