Political Spectrum Revised

[DavidGalazyn]

Hello,

I have only a few issues with Hearts of Iron 2 that should be addressed with Hearts of Iron 3. The political spectrum model your company used is not that accurate. It was the traditional model that used in US Politics. The Political Left and Political Right the problem is that placing governments (or their leaders) in this model is flawed. Hitler would be put on the far right extreme and Stalin on the far left extreme yet there is maybe a dime's difference between the two. In a spectrum similar people are supposed to be of similar views so, does this mean that Mother Teresa should be put with Stalin because she believes in a altruistic communism? Another view of this would be to do what your group has done before which is the Libertarian model of the diamond with the Liberals/Communists to the left, the Conservatives/Fascist on the right, Libertarians on the top, and Statist on bottom, with centrist in the middle. The problem here is that Conservatives are very different in their view of Freedom than Fascists, and the same with Liberals/Communists. Really it is three issues Economic Freedom, Individual Freedom, and War/Peace which do not fit into this model. Instead maybe 5 spectrum are needed 1. Economic Freedom 2. Personal Liberty 3. War and Peace would seem to fit more appropriately. The reason I say it is more appropriate is that it really is able to make some distinctions between the Right and Left Spectrum View. I saw that you had included with HOI2 these three spectrum and it really does your group a major credit to be this detail oriented. HOI2 had Free Market versus Central Planning the only issue here is that this isn't the best way to view economics because like the Left Right Spectrum you end up with weird results of who ends up next to who (Fascist and Socialist ended up together again). Instead a better idea would be to break the Market/Planning Spectrum into two : Government Regulation/Control, and Government Ownership. If you split the economics into these two in the case of Government regulation you can now separate Fascist are on the end of total control and Socialist are on the Opposite because there is no regulations because they own all business. On the Government Ownership model now the Socialist are to the most extreme because they own all business and Fascist are little less because they own less outright. The last thing I would like to say is that one other spectrum can be improved in two ways is the Democratic/Authoritarian Spectrum. First, It should probably be totalitarian instead of authoritarian because authoritarian usually means some freedom and totalitarian means no freedom. Second is in adding a Spectrum of Voluntary Political Participation vs Involuntary Political Participation because again a totalitarian society can require everyone to participate in politics or could have a society where no one but an elite participates.

Thank you
David Galazyn

 

[jamesmcm]

Well we already have the Dove/Hawk lobby for peace/war maybe that should be integrated with the parties more.

But yeah, I agree that really they should switch to using Social on Y axis and Economic on X axis. But, it's important to remember that they're talking about it historically, in fitting with the three major alliances, not about politics specifically.

 

[pnt]

This is an interesting line of thought. Having a more realistic political model could be nice, especially if one wants to experiment with alternatives. However, maybe it would be easier for more people to join the discussion if you could make an explicit suggestion of what sliders there should be, what modifiers they would bring, and how the government type would be determined (instead of using the HOI2 left/right - democratic/authoritarian matrix)? I mean, it is sometimes easier to discuss details than principles.

 

[Markusw7]

political sliders like in HOI2 do not exist anymore, this is old news btw.

 

[unmerged(138184)]

You will always run into the issue of how to devise a political spectrum model that can reflect every viable ideology present in the world at the time to a high degree of accuracy. (Hard to do, I would think.)

I think if you look at the concept underlying the core architecture of the game (3 dueling factions), then it makes sense to have the political model somewhat reflect that.

That said, I was always troubled by the failure to account for, say, the Catalonian/Spanish anarchists on the HOI2 political model. I realize that such "extreme" libertarianism was viable in the world as a possible governing philosophy only in that one particular place. But again, I always wondered exactly how you would model them if they were a possible entity in the game (as they were in CORE for HOI1, if I recall correctly.)

 

[unmerged(26764)]

The interesting case is really Italian fascism. It would have been very easy for Italy to move towards a more left wing dictatorship instead of the right wing one it adopted. Mussolini started as a hard core socialist / communist and never really thought he wasn't one -- just a different kind. His modern classifcation as "right wing" has as much to do with political propaganda at the time stemming from infighting among the Italian socialist movement, as well as to Italy's eventual alliance with Germany, than it does to any real "right wingness" to his regime. Moreover, Italy's regime had more in common with both Stalinism and Nazism than it did with any form of democracy, left or right.

It should be easier to switch a country from Stalinism to Fascism than it is to move from social democracy to either form of dictatorship. Moreover, it is silly for a nation to have to move through democracy to get from one dictatorship form to the other.

That said, the new political system seems to do okay on this (and we'll learn more about how they're doing it). I am hopeful that the "triangle" idea will handle this.

 

[unmerged(110051)]

what you are talking about here is the concept of closed vs open societies, and both comunism and fascim are closed societies.

