In a 1956 article addressed to libertarians (but from which others might benefit), Leonard E. Read briefly sketched the origins — and subsequent inversions — of the political terms “Left” and “Right”:

There was a time when “Left” and “Right” were appropriate and not inaccurate designations of ideological differences.

[Quoting Dean Russell]: “The first Leftists were a group of newly elected representatives to the National Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. They were labeled ‘Leftists’ merely because they happened to sit on the left side in the French Assembly.

“The legislators who sat on the right side were referred to as the Party of the Right, or Rightists. The Rightists or ‘reactionaries’ stood for a highly centralized national government, special laws and privileges for unions and various other groups and classes, government economic monopolies in various necessities of life, and a continuation of government controls over prices, production, and distribution.”

The leftists were, for all practical purposes, ideologically similar to those of us who call ourselves “libertarians.” The rightists were ideological opposites: statists, interventionists, in short, authoritarians.

“Left” and “Right” in France, during 1789–90, had a semantic handiness and a high degree of accuracy.

But “leftist” was soon expropriated by the authoritarian Jacobins and came to have an opposite meaning. “Leftist” became descriptive of egalitarians and was associated with Marxian socialism: communism, socialism, Fabianism.

What, then, of “Rightist”? Where did it fit in this semantic reversal of “Leftist”? The staff of the Moscow apparatus has taken care of that for us, and to their advantage: Anything not communist or socialist they decreed and propagandized as “fascist.” This is by way of saying that any ideology that is not communist (Left) is now popularly established as fascist (Right).

But, says Read, both terms are hopelessly anachronistic:

“Left” and “Right” [as used these days] are each descriptive of authoritarian positions. Liberty has no horizontal relationship to authoritarianism. Libertarianism’s relationship to authoritarianism is vertical; it is up from the muck of men enslaving man.

As such, “Left” and “Right” pretty much designate the same thing. Consequently, to sidestep disastrous pitfalls, advises Read, we should avoid Aristotle’s “golden mean”:

One important disadvantage of a libertarian’s use of the Left-Right terminology is the wide-open opportunity for applying the golden-mean theory. For some twenty centuries Western man has come to accept the Aristotelian theory that the sensible position is between any two extremes, known politically today as the “middle-of-the-road” position. Now, if libertarians use the terms “Left” and “Right,” they announce themselves to be extreme right by virtue of being extremely distant in their beliefs from communism. But “Right” has been successfully identified with fascism. Therefore, more and more persons are led to believe that the sound position is somewhere between communism and fascism, both spelling authoritarianism.

And authoritarianism, under whatever name, is anathema not only to libertarians but also anyone who values freedom:

The libertarian can have no truck with “left” or “right” because he regrets any form of authoritarianism—the use of police force to control the creative life of man. To him, communism, fascism, Nazism, Fabianism, the welfare state—all egalitarianism—fit the definitive description that Plato, perhaps cynically, gave us centuries before any of these coercive systems were evolved:

The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war as well as in the midst of peace—to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals … only if he has been told to do so …

In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and, in fact, to become utterly incapable of it.

More details are in Read’s article, “Neither Left Nor Right”.