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Right-wing- Left-wing — Where did these directional terms originate in the United States Political System?

Why do left and right signal different ends of a political spectrum?

Patrice Higonnet, a professor emeritus of French history at Harvard University, relates that the initial story of this use of vocabulary began in France in the summer of 1789. The French Revolution itself and the storming of the Bastille escalated the population into chaos. The National Assembly met to act as the revolution’s government. Their primary focus at that time was to write a new constitution.

David A. Bell, a professor of early modern France at Princeton University, stated that one of the major issues of this assembly debated at that time was how much actual power the king would have. Would he have the power of absolute veto? During this assembly — as the debate continued- those that thought the king should have absolute veto power sat on the right of the president of the National Assembly. Those individuals during this time that believed the king should not have the right to absolute veto sat on the left of the assembly meeting. These individuals were considered “more radical” at the time. To clarify, those that wanted to stay closer to tradition and conservative were seated on the right and those that wanted more change were seated on the left. “So these groupings became known as the left and the right, and that’s where we trace the origins,” Bell told TIME Magazine.

Through the ages, the seating pattern repeated itself in subsequent legislatures and parliaments. “It entered popular vernacular quite quickly,” he says. “These terms were used in the newspapers reporting on the national assembly.”

The terms began as “literal descriptions,” in relation to seating, according to Sophia Rosenfeld, a professor of European and American intellectual and cultural history at the University of Pennsylvania.

The vocabulary and nuances of The French Revolution made their way across the globe. French historian Marcel Gauchet wrote an essay entitled “Right and Left” where the process of right and left were primary categories of political identity. This, however, was “a long drawn-out process that lasted more than three-quarters of a century, until the first decade of the 20th century.”

In the early years of the Soviet Union, specifically in Bolshevik Russia, the use of the terms “ left and right” exemplified its huge reach across the planet. Marci Shore, a professor of European cultural and intellectual history at Yale University, related to TIME Magazine that “The Bolsheviks were fascinated by the French Revolution. They were intensely conscious about carrying out its legacy — and raising it to a higher level.” The Bolsheviks viewed it as a necessary step in the historical process that would eventually lead to communism.