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I thought that left/right was originally and primarily about state involvement or not, so I guess centralisation/individuality.

• vidarh 10y ago
  Originally it was about who supported the monarchy in France, and who didn't in the constitutional assembly and first legislative assemblies after the French revolution. The constitutional monarchists and aristocrats sat on the right. Those opposing the monarchy sat on the left. Through the 19th century, the groups classifying themselves as left grew to encompass (going left to right) anarchists, left-libertarians (right-libertarianism wasn't founded until about a century later), communists and other revolutionary socialists, social democrats and classical liberals (in modern day Europe classical liberals sometimes are considered centre-right). On the right, the 19th century saw the collapse of support for absolutist monarchies and feudal systems, followed by the start of a splits along religious lines (many European countries have "Christan democrats" competing against usually mostly Christian but not religiously aligned conservatives) and between rural and urban forms of conservatism (e.g. special interest parties targeting farmers or rural populations are common many places), and eventually the rise of right-wing libertarianism and populism. State involvement or not is a red herring - e.g. a lot of the splits on the left have been about level of state involvement, ranging from wanting to destroy the state completely to wanting a strong state. Similarly on the right since the rise of right-wing libertarianism from the 50's-60's onwards. Basically you can't make sense of this on a single axis.