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cnash t1_j28w47k wrote

They mean political descendants of the factions that sat on the literal left and right sides of the National Constituent Assembly during an early part of the French Revolution. Broadly speaking, republicans who wanted to get rid of the King and abolish feudalism sat on the left, and monarchists sat on the right.

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Ohmyfrogginbeak t1_j28wu8a wrote

Hi! Adding to this (very cool) historical context: today “left” is generally associated with change, promoting social or common good (and the governments/economic policies that do so). Many say there’s a greater interest in a distribution of power, or more democratic access to power. There’s also a higher interest in significant change to the status quo. See the comment above for the roots of this in the revolutionary movement.

The “right” is focused on conservative (gradual/incremental) change, individual liberties, and the maintenance of power structures as they are, or a reversion to how they once were. See above, again, for the roots in supporting the monarchy.

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D3V1LS_L3TTUC3 t1_j292g80 wrote

I mean. Given the way that right wingers tend to restrict the rights/liberties of anyone who isn’t a straight cisgendered able-bodied/minded white man.. I would definitely not say conservatives focus on “individual liberties”

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Ohmyfrogginbeak t1_j297nsj wrote

Hi!

I was trying to be as charitable and universal as I could be- in practice, conservatives (to my knowledge, in the US and UK) may trend towards favoring the individual liberty of those in power.

The theory of their (in as much as I can generalize about an entire part of the political spectrum) framing of the world, I believe, is one of hyperindividualized responsibility. I quite like this video on the subject. think of Margaret Thatcher’s quote about how there is no society.

I think it’s valuable to understand both your opinion of a thing, and how the adherents to that thing see themselves and that cause- for example, your comment makes an excellent point of highlighting the contradiction between individual liberty (expressed as absence of government involvement), and individual liberty (expressed as the ability to live one’s life with dignity).

To a conservative (of the vague, almost indefinable blob I have in mind), the failings of a non-cis, non-het, non-white are entirely due to their personal failings to take advantage of opportunity. If you, say, bring up the fact that this hypothetical person was specifically discriminated against when seeking education and employment, they might insist that their handicap was a product of individualized racism by admissions officers or hiring officers. If you highlight that these adcom officers were following procedure, they might try to pull the string of racist causality all the way back to one, individual person who made a decision to be racist.

No bad systems, just bad people. To a conservative (of my specific blob I have in mind), people are personally responsible for almost everything that happens to them, so systems shouldn’t be changed, we just need to get rid of all the bad people.

There’s an extremely interesting, in my opinion, parallel here between the philosophy of such thought, and who I think it comes from. History, as we were taught it for most of…well, history, was the stories of the nobility. Books were written by, and for, and published by, and for the benefit of, the nobility for most of human history. Taken in this lens, the world is one of individual Caesar’s (and not the legions who fought for him), gentleman scientists (and not their clerks), the unified, individual will of rulers (and not their bureaucratic apparatuses). Art from 13th-19th century Europe was just a rich person’s Instagram.

I think there’s something there- in who benefits the most from conservative policies (those already in power, and would lose power, even if slightly, if the system meaningfully changed), how they likely view themselves (as titans of agency), and what stories they’ve told society through their versions of history, their stories, and the stories meant to cater to them. (How many stories privilege, or focus on, the concerns of royalty and nobles? What do we think happened to books encouraging democracy before they became too numerous to suppress? What do we think happened to the tales of democratic leaders, like Spartacus, who were illiterate?)

I also think it’s worth understanding this mechanism, or philosophy, and how it gets translated to people who have nothing to gain from it, but support it nevertheless. What stories were we told about how the world works, growing up? What myths are expressed as common sense? What unexamined beliefs do we bear in our minds, that were handed to us by those with power and the means to crystallize it?

Fun thoughts!

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grumblingduke t1_j2915mb wrote

"Left" and "right" are fairly vague terms, used to split people into convenient political groupings. They are the continental-European versions, compared with the more British/American "progressive," "liberal" and "conservative" terms. They are all a bit vague due to the different political landscapes in different countries and at different times, and the terms (particularly "liberal") can have very different meanings in different places.

Roughly speaking, and generalising horribly:

  • left-leaning people/progressives feel that power structures and social hierarchies are a bad thing, and that the role of society (via government) should be to remove them,

  • right-leaning people/conservatives feel that power structures and social hierarchies are a good thing, and that the role of society (via government) should be to protect them.

  • centrists/liberals may feel either way about power structures and social hierarchies, but don't think the government should interfere.

Then you have groups like anarchists and libertarians, and a few others, who tend to line up somewhere with the above but might disagree on the specifics.

With both left and right you get "centre-" "hard-" and "far-" etc. depending on how extreme they take their views. Far-right people and governments tend to be in favour of use of direct force to impose power structures (to the extremes of the 1930s-40s German Government which systematically killed millions of people who didn't fit in their ideal society), while far-left people and governments can do the same to abolish power structures (e.g. the 1920s Russian Government which killed a lot of nobility and religious leaders who were part of the existing power structures).

"Left" and "right" is mostly relative, though. A "left-wing" group in one country might have similar views to a "right-wing" group in another country, depending on where the "centre" is.

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D3V1LS_L3TTUC3 t1_j292pqq wrote

Notice how the most extreme example of “far left” is people killing a relatively small number of wealth hoarders with the intention of redistributing wealth to society, meanwhile “far right” is the literal genocide of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of innocent people

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grumblingduke t1_j293uow wrote

Worth noting that the far-left Russian Government ended up spiralling into an authoritarian nightmare that killed a lot more people. Part of the problem with far-left politics is that if you don't have the support of the population you need to introduce all new power structures to force your lack of power structures on the people. And then you open the doors to all sorts of corruption and evil.

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D3V1LS_L3TTUC3 t1_j2aaofk wrote

So your critique against leftism is the same critique that could be applied to literally any sort of political ideology.. “if you don’t have the support of the population you have to force things and that ends with corruption”

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biggsteve81 t1_j297lr1 wrote

The Khmer Rouge would be considered far left, and resulted in the Cambodian genocide.

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utopianbask t1_j28ykcj wrote

Broadly speaking:

Far left - Communist

Left - Liberal minded

Centre - a mix between liberal and conservative. Usually quite pragmatic.

Right - Conservative minded

Far right - Fascist

This isn't a definitive guide, most people are more mixed and complicated. But broadly speaking, this is what people mean when they use those terms.

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[deleted] t1_j294kt6 wrote

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Gnonthgol t1_j28wgic wrote

This comes from the formation of modern democracy. There were parliments all over Europe with lots of smaller parties or even independent politicians. Parties that would agree with each other would often sit together so you often ended up with right and left wings of these parliments. As it happened they split on the great political debate on the distribution of power between the newly formed labor class and capitalist class. And in most of the parliments the labor friendly politicians sat on the left while the capitalist friendly politicians sat on the right. Obviously each parliment was different and political divides were different but this was the general trend. So the left-right divide became a common politican term.

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