How Wings Took Flight. First Left then Right.
I’m writing this one mainly to get something that has been on my mind out of my head. Not sure I’ll make many posts like this going forward.
For a long, long time now I have disliked the terms left-wing and right-wing. At first, the reason it bothered me was the idea that the entire political spectrum could sit so neatly upon a single axis of left and right. Or perhaps we could get even more daring and make it two with the four quadrant political compass. One sliding scale for your authoritarianism against your liberalism and the other your economic standing being either a typically left-minded or lean right-minded.
Granted, the original form of the four quadrant compass is more robust than the left-right axis because it at leasts asks 62 questions before it can make assumptions about you. Though I recall quite a few conversations with people across the entire political spectrum in which it took much more than that to understand their ideas. But I never could fully articulate my problem with these terms and carried on with a vague feeling these words felt too small.
It took some years of engaging in political discussion and learning about more various ideologies, that I found a similar problem. Anecdotally speaking, people would use terms of specific political ideologies in a similar way to left and right. Anarchism, capitalist, communism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, libertarianism, nationalism, populism, socialism, and all their anti-, neo-, post-, and other prefixed variations that they come with to name a few.
These would be used in the political tribalism that we as a species have engaged in for all of recorded history and probably even longer than that still. This is the fundamental nature of the memetics we have developed over thousands of years and it will not change. But these terms of political and ethical ideologies never bothered me when used in the same way as the dismissiveness as left/right wing. [Scratch out whichever doesn’t apply to your viewpoint.]
At the very least, to dismiss a capitalist or communist for their political ideology at least means you have an issue with something more concrete than the wider umbrella grouping that left/right hold over each of these. People’s misunderstandings, shallow knowledge, biases, etc. towards the subgroupings were clearly an aside to what I felt like was a broader issue at hand. I started to reason that whatever was one’s -ist or -ism when it came to political discussion, they were all full of immense nuance and complexities. So how was it that the roof they all nested under could be used just as, and at times more, flippantly. This eventually got me to try looking into the origins of the terms left-wing and right-wing.
Everything I found leads back to the French Revolution, personally it's an endlessly fascinating period of history so any excuse to go back and learn more is exciting. The origin of the terms are often dated to 1789. Though if you do not mind, I would like to go back a little bit further to set the stage. Just for a moment.
| Date | Events |
|---|---|
| 1776 | King Louis XVI reinstated parlement in 1776, just 2 years after the death of his predecessor, King Louis XV whose reign was plagued with a back and forth power struggle between the king and the parlementary members. There are a variety of reasons why this was an issue in both monarch’s time. However most don’t really tie in to the objective of this essay/ramble and it likely feels long enough. What’s very important to know is that that France, and especially the crown itself, is struggling financially. |
| 1781 | The finance minister at the time, Jacques Necker, published a report titled Compte Rendu. The goal of this report was to hide, obfuscate, and at times outright lie on France’s finances allowing the crown to borrow more, sepress anxiety about the economy, and a negotiating tool in Parlement. An important note, this report was aiming to decieve all of France, King Louis XVI included. Necker was a Genevan banker and a director of the French East India Company prior to being hired by the French King. Once hired and seeing just how bad things had gotten with the French Treasury, the economy, and the crown’s accounting books he would implement a number of taxes on the general populace (like restoring an old farming tax) and relying upon high interest rates instead of taxing the wealthy population to collet income. When this was not enough, he resorted to borrowing but knew the terms would be either unfavourable to France or denied outright if he could not improve the numbers somehow. Leading to his report. |
| 1786 | Jacques Necker’s high interest rates and some taxations targetted primarily the priveledged classes so protest from them eventually led to his dismissal. Once the new finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, was instated he goes over the books. He then warns the king of the risk France is facing of an imminent and immense bankruptcy. Any attempt by the king to bargain with parlement or the Assembly of Notables in order to raise funds is met with immediate resistance. |
