Why Libertarians, Conservatives, and Anarchists Should Get Along

Part 3: How dozens of ideologies boil down to two

by Christopher Cook

[ Part 1 | Part 2 ]

How many political ideologies have there been over the last 150 years?

In all likelihood, a series of familiar words has begun flashing through your head. Communism. Fascism. Socialism. Conservatism. Libertarianism.

Perhaps you drilled down a little further: Democratic socialism. Progressivism (America) and social democracy (Europe). Paleo-conservative, social conservative, fiscal conservative.

Maybe you can describe some of the differences between Italian fascism and German Nazism, or between Marxism-Leninism and Maoism.

Maybe you can list every single flavor of the libertarian rainbow, from most to least austere: Anarchist, minarchist, Objectivist, Public Choice School, Austrian (Misesian), Austrian (Hayekian), Chicago School…

And so on.

Every one of these ideological categories can be further subdivided, and there are plenty of others I didn’t mention. But what if I told you that at one level of analysis, there aren’t dozens of ideologies, but only two?

A bigger tent

In Part 1, we discussed the tendency of political movements to fracture—often over comparatively minor differences. Discussion becomes debate. Debate becomes division. Division becomes dissolution. Political movements possess a seemingly bottomless capacity to fork into ever-smaller splinter groups.

In Part 2, we explored some of the internal divisions within the freedom movement, and why libertarians are especially prone to fractiousness.

Before we can discuss some specific solutions, however, we have one more task. I would like to convince you that the freedom movement is bigger than you think…and that it ought to be considered so.

This is where the concept of two political ideologies comes in.

Disclaimer:

The exploration upon which we are about to embark will include a large amount of generalizations. These will be accurate, but they will, of necessity, ignore a variety of nuances. I acknowledge that the nuances exist and that they are important, but for the purposes of this discussion, we must focus on the generalizations.

Furthermore, in our core questions section below, it will appear as if I am delivering a blanket condemnation of the political left. I do believe that the ideology of the left gets the answers to all of these questions wrong, and much to the dismay of humankind for the last 200 years. However, I also acknowledge both the many exceptions that underly these generalizations, and the heartfelt good intentions of many of those who have inclined leftward over the years.

A freedom scale

In many ways, politics can be boiled down to a single question: how much?

How much freedom? How much government?

In his natural state, the individual is free. Governments restrict a measure of that freedom, and the bigger a government gets, the more it restricts. The relationship between government and individual freedom is, roughly speaking, inversely proportional.

Thus, we can imagine a single-axis political spectrum that measures amount of individual freedom, with the minimum to the left and maximum to the right, moving in inverse proportion to amount of government along the same axis. A “freedom scale,” if you will.

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