Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction

Politicians and pundits have long disparaged their opponents with polemicist cries of "leftist!" or "rightist!" But with the fall of communism and the recent conservative ascendancy in the United States and Europe, many commentators have flatly declared that the traditional left/right distinction has lost its relevance. Now, even as political players scramble to redefine themselves with freshly "spun" labels, Norberto Bobbio asserts that the demise of the left/right distinction has been greatly exaggerated.

Bobbio argues that left and right are not absolute terms, but represent a shifting map of the political spectrum, relative to the particular cultural and historical contexts of a given time. The distinction continues to endure because it reflects the essentially antithetical nature and dynamics of democratic politics. In his accessible yet provocative style, Bobbio constructs a historically informed, analytic division of the political universe along two foundational axes, from equality to inequality, from liberty to authoritarianism. He then charts the past and present tendencies of the left and the right, in both their more moderate and more virulently extreme forms. Ultimately, for Bobbio, the measure of post-modern democracy will indeed lie in where and how we situate ourselves relative to these critical left/right parameters, in whether we cast ourselves, our votes, and our era in terms of political expediency, social viability, or moral responsibility.

A bestseller in Italy, where it sold over three hundred thousand copies, Left and Right is an important contribution to our understanding of global political developments in the 1990s and beyond.

Following the collapse of communism and the decline of Marxism, some commentators have claimed that we have reached the 'end of history' and that the distinction between Left and Right can be forgotten.

In this book - which was a tremendous success in Italy - Norberto Bobbio challenges these views, arguing that the fundamental political distinction between Left and Right, which has shaped the two centuries since the French Revolution, has continuing relevance today.

Bobbio explores the grounds of this elusive distinction and argues that Left and Right are ultimately divided by different attitudes to equality. He carefully defines the nature of equality and inequality in relative rather than absolute terms.

Left and Right is a timely and persuasively argued account of the basic parameters of political action and debate in the modern world - parameters which have remained constant despite the pace of social change. The book will be widely read and, as in Italy, it will have an impact far beyond the academic domain.