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So as some of you may have noticed I have been thinking about the political compass lately and how I can explain the various axis to people, as well as where I feel a lot of America lies on this chart.
Its clear terms like Left, Liberal, Libertarian, conservative are often misused, confused, or to be more generous, have multiple conflicting definitions.
So lets be clear about one point. Language is fluid. People use the terms in conflicting ways, thats ok to a point, but its gotten so bad that it makes communication difficult because you never know what definition someone is really using. So I'm going to use the technical definition here mostly rather than the colloquial ones. Usually the definition of left and right just means Democrat and GOP in america, but I find that really masks a lot of nuance.
So when we talk from a technical angle Left really means "The government should force the more fortunate to help the less fortunate" this tends to mean if your Left you support redistribution of wealth and social programs, if your left to the most extreme then your basically some form of communism where you feel all wealth should be distributed evenly. Right on the other hand tends to mean you support free markets, in its most extreme you would want no financial regulations of any kind, a pure capitalism (no not the USA sort of capitalism, full pure, extreme capitalism). Socialistic countries such as much of Europe would fall about 2/3rds of the way towards the left, more capitalistic countries like the USA would probably fall closer to 1/3rds of the way towards the left, but still left leaning. There are very few countries today that would fall towards the right side of the spectrum
The top to bottom side is much easier to understand. The top most side would represent Authoritative regimes. Basically the farther towards the top you go the bigger the government you have and the less freedom the people have to question the government or collective opinion. The farther to the bottom you go the closer you appeal to the Anarchist mentality of small government with minimal power.
Now whats interesting to me is the DNC in america would fall very close to the top-left corner, about 2/3rds or closer to that top-left corner. The GOP I'd say falls towards the top-right corner, also about 2/3 of the way there. Most people who are consistently independent however seem to fall somewhere near the bottom-middle. I myself am bottom-middle, about as far away from either of these parties as I could be short of being an actual anarchist (im not all the way at the bottom). I'm more than happy about where I wound up.
@snow Is it that you dislike the idea of left and right or just dislike how people (incorrectly) us the term. Afterall politiscales does use the technical definition of left-right as part of its test, it just includes other aspects too.
@snow They use different words that mean the same thing though. Their communism-capitalism axis means left-right
@snow I agree the tests arent the same, politiscales is nice because it has more information about more axis. All I'm saying is that the left vs right axis (communistic vs capitalistic) is basically one of the axis that is in politiscales, and is still relevant. But there are also others they cover which is nice.
@miguel31416 I agree, same, being Classically liberal (Libertarian) is more important. Which is why considering both parties are Authoritarian I disagree with both.
How do you locate the centre? I understand from the description how to say one belief is to the left of another, but not how you arrive at an absolute position such that we can say almost all countries are left of centre.
Notably, when the test site uses platform details to complete the test on behalf of political candidates/parties, the results mostly wind up right of centre.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
https://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2019
@khird The center is easy, the center is neutrality between the two points. So take Left-right, which is communism vs capitalism axis.. someone who beleives both principles should be engaged equally or is otherwise indifferent on the issue most of the time would be in the middle.
That's roughly how I'd go about it - maybe we need a more precise way to say when two principles are equally engaged?
Ignoring the vertical axis, I'd have put:
Canada, basically capitalist with some socialist policies: near right
USA, basically capitalist with fewer socialist policies: further right
China, basically communist with some capitalist aspects: near left
North Korea, pretty much entirely communist: all the way left.
The neutral point might be somewhere around India.
@khird By the way I dont find the political compass' opinion on where the various candidates would lye is even remotely valid. Sadly if we talk about candidates I dont think most people would be objective enough about them, or they themselves would be objective in describing their true intentions, for any sort of mapping to be remotely accurate.
When I look at how they map the candidates I find it way off compared to their track record and even a bit naive. Then again they arent Data Scientists, I am, so I probably have a better instinct for some data than your average person.
I think the uniaxial distribution in the US has led to a shift in terminology. Imagine the candidates' positions were rotated 45 degrees or so to lie mostly horizontally. Now their relative positions probably line up better with common use of the terms "left" and "right".
A true pure libertarian (ACLU?), is now left- libertarian.
The Libertarian Party, shown pure right, is now right-libertarian (& the overall most libertarian).
The Green Party, shown left-libertarian, is now pure left.
@freemo To be more precise, communism doesn't necesarily mean a complete even distribution. If you seize the means of production, you have socialism, but people can still have different salaries.
@DracoMagister Communism in its pure form does mean even distribution. If you have a graph that shows 100% communism it implies that is your stance. If your goal is something less than that, such as socialism, then youd be close to the communism scale just not 100%, socialism would have you about 2/3rds of the way there to the left like I mentioned.
Keep in mind we arent talking about communism as in governments named communism because no such thing as a pure communism, everything is at least a little bit a compromise and only partially communistic. We are talking about the pure and rarified ideology when we talk about the spectrums.
@freemo which axis do you care more about? I'd always choose a libertarian society over an authoritarian one, no matter if it's left or right