Political Alignment Test
Table Of Contents:
What is the difference between communism and socialism?
To be very clear I'm not saying that all socialism is planned economy socialism, I'm merely labeling this edge of the economic axis as planned economy socialism. this economic axis is measuring a very broad range of economic aspects roughly between voluntary and involuntary economics (something close to non-market vs market and involuntary ownership vs voluntary ownership) this axis is aligned to one end with the very specific ideology of economic socialism, not just socialism, because socialism can have many non-economic aspects depending on one's definition, but it also further specifies to planned economy socialism, not just any socialism. And rather than say some absurdly long description of economic planned economy socialism, it's better for everyone to just put those terms on the cube once and subsequently be reductive and let people read up on the exact meanings of the axes on the explanation pages. This also applies to any of the labels on the politicube's axes: freemarket capitalism is not all capitalism, but it is on that edge of the economic axis.
You can certainly make economic axes where laissez-faire capitalism is an edge in the vein of interventionist vs non-interventionist or greed vs altruism. However this goes to the heart of objectivity in that if you think doing nothing aside from having voluntary property rights is an extremist ideology, then your metric is probably terrible. I can think of nothing more centrist than doing nothing (most of you think "let me grill in peace" is a centrist policy, yet randomly reassign it to the economic extreme). Hence the economic axis here places laissez-faire capitlaism as a moderately right of center economic policy. This is sensible because when you do nothing to enforce fair competition and voluntary economics, then individuals are free to coerce each other out of their property, this makes it closer to the involuntary economics of socialism than a freemarket where such involuntary economics are not merely ignored but prevented by the state.
If the center of a test is status quo, then the Soviet Union was a centrist regime by its own perspective just like Nazi Germany was a centrist regime by its own perspective, just like everything is a centrist ideology when it is in place. Status quo is an entirely subjective and therefore useless metric for a test. It would mean arbitrarily making valuations according to my subjective status quo which is bound to be different from the status quo of others from around the world. It is absolutely necessary for a test to be objective for it to have any objectivity or else it will just be biased by subjectivity. An issue whihch you will encounter in many other political tests where they ask you idiotic questions like "should there be more wealth equality?" in which the answer: No (Cuba is already communist enough), would be equal to: No (I like non-welfare capitalism). Hence the objective centers of these two axes coincide with just letting people do what they want ("let me grill in peace"), as well as combinations of both ends of the axes (radical centrist).
The field of anarchism covers an eclectic range of different definitions each with their own interpretations and requirements, many of which are incompatible with each other. The diverse definitions of anarchism are themselves a representation of anarchism, as it is inherently a non-centralized ideology which fundamentally seeks the primacy of every individual. The various interpretations or schoools of thought are broadly based on any number of the following core tenets:
Any of these tenets are applied to the governance systems of anarchist ideologies and may also be applied to other aspects though often inconsistently across various different fields such as economics, governance, and culture. So, for example, an anarchic ideal of non-hierarchy in the government may or may not also be applied to non-hierarchy in property ownership or in cultural equality.
Communism (not just Marxist communism) and socialism are very broad ideologies which can be defined many different ways, we only consider them by their core economic aspects as economic communism and economic socialism rather than in their broadest and most ambiguous forms. Socialism is generally described as social ownership of the means of production. Communism also involves social ownership of the means of production, thus it is a subset of socialism. However, communism further requires that the final products produced (or equivalently, the proceeds from them) are socially allocated to all members of the communist society, thus it is common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Hence the distinction is that in communism one can earn property income through the labor of others, whereas in non-communist socialisms one only receives income through their own labor. To describe it with an analogy, communism is to socialism what social capitalism is to capitalism. Communism and social capitalism are subsets which socialize the allocation of property through mandatory welfare programs.