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There is one almost trivial argument against discarding the concepts left and right as central or at least indispensable elements of the political system. This is not the first time that we have been urged to get rid of the left-right dichotomy. Back in the 1960s, given the rise of a middle-class society that would supposedly continue to erode extremes of social stratification, some argued that the left-right schema had outlived its usefulness and should be given a decent burial. The national conservative Erich Mende was not the last to ridicule a political geography stipulating where butts were supposed to sit in parliament. And after 1989-90 it was nearly impossible to escape funeral orations over the corpse of left-right.
If one observes carefully the history of this cortege, two things come to mind. First, the left-right dichotomy has often been declared null and void by conservatives who still value certain liberal principles or by journalists with a background in radical leftist politics. Also, these funerals obviously don’t stop the ritual from repeating itself every few years. This shows that wellsprings of the left-right dichotomy have not yet dried up.
To begin with, let’s focus on the critique of this scheme. Opponents say that it is historically outmoded and belongs only in a museum. In an era of Fordism and industrial modernity, »left« means the workers‹ movement, its ideas and organization. The left was united around three notions: progress, equality, and emancipation. The authoritarian and liberal wings of the left both embraced those goals, although in quite different ways.

Progress was a metaphor for the idea that history can be made. Under socialism, class privileges were to be abolished and social processes made subject to planning. The society thus envisaged would be more equal than a class-based society split into capital and labor. Social rights would offer individuals the chance to emancipate themselves.
The right, which preferred to call itself conservative, formed the antithesis on all those points. For conservatives, history seemed more like a dark, opaque accumulation of imponderables and unintended effects. Right-wingers cringed when they heard the word equality, since it implicitly threatened freedom except in the narrow sense of equality before the law. And emancipation or individual self-realization appeared to many on the right as a dangerous experiment that threatened to destroy cherished traditions.

»Ecological concerns have brought to the fore an issue that cuts across the left-right scheme.«
 

Today, this classification, based as it is on ideal types, no longer fits reality as well as it once did. The social and moral environment of the working-class movement as well as those of the churches have lost meaning in individualistic service- and knowledge-based societies. Moreover, ecological concerns have brought to the fore an issue that cuts across left-right distinctions. The quintessential motive underlying ecological thinking is to conserve and protect; it implicitly denies the progressive narrative. On the other hand, the criticism that environmental pollution and climate change hit the poor harder than the rich draws on the left’s ideal of equality. But is that a reason to consign the concepts of left and right to the dustbin? Why should the distinction between left and right be regarded as superfluous simply because there are hybrids that draw on both left- and right-wing ideas and narratives, or because the political formations of industrial society seem somewhat like relics, or because populist parties mingle leftist and rightist programs on migration and economic policy? 

In the fog of the counter-enlightenment

The truth is just the opposite. All of those processes can be labeled, understood, and properly contextualized only in and through the categories of left and right. In an age when the head of a party that won 20% of the vote (the AfD) can claim that »Hitler was a leftist,« it is crucial to insist on clear distinctions in order to disperse the fog of the counter-enlightenment. In addition, one might well ask which descriptive terms are supposed to replace the dichotomy between right and left? If many scholars of totalitarianism theory can be believed, the distinction between democracy and dictatorship has replaced the left-right scheme, making it superfluous. Is that plausible?

Civil liberties, the power to vote out a government, and the separation of powers all are fundamental prerequisites of a good society. It is also true that the crimes committed by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union in the name of leftist, communist progress were so monstrous as to stand comparison with those of colonialism. There is nothing innocent about the concept »left«; it requires constant critical self-reflection. However, the division of the world into a binary of dictatorship versus democracy promises false clarity. Formally, India is a democracy, but it is also a country in which almost 200 million people suffer from malnutrition. In China, the repressive Communist Party dictatorship has freed more people from poverty than any other regime ever before, and has done it in only two-and-a-half decades. Those examples illustrate that the dictatorship versus democracy dichotomy is of only limited utility in grasping the complexity of societies. Left and right reflect more precisely the many-sidedness, contradictions, and ambivalences of societies.

»The division of the world into a binary of dictatorship versus democracy promises false clarity.«
 

Of course, when it comes to the concept »left,« understood as a political program, one needs to revise the traditional model. Its linkage with the word »progress« is questionable, and not only because these days it rings hollow in the echo chambers of aging, change-averse Western societies.  Losses are inscribed in the concept of progress. In contrast to the situation that prevailed a hundred years ago, it is applicable now only in a reflexive, refracted sense. 

The left-right scheme remains timely
 

So, what is left? Thirty years ago, Norberto Bobbio proclaimed: »For the left, the ideal of equality always has been the lodestar.« This statement has stood the test of time amazingly well. Enlightened Western societies have become liberal (although a backlash is now imminent). Individual liberty has perhaps never been as extensive as it is today, while external pressure to conform has rarely been this minimal. That is absolutely a success story. But these gains in emancipation should not blind us to the fact that the inequality of wealth, influence, opportunity, and the chasm between poor and rich have simultaneously been on the rise. Today, the secession of the wealthy, once a characteristic of developing countries, is a sign of our times. And the disengagement of the billionaires has only just begun, assuming that one takes the ideas of American tech-oligarchs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk seriously.
The attacks of the libertarian right are directed against democracy and the rules it imposes that limit freedom. But at bottom this is an attack against the idea of equality, one that flows from the spirit of a radical, extremist ideology of inequality and unfettered individualism. So, if the left-right schema really has been consigned to a museum, perhaps the time has come to dust it off again.