Defining a Pragmatic Political Spectrum
Rather than let things come down to vague misgivings (or even deliberate misinformation) let us define a practical spectrum for understanding US and world politics.
Also, this is a long and drawn out article (by a non-expert, I might add) so, if all you want to see is the visual, feel free to scroll down to see the politico-economic spectrum I designed under “The Final Graphics” which includes context and a few notes.
*Edited on November 9th for grammar, content unchanged*
Case 1: The Standard Spectrum
There are often wide variations between how people, especially Americans, consider the political spectrum.
One way that a spectrum has been defined is as a sliding scale indicating the size of the welfare state. In this system, we often see a left defined as seeking minimal inequality, right as seeking maximal inequality and both as enforced through progressively larger government in both directions. In my experience, this is the scale most often seen in textbooks.
Now, I’d argue that this spectrum is useful in that it approximates reality. There are critical differences between, say, a communist, a liberal (here meaning market liberals, so Liberals and Conservatives) and a fascist system. However, I’d argue that it’s too simple.
How do we define the shift from left-liberalism (sometimes broadly called progressivism) to socialism (often communism is used to refer to state socialism). Many, including progressives themselves, see their policies as necessary to prevent socialism.
And how do we consider anarchic beliefs, like those of the Spanish revolutionaries? They viewed themselves as leftists and raised the red flag. But their system of government was undeniably less authoritarian than that of Stalin or even that of democratic socialists like Attlee.
At the other end, how do we define the shift from conservative “limited government” to a kind of fascist, totalitarian system? And does that make anarchists conservatives?
So, here we find holes in our political logic. And like a mathematical system of logic, contradictions are the first step to a total unraveling.
Case 2: The Statism Spectrum
Well, what about another kind of spectrum? What if we view political systems as based mainly on the accumulation of power, with left as total statism (complete state control) and right as minimal statism (minimal if any state control). This is the spectrum that has come to be associated with libertarians and “anarcho-capitalists”.
I’ve also heard it called a wedge spectrum, with high amounts of state power being represented as the much larger end, and almost no height at the right end. The one that I’ve seen is a bit eccentric, but it gets the main point across:
While this idea has been around for a while, I actually just saw an article on a libertarian blog site describing it again. The author opts for a more subdued spectrum:
And here, communists and fascists are seen as deviations of the same “hard left” ideology, conservatives are seen as part of the “soft left”, and the Case 1 spectrum is rejected as a product of leftist propaganda. Though, I’m guessing the author , Vasko Kohlmayer, may not be fully committed to a dispassionate outlining of political processes, given sentences like this:
“Today’s Democratic party — which has been recently taken over by its radical elements — is a present-day version of the Nazis in the American context.”
He also felt the need to include sentences like this:
“… many among the woke also exhibit sexual abnormalities of various kinds such as homosexual behavior or thinking that they belong to the opposite biological sex …”
Also, if you need any more, two paragraphs are devoted to dissecting the psyche of a woman who screamed about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (in a TikTok video that you’ve probably seen before on Twitter). Anyways, weird moralizing and “Democrats are Nazis” claims aside, we still see here clear issues.
Historically, opening and maintaining markets has been done through violence and state power. While we could discuss at length the quasi-military status given to the Dutch and British East India companies, I think this quote from Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, defines this well:
“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.” (1907, from an unpublished paper but referenced in “The Rising American Empire” (1960) by Richard Warner Van Alstyne)
Not only that, some of the freest markets for capital have been associated with the least free political infrastructures, like that of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Notably, Pinochet’s regime was even supported by some classical liberals for maintaining the markets and crushing suspected socialists. The most notable of whom may be James Buchanan, who helped write the regime’s constitution.
Also, at the far-right of this spectrum, the notion of capitalism in absence of a state is dubious. Not only has it never been seen in a real life system, key thinkers in the space note that it would rely on a kind of “non-aggression principle” between capitalists. But how could this be? Why, in a competitive market system, would a firm not do that which would ensure their success in absence of a system to stop them?
