The Terms "Left" and "Right" Originated During The Event

The left–right political spectrum is a classification system for political perspectives associated with left–right politics, ideologies, and parties, with a focus on concerns of social equality and hierarchy. There are centrists or moderates who are not strongly aligned with either extreme of the spectrum, in addition to positions on the left and right. Some people consider the left-right political spectrum to be unnecessarily simplistic, and therefore reject this approach of categorizing political positions in favor of another system, such as a two-dimensional rather than one-dimensional description.

During the French Revolution of 1789, when members of the National Assembly were divided into supporters of the king to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left, the phrases "left" and "right" were coined. The divides continued when the National Assembly was replaced in 1791 by a Legislative Assembly made up completely of new members. The "innovators" sat on the left, the "moderates" in the middle, and the "conscientious defenders of the constitution" on the right, where the Ancien Régime's defenders had previously gathered.

The terms "left" and "right" did not refer to political ideology per se, but rather to legislative sitting. The "democratic socialists" and "reactionaries," who used red and white flags to signify their party affiliation, were the primary opposing camps after 1848. The phrases were used by political parties with the foundation of the Third Republic in 1871: Republican Left, Center Right, and Center Left (1871), Extreme Left (1876), and Radical Left (1876). (1881). The beliefs of the Radical Left were really closer to the beliefs of the Center Left than the beliefs of the Extreme Left.