Originally Posted by
Endus
A more useful interpretation is that in the West, the left-right axis is more correctly the left-liberal/right-authoritarian axis. On the traditional graph, representatives fall on a line from bottom-left to top-right, more or less.
The communist regimes argued a left-authoritarian perspective against what they saw as right-liberalism. And that's the root of the conflict; not left vs right at all, but the conflict between different axes that those societies internalized. It's why people of either often talk past each other; they can't even agree on the end points of the axis they're discussing, so it's unsurprising that their arguments about each other make no sense.
And in particular with conservative views in the West, it was about two opposing authoritarian views; their right-wing authoritarianism as opposed to the Russian's left-wing authoritarianism. And, ironically, both preached against authoritarianism, while pushing it themselves, by framing the other as the "enemy" based on left/right economics.
Right-wing views don't have to be authoritarian, though the alternative is anarcho-capitalism, which just lets corporations run roughshod without much/any control, which means the corporations themselves often step up the authoritarian nature of society, since they have no interest in defending freedoms.