View Single Post
Old 12-12-2004, 09:48 PM   #19 (permalink)
MSD
The sky calls to us ...
 
MSD's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: CT
The simplest you can get with the political spectrum is left=neo-liberal (referred to as "liberal") and right=conservative/classic liberal (referred to as "conservative.") A good step up is to leave that axis to deal with economics, and an up/down axis, up=authoritarian and down=libertarian, to deal with social issues.

-liberalism will be defined as the philosophy that the state should look out for individuals, and that high taxes, government control of industry and means of production, and redistribution of wealth are an appropriate way to accomplish this.
-conservatism is the opposite of Liberalism, preferring to leave the means of production to private entities, and to tax as little as possible, leaving charity to private organizations.
-authoritarianism is the belief that the state is more important than the individual, and therefore restriction or removal of rights and liberties is an appropriate way to accomplish this. This philosophy is often coupled with the belief that people are inherently bad and incapable of self-government.
-libertaranism (lowwercase "l") is the belief that the individual is the most important unit, and that the state should respect this, regulating behavior only to the extent that is necessary to disallow harming another individual

The two-axis system places Communism in the upper left (authoritarian, liberal); Socialism in the lower left (libertarian, liberal); Libertarianism (uppercase "L,") in the lower right (libertarian, conservative); and fascism (lowercase "f") in the upper right (authoritarian, conservative)

Another axis that can be added is Isolationist/Globalizationalist (I think I just invented a word.) To respond to Jizz-Fritter's post, Ideal Communism would most likely be authoritarian/liberal/isolationist.
MSD is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360