This is a think-piece.  I hope that it will inspire you to think about its subject matter. Please approach it with an open mind.

Hello Everyone.  I’m going to take a moment to discuss the political spectrum and compass. 

This is part one of a series discussing this topic.  Today’s topic concerns the eastern hemisphere of the “political compass.”  The compass, like many others, contains northern, southern, eastern, and western points.  These points represent authoritarianism, libertarianism, and the right and left wings, respectively.

Politics is “the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”

I’m proposing a compass that better represents this definition.  In the next sections, I’ll compare and contrast the two models. I will also explain why my own model represents the full spectrum of political thought.

So, let’s talk about it.

The northern and southern points represent authoritarians and libertarians, respectively.

The authors of the “accepted model” compass list this as the “social axis.” It determines how much personal freedom an individual should have.  In other words, how much power and influence should a government have on an individual’s life?  Should we obey its authority? 

Those who support obedience to a powerful government, even at the expense of personal freedom, are authoritarian. At its most extreme end, you would have a totalitarian government.  Such governments would have the power to enforce their laws under penalty of death.

At the other end of the spectrum are libertarians.  These are people who are instead skeptical of state power. They seek to minimize its influence, even if that leads to a loss of security and stability.  At its most extreme, you have anarchism, the complete abolition of government.

I’m not going to spend a ton of time with this axis, as my own compass would contain an identical one.  Both would seek to ask “how much power should the government have?” 

I have many more issues with the next axis.

The western and eastern points represent left- and right-wing ideology.

The authors of the “accepted model” compass list this as the “economic axis.” This determines how we organize the economy and its “goods and services.”  These include food, shelter, drinking water, electricity, phone and internet access, transportation, healthcare, and more.

In America, these are typically owned by individuals and/or corporations. This is a capitalist organization of the economy.  It is hierarchical and thus right-wing. Or, the economy can be democratically owned by a nation’s citizens. This is a left-wing socialist/communist organization of the economy. 

Defining the left and right by economics alone is reductive.  The left and the right originated in the French Revolution in the late 1700s.  The King, the nobility, and the clergy sat at the top of a social hierarchy.  They exercised and abused complete control over economic, social, and political power.  The peasants, who made up over 98% of the population, were at the bottom of the hierarchy.  Because of this, they had little to no political power yet did almost all the labor.

Abuse by the upper class would cause the country to break out into a violent and bloody revolution.

In court, the revolutionaries sat to the left of the King.  They proposed that political power be equally distributed across society.  The loyalists sat to the right of the King.  They defended the monarchy and the social hierarchy.  This is the origin of the terms “Left” and “Right” in political parlance. 

While economics was a motivating force behind the French Revolution, it was not the only one.  The Left, from its foundation, has advocated for social equality. The right exists in opposition, promoting social hierarchy.  In fact, the struggle between egalitarian and hierarchical politics predates the terms “Left” and “Right.”

Few people have strong opinions on how to manage a nation’s economy.  And yet, many people have opinions about who should have power, and how much.  The accepted model compass misses this.

So, I’m proposing, or re-proposing, a different compass instead. 

A political compass should discuss who gets to have power, and how much.

The authority-liberty axis on my compass remains the same. Authoritarians want a greater ability for the government to enact and enforce its laws.  Those who want less government influence and enforcement are libertarian.

For the left and right, I will be using their more generic and historical definitions.  The left represents social equality. The right, social hierarchy.

This even includes the economic definitions!  A capitalist organization of the economy is a hierarchical one. People who own more “capital” have more power.  A communist economy pursues egalitarianism. Ownership of goods and services is democratized.

This also allows for a better understanding of how we structure our governments.  Democracy is the egalitarian distribution of political power and is left-wing.  Right-wing governments have power concentrated in one person (autocracy) or a few people (oligarchy). 

This also allows for some interesting political structures. For example, an authoritarian democracy could exist.  Society would directly vote on its own rules and laws.  The government would also have significant power to enforce its laws.  It does not have to have a communist economy.

Likewise, a libertarian autocracy could exist. One individual decides the rules and laws for society.  But, following those rules and laws is mostly optional.  Its economy does not have to be a capitalist one.

By assigning different concepts to the left- and right-wing, we can come to the last point that I would like to make.

People are often a collection of left-wing, right-wing, authoritarian, and libertarian ideals.

My proposed version of the political compass is more diverse and inclusive. One that is not reduced to economics, but focuses on who gets to have power, and how much. 

Lastly, I’ll be using the rest of this series to dive into this idea.  People are often a collection of left- and right-wing ideas, of authoritarian and libertarian ones.  If we can understand that, then maybe we can understand each other a little better. 

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