Political Compass Revised The Comparison between the Old and the New, Left and Right wing --- Part 1

1. The Critique of the Original Political Compass
The original political compass based on the Left/Right (Collectivism/Capitalism) axis of the economic and the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis succeeds in explaining about the complex characteristics of political ideologies which are not enough to be explained by the single linear political spectrum. Nevertheless, this political compass analysis seems to over-simplify the philosophical backgrounds of these political theories. Firstly, it easily equalise Authoritarian to Theocracy, and Secularism to Libertarian. Secondly, it lacks differentiating between the teleological focus (consequence first) and the deontological focus (Duty/Will first). Overall, this cannot distinguish the philosophical intention, the rationality behind determining the degree of intervention.



First of all, this neglects considering about the necessary law enforcement whose principle is rational enough to be fair, and about the critical difference between chaos and self-governance. Many political philosophers affirm that, in order to secure liberty for individual citizens, the rule by law and its enforcement are essential. For instance, Montesquieu argued that liberty and equality require significance of law. The original political compass seems to mix up the rule by law with the law by rule.

Secondly, this original compass equalises the theocratic regimes to the authoritarian left. It can be easily imagined that these two camps, the secular authoritarian left and the theocratic authoritarian left, would strongly condemn its labelling based on this compass. Even though both Authoritarian-Leftists are anti-capitalism and highly authoritarian, their philosophical principle is completely opposite to each other.

Thirdly, the original political puts an excessive emphasis on distinguishing their policy practice and ideal, which majority of the New Left-wing nowadays believe in, from the state socialism imposed by the socialist nations under various Communist party regimes. Nonetheless, even though their external characteristics is different, their quality is still essentially identical to each other in both good and bad way. Both are fundamentalistic secular as though it were a fundamentalist monotheism without God, and supporting revolutionary subversion of the world. Only the difference is their process and the tools they apply to their aim.

2. How the Revised Political Compass is Revised
The revised compass presented here takes account of both the consequence they aspire to induce and the duty they are obliged to. Unlike the original political compass, the axis introduced does not mention about the scale of intervention by either government or any other autocratic institute such as a feudal lord, religious organisation, or private corporation into both economic and social schemes. By contrast, this revised compass based on these axes representing political thinkers’ action planning and mind principle enables to analyse how the intervention is applied more or less by means of their philosophical objective.

The vertical axis represents political thinkers’ action planning. It measures whether political thinkers focus on individuals’ right and duty or the overall consequence induced by individuals’ actions. The Deontologists on the left hand side scale claim that politics must put the highest priority on the universally absolute principle, basing individuals’ right and duty, all individuals ought to follow over any hypothetical estimation and thought. By contrast, the Teleologists on the right hand side scale think that politics has to be functional as a whole part so that the hypothetical estimation and thought to draw the big picture of their governing state are essential. Then, the Teleologists argue that fundamentally sticking to the absoluteness of moral right and duty is meaningless because these measure vary across different times, places, and occasions in order to form a stable functional structure in each different situation.

The horizontal axis represents political thinkers’ mind principle basing their action planning. It measures how the principle individuals’ actions and mind are base on. The bottom scale indicates the principle which individuals pursue in by means of their subjective wish, emotional attachment, and fear of the others. Those who obey this principle follow what individuals are taught or commanded to believe or what is wished to become true in real. The top scale indicates the principle guided by the objective realities such as resource limitation in the substantial world, the market mechanism, and mathematical and scientific factors. Those who understand this principle use analyses based on logical inference to determine their decisions and establish their rule.

3. How the 4 Category groups are characterised on this compass
- Old Right-wing
When the technological development and the civility of individuals are at the primitive level, politics tends to be a primitive form as the simplicity, more than the complexity, prevails to satisfy their needs and wants. These individuals living there are often under the constant threat of harsh disasters, fatal endemic diseases and persistent lethal assaults by neighbouring tribes. They have little methods to protect themselves from these threats because technology and civility of individuals living in this kind of world are significantly insufficient enough to prevent these threats. Then, their mind tends to dominated by fear, and their priority is to prevent their haunting fear. Furthermore, such a situation is less likely to enable individuals to form their rational mind set and voluntarily fairly compete and cooperate together. Therefore, the first political priority is establishing a strong cohesion bundling individuals to one community group.

In this case, resource distribution is too limited to distribute equally among all individuals, and there tends to be little technology and wisdom to develop their rationality encouraging fairness. So, the wealth and the opportunity are inevitably unequally as well as unfairly, and majority individuals tend to take their situation for granted. Under the substantially low resource and technology level, this unequal distribution prevented from a competition is an effective way to concentrate all the resources available to one authorised institute to use them for sustaining one strong figurehead charisma and mature the cultural standard within one family or religious organisational structure. In such a world, majority subordinates obey and unconditionally contribute to their powerful minority such as feudal lords and religious authorities because of the majestic charisma as an authority figure of their belonging community. These individuals strictly follow their retained tradition and worship a superstition which they are emotionally attached to. They feel secured under an umbrella of one cohesive community even with a sacrifice of their material well-beings and their individual rights.

... continue reading: