The relationship between modern leftism and classical humanism has grown increasingly strained. While humanism champions the universal dignity, reason, and agency of all individuals regardless of their background, certain contemporary leftist factions have adopted a selective framework that prioritizes rigid group identity and ideological conformity over universal human rights.
Historical Foundations of Universal Humanism
Because all humans share the same inherent dignity, empathy must be applied universally regardless of social status, class, or political alignment. By advocating for global justice and universal human rights, the modern humanist vision of universal compassion traces its roots through three pivotal historical epochs: the Classical Era, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment.
Classical Era: In ancient Greece, Stoic philosophers introduced the concept of Logos – a universal spark of reason shared by all humans. This laid the groundwork for the idea that human beings belong to a single global community (cosmopolis).
Renaissance Rebirth: During the 14th to 16th centuries, European Christian humanists like Desiderius Erasmus shifted intellectual focus from strict religious dogma toward human potential, agency, and dignity. They argued that every individual possesses inherent worth rooted in their capacity for moral and intellectual growth.
Enlightenment Framework: In the 17th and 18th centuries, secular humanism coalesced around universal human rights. Philosophers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant argued that rights are not granted by rulers or groups; they belong naturally to the individual. Kant’s “categorical imperative” commanded treating every person as an end in themselves, never merely as a means.
Calculated Compassion: Why Leftism Rejects Universal Compassion
Leftism approaches empathy and compassion through the lens of power dynamics and historical material conditions rather than the abstract individual. Rooted in the 19th-century Industrial Revolution and the rise of utopian socialism and Marxism, the leftists’ framework dictates that compassion must be structurally and historically situated.
Leftists believe that showing equal empathy to everyone ultimately protects oppressors. From this perspective, true empathy and compassion cannot be universal, as sympathizing with powerful oppressors actively harms the oppressed. Critics argue, however, that this approach limits compassion to specific political, racial, ideological, or social groups. They contend that dividing the world strictly into oppressors and victims destroys broad human solidarity and limits empathy and compassion to small, tribal boxes.
Birth of the Left: The political “Left” was born in the 1789 French National Assembly, where those sitting on the left opposed the monarchy and championed social equality. From its inception, Leftism was explicitly tied to the struggle against an entrenched ruling class.
The Illusion of Universal Compassion: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels transformed this impulse into a systemic theory, arguing that history is driven by class struggle between the bourgeoisie (owners) and the proletariat (workers). In this framework, universal compassion is often viewed as an illusion that masks material exploitation. Expecting an exploited worker to have equal empathy for the owner was seen as a subversion of justice.
Evolution of Western Leftism: Over the decades, Western Leftism expanded from economic class to include race, gender, and imperialism. Critical theorists and civil rights activists argued that institutions inherently protect the powerful. To achieve true equity, solidarity must be actively directed toward the marginalized.
Why Politics Favors Strategy, Not Sympathy
This approach is rooted in Realpolitik – the political philosophy asserting that nations and leaders act out of self-interest, power dynamics, and survival rather than moral ideals. Consequently, political decisions prioritize practical outcomes over altruistic motivations.
Throughout history, governments have routinely prioritized stability, resource security, and power preservation over empathy and compassion. These calculations yield policies where pragmatism entirely overrides human compassion. Ultimately, political systems are driven by strategic logic and national security rather than selective compassion. The core concepts include:
Pragmatism: Governments constantly execute cost-benefit analyses, focusing strictly on actions that maintain power, secure resources, or ensure stability – even when those choices appear ruthless.
Historical Precedent: History consistently demonstrates moments where strategic necessity completely overrode humanitarian concerns. The following examples from ancient history, the Cold War, and modern geopolitics illustrate this dynamic, directly aligning with the core thesis of Humanism versus Selected Compassion.
Ancient History: The Roman Republic and Empire
Calculated Pragmatism: The Roman Senate’s destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE during the Third Punic War. Although Carthage no longer posed a direct military threat, Rome chose total annihilation to eliminate an economic rival and signal absolute dominance to the Mediterranean world.
National Security and Survival: Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was framed to the Roman public as a vital defense of the Republic’s borders. The campaign, however, was ultimately a strategic move to amass personal wealth, secure legionary loyalty, and achieve supreme political power.
