Was talking about this with someone today. People, especially the right-winged, will associate the so-called far left wing with Communism/Marxism. But I find it weird that any scale would just happen to have that as the far end of the spectrum. If you were to go down the scale to the very, very end, what political statement/remark would be the closest thing to the very tip of the spectrum? Something like “the robots should take over” or something?
“I’m doing the no poop challenge until Luigi is free!”
Jokes aside… it depends on how you define left/right. Political behaviour and ideology aren’t just a simple axis, not even two; they’re multidimensional. And, for me, if I’m forced to analyse it 1D, it’s all about how you distribute power: the left wants to spread it as much as reasonably possible, the right wants to concentrate it.
So, for me, the most left-wing thing someone could say is simply “nobody should have more power over another than the other has over them”. Or something like this. Note how this encompasses rather well both anarchism and Marxism.
I don’t entirely agree with it but I heard once that the left wants powerful people to work in a context of commensurate accountability, whereas the right wants powerful people to be safe from accountability.
I’d say the first one is lefter than the second, but you can still go further left: instead of having commensurate accountability for powerful people, have no powerful people at all.
That’s a very rudimentary anarchistic concept but power is so inherent to human relationships that anyone would either quickly abandon it or find themselves very frustrated.
If you are interested in a short and easy to read article that goes through the whole idea of “no powerful people”, look up Freeman’s Tyranny of Structurelessness. A classic text particularly among anarchists.