In
politics,
left-wing,
leftist and
the Left generally imply support for social change with a view towards creating a more
egalitarian society. The term
Left was coined during the
French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament; those who sat on the left generally supported the
radical changes of the revolution, including the creation of a
republic and
secularization.
[1] The concept of a political Left became more prominent after the
June Days Uprising of
1848. The term was applied to a number of revolutionary movements in Europe, especially
socialism,
anarchism[2] and
communism. The term is also used to describe
social democracy and
social liberalism.
[3] The
Left-libertarian Roderick Long summarises left-wing politics as "concerns for worker empowerment, worry about plutocracy, concerns about feminism and various kinds of social equality.
[4]In politics the term left wing derives from the French Revolution, as radical Montagnard and Jacobin deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right in France was between supporters of the Republic and those of the Monarchy.[1] The June Days Uprising during the Second Republic was an attempt by the left to assert itself after the 1848 Revolution, but few of the (still predominantly rural) population supported them.
After Napoleon III's 1851 coup and the subsequent establishment of the Second Empire, Marxism began to rival Radical Republicanism and the "Utopian socialism" of Auguste Comte and Charles Fourier. Particularly influential in this regard was the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, which asserted that the history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggle. They predicted that a proletarian revolution would eventually overthrow bourgeois society, and by abolishing private property create a classless, stateless, and post-monetary society.
In the mid 19th century, nationalism, socialism, agitation in favour of greater democracy, and anti-clericalism (opposition to the role of the church in controlling French social and cultural life) all became features of the French Left. In the United States many leftists, social liberals, progressives and trade unionists were influenced by the works of Thomas Paine, who introduced the concept of Asset-based egalitarianism, which theorises that social equality is possible by a redistribution of resources, usually in the form of a capital grant provided at the age of majority.
