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| The Political Animal: Aristotelian Metaphysics for Austrian Schoolmen Posted: 26 May 2021 02:30 PM PDT ABSTRACT: This essay aims to introduce the Austrian community to the metaphysical principles of political life first discovered by Aristotle and subsequently clarified by Thomas Aquinas. I begin by contrasting the Aristotelian perspective on social cooperation to that of mainstream post-Cartesian political philosophy with its emphasis on willful consent. I then describe the Aristotelian notion of the common good as the metaphysical principle of political life. From the existence of a diversity of political communities, I demonstrate that that each community needs to have a political authority. I then briefly examine the political ideas of Mises and Rothbard in light of the foregoing, noting where they are compatible with and where they diverge from Aristotelian-Thomistic politics. Finally, I offer some take-home considerations showing how Aristotelian political principles can bring a fresh perspective on issues of concern to the Austrian community, namely, an opposition to the "welfare-warfare state." Keywords: Aristotle, metaphysics, political philosophy, austrian economicsMichel Accad (draccad@draccad.com), MD, is a physician in San Francisco. This essay aims to introduce the Austrian community to the metaphysical principles of political life first discovered by Aristotle and subsequently clarified by Thomas Aquinas. This introduction will hopefully provide the reader with an alternative framework of political philosophy which is radically different from the political liberalism of the last three hundred years yet compatible with the principles and methods on which the edifice of Austrian school economics is built. As a preamble, however, I wish to briefly highlight the points of commonality between Aristotle's general scientific approach and that taken by the Austrians in their economic theory. As Smith (1990) and Gordon (1994) have noted, there is a strong Aristotelian influence on the development of Austrian economics that goes back to Carl Menger and that has implicitly informed the thought of Ludwig von Mises and his followers, even if Mises himself was unaware of that influence. We can identify distinctly Aristotelian principles in the economic thought of the Austrian school. First is causal realism. The Austrians—if not explicitly, at least implicitly—seem to agree with Aristotle that there is a mind-independent reality, an extramental world accessible via the senses and intelligible to the human mind. For the Austrians, as for Aristotle, cause and effect relationships are real and discoverable through the proper use of reason. Like Aristotle, the Austrians trust in the general reliability of sense knowledge and in the conformity of reason to reality. Because of this, they have been able to elaborate an economic science in systematic fashion, starting from first principles. Such was the approach taken by Menger and later followed by Mises and Murray N. Rothbard in the establishment of Austrian economics. Second, having no qualms about interpreting human action as teleological, the Austrian school has separated itself from the mainstream of modern philosophy and science and has been criticized for being a throwback to Scholasticism. It is easy to see why: Mises's idea that humans act in order "to satisfy a felt uneasiness" brings to mind the Scholastic dictum that every agent acts for an end and, more generally, Aristotle's notion that humans are self-perfecting beings actualizing their active potencies. Teleological realism is a critically important Aristotelian principle and also a foundational concept in Austrian economics.1 Despite these points of commonality, there is an important difference between the general philosophical approach taken by Aristotle and the method of Austrian economics—at least as formalized by Mises. Mises insisted in sharply separating the study of human action and the physical sciences by the so-called methodological dualism (Mises 1998, 17). This separation makes perfect sense insofar as the physical sciences, as practiced in modern times, rest on mechanistic presuppositions which are seemingly incompatible with teleology. For Aristotle, however, such a methodological separation would seem unnecessary and counterproductive, as it uproots man from his greater cosmological context: a natural world which is also pervaded with teleology and governed by fundamental principles that also apply to human action. As we shall now see, it is in the domain of political philosophy that this divergence is most consequential. HUMAN REASON AND SOCIAL COOPERATIONA major difference between the Aristotelian or Scholastic world view, on the one hand, and the modern liberal world view, on the other, concerns the emphasis that modern philosophers typically place on man's power of reason. In the aftermath of the mind-body dualism introduced by René Descartes, post-Cartesian political philosophers have, by and large, considered an action to be a human action if it involves the exercise of man's rational capacities. Following Thomas Hobbes, they have tended to discount nonrational action as being merely animal and mechanistic. It is the will of man which is the prime consideration. Modern political theories have generally focused on the willful consent of the individual as a principle of cooperation in human society: a society is human, because its individual members have consented to living together in certain ways and for certain reasons. The diversity of modern political theories, then, stems from divergences of views about what it is that the individual is (or should be) consenting to and what the reasons are that inform his consent. For Aristotle, however, man is a unitary being. When Aristotle remarks that man is a rational animal, he does not emphasize man's rationality at the expense of his animality even though, of course, the power of reason is man's highest faculty and is unique to him. Human nature, for Aristotle, is at once animal and rational. So, while most modern political philosophers acknowledge that man is entirely dependent on social cooperation, man's dependence on others is, for Aristotle, part of his nature. This means that man's social character is as much a part of his animality as it is of his rationality. Like other social animals, man depends on the specialized work of other members of his species to satisfy his essential needs for food, shelter, safety, the care of the young, and the maintenance of the species. Therefore, man is dependent on the division of labor in much the same way that the bee is dependent on it. Human social cooperation per se need not, in Aristotle's view, invoke principles other than those at work in the animal kingdom. Where man's rationality comes into play, of course, is in regard to the particular character that the human society takes: it is because of man's power of speech, his ability to reason about means and ends, and his capacity to make moral judgments, that human societies acquire their unique structures which are fitting for the perfection of a rational animal. Still, it is not man's rationality that is the cause of his being a social being. For Aristotle, the utter dependence of man on social cooperation and on the division of labor means that in a formal sense, a society of men must be prior to the individual even if, in a material sense, the individual must be prior to society. There can be no individual man without a society, and there can be no society without individual men. The coincident and mutual causality between the two is in keeping with other Aristotelian metaphysical principles, such as the mutual and coincident causality of act and potency that explains being and becoming. Aristotle will not get distracted by mechanistic or evolutionary questions about how the world came to be that way. For some animal species, sociality is an unambiguous part of their nature. We do not ask ourselves: "How do individual ants come to form a colony?" The ant species is simply "colony forming." Likewise, we shouldn't bother asking ourselves how individual men and women come to form human societies. Man is a social animal. If the individual man is radically dependent on social cooperation and on the division of labor, then nature must somehow "supply" society along with man. The causal principle by which Aristotle explains such a cooperation will be clarified next. THE ARISTOTELIAN COMMON GOODIf man's reason is not the cause of social cooperation, what accounts for the existence of societies? As a causal realist, Aristotle will not settle for brute facts. The existence of societies must be explained, and their principles deduced through careful reasoning. Although even a modest review of Aristotelian metaphysics is clearly beyond the scope of this paper, I will attempt to introduce here some of the concepts that are relevant to political theory. The Nature of Things In the ancient Aristotelian-Scholastic cosmology—rejected by Descartes and the Enlightenment philosophers—each existing thing has a nature, an intrinsic principle of motion, incumbent upon a thing's essence. A cat behaves as a cat because of the cat's nature, and likewise a rosebush and a human being. Each is a living organism, and each behaves in a certain way in accordance with its essence. Even a stone is, by nature, inclined to move "to the center" of the universe, that is, the center of the earth.2 This view is to be contrasted with the atomistic world view—ancient or modern—whereby material beings are mechanical. Under that framework, movement comes not from within but is imparted by external forces of nature, which move parts in a mechanical way. Descartes famously believed that all animals are mere automatons whose purposeful movement is an illusion. He made an exception for man, whom he endowed with a separate soul that controls the purely mechanical body. This "ghost in the machine" view still pervades the popular imagination but also much of modern social and political philosophy, at least to the extent mentioned earlier: if human