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The most common way to grade your political position is on the Left-Right axis. On the Left end (usually red) you have preference for equality of outcome (i.e. those who struggle get should get help to bring them up to a minimum standard), while on the Right (usually blue) the preference is for equality of opportunity (i.e. everyone should get the same chances to succeed or fail on their own merits).
Now very quickly this runs into complications as their are actually two common axes that are not that closely correlated. They are the economic and social axes. The economic axis has capitalism at one end (i.e. no restrictions on money and business) and socialism at the other (i.e. government command of all important parts of the economy). Meanwhile the social axis has anarchism at one end (i.e. minimal restriction of self expression) and authoritarianism at the other (i.e. strength through conformity). This has long since been developed into the political compass model (my own version show below):
But a few years ago I wondered, could you fit a third axis on here, making the Political Compass three-dimensional, and if so what would that axis represent. After some musing I came up with the foreign affairs scale with globalism (i.e. attempt to influence or cooperate with other countries) versus isolationism (i.e. focus exclusively on the home country).
An important factor in trying to make a three-axis political spectrum graph is that the axes are not equally important. As a crude measure I would rate the economic scale out of nine, the social scale out of seven and the foreign scale out of five in terms of importance to individuals. Thus you get something like this:
Notes:
The labels I went with have been chosen with to cause least confusion, but I could have replaced conservatism with authoritarianism and liberalism with anarchism for instance. Edit: I did.
The corners have been cut off the 2D graph because I don't believe there is much in the way of a difference in practice between communism (top left) and fascism (top right) or between anarcho-syndicalism (bottom left) and anarcho-capitalism (bottom right).
I think the ideal graph should result in the vast majority of people ending up in the middle.
The graphs have been changed with new labels added following commenter feedback. + Show Spoiler [old graphs] +
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Nice blog, but I don't think I have to tell you that there are many problems with these classifications. Saying "the Left" is kind of OK because we're usually referring to a distinct class of ideologies in the ball park of communism and socialism. There's not such a tidy definition of "Right", though. It's heavily dependent on context. I feel like saying something is "Right-wing" is almost never useful and quite frequently is used to dubious rhetorical effect.
Also, the opposite of Conservatism is Radicalism.
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Instead of Conservatism - Liberalism, you should have anarchism - authoritarianism.
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Canada8990 Posts
On December 13 2016 13:24 Jerubaal wrote:
Nice blog, but I don't think I have to tell you that there are many problems with these classifications. Saying "the Left" is kind of OK because we're usually referring to a distinct class of ideologies in the ball park of communism and socialism. There's not such a tidy definition of "Right", though. It's heavily dependent on context. I feel like saying something is "Right-wing" is almost never useful and quite frequently is used to dubious rhetorical effect.
Also, the opposite of Conservatism is Radicalism.
Depend how you define Radicalism and conservatism, if you define conservatism as "a will to change the keep the society the same as it was before" then yes radicalism as a will to drastically change the society would be appropriate.
But in general conservatism revolve less around the idea of not changing the society and more about the idea to restore some value or way of life that has been lost, or are about to get lost, and that pass by a change of society, it is almost never the preservation of the society as it is now, or even a perfect return to a society back in time (since those are clearly impossible anyway).
And in that way of seeing the world you can very well have radical conservative, lets say the KKK, who want a clear break from our society, but identify themselves by referring to the past.
And since the value conservatism usually want to protect revolve around nationalism, morale purity, family, respect of authority... I guess you could say that liberalism is the opposite even if I don't really like that dichotomy.
I think totalitarian-anarchist would indeed be a better axes for what you want to represent.
Also I am not sure about the interventionist-isolationist axes, I understand isolationist, not having any contact with entities outside of your border but what is at the end of interventionist? Global government? World conquest? The abolition of nationality and the creation of a world culture? Is it our country intervening in other country or is it us letting other intervene in our country?
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On December 13 2016 14:30 ninazerg wrote:
Instead of Conservatism - Liberalism, you should have anarchism - authoritarianism.
I don't think that's entirely helpful because while they are technically opposites neither Liberalism nor Conservativism completely objects to an authoritarian government or an anarchistic society. The size of government (if they agree there should be a centralized body) might be at stake, but there are conservatives and liberals who would argue for both anarchism and authoritarianism. Neither, however, would agree on the reason for adopting that ideology. I do think that its a cool idea though and in general the Conservative - Liberal dichotomy is unhelpful in some ways because it brands otherwise quite similar ideologies as opposing when in fact they are similar.
