The Political Compass, a popular online quiz, was supposedly designed to remedy the simple-mindedness of the left-right spectrum by replacing it with two axes: political and social libertarianism vs. authoritarianism, and economic Left vs. Right. Basically, everything nice you say about big business puts you further to the economic Right — which the quiz equates to a preference for free markets — and everything negative you say about corporate power puts you further to the Left (i.e. collectivism).
The quiz explicitly identifies the economic Right with libertarianism and neoliberalism. The horizontal Left-Right axis, the explanatory page says, is “economic.” “Margaret Thatcher would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.” The fact that the designers of the quiz refer to “Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market,” and that that they equate support for free markets as a right-wing position, says it all.
Remember the old “Pinochet was politically authoritarian but economically libertarian” canard? Right. Pinochet sent soldiers into factories and asked managers to point out union troublemakers for arrest. The clear intent was to prevent the owners of a “factor of production” — labor power — from exercising full bargaining rights on the market. Imagine if he’d carried out a similar program of terror against the owners of capital to force them to offer better terms to labor — do you think the designers of this quiz would call that “economically libertarian”? Pinochet took land from the people cultivating it and restored it to a landed oligarchy based on quasi-feudal titles. He “privatized” taxpayer-funded state property to crony capitalists on sweetheart terms. Somebody obviously never heard of the distinction between “pro-market” and “pro-business.”
Some of the questions have a “have you stopped beating your wife?” quality to them. For example: “Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.” Or “A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.”
I believe the main reason corporations rape and pillage the environment is that the government is actively intervening to protect them from the consequences of pollution — subsidizing waste, preempting tort liability, and the like. The main function of government is to subsidize the operating costs of monopoly and enforce the entry barriers that protect monopolies against competition.
But the implicit framing of the questions suggests the government and big business are naturally enemies, with state intervention as the only way to prevent corporate malfeasance. So how’s a left-wing free marketeer like me, who believes big government props up big business, supposed to answer questions like those? Given the designers’ preconceptions, there’s no way to answer truthfully without giving a false impression.
And how about this little gem: “What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.” Want to guess whether an “Agree” or “Disagree” puts you closer to the “free market” end of the spectrum?
The test placed me squarely in the middle of the Economic Left/Right axis. I suspect my answers cancelled each other out because, while I regard all my positions as perfectly consistent with genuine free market libertarianism (as opposed to being a shill for big business and the plutocracy), the compass works from the unstated assumption that any critique of corporate power is somehow “anti-business” or “anti-market.”
This wretched quiz takes for granted all the worst assumptions of our dumbed-down political culture. In so doing, like Newspeak, it reinforces all the ways in which our corporatized political culture obscures critical thought.
“Both sides” in American politics share the unstated assumption that corporate economic domination is the natural outcome of a “free market,” unless the state intervenes to obstruct the process. They just disagree on whether that’s good or bad. But they share a common interest in promoting this misconception. Mainstream “conservatives” have an interest in pretending the size and power of big business, and the wealth of the plutocracy, result from success in the competitive market — and not corporate welfare. Mainstream “liberals” have an interest in pretending the regulatory state — run by people like themselves — is all that stands between us and corporate tyranny, when in fact it’s propping the tyranny up.
If I may allude to Plato, this quiz minutely measures our beliefs about flickering shadows on the wall of a cave. If reality is what you’re interested in, then tear up this wretched quiz, free yourself from your mental chains, and turn around and face the light of day.
Translations for this article:
- Portuguese, A Bússola Política: Não Perca Seu Tempo.
Thanks for blowing the whistle on this notorious bit of propaganda.
(1) "I believe the main reason corporations rape and pillage the environment is that the government is actively intervening to protect them from the consequences of pollution — subsidizing waste, preempting tort liability, and the like."
You may _believe_ this, but I very strongly doubt you can argue it convincingly with facts and reason. I would enjoy seeing the argument fleshed out, though.