nature is to be considered, it is considered only in so far as it consists of willful actions. The modern political philosopher has generally remained agnostic or ambivalent about how man's embodied rationality relates to the realm of causes and effects, which rule the rest of the natural world. And, after Charles Darwin, he may even deny that there is such a thing as a human nature, viewing man's actions as simply the mechanical products of a mindless historical process of evolution. The Good of Things If we accept the ancient realist's position that natural things are endowed with their own intrinsic nature and that such a nature is a principle of motion, causing the individual to act in certain ways, Aristotle points out that the actions of living things are intelligible precisely because they are directed toward recognizable ends. As we noted earlier, the dictum is: every agent acts for an end. The rosebush digs roots for the end of fetching water and nutrients. It develops leaves for the end of catching sunlight. The cat snuggles in the blanket for the end of getting warm. In the Aristotelian world view, teleology pervades the natural world and is not confined to the conscious willfulness of man. Focusing our attention on that which the agent pursues, we come to our concept of interest: the good. A good is what elicits an inclination or a desire in a subject. If a subject acts upon the inclination elicited by a good, then that good specifies the end, or final cause, of the action, i.e., "that for the sake of which" the action is done. For a rosebush, water and minerals in the soil are goods, and the sunlight in the surrounding space is a good: the rosebush digs roots for the sake of obtaining water and minerals, and it develops green leaves for the sake of catching the surrounding sunlight. For a cat, a serving of cat food, a blanket in winter, and catnip sprinkled on a scratching pad are all goods. The cat will move toward the bowl for the sake of the food, snuggle in the blanket for the sake of its warmth, and claw at the catnip-sprinkled scratching pad for the sake of the enjoyment it provides. For man, a glass of wine with dinner, an afternoon at the sports arena, a university education, are goods. All of these goods elicit an inclination in their subject, which may be followed by an action toward the good, the end of the action. In the Aristotelian perspective, the goodness of a good resides in the good itself, i.e., in reality. In other words, a good is not good by virtue of a subject determining it to be good but is good in itself. Again, Aristotle comes to that conclusion by observing the similarities of action between natural beings. Clearly, the water is not good for the rosebush because the rosebush deems it to be so. The rosebush is obviously mindless. Likewise, an education is not good for Lisa by virtue of Lisa determining it to be so, but it is desired by Lisa because she apprehends it and judges it to be good in itself. Of course, Lisa could be mistaken and judge as good things that are not. Still, the goodness of an object is in the object itself and is not determined by the mind of the subject.3 Goods need not be material substances. As mentioned, an education is a good, health is a good, friendship is a good, etc. But, to repeat, a good considered in terms of the inclination it elicits in a subject has the character of an end, or final cause, and is a metaphysical principle of an action, i.e., one not reducible to the material aspects of reality. Singular Goods and Common Goods4 From the examples we have listed above, we can see that certain goods are proper to each nature. Catnip is a good proper to cats but not to snakes. Likewise, a university education is a proper good for humans and not for cats. Each nature, each natural kind, responds, desires, has inclinations for goods that are proper to its species. Among proper goods, we must now distinguish singular goods from common goods. A singular good is a good that extends its goodness to only one individual member of a species. A common good, on the other hand, extends its goodness to many members of the species at once, and it is shared at once among many without exhausting itself. The inexhaustible extension to many is what philosophically defines the term "common." Of the examples given above, the following are singular goods: the water in the soil is a singular good for the rosebush nearby. The catnip on the scratching pad and the blanket on the bed are singular goods for the household cat. The health that I desire for myself is my singular good. If I desire health for you, then I vicariously desire a singular good for you. These singular goods extend their goodness to only one individual at a time. Now, it is true that many of these goods may be shared by more than one individual, and perhaps even by many individuals: the water in the soil can be shared by many rosebushes; the blanket could be shared by the cat and the owner, a chocolate cake can be shared among two, three, or twelve people. Still, none of these are common goods, properly speaking, because when they extend their goodness to many, their goodness is diminished. They exhaust themselves. They are not true common goods but are instead aggregates of singular goods. A common good—by definition—is a good that extends itself to a community without exhausting itself. It is what causes a community to be a community. It is that which inclines individuals to act as a part of a community and not simply as a multiplicity of individuals. As Aristotle says in the opening line of the Politics, "Every state is a community, and every community is established with a view to some [common] good." The concept of a common good is easy to grasp when it pertains to voluntary communities: the game of soccer is the common good of the Liverpool Football Club; the production and sale of bricks is the common good of the ACME Brick Company, and the teaching and dissemination of Austrian economics is the common good of the Mises Institute. It is for the sake of the game of soccer that the Liverpool FC team members are united as a team, for the sake of making and selling bricks that the owners and employees of ACME are united as a company, and for the sake of disseminating a specific economic theory that the students, faculty, and administrators of the Mises Institute are united as an institute. The Political Common Good In the examples of voluntary association just given, the concrete common goods that bring together the employees of the brick company, the members of the soccer team, and the students and faculty of the educational institution are self-evident and of no great philosophical interest. Precisely because the association is voluntary, the common good is apprehended by the mind of men and can be easily defined or articulated in more or less concrete terms: "making bricks," "playing soccer," "disseminating Austrian economics." In contrast, the common good of their political community5 (which, as we have seen, is not established on a voluntary basis, but is formed by human nature) is not a concrete good that can be specifically described. Rather, the political common good is inferred from the existence of the political community. It is the metaphysical principle that explains the existence of the political community—if one wishes to remain faithful to the principles of causal realism. The political common good is inferred as follows: we observe that human beings live in political communities—tribes, cities, nations—by nature (as shown in the first section above). Since only individuals act, and since each agent acts for an end, if we observe individuals acting in political communities, we infer that a good must be present to incline them to act thus. Otherwise, the community or the acts of living communally would be unintelligible and the principles of causal realism violated. That good is the principle and cause of a community being a community. It is the political common good, as understood by Aristotle, by Aquinas, and by medieval and contemporary philosophers who follow the principles of causal realism outlined by Aristotle and Aquinas.6 The Primacy of the Common Good over the Singular Good We should note that the political common good is necessarily "greater" than the singular good: it is not only a good for each individual, but it is a good that inexhaustibly communicates itself to all individuals of the political community. It is a greater good because it exerts a greater effect. De Koninck (1943) explains the greater effect of the common good as follows: The common good is greater not because it includes the singular good of all the singulars; in that case it would not have the unity of the common good which comes from a certain kind of universality in the latter, but would merely be a collection, and only materially better than the singular good. The common good is better for each of the particulars which participate in it, insofar as it is communicable to the other particulars; communicability is the very reason for its perfection…. That does not mean that the others are the reason for the love which the common good itself merits; on the contrary, in this formal relationship it is the others which are lovable insofar as they are able to participate in this common good. The greater effect of the common good explains why individuals can be seen to spontaneously give up their own singular goods—and even their lives—for the promotion or defense of the common good, such as the soldier who willingly enrolls in the armed forces to fight an enemy who he believes threatens his beloved country. The sacrifice of the individual for the community can only be explained if the common good elicits a greater inclination toward it as compared to the singular good.7 At the same time, the greater love for the common good does not subjugate the individual. In the view of Aristotle and of the Scholastics, man's self-perfecting pursuit of goods necessarily points to an ultimate good: his happiness. All goods are, in a sense, instrumental and ordered to the pursuit of that ultimate good. As a social animal who depends on