Communism to Fascism to Trump: Graphing political ideology and the futility of visualization

[Trotsky]

This originally started as a post in another thread, but I ended up wasting way too much time on it - as I'm sure some of you will remind me. But I really think that attempting to graph political ideology, as pedantic, frustrating, and contradictory as it may often be, is kind of fascinating and can lead to some interesting debate. This is especially true with this style of chart, which gets circulated a lot, where apparently dissimilar persons/ideologies are forced into being closely proximal (see Hugo Chavez and Dwight Eisenhower).

This is what I came up with.

I wish I could amend some placements -- moving Obama a bit to the right, Leninism and Stalinism a bit to the right, Fascism a smidge to the left -- but sadly it's etched in digital stone.


So make your own, give it a go, make some comment about how my graph sucks.


I'll tag the same people that I was going to tag in my post, for additional thoughts: @Jack V Savage @TheGreatA @PolishHeadlock @Rod1

 

[ShinkanPo]

Is that a Chinese checkers game?

 

[RubberGuard5]

Why is Titoism not in the left authoritarian square?

 

[Trotsky]

Why is Titoism not in the left authoritarian square?

Economically deferential to worker organizations (whereas the soviets were neutered in the USSR in favor of bureaucratic control). Culturally pluralistic and politically republican. Also allowed travel and trade with capitalist countries. Maybe should be bumped up a unit.

 

[RubberGuard5]

Economically deferential to worker organizations (whereas the soviets were neutered in the USSR in favor of bureaucratic control). Culturally pluralistic and politically republican. Also allowed travel and trade with capitalist countries. Maybe should be bumped up a unit.

Worker organizations were a sham, though. My grandfather's stories about "self-management" are hilarious. Not sure what you mean by culturally pluralistic. As for allowed to trade with capitalist countries, well, kinda. You still needed to travel to Italy for example, if you were to buy brand name clothing. Import of certain goods was allowed, usually those without an alternative made in Yugoslavia.

 

[Trotsky]

Worker organizations were a sham, though. My grandfather's stories about "self-management" are hilarious.

I can't really qualify what constitutes a "sham" or how democratic the organizations felt to workers on the floor, but they did have real autonomy and independence from the League. The (most) prevailing critique from the left of the organizations were that a lack of bottom-up vertical democracy and appreciation for remainder profits pissed away needed incentive, and economic waste gathered at middle management (rather than at the top such as in capitalist countries).

I also thought this bit about the internal economic struggles (uneven fragmenting in trade specialties, uneven economic development at the outset of the federation) of the autonomous nations was pretty interesting.

The present crisis of the European Union, which has been most pronounced in the Balkans, has thrown into doubt the strategies of growth that many leaders of the post-Yugoslav republics have pursued since the 1990s. This crisis opens important opportunities for socialists to articulate an alternative vision. Undoubtedly the Yugoslav experience, with its powerful symbolism of anti-imperial struggle and open, experimental culture, will inform this vision. But the negative lessons of the Yugoslav path to socialism should also be learned.

Chief among these lessons is the role of the international economic order in limiting the durable and stable growth of peripheral economies. Arguably, postwar Yugoslav socialists maneuvered as best they could within the conditions set by a global economy that prioritized the interests of Western capitalist economies. But their compromise with this global economy exacerbated the contradictions of Yugoslav society.

Any genuine struggle for development and self-determination will need to reckon with the limitations of the individual nation state. Larger economic units based on regional cooperation will need to be sought. Such arguments are not unique to the Left — they have long been used in the region to justify the liberal strategy of European integration. However, as the fate of the Syriza government in Greece demonstrates, the European Union does not shield the periphery from the pressures of global markets; rather, it restructures them on a European plane.

Not sure what you mean by culturally pluralistic.

I mean that there were many language, religions, and cultural customs retained by the member nations of the republic. In an era of nation states, it's almost unfathomable to think of seven different countries, with different languages and cultures and longstanding ethnic animosities, working in tandem toward a prolonged economic growth. Not only were the nations allowed economic autonomy: there was very little cultural leveling, as was common elsewhere as in the USSR and, worst of all, during the Cultural Revolution in China.


