Power Concentration
I already discussed in my previous post how representing political views with a single spectrum is an oversimplification. With that being said, there is a certain fundamental idea that tends to uniformly determine many of the views of the most common political factions. That idea is concentration of power. The extremes of this spectrum are communists, who believe everyone in a society should have an exactly equal amount of power, and fascists, who believe a very select few people should have all of the power. Here’s a rough spectrum, including most significant stances in the USA today.
I tried my best, but ultimately you can’t really quantify this, so the scaling of this isn’t as important as the ordering. Also, most, if not all, of these also exist on a spectrum, i.e. Progressives can exist a bit to the right or left, rather than just at the exact point shown in the diagram.
Expanding on the power concentration concept: One of conservatism’s largest pillars is laissez-faire capitalism, which ultimately results in a “winners and losers” society, where money is concentrated at the top, and it also allows for money to buy power. In this way, power is not solely held by a handful of government officials as in fascism, but instead is disproportionately held by the ultra-wealthy, which is only a slightly larger group. Moving left from there, neo-liberalism and progressivism, both part of today’s Democratic party, both push for more economic regulations to prevent the money & power concentration that unchecked capitalism produces. The difference between the two is just the degree to which they do so, with progressives wanting more regulations than neo-liberals. In socialism, like in communism, there is no private ownership of corporations, which prevents people from becoming insanely wealthy. However, unlike in communism, there is money and thus people can earn more or less depending on how much they contribute, meaning power isn’t uniformly distributed. Finally, democratic socialism, which overlaps with progressivism in today’s US, is basically a move in the direction of socialism through democracy, as opposed to revolution, as in the USSR and China. As such, it has to make some concessions relative to socialism, and thus falls closer to the center than socialism.
The explanation so far has been about economic opinions, but I started by saying this spectrum also informs other opinion, here are some examples. At this point, I’ll go with Republican and Democrat instead of conservative/liberal, as the former have more well-defined stances, while the latter are more general ideologies:
Abortion and drug laws: The common Republican stance on these issues gives the government the power to decide what individuals do with their body, while the Democrats’ stance is to put that power in the individual’s hands.
Immigration: Democrats are generally more willing to accept immigrants and give them rights, while Republicans are more likely to believe in keeping them out, and giving them fewer rights, which helps to maintain power hierarchies. Giving more people rights dilutes the relative power the elites hold.
Voter rights: Republicans have admitted to suppressing voters, through means like not bringing voting security bills to votes in the Senate, voter ID laws, not allowing felons to vote, and voter registration purges. Democrats typically fight these measures. Eliminating someone’s ability to vote obviously reduces their power in a democracy.
Military: Republicans want a larger and more active military than Democrats. This is more about global power concentration than domestic, but the same idea applies. Having a massive military allows us to impose our will on the rest of the world, making us disproportionately powerful.
Education: Democrats advocate more for education than Republicans do. This will likely get its own post in the future, but the short story is that more education means more economic mobility, which dilutes the power of those already at the top.
There are some issues that can’t be traced back to creating power dynamics, but many of those are still related in that the stances benefit the powerful in either’s ideology. One example is environmental policy, which Republicans’ haven’t prioritized, and have repealed Democrat-led regulations of emissions. In all likelihood, this will create a worse world for everyone, but in doing so, allows the ultra-wealthy to become even more wealthy, by pocketing the savings the companies get from no longer following environmentally-conscious protocols. Democrats prioritize saving the environment, which is more beneficial to the population as a whole.
In my next post, I use the power concentration spectrum to look at Democracy’s equilibrium within the spectrum.