the division of labor, man's pursuit of happiness proceeds from the pursuit of singular goods but also from the desire for, and pursuit of, the greater common good. Both the singular goods and the common good order him to his ultimate happiness and the two are not in conflict with one another. Contrast with the Modern Understanding of the Common Good The foregoing Aristotelian understanding of the common good as a teleological principle of social life stands in sharp contrast to the modern understanding of the term. In modern political philosophy, the concept of the common good refers either to aggregates of singular goods or to concrete shared interests not unlike the voluntary common good of a business enterprise. This is readily seen in a recent entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that defines the common good as "facilities … that the members of a community provide to all members in order to fulfill a relational obligation they all have to care for certain interests that they have in common" (emphasis mine).8 The examples of facilities given include the road systems, public parks, police protection, courts, public schools, cultural institutions, civil liberties, clean air, and national defense. These are clearly concrete goods (e.g., the roads) or specific interests (e.g., the right to free expression), in keeping with the idea that human political societies are formed through willful, rational cooperation. In such a framework of understanding, there is no distinction in kind between the political association and the various examples of private associations we mentioned earlier, such as the soccer team, the firm, or the educational institution. The distinction is merely one of scope, wherein the political society is a voluntary association that concerns all members of the community. Seeing the common good as essentially an aggregate of singular goods, the modern political philosopher since Hobbes sees an inherent conflict in the social life of man: the common good compels the individual to give up something he would otherwise pursue. It places limits on the individual's liberty and, therefore, is a paradoxical good that has the character of a necessary evil rather than a true good that orients the individual toward his flourishing. The political philosopher's goal, then is to come up with rules of political life that minimize that conflict. No Common Good According to Mises and Rothbard? Before closing this section, we should note that the concept of the common good is conspicuously absent in the work of Mises and Rothbard. It does not figure in the indices of Mises's treatises that address political questions, such as Human Action, Liberalism, or Socialism, nor does it receive any attention in the works of political theory of Murray Rothbard. This lack of attention likely stems from the fact that economic theory may dispute the value of the common good in its modern conception. If the common good is a "set of facilities" that are shared among many and, therefore, nothing more than an aggregate of singular goods, there is no need to give it any special consideration. Its optimal distribution will be achieved by normal market processes and exchanges. Furthermore, if the common good is a set of concrete "shared interests," the subjective theory of value would prescribe that people be allowed to sort themselves into communities of shared beliefs and values. Government intervention in the name of the common good is superfluous or worse. Still, the concerns of Rothbard and Mises in political theory are similar to those of Hobbes and of most modern political philosophers: the minimization of conflict. Rothbard believed conflict would be minimized by the absence of government while Mises believed it could only be achieved under the coercive action of the state.9 MANY POLITICAL COMMUNITIES, MANY COMMON GOODSHaving established that the political community exists by virtue of a political common good, and having distinguished the Aristotelian understanding of that common good from the modern liberal perspective on it, we now reflect on a fact of observation: the human race exists as a diversity of distinct political communities, not a single one. The human race is not ordered to a universal political common good. Rather, a diversity of coexisting political communities populates the world, each ordered to its own common good. What accounts for the diversity of political common goods in human life? Here again, Aristotle would begin by looking to the animal world for the answer: there is one species of black ants but many black ant colonies. What accounts for this multiplicity? When an ant colony outgrows its anthill or when conditions are adverse, one or more new queens are produced, and a part of the colony may either swarm or "bud" away to find a more suitable habitat. If successful, a new colony is formed. Similar phenomena occur among bees and among other "eusocial" animals, such as wasps, certain species of mole rats, and certain crustaceans. Whatever the mechanism of multiplication may be, the lesson to be drawn is that societies of animals—of which human societies are a type10—naturally emerge from preexisting societies depending on territorial considerations which regulate the size of the community to optimize its flourishing and self-sufficiency.11 Social cooperation is cooperation in a certain place at a certain time. The material world is not immediately sustaining but its raw resources must be worked and developed through the division of labor. For ants as for men, the transformation of those resources into "capital goods" necessarily confines the division of labor to a given territory. Given the natural propensity of living species to grow in size and number, the limitations imposed on a given community by a given territory is one important mechanism by which communities divide from one another, leading to a multiplication and diversity of populations segregated according to territorial considerations: at this point in time and under these current conditions, this ant colony thrives on this anthill, and that ant colony on that one; this human tribe lives in these pastures, and that human community dwells in that city on that riverbank. Because human societies are societies of rational animals who possess creative imagination, the multiplication of human societies also produces a great diversification in the mode or manner of existence over time. What distinguishes one ant colony from another is simply its location, size, and whatever accidental features are dictated by the habitat. Human societies, on the other hand, are further diversified in their language, culture, political organization, moral norms, religions, etc. The Political Common Good Is Prior to the Language, Culture, Religion, and Political Organization of a Political Community Based on the metaphysical considerations given earlier in this essay, it should be apparent that the political common good must be ontologically prior to the language, culture, religion, and political organization of a community, even if language, culture, religion, or political ideology may temporally preexist the formation of the community. Linguistic, religious, cultural, or ideological affinity can explain the distinctive characteristics of a political community, but they cannot explain its being a political community as such. Of course, shared cultural values, shared religion, and a shared language can be the impetus for forming a new political community in a new (and hopefully unclaimed) territory, or may be criteria by which a community chooses to include certain members and exclude others. But culture, religion, and language cannot be the reason a community is an actual political community. If the "Catalan people" choose to secede from Spain and succeed in living together as a Catalan nation, their political common good will be distinct from the Catalan language and culture. To show this, consider that, for example, the Catalan language could, over time, cease to be spoken among the Catalan people without the integrity of the community suffering a loss. Also, any Catalan-speaking person may choose to leave the Catalan nation or to not join it to begin with. The Catalan language itself cannot be the cause of being of the Catalan nation. Likewise, a community's political organization and its dominant ideology cannot be the cause of its being a political community. The political community of Russia was organized as a monarchy for centuries but abruptly became a Communist nation in 1917 and, equally abruptly, changed into a constitutional democracy in 1991. Despite the dramatic changes in political organization, the same nation remained through the change. That sameness implies a sameness in the political common good that orders the Russian nation. That the political common good can persist despite dramatic changes in language or in religious, cultural, or political organization shows that the political common good is "prior" to all these attributes of a political community. To be clear, however, this priority is not a priority in time, but an ontological priority. Common goods do not exist in themselves, "out there in the world," waiting to be pursued by a people. A common good is a metaphysical principle that emerges in a historical context, under specific conditions, when a community succeeds in becoming self-sufficient. Nevertheless, the common good is a real teleological principle, distinct from its material principles, from its people, and from the cultural and ideological attributes that it brings to a community. It is not Clovis, his Frankish followers, their beliefs, and the territory they occupied that caused France to be a nation. But it is Clovis, his Frankish followers, their beliefs, and the territory they occupied that made the nation that emerged become "France" and not another nation. The Necessity of a Political Authority Because political communities are diverse, the question of how to distinguish a member of the community from an outsider arises. That distinction, of course, is essential to preserve the integrity of any given political community. In