The Liberty Papers

I am sometimes a stickler for nomenclature. People bandy about terms like “marxist”, “fascist”, “right-wing”, “left-wing”, and the like, often with very little understanding of what they mean.

I was reading one of the posts by Eric, the original founder of The Liberty Papers, and decided to lift an image from that post regarding a two-axis political spectrum:

Notice that on the capitalism/socialism, Marx is over in the same area as Lenin and Stalin. Yet on the totalitarianism/individualism spectrum, he’s in the same area as Patrick Henry. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the works of someone like Marx; he’s far closer to anarcho-socialism than he is to totalitarianism in a Stalinist sense.

Perhaps something to remember the next time you call someone like Hillary a Marxist. She’s probably more of a Leninist, or perhaps a Rooseveltist. Obama would probably be closer to a Nader or a true Marxist. And McCain would likely fit on the same vertical axis equal to or north of FDR, but horizontally probably in the same area as Clinton.

Just some thoughts for your Monday morning… Discuss.