A Better Model of Political Categories

Don’t let the PEMRs win

Not this one though…

In “The Rise of the Right-Wing Progressives” I explained how I believe Progressivism and Conservatism should be considered poles on a separate political axis from Right vs. Left, and how Right-Wing Progressives are therefore a coherent political-philosophical category worth paying attention to. I also promised a follow-up post building out a more comprehensive framework for thinking about political categories more broadly. This is that post.

I’ll keep it relatively brief, though, as this is certainly all a bit of an abstract intellectual exercise. Nonetheless I think it’s still an interesting and worthwhile one, as cramming everything about our politics into Left vs. Right leads to some deep confusion about who is pursuing what ends and why. Moreover, I don’t find any of the various alternative frameworks for explaining political categories that do exist (such as the common four-quadrant “political compass” box chart) to be at all sufficient. In fact they are usually deliberately misleading, as far as I’m concerned. Or at least I just find them all rather irritating.

So, for what it’s worth, I’ve thrown together the below framework based on how I’ve come to think about the political landscape. It is, please note, not a chart. I have rebelled against the political chart! The political chart will be buried by History! I suspect any accurate representation of human political natures will necessarily be too nuanced to easily represent with a nifty graph, as handy as having one is for propagandizing. Instead, since I identify not two, nor three, but four separate relevant axes/spectrums, I’ve drawn inspiration from the famous (and probably mostly BS) Myers-Briggs personality test to provide you with a different model for identifying what we might call political personality types. This should still prove sufficient for propagandizing as you wish. Feel free to take it and make whatever use of it you will.

The Axes of Political Personality

1. Progressive (P) vs. Conservative (C): As I’ve described in the past, a radical progressive thinks that new things are always better than older things, and change is always good, because everything gets better over time. They believe history has a destination and a direction of travel: towards a state of perfection (aka utopia). They may see their purpose (or the purpose of society, government, civilization, humanity, etc.) as contributing to this great process of progress, which includes everything: not only technology and material conditions constantly get better with time; human knowledge, wisdom, and moral goodness improve as well. “The arc of history bends towards justice,” as they say, and they fear being left on the “wrong side of history” with the backwards barbarians. Therefore the progressive holds the past always in suspicion and the future in reverence.

In contrast, a conservative either does not believe history has any direction, or suspects the laws of entropy in fact suggest things only gain in disorder over time. A radical conservative believes change is more often a bad thing, because old things, ideas, and institutions have, by their very longevity, proven their value and ability to work, while new things are untested and liable to only function worse while destroying those things of value that remain. Therefore the conservative views the past with reverence and the future with suspicion. (This, as in all of these axes, is really more of a spectrum not a strict binary.)

2. Egalitarian (E) vs. Hierarchical (H): As I also described in the last essay, this spectrum is the principal divide between what we think of as the political “Left” and “Right,” and it could alternatively be described in such terms. The Right values hierarchy, or the separation and ordering of particular people, things, or goods ahead of others, and considers doing so to be a positive act. The Left values and prioritizes equality over other values; this undermines or precludes the establishment of hierarchies and boundaries. This extends to abstract issues of hierarchal ordering, such as borders and the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, or differences between the sexes. Therefore it also affects attitudes towards the importance and rightness of order in general, such as the rightness of establishing and enforcing laws and penalties proscribing certain behaviors.

3. Individualist (I) vs. Communalist (M): To be an individualist means to prioritize the rights, needs, and desires of individuals over those of the community or collective. At the extreme, an individualist believes the group cannot justly make any decision on behalf of the individual, or claim any inherent duties or obligations of the individual. In contrast, a communalist believes the individual in many cases has an obligation to prioritize the good of the community over their own desires. Moreover, whereas the committed individualist may see the individual person in a theoretical “state of nature” as inherently a free agent, with no responsibilities not voluntarily consented to, a committed communalist is likely to see individuals as born into webs of non-consensual relational ties, with a range of inherited duties, obligations, and loyalties (such as to family, tribe, or nation).

Note that I am deliberately using “communalist” here rather than “collectivist,” as the connotations of the more radical “collectivism” aren’t necessarily accurate. While an especially extreme communalist, such as a Communist, might indeed believe some abstract “collective” should always take precedence over the individual, a communalist may simply believe more broadly that social communities can make legitimate claims on the actions of member individuals, and that the good of the community can in at least some case rightly be placed ahead of the individual. More generally, a communalist may simply care more about the community level – e.g. a religious community or the “common good” – than the individual level. We will be using the letter “M” here to abbreviate “Communalist” only because “C” is already taken by “Conservative.”

