• Owl [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The Political Compass website defines left/right as state vs "free" (capital) control of the economy* and up/down as government enforced social hierarchy vs not. So yeah, by that definition MLs are libleft (lower left). But typically when we talk about libleft and authleft we're using that as shorthand for direct transition to communism vs an intermediary stage of state control, by which MLs are authleft. The compass tries to piggyback on that and put Stalin in the authleft quadrant, even though that's not actually consistent with the axes as it defined them.

    *Worker control isn't even an option, which is why I said it can't conceive of ancoms.

    • Liberalism [he/him,they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah, I understand that libleft/authleft is often understood to be ML vs anarchist or whatever more moderate version of those ideologies, but it goes against the stated rules of the political compass and just contributes to people having an even worse understanding of communism than they already do.