However this concept, although originally from Henri Bergson, was developed and become relevant after the end of WWII by Karl Popper in his book open societies and its enemies (1945). Prior to that the main idea at the time was comunism vs capitalism. After the great depression and due to the raise in Communist appeal, fascism and national socialism were proposed as a way to deal with the failures of the capitalism as everyone was predicting its demise (sounds familiar with nowadays crisis?).
In fact the new deal of FDR was in part inspired by germany´s economic miracle, did you knew?

So historically the idea of open vs closed societies were not widespread, but the anthology of far left and far right

 

[Alex_brunius]

Lets have an markerar that can move in 8 dimensional space to plot your political views in different core issues instead, Thats sure to be much better and more accurate.

Only one slight problem.... how to show it on a 2d screen?

 

[unmerged(81995)]

I have only a few issues with Hearts of Iron 2 that should be addressed with Hearts of Iron 3. The political spectrum model your company used is not that accurate.

It´s accurate enough for game purposes. I am quite familiar with Acton/Popper-/Hayek and Marx/Lenin writings and you have some (minor) valid points.

But on an abstracted scale HOI II handles the political issues quite right. The only point that might need a change is the association between NationalSocialism and Fascism with Planned Economy. This is really dead wrong - there is a big difference between an in principal market economy with huge public spending and tight government regulation and an economy which is solely state owned.

Your other points are moot in political practice. There is no doubt a big similarity in dictatorship practice between the far right and the far left. Yet it would need an outright revolution to change instantly from one to the other - thus there is no fault to have to go through the middle to change (peacefully). And viewed from the extreme there is so much neighborhood between social democrats and social conservatives that any in game differentiation would make little sense.

Thus the eight dimensional representation of different political opinions will hopefully never materialize . For political practice (even in RL) the only differences that matter are political freedom vs. oppression and economical freedom vs. government intervention. And for these cases the HOI II representation was just good enough.

Regards,

Thorsten

 

[unmerged(26764)]

That's actually not really true. It's just a common misperception.

Remember: The Nazi party was the "National Socialist Workers Party." Ernest Roehm, commander of the SA and the second most powerful person in the movement behind Hitler (before the establishment had him killed as a power threat) was an outright socialist. His main goal was to empower workers to overthrow the traditional power structure.

Mussolini was for most of his early years a committed socialist. He edited the socialist newspaper. He considered his movement a kind of socialism. The other socialists turned against him and branded him right wing when he embraced Italian nationalism when Italy was threatened by other countries. But domesticaly, his program was founded in socialism.

Fascism and Communism have a lot in common. Fascism is considered right wing because of the political alliances they made with business to seize power. But that didn't make its philosophy of government "right wing" in any true sense.

It would be very easy for a fascist country to subtly move itself to something closely resembling Stalinism. At the time, world politics and domestic politics invested a lot of effort into making these idealogies polar opposities, when they're really close cousins. But don't be fooled.

Moving through democracy to get from one to the other is incorrect. Nor is revolution required. Just a subtle shift in policy.

 

[Raczynski]

That's actually not really true. It's just a common misperception.

Remember: The Nazi party was the "National Socialist Workers Party." Ernest Roehm, commander of the SA and the second most powerful person in the movement behind Hitler (before the establishment had him killed as a power threat) was an outright socialist. His main goal was to empower workers to overthrow the traditional power structure.

Mussolini was for most of his early years a committed socialist. He edited the socialist newspaper. He considered his movement a kind of socialism. The other socialists turned against him and branded him right wing when he embraced Italian nationalism when Italy was threatened by other countries. But domesticaly, his program was founded in socialism.

Fascism and Communism have a lot in common. Fascism is considered right wing because of the political alliances they made with business to seize power. But that didn't make its philosophy of government "right wing" in any true sense.

It would be very easy for a fascist country to subtly move itself to something closely resembling Stalinism. At the time, world politics and domestic politics invested a lot of effort into making these idealogies polar opposities, when they're really close cousins. But don't be fooled.

Moving through democracy to get from one to the other is incorrect. Nor is revolution required. Just a subtle shift in policy.

Could you explain then, why fascist and nazis always allied with conservatives and first and foremost attacked communist/socialist opposition?

 

[UniversalWolf]

Could you explain then, why fascist and nazis always allied with conservatives and first and foremost attacked communist/socialist opposition?

Because communists consider Nazis to be socialist heretics, and vice versa. They hate each other because they're so similar. It's not too different from various sects of Christianity fighting each other over minute doctrinal questions, or Sunnis and Shiites fighting each other over interpretations of Islam.

Personally I liked the HoI1 model of a triangle with Hitler in one corner, Stalin in another corner, and the Statue of Libery on top.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

That's pretty much right. That and they were competing for the same people to rise to power: the poor and working classes who felt left out of society.

 

[Raczynski]

Because communists consider Nazis to be socialist heretics, and vice versa. They hate each other because they're so similar. It's not too different from various sects of Christianity fighting each other over minute doctrinal questions, or Sunnis and Shiites fighting each other over interpretations of Islam.