4. Materialist-Rationalist (R) vs. Spiritual-Intuitive (S): Finally, I believe political personalities and movements need to be divided between those who lean towards a strictly materialist view of the world and prioritize the “rationalistic” analysis of measureable data in making decisions, and those who lean into a spiritual or religious worldview and incorporate what we might call an “intuitive” understanding of reality into their understanding and decisions. This isn’t strictly an atheistic vs. religious divide. A German Romantic, for example, would still map to the spiritual-intuitive side of the spectrum even if not associating with any specific religion.

I also see this spectrum as mapping somewhat closely to the differences between the two types of thinking/worldview described by Iain McGilchrist: a narrowly-focused, acquisitive, quantifying “left brain” vs. the big-picture, holistic, connection-making “right brain.” Functionally, a materialist-rationalist is also more likely to believe that they or their political movement is able to exercise direct control over world and shape it how they please, while a spiritual-intuitive is more likely to believe that there is a fundamental natural or divine order to the universe that cannot be altered and which must be conformed to.

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I think that, together, these four axes can be combined to relatively accurately describe the fundamental nature of almost every conceivable coherent political ideology, movement, or tendency. A final quick note, however: all of the above can, in whatever combination, be more or less “authoritarian” depending on how keen the people in power are to impose themselves, their ideological views, and their material interests. Since they’re the people who took power, the answer is usually “yes.” This is such a human universal that I’m not sure it belongs as a separate axis at all; so I’m leaving it out.

A Few Examples

To demonstrate the model, let’s use the combination of these axes to describe a few different political categories or movements.

Communism, for example, can be described as: Progressive, Egalitarian, Communalist, Materialist-Rationalist (PEMR).

German Fascism (National Socialism): Progressive, Hierarchical, Communalist, Materialist-Rationalist (PHMR).

Italian Fascism: Progressive, Hierarchical, Individualist, Materialist-Rationalist (PHIR).

Classical Liberalism: Progressive, Egalitarian, Individualist, Materialist-Rationalist (PEIR).

Striking how close all of those are eh? From this vantage point it’s no wonder that there’s so much confusion about whether fascism is really Left-wing since it shares so much with communism, or what not – the similarities of all the major ideologies of the 20th century are notable because they share some of the same fundamental political categories. They’re all distinctly modernist political belief systems that envision systemizing materialist-rationalist knowledge and technique to enact progress towards some unrealized utopian future.

Arguably it also took only a small evolutionary mutation of classical liberalism, swapping out some of the hard rationalism for more “my truth” and “indigenous ways of knowing,” to end up with the more loony variety of today’s “Woke” Post-Modern Progressivism: Progressive, Egalitarian, Individualist, Spiritual-Intuitive (PEIS).

But what about the non-progressive political personalities? Well, using this framework we can for example quickly and clearly identify the exact opposite personality to liberalism: not the fascist, but the Classical Reactionary: Conservative, Hierarchical, Communalist, Spiritual-Intuitive (CHMS).

Other authentic conservative political personalities might include what could be labeled Anglo-American Conservativism: Conservative, Hierarchical, Individualist, Spiritual-Intuitive (CHIS).

Then there are more exotic varieties, such as what might be described as Confucian Conservatism: Conservative, Hierarchical, Communalist, Materialist-Rationalist (CHMR).

And if you are wondering if this means Left-wing (egalitarian) conservatives can be a thing, well yes, we can in fact use this framework to describe a Left-Conservatism: Conservative, Egalitarian, Communalist, Spiritual-Intuitive (CEMS). (And if you’re skeptical such people can exist, just go check out Compact magazine.)

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So there you have it. That should be enough for you to get the idea. There are of course more combinations, but I won’t try to categorize them all here. Feel free to do that yourself and let me know what you come up with. As I said, take this and run with it as you’d like. And let me know your thoughts in the comments.

While the world hardly needs more political theories, I figure one more shouldn’t hurt. Maybe at least some people will find this interesting, clarifying, or otherwise useful. Plus, I think the framework does help reveal some intriguing and important patterns, such as the progressive-materialist-rationalist foundation of managerial ideologies, whether egalitarian or hierarchical, as well as the notable conservative-spiritual-intuitive nature of their inherent opposition.

Or, at the very least, the next time someone says they’re an INTJ you can enjoy telling them that you’re a CHMS and have no time for their petty 20th century nonsense.