Two Lefts won't beat a Right

SINCE the French Revolution more than two centuries ago, the labels "left" and "right" have been used in reference to two competing political ideologies and the movements representing them - those on the left promoting social justice and economic equality as the engines of progress, and those on the right protecting traditional values and national cohesion as ways of safeguarding the political order.

Through the years those terms have been used and abused by leaders and groups vying for power, and started losing their meaning after the end of the ideological rivalry of the Cold War and against the backdrop of the economic and technological changes of recent decades.

Hence for most of the 19th and 20th centuries we have accepted as a political axiom that the electoral base of left-leaning socialist parties was dominated by members of the working class while the conservative right-wing movements represented the interests of the rich economic elites.