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On December 13 2016 12:31 Korakys wrote:
The labels I went with have been chosen with to cause least confusion, but I could have replaced conservatism with authoritarianism and liberalism with anarchism for instance. [sic]
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If we're getting into definitions, the opposite of conservative is progressive. And that is causing the entire problem, because while liberalism has some meaning on an anarchism - autoritarianism scale, conservatism doesn't.
And similarly, a liberal is not necessarily progressive. It depends largely on the status quo. If the progressive movement was in favour of imposing totalitarian rule, then progressive and liberal would be treated as opposites, just as conservative and liberal are treated as opposites now.
More importantly, however, I wonder why you picked foreign policy as your 3rd axis. And why, in particular, those. I would think globalism would make a better opposite of isolationism. However, I think a far more useful distinction would be hawkish <-> dovish. And that brings us to the main problem: there are a vast number of "useful" spectra upon political decisions can be classified. The original 2 scales were chosen because they encompass the majority of topics that people find important in their day to day life. They are far from perfect, and in particular, are quite outdated by now, but you don't really explain why you want to add your FP scale to this. What about Environmentalist <-> Industrialist (a scale for how much the preservation of nature should be weighted in policy decisions), or to replace the (meaningless) progressive <-> conservative scale: Biblical <-> Secular (I replaced the normal "religious" with biblical, because all religions are different, but this scale would obviously be about how much you feel religion should influence law). As you can see, there are plenty of other scales one can come up with for a 3D, 4D, or 10D compass.
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On December 13 2016 14:40 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2016 13:24 Jerubaal wrote:
Nice blog, but I don't think I have to tell you that there are many problems with these classifications. Saying "the Left" is kind of OK because we're usually referring to a distinct class of ideologies in the ball park of communism and socialism. There's not such a tidy definition of "Right", though. It's heavily dependent on context. I feel like saying something is "Right-wing" is almost never useful and quite frequently is used to dubious rhetorical effect.
Also, the opposite of Conservatism is Radicalism. Depend how you define Radicalism and conservatism, if you define conservatism as "a will to change the keep the society the same as it was before" then yes radicalism as a will to drastically change the society would be appropriate. But in general conservatism revolve less around the idea of not changing the society and more about the idea to restore some value or way of life that has been lost, or are about to get lost, and that pass by a change of society, it is almost never the preservation of the society as it is now, or even a perfect return to a society back in time (since those are clearly impossible anyway). And in that way of seeing the world you can very well have radical conservative, lets say the KKK, who want a clear break from our society, but identify themselves by referring to the past. And since the value conservatism usually want to protect revolve around nationalism, morale purity, family, respect of authority... I guess you could say that liberalism is the opposite even if I don't really like that dichotomy. I think totalitarian-anarchist would indeed be a better axes for what you want to represent. Also I am not sure about the interventionist-isolationist axes, I understand isolationist, not having any contact with entities outside of your border but what is at the end of interventionist? Global government? World conquest? The abolition of nationality and the creation of a world culture? Is it our country intervening in other country or is it us letting other intervene in our country?
The first definition of conservatism you give is the most basic but doesn't really encapsulate any real characteristics. As many have noticed, there's a certain absurdity to the idea. Who once was the revolutionary is now the conservative. The Soviet Communist Party was conservative in the final decades of the USSR.
The definition you give falls prey to the same problems. It is too dependent on your own perspective. Even your formulation that conservatism is "the idea of not changing the society and more about the idea to restore some value or way of life that has been lost, or are about to get lost, and that pass by a change of society" is a bit, mmmm, tautological(?). We wouldn't be having a debate about something if there wasn't some tension going on in society. So the conservative is always against something and a progressive is always for something? What about immediately after? (Rolling back the clock to 10 minutes ago.) Are pensioners complaining about infringements on their benefits conservatives? That's their way of life. I think that this definition is vulnerable to abuse and it just becomes whatever you want it to be. You may also just be assigning a vague intuition of a characteristic and then pigeonholing everything consider similar into a category.
The useful definition of Conservatism is often referred to as Burkean Conservatism and is a mode of political engagement, just like Radicalism. They do not have explicit positions attached to them, but certain ideologies do tend toward to one side. Conservatism respects tradition and precedent, as you pointed out, but you seemed to insinuate that it opposes all change. Rather it considers organic, gradual change to be superior to the direct, immediate change demanded by Radicals.