Additionally, referencing the article again here, how can we say Hitler was a kind of socialist, when his own works call for a refutation of Marxism?
“The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.” (from “On National Socialism and World Relations”)
And that’s not even including the economic aspect, that Hitler’s government is the origin of the term “privatization” or, the process of handing state owned enterprises off to private ownership.
As one last note, lest I leave room for falsification, I understand that not all socialists are Marxists and, therefore, there may be socialists that deny Marxist concepts. However, there is no form of socialism that I know of that 1) objects to the notion of class struggle, 2) exalts rather than challenges private property and 3) keeps control over those resources, even as “public property”, in the hands of a few industrialists and managers .
So, we have two systems here that both seem unreliable. What about one more?
Case 3: The Political Compass
This one puts together a kind of synthesis of Case 1 and Case 2, and has become especially popular among young people as a way to outline their political beliefs. The Case 1 spectrum is used setting the horizontal axis, while the case 2 spectrum laid 90 degrees to its perpendicular, with the left end becoming top (authoritarianism, strong government) and right end becoming the bottom (libertarianism, weak government). In so doing, what you end up with is a grid:
With this, we get four broad political positions: upper left as authoritarian leftism (big state socialists), lower left as libertarian leftism (left-wing anarchists), lower right as libertarian rightism (free market, minarchist capitalists), and upper right as authoritarian rightism (autocratic capitalists).
While, as a logical model, this fulfills a kind of completeness (coverage of all major positions), it encompasses some of the flaws of both systems.
Again, how feasible or realistic is the notion of anarchic capitalism? Or should we view it as a personal rather than national position? How realistic is the notion of no state at all at the left and right? And how can we distinguish left-wing big government from right-wing big government? Worse still, some use the Nazis to signify a kind of authoritarian centrism, on the basis of their ethnonationalism and their welfare programs, so what does that mean?
The Central Problem
The core issues of all three spectrum models are rooted in 1) the inclusion of personal ideologies (which may lack historical relevance at the national stage) along with state ideologies, 2) an unclear dynamic for the left-right shift (including the notion of welfare as perpetually left wing), and 3) a fairly glib notion of authoritarianism (either treating it as a purposeful position or an accident of good intentions rather than a structural phenomenon).
So, what can we do to build a better model?
Defining a Framework
I posit that a meaningful political spectrum would 1) focus on ideologies that have been realized and are present among a large (100, 000+) community of people, 2) define a clear left-right dynamic by interests, and 3) account for authoritarianism within systems rather than as accidents of personal intention.
As a result, I believe such a spectrum would be linear — for both simplicity’s sake and as a result of setting authoritarianism as a condition of political contexts. Additionally, I think that in evaluating state systems, it makes the most sense to define these ideologies by policies as well as economic structures.
Setting a Dynamic and Its Boundaries
I contend that the core distinction between systems is a notion of hierarchy, as built in to economic systems which either undermine or reinforce said hierarchies. A scale could then be set spanning from an ideology rejecting hierarchy with an accompanying economic system, to one embracing it in full and its accompanying economic system. I wager then that at one end, you have anarchism and, at the other end, absolutism.
Of course, that’s the easy part. How might we fill in the rest? Here, we can draw on the example systems as discussed earlier when critiquing the other spectrum models.
What might be the core distinction between big, but not total, left-wing government compared to big, but not total right-wing government? Lets draw on model that would land left in Cases 1, 2, and 3: FDR’s administration from 1933–1945.
Then, state systems were implemented like the Civilian Conservation Corps program that redistributed wealth, but also came with stronger, more centralized government and taxes on corporations.
Compare that to the administration of W. Bush, an indisputably “big government” that would reject key notions of FDR’s (particularly on taxation, regulation, and even social policy). Here, state systems were put in place that spurred growth but did so by directly aiding corporations (notably, the subsidies to Enron and contracts for corporations in Iraq).
