Towards a New Political Classification System

Over the years, people have tried to argue for many different ways to classify people politically.  The most basic is just a left to right spectrum, like this:

Communist———-Socialist——–Social Democrat———American Liberal————Conservative————Reactionary————Feudalist

This spectrum does fairly well when it comes to economic issues, but pretty much ignores social issues, personal liberties, and the variety within each point on the spectrum – put five Communists in a room together, and you’ll probably get five different Communist parties.  Plus, where do we put Libertarians?  And Fascists?  Given that the Libertarians were left out, it seems pretty logical that they would be the ones who would design a new system to replace the old: a diamond-shaped thing called the Nolan Test.

This is an example of the Nolan Test

The Nolan test does take social issues into account.  What it doesn’t look at is what that “economic regulation” is.  Is it no-bid contracts for well-connected corporations, or a public education system?  (or is it no-bid contracts for Halliburton to build schools?)  Is it palaces and pyramids for the rich, or food for the poor?

I base my model somewhat on Prof. Jonathan C. York’s work, of Mountain View College in Dallas, on the “LEO Test”.  You can find it in my blogroll.  Dividing the spectrum into liberty, equality, and order makes good sense, and I believe my system is but a variant of York’s.

My system starts with a basic left-right spectrum, like this:

Role of Government in the Economy

Give all to the downtrodden—————————————Do not intervene———————————————-Give all to the powerful

But sometimes, people support policies that go both ways – they want the government to intervene both for the rich and the poor.  And some people believe in government control of the economy for control’s sake.  How do we describe these factors?

In my view, with a pyramid, like this:

Everything that works is complex

The gold triangle at the top is the Libertarians.  The blue and red areas immediately below them are the Democratic and Republican Parties.  The green area represents the Green Party in the U.S. and most of the Social Democratic Parties in Europe.  The gray area represents “true pragmatists – people who really don’t care about ideology at all, and so end up right in the middle.  And the orange area represents the ideology of most major corporations, if they were completely amoral.

The pink blob represents the Socialist parties of the world.  The big brown square represents the various Fascist movements: Mussolini is in the top left corner, Hitler in the bottom center, and Franco on the far right.  The light purple area represents traditional feudalists and landowning elites.  Moving to the bottom of the pyramid, we have Communists in red (of course), pure statists (really with no ideology but that the state should control the economy) in light gray, and monarchists/supporters of a Pharonic divine god-king in purple.  And that’s world politics.

I think for true completeness, it needs another axis – it needs to be a true 3-D  square-based pyramid.  The other axis could be social regulation, with the far left wanting to completely remake society (i.e. the Cultural Revolution) the center doing nothing, and the far right supporting  a forced return to the society of centuries ago (but without the part where the Puritan women got married in their underwear).  This would likely move Socialists and Fascists further apart, which would make both happier.  It would also give more definition to the different factions within the Democratic and Republican parties.  But I’m not nearly good enough at 3-D in Paint to make this model right now.   You’ll have to use your imagination.  Plus, the economics is the important part.

Any thoughts?

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