(2) "The main function of government is to subsidize the operating costs of monopoly and enforce the entry barriers that protect monopolies against competition."
This is true in many instances circa 2011 and perhaps has been true for every year in America since July 4, 1776. However, even granted its truth, that does not mean your assertion (1) above is correct or well-argued. The two are not connected, causally.
You suggest that if government regulation got out of the way, corporations would not pollute… or, alternatively, they would pollute, but somehow the public would cause the corporations to provide compensation, or offer retribution of some type.
I submit that you are strongly naive about how ethically businesses would operate absent regulatory coercion and/or legal protection of various indirect sorts (appearance of restriction; restriction that doesn't achieve what it asserts). I submit that businesses don't pollute _because of_ regulation, but rather, that they pollute _despite_ regulation.
The idea that the public can cause a polluting business to undertake retributive acts after that business pollutes is similarly naive. Through what lever of power will this retribution be suggested, if not coercion of the type you're mocking with your take on regulation?
Also, oftentimes pollution is only required one time in order to wreak ecosystem havoc. If an ecosystem or species is destroyed, what form of retribution can the polluter offer? How will it be retributive?
*************
I agree completely that the presently structured federal and state governmental architectures are little more than handmaidens for businesses, and that present regulation is a farce despite its pretense at levelling playing fields, protecting consumers, and protecting the natural environment.
After 20 years of working in corporate and environmental planning (regulatory) environments as well as working as a lawyer, I have to agree with your take on how government works right now.
I don't think that 20 years of experience can suggest anything other than this, however:
The scalar problem of large combines of industrial process (i.e. bigger than a one-person or small crew tradeshop, artisan craft shop, etc) being able to do more damage than one complaining citizen can stop or adequately complain about, that's what you seem to be missing.
Unless you totally level the playing field, large combines are going to happen because humans are greedy and seek power, and some humans are greedier and more lustful after power than is healthy. Those folks will create businesses like a Monsanto or DuPont or ConAgra. What retribution can be had against such a leviathan?
How will you stop such leviathans? Surely not by eliminating government.
Here you can see all the questions and their contribution to the final score: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5B0X98qZojkMjgx…
I suspect the more a person is up on the vertical scale (libertarian) the less the usual left-right distinction is making sense
Fuckin' great. I've been making the same criticisms forever.
PS the "political compass" idiots put Benjamin Tucker in a reading section for libertarian rightists and Michael Moore in one for libertarian leftists. Words fail.
PPS I got 3-something left, 8-something libertarian.
The easiest way to defend a capitalist empire is to say it's a product of freedom and voluntary exchange. The easiest way to defend a communist empire is to say it was built in defense of the working man. The enemy may be good at getting followers, but at least it makes itself an easy target.
I can’t resist emphasizing that the C4SS Find Your Philosophy Quiz is designed precisely to avoid the sorts of problems Kevin has identified with the Political Compass. No doubt we need to roll out version 2 sometime sooner rather than later—it certainly needs work—but it’s designed to enable quiz takers to identify as, for instance, both pro-market and anti-corporate. Check it out.
I thought that quiz was fine, till I saw Nelson Mandela placed in the Libertarian socialists column, what were they thinking? smh.
It's been years, but I went ahead and took that quiz again. There are some seriously retarded questions on there…
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Agree or Disagree?" – WTF?! Is that a joke question?
"Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment." – So I have to choose between centrally planning X and centrally planning Y? Some choice…
"All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind." – Um, I think racists and religious fanatics should generally keep to themselves (voluntarily). Does that make me a bigot and a statist?
"A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system." – I answered 'strongly agree' cuz it's true, but that certainly doesn't mean I support the state…
RESULTS:
Economic Right: 2.38
Social Libertarian: -7.13
Yeah, that's bullshit – I'm a total anticapitalist anarchist. Those questions are phrased horribly, I agree.
Can someone make a new and improved compass perhaps? Charts and neat and handy.
