A meme has been making the rounds on social media — a Left‑wing riff on Life of Brian’s famous “What have the Romans ever done for us?” sketch. The structure is familiar:
What have the Lefties ever done for us? The weekend. Apart from the weekend? The eight‑hour day. Apart from the weekend and the eight‑hour day? Paid holidays. Apart from the weekend, the eight‑hour day and paid holidays? The State Pension. Apart from all that? Workplace health & safety. Apart from all that? The minimum wage. Apart from all that? Trade unions. Apart from all that? Collective bargaining. Apart from all that? Maternity leave. Apart from all that? Equality laws. Apart from all that? Protection from unfair dismissal. Apart from all that? Child labour protections. Apart from all that? Sick pay. Apart from all that? Limits on working hours. Apart from all that? The belief that working people deserve dignity and a fair go.
It’s a cute piece of political theatre, but also a delightful exercise in false equivalence, smuggling in the assumption that anything good in the modern workplace must therefore be a product of Left‑wing ideology.
Let’s walk through the list and compare the meme’s mythology with actual history.
The Weekend
The weekend owes nothing to Leftism.
- Christianity provided Sunday as a day of rest for nearly two millennia.
- Judaism provided Saturday, the Sabbath, for several thousand years.
- The English word weekend dates to 1630, centuries before Leftism existed.
The Eight‑Hour Day / Forty‑Hour Week
This one is especially ironic.
The modern forty‑hour week owes more to Henry Ford, a capitalist industrialist, than to any Left‑wing movement. Ford introduced the five‑day, forty‑hour week in 1926 because it increased productivity and made workers more likely to buy cars.
Leftism later claimed credit for what capitalism had already normalised.
Paid Holidays
Paid time off did not begin as a Left‑wing crusade. It emerged organically as employers competed for labour in a growing industrial economy. Once the practice was widespread, governments codified it.
Leftism can claim some influence here, but it was not the origin.
State Pensions
The pioneer of state pensions was Otto von Bismarck in 1889 — a conservative German Chancellor who explicitly designed social insurance to undercut socialism, not promote it.
Leftism arrived late to the party.
Workplace Health & Safety
Britain passed the first workplace safety legislation in 1802, under Prime Minister Henry Addington, a Tory.
Again: not Leftism.
The Minimum Wage
Yes, the Left introduced minimum wage laws. But the historical origins are… awkward.
Early minimum wage campaigns in places like Australia and the United States were explicitly designed to exclude racial minorities from labour markets. This is well‑documented, and Leftists today understandably prefer not to discuss it.
Trade Unions
Trade unions began forming in 18th‑century Britain, driven by the Industrial Revolution — decades before Marx and Engels wrote a word.
Unions were not a product of Leftism; Leftism later attempted to appropriate them.
Collective Bargaining
Collective bargaining follows the same historical trajectory as unions: pre‑Leftist, industrial, and organic.
Maternity Leave
This one the Left can legitimately claim. Denmark introduced maternity leave in 1901 under Venstre, a Left‑liberal party.
Equality Laws
Equality before the law predates Leftism by centuries.
- Adam Smith argued for universal moral equality.
- Judaism and Christianity grounded equality in the Imago Dei — the belief that all humans bear the image of God.
- Arthurian mythology (the Round Table) symbolised equal standing among peers.
Protection from Unfair Dismissal
Possibly a Left‑influenced development, but the history is complex, and given how many other claims in the meme collapse under scrutiny, this one requires more research before awarding credit.
Tentative: maybe.
Child Labour Protections
Child labour protections arose from the Industrial Revolution, which created enough surplus wealth for society to remove children from the workforce.
I’ve already outlined this in detail elsewhere. This was not a Leftist achievement.
Sick Pay
The origins are mixed and require deeper investigation. Leftism may have played a role, but it was not the sole driver.
Limits on Working Hours
Again, no. Working‑hour limits emerged from industrial productivity research, employer incentives, and organic economic evolution — not Leftist ideology.
“The belief that working people deserve dignity and a fair go.”
This is the most bizarre claim of all.
