The Death of the Political Spectrum and the Rise of the Political Compass

The last decade has been a transformative one globally; whether it is the rise of a new multipolar order transforming our geopolitical reality; the acceleration of technological growth and its respective sociopolitical and economic implications; or the uncertainty of late stage capitalism, the world is definitely transitioning towards a new age which we might have glimpse of, albeit a blurry one. This apparent shift is also being felt in the political realm with the crisis in parliamentary democracies in the West, the extreme polarisation in Western politics, and the rise of populism and the new, and far, right movements – developments that leads us to question to what degree the fabric of democracy has been torn, and the possibility of repairing the dominant Western political form. 

Historicism, the way in which things can be explained by studying their history, is an ambiguous term within the departments of history and philosophy today as a result of the many different ways the term has been used within modern scholarship. That said, it is a term that could provide fruitful insights concerning current political developments, and possibly provide us with the foresight necessary to envision the future of the political landscape. Humans, as I have mentioned in many of my writings, are paradoxical creatures, since their historical existence is shaped by two basic human activities that contradict yet necessitate one another: memory and amnesia. This necessary clash and reconciliation between our remembrance and forgetfulness, the very basic of human traits, is expressed in the fields of history, historiography, and philosophy of history. 

Within the German historicist tradition, it was argued that to understand a specific phenomenon – its essence, or trajectory – one would have to trace its transformation across history. With its origins in either the rise of the Westphalian system or the French Revolution, or perhaps both, outlining the development of modern politics across time would allow us to not only comprehend its transformation historically, but also to come to terms with its transformation today. The political spectrum is a conceptual tool representing the different political forces at play within the 20th century, a spectrum dominated by the three primary ideologies that substantially shaped Western politics, namely, Marxist Socialism at the far left, liberal capitalist democracies at the center, and fascism at the far right of the spectrum. 

The spectrum is the shape given to the different political forces at play within Western parliamentary democracies since their inception during the 19th century. What is odd about political spectrums, if looked at through a historicist lens, is how the spectrum dissolves once the pendulum swings to one end or the other. In Europe this is seen clearly with the rise of fascism which clearly represented the far right end of the political spectrum, leading to the dissolution of the spectrum as a whole. In Russia, even though the Bolsheviks did not win a majority vote within the 1917 Russian constituent assembly election, they had amassed enough votes to gain the confidence necessary to dissolve the assembly and enforce a one-party rule. 

Another interesting phenomenon that could be viewed through a historicist lens is the continuous stretching of political spectrums as a result of the cultural, economic, and sociopolitical changes across time, and the effects of such shifts within different generations. A progressive liberal in the United States today for instance possesses views that are in contradiction with the political and economic views of classical liberals a century earlier. The stretching of the political spectrum is also the result of economic and material forces, such as the internal migrations from the countrysides to cities, external migrations over time, increasing economic disparity, tensions between farmers and corporations or government, and many additional reasons. The stretching of the political spectrum eventually leads to individuals alienated from their own political parties as the spectrum is stretched, based on shifting sociopolitical and economic dynamics. 

The most recent example of this was the transformation of leftist and centrist parties within the past two decades within the West with what could be called “ultra-progressive” policies that left many of their former supporters estranged. Another case is that of Germany during the Weimar phase, where the political spectrum could be argued to have been stretched by liberal parties. Additionally the Nazi victory, which stretched the political spectrum to the far right, left many German conservatives isolated from what they considered as a radical change in policies. In cases where the political spectrum is stretched within such short periods of time, the supporters of specific parties remain aligned to their previous political, social, and economic opinions, while that of their own parties shift. What results in such cases is the recategorisation of political positions, those who were considered centrists would then turn into conservatives if the political spectrum is stretched by the left, and those who were once considered conservatives would be considered liberals by those who stretch the spectrum through the right. 

As modern Western society developed further across space and time, the political, social, and economic issues became more complex and in turn led to transformations of the political dimensions. Of course, although the traditional left-right dichotomy remains, bifurcations arise and additional political categorisations emerge as a result. Beyond the traditional political spectrum, liberal-centrist-conservative, new spatial models take into consideration the complex nature of modern political dimensions to include libertarian and authoritarian types, who today are on the rise within the Western political scenes. 