I can't answer all of your questions, but I'll try to flesh out a mutualist vision of combating pollution as I see it. I'd love to see Kevin's response though. (Note: a genuine anarchist doesn't accept the idea of managers or capitalists as described here, but a free market would, in a mutualist vision, eventually abolish capitalism as well. The point here is that even when there are corporations, capitalists, managers etc., a free-market arrangement wouldn't let them off the hook)
Eliminating government is only one part of the anarchist's agenda, though surely the biggest one in the market anarchist's list. In the larger scale, anarchists try to enable true democracy (not majority rule, but control over things that concern you), and the government is a sad, sorry excuse of democracy that actually stifles the voice of those who are being trampled on. Therefore the idea is not to repeal environmental regulation and hope that people will stand up to the corporations, but to empower citizens to resist all tyranny, including the government and the corporations. It's conveniently both a means to an end and an end in itself.
A few notes:
1. The "leviathans" (corporations) are legal entities whose liability is limited by the government. They are not something that just spontaneously appear when voluntary association runs wild, because in a free market the idea is that you bear the costs of your actions. With corporate personhood and limited liability, the actual people who willfully pollute are not held responsible enough – the dummy corporation just pays a few bucks and continues on with its course. The idea is that shareholders, who don't actually control the actions of the corporation, wouldn't have to pay the cost of the managers' mistakes or the company's debts, but this just creates a huge moral hazard for both managers and shareholders. There are also other ways in which the government props up managerial omnipotence – read more here: http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Padilla7.pdf
2. If you doubt that one person can bring down the polluting companies MegaCorp and GigaTech, you might be correct – but it's not just one man against the system. People overwhelmingly oppose corporate assholes, and measured in numbers the vigilant citizens far outnumber the actual polluters. Therefore courts (private courts, either David Friedman-types or syndicalist/mutualist/etc.), when faced with evidence that GigaTech has dumped waste on Bob's backyard, would have no reason to rule in GigaTech's favor (GT may try to buy the court, but who would want their services after that kind of atrocity?)
One last thing: coercion in this context is a tricky word. In a strict sense it's not an initiation of force to demand retribution, so I would have no moral qualms about the government punishing polluters (but only after the deed), but rather pragmatic ones (ie. govt regulation is bad because it's ineffective, wasteful and corrupt). Private courts and protection agencies (again, any kind of anarchist system will do in this case) could legitimately use force against polluters, so it's not a matter of turning the other cheek as you seem to assume it to be.
The real question is: How do leviathans become such?
The answer is: The state.
The top-heavy, lumbering corporate behemoths that trample us daily could not survive without:
-State-supported infrastructure allowing artificial economies of scale
-State-funded education of corporate worker drones
-State-granted IP monopolies creating artificial scarcities
-State-created regulatory barriers to small-scale competition
-State-enforced socialization of externalities and risk
etc., etc.
The state is, and has always been, the coercive tool of the elite. Anarchism does not depend on people being nice to each other…it places full responsibility for behavior right where it belongs — with the individual. A genuinely free market (i.e. sans coercion) naturally distributes economic power and opportunity.
If you want fuzzy-headed utopianism, imagine trying to find (and elect) honest, intelligent, non-megalomaniacal politicians who would curb state-supported corporate dominion and create freedom, justice and plenty for us.
Karl, you're a lawyer & you SERIOUSLY don't know how limited liability in particular & the corporate structure overall shield unscrupulous businessmen from the full fallout of their actions? Why is the entire board of directors for BP not bankrupt?
I did, a while ago, and posted my thoughts here. I look forward to the refinements.
My recent post Thickerer volunarism
What means do you propose for keeping such leviathans out of government?
"Um, I think racists and religious fanatics should generally keep to themselves (voluntarily). Does that make me a bigot and a statist?"
Of course not, but use of the r-word might.
I can only assume you're unfamiliar with Kevin's previous analysis if your interpretation of his pollution statement was that corporations should just be left alone or something. Corporate status is a creature of government, and should end right along with it.
