Book Review:THE MYTH OF LEFT AND RIGHT

After watching Andrés Acevedo’s YouTube video “The Political Spectrum Is a Myth.”  I picked up Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis’s book The Myth of Left and Right. The book strongly confirms many of my own thoughts on ideology, so I was genuinely excited to engage with what the authors propose in their book. Their central argument is that ideologies are a product of our tribal political system and give rise to a unidimensional political spectrum that is stupefying society – both at the personal and systemic level. While all models are wrong and some are useful, the left–right spectrum is, in contrast, both wrong and deeply harmful. The book is an easy read and offers many illustrative examples in support of its claims. It is a must-read for those that are concerned about our democracy.

Because I largely agree with the authors, this blog will focus primarily on the areas where I believe the book is lacking or where I disagree. My goal is to further the discussion around what I see as a crucial paradigm shift – one that is necessary not only to preserve American democracy, but potentially humanity itself.

I’ll start with a point I had already come to in my own 2020 book, and seeing it show up in theirs honestly made me smile:

“Those who say we cannot be granular in politics because we need an overarching model to bring order to a complex domain overlook the fact that we do without such an overarching model in all other complex realms of life. Few of us think in unidimensional terms when it comes to business, recreation, or medicine,…” The Myth of Left and Right – p90

This resonates strongly with my own words:

“Do we need Big Pictures and ideologies to improve our society? Science did not advance via big, holistic theories. Economies do not thrive on the search for ideal economic systems. Evolution is not propelled by the search for the perfect organism. Should we search for one big political solution instead of looking for many realistic, small solutions? I think not.”
–  The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy, p. 54

Similarly, the authors of the book want to use the court of law as an inspiration for reforming academics while I want to use it to reform the legislative power.

The book is very U.S.-centric. I understand this focus given the authors’ background in American history and their concern for their own community. Still, I see this as a missed opportunity to develop a more general theory for this paradigm shift, since ideology is not unique to American democracy. Moreover, the absence and failure of democracy in many countries poses a direct threat to the U.S. itself – Russia and China being obvious examples. Incorporating international case studies could have strengthened (or falsified) their arguments.

Consider one of the authors’ key claims: that from the founding of the United States to today, the political system has become increasingly ideological – but that this trend can be reversed within the existing system. I find this deeply unrealistic. The reliance on ideology by political parties is largely driven by two structural factors: population size and integration.

As democracies scale – from villages to city-states to federal systems – and as participation broadens, ideology becomes increasingly necessary to align large groups of people with party objectives. Parties also vary in their level of internal integration. Highly integrated parties tend to develop more stringent ideologies, a phenomenon observed broadly in organizations and described by Conway’s Law. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)

In the European Union, for example, there are nine political groups at the EU parliamentary level but hundreds of parties at the national level. Ideological consistency and party discipline are weak at the EU level and strong at the national level. It is therefore more accurate to think of early U.S. parties as loosely aligned coalitions – similar to today’s EU political groups – whereas modern U.S. parties resemble highly integrated national parties. This shift has been driven by increased internal migration and advances in communication technology. EU political groups will likely remain less integrated for some time due to persistent language barriers.

I therefore think that a theory that the “ideal USA democracy” was infected with the left-right spectrum from Europe is a weak theory. The USA would always have evolved towards a more unidimensional political landscape. It would have been named differently, that’s all. There are plenty of examples in the world where religion or ethnicity groups are the principal component – these are not less damaging to democracy.

For this reason, I find the theory that an otherwise “ideal” U.S. democracy was corrupted by a European left–right spectrum unconvincing. The U.S. would inevitably have evolved toward a unidimensional political structure regardless. It might have been labelled differently, but the outcome would have been similar. Around the world, we see political systems organized around religion or ethnicity instead – structures that are no less damaging to democracy.

Hyrum Lewis frames ideology within a Darwinian paradigm, which makes the survival of political parties a central concern. However, in the book this aspect could have been more explored. My explanation is as follows: To understand the evolution of parties, we must examine the environmental factors that determine party success – chief among them, winning elections. Nearly all electoral systems today, including that of the U.S., assume that choosing representation by one party necessarily excludes representation by another. By definition, this makes elections unidimensional, since dimensions must be independent. It is therefore unsurprising that such systems produce unidimensional party landscapes and, consequently, a unidimensional ideological spectrum.

To use the basket analogy: if the system allows you to shop in only one store, each store will cram as many unrelated products into your basket as possible, because you can’t get them anywhere else – and present them as if they naturally belong together.

The authors recommend seeking out “healthier tribes,” but while they provide examples of healthy and unhealthy tribes, they treat the topic somewhat superficially. What makes a tribe unhealthy? I believe this can be reduced to two properties: (1) whether membership is mutually exclusive with other tribes, and (2) the scope of the tribe.

If tribe membership is not mutually exclusive, it is never harmful. My recreational badminton club does not prevent me from joining another club; therefore, it is inherently healthy. Even mutually exclusive tribes can be healthy if their scope is sufficiently constrained. Many Christian denominations, for instance, are rendered relatively harmless by secularism. In contrast, religions unconstrained by secularism – such as ISIS – are clearly unhealthy.

Political tribes are exceptional because they can gain “root access” to the societal blueprint itself, making them uniquely dangerous. For political tribes to become healthy, their scope must therefore be limited even more strictly. It comes to me that spending less time on politics might easily breed political apathy within people, leaving the power of politics even more concentrated with the ideological fanatics.

The authors clearly show that political tribes, with the illusion of ideological essence, are the primary drivers of thought and meaning for most people in politics. Given this, it is unclear to me why merely changing our language or individual changes of behaviour would have a meaningful impact. Unless we transform the underlying social structures themselves, I do not believe much will change for the better.

I am genuinely delighted that the authors have identified this new paradigm. However, in my view, they have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg. While they convincingly expose the false dilemma inherent in the left–right essentialist model, they keep on defending the causing false dilemma in the voting booth – all in the name of (in my opinion) fake legitimacy for the winner.

To be clear, I am not simply advocating for more parties; a false trilemma is no better than a false dilemma. Rather, we should be able to vote for or against political representation from each party independently from each other. Is choosing representation by one party truly incompatible with choosing representation by another? If so, why? I strongly believe it is not, as I argue in my book. And this would unlock the needed change!