The Problems with the Political Compass
The Missing Axis
As humans we are nearest to ourselves, our bodies and minds are the most concrete forms of private property that any of us will ever own even though our bodies and minds are a collection of systems and processes that function harmoniously for the ultimate goal of survival, even though we ourselves did not create these parts of ours, they were given to us by our evolution, the principle still applies. There really is no separating individuals and collectives within the human species because man is the planet’s greatest creative duality. This is the starting point of all my philosophical beliefs. I want it clearly known from the outset where I stand, politically speaking, so I have defined myself for you in Figure 1. If you wish, go online, take the political compass test and see where you line up in comparison with me. Perhaps then we can come to some understanding, you and I, before any political mongers scream to the high heavens about what a fascist or rightist I am.
However, there is something deeply intriguing about the mongers who do levy such criticisms about far/alt/new-righters: politics is a matter of perspective. As you can tell, I am far closer to the center of the economic axis than I am to the farthest side, so if one were to call me far-right, such an accusation begs the question: far from whom? To many, candidates like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard may seem far left, at least from a US perspective, but “globally speaking”— as the Political Compass likes to claim – Gabbard and Sanders are typical social democrats, as can be seen in Figure 2. Bernie Sanders is regularly called a Socialist, which I personally think he is, but he has more in common with European democrats than actual politically vengeful pinkos.
Andrew Yang is another interesting example. Andrew Yang had perhaps the most comprehensive list of policy ideals on his campaign website and many libertarians and left-of-center voters praised him for being a fresh face in American politics. Although, as we can see, Mr. Yang, measurably speaking, is far right, and believes in just as much state authority on social matters as Jay Inslee, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, and Bill DeBlasio. Andrew Yang is actually run-of-the-mill, so it should be no shock that his political endeavors landed flat. Many might be rather shocked to find out that many of their pet politicians might not be reflective of their own politics whatsoever, mostly because politicians rarely, if ever, portray themselves the way they behave. I personally know many friends who score in the left libertarian square who look down their nose at Tulsi Gabbard simply because she served in the military, regardless of the fact that she was far more representative of their politics than almost any other candidate in the 2020 primaries besides Bernie Sanders. Why all of this confusion and misplaced judgement? Some are too busy to be bothered with politics, and frankly, I wish I was one of those people. It should be no surprise that politicians will say anything and act on nearly nothing since it is far easier in America to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. All of this boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of politics that isn’t made descriptive enough in the Political Compass. The Political Compass routinely misrepresents most people’s political beliefs and it’s not because they don’t do their due diligence or have very in-depth analysis of the political landscape, their measuring stick simply doesn’t allow for them to make the proper measurements of what kind of politicking people actually do or the beliefs they actually have.
After some digging through the Political Compass website, it has come to my attention that there are four definitions that need work. The y-axis is defined by authority and liberty. This measurement might be defined on its extreme top and bottom points as totalitarianism and anarchism respectively: singular rule(s) and decentralized rule(s). This definition is quite specific, which I like.
The same principle, however, does not apply to the x-axis. On the left end of the x-axis there is “left” and on the right end there is “right”. This is vague, which I dislike.
What is meant by “left” is that one, or a group, gives to another the economic thing. For example, a leftist might exchange, in a barter manner, a basket of berries for a winter blanket. In this sense, there is no expectation of compensation for labor because the product of the labor is exchanged for another product or service almost immediately, or there is at least an expectation of giving away the economic good at a later time. In most social democracies in the modern era the same principle applies in the tax codes that uphold many socialized programs. You give the State your taxes and the State gives you healthcare. The liquid currency being exchanged makes the complex service of healthcare available, not necessarily the authority of the State, but in the abstract, this is a barter exchange from the perspective of the citizen being taxed and using the healthcare program. In this more primitive and “true” left economic system of barter, however, there can’t be a mechanism of liquid currency used for abstract exchange. Perhaps this is why in many socialist societies that transition from capitalism to socialism we can see with regularity the destruction of currencies and markets, because for the truest of left economists, Barterers, there is no philosophical or actual need for money, the economic thing is simply exchanged away from one party to another as-is. The Socialist therefore needs hyperinflation and the annihilation of currency, not because hyperinflation is good, but because they desire the barter mechanism as a means of simplifying and making the economy “fair”, even if it comes at great personal or societal cost. I think this is perhaps why some left-economists of old look back at the “noble savage” societies through a set of sepia-colored glasses. In such societies there is no need for money hoarding or for Preto’s probability distribution to occur because social status can be derived from giving away the economic thing rather than keeping the economic thing for means of greater abstracted exchange at a later time. See first-nation potlatch societies for more in-depth explanations on how giving societies derive status with such economic mechanisms.