My recent post A large assumption with extra cheese
I think the political compass doesn't really do what it suggests – the questions are more designed to identify which political position your views _correlate_ with not what they are. Some of the questions asked are nothing to do with anything (e.g. one asks about surrealist art) yet they may well tie up closely with particular political positions.
It's like asking whether someone prefers Fox News or MSNBC. If you're playing a guessing game then that sort of answer might help you identify if someone is "right-wing" or not – after all Fox News viewers probably on average are more likely to vote Republican. But such a question is totally useless if you're asking someone who thinks all corporate media is bullshit – they might prefer Fox News because the lies are much more obvious and comical.
As for the specific problem with the axes – I'm always bemused by debates "pro" and "against" markets. The issue (for me) is about private property and the ethics of social solidarity / common-responsibility. Markets seem like eminently sensible methods of organisation in all manner of situations so I suppose I'm pro-Market yet I'd identify as a (Anarcho-)Communist. Go figure.
Maybe there should be yet more dimensions… but, after a certain point, that is only likely to add to the confusion. There might be some better way to analyse all this, but one doesn’t occur to me just now.
You didn’t mention that the test site is here. I got “Economic Left/Right: 1.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.69″ – with nothing to say what those numbers meant (wikipedia does say that the scales run from -10 to +10).
Karl wrote:-
I submit that Karl has fallen prey to precisely the sort of confusion the article is addressing. Do you notice how, from the first of those paragraphs to the second, he has gone from talking about corporations to talking about businesses, probably without even noticing the bait and switch? They aren’t the same thing, and it matters, because if government regulation including corporate law got out of the way, corporations would not exist (or hardly ever, and then only in special cases like monasteries which don’t present quite the same problems), and businesses – which still would exist – would be far more identifiable targets for the aggrieved to get at like sole traders or partnerships of natural persons, so policing them wouldn’t require any such government apparatus but only ordinary individual responses. Freeing things up doesn’t mean taking away corporate obstacles while leaving corporate props and covers, it means a real level playing field for natural persons without artificial constructs crowding them (us) out or operating incompatibly with them (us).
I think the concept of plotting political ideology on a libertarian/authoritarian axis vs a social/economic axis is sound. The key is removing bias and assumptions from the questions that place you on each axis.
I think you don't know anything about Kevin Carson, and are just making yourself look bad.
My recent post Ayn Rand- self-ownership- and hypocrisy
Gee, the Medieval period none of the Statist products you list yet for some reason it didn't turn into a Utopian living.
Would BP necessarily be doomed in a truly free market? It wouldn't be a crime to pollute the commons. If your neighbour is dumping waste into your backyard then there's a problem but if he's dumping in a vacant, unowned lot behind his yard then there's no problem. If anything he could claim he is homesteading the lot and thus has a good claim to own it and continue dumping.
Gil wrote:-
There are two answers to that:-
- That’s not the only way things can go wrong, and in particular a symmetrical structure (the feudal system) worked out asymmetrically because of the asymmetrical inputs (parameters, boundary conditions) it had when it was set up; peasants etc. had to come to terms with former warlords on very unequal terms (see Kingdom of Arles for what happened when some Italians tried to play off rulers against each other for a more equal result; the rulers agreed it among themselves: “Both kingdoms were united in 933, when King Hugh of Arles ceded Lower Burgundy to King Rudolph II of Upper Burgundy in turn for Rudolph’s waiver of the Italian throne”). As well, after that initialisation, there were no structures in place to restore symmetry.
- It is not in fact the case that “none of the Statist products you list [existed] yet”; they did, though only in a primordial form, at least at first. Along with the feudal system there were successor kingdoms of Rome, originally founded by post-barbarians drawing partly on clan models but also on concepts of oriental despotism transmitted via Rome and the Catholic church, so forming a synthesis. And there were also various church institutions; in the High Middle Ages great monasteries and military orders had much the same overwhelming effect as modern corporations, use they were corporations. That is why such things as the Statute of Mortmain became so very necessary.
