Which of these best define how you think of the left-right political spectrum?

[TheReckoning]

What do you think?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

The view of social, economic, cultural hierarchies and orders and the level of deference given to ~the past~ is how I would summarize it.

However, Cath introduced me to trolling people with [Blairite's wording here] "left->right is defined by how happy you are to smash stuff to make it all more modern" and that is much more fun than the proper spectrum.

Of the seven options given in the poll, I voted for "Total equity-> Not".

[Ferguson97]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

[TheReckoning]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

So you would say fascism is far-left? Fascism is extremely collectivist.

[MarkD]

Of course the answer is Supporting Change > Opposing Change.

"Conservatism is the politics of prudence, which begins with acceptance of the fact that, more often than not, and to a degree that is humbling to mere human beings, the inertia of history and society severely limits both the pace and degree of change that human willfulness can bring about. In other words, as a wise man once said, in a battle between you and the world, bet on the world." -- George F. Will, "The New Season."

The New Deal programs, the Great Society programs, and Obamacare have significantly changed the federal government's power. A common theme of liberalism from the mid-20th Century to now has been to reject traditional moral values and to change virtually every policy that reflects traditional moral values.

[Ferguson97]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

Fascism is extremely collectivist.

No it's not?

[Red Velvet]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

So you would say fascism is far-left? Fascism is extremely collectivist.

No it’s actually often the opposite. Just look at Pinochet lol

[TheReckoning]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

So you would say fascism is far-left? Fascism is extremely collectivist.

No it’s actually often the opposite. Just look at Pinochet lol

Pretty much all political scientists do not consider Pinochet a fascist. 

[John Dule]

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

Fascism is extremely collectivist.

No it's not?

Lmao

[Dr. MB]

#6 comes closest I guess.

Authoritarianism, libertarianism, collectivism, and individualism have nothing to do with the left-right spectrum. "Supporting change" is meaningless. Change in the United States is different than change would have been in the Soviet Union.

[It's Perro Sanxe wot won it]

None of the options fit nicely, because all those extremes are different things in different times, different places and different contexts. The left-right spectrum is actually a big ball of wibbly wobbly politickey… stuff.

[nclib]

Definitely "Total equity-> Not". Today's Republicans made exceptions to those other categories whenever it goes against their party/ideology.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Number 1 and Number 6 are the only ones that approximate. The other options are measuring political aspects separate from the left-right lens and whose comparative "leftness" and "rightness" changes depending on the context and society being analyzed.

Collectivism vs Individualism, but I don't think a binary right-left spectrum is useful anyway.

Hard disagree, it and the corollary auth-lib axis are the least related to left-right divisions at a foundational level. I do agree that the left-right spectrum is overused and overrated, though.

[lfromnj]

The prioritization of equality over other values has a great deal to do with it. I voted for #6, although I don't understand why it uses the term "equity" instead.

Equity has been an increasingly used buzzword by certain parts  of the left.

[TheReckoning]

The prioritization of equality over other values has a great deal to do with it. I voted for #6, although I don't understand why it uses the term "equity" instead.

What I’m confused by this definition of left-right is that fascism- a far-right ideology- doesn’t prioritize inequity among all else. Fascism certainly doesn’t try to eliminate class like communism, but it’s not necessarily pro-massive income inequality, either. Fascism does believe in “superior” cultures, and it’s not opposed to power structures, but to say it purposely tries to create inequity to the same level total communism tries to eliminate doesn’t seem accurate.

Of course the answer is Supporting Change > Opposing Change.

"Conservatism is the politics of prudence, which begins with acceptance of the fact that, more often than not, and to a degree that is humbling to mere human beings, the inertia of history and society severely limits both the pace and degree of change that human willfulness can bring about. In other words, as a wise man once said, in a battle between you and the world, bet on the world." -- George F. Will, "The New Season."

The New Deal programs, the Great Society programs, and Obamacare have significantly changed the federal government's power. A common theme of liberalism from the mid-20th Century to now has been to reject traditional moral values and to change virtually every policy that reflects traditional moral values.

Hitler would be left-wing by this definition, while an American who wants to maintain Roe v. Wade would be right wing.

[HisGrace]

I think of it as collectivism vs individualism, personally. Supporting/opposing change is more liberalism vs conservatism. Hence why I would consider myself liberal in the broad sense but also on the right.

The left and right are both equally tribalist these days so you can't make a distinction there.

[TheReckoning]

The prioritization of equality over other values has a great deal to do with it. I voted for #6, although I don't understand why it uses the term "equity" instead.

What I’m confused by this definition of left-right is that fascism- a far-right ideology- doesn’t prioritize inequity among all else. Fascism certainly doesn’t try to eliminate class like communism, but it’s not necessarily pro-massive income inequality, either. Fascism does believe in “superior” cultures, and it’s not opposed to power structures, but to say it purposely tries to create inequity to the same level total communism tries to eliminate doesn’t seem accurate.

The definition based around equality defines the right only by exclusion. It defines right-wing thought in terms of its failure to prioritize equality over other values - e.g. truth, beauty, tradition, heroism, and sometimes even liberal values like freedom - rather than in terms of placing a positive value on inequality itself.

In that case, wouldn’t far-right ideologies have almost nothing in common? Someone who thinks that market freedom supersedes material economic equality in importance has almost no ideologically similarities to those who believe that superior races should genocide inferior ones.

[Blue3]

Out of these options, I guess equity, though that doesn't feel complete.

[SInNYC]

Traditionally, supporting vs opposing change.

But today, supporting change to something new vs supporting change to 70 years back. And during the 80s/00s, supporting change to the 70s vs supporting change to the 20s.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Too lazy to make a new post so I'll just repost my take on this question that I've touched on a couple of times elsewhere

The fundamental philosophical dispute between left and right is over equality vs hierarchy. The conservative tends to start from the viewpoint that whatever inequalities or power structures that exist in society are of the natural order, and produce some good. To level the hierarchies embedded in, say, the heterosexual-patriarchal nuclear family, is to introduce violence and coercion into the institution and to pervert the order of things.  

That thread about Alito's remarks to the Federalist Society is instructive here: Alito simply takes it as a kind of ontological fact that marriage is between a man and a woman, so by necessity the legalisation of same-sex marriage is an authoritarian attack by leftists on the nature of marriage itself.

Then what you mean by "conservatism" has nothing to do with its ordinary usage by actual people. Reminds me of the Marxists who argue Bernie Sanders or AOC aren't socialist because the term refers to a specific mode of production that supersedes capitalism..

Conservatism is the defence of hierarchy. A philosophical position that any social change is inherently dangerous did not exist prior to conservatives' defence of hierarchy: that rhetoric was formulated in the wake of the French Revolution in a Europe where church and throne dominated and any social change was de facto an attack on existing conservative hierarchies. People who bought into the idea that "change is bad" was an actual neutral philosophical position of the right have been disoriented by the radicalism of conservatism in the late 20th and 21st centuries because they missed that it was a historically contingent rhetorical argument discarded as soon as it became possible to conceive of kinds of social change as = restoring or erecting new hierarchies.

Put another way, Burke's 'organic constitution' etc. was never intended to be an argument in defence of e.g. conservative continuity within a socialist republic, because Burke could not imagine such a society ever being stable or legitimate. Drop him in 70s USSR (or Britain) and he'd certainly condemn the restrictions that existed on property etc. as elements of a tyrannical government that necessitated radical reform to regain the liberty of his class.

[progressive85]

Egalitarianism / The Spreading of Power to Marginalized Groups

vs.

Elitism / Preserving Power for the Financial Elite and Monied Class