animal societies, the distinction is made on a strictly material basis and, therefore, can be entirely decentralized. For example, an intruder ant which threatens the integrity of a colony may be detected based on a pheromone and be immediately attacked by any member of the colony, even one not specifically functioning as a guardian. The remarkably versatile life of ants is astonishingly decentralized with respect to authority, causing Aristotle to point out that each ant is "its own ruler." In human political communities, in contrast, information about the membership of a given human being cannot be communicated by material factors alone. Even though one ordinarily becomes a member of a political community by birth, no political community is established on a strict genetic or biological basis. Even the most primitive tribes are apt to include outsiders, for example, by marriage. Besides, when communities are large enough, there may not be any practical way for one person to know the genealogy of another. To belong to a human political community obviously involves a degree of personal choice: I may choose to relinquish my membership in the American political community to become, say, Mexican. Making the choice effective, however, is clearly not up to me. I am effectively a Mexican only once I am deemed to be so by the Mexican community as a whole. Otherwise, disagreement among Mexicans on my status would threaten the integrity of the political community. But agreement among Mexicans cannot possibly come about through their individual free choices. Such unanimity would be highly unlikely or highly precarious. Rather, the need for establishing my status as a Mexican for Mexico as a whole necessitates an authority to ultimately decide and thereby communicate for all Mexicans whether or not I belong to their political community. The fundamental need for all who engage in communal life to be informed—implicitly or explicitly—of the "membership status" of any given individual justifies the existence of a political authority to adjudicate this matter when the situation demands it. In primitive tribes, that authority may be confined to a single ruler or a council of individuals. In more developed societies, it is most often seen to take the form of an institution: the state. But note that this justification for a political authority leads us to conceive of its primary function in a very specific way: the political authority is not primarily the person or institution holding "a territorial monopoly on the use of violence" for the purpose of achieving peace and security—the common understanding of the state in modern political theory. Rather, the political authority revealed to be necessary by Aristotelian metaphysical principles is primarily the person or institution to whose judgment the community must necessarily submit in matters regarding the ultimate identification of individuals as members of the community or as outsiders. GRECO-AUSTRIAN CONFLICT?Since I began this essay with remarks on the Aristotelian roots of Austrian economics, I will now briefly comment on the political philosophy of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard in light of the preceding considerations. To be clear, the following comments cannot amount to a nuanced analysis of either man's political thought. I will simply contrast a few of their salient ideas to those of Aristotle. Both men, it appears, espoused a view of the nation as a natural community whose explanation transcends atomistic and mechanistic principles and does not come into being by any social contract. According to Salerno (2019, 8), Mises believed that "the nation has a fundamental and relatively permanent being independent of the transient state (or states) which may govern it at any given time," causing him to view the nation as "an organic entity." Likewise, Salerno (2019, 9) draws attention to the following comment in Rothbard (1994): Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange. They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. He is generally born into a "country." He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area. While those comments by Mises and Rothbard suggest compatibility with Aristotelian political principles, there are also striking dissimilarities. Rothbard, for example, grounded much of his political ethics in John Locke's theory of property. With its emphasis on the importance of "self-ownership," that theory borrows heavily from post-Cartesian ideas in which the willful consent of man is central. For example, in his Anatomy of the State, Rothbard declared: Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them … into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources … and to exchange these products for products created by others. (2009, 13, emphasis mine) That passage, in contrast to the previous one, would place Rothbard in the modern liberal tradition of considering political communities as formed through the willful actions of individual human beings. Mises's views in regard to the genesis of human societies are also somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, he emphatically rejects the Lockean idea of the isolated individual. As Salerno (1990) has remarked, the isolated human being is for Mises either fictional or metaphorical: "[M]an as man is necessarily a social animal. Some sort of social cooperation is an essential characteristic of his nature" (1985, 252). At the same time, Mises rejects outright any metaphysical explanation for the political community and sees no explanation for it outside of the action of individuals: Individual man is born into a socially organized environment. In this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is—logically or historically—antecedent to the individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty or nonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society's autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass error. (1998, 143, emphasis mine) Instead, Mises proposes evolutionary explanations for the origins of political communities in which human reason takes pride of place, and he rejects any political theory that adopts the animal society as an explanatory model: The principle of the division of labor is one of the great basic principles of cosmic becoming and evolutionary change. The biologists were right in borrowing the concept of the division of labor from social philosophy and in adapting it to their field of investigation. There is division of labor between the various parts of any living organism. There are, furthermore, organic entities composed of collaborating animal individuals; it is customary to call metaphorically such aggregations of the ants and bees "animal societies." But one must never forget that the characteristic feature of human society is purposeful cooperation; society is an outcome of human action, i.e., of a conscious aiming at the attainment of ends. No such element is present, as far as we can ascertain, in the processes which have resulted in the emergence of the structure-function systems of plant and animal bodies and in the operation of the societies of ants, bees, and hornets. Human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. It is the outcome of a purposeful utilization of a universal law determining cosmic becoming, viz., the higher productivity of the division of labor. (1998, 144–45, emphasis mine) These comments place Mises in opposition to Aristotle who, as we mentioned earlier, saw teleology as pervading the entire natural world and considered the analogy between societies of men and societies of bees to be real and proportionate, rather than imperfect or metaphorical. Mises, in contrast, sees teleology only in the willful consciousness of man: "Reason and experience show us two separate realms: the external world of physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena and the internal world of thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action" (1998, 18). What's more, Mises seems to have rejected metaphysics wholesale, stating in Human Action that: "In the present state of our knowledge, the fundamental statements of positivism, monism, and panphysicalism are mere metaphysical postulates devoid of any scientific foundation" (1998, 17–18). But the lack of a specific reference to Aristotelian metaphysics in that statement, however, is noteworthy. To what extent was Mises familiar with Aristotelian first principles? In the one passage of Human Action that mentions Aristotle, Mises criticizes the ancient philosopher for believing that value inhered in the good: An inveterate fallacy asserted that things and services exchanged are of equal value. Value was considered as objective, as an intrinsic quality inherent in things and not merely as the expression of various people's eagerness to acquire them. People, it was assumed first established the magnitude of value proper to goods and services by an act of measurement and then proceeded to barter them against quantities of goods and services of the same amount of value. This fallacy frustrated Aristotle's approach to economic problems and, for almost two thousand years, the reasoning of all those for whom Aristotle's opinions were authoritative. (Mises 1998, 204, emphasis mine) Mises may have correctly criticized Aristotle's primitive economics, but we should highlight the fact that the Aristotelian objective reality of metaphysical goodness does not entail that valuation itself should be objective. Clarifying that point is not simply of arcane interest. Consider the positivist criticism of Austrian economics according to which a statement such as "an actor will always choose his most valued end" is a definitional statement, or a tautology. That criticism may be valid if the goodness of a thing is entirely subjective and determined by the actor. If the goodness of a thing does not pertain to the thing itself, to its extramental reality, but is only a psychological determination made by the choosing actor, then the positivists would be correct: "most valued" would simply mean what the acting person chooses. If