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Soundwave 3 days ago
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sc94597 said:

The left-right paradigm isn't necessarily directly determined by state control. In so much as it makes sense (and yes there are limitations), it a measure of one's orientation towards social hierarchy. Those who support and preserve current social hierarchies, or want to return to past social hierarchies are on the right. Those who want to deconstruct them are on the left. 

This paradigm originated in the French Revolution with the left aiming to deconstruct the Ancien-Regime and the right aiming to protect it. "Left" and "right" coming from where these individuals sat in the National Assembly (on the left side or the right side.) 

When you consider that social hierarchy is the dividing principle, then you can fit it on a single axis. There are cultural hierarchies, economic hierarchies, and organizational hierarchies -- and its hard to be a critic of one without criticizing the others. Anarchists are at the furthest left because they aim to deconstruct all social hierarchies and to have a society where social relationships are horizontal, agglomerative relationships rather than vertical, top-down ones. This is why anarchists didn't just aim to abolish the state, but capitalism and organized hierarchical religion as well. 

Fascists are on the far-right (although not as far right as absolutists/absolute monarchists) because they believed that hierarchies were not just "good" but necessary parts of the social organism manifested in the state. There is an idea of corporatism in politics that the societies can be thought of as "bodies" or "super-organisms" in themselves, and fascist corporatism heavily conflates society and the state. 

Personally I don't think multi-dimensional accounting of politics where axes are orthogonal to each-other are correct. Social hierarchies in human settled society come in packages. The state, patriarchy, religious hierarchy, economic hierarchy, gerontocracy, etc all work together and reinforce each-other. So those who support one tend to support the others, and those who want to deconstruct one tend to want to deconstruct the others as well. Multi-dimensional models can exist, but they shouldn't have orthogonal (perpendicular) axes. 

This isn't to say the left-right paradigm captures all of politics, but it does capture this particular principle of social hierarchy vs. social anarchy. 

Facism (Nazism) is hard to put on a spectrum like that because it has elements more akin to a fanatical religion. Facism also tends to burn itself and society down to the ground, if other political forms at like weed, then facism is crystal meth.