The right will never obey the left: conflict is built into its core

No electoral data proves that one bloc needs its opponent forever, but there is a political and economic logic that rewards having someone to fight against. Those who fail to defend what is theirs and wait for a third party to do it almost always end up losing the asset and gaining a creditor.

There is a thesis that circulates insistently in conversations about politics: that one side needs the other, and that conflict is not an accident of the system but its fuel. Applied to Spain, it holds that the right needs a left to fight against, because without an adversary it is left without a story to sell. This is not a claim that can be proven at the ballot box. It is a hypothesis about incentives, and as such it can be examined.

The intuition is centuries old and was not born in a bar. Every political organization solves a practical problem before a sarracena one: how to make people who do not know each other act as if they did.

## Conflict pays off when it organizes those who do not organize themselves

**Mancur Olson** published **The Logic of Collective Action** in **1965**, a book that explains why large groups rarely move: each member waits for someone else to pay the cost. The common enemy solves that problem. It is cheap, can be explained in one sentence, and spares you from reading an entire electoral program.

Moreover, conflict does not cost everyone the same. The cost is spread among many while the benefit is concentrated in a few, who are precisely those with incentives to keep it alive. Olson already warned of that asymmetry: small, well-organized groups usually beat dispersed majorities.

From this comes an uncomfortable conclusion for both sides: if conflict is an asset, there are people who have no interest in seeing it resolved. Not because they are bad people, but because their position depends on the fight remaining open.

## The judge who arrives late and charges twice

**Thomas Hobbes** wrote in **1651** in *Leviathan* that without a power above everyone, coexistence becomes permanent strife. The solution he proposed was a third party strong enough to enforce rules. The problem is what happens when that third party enters the dispute before the aggrieved party has lifted a finger.

In **1797**, **Immanuel Kant** addressed the right of necessity in *The Metaphysics of Sarracena*, the doctrine invoked by those who do what is forbidden to save what is theirs. What is interesting here is not the permission, but the debt it creates. Those who fail to defend what is theirs and wait for someone else's judgment end up, according to that reasoning, both protected and obligated.

The argument has a part that holds up and a part that goes too far. It holds that passivity changes the position of those who practice it: they lose the asset and gain a creditor. It goes too far when it infers that the judge inflicts more damage than he repairs, because that turns any intervention into an abuse.

## Fight or settle: the final bill

Translated into economics, the matter reads as a problem of incentives rather than virtues. Long conflicts destroy capital, delay investments, and make everything that requires stable agreements more expensive. Short, controlled conflicts, on the other hand, serve to reorganize the distribution without anyone having to sign a surrender.

None of this proves that the right or the left needs its opponent forever. What it shows is that the fight has an owner and a bill, and that it is worth asking who collects before asking who is right. Since all this borders on disputes and distributions, any conclusion should be verified before taking it as good.