Some models measure this complexity by introducing new political binaries that could shape, or perhaps are already shaping, political positions: collectivism vs individualism, progressivism vs conservatism, totalitarianism vs libertarianism. In geopolitical matters this could manifest itself in interventionism as opposed to non-interventionism or isolationism. In the US this can be seen with the recent rise of paleoconservatism to resist what can be viewed as the neoconservative interventionist policies that dominated US foreign policy across the past decades. With the changing ethnic and cultural landscape as a result of migrations, even the issue of open or closed borders becomes highly politicized with groups calling for either multiculturalism or assimilation, or even call for closed-border policies, as seen in the case of Trumpism and populist movements in Europe. Even national economic issues, and trade, have become highly politicised, with the effects of a globalised world economy finally taking a toll on specific economies around the world, forcing many to consider alternative options to combat what they view was a negative outcome of a globalist economic approach. The transformation of political views towards trade is perhaps best expressed in the case of Argentinian politics in the past century. Javier Milei’s new administration in Argentina is a perfect example of anti-Keynesian economic policies in practice, with his new style described as “anarcho-capitalism”. Milei’s own victory is in itself a shift from a unique sociopolitical and economic ideology named Peronism, after the Argentinian president Juan Peron, which was characterised by economic independence with the aim of strengthening national industries. Additionally, the urban and technological changes that have occurred the past centuries have led to the politicisation of issues that would have never been considered as susceptible to politicising, such as technology, or the emergence of new radical, or unusual, political positions on issues that are quite primordial such as land and property. Georgism, named after the American economist Henry George, calls for the implementation of land-value taxation in order to reduce other forms of taxes has recently re-emerged as a result of rising costs of land and housing. 

Moreover, the transformational effects of modern technology, combined with its exponential growth, has led to different political positions on this specific issue, ranging from the resistance of the interference of large tech firms on the political and economic process, which Yanis Varoufakis described in his concept of technofeudalism where big tech’s interference in the politico-economic process is antithetical to the spirit of capitalism due to differing interests, thus leading to transformations that are detrimental to everyone but the tech firms, to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which is also a clear political statement against such realities in the tech industry, deploying the platform to support MAGA politics, whilst simultaneously transforming the platform into an arena for freedom of speech and political debate. The physiological, cultural, and mental transformations as a result of technological and industrial process has also led to new opinions emerging concerning the nature of technics and technology, asserting that technology is not a neutral force, and thus our technological orientation is a matter of existential relevance. 

Accelerationists and futurists argue that in order to overcome such a predicament, namely, the non-neutrality of technology, we would have to accelerate the development of technology, some arguing for a symbiosis between humans and technology (transhumanism), others for a removal of any moral and social obstacles hindering technological progress, and some for a transformation of the political process that is compatible with such technological changes. Many such thinkers have managed to gain a large following in the past decades that could potentially change the political dimension of the West, which include, but are not limited to, the works of Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, Jason Reza Jorjani, and Yuval Noah Harrari. 

A historicist approach also allows us to trace the origins of such developments within the West, although short-lived the Futurist Political Party in Italy, founded by the futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, gives us a glimpse of how technological accelerationism could potentially look like if materialised in the future. On the other side of the technological spectrum, what could be called techno-primitivism or archaism, similarly argue that technology is not neutral, but in face of such realities we require the need for de-accelerating industrial society and technological progress. Such movements emphasize a return to nature arguing that the ontological divide that had emerged between man and nature as a result of industrial-technological society has led not only led to the ecological crisis, but to the rise of a society that minimizes the individual at the cost of the city, institution, system, and machine. Ted Kaczynski, or the Unabomber, has expressed such ideas in a radical manner with his attack on industrial society through a series of mail bombs, and subsequently publishing his manifesto titled Industrial Society and Its Future, in what could be considered the first historic case of “eco-terrorism”. John Zerzan, on the other hand, is a more pacifist expression of such political positions, who has argued for a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, not only critiquing industrial society, but agriculture as well. 

Some thinkers also lie in the border between the two positions, such as John Michael Greer, who had argued for the use of appropriate technologies through an ecocentrist ontological framework which could lead to realistic possible futures beyond what he perceives as the collapse of Western industrial society. Beyond these realms, one can witness further transformations of the political dimension within many other fields such as health and food policy, as seen since the COVID pandemic which has essentially redefined the politics of health, and the recent rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who aims to transform the way Americans eat and drink as well as potentially revising, or amending, medical research and the healthcare system. The conscious world around us is an expression of unconscious ideas that have been born within our past, and this is reflected accurately in the transformations that have taken place in Western politics. 

Humans are political beings, and as long as our urban, technological, social, health, and economic realities transform, the political dimensions will accommodate such changes due to their existential relevance to us. In politics, the spectrum has been stretched and dissolved on multiple occasions, and it has also today evolved into a compass to include the new dimensions and map out the rise in complexity of our own societies. Thus, in my judgement, we should not be solely asking questions concerning partisanship in politics today, but rather, ask questions on the transformations of the political dimension as a whole, and what are the implications of such changes.

Image: Flickr/Tyler Merbler

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