So you are from the former Yugoslavia? I live in Little Bosnia and also have had a few Croatian friends by happenstance. I know Yugonostalgia is more pronounced with Bosnians than a couple of the other former member nations, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

 

[TheComebackKid]

Marxism is libertarian?

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

This is what I came up with.

How exactly did you arrive at these conclusions?

Did you just fill out the quiz yourself how you would assume these people would answer, or was this a chart you lifted off of a website?

Some of the conclusions appear to be close enough, while others are just wildly off.

 

[Trotsky]

How exactly did you arrive at these conclusions?

Did you just fill out the quiz yourself how you would assume these people would answer, or was this a chart you lifted off of a website?

Some of the conclusions appear to be close enough, while others are just wildly off.

Haha, no, I was not meaning to conform the chart to the Political Compass quiz's questions and outputs (which pulls very noticeably to the libertarian left). I was just going off of personal knowledge. Like I said, it's kind of interesting and fun to me. It can be somewhat difficult to consider all the policy features, especially since there is a noticeable flip along the X-axis. For that reason, placing neoliberals (Clinton) and mid-century conservatives (Eisenhower) is difficult.

Marxism is libertarian?

Extremely. Under Marxist doctrine the state is strictly limited and made to wither away to a stateless society. However, the occurrence of Leninism (bureaucratic seizure of the state apparatus in a periphery economy as a way to expedite outside revolution toward the world economic epicenter) kind of laid a blueprint contrary to traditional Marxist development and laid way for, as you know, quite non-libertarian systems in under-developed countries.

But I placed Marxism closer to the center on that spectrum to account for a certain level of organizational (as opposed to state) coercion (workers seizing production, etc.).

 

[RubberGuard5]

I can't really qualify what constitutes a "sham" or how democratic the organizations felt to workers on the floor, but they did have real autonomy and independence from the League. The (most) prevailing critique from the left of the organizations were that a lack of bottom-up vertical democracy and appreciation for remainder profits pissed away needed incentive, and economic waste gathered at middle management (rather than at the top such as in capitalist countries).

I also thought this bit about the internal economic struggles (uneven fragmenting in trade specialties, uneven economic development at the outset of the federation) of the autonomous nations was pretty interesting.

​

I mean that there were many language, religions, and cultural customs retained by the member nations of the republic. In an era of nation states, it's almost unfathomable to think of seven different countries, with different languages and cultures and longstanding ethnic animosities, working in tandem toward a prolonged economic growth. Not only were the nations allowed economic autonomy: there was very little cultural leveling, as was common elsewhere as in the USSR and, worst of all, during the Cultural Revolution in China.


So you are from the former Yugoslavia? I live in Little Bosnia and also have had a few Croatian friends by happenstance. I know Yugonostalgia is more pronounced with Bosnians than a couple of the other former member nations, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Yeah, I'm from Serbia. Yugonostalgia, my experience tells me, is most pronounced with Serbs, followed by Bosnians. Serbia and Bosnia were the only places where Yugoslav identity caught on. In the case of Bosnians (more specifically Bosnian Muslims), the reason is they didn't have strong national identity before Yugoslavia's formation. In addition to that, Bosnia was most diverse and most ethnic mixing was happening there, so mixed people started identifying as Yugoslavs. As for Serbs, i can't explain it.

Anyway, Serbia and Bosnia were the biggest losers of the wars, because life is still generally worse there now in comparison to pre-war period. A switch to market economy did good for Slovenians and Croatians, so it's no wonder they aren't Yugonostalgic. In contrast to that, Bosnia and Serbia have higher unemployment than it was in the Yugoslav era. Although, reason for that mostly lies in the fact that companies in Yugoslavia were treated as a kind of social security institutions, meaning people were given jobs even when there weren't any positions available. These people were in shock when switch to market economy happened and they found themselves on the job market. They had little to no skills and high expectations. And there were a lot of them. When wars were ended and economy stabilized, these people continued their careers at lower paying jobs, where they had to work much harder than they used to, and they had to accept jobs at companies where there weren't as much worker protection as before. It's not surprising that they remember Yugoslavia as amazing.