| 1788 | Royal officers arrest Jean-Jacques Duval d’Epremesnil and Goislard de Montsabert, sitting members of Parlement for their resistance to the crown’s authority in absolutism. A month later begins the Day of Tiles that was one of the first revolts against the crown. And so this carries on and escalates. More revolts, protests, and riots alongside declarations, public speeches, and pamphlets from all sides continue from there. |
| 1789 | During the discussion and drafting of a new French constitution, beginning in may, debate over the issue of how much authority the King have becomes a sticking point. In June an oath is taken by the assembly in a literal tennis court swearing to not disband until the constitution is drafted and established. The oath is dubbed the Tennis Court Oath. It is from here the assmebly finds two primary factions emerging from the aristocratic monarchists arguing from a more ‘conservative’ view of the king’s power and the anti-royalist revolutionaries who argued for a progressive view that the king should hold little and the majority of power should be seated in Parlement. Baron de Gauville, a conservative, wrote in his journal “We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp.” This excerpt is believed to be the origin point of left-wing and right-wing yet in saying that we can see its usage was more about the competing faction’s seating arrangement that emerged after a long debated issue. There is little to suggest any wider evolution of the term occurred until 1815. Inbetween then, the seating arrangement seemed to ebb and flow depending on the issue at hand. Though it still held a general ‘progressives on left and conservatives on the right’ foundation. |
| 1794 | Believing the seating method and factionism was ingraining people in their respective sides, the seating arrangements alongside political clubs were banned.. |
| 1815 | And now, to continue our chase of history we arrive at 1815. The fall of Napoleon Bonaparte has happened and the Bourbon Family is back in power through the reign of King Louis XVIII. This is when political clubs are restored through the work of the self-titled ultra-royalists. A conservative faction made up overwhelmingly of the priviledge classes and were the majority in the assembly. Naturally, once political clubs were back they resumed their place in the right wing. The party of constitutionals sat in the centre and the independents in the left wing. Here the setting arrangements held firm. Curiously this is where extreme left, extreme right, center left, and center right started to emerge in assembly accounts. Likely to better refer to the nuances that were around in the sections of the assembly. So even now the terms left and right were still not explicitly about a political ideology but rather the seating of those in the assembly due to political clubs or the stances on a given issue. |
| 1871 | Here the French have established The Third Republic. The political party system has become more entrenched and this is when the terminology transformed into labeling parties by their seatings foremost. A party could now commonly be referred to as a “Centre Right” or “Radical Left” party. This would replaced old terms such as reactionaries or the reds that were the primary descriptors of parties. |
How exactly these terms spread into other countries and became adopted seems to be largely unknown from what I could find. For example in British politics what seems to be cited as the origin point for their adoption of terms left and right was discussion over the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s. Though there are many French words that have entered into common parlance in English, some most don't even realise are borrowed from the French language. So perhaps that's we ended up with those terms.
It's thanks to this research that I found out what bothers me. Our usage of the word makes either wing sound like they cover a large breadth within them yet to me they fail to truly capture the scope, nuance, and complexities within their own definitions. And that's because they do. These words were never intended to be so broadly reaching. They entered into common parlance but then the system they described changed but the words remained. How exactly they ballooned instead of fading is a mystery. They somehow managed to stay in regular use, so naturally the terminologies meanings evolved. What is also interesting is that these terms are still new ideas. What emerged as a label to create distinction during a single country's debating of governing powers, became terms to describe political factionism in the same government, before evolving once again into an umbrella term of a 'political spectrum'. These terms today still have their use and I'm not suggesting we stop. Rather it seems to me that to use left or right to describe a person, or faction, as wholely belonging to an entire spectrum of political ideology, defeats the purpose of words. Even if you ignore their simplistic origins and first evolution to cover more nuance. It is rare to find an ideology or ethic or, especially so, a person who is wholely left or right. These ideas are too complex and abstract at their broadest to not move along the axis. Never truly finding purchase.
Anecdotally I think most people already believe this on some level. It's my hope we can continue to use them as nuanced descriptors on political views, rather than an ideological umbrella term. In many ways, this was both a lot to read and only a little bit of info on the topic. All the same I thank you for reading.