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On December 14 2016 04:24 Acrofales wrote:
If we're getting into definitions, the opposite of conservative is progressive. And that is causing the entire problem, because while liberalism has some meaning on an anarchism - autoritarianism scale, conservatism doesn't.
And similarly, a liberal is not necessarily progressive. It depends largely on the status quo. If the progressive movement was in favour of imposing totalitarian rule, then progressive and liberal would be treated as opposites, just as conservative and liberal are treated as opposites now.
More importantly, however, I wonder why you picked foreign policy as your 3rd axis. And why, in particular, those. I would think globalism would make a better opposite of isolationism. However, I think a far more useful distinction would be hawkish <-> dovish. And that brings us to the main problem: there are a vast number of "useful" spectra upon political decisions can be classified. The original 2 scales were chosen because they encompass the majority of topics that people find important in their day to day life. They are far from perfect, and in particular, are quite outdated by now, but you don't really explain why you want to add your FP scale to this. What about Environmentalist <-> Industrialist (a scale for how much the preservation of nature should be weighted in policy decisions), or to replace the (meaningless) progressive <-> conservative scale: Biblical <-> Secular (I replaced the normal "religious" with biblical, because all religions are different, but this scale would obviously be about how much you feel religion should influence law). As you can see, there are plenty of other scales one can come up with for a 3D, 4D, or 10D compass.
You make some excellent points here. Let me attempt to address them:
Firstly, several commenters have quibbled with the labels of the social axis. I chose those labels because I believe that is most often what people in those groups call themselves, or are called by the opposite group. Thus they are the most relatable. Remember this is just the social scale (i.e. mostly covering matters related to what is lawful and acceptable conduct among the citizenry). The labels authoritarianism and anarchism are technically more accurate (I should perhaps have taken TL's higher audience intelligence more into account here). However the actual words in isolation (they are not strict antonyms in the dictionary) do apply fairly well; the past was generally more authoritarian so a conservative (i.e. someone who resists change) fits at the moment. Meanwhile anarchy is just a more extreme version of liberty. This is a weak argument I know, but non-the-less it is my reasoning.
Regarding the choice of the foreign scale, firstly let me say that globalism is probably a better term to use than interventionism (and one I didn't think of) and provides a better vision of what that end-point of the scale could mean: something close to a world government, or more probably, supremacy of the UN over any one member state. Now I chose the foreign affairs spectrum over others because I believe it correlates only weakly with the other two scales. Hence an isolationist authoritarian capitalist might be more common than a globalist authoritarian capitalist, but not exceptionally so and an isolationist liberal socialist is not at all uncommon compared to a globalist liberal socialist. When it comes to the other spectrums you have put forward I think the main problem is that they correlate too closely with the axes already on the graph. With hawkish/dovish this only really applies to military engagements and does not encompass trade deals, international alliances and the like. No-one really opposes environmental protections in their own right, they only do so when they perceive an economic trade-off.
With biblical/secular let me tell you a story: this week I learned that my new Prime Minister is Catholic, I was surprised because he has been Deputy PM for 8 years and I didn't know this fact, but also I was surprised that it was even considered worth reporting as religion has very little importance in New Zealand politics. The reporting was also followed by a statement from the new PM basically saying that he wont allow his faith to affect his political judgement. From this I demonstrate how irrelevant that axis would be in some countries. I aim for widest applicability.
You could easily find many scales to plot peoples positions on, but I wanted to find the three most relevant ones. I stopped at three because tesseracts are bloody hard to draw!
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On December 13 2016 15:47 docvoc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2016 14:30 ninazerg wrote:
Instead of Conservatism - Liberalism, you should have anarchism - authoritarianism. I don't think that's entirely helpful because while they are technically opposites neither Liberalism nor Conservativism completely objects to an authoritarian government or an anarchistic society. The size of government (if they agree there should be a centralized body) might be at stake, but there are conservatives and liberals who would argue for both anarchism and authoritarianism. Neither, however, would agree on the reason for adopting that ideology. I do think that its a cool idea though and in general the Conservative - Liberal dichotomy is unhelpful in some ways because it brands otherwise quite similar ideologies as opposing when in fact they are similar.