such is the foundation of Austrian economics, it could not add new knowledge about the world. By locating the goodness of a thing in the thing itself, Aristotelian metaphysics refutes the charge of tautology: the actor sees various goods in the world, subjectively ranks them at any moment in time, and chooses means to pursue the most valued ends at that particular time and place. The key element is to recognize that goodness is in the things themselves. The valuation, then, reveals the subjective, personal preference of the actor for one good over another. The revelatory character of the action allows the statement "an actor will always choose his most valued end" to be the premise for a deductive economic theory, and economics need not be reduced to identifying relationships between actors and goods solely by empirical, i.e., statistical, inference. As Gordon (1994), Hoppe (2007), and others have noted, there is a strong Kantian influence on Mises, evident in his frequent use of Kantian terminology. His conceiving of the "external world of physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena" as a separate realm from the "internal world of thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action" raises a question about his stance on realism. But too strong a subjectivist view of the goodness of things could jeopardize the causal-realist claims of Austrian economics. According to Hoppe (2007, 19), however, that need not be so: by adding to Kantian philosophy the a priori category of human action, Mises built a "bridge to reality" and allowed Austrian economics to escape from the Kantian idealism into which it might otherwise find itself. If that is the case, then Mises may not have been as far from Aristotle as he might have thought, especially since it is difficult to conceive of human action independently of sense knowledge.12 SUMMARY AND TAKE-HOME CONSIDERATIONSTo summarize this introduction to Aristotelian principles of political life, we began by noting that human political communities exist not by the will of man, or by his power of reason, but by his nature as a social animal: man essentially depends on others and on the division of labor, and therefore social life is as natural to him as it is to bees and ants. Aristotelian causal realism appeals to a plurality of causes to adequately explain the natural world: material, formal, efficient, and final (teleological). As part of the natural world, man is a teleological being whose actions are ordered toward ends. The teleological cause that orders the communal life of man is the political common good. The understanding of the common good as a metaphysical principle with the character of a final cause is in stark contrast with the contemporary conception of the common good as an aggregate stock of "facilities" or as "shared interests." The mechanistic assumptions that underlie the modern concept of the common good are unrealistic and fail to provide a causal explanation for the communal behavior of man. Human political communities, as well as animal societies, are diversified: there is not one universal ant colony, nor is there one universal human society. The diversity of political communities implies that the division of labor and economic exchanges between members of a community are privileged as compared to the division of labor and economic exchanges that could occur between communities. This privileging implies the need for a mechanism to distinguish members of one community from others. In human societies, this mechanism involves rational judgment and is an operation of individuals or institutions: the political authority. In this essay we have seen that Aristotelian teleological realism, which forms the foundation of Austrian economics, can also form the foundation of a true political science. The basic political principles summarized in the preceding pages are not prescriptive in and of themselves but may be prescriptive insofar as we understand real principles to be "laws of nature" that must be respected or else disregarded at great peril. Political life—life in society—is not an end but a means by which individual human beings flourish and attain their happiness. The better we understand and respect the principles of political life, the better the chance of finding happiness. By rejecting the Lockean homesteading principle and by providing a justification for a formal political authority, the political realism of Aristotle may disappoint some members of the Austrian community who wish to pursue the ideals of anarcho-capitalism and the project of a purely voluntary society. I hope the Aristotelian principles will not be dismissed simply because they lead to a conclusion that is not desired. At the same time, the justification for the state offered by Aristotelian metaphysics need not lead one to be resigned to coexistence with an aggressor, as was Mises's view,13 so long as we conceive of aggression (and violence) in its Aristotelian sense, as going against the nature and the good of things. Understood properly, the State's only purpose should be the promotion of the common good of its community, a good that is naturally desired by all its members. It is only when the state deviates from this function—as it is apt to do when the community adopts a faulty understanding of the common good—that it is liable to act as an aggressor. Quoting Aquinas, De Koninck (1997, 36) highlights the importance of distinguishing the common good from the singular good to avoid tyranny: [O]ne can love the common good in two ways. One can love it to possess it, and one can love it for its conservation and its diffusion. In effect, one can say: I prefer the common good because its possession is for me a greater good. But this is not a love of the common good as common good. It is a love which identifies the common good with the good of the singular person considered as such. "To love the good of a city in order to appropriate it and possess it for oneself is not what the good political man does; for thus it is that the tyrant, too, loves the good of the city, in order to dominate it, which is to love oneself more than the city; in effect it is for himself that the tyrant desires this good, and not for the city." The appropriation of the common good for one's own possession brings to mind Rothbard's depiction of the state as "a gang of thieves writ large." The political metaphysics sketched in this essay can also provide a principled opposition to the "warfare-welfare state." First, political common goods are real principles, and political communities are natural orders that must be respected precisely because they are real. Therefore, imperialism and universalism are necessarily violations of those natural orders. Second, as we have seen, the political common good is not a treasury of singular goods to be taken from some and doled out to others under specious pretexts or based on a poorly conceived notion of social justice. With a realist's understanding of the common good, the disastrous social policies adopted by all liberal democracies over the last two centuries would not have been enacted. As De Koninck puts it (again quoting Aquinas): A society constituted by persons who love their private good above the common good, or who identify the common good with the private good, is a society not of free men, but of tyrants—"and thus the entire people becomes like one tyrant"—who lead each other by force, in which the ultimate head is no one other than the most clever and strong among the tyrants, the subjects being merely frustrated tyrants. The political common good is a metaphysical principle that ultimately serves the happiness of individual man. Like all principles of nature, it must be pondered carefully. Clearly, this essay could only tangentially introduce the reader to Aristotelian metaphysics. Those unfamiliar with it will undoubtedly question many of the points we have made in passing: In what way does Aristotelianism provide an alternative to both Cartesian mind-body dualism and materialistic monism? What are the exact principles of causal realism, and how does Aristotle justify them as self-evident? What are the reasoning steps that allow the philosopher to proceed from first principles to a coherent anthropology? Those questions are of utmost importance, and I hope that this essay will spur interest in the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas. The philosophical foundations they have provided can serve the gamut of scientific inquiry about man, from the physical sciences to the social sciences, acknowledging a fact that should be obvious to all: man is at once a rational being and a physical being. Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and present-day contributors to Austrian economics have built a wonderful edifice of knowledge about the rules that govern the exchange of singular goods in society: economic science in the Austrian tradition. Perhaps it could be bolstered by being placed on a deeper anthropological foundation, one that more completely considers man in all his dimensions—physical, animal, rational, and political.
