Political compass

The most common political compass model.

The political compass is a two axis spectrum which commonly measures economic values as well as authoritarian or libertarian stances. One popular example of a political compass is politicalcompass.org, a political test founded in 2001 which has a two axis model, one being the "social scale," which measures social attitudes as well as acceptance of "state-imposed collectivism," and the other being the "economic scale," which measures support for state-intervention and collectivization versus privatization and otherwise laissez-faire policies.

According to this particular example of a political compass, Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin (i.e. Marxists–Leninists and other state socialists) are considered "authoritarian left," Peter Kropotkin, Rosa Luxembourg, and Howie Hawkins (i.e. anarchists and other libertarian socialists) are considered "libertarian left," Milton Friedman and Ron Paul (i.e. right-libertarians) are considered "libertarian right," and Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, and Adolf Hitler are "authoritarian right."

Around 2017, one version of the political compass became ubiquitous in political internet memes and came to shape the culture of internet politics. /r/PoliticalCompassMemes on Reddit has over 500,000 subscribers as of August 2023.

Criticism

The political compass has been criticized by Marxists for a variety of reasons, which include:

• The political compass test fails to account for the Marxist view of economics and government. Marxists, for instance, wish to have an empowered state only as a transitional "authoritarian" stage to develop the conditions for communism, which is "libertarian" and lacking in any central government; that is, they are both "authoritarian" and "libertarian" at the same time by the metrics of the political compass test. Because of this, most communists are placed on the lower edge of the "libertarian left" section (where anarchists would be placed).

• The political compass test is metaphysical; it fails to account for the changes in class society that result in certain ideological trends being viewed as "moderate" or "radical" relative to that time in history and merely views what is "left-wing" or "right-wing" in a static condition. For example, during the 18^th century in France, liberals were viewed as a radical force, and monarchism was the status quo, unlike the current situation.

• The political compass places proponents of anti-government free-market capitalism in a "libertarian" position, despite their economic views allowing increased exploitation and otherwise oppression of the workers. For example, anarcho-capitalists, despite claiming to reject governments, would, in their ideal society, permit objectively "authoritarian" practices such as starvation of the poor, uncontrolled and total corporate dominance over individuals, debt slavery, etc.