Left, Center or Right?

[Conoga]

Right.

[Dusk_Kittens]

So in a political sense to what direction is your nation, left, center or right?

Vecherd is a Far-Right nation(Libertarianism).

In response to this several people have posted protesting that they don't see things in those terms, that they reject the "Left vs. Right" dilemma, that it's flawed, outdated, too limited, etc. One person responded as follows:

... you're classifying libertarianism as right?

The trouble is that not only is the Left vs. Right categorization too limited and so on, but that people have different ways of approaching the subject, different backgrounds, different assumptions, different definitions. This results in no little confusion and quite a lot of annoyance, leading to polarization and representatives of each polarized camp viewing members of the other polarized camp (and sometimes even anyone who isn't in their own camp) as unreasonable, stubborn, ignorant, confused, etc. Frustration increases. Eventually, any "discussion" between the two polarized camps is reduced to passionate rhetoric perceived as a means to "win" the disagreement, and/or slogan-like expressions repeated again and again in the hope that the other person will finally "get it," etc. --

However, the people in the other camp will never "get it" as long as the two camps are each playing their own game with their own rules. Sure, it looks like the same game at first glance, just as Rugby and Soccer/Football can be confused by those not familiar enough with the two games to see the differences (put "Baseball" and "Softball" in there, or "Shinty/Camanachd/Hurling" and "Field Hockey," or any other two games which have some superficial resemblance and kindred objectives and similar rules; it doesn't matter).

Left/Center/Right are terms related more to Economic systems than to Political systems.

The depiction of Economics and Politics as essentially one category, and reduced to a one-dimensional line continuum ignores the differences in what the two are concerned with.

Economics deals with commodities, products, means of production, labor, wealth, wages/salaries, benefits, working conditions, etc.

Politics deals with who has a say in government, how much say they have, what form the government should take, whether a central government should dictate to local governments as in a federal polity or whether local governments should be autonomous with the national government acting primarily in the role of dispute resolution and dealing with foreign powers as in a confederation, and so on.

To be Economically Leftist does not necessitate that one be Politically Totalitarian, nor does being Economically Right Wing require one to be Politically Totalitarian.

However,
due to different approaches to, and ways of looking at, the subjects, many Economically Right Wing people will accuse Economic Leftists of being "Statists," "Stalinists," supporters of Tyranny or Totalitarianism, etc, and, by the same token, looking at the subjects from a different perspective, many Economic Leftists will accuse Economic Right Wingers of being "Fascists," "Nazis," supporters of state-supported monopolistic corporatism, and so on.

Various political compass charts out there (Nolan's, Pournelle's, and "the Political Compass," as well as variants on those, and a few lesser known examples) take these distinctions between Economics and Politics into account and expand from the one-dimensional "Left or Right" line continuum, providing instead a two-dimensional measurement, based on the "Cartesian Coordinate System" (developed by the Philosopher and Mathematician, René Descartes -- "Cartesian" being derived from the name "Descartes"), with an X axis and a Y axis, the Y axis relating to "Politics" and the X axis relating to "Economics." Several examples have been posted of people's perspectives based on one or another of these plane geometrical graphs in the previous posts in this thread. My own perspective as graphed by "The Political Compass" is depicted on a graph in the link below (in my signature) to "My Political Compass."

All of these schemes for graphing perspectives based on two axes differ from one another to a greater or lesser extent, but most of them seem to generally agree that the Left/Center/Right coordinate axis pertains to Economics and represents something akin to a range from Communism on the extreme Left to completely unrestricted Capitalism on the extreme Right (although some seem to consider the furthest point to the Right to be state-bolstered corporatism, which may also be named "Fascism"). Some people regard the far Left to be total Regulation of business and the far Right to be absolute lack of Regulation of business, and these will tend to portray the far Right as "Free Market Capitalism" or "Economic Libertarianism" (this is not, however, the same thing as "Social Libertarianism," but I'll get to that shortly). Others see "Left" as "Freedom" and "Social Progress," and "Right" as "Oppression" and "Restraint." Still others posit the polarities as concerned with "Communitarianism" vs. "Individualism." And yet others refer to the polarities in different terms. Regardless of how one perceives the two poles, however, and what terms one uses to label them, the Left/Center/Right on the X axis is usuallyconcerned with Economics, and not with Politics. Of the more well-known charts, only Pournelle's chart dispenses with a coordinate axis specifically labeled as connected with "Economics," and instead he has the X axis for "Statism" (with the Left seeing the State as "ultimate evil" and the Right engaging in "worship" of the State) and the Y axis for "Rationalism" (with the upper end enthroning Reason, and the lower end being anti-rational). On this chart, both Communism and Fascism are Far Right, but they are still poles apart in terms of the Y axis. As noted, Pournelle is not using Left/Center/Right in the usual manner (that is, as pertaining to Economics).

