It's very different. The assumption, I guess, is that more "intervention" = "more equality"? That's not right, and I'd think you of all people would appreciate the problem, as you aren't deluded as many are about the nature of gov't intervention (for example, the existence of capital income requires and is a form of gov't intervention). It's not clear how it's less interventionist for the gov't to side with capitalists than for gov't to side with workers (or to go both ways).
The freedom to which private power can exist (virtually none in the USSR, Maoist China, much greater in Thatcherite Britain, Singapore, Somalia etc.) is probably the biggest thing.
But, again, the difference isn't primarily ideological, which is what the spectrum is supposed to represent (and what proponents of the right-wing libertarian version also claim to represent).
Yeah, the difference is in tactics, like you said. And the Soviet tactic of idolizing the state, submitting to a vanguard party and engaging in a cult of personality, is vastly different from anarchist tactics of collective management, ownership and decision-making.
On the right, I also see a huge difference between US neocons who also worship the state, the military and think US imperialism is a wonderful thing, to the isolationist libertarian types who only give a damn about filling their seeing their bank account grow.
I don't think the spectrum says anything about becoming. There's no reason at all to think that Catalonia would turn into the USSR just because the USSR was run by leftists and trade unions had a foothold in Catalonia.
Of course there is. Progression and relationship is implied in any continuum. This is the whole point of inserting putting political concepts into a mathematical/geometrical one.
I just did a quick google image search of "standard political spectrum" and it is absolutely full of incoherent garbage. I suggest you try it. The Nazis are next to the USSR, next to Cuba. Ron Paul and "anarchy" (which the political compass site correctly points out as having historically been left wing) are way to the right as "complete freedom."
To me, this illustrates how incomplete and simplistic it is. Any idiot can put the good guys on the right (freedom!) and the bad oppressors on the left (the gubmint!). This is much harder to do in the compass. The standard spectrum was fine in the 1800s when the left was the worker's movement, secularism, humanism while the right was monarchy, capitalists and the church.
But starting in the 20th century and with the appearance of Leninism/Maoism and of secular free marketeers breaking away from the church, some new dimensions were needed.