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| The Theory of the Political Spectrum Posted: 26 May 2021 10:15 AM PDT ABSTRACT: This article introduces a new approach to the problem of political spectrum polarization. Political science has introduced a multitude of spectrograms based on different factors, dimensions, axes, and cardinal points. Most often the graphics do not complement each other, and it seems that each of them describes a completely different reality. There was an urgent need to conduct an objective analysis of political philosophies and find the factors that influence political spectrum polarization. An unbiased rubric to evaluate political doctrines would enable a more accurate understanding of political ideologies. To this end, thirteen political doctrines were analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis, which introduced objectivity to the study due to its use of a formalized mathematical apparatus of the theory of sets. It was found that spectrum polarization depends on three conditions: attitudes toward private property, individual freedom, and wealth redistribution. As the factors that influence political spectrum polarization were firmly determined, it became possible to build a spectrogram unambiguously.] Keywords: wealth redistribution, private property, economic freedom, socialism, fascism, libertarianism, marxism, political spectrum, political philosophy, qualitative comparative analysisAllen Gindler (agindler@cyberrex.com) is a scholar from the former USSR specializing in political economy, econometrics, and industrial engineering. He taught economic cybernetics, standard data systems, and computer-aided work design in the Khmelnytskyi National University, Ukraine. He is currently a private consultant to IT industry on database administration and cryptography. In the course of evolution, people have formulated many philosophical ideas concerning the socioeconomic structure of society. Some of these ideas became a reality, while others remained purely imaginary constructs. All real and abstract socioeconomic ideas constitute the political spectrum. Humans have habitually tried to classify and visualize political variety in order to make sense of its structure and find a proper place for their world views. Thus, the political spectrum is most often understood as a graphic representation of various politico-philosophical positions on diverse issues that are relevant to a given society in a certain period of time. This definition implies that the political spectrum is not only historical but multidimensional. The specific time frame is extremely important, as some issues that are relevant now were not considered in the past. Different eras produce different social issues, and the weight of these issues changes accordingly. For example, the legalization of marijuana or same-sex marriage was not a problem that worried society a century ago. Some questions have stood the test of time; they were prominent in the past and they are relevant now. Such eternal questions include concerns about individual freedom and attitudes toward property, justice, and civil rights, to name a few. Humankind has developed a practice of solving issues comprehensively by creating political philosophies or ideologies that suggest solutions to the main issues in a packaged form. People can choose from among bundled solutions by clinging to this or that ideology. These ideologies suggest different ways of solving problems facing society. The more backward a society, the fewer questions are tackled through political doctrine. There is also interconnection between issues within a political ideology: the solution to some problems depends on the solution to others. Every ideology must have its own answer to the questions. Political doctrine cannot be silent on actual societal problems; otherwise, it will be ignored by people. Historians have traced the most common and long-standing "left-right" political spectra to seating arrangements in the French Parliament after the revolution (1789–99). As the story goes, the aristocracy sat on the privileged seats at the right; their agenda was to preserve an existing state of affairs. Commoners occupied the left wing; they were for laissez-faire commerce and civil liberties (Knapp and Wright 2001). Since then, agents of the status quo have been associated with the right wing and representatives of change have been linked to the left wing. Therefore, in people's perceptions, leftist ideologies are actively seeking modifications to the existing socioeconomic formation, while the right-wingers are proponents and keepers of the existing order. THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM DYNAMICSAt the time of the French Revolution, when the original left-right political spectrum was born, French society had a straightforward structure composed of the aristocracy, the clergy, and commoners. A political struggle was staged between the nobility on one side and everybody else on the other. At that time, the political spectrum exhibited a pronounced dichotomy. It was the epoch of feudalism's swan song, in which Western European countries battled with outdated feudalism. Ultimately, feudal aristocracy lost to capitalism. Capitalism was a left-wing agent of change, and feudalism represented the right-wing preservation of the status quo. Indeed, the nobility and clergy identified commoners as radical leftists. The latter sought to restrict the nobles' power, privileges, and wealth. After the victory of the bourgeois democratic revolutions in the overwhelming majority of European countries, from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, the political situation changed. During capitalism's advance, the political spectrum developed in two distinct ways based on two events. The first event was a switch of the political spectrum's polarization. Using the terminology of the one-dimensional political spectrum introduced by the French, the former left became the Right and vice versa. Absolutism was defeated and joined the ranks of outdated ideologies. The free market ideology began to take the right-wing position, because its supporters were committed to maintaining the new status quo. It should be noted that the destruction of the capitalist democratic state by the Bolsheviks, Fascists, and Nazis all led to a switch in the polarization of the political spectrum in their respective regions. However, under totalitarian regimes, this change was camouflaged by the collapse of legal political activity, which was expressed as a ban on dissent. Based on the foregoing, it is tempting to originate a common sociopolitical law that states: the socioeconomic changes in society result in a switch in the polarization of the political spectrum. The most significant achievements of the democratic revolutions were guaranteed civil rights, political freedom, and economic freedom. These resulted in a quantum leap in all aspects of human activities. Those involved with science, technology, architecture, literature, and art reached unprecedented achievements. Society became more developed, knowledgeable, and heterogeneous, producing a vast amount of different politico-philosophical ideas. Therefore, the second event after the democratic revolutions was a broadening of the political spectrum. This expansion occurred only during the development of capitalism and democratic institutions. No other political orders have resulted in anything similar in the entire history of mankind. When radical changes are proposed, the political spectrum is shifted to the left, and ideological struggles ensue. When this occurs, the political spectrum widens, because the Right, as status quo, is in principle static and exhibits almost no movement. The Right remained fixed in place until it abandoned its hold by losing the political struggle. The capitalist democratic system was defeated by various currents of socialism in some countries during the twentieth century. The vast majority of the former Communist bloc of Eastern Europe embraced capitalism once again several decades later after their defeat in the Cold War. Regardless of an imaginary or real switch in the polarization of the political spectrum, the modern political spectrum in question is a progeny of capitalism. No other political system has made possible the coexistence of a great variety of different sociopolitical philosophies, currents, and movements. Ironically, the majority of these philosophies have been trying to dissolve capitalism to varying degrees. Only right-wing ideologies are trying to conserve the gains of the democratic bourgeoisie revolution: the free market, civil rights, and the supremacy of law. FINDING OBJECTIVITYA political spectrum is a system of qualitative comparisons of different political philosophies. Humans try to grasp the main characteristics of political ideologies and sort them by importance, relevance, and usefulness for an individual and society as a whole. The political spectrum is not a natural phenomenon taking place in the physical world but rather a product of human cognitive abilities. It is a subjective perception and valuation of the variety of political thoughts that are generated within society. People tend to associate themselves with a particular ideology that suits their world view and to reject ones that do not fit their mentality. At present, the political spectrum has become broader and more heterogeneous, since freedom has spawned many different political ideas. People became politically savvy and wise in all the vicissitudes of politics. Therefore, the conditions that determine the classification and ranking of political doctrines along a political spectrum have become rather intricate. Moreover, these conditions that differentiate political ideologies have been obscured by political necessities, propaganda and counterpropaganda, human emotions, and historical revisionism. Whatever arguments one side of the political spectrum brings, the other side refutes with ease. Then, the former rebuffs the latter, and this goes on forever. Thus, it is necessary to present a method that examines the political discourse with neutrality and objectivity. It is essential to find traits that will unambiguously sort ideologies along a political spectrum. What does it mean to belong to the leftist movement? What conditions lead to a particular rightist ideology? What are the mechanisms and factors responsible for the classifications and rankings of political ideas? Take Italian fascism, for example. Neither the Left nor the Right wants to claim ownership of fascism. There is no consensus among political scientists, sociologists, and economists on the placement of fascism on a political spectrum. Leftists have been so vigorously fighting off fascism that they thrust it to the ultraright position, to the right of classical liberalism. The Right has considered fascism as phenomena of the Left, foremost from the foundational principle that there is nothing to the right of liberal capitalism in a capitalistic society. The founder of fascism proclaimed that fascism superseded both capitalism and Marxian socialism and positioned