The proliferation of the Holy Gospel of the political compass has seriously damaged the ability of the Left to form organizations with more influence than a branch of the DSA
This is a really good point. In addition to the Political Compass test questions being loaded, the two-dimensional representation of politics obscures and distorts just like the one-dimensional one does, and lumps a lot of things into an axis that are neither interchangeable nor linearly dependent.
Really, even the terminology of Left and Right is something we need to abandon, in favor of something less Euclidean and more descriptive. There are liberals of many different kinds (including the ones who invented the terms of leftist and rightist), there are reactionaries of many different kinds, and there are progressives/egalitarians of many different kinds.
This is a really good point. In addition to the Political Compass test questions being loaded, the two-dimensional representation of politics obscures and distorts just like the one-dimensional one does, and lumps a lot of things into an axis that are neither interchangeable nor linearly dependent.
Really, even the terminology of Left and Right is something we need to abandon, in favor of something less Euclidean and more descriptive. There are liberals of many different kinds (including the ones who invented the terms of leftist and rightist), there are reactionaries of many different kinds, and there are progressives/egalitarians of many different kinds.