 

[Cirris]

This originally started as a post in another thread, but I ended up wasting way too much time on it - as I'm sure some of you will remind me. But I really think that attempting to graph political ideology, as pedantic, frustrating, and contradictory as it may often be, is kind of fascinating and can lead to some interesting debate. This is especially true with this style of chart, which gets circulated a lot, where apparently dissimilar persons/ideologies are forced into being closely proximal (see Hugo Chavez and Dwight Eisenhower).

This is what I came up with.

I wish I could amend some placements -- moving Obama a bit to the right, Leninism and Stalinism a bit to the right, Fascism a smidge to the left -- but sadly it's etched in digital stone.


So make your own, give it a go, make some comment about how my graph sucks.


I'll tag the same people that I was going to tag in my post, for additional thoughts: @Jack V Savage @TheGreatA @PolishHeadlock @Rod1

Jeremy Corbyn wants to seize vacant houses from private owners and give them to migrants/homeless. He's a big backer of forced social engineering policies. There is NO WAY that you can even remotely consider him Libertarian.

And if you want to fill up the Purple Square, why don't you add Rand Paul, Ayn Rand, Nigel Farrage to that side of the list.

 

[Andy Capp]

...the Political Compass quiz's questions and outputs (which pulls very noticeably to the libertarian left).

It sure does. According to it (if it's the same one I'm thinking of) I come out somewhat left of Ghandi. LOL

 

[ShinkanPo]

Jeremy Corbyn wants to seize vacant houses from private owners and give them to migrants/homeless. He's a big backer of forced social engineering policies. There is NO WAY that you can even remotely consider him Libertarian.

And if you want to fill up the Purple Square, why don't you add Rand Paul, Ayn Rand, Nigel Farrage to that side of the list.

That is some scary shit for him to even think about that. I once had a bad dream where the government forced me to accept Military personnel to live in my home as a solution to housing problems in my country it was a silly nightmare but to know that in the western world there are some politicians who have a similar idea is kinda scary.

 

[Andy Capp]

...the Political Compass quiz's questions and outputs (which pulls very noticeably to the libertarian left).

It sure does. According to it (if it's the same one I'm thinking of) I come out somewhat left of Ghandi. LOL

 

[Trotsky]

And if you want to fill up the Purple Square, why don't you add Rand Paul, Ayn Rand, Nigel Farrage to that side of the list.

I actually racked my brain on this subject. Of your three, Ayn Rand is the only one who I know would definitively fit but she was a fiction novelist and had very little in the way of actual policy. I would have no insight into where to place her because there are so few politicians and theorists by which to proximate her position. I could just place her name willy nilly in that quadrant, but it wouldn't mean much.

Rand Paul would just be a unit or two down from Romney. And I didn't even think of Farrage. I suppose he would fit.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to seize vacant houses from private owners and give them to migrants/homeless. He's a big backer of forced social engineering policies. There is NO WAY that you can even remotely consider him Libertarian.

Corbyn is very libertarian. No classification is without anecdotal anomalies. Also, absolute private property ownership is but a sliver of what can be conceptualized as liberty - and not a very principled sliver at all to be sure. In fact, this board has shown time and time again how little thought right-libertarians have given to the origins and maintenance of absolute private property rights.

 

[Ice That Jaw]

That chart has Sanders as a liberal libertarian but Sanders isn't very libertarian at all. He can't be. None of his proposed policies would work under the most basic principle of limited government intervention. It's not a knock on him, it's just that he is a very strong supporter of expanded federal capabilities, and he thinks it hasn't worked so far because we've been holding back too much.

 

[Trotsky]

That chart has Sanders as a liberal libertarian but Sanders isn't very libertarian at all. He can't be. None of his proposed policies would work under the most basic principle of limited government intervention. It's not a knock on him, it's just that he is a very strong supporter of expanded federal capabilities, and he thinks it hasn't worked so far because we've been holding back too much.

