A while ago I wrote that political compass fails to represent political opinions clearly enough. By now four squares political compass became nothing more than a meme tool that only reflect political/social culture rather than political positions.
So here I created a better political alignment tool, that I call Political Diamond.
Left and right still represents economic struggle between rich and poor. Right is an attempt to keep rich richer and poor poorer or at least prevent change to economic status quo. Left is instead attempted to level the field and make society more economically equal.
The triangulars at the very edge can be considered extremes of such ideology. However economic extremes only, as authority vs liberty is represented by the vertical axis.
However, authority vs liberty is too complex to simply represent with one axis. There are many forms of authoritarianism or libertarianism, that have little in common with each other.
So, I created horizontal layers and named them after the defining features of these ideologies.
Layers from middle to top.
I will begin with middle top layer and then go up. Afterwards I will take on middle bottom and go down instead.
Traditional center-left and center-right
Between Democracy and Ideology layers are red and blue. Red is traditional center left (Social Democracy, Labour) and blue is central right (Conservative and many other names).
There are democratic ideologies that use limited state authority to implement policies, they see as desirable. Red wants more economic equality but within democratic framework, blue wants to simply preserve status quo and wealth accumulated by those who are better off.
Both red and blue respect democratic system and rule of law. Under this system you are better off if your party is in power, but you do not suffer too much if it's the other way around. These two parties are what is normal in most Western World.
Far left and far right
Between Ideology and Dogma there are dark red and pale blue. Dark red are authoritarian socialists and communists. Pale blue is a variety of ideologies, determined to restore traditional social order and hierarchy. These are what people call far left or far right. They themselves probably see themselves as moral right or orthodox left.
For both of these layers their ideology or principles are more important to them that democratic governance or individual freedom. They believe their believes are more important that people's will or individual liberty and should be enforced on people if they refuse to toe the line.
In Dark Red and Pale Blue, you either think it's a righteous system that runs the country as its ought to be or instead think that this is a totalitarian oppression and cruelty. Your wellbeing and place in society depends on your personal agreement with the prevailing ideology as well as on how favorably or not such ideology views you personally.
Autocracy
Above Dogma and below Totalitarianism lie various autocratic regimes. All power is vested with a single person or some authority body who makes all the decisions at their discretion. Absolute monarchies, totalitarian states, primitive despotisms would fall under this purple corner.
Unlike lower sectors you can no longer call them ideologies. Here there is no longer clear distinction between left and right as omnipotent authority can run syncretic or even arbitrary policy.
Various corrupt and devolved states with self-serving rulers do fall under this category as well. Such rulers exploit their position of authority to exploit the state and the people for their personal benefit.
Autocratic regimes are where your power and wellbeing depend only on your place in the pyramid of power and good will of those in power. There are in general very bad places to live.
Layers from middle to bottom.
After going up towards more autocracy now we will go down towards more liberty.
Libertarianism, both left and right
Between Democracy and Liberty lie various forms of libertarianism. Some associate libertarianism with right wing only, but that is incorrect. There are both left and right libertarianism. Andrew Yang and Pirate Parties are good example of left-libertarianism. I colored right libertarianism gold and left libertarianism (Social-Libertarianism) gold instead.
Libertarianism wants to increase personal individual freedom within liberal democratic system. In that regard they oppose traditional parties as more authoritarian than they are themselves. Traditional parties fall midway between libertarianism and illiberal far-left or far-right.
Libertarianism sees a lot of rules that restrict individual freedom and wish to eliminate them. Cannabis legalization, gay marriage, gambling, alcohol and guns are many such things that libertarians wish to legalize. Libertarians wish to legalize as much as possible, seeing maximization of what is legal as a way towards maximizing individual freedom.
Within libertarians there are also distinctive left and right trends as there are between traditional parties. Right-Libertarians are mostly concerned with minimization or elimination of taxes and less government regulation on business. Left-Libertarians instead focus on things such as Universal Basic Income as the way to give everyone bureaucracy and authority free income to facilitate individual freedom.
Unlike green and blue sectors, libertarianism does not seek to abolish state per se. State is needed to make sure this maximized liberty survives.
Neo Primitivism and Chaos
Between Liberty and Anarchy lie various theoretical and experimental ideologies. I colored them green and dark blue.
To libertarianism they are, what far-left, and far-right are to the traditional (democratic) parties.
If far-left and far-right erode democratic and liberal principles of the state in order to turn the state into a tool for enforcement of their dogma, then green and dark blue sectors instead seek erode governmental structures themselves.
Green is used in Anarcho-primitivism as well as in traditional political compass, so I guess we can use this color for this culturally left sector of Communal Primitivism. At best they want to create something like Christiania in Denmark at worst some lawless society that paradoxically uphold certain rules through communal effort.
Dark blue is darker shade of traditional right, the opposite of pale blue of far-right. If far right wished to enforce their morals and way of life on the rest of the society, then this Paleo Conservatism instead wishes to create some autonomous isolated communities, where they can live in accordance with their believes, kind of like Amish.
This is the only area where division between left and right is more cultural, then economic. However, even here paleo conservatism would be unlikely to create economic equality. I sincerely doubt that Communal-Primitivism will be able to provide everyone with economic equality or even decent standards of living.
Lawless Society
Between Anarchy and Law of the Jungle, at the bottom most there is lawless society. Where there are no laws or rules, might makes right, like in wild nature. This can happen if society collapses. However, some extreme ideologies, such as Social Darwinism, pure Primitivism, Avaritionism wish to create it on purpose. Of course, such ideologies do belong to this bottom most corner.
Just like in Autocracy there is no division between left and right. It's just random luck, ability to force one's way on others and survive.
Eventually an individual or an organized group may emerge and turn this society into an autocracy by force. Because of that this system is not self-sustainable and will eventually be replaced with a different system.
Conclusion
That can more of less cover most ideologies and create a clear idea where everyone stands on issues. Social-Libertarianism and Communal-Primitivism has little in common, but would be in lib-left quadrant of the traditional political compas, albeit for different reasons. Center-left and far left each got their own sector as well. So are many other ideologies.
There are still certain issues that are not covered by this system, such as relationship between man and women. However, these are better addressed by a separate system.
Extra: Theoretical Anarchism
Anarchism by itself is not represented anywhere on this compass.
Theoretical anarchism, the one of which people like Max Stirner talked with their intellectual friends, is not a ready to implement ideology, but an idealistic wish to live in a society, free from any authority.
Their spirit lives in libertarians, but we have to create an ideology that can actually achieve freedom, rather than destroy society and plunge us into primitivism.
Strictly speaking Anarchism is a legacy of Libertarianism only and Communal Primitivism or Paleo Conservatism has nothing to do with it. However, some of Communal Primitivists might want to claim their ideology to be Anarchist.
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