Left, historically, refers tightly to the liberal party seats on one side (gauche) of the Parisian legislative chambers of the 19th-century French republic.

The metonymic spread of meaning extends outward, and some radical critics contend that "the Left" is thus nothing other than the left of bourgeois capital, the old "loyal opposition."

Was the "new Left" in "the streets" rather than "the chambers"? Somewhat... but when they "retired", the "new Left" went to sleep, at least, in chambers, not in the streets... they weren't crowding out the poor under those famous bridges of the Seine...