Just to respond to the theme that ‘right wing’ is a meaningless label, not so. It originally arose from the seating arrangements in the French Assembly, where the right wing were the monarchists. Hence right wing became generally accepted as a label for the authoritarian defence of a monarchic, aristocratic, or oligarchic power structure. As these power structure tended to be the ones in place, you have the confusion with Conservatism (e.g. Torys).
By a further semantic slide, it came, for some, to mean any authoritarian power structure with power concentrated in the hands of the few, hence the lumping together of the various 20thC dictatorships as right wing.
For those who conceive the power of ‘Big Business’ to be oligarchic and oppressive, any political program favourising the large corporations is right wing. One source of confusion between ‘right wing’ and Libertarianism comes from the disingenuous protests that any politics which limit the power of the corporate world are ‘attacking free enterprise’ thus, attacking individual freedom. This is compounded by the myths attached to the notion of private property, where ‘mine’ as in ‘my log cabin and my boots’ is extended to ‘my corporation over which I have Regalian powers’ simply because I invested some bucks in it 30 years ago.
Libertarianism as described here seems to be a peculiarly American movement, which would map somewhat but not completely to the European anarchists.
Finally, of course individual politics are multi-dimensional. However, all countries which aren’t dictatorships seem to end up with two party systems, so all those dimensions have to projected down, hopefully on a ‘best-fit’ basis, to the single axis most appropriate to the country in question.
Just to respond to the theme that ‘right wing’ is a meaningless label, not so. It originally arose from the seating arrangements in the French Assembly, where the right wing were the monarchists. Hence right wing became generally accepted as a label for the authoritarian defence of a monarchic, aristocratic, or oligarchic power structure. As these power structure tended to be the ones in place, you have the confusion with Conservatism (e.g. Torys). By a further semantic slide, it came, for some, to mean any authoritarian power structure with power concentrated in the hands of the few, hence the lumping together of the various 20thC dictatorships as right wing. For those who conceive the power of ‘Big Business’ to be oligarchic and oppressive, any political program favourising the large corporations is right wing. One source of confusion between ‘right wing’ and Libertarianism comes from the disingenuous protests that any politics which limit the power of the corporate world are ‘attacking free enterprise’ thus, attacking individual freedom. This is compounded by the myths attached to the notion of private property, where ‘mine’ as in ‘my log cabin and my boots’ is extended to ‘my corporation over which I have Regalian powers’ simply because I invested some bucks in it 30 years ago. Libertarianism as described here seems to be a peculiarly American movement, which would map somewhat but not completely to the European anarchists. Finally, of course individual politics are multi-dimensional. However, all countries which aren’t dictatorships seem to end up with two party systems, so all those dimensions have to projected down, hopefully on a ‘best-fit’ basis, to the single axis most appropriate to the country in question.