And then Gil wrote:-
Gil hasn’t read and absorbed the earlier comments. BP would indeed be doomed, because without the internal dynamics of monasteries etc. it could not exist in that corporate way at all without state backing – and never mind the rest of that paragraph. On the other hand, things like the D’Arcy Concession could quite easily exist – and be just as self limiting in size and duration as that was in practice (without the creation of BP or at least the involvement of other corporations, it would have led to no continuing entity).
Pollution is rarely a pinpoint problem. Releasing toxic substances into the ecosystem affects everyone around you. Why wouldn’t individuals be held accountable for ruining a community used area?
Let's look at some of the specific ways the regulatory state has either actively subsidized pollution or protected polluters from the consequences of their actions:
The state courts in the early-to-mid-19th century essentially remade the common law of public and private nuisance to make it more "business-friendly." Before that, an actor was responsible for the harm her actions caused regardless of intent or negligence. The objective nature of the harm was what required compensation. If someone's actions created a negative externality for me, under the old understanding of tort liability, they were liable for compensation — period. This was all thrown out the window by the courts because it was "unreasonably burdensome" to commercial interests.
The government has massively subsidized the extractive industries, as well as subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels directly (through subsidies to extraction and an oil-driven foreign policy) and indirectly (by subsidizing centralized transportation infrastructure). The government preempted ownership of most vacant land and then gave preferential access to logging, mining, ranching, etc. interests. It builds logging roads at taxpayer expense. It subsidizes virtually every step in the nuclear industry, from building roads to uranium mines on public land to subsidizing the disposal of wate, and capping liability.
One of the most perverse effects of the regulatory state is to preempt common law liability by turning the regulatory standard into a maximum. In effect a corporate malfeasor can argue that any liability standard more stringent than the dumbed-down, LCD regulatory standards (which are based on "sound science," of course — haw, haw), is superceded by the regulation. So the regulation creates, by implication, a "safe harborr" for malfeasance that meets the regulatory minimum standard.
To take just one case — mountaintop removal is carried out on land from which the state played a role in clearing the first settlers and nullifying their homestead-based claims, and deeding it over to the mining companies (rent Matewan for a vivid illustration). And EPA regulations that permit mountaintop removal preempt liability for tortious acts like causing massive destruction to surrounding land and injuring public health.
You seem to be under the impression that I classify the enforcement of tort claims as a regulatory or coercive activity. I do not. The standard market anarchist scenario envisions people appealing to juries of their neighbors for redress in cases of fraud or breach of contract. I don't know why tort liability would be any different. That's just another case of people cooperating voluntarily to defend themselves against aggression. Someone who contaminates my groundwater with PCBs or makes the neighbors sick with coal dust would probably have a lot harder time with a jury of the vicinage than with the EPA.
My recent post Open Source Government
If BP destroys the productivity of surrounding fisheries regulated as commons by fishermen's associations, or you neighbor's waste in a vacant lot pollutes your groundwater or otherwise damages your quality of life on your own property, then he's a tortfeasor.
My recent post Open Source Government
I missed the last point of your argument, which is key. I don't believe that in most cases the emergence of large combines was a natural or spontaneous part of the market process. Most large industry is many times above the maximum economy of scale, and could not survive in a competitive market. Government subsidizes many of the diseconomies of scale, subsidizes the operating costs of large size (e.g. the land grant railroads and IHS which made firrm size and market area artificially large), and uses various forms of regulatory cartelization to protect giant inefficient megacorps from the competitive consequences of their inefficiency.
I believe absent these state interventions, the economy would look a lot less like something described by Galbraith and Chandler, and a lot more like something out of Lewis Mumford and Ralph Borsodi.
