The idea that Democrats
represent the Left and Republicans represent the Right is even more
ridiculous than the idea that the left-vs.-right political
spectrum can explain politics. But of course, we all know this.
However, what many of us don't know
is how the traditional left-vs.-right “political
spectrum” or “political compass” got the way it is, and exactly
how and when it outlived its usefulness. Understanding the history of
the spectrum, and how the modern two-dimensional square political
spectrums developed, are vital keys to understanding what the real
map of politics and anarchism looks like.
Figure #1: The Left-vs.-Right Model
The concept of a linear,
one-dimensional, left-vs.-right model evidently originated in the late
18th century in the French National Assembly, during the
French Revolution (see Figure #1). It was the press who gave the
“left” and “right” labels to the representatives, who were
seated on the left or right of the chamber according to their
support for either the monarchists and those loyal to the
Ancien Régime
(on the right), or the Revolution (on the left). This
arrangement continued after the body's replacement with a Legislative
Assembly, and through a National Convention, to today. In the
mid-19th century, influential economists Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, and Claude Frédéric
Bastiat sat on the left of the chamber at the same time.
Today in the U.S. Senate
and House of Representatives, Democratic Party representatives sit on
the left, while Republicans sit on the right. It's similar, but that
does not necessarily mean that Republicans are more likely to support
monarchy, nor Democrats revolution. And it certainly doesn't mean
that the Republican Party is conservative, nor that the Democratic
Party is Leftist. Additionally, the existence of totalitarian
socialists and libertarian and “anarcho-” capitalists show that
the old left-vs.-right paradigm is no longer relevant.
But that was true back
when Proudhon and Bastiat both supported the French Revolution.
That's because according to the modern, common perception, Proudhon
is regarded as a Mutualist of the left, while Bastiat is considered a
classical liberal of the right. Bastiat influenced Belgian economist
Gustave de Molinari, the author of The Production of Security,
and the first person to articulate what is now called
“market-anarchism”. The Molinari Institute bears his name, and
many self-described libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and Agorists
are influenced by Molinari, including self-described Aristotelian
objectivist Roderick T. Long, who has written on the difficulty of
classifying anarchists on the traditional left-vs.-right
spectrum.
After the Paris Communes
of 1848 and 1871, and the careers of Marx, Proudhon, Bastiat, and
Molinari, the early 20th century saw the rise of
synthesis-anarchism; people like Rudolf Rocker and Voltairine
deCleyre wanted individualist anarchists, socialists, and
anarcho-communists to work together to fight capitalism and the
state. Some modern variants of “Anarchy Without Adjectives”
integrate the most anti-capitalists elements of libertarian-leaning
anarchism, such as contributions from left-Rothbardianism and
left-wing market-anarchism, mutualist anarchists, Geo-anarchists
(anarchist students of Henry George), and others.
In the mid-20th
century, the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Japanese imperialism,
and the U.S.S.R. gave rise to Horseshoe Theory (see Figure #2). The
pre-WWII Molotov-Ribbentropp treaty (to carve-up Poland between
Germany and the U.S.S.R.) and the late 20th century Stasi
of East Germany, showed the public that liberalism is a moderate
center, while the extreme left of communism and the extreme right of
fascism met at an evil authoritarian center. However, Horseshoe
Theory only goes so far; it only shows the top half of the political
compass, leaving anarchism out of the mix (see Figure #3). Thus,
anarchism is considered “fringe” by most Americans, and even as
“extreme” as totalitarian systems (partially owing to the
widespread perception of anarchism as necessarily chaotic or
violent).
Figure #2: Horseshoe Theory
Figure #3: The Full 2-D Political Spectrum
It's not entirely
accurate to describe Adolf Hitler as a socialist snowflake art
student who hated privilege and capitalism, nor Barack Obama as Adolf
Hitler. Nor is it accurate to describe Nazism as socialism just
because “National Socialism” has “socialism” in the name.
It's also inaccurate to describe Gregor and Otto Strasser as Nazis,
because although they were the Nazi Party's socialist propaganda arm,
they were betrayed and assassinated by the party's leadership. Just
as National Socialism was capitalist, today the closest descriptor
for Strasserism that we have is “social-nationalism”, which makes it
sound more nationalistic than National Socialism. But the Strassers
were to the left of the larger segment of the Nazi Party that
betrayed them; the Strassers were German socialists who opposed both
Jewish and German capitalism, and they were more socialist than the
National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazis).