What is meant by “right” is that one, or a group, makes the economic thing, abstracts its value through a liquid currency and indirectly exchanges them for another economic thing through the mechanism of the market, of which the life-blood is the stability of the liquid currency. This is why in capitalist societies that experience hyperinflation we can routinely see a reversion to black market and barter exchange. When the currency dies, the market does not die with it, people still make exchanges of goods and services, they just find themselves lacking a means of exchanging highly complex goods and services with regularity. A rightist finds themselves asking too many questions with the Barterer: how many of my berries are actually equivalent to your winter blanket? What happens if my berries are fresher or of a higher quality than all the other foragers, could I receive from you a thicker, warmer blanket? Do you even have a thicker and warmer blanket to exchange with me if such circumstances were the case? The greatest problem with a system of barter, in the eyes of the true rightist, is that it becomes increasingly difficult to exchange specialized goods and services for lesser common goods and services. Why should I exchange this specialized axe that took me months to forge for your twenty chickens? How do I know that your chickens are any good until I lose my axe to you in the exchange? Say something were to happen to the chickens or the axe soon after the barter was completed, how do we reconcile a return of goods if one of us is disappointed? So many questions and for many including the rightist, the least painful way to answer them is through the exchange of hard, abstractly valued liquid currency.
All these mechanisms of economics are not explicitly understood within the “left-right” paradigm, nor is it fully understood the roles of government, taxes, public programs, regulations, etc. It is a lack of specificity, economically speaking, that has so many people tied in knots over their compass score and why we shoehorn in vague terms like “left” and “right” to mean something akin to government intervention in the economy or laissez-faire lack thereof. There also seems to be a moral quality attached to these terms of “left” and “right”.
On the left hand, it is argued that inequality is the gravest moral sin, hence why the true leftist (the communist) wishes to do away with money, long-term saving, and production of complex goods and services, for these economic things expose the occurrence of haves and have-nots, differences in quality of production, and inequality of effort, chance and what Heidegger called “thrownness”, the oppressive pre-set circumstances of life that one cannot change despite any effort to do so, such as: height, skin color, parental upbringing, geographical origin, etc.
On the right hand, it is argued that intervention is the gravest moral sin, hence why the true rightist (the laissez-faire capitalist) wishes to do away with government, nationalization, and controls over monetary policy by any institutional authority, for these economic things expose the occurrence of private property destruction, weaponized taxation and regulation without expanded benefits derived from such interventions, and the devaluation of liquid currencies by way of excessive money creation and State-sanctioned counterfeiting.
Economics is a measure of values and the desire to have the valued thing through creation and exchange. Human Action never stops, so no wonder the Political Compass has crammed morality into their measurements. Perhaps such an occurrence is inevitable. However, this isn’t the x-axis’s only problem. As can be seen in Figure 3, there are implications about collectivism and individualism on the economic x-axis. If “left” implies collectivism then “right” must conversely imply individualism.