We see an interesting distinction, but let’s go further. How about at the far ends of the Case 1 spectrum? I’ve touched on how fascism has utilized corporate power briefly. In his book “Blackshirts and Reds”, historian Michael Parenti expands on this, claiming that fascists were used by and later allied with wealthy industrialists to suppress emergent and potentially revolutionary labor power. This also fits the model with Pinochet, whose rise to power brought a liberalization of the markets and a brutal suppression of labor power, as well as the populace at large, with state terror. Therefore, between liberalization and nationalization, we find a common goal of protecting corporate power.
At the other end, with the likes of the Chinese government, we see the opposite. Here, corporate power is subjugated under state power, as internal corporate affairs are directly influenced by the state and core functions of the system, including major companies and banks, are all state-owned (at least on the mainland). And, while that state may not be democratic in the Western sense, as a consequence of their Marxist-Leninist beliefs, and has a reputation for authoritarianism (though, I’d argue that there are important historical and geopolitical reasons for this), its worth noting that, as an electoral system, the ambition is opposite that of demonstrated fascistic economic systems.
Therefore, we can declare a dynamic, between those national ideologies intent on protecting corporate power from labor reaction (however they may consider labor to be) and those intent on protecting labor power from corporate reaction.
And why focus on corporate power? Well, drawing from my personal Bible on political power, it is helpful to consider the critical aspect of governance to be control over the major levers of power in a nation. Those levers would necessarily include control over measures needed to produce and provide food, water, and shelter, as well as the institutions for protecting that control. Therefore, in defining corporate power as the private, concentrated control over those resources, we define a structure outside of those levers that could be altered or even changed by political initiative.
For example, nationalization of a major oil company would shift that lever of power (energy production) out of private control and into state control — and if that state is democratic, ideally, public control. This would approximate what the government tries to do not only in China, but in nations from Bolivia to Norway.
We can also note how, as in the case of Mussolini, the leader of fascist Italy, corporations were nationalized but — rather than being leashed by government — they were given additional privileges, even becoming organs within a state oligarchic system.
So, here we see how the state plays a role in this. It can restrict corporate power (often affiliated with decentralization of power in the state through democratic or distributive processes) or enable it (often through breaking down existing controls at the soft end, and centralizing state power for the protection of corporate agency at the hard end).
Finalizing and Populating the Spectrum
So, after a very long walk, we can say the following:
- We can set anarchism at the furthest left, fascism at the furthest right.
- We can say that systems which embrace a state focus on democratizing core productive forces sit on the left and that systems which embrace a state focus on concentrating core productive forces into few hands sit on the right.
- We can treat our existing system of liberal democracy, with many parties focused on balancing popular/labor power with corporate power via welfare programs, regulations, subsidies, and state contracts, as set in the middle of this spectrum.
- We can treat a system in which popular power overtakes corporate power (regardless of whether that is viewed as a good or bad thing) as sitting on the left, ranging from mixed market approaches to fully decentralized resource control (i.e. some kind of communal or cooperative economic system).
- We can treat a system in which corporate power overtakes popular power as sitting on the right, ranging from a firm hand restricting opposition to corporatized control of resources to fully centralized resource control (often affiliated with restrictive social frameworks).
- And, in each case, we can associate an economic model that reflects how much power either interest — popular labor or corporate capital — has over the levers of power.
