The Libertarian compass gauges your opinions on capitalism and civil liberties. Or, put another way, it asks you your opinion on capitalism, and what you propose to do about those who disagree in order that your opinion on capitalism may prevail. If you don't propose to do anything about those who disagree, then your opinion on capitalism doesn't really matter to anyone, as it will have no effect on the class war. There's already a word for people like that: "liberals." You can read Ayn Rand or Noam Chomsky about it, call yourself whatever you like about it, but you're a fence sitting liberal about the most pressing question facing humanity, and share that position with everyone else with that attitude.
You also share that position with the rich, whose illicit wealth means the only thing they have left to acquire is a good name, and try to get that good name with inoffensive virtue signalling that never really changes anything. This works for them because that illicit wealth can buy any government in a capitalist society, and therefore they don't usually need to bother themselves with whether a formally liberal party controls the government.
So the top of our triangle, approximately acting like they're above everyone else and smack dab in the center, is the natural ideological home of the liberal rich.
To keep with the directional tradition that's predominated since radicals sat on the left of the Estates General during the French Revolution, the bottom left corner would be working class socialism. Workers who understand their own interests are socialist. Workers who don't are conservative, but we'll get to that in a bit.
That leaves the bottom right corner of the triangle, which is fascism. Though half of the middle class may pose as socialists for the purpose of the culture war, if real class war breaks out, they will line up behind the fascist corner, for it is the natural home of their class.
This leaves us with a political compass looking like so:
Obviously, there are more than these three ideologies, but these are the core ideologies of each class. Before we explore the other ideological positions on this triangle compass, let's establish what the sides of the triangle mean.
First off, the side opposite to each corner is its negation, while each corner is just a combination of its adjacent sides. So what do liberals and fascists have in common, that socialists oppose? Capitalism, of course.
What do liberals and socialists have in common, that fascists oppose? Democracy.
And this is trickier, to the point that we have to resort to the demented scribblings of Adolf Hitler to name a concept that hyperliberal English speakers never had a word for. But what do socialists and fascists have in common that liberals abhor? The will to power, or "authoritarianism" or "totalitarianism" if we're still listening to the Libertarian Party and not just jacking and improving their favorite toy.
That means that socialism is just the combination of democracy and the will to power; liberalism is just the combination of democracy and capitalism; and fascism is just the combination of capitalism and the will to power.
Something to understand when applying the class analysis of this triangle to history is that though these classes lay throughout the history of human civilization, and their corresponding ideologies do too, usually in the past they don't go by their modern names, or possess the theoretical tools that later people of their class would. So if you want to find ancient liberals, for example, find anyone that pretends to care about "norms" and good government, up and until it cuts into their bottom line. Cicero would be one such ancient liberal; Kubilai Khan another.
Or to put this concept in other terms, if trying to class analyze the American Civil War, the socialists (other than Marx and a handful of others) would mostly be calling themselves abolitionists in that era. "Fascism" as a modern political term wasn't invented yet, but it would have clearly been represented by the slave patrols and the middle class of the Confederacy. "Fascism" is derived from the symbol of the Roman state, the fasces, and the decadent liberal slaveowners running the Confederacy aspired to be like the decadent liberal slaveowners running Rome. Both were reactionary slave economies that required expansion to survive, both collapsed amid hyperinflation and military conquest, and the parallel is obvious even when words aren't.
For a less prosaic example of ancient fascism, the Assyrian Empire and its vicious slave imperialism and ethnic cleansing are another example of looking for the ideological class markers on the sides of the triangle compass to identify the ideology when it isn't otherwise named.
So what about the other ideologies? Still not yet. We must identify what makes each class tick. Why is liberalism? Just precisely who first thought that liberalism was a good idea, why, and how much does it cost to mail excrement to their grave?
Well, liberals are shady rich people, and after you've stolen the wealth of the workers, all you have left to acquire is a good name. So the point of liberalism is to liberal better than all the other liberals: to chase that cheddar, and then those sweet sweet virtue signals. Why? Because the ethical core of the rich is vanity, an explosive combination of individualism and utopianism. Why else would a billionaire like Jeff Bezos chase more money? He could retire now and still be unable to spend all his money, even on his precious space colonies. But he must be the richest, the best. He must be richer not only than modern liberals. At this point, he's competing with Manda Musa, with Crassus, with the Nizam of Hyderabad, to be King Liberal of All Time.
Continue reading Part III
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