What is the difference between the left and right in political parties?

Answer 1

Left wing parties stress the rights of a community, and that people should act in the interests or the good of the community.

Right wing parties stress the rights of the individual and stress that nothing should interfere with the rights of the individual to do as he/she pleases.

In real life it all becomes quite confused, since right wingers can become terribly moralistic, which means they want to impose individual beliefs on a community. And left wingers can get very confused about economic wealth and the rights of individuals to accumulate property and wealth.

Which is why they normally meet in the middle and something like social democracy is usually the outcome.

Answer 2

A number of social and economic criteria have been given for left vs. right politics respectively e.g. reform vs. tradition, social radicalism vs. social conservatism, economic intervention vs. economic freedom, authority vs. civil liberty etc. However as circumstances change the criteria are inconsistent. To take a major example Nazism while considered right-wing was nonetheless socially radical and economically interventionist. So it has been concluded that left and right are inconsistent terms, and so perhaps should be abandoned as unhelpful in political discussion and analysis. However a consistency does hold whatever the issue on the question of equality, whether social (personal rights) or economic (income and property). So while Nazism was socially radical and economically interventionist it clearly upheld social if not also economic inequality, though the inequality it established was one replacing much of the old and therefore socially radical. Regarding whether a government policy is left or right turns on the question of its goal rather than the policy itself and on whether that goal supports or advances equality or supports or advances inequality, whether legal, civil, political, social, or economic.

Answer 3

Speaking in general terms, a leftist government believes a large central government is better able to handle a nation's affairs. In contrast a right wing or better said, conservative party believes in a smaller central government and more control is given to state and local governments,