I almost hit the "Gandhi" marker spot-on.

Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38

(see obviously a bit incomplete, as anyone looking at our recent arguments in the Krellin/rich thread would hardly peg you as to the left of me economically abgemacht.)

Thus the danger of judging someone based on one minor economic policy.

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.77

Economic Left/Right: 1.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -.31

I am apparently a centrist and will now proceed to resolving this problem by killing myself.

"Strongly believe that no "moral" person can justify making more money than the current median income"

This is interesting. Does this at all account for cost of living differences across the country? Or size of family? Or contribution to society?

Economic Left/Right: -0.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.21

Pretty much dead centre or (using my interpretation) I'm right, you're wrong :)

Don't worry, red. The centre is the new right

Does that make communism the new sexy?

In the sense that it's dangerous and wrong, of course!

Economic Left/Right: -7.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.10

I love that the site's two seemingly crazy European right-wing nutjobs (and I say this with the greatest love) are far further to the left than the entirety of American politics.

Wait, what?

Communism has always been sexy. Except when it became an authoritarian massacre.Which it probably will always inevitably become in a "dictatorship of the proletariat" scenario. Too much danger of ends justifying the means in any sort of utopian philosophy.

--

"This is interesting. Does this at all account for cost of living differences across the country? Or size of family? Or contribution to society?"

It's more a guiding principle for me than some sort of iron-clad rule. It is of course open to all sorts of undermining ("Why stop there?" "What about XXX?" etc etc etc) so of course people can determine what the factors are in their own life to adjust it. Definitely contribution to society is irrelevant to me. Family and cost of living obviously important. The vast majority of the things I have done to contribute to society have been unpaid and the years I was making the most money for the least amount of hours, as a semi-professional poker player, I was literally contributing zero to society in that capacity.

Just using it as an example of a rather controversial and perhaps misguided belief (which I see everyone else is skipping) but I'm not very comfortable tooting my own horn about it ($30k living in the US still makes one pretty damn obscenely wealthy in my book - my clothes and this computer were still made in sweatshops, at least half my calories are flown into the country or produced on factory farms, etc). It's just something I've decided to make my life easier in terms of constantly questioning if I am making too much money. One could make the argument that I am just justifying laziness, and I could do more for the world if I got obscenely rich and then gave that money away. i realize it is a fairly morally untenable position. But still, it is as close as I have been able to get to a vow of poverty living in a hyper-capitalist society (and wanting all the shiny things as much as anyone else). I expect it to gradually shrink as I get older and less enamored with gadgets.

I thought Octavious and me come out as being more right wing in this thread than you fine ladies and gentlemen here... Isn't "minus" the direction of less authority and left-wing economics in this particular website's definition?

@red
"...are far further to the left than the entirety of American politics."

"American Politics" not "webDip users"

Yes, but go on and look at the website's charts for world politics, you're far to the left of most leaders.

@erist

Sure. If instead, you were to raise the minimum income such that one could actually live on it, though, would it really matter what that max income was?

Economic Left/Right: -10.00
Social : - 4.31

This test is quite terrible, as most tests written by libertarians for libertarians are. I don't even know how some of these questions relate to politics.

I identify as a Marxist-Leninist. That means for me supporting actually existing socialism. It also means being an internationalist who expresses genuine solidarity with movements and governments fighting imperialism around the world. I tend to be anti-revisionist (see: 1999 Brussels statement of the international communist seminar for details) while also upholding today's China as a socialist country. In terms of US strategy I emphatically encourage all progressive minded people to vote strategically while building a viable leftwing movement. That means voting to defeat the Republican Party and getting out there & protesting in the streets.

I reject morally pure lifestyle politics that is often fashionable among the (petty bourgeois) Trotskyist, anarchist, and social democratic left. Ideology without a practical programme for victory is absolutely worthless.

I think socialism is the only hope for mankind. A command economy is the only solution to the problem of resource overexploitation and climate change. Markets have utterly failed as resource distributing mechanisms. Deficit spending is a reflection of the crisis of capitalism since the 1970s. Social democracy is not sustainable in a global capitalist world system.

@abge,
I understood exactly 0% of your post :)

^What Putin said, some of these questions were really quite ridiculous and I made very certain not to hit "strongly anything" there. Also, I agree the test is flawed, even though I think the ensuing thread has potential.

Putin: Authoritarian socialism has turned into gulags and massacres everywhere it has been implemented except perhaps some of the Latin American countries. (even those questionable. Cuba has much to recommend it and much to totally condemn it for for example). Vanguardism has been used to justify moral atrocity after moral atrocity in the history of capital-C Communism.

@red
ghug was comparing you to American Politics as a whole, not to us webDippers who were posting our scores.

*BEEEPPP*

*mute*

*tries to read lips, gets bored*

*leaves*

(and no, we don't forgive you for Spain. Up the Kronstadt Rebellion.)

"Ideology without a practical programme for victory is absolutely worthless. "

qft

more quick summaries of political beliefs, less reliance on the scores of a flawed test then! (and for those of you that think the social questions have little to do with politics, they actually are quite highly correlated with political mindsets from an empirical point of view)

Erist,

Please cite me a country where libertarian socialism has been implemented successfully. You can't. Countries that try socialism while maintaining the remnants of bourgeois democracy get overthrown and destroyed. See the 1 million CP members in Indonesia who were slaughtered in the mid-60s for an example. See also what happened to the Chilean left under Pinochet. See also what happened when Rios Montt came to power in Guatemala. See what happened to Iran in 1953. There are countless examples.

The libertarian left is able to keep its hands clean precisely because it doesn't even remotely threaten the capitalist world order. That's why most libertarian leftists are content with lifestyle politics.

While I agree with some things Putin says, almost everything is funnier when set to this picture of Putin, even the things that aren't all that funny:

http://i.imgur.com/OzkAR.png
http://i.imgur.com/aeumm.png