My recent post Open Source Government
Yet another alternative to the Political Compass, my newly-created "Agnostic Ideology Sorter" at http://voodothosting.com/23
My recent post New opinion survey instrument and political spectrum/landscape tabulator in beta testing
Chris Lightfoot's quiz derives the axes empirically from correlations between answers (by an early sample, I guess) to the questions, rather than weighting the questions according to preconceived scales.
"while I regard all my positions as perfectly consistent with genuine free market libertarianism (as opposed to being a shill for big business and the plutocracy)"
But author, why do you assume that Libertarianism is not compatible with big business? You said you answered against big business, and big business it right-wing.
Compatibility between corporate power and libertarian belief exists in MANY philosophies (Shit, I personally know people with such stances):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarch… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism
etc
etc
etc
The more free and powerful that capitalism is, the farther right along the spectrum of course. This does not have anything to do with a state. It's all about an elite few, with or without state interference.
Perhaps you are not as much of a heartless right-winger that you may think you are, sorry.
Also, author,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wriQGI5NGOM
I'd guess you aren't a huge Chomsky fan, but within the first minute, some important terminology, nothing ideological I swear, concerning this is explained.
Better to do nothing than to try something ? The GovernMentals count on people like you
GovernMentalist count on people like you who do noting but criticize didn't like the results
Some good points Karl but it is a lot simpler. The only reason corporations rape and pillage the environment or support dictators and create wars or anything else is profits. It is their nature. And through exploitation of labor comes their power to buy governments and control economies and protect their profits from where the power comes.
General Pinochet didn't have any philosophy except money and power. He was a puppet of the USA. He was armed and financed by the US and his top military officers were trained right here at the School of the Americas. When the failed attempt to buy the elections with money from ITT failed and Salvador Allende was elected the US freaked out and put an economic boycott on Chile then prepared from the coup d'état. What freaked them out was when the anarcho-syndicalist started taking over factories, farms and mines. Allende gave land to the Anarchist and syndicalist in which they built 3 cities from the ground up with no centralized power. This scared the capitalist as much as the Spanish Civil War did and the coup d'état was the only recourse left. three days after the coup US Phantom jets flown by US trained Chilean pilots leveled at 3 cities killing a lot of the people.
One thing about the Political Compass is it had me pretty much where I am, as far left politically and economically as the chart chart would go. Except politically I am not as far left as an individual anarchist as I am more of a syndicalist but the individual anarchist is good for an anarchist community because they are usually the first to realized when a bit of centralized power is developing. I was also off the charts economically because there was no place for someone that advocates a moneyless society. The chart was useful for my right wing friend who really didn't know where he really was politically. When I was a cab driver we had many conversations late at night in a parking lot an he would always call me a liberal. The chart was useful for him to discover he was closer to a liberal that I was because a liberal is not opposed to capitalism or government. It is a pretty sad commentary when liberals become the left of our society. Many right-wing group create their own political spectrum so they don't have to expose where they really are which is closer to fascism that the real left.
I also don't like the term libertarian used to describe anarchism although they once were very close that is no longer the case. Modern libertarians or people that call themselves libertarians have to many contradictions and hypocrisy. They are opposed to big government running their lives but say little about big corporations making decisions behind closed doors that affect the common working class folks and the poor. Many also want a big military to protect their freedom for a big military a government is needed to administer it and collect taxes to financially operate it. Lazier fare capitalism most libertarians approve of but eventually capitalism with evolve into corporatism and fascism.
We all know that it's really just a tool for internet libertarians to affirm their self worth. But yeah, there are some questions where you have to give weird answers because you're trying to land on top of Milton Friedman. My point is, there are a lot of subtexts and hints at issues we care (or pretend to care so as to assure ourselves that our views are lining up with our morals) about. For example — "there is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment" and "possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offense" and "although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried" are red-button, and if you get "the freer the market, the freer the people" or "I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong" wrong, you lose. It doesn't mention SOPA/PIPA because the test is old, but if it did, that would be heavily weighed (because Gandhi and Hitler *totally* had opinions on it).