It's not ready yet but I wanted to show off the graphic design for my attempt at a political compass alternative that understands the differences between socdems and actual left ideas.
I like your thinking, that makes a much better compass, but it doesn’t really account for who controls the government, or wether the control is direct. Where would you put Marxism-Leninism in compassion to say Anarcho-syndiclism. Also what about Feudalism with its hierarchical land ownership and taxation?
The way the test is set up, MLs will get the top left of the triangle and Syndies will get the bottom left. I have no idea where a neofeudalist would land, probably the right half of everything.
I'm not going to represent every dimension of political thought in a three-and-a-half axis system.
Actually, here's my first draft of the test's intro, talking about how tests like this are inherently reductive.
Real world policy is composed of endless independent decisions, yet political frameworks try to fit all of political thought into just a single left/right spectrum. If you're lucky you'll get a second axis, or maybe even eight of them. Doing this requires lumping some of the endless decisions together and adding them up into a single position. One person might care about black rights but not gay rights, another might care about gay rights but not black rights, and any political test (even this one) will declare those two individuals equivalent, even though the difference between those two test-takers may matter an awful lot to you if you are gay or black.
Some of this kludging together is inevitable - if we all had time to rattle off every one of our views to everyone we meet, we would not need political tests. But who decides what views get to be grouped together? Is the difference between left and right one of big versus small government? Social versus capital control of the economy? Minority rights versus nah? Inevitably, the groupings are determined by the biases of whoever wrote the test.
To attempt to address this, I have constructed this test using the three most common frameworks I've found people operating under, by actually talking to people with different political views and seeing what ideas they think are virtuous, which they think are viceful, and which they fail to understand entirely. It is, of course, still biased. But it attempts to at least show you three different biased views of the world.
But government isn’t a class in and of itself, a ML gov (in theory) controls the MOP on behalf of the worker, which is worth distinguishing from a nationalist, theocratic, monarchist etc government controlling the MOP.
The difference between ML and anarchist theories is the government controlling the MOP on behalf of the worker and the worker directly controlling the MOP.
Acknowledging different kinds of left theories lets me make the leftist framework a triangle so it's more interesting and exciting than the other two.
ya got make it even simpler. it's all got to be based around one thing. and lots of pretty colors. also, it has to apply to them as an individual, because that's all they care about.
It's not ready yet but I wanted to show off the graphic design for my attempt at a political compass alternative that understands the differences between socdems and actual left ideas.
I like your thinking, that makes a much better compass, but it doesn’t really account for who controls the government, or wether the control is direct. Where would you put Marxism-Leninism in compassion to say Anarcho-syndiclism. Also what about Feudalism with its hierarchical land ownership and taxation?
The way the test is set up, MLs will get the top left of the triangle and Syndies will get the bottom left. I have no idea where a neofeudalist would land, probably the right half of everything.
I'm not going to represent every dimension of political thought in a three-and-a-half axis system.
Actually, here's my first draft of the test's intro, talking about how tests like this are inherently reductive.
But government isn’t a class in and of itself, a ML gov (in theory) controls the MOP on behalf of the worker, which is worth distinguishing from a nationalist, theocratic, monarchist etc government controlling the MOP.
The difference between ML and anarchist theories is the government controlling the MOP on behalf of the worker and the worker directly controlling the MOP.
Acknowledging different kinds of left theories lets me make the leftist framework a triangle so it's more interesting and exciting than the other two.
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ya got make it even simpler. it's all got to be based around one thing. and lots of pretty colors. also, it has to apply to them as an individual, because that's all they care about.
the government mediates between the classes. it doesn't exist on a third axis independent of them.
make them choose whether bourgeoisie stealing land from serfs and turning them into wage slaves (primitive accumulation) is good
That's actually a pretty clever one! Thanks!