LogFAQs > #885483935

Very few people actually know what the terms left and right-wing mean.

Economic systems and size of government have next to nothing to do with it, it's about your views on society. The left believes in egalitarianism while the right believes social hierarchies are either inevitable or even preferable. We get the terms from the French Revolution when liberals sat on the left side of the Estates General and the monarchist on the right.

This is why two very different nations, a capitalist liberal democracy like the US and an authoritarian communist state like the USSR are both considered left-wing. Authoritarianism itself is not left or right-wing, it could be equality by force (communism) or social hierarchy by force (fascism).