can someone explain what that r/politicalcompass map thing means and what each of the four corners represents?
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I’m assuming you are referring to the two axis, Left/Right and Libertarian/Authoritarian political compass here.
The idea is that ones broad political position can be mapped using these two axis, obviously its a simplification but any system that maps one’s political position would be. Its probably the simplest without being *completely* trash.
The axis’
– Left/Right. Its contentious what this axis even means and there is no real definition, kind of just a consensus that some things are more left or right than other things. The way I interpret the left/right spectrum is a question of ‘How distributed should power be?’ with the left-most position being as evenly as possible and the right-most being as concentrated as possible. When Left/Right started being used as a political analogy, it was to describe Monarchists on the right and Republicans (who wanted Democracy) on the left in the post-revolutionary French parliament, so it kinda tracks. Economics came into it following the Industrial Revolution and adoption of Capitalism as an economic model, political power is no longer the only important consideration, economic power (wealth) is just as big. Nowadays the economic realm is the only one where Left/Right is used as the world is pretty settled on dispersing political power to some degree using Democracy, until you reach the far poles.
– Lib/Auth. Kinda simple in comparison, how hard does your politics suppress individual rights and autonomy to enforce its system. Every system needs to do this to a degree, even the most Libertarian leaning ideologies still have rules on personal conduct (notably the Non-Aggression Principle) which one needs to abide by to be accepted by society while the outright Authoritarian ones like Fascism could not sustain itself without that suppression. So very broadly, ‘more free’ is toward Libertarian while ‘less free’ is toward Authoritarian.
The real-world ideologies that best represent the four corners are
– Lib/Left, Anarchism. which despite the common usage of the word is an actual political philsophy and not just synonym for chaos. Not much in the way of real world examples at nation-sized scales, Rojava is probably the best one.
– Auth/Left, Soviet style Communism. eg the Soviet Union, pre-90’s Eastern Europe and China.
– Lib/Right, Anarcho-Capitalism. No real examples of developed nations doing this, you kinda have to look to American and colonial settlers and ignore that they were stealing native property all the while, arguably this whole quadrant is oxymoronic (everyone is free but very few have power, hmm…).
– Auth/Right, Fascism. Nazi Germany is the obvious example but there’s also Fascist Italy and Spain.
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