Correct.

More or less, working from 12 o'clock, you get the following leaders or thinkers:

• 12 o'clock: Hitler/NDSAP (north)
• 1:30: Augusto Pinochet (north-east)
• 3: Milton Friedman
• 4:30 Ayn Rand / Objectivism
• 6 o'clock: Emma Goldman
• 7:30: Ghandi
• 9 o'clock: Karl Marx/ Fredreich Engels
• 10:30: Stalin/Lenin/Mao/Pol Pot

Not at all; you're spot on.

There are debt crises around the world, so there's an enormous focus on austerity. Since tax hikes are always unpopular, governments tend to make spending cuts at this time. Even the few left-wing parties still in power feel pressured to be more fiscally conservative.

The north is because of all of the legislation about monitoring people, especially on the internet, and stronger laws against immigration.

Interesting. I wonder where we'll end up in a few decades - probably fortress nations or something like that.

I assume China and Russia governments would pretty much be there already, maybe a bit more left though.

Basically this graph has economic freedom on the left to right and individual freedom on the vertical axis. Those things I mentioned only limit economic freedom, not individual freedom. Hugo Chavez is a more authoritarian socialist (and despite being democratically elected his views are not social democratic views). Compare him to somebody like Noam Chomsky who is an extreme libertarian (to the point of being basically an anarchist) while at the same time being socialist.

Socialism does not deal with the authoritarian-libertarian axis on this graph, only with the left-right one.

Actually, Marx and Engles were far apart philosphically despite their collaboration.

They had similar views though dissimlar ways at viewing the world.

Some people dispute this, but only because Engles is usually presented as a scapegoat to blame for the "negatives" of socialism, like Stalinism.

I've been moving further and further left every year.  I was once pretty far to the right.



Socially I've gradually moved a bit downward, but I've always been below the middle line.

I can't help but question these images.  I wouldn't consider myself that far away from the likes of Obama or Ron Paul, nor would I consider myself to be really more liberal than the leaders of places like Sweden and Finland. 

@Makingmusic. I agree, I can't help but feel that there is some sort of bias in how they're answering the question for every country to end up on the political right and for most of them to end up authoritarian.

The thing I learned was that most leaders (as opposed to most people taking the test) do not take radical approaches to any one issue. If you 'strongly agree' or 'strongly disagree', you tend to drift significantly further in given directions. If I answered only agree/disagre on most of my answers, I'd drift significantly up and to the left. I'd say thats the issue with many politicians - that even 'leftists' or 'right' politicians tend to moderate their views, and end up in that upper-right partition.

What about Mitt Romney?  Afterall Obama and Mitt Romney are more or less the exact same guy.