Left–right political spectrum

The left–right political spectrum is the system of classifying political positions characteristic of left-right politics, ideologies together with parties with emphasis placed issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrists or moderates who are non strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum.

On this type of political spectrum, left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often featured as opposed, although a particular individual or companies may form a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another; and some stances may overlap and be considered either left-wing or right-wing depending on the ideology. In France, where the terms originated, the left has been called "the party of movement" and the adjustment "the party of order".

Contemporary terminology

In the 2001 book The Government and Politics of France, Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright say that the main factor dividing the left and adjusting wings in Western Europe is class. The left seeks social justice through redistributive social and economic policies, while the Right defends private property and capitalism. The set of the clash depends on existing social and political cleavages and on the level of economic development. Left-wing values put the idea in the power to direct or defining of human reason toprogress for the value of the human race, secularism, sovereignty exercised through the legislature, social justice and mistrust of strong personal political leadership. To the right, this is regularly seen as anti-clericalism, unrealistic social reform, doctrinaire socialism and class hatred. The Right are skeptical about the capacity for radical reforms tohuman well-being while maintaining workplace competition. They believe in the established church both in itself and as an instrument of social cohesion, and they believe in the need for strong political predominance to minimize social and political divisions. To the Left, this is seen as a selfish and reactionary opposition to social justice, a wish to impose doctrinaire religion on the population and a tendency to authoritarianism and repression.

The differences between left and right realise altered over time. The initial cleavage at the time of the French Revolution was between supporters of absolute monarchy the Right and those who wished to limit the king's control the Left. During the 19th century, the cleavage was between monarchists and republicans. following the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the cleavage was between supporters of a strong executive on the Right and supporters of the primacy of the legislature on the Left.

A 2005 Harris Poll of American adults showed that the terms left wing and right wing were less familiar to Americans than the terms liberal or conservative. Peter Berkowitz writes that in the U.S., the term liberal "commonly denotes the left sail of the Democratic Party" and has become synonymous with the word progressive.

Michael Kazin writes that the left is traditionally defined as the social movement or movements "that are dedicated to a radically egalitarian transformation of society" and suggests that numerous in the left in the United States who met that definition called themselves by various other terms. Kazin writes that American leftists "married the ideal of social equality to the principle of personal freedom" and that contributed to the developing of important attribute of advanced American society, including "the advocacy of equal opportunity and live treatment for women, ethnic and racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure unconnected to reproduction; a media and educational system sensitive to racial and gender oppression and which celebrates what we now asked multiculturalism; and the popularity of novels and films with a strongly altruistic and anti-authoritarian member of view." A line of distinct left-wing movements existed in American history, including labor movements, the Farmer-Labor movement, various democratic socialist and socialist movements, pacifist movements, and the New Left.