The work of the
Strassers – as well as that of
Egoist Max Stirner, Ernst Junger, Charles Maurras, Georges Sorel,
Austromarxist Otto Bauer, Nestor Makhno, Enver Hoxha, the
National Bolsheviks and national communists, other “proletarian
nationalists”, and patriotic socialists - only compound the
difficulty of mapping all political philosophies on the traditional
left-vs.-right axis (especially
authoritarianism and fascism and their variants). This difficulty
owes itself to the existence of nationalist-leaning communist and
socialist philosophies on one hand, and progressive and
Marxist-influenced philosophies oriented towards markets and free
enterprise (such as those of Adam Smith, the Physiocrats, and the
Chicago School) on the other. The difficulty of mapping all the
strange and new philosophies – often bearing such absurd names as
“National-Anarchism”, “Anarcho-Fascism”,
“Anarcho-Monarchism”, “Anarcho-Statism”, and the bizarre
Marxist-Stirnerite philsophy of “EGO DIKism” which perhaps
unintentionally synthesizes the post-Left with the alt-Right -
prompts us to look at politics in a new way.
In
middle school biology, we were taught to use Punnett squares (named
for Reginald Punnett, who devised them). A Punnett square is a
variation of the Pournelle chart; it it used to predict the chance
that certain dominant or recessive genetic traits would be inhereted
by offspring. This is done by displaying two aspects of one parent's
genes on the X-axis, against the other parent's genes on the Y-axis
(see Figure #4). We can do the exact same thing with anarchism and
totalitarianism on one axis, and communism and capitalism on the
other. The result is the two-dimensional development of the
one-dimensional left-vs.-right
axis; the “Nolan chart” (see Figure #5), popularized by
Libertarian Party co-founder David Nolan in 1971. In the previous
several years, similar political spectrums had been published by
Maurice C. Bryson and William R. McDill (in their article “The
Political Spectrum: A Bi-Dimensional Approach” in The
Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought
in 1968), and Stuart
Christie and Albert Meltzer (in The
Floodgates of Anarchy
in 1970).
Figure #4: A Punnett Square
Figure #5: The Nolan Chart
However,
the two-dimensional map does not fully solve our problem. If we
consider that we have communism on the left and capitalism on the
right, and totalitarianism on top and diffusion of power and chaos on
the bottom, then there's no reason why we can't have a third
dimension. Why not moderate compromise vs.
radical discord? After all, the goal of anarchism is, more or less,
to work together, and if we can't, then for different anarchist
schools to leave each other alone. If anarchists can live with only
working together when we agree, then not only does that make sure
nobody is harmed when people voluntarily cooperate, it also shows
that what the anarchists want is the opposite of the goal of
politics.
Of
course, what politicians want is compromise by any means necessary.
But moderate compromise has not worked for us. That's why the
“radical center” has emerged, and so has the
“progressive-libertarian alliance” that began ten years ago
between Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and
others. With the third dimension of moderate political compromise vs.
radical (whose Greek root radix
means “root”) centrism, we can now show how where the East German
Stasi are in relation to market-tolerant Anarchists Without
Adjectives. My 62-sided, color-coded, three-dimensional political
spectrum – which my friend Charles Poston named “the
Politosphere” (see Figures #6 and #7) - attempts to map these three
dimensions onto a globe.
Figure #6: The Politosphere (View from Top)
Figure #7: The Politosphere (View from Bottom)
Anyone
interested in finding out more about political spectrums can visit
politicalcompass.org,
Jacob Asplund's asplundchart.blogspot.com,
or iSideWith.com;
Google-search “The World's Smallest Political Quiz”; read the
Wikipedia article “Left-right politics”; or go to my blog
www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com
and type “political spectrum” into the search field on the
top-left. You may also wish to look for the three-dimensional cubic
political spectrum at NationStates.net, the site of an online video
game that allows players to make political decisions to run their own
fictional e-nations, complete with flags and mottos.
The
discovery, delineation, and enumeration of economic schools of
thought bearing implications in politics as well as anarchism make it
possible to expand the number of economic categories which may be
shown on any particular spectrum (see Figure #8), for, as
anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker explained, anarchist tendencies are
“only different methods of economy”. But the left-vs.-right
economic axis aside, tools like those listed in the above paragraph
will help make it possible for more people to understand that we live
in a three-dimensional political continuum, not a black-and-white,
left-vs.-right
false dichotomy. Venn diagrams and Euler diagrams are also helpful learning tools
(see Figure #9).
Figure #8: A Political Spectrum with
12 Economic Categories and 5 Power Categories
Figure #9: An Euler Diagram of
Statism, Socialism, and Capitalism
Not
only that, these tools will make it possible for more people to fully
understand anarchism and totalitarianism, and it could also enable
collaborative efforts to create more detailed political spectrums,
perhaps even with radically different axes and shapes from the
figures shown here.
Written
on March 18th
and 19th,
2017
Figures #1-#4 and #6-#9 Created by Joseph W. Kopsick
between 2011 and March 19th, 2017
Figure #5 came from
http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php
Figures #1-#4 and #6-#9 Created by Joseph W. Kopsick
between 2011 and March 19th, 2017
Figure #5 came from
http://nolan.jimeyer.org/nolan_example.php
