86amanda86

I find this very interesting. It is quite in depth...

Your Political Compass

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I am posting this in just so it's on here for reference.

About The Political Compass

Thanks for your time. In a moment we'll show you where you belong on the political compass. It just needs a few words of explanation first.
Remember that before the test, we explained the inadequacies of the traditional left-right line?

If we recognise that this is essentially an economic line it's fine, as far as it goes. We can show, for example, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot, with their commitment to a totally controlled economy, on the hard left. Socialists like Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Mugabe would occupy a less extreme leftist position. Margaret Thatcher would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.
That deals with economics, but the social dimension is also important in politics. That's the one that the mere left-right scale doesn't adequately address. So we've added one, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.





Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.

The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy)





The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples law of the jungle right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism ( libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner.

In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarism is necessarily "right wing", with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today's Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.

Following is where you stand on our political compass. Thanks for visiting us and be sure to tell family and friends, It should spark off some lively dialogue, and you may discover that you didn't know them as well as you thought you did.



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I got-

Economic Left/Right: 1.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.31

JW77

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

86amanda86

I wish we could make a graph like the one on there, I'll work on that.

AuburnGrad

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -3.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.03


Thank you for posting. That was interesting.

JW77

I'm still voting for Bush.

mh67511

What is the domain of each axis?

86amanda86

there, I added a graph.

the horizontal line(left/right) is economic.
the vertical line(libertarian/authoritarian) is social.

Wild Pikachu

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64

Did anyone check the Election 2004 page? Bush and Kerry in the same quadrant--Authoritarian Right!

dawnie

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.23

My dot was in the right upper quadrant, right next to both lines

Avatar

Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.87

Close to Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. There are worse people to be compared to.

Katis

Economic Left/Right: 3.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.82

My dot was up one and over 3 in the upper right quadrant. I've taken this test a few times and it is usually somewhere between these results and E L/R: 2.00 and SL/A 2.4

LittleMilkJug

Economic Left/Right: -7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.15


I'm there with Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama

Bkrstar

Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.97

Drekkan

Economic Left/Right: 1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.9

*Sigh* No one on the tables anywhere near me.

alli balli

Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05

I'm close to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, too.