Conservativism and Liberalism are too vague. The distinction between anarchy and authoritarianism is clear: one wants the government to legislate nothing, one wants the government to legislate everything. If you have two very extreme points, you can find the conservative and liberal stances on the particular subject somewhere in between. Maybe. I say "Somewhere", because of this: Consider that we have two individuals who both consider themselves relatively conservative. They both agree on 'social conservative' issues, such as gun ownership rights, pro-industry stances, are pro-capitalist, and are both somewhat nationalist. However, one believes that the government is necessary to protect law-abiding citizens, whereas the other believes that the government should be done away with entirely.
On December 13 2016 14:40 Nakajin wrote:
And since the value conservatism usually want to protect revolve around nationalism, morale purity, family, respect of authority... I guess you could say that liberalism is the opposite even if I don't really like that dichotomy.
I think totalitarian-anarchist would indeed be a better axes for what you want to represent.
Basically, what this guy said.
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On December 13 2016 15:47 docvoc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2016 14:30 ninazerg wrote:
Instead of Conservatism - Liberalism, you should have anarchism - authoritarianism. I don't think that's entirely helpful because while they are technically opposites neither Liberalism nor Conservativism completely objects to an authoritarian government or an anarchistic society. The size of government (if they agree there should be a centralized body) might be at stake, but there are conservatives and liberals who would argue for both anarchism and authoritarianism. Neither, however, would agree on the reason for adopting that ideology. I do think that its a cool idea though and in general the Conservative - Liberal dichotomy is unhelpful in some ways because it brands otherwise quite similar ideologies as opposing when in fact they are similar.
that's because liberalism and conservatism aren't really concrete ideologies at all. on the other hand, libertarianism and authoritarianism are, which is why i'd put those in instead.
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I have updated three of the axis labels due to feedback. The winners are: authoritarianism, anarchism and globalism.
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On December 14 2016 15:32 Korakys wrote:
I have updated three of the axis labels due to feedback. The winners are: authoritarianism, anarchism and globalism.
It was all just an elaborate trick. Our social experiment worked!
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On December 14 2016 08:45 Korakys wrote:
With biblical/secular let me tell you a story: this week I learned that my new Prime Minister is Catholic, I was surprised because he has been Deputy PM for 8 years and I didn't know this fact, but also I was surprised that it was even considered worth reporting as religion has very little importance in New Zealand politics. The reporting was also followed by a statement from the new PM basically saying that he wont allow his faith to affect his political judgement. From this I demonstrate how irrelevant that axis would be in some countries. I aim for widest applicability.
This illustrates one of the most insidious conceits of Modernism. It supposes that ideas like religion an imposition in the public square but purports that "secular" ideas are some how neutral. Even the usage of the word secular is supposed to denote some sort of neutrality, but few ideas are neutral. This is a ploy to disarm people from using their moral judgement to oppose Enlightenment agenda issues on the grounds that "you can't impose your view on other people", even though these "neutral" positions that they are trying to privilege are no less of an imposition than the prohibited views.
A good rule of thumb for logic and rhetoric is that if someone says that all of the arguments against yours are weaker, they might have a strong argument. If they say that all arguments against you are invalid, they are probably full of shit.
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On December 15 2016 00:52 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2016 08:45 Korakys wrote:
With biblical/secular let me tell you a story: this week I learned that my new Prime Minister is Catholic, I was surprised because he has been Deputy PM for 8 years and I didn't know this fact, but also I was surprised that it was even considered worth reporting as religion has very little importance in New Zealand politics. The reporting was also followed by a statement from the new PM basically saying that he wont allow his faith to affect his political judgement. From this I demonstrate how irrelevant that axis would be in some countries. I aim for widest applicability.
This illustrates one of the most insidious conceits of Modernism. It supposes that ideas like religion an imposition in the public square but purports that "secular" ideas are some how neutral. Even the usage of the word secular is supposed to denote some sort of neutrality, but few ideas are neutral. This is a ploy to disarm people from using their moral judgement to oppose Enlightenment agenda issues on the grounds that "you can't impose your view on other people", even though these "neutral" positions that they are trying to privilege are no less of an imposition than the prohibited views. A good rule of thumb for logic and rhetoric is that if someone says that all of the arguments against yours are weaker, they might have a strong argument. If they say that all arguments against you are invalid, they are probably full of shit.
Let's talk about ice cream.
Suppose we live in an alternate universe where all the religions and ideologies are just ice cream. There is a chocolate ice cream President. The senate slaps a bill on his desk. This bill has a clause that says strawberry ice cream should be left out in the sun to melt. Therefore, this bill is clearly biased against strawberry ice cream. If the President follows his religion, then he'll sign it, because it melts an opposing ice cream. If the President doesn't allow religion to influence his decision, he will see that the bill is clearly anti-strawberry ice cream, and will not sign it, even if strawberry ice cream lovers are annoying everyone and want the sidewalks all painted pink.