Nevertheless, the differences in terminology can lead to confusion and debate based on different people being engaged in different Sprachspiele (to put it in Wittgensteinian terms -- a Sprachspiel is a "Language Game," a way of using language according to a particular outlook, with specific rules governing word meanings and uses based on that particular outlook). While everyone seems to be talking about Economics when referring to Right/Center/Left, several decades of different approaches to understanding of Economic systems, and different rules involved in discussing them based on those different approaches, have led to even more confusion between people coming to the discussions from different backgrounds and with different approaches to the subject.

• To those who see Left/Center/Right in terms of how much or how little business is regulated, for example, "Left" is seen as more or less equivalent to "Statism" or "Totalitarianism" or "Tyranny," and "Right" is seen as more or less equivalent to "Liberty" or "Libertarianism" or "Free Market."
• To those who look at this coordinate axis in terms of questions of "Social Justice" (by which is meant, in this context, "Equal Economic Opportunity" and the like), "Right" is viewed as "Oppression" and "Suppression," and "Left" is seen as "Liberation" and "Progress."

So much for the X coordinate axis and Economics (for now, at least).

With regard to the Political dimension on the Y coordinate axis, the basic idea is one extreme being Anarchy and the other being Totalitarianism, although the various graphs use various names for these, with one representing Anarchy as "Libertarianism" and Totalitarianism as "Fascism," while another has "Libertarianism" one one end and "Authoritarianism" on the opposite end, and so on. While these are not wholly inaccurate ways of looking at the Political dimension, the Y axis, if it is to be connected with Politics, really should deal more with Politics, and less with Civil/Social Liberties.

Unfortunately, these graphs have conflated Political with Social/Civil. There should in fact be at least three coordinate axes, not merely X and Y (or Left to Right and Bottom to Top), but also Z (Out to In).

Here, fortunately, we have some alternatives. Max Barry is not the only person to have put forward an attempt at three-dimensional understanding of these questions, but as you can see on your Nation's "Overview" page, there are the three coordinate axes represented, as "Civil Rights," "Economy," and "Political Freedoms." A graphic representation of these ideas has been developed and can be seen here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... calmap.png

For a few examples of the various other charts and how they are defined and set up, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_Chart

These are all limited to two dimensions. Of all the schemes for understanding which I have presented here, only the NS Political Map steps outside the box to view the situation in three dimensions (although it is not, as I have noted, the only three-dimensional approach to these questions). It may not be perfect; indeed, the labels assigned to each of the 27 possible categories on Max's graphic representation may in some cases be exaggerated or satirical, being designed to relate with the mechanics of the game. It is inspired, however, by an evolutionary leap in the way of looking at these questions, to see them in three dimensions rather than two (and light years ahead of the old one-dimensional model). I suspect, though, that there are more than three dimensions which ought to be considered; the challenge becomes how to present any sort of graphic representation of a four-dimensional or five-dimensional model (much less a model which involves even more dimensions), or, failing that, how to explain the more advanced model using language alone.


Does my nation's category reflect my own views on these questions? Honestly, I doubt it. I'm engaging to some extent in Role Playing here in this game, and I have developed a character persona for the Founder and Head of State for my nation; the choices I make on the Issues that come before my nation are based on how I think she would respond to those issues. I'm not that person; the real world doesn't afford me the luxury of making such decisions, nor the responsibility of facing such issues, and if I were in a position to govern a nation, I would hope that my advisers and I myself could come up with options that would avoid some of the excesses in results that derive from selecting the game-provided options for these issues. However, I do suspect that a "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise" isn't too far away from what I would work towards establishing if I were in the position to make such decisions. I wouldn't want to go quite as far to the Left as the exaggerated "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise" society in the game is (so I might be more of a "Left-Leaning College State"), and I might be more in favor of Political Freedoms (placing me back at "Left-Wing Utopia," where I started out, or perhaps, in light of me not wanting to go to the furthest extreme of Leftism, it might place me at "Civil Rights Lovefest"), but as far as Civil Liberties or Personal Freedoms, yes, I would be extremely supportive of those, so I would certainly be in the topmost tier on that chart.

