Politics: What’s it all about?

The answer to this seemingly simple question may also lead us to an explanation why centrist, notably Christian Democratic policy, is so weak in these latitudes, when it is a very strong political stream, indeed often the mainstream, elsewhere, including the European Parliament.

In principle, the Czech voter has been assured, ever since the Velvet Revolution, that a political figure stands either left or right, or they are undecided if not outright opportunist. The famous Czech crossword puzzle answer to “snake in three letters” (actually three in Czech), targeting the late leader of the KDU-ČSL, Josef Lux, might serve as a textbook example of such a simplified approach to politics. For to accept the left-right rhetoric is to treat politics as such as a one-dimensional affair relating to a single value, whatever we choose to call it, such as the degree of redistribution of taxes or assets. Actually, the left-right rhetoric has been to the liking, since the Velvet Revolution, of two strongest political entities, namely the ODS and the ČSSD, in their quest to oust their political rivals from the game. These two parties basically tried to divide voters to two camps, simply defined as either social allowance beneficiaries on one hand, and selfish individualists on the other.

But if one accepts that life is not always money, and politics therefore should not be this way, the one-dimensional aspect of it will cease to be relevant. Politics should be the proving ground of battling for more than the redistribution of taxes. Protection of children in the family as the future of the nation, protection of the environment and the approach to international relations all bring testimony that in the search of the common good, more than one axis there exists in the stating of political postures. In addition to economics there must also be the conservative/liberal axis as well: one can exist as a liberal on both the left and right side of the economic axis. Actually, the democratic value deserves an axis of its own, because the possibility to defend democracy or other core values with extra-democratic instruments if need be (Pinochet?), or the monarchist ideas, will hardly fit in the one or two-axis arrangement mentioned above.

If, therefore, politics does not follow a single axis of values, the whole Czech left-right discourse will appear to be really and truly false and empty, or rather confusing on purpose. Unfortunately, a look at the state of Czech society will, à contrario, serve to prove the demonstrable fact that only a state with a strong middle class is strong—a virtue to be attained by pursuing a centrist policy. It is neither the upper crust nor those dependent on welfare, but the middle class, which carries on the tradition of well-educated children, the class of people who crave for genuine cultural values, read books and create a nonprofit sector. It is the middle class which creates the economic wealth of the nation. Therefore the prosperous Western countries pamper their middle-class entrepreneurs and small businesses: they will not hijack their money to tax havens and will create 80 percent of the nation’s GDP. I am not talking about the healing effects of centrist policy for a split society like ours.

However, it should be noted that the left-right confusion is not the ultimate confusion of the Czech voter. They are led to believe that politics involves either bad but established political parties or good movements led by nonpolitical politicians and actually lacking a defined political programme. The fact that a quarter of century after the Velvet Revolution the Czech voter has transmogrified from his initial leftist-rightist misinterpretation of the role of political parties in the public space (towards anarchy, a fertile ground for clientelism and Berlusconization) indicates that the problem is in the voter rather than the political system. The cure is in education and return to Christian values.