it neither on the left nor on the right. It was supposed to be an ideology that transcended the left-right paradigm. The phenomenon of fascism was difficult to grasp, as it contained different elements from both left- and right-wing doctrines. Moreover, the analysis of the problem with fascism has been subject to ideological bias and emotional predisposition. Placing fascism in a specific position on the political spectrum has depended on political correctness and propaganda, not on scientific and objective efforts. Many visualizations of the political spectrum could not put fascism in its historical and ideological place, which arguably invalidates them. Moreover, scholars have not found agreement on which principal factors influence the placement of a particular ideology along the political spectrum, whether the political spectrum is unidimensional or multidimensional. Scientists have ignored the phenomenon of the switching polarization of the spectrum and the importance of a specific frame of reference when building it. The twentieth-century one-dimensional spectrum has communism on the left and fascism and Nazism on the right along with ideologies that support a free market economy. Left-wing academia still adheres to this graphic representation of the political spectrum. However, the positioning of communism and fascism with Nazism on diametrically opposite poles neglects totalitarianism as a critical commonality between all three regimes. In order to bring fascism and communism closer, the linear spectrum was curved to form a circle, as described by McGann (1967.) In the circular spectrum, communism and fascism occupied adjacent positions, correspondingly to the left and the right of the vertical diameter. "Democracy" was positioned on the other side of the circle. McGann criticized the "circular theory." He pointed out that there is no room in the model for another uncomfortable player in building a spectrum—anarchism—and proposed a modified linear model instead. His model classified political ideology according to the degree of state control and has two cardinal points: anarchy, with 0 percent government regulation, and totalitarianism, with 100 percent state control. "Democracy" falls somewhere in between. Bryson and McDill (1968) offered a bidimensional model of the political spectrum in which the vertical axis represents the degree of governmental control (statism versus anarchy) and the horizontal axis represents the degree of egalitarianism favored (left versus right). In the same issue of Rampart Journal, Hall (1968) suggested the LFE (lopsided figure eight) theory of the political spectrum. Hall combined the bidirectional spectrum with some circular features. On the x axis, there is "respect for private property," while the y axis denotes "political regulation." The author claimed that his approach combined the best of the circular and linear theories. However, even a glance at the chart would reveal some inconsistencies in the placement of some political doctrines. For example, "collectivist anarchists" are placed on a point with a fairly high degree of "respect for private property," which is not correct. David Nolan, the founding member of the US Libertarian party, presented his chart in 1971, which depicted different political ideologies along two axes: "Economic Freedom" and "Personal Freedom." His approach seems to be the most promising; however, the question of properly placing fascism and anarchism on the graph remains open for discussion. People still want a definite answer: Which ideology belongs to the Left and what ideology belongs to the Right? Scholars have suggested a variety of political spectrum graphs employing different geometries, dimensions, axes, and cardinal points. However, the controversy surrounding the political spectrum has not subsided. In order to change the current state of affairs, it is imperative to find an objective way to assign a particular ism to the Left or to the Right. Therefore, the goal is to find unbiased categories of political philosophies that can unambiguously determine placement on the political spectrum. Such a task entails a comprehensive examination of political doctrines (case studies) and comparison between them (cross-case studies). The best method of conducting corresponding research in social science is called qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The research in question differs from the traditional social science investigation in two crucial aspects. First of all, the subject of the study is not a country or a social group, but rather particular characteristics of political ideologies. Secondly, the observable phenomenon is a somewhat artificial mental construct rather than observable social or political fact. The latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth were rich in generating various political ideologies that changed the social order. Consequently, it is rational to investigate the real and abstract political ideas that flourished at that time. The following political philosophies were selected for examination: Marxism, Trotskyism, social democracy, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, revolutionary syndicalism, fascism, National Socialism, conservative liberalism, progressivism, and classical liberalism. The question that needs to be answered is which factors determine doctrines' polarization. This would further reveal the exact geometry, dimensions, and axes of the political spectrum. The undeniable advantage of QCA is the formalization of the verbal provisions of political doctrines and their translation into the mathematical language of set theory. QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGIESCharles Ragin developed qualitative comparative analysis in the late 1990s. Since then, the method has rapidly advanced and become widely used in social studies. In this method, relations between social phenomena are perceived as set relations. In order to uncover interconnections between cases and outcomes, QCA therefore employs the mathematical apparatus of set theory, which is based on Boolean algebra. The domains of this study are political philosophies that constitute a political spectrum. They are verbal by nature and can be stated in terms of sets and set relations. For instance, "conservatism is a right-wing ideology" is equivalent to the phrase "conservatism is a subset of right-wing 'ideologies'"; in turn, "right-wing ideologies are a subset of the whole political spectrum." Moreover, every unique aspect of political ideologies is a member of its corresponding conceptual set. Thus, "revolution" and "evolution" are both elements of the set "methods of change." The goal of set theoretic methods is to establish explicit connections between sets of interest. QCA assists in identifying commonalities across an array of political ideologies that prompt meaningful empirical connections. This means that QCA could discover causal relationships between political ideologies' attributes and their role in the placement of a particular theory on the political spectrum. In QCA terms, aspects of political philosophies that are thought to be causes of a phenomenon are called "conditions," while the phenomenon itself is called an "outcome." An outcome in this study is the assignment of a political ideology to the Left or the Right on the political spectrum. In other words, the outcome is political spectrum polarization. Philosophical aspects can be causally linked to an outcome as necessary or sufficient conditions, either by themselves or in combination with others. Thus, set relations are interpreted in terms of sufficiency, necessity, and forms of causalities. For this study, fuzzy set QCA (fsQCA) was chosen as the most adequate. Fuzzy sets are both qualitative and quantitative. They allow researchers to establish difference in kind between cases (qualitative difference) and determine difference in degree (quantitative difference) between qualitatively identical cases (Schneider and Wagemann 2012). Every political philosophy is considered to be an individual case under the study. The data on which QCA operates are the membership scores of cases in sets which represent political science concepts. Fuzzy sets explicitly require that the definition of membership values for sets be based on three qualitative anchors: full set membership (1), full nonmembership (0), and indifference (0.5). The anchor of indifference is a point of maximum ambiguity; therefore, assigning a 0.5 membership score is not recommended. For example, "proletariat" is an element of the set "agents of change." A membership score of Marxism-Leninism in the "agents of change" set is 1, as this theory designates a proletariat as the only force of a socialist revolution. In the case of Maoism, however, the "proletariat" was not a major social influencer. A membership score of Maoism in the "agents of change" set would be a 0, as it relies on the peasantry as an agent of change. In this example, "proletariat" and "peasantry" are supposed to illustrate two boundary membership values of the "agents of change" fuzzy set. In general, the membership score in fuzzy sets varies from 0 to 1 and could be any value except the value of maximum ambiguity. In this study, the four-value scheme (table 1) has been employed, which is especially useful in situations where researchers have a substantial amount of information about cases but the evidence is not systematic or strictly comparable from case to case (Ragin 2008). One of the first tasks in qualitative research is to find aspects (conditions) that describe a political theory best and might influence an outcome. Any mature political theory outlines its positions on designated goals; primary enemies; agents of change; methods of change; scope and pace of implementation; economic and social policies; relations between classes; dealings between state and individuals; questions of nationalism and race; immigration; taxation and tariffs; wages and wealth redistribution; etc. Table 1: Verbal description of fuzzy-set membership scores
