Rethinking the Political Spectrum

“The most important effect of the new, accurate political spectrum is the clarity it brings to political analysis and discourse.”

I think this look at the political spectrum is very useful—especially if you add anarchy at the right, as you suggest.

However, I object to the author suggesting this is somehow new or novel. I read almost identical analyses of the political spectrum in 1968.

“On the far right, you have totally decentralized authority, such as autonomous city-states.”

Well, that puts anarchy right back into your spectrum. The next step beyond autonomous city-states would be entirely autonomous individuals—to wit, anarchy.

However, I like the thinking behind the decentralized vs not as the basis for a spectrum.

The next step beyond autonomous city-states would be entirely autonomous individuals—to wit, anarchy.

Remember, the basis for the political spectrum is the presence of a government that engages in politics in the first place. Anarchy is the absence of government. Therefore, anarchy is not on the political chart: anarchy is the absence of the political chart.

However, I like the thinking behind the decentralized vs not as the basis for a spectrum.

Thanks. It really should be the basis: after all, politics is just a gigantic argument over who gets authority over what. Ideologies change--not too many monarchists around these days--but all ideologies advocate a certain level of authority that can be contrasted relative to each other. And place on the chart also depends on the subject being talked about: for example, while ancient Greece as a whole could be described as far-right--completely decentralized government in the form of autonomous city-states--the form of government in each of those city-states differed. Athens had everything from dictatorships to democracies. When you get down to it, this could also explain conflicts of the ancient Greek world: the far-right region of ancient Greece was continually fighting wars against more centralized governments which were to their left in terms of organizational authority, such as the Persian Empire. And since each Greek city-state was autonomous and therefore spanned the spectrum, they had conflicts with each other as well.

There's a little more thought involved with this, but it's far more accurate than the moronic chart we currently have.

Good essay. Been looking in fact for the history of what Stalin did. Read parts of it before but could not find the details I wanted.

I would disagree on one item: the placement of libertarianism. One could, by its rhetoric, also place the ACLU there. One could, by their rhetoric, place Emma Goldman's anarchists there. But both aided and abetted and one was founded by bolsheviks. When the Libertarian party actually accomplishes something, when it has something to show for all the rhetoric, I'll say it belongs where it is. Right now I see the party and movement as enablers of the left. My instinct is, as with anarchism, the ideology inherently always empowers the opposite of what is claims and the liberty its members often sincerely wish to advance.

But we have seen how it doesnt work that way in practice. We saw it in 1998 when the LP knocked Ensign out (by under 800 votes) and gave us Harry Reid as Majority leader. We saw it in 2002 when the LP was caught taking money from the DNC to run ads against the GOP in the south. We saw it in 2004 when the LP allied itself with the Green party to contest the Ohio vote.

When liberty is confused with licentiousness, the reaction and the result is a Zero tolerance society. The ACLU, by its promotion of "civil liberties", has empowered the courts, empowered lawyers and created a web of laws and regulations which have ensnared the nation. Unfortunately, as I see it the intentions many sincere libertarians have of advancing liberty has had and will have the same outcome as the ACLU has enjoyed with the only difference being the ACLU always intended to restrict freedom while the vast majority (but not all) of those who promote libertarianism do not.

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