To those who have bothered to slog through all of this lengthy post, I offer my salute and my gratitude. I hope I have encouraged some thinking for some of you. I have taken quite some time to write this post, and have done some thinking of my own as I wrote it.

[Zoozk]

Center-left

[Xanicea]

Using this backwards model, center-left.

However, an XYZ axis-model, as suggested by Dusk_Kittens, would be more accurate not to mention far superior. In that case, I'd be center-left economics-wise, far-left civil rights-wise, and center politics-wise.

[Fjeld]

Far-left.

[Wamitoria]

Syncretic.

[San Guillermo]

The country is considered center-left, as the Liberal Party has held the parliament for 17 out of the last 25 years.

[Khazyan]

We are what Fox News would consider "Very Far Left," and they're Fox News.

[Voltronica]

Ambidexterous.

[Saiwania]

The person behind this nation is conservative/libertarian but Saiwania is liberal according to Nationstates. Does liberal necessarily mean "left"?

[Amerikians]

Center mostly. We've some liberal elements, some straight fascistic elements.

[The Necromorphs]

Were outside of the Box!

[-Carta-]

Centrist, oh so very, very centrists. :D

[Georgism]

Center mostly. We've some liberal elements, some straight fascistic elements.

Aren't they the same thing? Huuuuurrrrrrrrr

[Meryuma]

If left is for freedom and right for oppression and restraint then we are extreme-left.

That said, we are National-Anarchocorporatists. Combining (ultra)nationalism, militarism, anarchism and corporatism.

The nation above everything; anything else is simply not worth living for.

No, that's soul-crushing, dehumanizing, far-right totalitarianism.

Anyways, we're a loose bioregional confederation of self-sufficient communes, so very much left.

[CTALNH]

The C.P.O.C is said to be by foreigners as an extreme left

[Kelvaros Prime]

leftie

[Dusk_Kittens]

Using this backwards model, center-left.

However, an XYZ axis-model, as suggested by Dusk_Kittens, would be more accurate not to mention far superior. In that case, I'd be center-left economics-wise, far-left civil rights-wise, and center politics-wise.

Earlier today, I found (through another poster's signature), a 5-dimensional model at the Center for a Stateless Society's "Find Your Philosophy Quiz." I am not wholly satisfied by the questions in their quiz, nor by the scores I received, but my main disagreement with the scores I received is in the Economic rating, where I was ranked at "58% Economic Leftist," because I think I'm slightly more to the Left than that. I think the Political Compass has my Economic Philosophy more accurately ranked, at "-7.12" Leftist (although I suspect I'm really more like -7.50). I also think the Political Compass has my "Social" Philosophy ranking not "Libertarian" enough; it has me at "-6.72" Libertarian, and I think I'm probably more like -8.00. In this category, the C4SS "Find Your Philosophy" quiz has me ranked as "80% Civil Libertarian," which I think is probably about right.

My Center for a Stateless Society's "Find Your Philosophy Quiz" scores are in the spoiler in my signature labeled "My C4SS Ratings."

[Sheniaux]

Sheniaux has historically been a Center-Right nation. For the past 26 years the Conservative Party as been in power. However within the last couple of months a new party has risen to power, The Reformist Party. Though they are slightly more left than the Conservative Party they are still generally labeled as a Right party. They have recently changed many aspects of the government and even called for a 5th Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Constitution. They have disbanded the old corrupt Congress and established a Democratic Assembly where every District holds local elections as a transitional government structure. Led by the new Lord President James T. Walker, they had 76% of the seats of the old Congress and how have 91% of the Democratic Assembly's seats. With a strong national support they will easily have there way with all issues and legislation.

[Yenisy]

By the standards of most western democracies we are slightly right of center.

By the standards of most socialist countries, we are decidedly right wing.

By the standards of right-wing authoritarian states, we are left wing.

By our own standards, we are dead-on center.

[The Grand World Order]

Socially far-right.

Economically right-center.

[The Supreme Truth]

Both Socially and Economically, the Supreme Truth is Far Right.

[Udema]

We are a typical Scandinavian constitutional monarchy, so centre-left.

Tove "comrade Queen" R.

[Free-Azania]

Anarchist, therefore, far left-wing.

[The Kangaroo Republic]

We could be described as center-left for now. The current coalition government consists of the Social Liberal Party, the Socialist Party and the Libertarian Party.