A New Model
For completeness, I’ve placed 17 positions on this chart. I’l briefly outline their details, across broad categories) and name a key example of their related systems:
The Left (from far-left to left-wing)
- Anarchism — democratic worker control over industry, no centralized infrastructure, mutual communal cooperation; Revolutionary Catalonia, 1930s
- Libertarian Socialism — confederated state, distributed administration and communitarian economics; Kurdish Rojava, present day
- State-Directed Socialism — centralized state management of worker cooperatives with single-party control; East Germany/GDR , mid-20th century
- Mixed Market Socialism — mixing state control and market enterprises, socialistic democracy (i.e. factions of socialism occupying legislature) as the core political program; Vietnam, present day; also referred to as Revisionist Marxism (relative to a Marxist-Leninist ideal of State-Directed Socialism)
- Democratic Socialism —like social democracy, but more likely to include structural change for altering the capitalist system, at the edge of liberal democracy; Sweden under Palme; has been associated with the term Eurocommunism/Democratic Communism
- Social Democracy — an ultimately market based system with nationalization of some major industries within pluralistic democracy; Finland, present day and many European center-left parties
The Liberal Center (from center-left to center-right)
- Progressive Liberalism — a system favoring the expansion of the welfare state, higher taxation, and more regulation, but less focused on permanent structural reform than social democrats; USA under FDR
- Modern Liberalism — a system favoring moderated state welfare alongside growth focus for markets, pluralist democracy; Canada, present day or many European centrist parties; has also been called Third-Way liberalism (though, may suggest more overlap with Liberal Conservatism)
- Liberal Conservatism — like modern liberalism but with more support for market growth and little to no interest in expanding the welfare state; USA under H.W. Bush or many European center-right parties
- Classical Liberalism — a free market focused, government intervention averse approach opposed to collectivist approaches to state and corporate management; Czech Republic under Klaus
- Modern Conservatism — a free market focused approach favoring the use of government for promoting growth, alongside reductions in welfare, in a pluralist democracy; UK under Thatcher; some also call it Conservative Liberalism
The Right (from right-wing to far-right)
- Traditional Conservatism — like modern conservatism with a greater focus on stressing religion and/or other cultural institutions, more restrictive on welfare/taxation; USA under Reagan; also has been called National Liberalism (Israel) and associated with Paleolibertarianism (USA)
- National Conservatism — like traditional conservatism but favoring market intervention to protect national interests and traditions, at the edge of liberal democracy; Hungary under Orban; also called Paleoconservatism (USA)
- Liberal Parafascism — an autocratic/oligarchic form of government favoring free markets for trade but restrictive on welfare and labor power, oligarchic; Chile under Pinochet
- National Corporatism — like parafascism, but with an added focus on state corporations and pervasive nationalism; Italy under Mussolini; may be called Fascism or National Fascism; not to be confused with neo-corporatism, an organizational framework associated with Rhine Capitalism and the Nordic Model)
- Integral Nationalism — like national corporatism but with an added focus on traditional and especially religious institutions to enshrine the regime; Spain under Franco; may include aspects of or even be called Clerical Fascism (as in ecclesial power enters politics, ending the division of Church and state)
- Palingenetic Fascism — like national corporatism, but dependent on broad national myth and racial supremacy to enshrine totalitarianism; Germany under Hitler; may be called Nazism
A Few Clarifying Details and A Critical Caveat
So there we are, naming a spectrum that conveys the competition between popular control and corporate control along a linear axis. For fun, I’ve also added the spectrum here but with visuals demonstrating power accumulation by each side.
To stop me from writing a whole other piece here and now, I’ll make three quick statements on the scale and three clarifying points:
- There are systems that are not represented on the scale directly → Some systems pull from many traditions and, by country, vary in terms of where they sit. To solve this problem, I’ve opted to not include them here. This spectrum also excludes the politics of pre-capitalist systems like feudalism or modern conceptions of neo-reaction and/or “social feudalism”. (Though, if someone has the details, I’d love to learn about the politics of a feudal court!)
- The scale does not account for social views → this is by design, since — while social views are affiliated with politico-economic positions — I’d argue that social positions can largely be held across the spectrum (i.e. there can be socially conservative state socialists and socially progressive market conservatives, but probably not reactionary anarchists or progressive fascists)
- While authoritarianism is associated with positions on the scale, it is not clear just how authoritarian each position is relative to any other → this is key caveat — I did not include this because 1) I felt unable to assess whether the powers of a state bureaucracy or of a state-sanctioned corporate council would be more intrusive (or oppressive) for the average person, 2) in practice, a nation’s history, population, borders, resource distribution, civic institutions, and wealth are key factors in whether a nation is capable of loose governance, so it seems unhelpful to define a structural phenomenon in terms of political ideology, and 3) even in the case of anarchism, it is unclear whether a more localized government is necessarily more freeing than perhaps a more benevolent, larger government. I welcome push back on this last point, but it’s inspired by tales of concentration camps run by the CNT-FAI in Spain (Workers Against Work, Chapter 4).
