[Cafiero]

I put this post in here, as I'm going to touch on a few of the overlapping schools of political thought.

If you're the kind of member who likes to check out who's new in the introductions section, you'll know of what I termed my journey of political discovery -- if not, essentially for reasons of personal ignorance, I have only recently been discovering for myself over the last few months, the many different compartmentalisations in defining specific ideologies. In attempting to gain a much deeper insight into what I believe politically, I went on a political quiz spree over a few weeks, basically filling out every one I could find that looked somewhat respectable.

I noticed that depending upon the choice of questions, I seemed to move around a little on the graphs from quiz to quiz, and that not all quiz's analysed the same spectrum's on their corresponding lines.

I'll share a few for examples:






As you see, there's a fair bit of movement, depending upon the questions used to pin you down, and oftentimes, very narrow options for answers that do not make for a true representation of my feelings on the matter at hand.

I then found a few more detailed ones, and a somewhat clearer picture began to emerge...





with the final and most comprehensive one I took saved for last ...





There basically seems to be something of a tendency for me to veer way off down into the deep South-West of the political compass.


Part of the issue with the discrepancies may well be connected to my still limited Economical knowledge and understanding, which I'm in the process of trying to improve upon. At school I was wonderful with languages and the arts -- but absolutely shite at maths. Things it seems have still not changed all that much. But regardless of my lack of mathematical acumen, when facing questions such as those in the quiz's -- it is something else that splits me with indecision. In theory at least, I am all for as much personal liberty and autonomy as is possible to achieve, but when that stance comes face to face with questions on the market -- personal liberty of choice cannot take preference if that means that someone somewhere is going to get exploited to make my life more comfortable. So there have to be some forms of regulations to stop that from happening.

I would be grateful for any help in further narrowing down my position on the compass. I'll be happy to consider and answer any questions that help in finding my place.

Ultimately (as an absolute ideal), I so far tentatively seem to identify a lot with Piotr Kropotkin, Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta et al in their efforts to usher in Anarcho-Communism -- but I am also somewhat happy to settle for a genuinely benevolent (not dictatorial) Socialist system that guarantees everyone will have their basic needs met as a fundamental inalienable human right. I am happy for people to work even harder if they so choose, if they wish for even more nice things, but as I said in my intro post -- only once we've reached a level of humanity that someone else doesn't have to starve or die of an easily treatable disease to allow you to have that.

Another potential issue is that I abhor violence, and cannot countenance it save for absolutely necessary self-defense against attack, and also for intervening to stop heinous genocides from being carried out, if there is no other choice left on the table.

So maybe the last couple of images about are about right, and I'm kind of straddling the boundaries of Anarcho-Communism, Anarcho-Socialism and Left-Libertarianism?

I welcome your guidance Comrades.

[mikema63]

Abandon the compass, for it is shit.

Seriously though, political ideology is far far far too complicated to have less than a dozen "axis". Also, ideologies aren't really continuum's so much as discrete boxes with lots of variability within the box.

These box's generally correspond to your beliefs about how reality operates, and the variation within those boxes is a function of your personal values.

[Cartertonian]

I think the snag with any test, of which the political compass is representative, is that it is human nature to be critical of the world as we see it, without necessarily having a clear picture of either a: how we would wish to see our world and b: what would need to be done to achieve that. Thus, a lot of people who complete the test end up seeming to be Left Libertarian (rejecting current economics AND current governance) when, in actual fact, if you call them out on that they are not.

It's always easier to say what we don't like than to specify what we would like.