However, as we can see in Figure 4, the Saudi Monarchy would be considered an authoritarian individualist capitalist society, even though their form of government is run by a whole group of royals that impose their rules from the top down, which hardly makes them individualists. Hitler, whose political philosophy was largely defined by his bastardized love for Nietzsche, was an absolute collectivist, so much so that he considered the Aryan “race” to be the group-based identity that was far and above the societal unit of the Nazi era. For the sake of humanity, Pinochet, a Chilean militarist dictator, who used the collective powers of the military to kill socialists and communists for his own party’s political benefit, might have touted a liberated market economy but that does not make him a hyper individualist as is implied. Otherwise, he would have explicitly protected the socialists’ and communists’ ability to politically disagree—within reason—with the party in power, which was not the case in Chile under Pinochet’s rule. In what politically blasphemous world are we living in where these leaders and their respective societies are considered to be individualistic when they provably are not? Not only that, but how is Luxembourg seen as a far-left economy when its Gini coefficient is roughly thirty-five as of 2018? All the Nordic countries have lower Gini coefficients based on their socialized safety-net programs. Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy whose Christian conservative party has held the most seats in parliament for the longest period of time in its political history and has a financial sector that has displaced its steel production economy in recent decades. As a measure of GDP per population in Europe, Luxembourg is an economic powerhouse. Frankly, it is hilarious and puzzling how such a country is defined as being slightly more authoritarian but just as economically minded as Karl Marx. You might also notice, they spelled Luxembourg wrong. Again, hilarious and puzzling. Is it apparent yet that the Political Compass has no magnetically true direction? Luxembourg is not communist! None of the ideologies of Hitler, Saudi Arabia, or Pinochet should be defined as individualist whatsoever! Those three societies might have elements of a laissez-faire market economics, which can be helpful for capitalistic individuals, but that hardly meets the definition of individualism as a philosophy. The lack of specificity in their terms on the economic and social axes leaves us all wanting and is the sole reason why so many claim that the Political Compass is not representative, biased and incorrect.
As the Political Compass’s introductory YouTube video explains, they expanded what used to be a single x-axis political measurement many years ago into a two-axis political measurement, however, another expansion is now needed in order for more accurate measurements to be made in our complex political world. I hypothesize that a z-axis is required. The y-axis measures social authority and liberty. The x-axis measures economic give and make dynamics, but it also simultaneously measures collectivism and individualism. This is false, ham-fisted and goes against all the standards of graphing mechanisms where one axis is supposed to measure only a single variable. Individualism and collectivism cannot be measured on economic and social terms alone, they are philosophical by definition. A z-axis would measure the nearness and farness by pointing nearest towards the reader to measure individualism and farthest away from the reader to measure collectivism from the zero-zero point on the graph. This will turn the four-quadrant Political Compass into a volume-capable eight quadrant Political Cube. The axes of economic structures, state authority and political philosophy would finally all have their own singular and defined variables and would no longer confuse and derange a complex process of politics at a global scale.
By couching collectivism and individualism as a strictly economic decision the Political Compass misses the complexity of philosophy and human nature all together. It surely must be possible for a socially authoritarian and economically left society to believe in the individual as the most basic human unit, or for a socially libertarian and economically right society to believe in the group as the most basic human unit. The terms “far left” and “far right” have become part of our lexicon because of the Political Compass and their test refuses to define what “farness”, “nearness”, “left” and “right” all mean. No wonder we’re all so deranged from our political perspectives, they’re all just as generic as our understanding of economics, politics and philosophy are and the tools we use to measure such things. There are plenty of societies that function to this day as effective theocracies and aristocracies that land them in the authoritarian right quadrant with plenty of American and Western politicians who still believe in the utmost protection of individual liberties; the same politicians who, despite their failures, would never make laws restricting the liberties of their own people solely based on group-identities such as: religion, race, sex, gender, economic status or political ideology. The political compass has claimed that it has done yeomen’s work by expanding a single x-axis political scale into a two-axis compass, but they have effectively only failed forward. Their terms are not specifically defined enough and do not measure singular definitions on their axes, and because of this nearly everybody who has taken their test finds themselves wondering whether or not the problem of the test itself is that it is a bias creating machine or an error on the part of the test taker themselves. The answers are likely yes and yes. How are we to treat the Political Compass with respect when it regularly wedges square pegs into round holes? Until the philosophical z-axis is added to make clear what actually defines individualism and collectivism then the compass will always be flawed, people will always confuse their political others based on flawed perspectives and we all will be no closer to avoiding the political horrors of the highly destructive 19th and 20th centuries. No new perspectives? No new solutions.