A secular position isn't necessarily "neutral", because it opposes making decisions based on dogma, and is rather the antithesis of partiality. Vanilla ice cream lovers have their own moral judgement, chocolate ice cream lovers have their own moral judgement, and so on. Non-ice-cream-eaters also have beliefs and can make moral judgements, even though they don't eat any ice cream. Not one has a monopoly on morality, and therefore, when governing a multi-ice-cream state, it is important to try to eliminate as much bias as possible. The polar opposite of a state that aspires to impartiality towards any particular ice cream flavor would be a state that blatantly disregards any flavor that is not aligned with the ice cream that is in power.
You may say, "In a reality closer to our own, non-ice-cream eaters are trying to get rid of ice cream entirely!" and if this is the case, two things may be happening:
1. You are so biased towards your flavor of ice cream that any talk of impartiality seems like an assault on your ice cream's values.
2. The non-cream-eaters are forming their own biased dictatorship by censoring ice cream.
If the second condition is true, then they are not being impartial. The imposition of an anti-ice-cream state is an obvious threat to everyone who loves ice cream. If the first condition is true, however, it may just be that the state, while making their best attempt at impartiality, has made decisions that you feel have not benefited your flavor of ice cream and consequently, you being to perceive that your ice cream is being treated unfairly, whether this is true or not.
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I was going to explain something like that, but I would never have done it as eloquently as ninazerg just did, so I'll just say that I agree entirely.
And moreover, I think secular vs religious (and which religion) is a very important axis for world politics right now, and NZ seems more like an exception than the rule.
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No, a better metaphor would be vanilla ice cream saying that we're not going to be partial to any flavor, so you're not allowed to make a chocolate based argument or a strawberry based argument. So every time there's a discussion vanilla says "all your arguments are invalid", the "vanilla" argument is the only acceptable one.
The tactic is really to get you hung up on the word religion. Cuz err'body knows that being a religious bigot iz bad. If someone is telling you that they are a "neutral" position, they are lying. you can only really be neutral on extremely mundane things. Stop thinking there is some dichotomy in political life. Almost all of these political positions where the word secular is invoked are chock full to the brim of Enlightenment ideology. To say that it's neutral and that it's really just these irksome religious types who are holding up the show is laughable.
You said earlier that nobody has a monopoly on moral judgement. Then why does one person with a worldview simply have to acquiesce to another person with a worldview?
The assumptions you're making that Modernity wants you to make is that
a)World views are inscrutable and can never communicate a reason higher than "because Jesus said so".
and
b) That the secular/neutral/impartial...i.e. the Enlightenment position...is not a worldview.
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On December 15 2016 07:09 Jerubaal wrote:
No, a better metaphor would be vanilla ice cream saying that we're not going to be partial to any flavor, so you're not allowed to make a chocolate based argument or a strawberry based argument. So every time there's a discussion vanilla says "all your arguments are invalid", the "vanilla" argument is the only acceptable one.
The tactic is really to get you hung up on the word religion. Cuz err'body knows that being a religious bigot iz bad. If someone is telling you that they are a "neutral" position, they are lying. you can only really be neutral on extremely mundane things. Stop thinking there is some dichotomy in political life. Almost all of these political positions where the word secular is invoked are chock full to the brim of Enlightenment ideology. To say that it's neutral and that it's really just these irksome religious types who are holding up the show is laughable.
You said earlier that nobody has a monopoly on moral judgement. Then why does one person with a worldview simply have to acquiesce to another person with a worldview?
The assumptions you're making that Modernity wants you to make is that
a)World views are inscrutable and can never communicate a reason higher than "because Jesus said so".
and
b) That the secular/neutral/impartial...i.e. the Enlightenment position...is not a worldview.
Did you even read anything I wrote past the first sentence?
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I don't find it useful to critique every statement made by someone, as that usually just pisses them off (guess we're past that). I prefer to try to get at the heart of the matter. What is it that really drives you?
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On December 15 2016 11:32 Jerubaal wrote:
I don't find it useful to critique read every statement made by someone,
as that usually just pisses them off (guess we're past that).
Try me.
I prefer to try to get at the heart of the matter.
You didn't, though. I even addressed some of the stuff you responded with.
What is it that really drives you?
My faith in my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
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