Originally posted by Starlight
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Politics is about power, and who has it and who doesn't. The left-wing view is that power should generally be equally distributed among all, any natural or unnatural inequalities of power should be removed in order that and all should be able to exercise equally power in own lives, their own decisions, and in their workplaces and government. The right-wing view is that hierarchies naturally arise, and inequalities of power are to be entrenched rather than opposed.
Examples of these power inequalities and hierarchies, are the Great Chain of Being where God is above the angels, who are above man, who is above the animals etc; a household where the man is the head of the family; a workplace where the CEO gives orders to the managers below him who give orders to the workers below them; an army where the general gives orders to the officers who give orders to the soldiers; a church where the priest tells the flock what the will of God is regarding how they are commanded to live their lives; a plantation where the slave owner orders the slaves around; a marketplace where a rich man can buy much and a poor man nothing; a King giving commands to his Lords and a Lord giving commands to his serfs etc.
The historical origin of the "left" and "right" terminology was the French parliament where the rich aristocracy and the church who commanded the economic and moral lives of the commoner were on the "right" and the representatives of the commoners were on the "left": Hierarchical power vs power distributed among the people. The same pattern plays out today in politics little differently. The rich and and those of the religious who want to order others to follow their religious morals group together on the 'right', with the common masses on the 'left'. The right still wants to keep entrenched hierarchies of rich-poor, white-black, male-female, while the left pushes to break those hierarchies and distribute equal power to the previously-powerless group in each hierarchy. So the left pushes to reduce the economic power differential between rich and poor; pushes to let every woman have the power decide what to do with her own body rather than having it dictated to her by religious zealots; wants to see every person be able to choose who they marry rather than it being dictated to them by others who want to restrict who others can marry to a particular gender; wants every person to receive healthcare necessary to empower them to live lives of meaning and purpose; wants everyone to be able to meaningfully participate in the government and in the electing of it; wants workers to have more power in their workplace and not be simply dictated to by their boss and CEO (e.g. through workers unions, or democratic elections of the CEO and upper management by the workers, or by workers being shareholders in the company etc), etc.
Considering the left-right continuum as being a push for an equal vs unequal distribution of power among all, explains policies on both economic issues and on social issues in both the present day and historically among both left-wing and right-wing parties. The left has pushed to maximize the distribution of power and useable freedom among all, whilst the right has pushed for there to be specific groups who dictate to others how those others are going to live or who have much more power in society than others.
Applying that definition to the topic of Stalin, one can then ask questions like "how equally was power distributed in Stalin's USSR?" and "to what extent were people empowered to make their own social and economic choices in the Stalin's USSR?" The primary answer to those questions is that Stalin was an extreme dictator and ultimately all the power lay with him. There was thus a massive hierarchy in the society and the power was not distributed to the common people. The common people were unable to exercise much, if any, power to make meaningful economic or social choices in their lives. This definition would therefore suggest that Stalin's USSR ought to be classed as an extremely 'right-wing' society.
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