Additionally, to answer just a few design questions that no one asked …
- Classical liberalism is placed to the right of center rather than true center because, given the structural barriers to popular action against organized corporate power (i.e. the challenges of organizing mass groups of the most exploited), I’d argue that a truly centrist position would maintain a minimal degree of welfare and regulations (public schools, food and drug protections, environmental regulations, etc.) In calling for the abolition of those elements, the ideology seems to place the ball in the court of corporations.
- While a scale implies a tendency to shift, one key aspect of this spectrum is that, due to constituent aspects of a political ideology (religious affiliation, base of support, philosophical basis, etc.), it makes sense for persons or parties to jump over positions rather than move linearly from one to the next in order. For example, a Classical Liberal party fearing major economic change from a majority socialist administration may skip directly to supporting a single-party structure under Liberal Parafascism.
(With that said, I would argue that given the relative ease of coordination between industrialists — at least when compared with the notorious factionalism in labor organizing — trends a liberal democracy to the right. I do, however, welcome push back on this point since it could be just as well that, because the leading superpower of the last century was liberal capitalist, governments pursuing prosperity, from Russia to China to India, have drifted in line with the Washington Consensus of economic neoliberalism.)
- As a final point, I’ll discuss the 3 broad segments of the political spectrum: socialist democracy (A — D), liberal democracy (D — N), and oligarchy (N — R). Here, it’s helpful to draw from a kind of Marxist analysis about the link between economic structures and sociopolitical aspects of society.
In a liberal democracy, where your author lives, the core economic system is based fundamentally on market exchange and the private accumulation of property. This is enshrined in our constitution and, as such, even the most stringent progressive policy enacted in this system could only be a deviation from that fundamentally capitalist system. Thus, I argue that a democratic socialist government and a national conservative government are at opposite limits of this system. The first would be pushing toward mode of production restricting private accumulation and use of resources (ideally, onward into socialism). The second would be pushing toward a mode of production restricting popular incursion on the private use of resources (ideally, onward into an autocratic system).
While I could talk at length on this, I’ll just say that, just like how you cannot vote out capitalism under the constitution of a liberal regime, you cannot vote out socialism under the constitution of a socialist regime and you cannot vote out fascist corporatism under the charter of a fascist regime. This follows from my notion of a dynamic between popular control to mixed control to corporate control of resources, since a complete victory for one side would likely necessitate putting up structural obstacles for the other side (i.e. requiring corporate leaders to be staunch party members at the left and outlawing labor unions on the right). Editors Note: Prop 22 comes to mind. Note that this logic changes once you bring to the table constitutional reform, which could take place through revolutionary or reformist means.
This also is key for understanding the notion of what the socialists in China or Nepal consider a socialist democracy. Consider country A, where a liberal democracy would have a social democratic and a conservative party, and country B, where a socialist democracy might have a state-directed socialist party (often just called a Communist Party) and a social democratic party. To people in country A, country B seems especially undemocratic, as it looks like two left-wing parties and no right wing parties. To people in country B, their economic base makes it so a social democratic party is their more conservative, market-focused party.
Unfortunately, I have less to say in comparing liberal democracy to fascistic oligarchy. Due to a dearth of resources on this topic, I’ll merely say that the uniquely nationalist and fundamentally oligarchic nature of fascist governments probably makes a comprehensive comparison between these systems moot.
I won’t go more in-depth on this here, but its an interesting lesson in how our own political system biases our perceptions of how politics may work in another country.
The Final Graphics
An Abbrieviated HPE Spectrum
For those who skipped to the bottom~~
The Full HPE Spectrum, American Political Context, and Notes
While there’s a lot more that I could bring up, I’d rather post the main graphic here, with the critical context for American politics, and clarify if any questions are asked in the comments.
