I was first introduced to libertarianism through the Nolan chart. For those who are not acquainted with this chart, it is a rather simple two dimensional chart where personal and economic freedoms are at the axes. If you value personal and economic freedoms the most, you'll end up on the upper corner which is libertarian, if you value personal freedoms primarily then you are considered a "liberal," and if you value economic freedoms primarily then you are a conservative. Finally, if you value neither, then you are an authoritarian. (I put quote marks on "liberal" because I think it is a gross misnomer and perpetuates the misconception of what a liberal is.) The chart is accompanied by a ten point questionaire and is cleverly designed to point out to most Americans that they in fact have libertarian inclinations. The purpose of the chart was for use as a recruitment tool for the Libertarian Party.
Nolan Chart
The chart is itself not dishonest and many Americans indeed value liberty and individuality; many have been led to realize that they are in fact libertarian in their beliefs. The main drawback of the chart is it oversimplifies things. Not everyone who falls under the libertarian field believe in the same thing regarding liberty and one often finds himself disillusioned once he joins the libertarian movement. To give an analogy in Christianity, one realizes that there are so many denominations to choose from - and worse, they despise each others beliefs if not each other. The Nolan chart does not convey that within libertarianism, there are many views and its adherents hold on to them as close as the religious do to their denominations. After all, the intention of the chart was to bring libertarians together and not to build walls between them.
If disillusionment does not settle in and they remain around long enough, they will eventually come across another chart - the Political Compass.
Political Compass
This is arguably the most popular classification chart currently. The Political Compass is essentially equivalent to the Nolan Chart, if you flip it over the horizontal and perform a 45ยบ coordinate transformation. The x- and y- axes have been replaced by the new coordinates namely, Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian. Similar to the Nolan chart, the Political Compass also comes with a questionaire; and because of the granularity of the chart, which consists of 20x20=400 squares, the questionaire that accompanies it is much longer.
One cannot arbitrarily assign themselves in this chart or seek to fall in one of the fields with ease. On the horizontal, i.e., left and right, it is not immediately obvious how one plots on the field. One can perceivably aim to be more or less authoritarian (vertical). The purpose of the chart is classification and is unidirectional. It does more for self-reflection than self-improvement.
Above are the two most popular ways of classification. Here I propose a new chart that has simplicity as a feature, taking after the Nolan Chart, but with clear indications on how one goes from left to the right, and with different levels of authorities of force. The intention is to give concise differences among the different views while being consistent with previous labels.
Rather than continuums, discrete categories will be used. The coordinates along the horizontal use the classical economic factors of production and the vertical uses varying organizations of force. How does this classification work? To get to each distinct field, one asks himself or herself these two questions:
- Of land, capital, and labor, what would you consider commonly held?
- At what organization of force are you willing to uphold your beliefs on private and common property? [None, individual, mutual associations, or Government]
The resulting chart looks like this.
It is worth noting that the phrase "factors of production" is not synonymous to the "means of production," which refer to land and capital taken together. Capitalism extends to that where capital is not taken as common, that is where it is considered privately owned.
Let us discuss briefly going by rows. At the bottom row would be the pacifist row. These are beliefs that are held but are not defended by force, but rather only through non-violent means such as civil disobedience, civil resistance, protest and counter economics. Societies such as these tend to be small and limited in scale. The second row from the bottom are the anarchic societies. These do not preclude the use of force but will only employ them defensively and individually for the maintenance of what they believe in. The third row from the bottom are the minarchies. Here, the collective means or organized bodies such as police and justice systems are assembled and utilized by members of society. Finally, the uppermost row is where societal order is through a State.
A surprising result, especially to American libertarians, is that the rightmost anarchic field is what can accurately be called right anarchism and not anarcho-capitalism. This is because in anarcho-capitalism, violence is explicitly not precluded in defending its views on property. Hence, anarcho-capitalism is not the "logical conclusion" of libertarianism nor is it the logical extreme. Furthermore, it depends on what one considers as common as we analyze next when we look at each column.
Let us now discuss briefly going by column. At the far left is communism, where all three factors of production are held in common. This is consistent with common usage of the word, although it is often not described in these terms, and so the chart makes it clear how communism can be distinguished from the rest. The second column is socialism. Here, the state form of socialism, as practiced, tends to differ with its anarchic form in its views on labor. That is, state socialism tends to socialize labor as well and this is represented with dashes with state communism. The socialization of labor often comes in the form of the taxation of labor. This is consistent with the opinion that socialism is merely a path to communism. This is also consistent with the view that capital is merely accumulated wealth from labor. The third column is Georgism where land alone is held common. This became a popular idea during the American guilded age and is gaining resurgence in popularity especially with economists. Finally, in the far left is monarchism. This makes the left-right distinction clear although a bit archaic. In more modern forms, monarchism has been replaced by corporatocracies although in functionality they are often the same - private parties control all factors of production.
This leaves us with the common question: where does the Unites States fall under all this? Note first of all that the diagram is meant to classify individual ideals, inclinations and preferences. They are not meant to describe governments; governments are complex entities. While the US dissimulates strong adherence to property rights on the factors of production - land, labor and capital - it has been for over a century taxing and therefore socializing these. It has partially socialist and partially squirearchical and corporate capitalist elements to it. How much socialism is there, one may ask? By the amount of capital and labor it taxes its citizens - these are the distinguishing features of communism and socialism. This is a rather disheartening and sombering finding, especially to Americans, who see the United States as the bastion of capitalism and unfettered free trade.
In conclusion, the distinctions between the Right and the Left can easily be analyzed by considering how the factors of production are viewed. The right views the privatization all factors of production as ideal while the left views the commonization of the factors to be the ideal. In between these two warring extremes is Georgism.