No, not really. The communist didn't consider fascist "the heretical socialist". They considered them fascist.

That's pretty much right. That and they were competing for the same people to rise to power: the poor and working classes who felt left out of society

Nazis support largely come form the petit-bourgeois, not the working classes. These were disgruntled centre-right voters, not the leftwing voters (the leftwing voting remained largely the same during the rise of Nazis, thought it shifted somehow from socialist to communist.

It's funny how some people are eager to correct "misconception", when they themself propagate ridiclously simplified views. They were similiarities between these two ideologies, both being totalitarian dictatorship. However, this doesn't mean they were on the same side of political spectrum.

 

[Mrdie]

It's funny how some people are eager to correct "misconception", when they themself propagate ridiclously simplified views.

Correct.

Fascism was "neither capitalism nor socialism" whereas National Socialism (Nazism) claimed that Marxism was not true socialism, and that the Nazis were "reclaiming" socialism for the people. Both were staunchly against class struggle. They advocated "national societies" as opposed to class societies, meaning that classes would become irrelevant, everyone would (in theory) work together and class conflict would cease to exist as all classes devote themselves to the nation.

A read of the Doctrine of Fascism is necessary.

Now, in the 1930's the Communists actually entered into a tactical alliance with the Nazis in Germany against Fascism. This is because... (taken from a post of mine on another forum):

While on this subject, we should also discuss how the Communists in Germany viewed the Nazis and Fascists. Now as you probably know, the German government was Social-Democratic, and Stalin had said:

"Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.. These organisations (ie Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins."
J.V.Stalin: "Concerning the International Situation" (September 1924), in 'Works', Volume 6, 1953; p.294.

This is actually true. The goals of Social Democracy and Fascism are essentially the same, the Social Democrats want to "reform" capitalism whereas Fascism is the radical wing of Social Democracy, who want to "go beyond capitalism and socialism." Many Fascists were ex-Social Democrats and semi-Marxist socialists, like Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini themselves. National Socialism (Nazism) however was seen in Germany as a new movement which claimed socialism, as opposed to the anti-socialism of Fascism. Otto Ville Kuusinen however said the following in the Comintern, founding the concept of Social-Fascism:

"The aims of the fascists and the social-fascists are the same."
Kuusinen, Report To the 10th Plenum of ECCI, in 'International Press Correspondence', Volume 9, no.40, (20 August, 1929), p.848.

It should be noted at this point that both the Nazis and Communists were being persecuted by a régime the Communists now thought was essentially a moderate bourgeois-democratic Fascist one. So Communists and Nazis in many areas developed a tactical alliance, as Communists viewed Nazis as petite-bourgeois socialists united against the anti-socialist state. Obviously once Nazis came to power they weren't too much different from Fascists, but this incident does show how much influence the Fascists (and in this case Nazis) had on the worker's movement before coming to power. Social-Fascism is a bad policy when you take it literally, as Kuusinen and the German Communists have shown us.

In short, Nazism is bourgeois socialism. Fascism is just radical populism. Movements like Producerism in the US were basically proto-Fascist movements.

This is a very good and through read on the subject.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

See this debate is interesting. And people can vastly disgaree about it. Mostly, I think, because there is no firm definition of "right" and "left."

Are markets "right" or "left?" Always? Are policies that benefit the lower classes "right" or "left?" Always? Is a strong state "right" or "left?" Always? This is all debatable, and brilliant people debate it.

The take home point is, however, that fascism and communism are not really polar opposites. I think everyone agrees on that. They are closer to each other than either is to market liberalism.

I think the game should (and likely will) reflect that.

 

[unmerged(110051)]

Its an interesting chat this one, there were a couple of main differences between comunism and fascism. Comunist were looking to achieve a perfect society through the "Class struggle" and this struggle was universal in their views, and therefore their interventionism was high, while the fascism were looking for social harmony-class harmony whithin a national society though vertical syndicalism and lebensraum and that made their interventionism also high.

One looking for social class pride, the other one for nacionalist pride. Fascism in italy or Spain was highly religious while reds were atheist.

In few think they both agreed .... in their hate for liberalism, in their authoritarian views, etc...

I think the political system in HOI2 was great in terms of interventionism-isolacionism, free market- centralized, left-righ, dove-hawk, etc... it gave a better undertanding than the linear ideal of left and right.

 

[unmerged(110051)]

See this debate is interesting. And people can vastly disgaree about it. Mostly, I think, because there is no firm definition of "right" and "left."

Exactly, and add that in the US, Europe or Asia the idea of what is right and left changes.

For instance Dems in Europe will be closer to right than to left, and socialdemocrats in Europe will be considered "almost communists" in the US

 

[Mrdie]

For instance Dems in Europe will be closer to right than to left, and socialdemocrats in Europe will be considered "almost communists" in the US

Communists see them all as reactionary though, and Fascists see them as degenerate.

 

[Easy1]

I think this one is pretty good, at least better......