Adam Smith argued for the dignity of labour in 1776. Christianity argued for the dignity of the person for two thousand years. Leftism arrived centuries later and claimed ownership of ideas it did not originate.
Conclusion: The Meme Is Cute — The History Isn’t
The meme is a clever rhetorical device, but historically it’s a confection — a list of achievements retroactively painted red and handed to the Left as if they were the sole authors of modern civilisation.
The truth is far more interesting:
- Many workplace reforms emerged organically from capitalism.
- Others came from religion, conservatism, or industrial necessity.
- Some were introduced by the Left — but often for reasons modern Leftists would rather forget.
If anything, the meme reveals how deeply the Left depends on myth‑making, not history, to sustain its self‑image..........The full article is published HERE
Colinxy regularly blogs at No Minister
7 comments:
The left and equality are like oil and water. The left have no interest in equality, infact they hate equality. They left are only interested in EQUITY. EQUITY is to 'take' from those who work and 'give it' to those who the left think are deserving of it - ie, the gangs, crims, unemployed etc.
Do NOT believe for one second the left want equality!
He hasn't quite got it right about equality. Equality between peers means equality between those already deemed equal - not what the Enlightenment ideal of equality was about. "All men [might have been] created equal" in late 18thC America but in Europe we still had the 'blue blood' paradigm in the form of the aristocracy - people supposedly inherently superior to the rest of the population. To this day, the monarch sitting in Buckingham Palace is above the law - cannot be summoned before a common law court. I am no leftist but I have some difficulty in defending the 'rightist' origins of equality.
Barend, I think you may be responding to an argument I didn’t actually make.
My point was never that the Right gave us equality. I wasn’t trying to construct a “Right‑wing origins of equality” narrative. My argument was simply that the Left cannot claim ownership of equality, and that attributing pre‑modern developments to “Leftism” is anachronistic.
The entire Left–Right political spectrum is a post‑French‑Revolution invention. Anything prior to the late 18th century cannot meaningfully be labelled “Left” or “Right” without distorting the historical record. That includes:
1. the Imago Dei tradition in Judaism and Christianity,
2. Adam Smith’s moral philosophy,
3. the medieval and early‑modern debates about natural law,
4. and even the symbolic egalitarianism of Arthur’s Round Table.
These are not “Right‑wing” origins of equality. They are pre‑political origins; part of the deep moral and cultural substrate that existed long before anyone sat on the left or right side of the French National Assembly.
The same applies to trade unions and collective bargaining. Their emergence in 18th‑century Britain predates the French Revolution entirely. The Eden Agreement of 1786 is a particularly clear marker of British industrialisation occurring before “Left” and “Right” existed as political categories. Socialist theorists later claimed Unions, but they did not create them.
So, the core of my argument is simply this:
If a development predates the Left–Right spectrum, then neither side can claim ideological ownership of it. The Left cannot retroactively paint these achievements red, and I am not painting them blue.
My critique is of the meme’s historical revisionism — not a defence of some imagined “Right‑wing equality doctrine.”
Very glib, but if we bring 'conservative' in as a synonym for 'right', my objections remain valid.
Barend, I have responded, almost certainly for the last time, over at No Minister. I do not believe you have understood my argument and are, figuratively, "putting words into my mouth".
I think I do, Colinxy. You have an interesting argumentative style based on wordplay in such a way that you can always accuse challengers of having the wrong end of the [illusory] stick. Pinning you down is like trying to grab hold of a wriggling eel but it's fun in its own way.........
Ok - if that list is debatable here are some stuff the left has given us here in Socialist state of Aoteroa:
- Massive debt
- Puberty blockers for kids
- Ram raiding
- Huge govt depts - delivering less
- High inflation
- Higher cost of living
- Higher surgery waitlists
- Higher Kainga Ora wait lists
- Fewer nurses
- High retail crime
- Race based policies
- Promised 100,000 extra houses (yeh right)
- More serious assaults
- More gang members
- fewer kids in school
- More kids wagging
- more child poverty
cripes I'm just getting started....
Why dont the left own up what they actually bring to the table!
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