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For example, Stalin genocided the countryside for not supporting communism enough. Also, both the KPD and National Socialists were based in cities, while the conservative parties were based in rural areas. Has this pattern always been the case or are there exceptions?

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    The Nazis were not 'left-wing'.
    – Ne Mo
    Nov 27, 2016 at 21:49
  • The national socialists were
    – Fhrbebe
    Nov 28, 2016 at 1:40
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    You can have that debate on Politics SE if you really want to. I'll also be interested to read your reasoning why East Germany was 'democratic'.
    – Ne Mo
    Nov 28, 2016 at 7:10
  • This is begging the question with the "always" part, you have to establish your premise first. Your examples, Nazis, Communist Germany, and Stalinists, are extreme outliers; they're such poor representations of "right" and "left" that they barely even fall on that line let alone be examples.
    – Schwern
    Nov 28, 2016 at 8:56

2 Answers 2

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The Progressive Party of Canada is a small-scale exception. It was formed by farmers opposed to the then Conservative Canadian government's tariff policy, and tended to form alliances with the various Canadian Labour parties, or socialist groups.

However, they did not last very long.

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More than leftwing and rightwing, I would talk about conservative and innovative.

For almost all of the history of mankind, the cities have been:

  • trade and communication hubs

  • the sede of government (not only political, but also religious)

  • industrial and economical powerhouse

  • intellectual centers

All of these have been related in a lot of ways... not only a city would be a local trade hub and could become an international one; if a trade hub appeared in a place where no city did exist then people would start stablishing there to profit from it, founding a new city. Similarly, even if a king did chose to move his court to the country, it would attract a considerable amount of follower and artisans who would form the seed of a new city.

The administration of the country, the trade, etc., would in turn need the existence of a class of people with some culture and the stablishment of communication links with other cities, favoring the interchange of ideas.

Also, live in small towns and villages favours a communal way of living, that usually punishes those who step outside the stablished traditions, while live in the city allows for a greater degree of personal freedom.

So in the cities you get:

  • a concentration of educated people with (relatively) good knowledge of what happens around the world, making it more probable that, if someone is going to develop a new idea/theory/concept, it would be done there.

  • a concentration of people making it easier to spread new ideas/theories/concepts developed in that city or in other cities.

  • a higher chance of those theories becoming noticed by the government (either for good or for bad).

Note that I am refering to the spread of ideas/etc. The origin of those could be very well a man living in an isolated farm, but usually the above mentioned points favor that, whatever its origin, the ideas spread faster through cities. Additionally, it is not hard to believe that the kind of man who spend his time devising new ideas would like to share them and listen to the ideas of opinions of men like himself, which would lead to him having a strong incentive to move to a city.

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