"You can't move off the left-right axis, that's not how language works. Except for me, I don't describe myself as left or right" -Michael Malice
Thomas Sowell defines it as "How malleable is human nature?" If you believe people's nature can be changed you lean left, if you believe their nature is fixed you are right. People fall in between the two extremes of what they think on malleability.
Difference between left and right
collectivism vs individualism
More government vs. less government
How they view hierarchies
The legitimacy of hierarchy
Left say no hierarchy - Leftists assume all hierarchies are illegitimate, and must be overthrown in order to achieve "equality.
Right acknowledges that there are hierarchies in nature based on different skills and abilities and that’s ok.
“ask a leftist if some people are better than others, and you will get a speech”
- Malice
According to Norberto Bobbio, one of the major exponents of this distinction, the left believes in attempting to eradicate social inequality—believing it to be unethical or unnatural, while the right regards most social inequality as the result of ineradicable natural inequalities, and sees attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian.