Generally speaking, more is written about the Left than the Right. On the one hand, the Right is not particularly cerebral (in one of the rare unequivocal statements he made, John Stuart Mill called the Tories the ‘stupid party’) or politically ambitious. The politics of ‘easy as she goes’ is unlikely to yield much in the way of profound cogitation. By contrast, the history of all Left parties is that of internal political struggles over the right organizational strategy and tactics, the right analyses of political situations, domestically and internationally, and the right policies to adopt and advocate in pursuit of goals that aspire and threaten to change society quite radically, even when they pursue reforms and not revolutions. So, the self-generated literature of the Left is, unsurprisingly, far more voluminous than that of the Right. On the other hand, the established ruling classes typically scrutinize the Left, like all else they find troublesome, inconvenient and threatening, quite closely. So to the literature of debate and self-analysis is added that of inquisition.
