The right-left divide is about power, not ideology

Photo by Michael on Unsplash

The origin of the concept of right and left in a political context dates back to the French revolution. In an effort to appease reformers, King Louis XVI allowed the empowerment of a legislative body to provide him with advice and consent. This was in the wake of the French intervention in support of the American revolution, and with the democratic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others popular at the time, so the ideas of democracy were running high in France.

This national assembly was set up as a half circle. People being who we are, the representatives tended to gather together with like-minded people. France was thought of as having three estates, the first was the nobility, the second was the clergy, and the third was the citizenry. Each group received its own representation in the legislature.

From the perspective of the president of the body, standing at the front and looking at the representatives, the nobility and clergy located themselves on the right with the citizenry filling in the rest of the seats. The most radical members, called the Jacobins, who had a dislike of the nobility and clergy, located themselves opposite that group on the far left.

Due to the initial system set up in that assembly of voting by estates, the first two typically outvoted the third. You could imagine how…