Cold War: Spheres of Influence and Proxy Conflicts
Calculating Pragmatism: The 1972 opening of U.S.–China relations by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Despite decades of intense ideological hostility, the United States forged a strategic alliance with communist China to exploit the Sino-Soviet split and isolate the Soviet Union.
National Security and Survival: In the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Soviet Union brutally crushed the popular uprising in Budapest, disregarding international moral outrage. This decision was driven by Realpolitik – the strategic necessity of maintaining a buffer zone against NATO and preventing the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.
Geopolitical Strategy and Cold War Containment: Foreign aid clearly illustrates the “illusion of compassion,” a concept where humanitarian assistance is heavily intertwined with national security and geopolitical dominance. Aid is often directed toward countries with strategic geographic locations or valuable natural resources. Through financial assistance, donor nations secure military bases, maintain trade access, or counter rival global powers.
The Marshall Plan (1948): Following the devastation of World War II, the United States sent more than $13 billion in economic recovery aid to Western Europe – an amount worth over $160 billion today.
While the Marshall Plan successfully rebuilt the region, particularly West Germany, and lifted millions out of poverty, its primary objective was to contain Soviet communism. A starving, broken Europe was highly vulnerable to communist influence. Conversely, a prosperous, stable Europe provided the United States with a robust bulwark of capitalist allies.
USAID and the “Food for Peace” Program (1954): The U.S. enacted Public Law 480 (Food for Peace), exporting massive domestic agricultural surpluses as foreign aid to developing nations. This initiative served multiple strategic goals: it disposed of domestic crop surpluses to stabilize U.S. agricultural prices, won geopolitical favor during the Cold War, and fostered long-term commercial dependency on American products.
Modern Geopolitics: Resource Security and Alliances
Calculating Pragmatism – The Western alliance with Saudi Arabia: Western democracies frequently overlook Riyadh’s human rights violations to secure global oil supply lines, maintain counterterrorism intelligence sharing, and preserve a strategic counterweight to Iran.
National Security and Survival: Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea: Driven by the strategic imperative to retain control over its Black Sea naval fleet, Moscow risked severe international sanctions and diplomatic isolation to secure its primary warm-water port, following Ukraine’s Euromaidan uprising.
Individual Liberty vs. Systemic Equity
Humanism and leftism offer distinct frameworks for social progress: one prioritizes inherent human worth, while the other centers on dismantling systemic inequality. Although historically aligned on goals like establishing social safety nets and challenging religious orthodoxy, their foundational premises have diverged. Today, this tension manifests across several key philosophical and political battlegrounds.
Humanism focuses on the individual, asserting that human dignity must never depend on group identity. Rooted in universalism, this philosophy posits that all people share a core nature and fundamental rights that transcend race, gender, nationality, or class. Consequently, humanism advocates for principles that apply equally to everyone.
Furthermore, humanism champions rational inquiry, skepticism, and free expression, maintaining that bad ideas should be countered with better arguments rather than institutional censorship. Ultimately, it emphasizes individual moral agency, arguing that societal progress occurs when people have the freedom to cultivate virtue and achieve self-actualization.
Conversely, leftism prioritizes collective identity, defining fairness as the active rectification of historical injustices. Modern leftist thought adopts identity politics, arguing that treating people as abstract individuals erases the lived realities of marginalized groups while masking systemic oppression.
Leftist theory relies heavily on structural determinism – the idea that societal systems, rather than individual free will, shape human behavior and social outcomes. Viewing the world through the lenses of capitalism, democratic socialism, and systemic racism, this framework argues that individual choices are heavily constrained by one’s position within power hierarchies.
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Modern debates often force a choice between viewing compassion as a universal value or a targeted tool for justice.
Humanists often view leftist-associated phenomena like “cancel culture” as authoritarian betrayals of Enlightenment values. Conversely, leftists argue that prioritizing absolute free speech over the safety and dignity of marginalized groups reinforces systemic discrimination.
Furthermore, humanists argue that leftists devalue individual accountability and meritocracy by reducing unique human beings to mere proxies for demographic groups. Leftists maintain that focusing purely on individualism ignores structural realities and unfairly blames marginalized communities for systemic failures like systemic racism.
While humanism seeks to uplift humanity by liberating the individual mind, leftism aims to achieve justice by restructuring the social order.
In this pivotal 2026 election year, Alaskans face a clear contrast between humanism’s emphasis on equal moral worth and universal rights and the leftist focus on identity politics, neo-Marxism, democratic socialism and structured equity.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