That falls more along the line of the left-right axis. You're talking about libertarianism strictly in terms of its American (right-libertarian) usage - by which FDR and all social democrats would be authoritarian by virtue of their support for state supervision of economy. Such would likewise place social democrats and socialists - two closely adjacent ideologies - on polar ends of the spectrum on the basis that socialists lobby for front end redistribution of power by workers (with less need for back-end government intervention), and social democrats lobby for back-end redistribution of capitalist proceeds.

 

[Seaside]

Would be awesome if far right took over the entire world. Or nationalist communism. Or religious far right. Imagine the crying done by liberals with no god or soul if Trump was reelected or abolished term limits and became supreme leader.

 

[Seaside]

Yeah, I'm from Serbia. Yugonostalgia, my experience tells me, is most pronounced with Serbs, followed by Bosnians. Serbia and Bosnia were the only places where Yugoslav identity caught on. In the case of Bosnians (more specifically Bosnian Muslims), the reason is they didn't have strong national identity before Yugoslavia's formation. In addition to that, Bosnia was most diverse and most ethnic mixing was happening there, so mixed people started identifying as Yugoslavs. As for Serbs, i can't explain it.

Anyway, Serbia and Bosnia were the biggest losers of the wars, because life is still generally worse there now in comparison to pre-war period. A switch to market economy did good for Slovenians and Croatians, so it's no wonder they aren't Yugonostalgic. In contrast to that, Bosnia and Serbia have higher unemployment than it was in the Yugoslav era. Although, reason for that mostly lies in the fact that companies in Yugoslavia were treated as a kind of social security institutions, meaning people were given jobs even when there weren't any positions available. These people were in shock when switch to market economy happened and they found themselves on the job market. They had little to no skills and high expectations. And there were a lot of them. When wars were ended and economy stabilized, these people continued their careers at lower paying jobs, where they had to work much harder than they used to, and they had to accept jobs at companies where there weren't as much worker protection as before. It's not surprising that they remember Yugoslavia as amazing.

Dont forget the EU giving them money and western bank help them. The western cabal wants serbia and bosnia to suffer so they come begging for to EU and be brought under it sphere of influence and control like romania and bulgaria.

Croatians overwhelmingly majority side with the nazis they were always the weak link in the paradise that was yugoslavia during the Tito years. And yes it really was good. Croats were largely anti yugoslavian or greater western slav identity. Selfish thinking. This is not even mentioning Clinton overreacted to Serbias 'genocide' and instead turned most of Serbia key infastructure into rubble.

Talk about disprorptinate response. A lot of people hating on Israelis blowing up few things cry about "proportinal tesponse" but are silent on NATO terror bomb campaign in libya or serbia!! That whole war I swear was to divide Serbia from Russia and economically ruin what was left of yugoslavia and the west succeeded years later you had corrupt officials and western aid to separate what is now "montenegro" from serbia! Oh and lets not forget that kosovo is stolen largely from Serbia and is for all purposes today part of greater albania. Yes the West favored the muslims and now today saudi money funds mosques in the balkans!! @VivaRevolution you might enjoy reading on this topic of why exactly was the geopolitical reason for the west to worsen the balkans and bomb serbia to hell.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Jeremy Corbyn wants to seize vacant houses from private owners and give them to migrants/homeless. He's a big backer of forced social engineering policies. There is NO WAY that you can even remotely consider him Libertarian.

The alternative to that plan is to hire agents of the state to force the homeless out of vacant houses to ensure that they remain homeless. That's even less libertarian.

And that illustrates the stupidity of the two-axis system. Also uses "left/right" in a way that is somewhat similar to but distinct from the usual spectrum, which is highly misleading.

And another problem is that a lot of differences in politics are not ideological at all but get associated with an ideology. Like, there's nothing inherently right-wing about believing that there's a big conspiracy of climate scientists to pretend that the world is getting warmer as a result of human activity or of economists to pretend that tax cuts don't spur growth (and pay for themselves--which is a mainstream GOP position).