While seeking the focal, descriptive attributes of political ideologies, careful attention was paid to the questions that caused heated quarrels among the competing philosophical doctrines. Those questions became common points of bifurcation between theories. The issue of the "role of a state" alienated anarchists and Marxists, while the question of "scope of change" estranged Trotskyists and Stalinists. After thorough and repeated examination, the following five principal conditions were chosen for QCA:
These aspects of political studies can be considered most relevant in the context of the political struggle in the period between 1850 and 1950. "Attitude toward private property" determines whether the means of production are collectivized or remain in private hands. The extreme left ideologies of the period under examination were unconditionally against private property and called for the socialization of all means of production. Reformists set the same goals but in a more gradual way. In any case, the Left aimed to control private enterprise in one way or another. On the contrary, the right ideologies cherished private property. Thus, due to the opposed approaches to private property, collectivization of property (CP) has been included as a condition in the QCA of political ideologies. "Type of economy" means whether a political doctrine promotes a market economy or a planned one. The Left developed a personal dislike for the market economy. Many leftist political ideologies advocated for a planned economy instead. The right political ideologies, of course, fully supported a market economy with different degrees of regulation. This condition is essential and gains inclusion in the final analysis as PE—planned economy. "Wealth redistribution" describes a transfer of wealth from one individual or stratum to others by means of expropriation, taxation, welfare, etc., which fuels a plethora of social programs. Political doctrines from 1850 to 1950 suggested a wide scope of social programs ranging from minimal to very generous. The Left usually advocated for the expansion of wealth redistribution programs, whereas the Right sought to keep them to a minimum. This dichotomy prompts the inclusion of wealth redistribution (WR) as condition in the model. The attitudes dealing with "individual freedom" range from its complete negation (collectivization of consciousness) to minimal intrusion into private life. Currents on the left had different approaches to this issue. Thus, anarchists promoted a stateless community and complete individual freedom: some viewed a state as a temporary entity, others as the main achievement of the society. The Right traditionally cherished individual freedom, pluralism of opinions, and a nonintrusive state. The issue of personal freedom is therefore included in the qualitative analysis as a potentially significant condition as collectivization of consciousness (CC). "Nationalism and racism" are self-explanatory attributes, but are extremely sensitive, distorted, and therefore politicized. It is a common perception that the Left was a proponent of internationalism and that nationalism was the trademark of the Right. A careful examination of the different political ideologies and actions of different regimes reveals that nationalism and racism are equally applicable to the doctrines situated at both ends of the political spectrum. Nationalism and racism (NR) could potentially influence an outcome, and therefore is a condition of the analysis. The next step in fsQCA is defining qualitative anchors that denote full membership (1) and full nonmembership (0) for every condition (aspect of the doctrine) and outcome (place on the spectrum). The qualitative benchmarks that will be used in fuzzy set calibration are presented in table 2. Table 2: Qualitative anchors
There are two cases of political ideologies, which are characterized by full membership and full nonmembership in both corresponding conditions and outcome: Marxism-Leninism and classical liberalism. Marxism-Leninism stood for the complete abolishment of private property (CP = 1), utilized planned economy (PE = 1), built a welfare system (WR = 1), totalitarian state (CC = 1), and exerted extreme atrocities on different ethnic groups (NR = 1).1 On the contrary, classical liberalism advocated for the prevalence of private property (CP = 0), a market economy (PE = 0), a minimum of wealth redistribution (WR=0), full individual freedom (CC = 0), and international trade (NR = 0). Undoubtedly, Marxism-Leninism is a left-wing political doctrine (Left = 1), as it actively seeks the destruction of the democratic state and complete collectivization of the means of production. There is no uncertainty that classical liberalism is a genuine right-wing ideology (Left = 0), guaranteeing property rights and individual freedom. These ideologies are complete opposites based on their membership scores in their corresponding condition configurations and outcomes. Table 3: Two polar ideologies and their membership scores
The rest of the political philosophies considered, whose ideas are also grounded in the interpretation of the five main factors used in this study, lie between these two extremes. Their membership scores in corresponding sets have to be determined through a calibration procedure. There are two methods of calibration suggested in fsQCA: direct and indirect. Both methods imply calibration of fuzzy sets using external criteria. In the direct method, values of external standards (economic indexes, for example) are assigned to the corresponding three qualitative anchors (full membership, full nonmembership, and the crossover point). Then, these benchmarks are used to transform the original interval-scale values into fuzzy membership scores. In the indirect method, the researcher performs an initial sorting of cases into different levels of membership, assigning different levels of preliminary membership scores and then refining these membership scores using the interval-scale data. These techniques assume that interval-scale external indicators exist for every condition and outcome. Unfortunately, a study of political spectrums does not possess such a luxury. There are several reasons for this. The subjects under study are political theories that are abstract ideas, not real social facts. If an idea has never been put in practice, the external standards cannot be appropriately applied to it. For those political ideas that have been institutionalized, some conditions still could not be correlated with existing external indicators. Moreover, for such conditions that can be explained using external standards, the data does not go back chronologically, i.e., to the latter half of the nineteenth century, as much as necessary in order to properly calibrate all the cases. External data could calibrate some of the conditions; nonetheless, it is not advisable to utilize different methods to score membership assessment across various cases and conditions. Does this mean that a fuzzy set analysis of political ideologies is inappropriate? The answer is definitely no. It is possible to refine the initial membership scores in the indirect method but by some other external procedure. For this purpose, the Delphi method was employed. The Delphi method is a process that involves interaction and cooperation between the researcher and a group of experts proficient in the subject under study. Initially, this method was used in the forecasting procedures and, like any forecast endeavor, it had mixed results. In the study of political spectrums, such prognosis is not an aim. On the contrary, experts are looking back at historical processes and facts that were not systematized, enumerated, or ranked. These circumstances simplify experts' work, as they need to systematize existing knowledge. Thorough interactions and collaborations between the researcher and experts resulted in the refined fuzzy sets presented in table 4. Table 4: Fuzzy sets of political doctrine, casual conditions, and memberships score
The first task was to find factors that deterministically classify a political doctrine as leftist. Therefore, only parameters that have universal consensus were chosen for the outcome (Left). Outcomes for fascism and National Socialism were intentionally marked "?," as there is no consensus among scholars in the placement of these regimes on the political spectrum. This means that neither fascism nor Nazism were taken into account in the initial iterations of mathematical calculations. A further assay was to build a truth table. A truth table is the main instrument in analyzing casual complexity. It is evident that the same outcome, for example, "ideologies leaning to the left," can be achieved via several different combinations of casual conditions. In QCA, such combinations are customarily called "recipes," or configurations. A truth table consists of all logical configurations and corresponding outcomes. The main goal of a truth table analysis is to identify explicit casual connections between "recipes" and outcomes (Ragin 2008). A truth table differs from the data matrix presented in table 4, where every row denotes a different case. In a truth table, each row instead represents one of the logically possible outcomes AND combinations between the conditions. A truth table that is derived from a fuzzy set establishes a qualitative difference between cases above the anchor of maximum ambiguity—0.5 (more in than out)—and cases below that point (more out than in). As every single condition may be either present or absent, there are 2k total rows in the truth table, where k is the number of conditions. Since the model consists of five conditions, there are thirty-two rows in the table. Among the thirty-two cases, only thirteen have been "observed."2 Neither empirical nor abstract evidence is available for the rest. They are, in essence, thought experiments, called counterfactual cases. Each set constitutes one dimension of the vector space. The five fuzzy set conditions produce a five-dimensional space. Each corner of the space represents one specific combination of the two extreme values that are possible in fuzzy sets—full membership (1) and full nonmembership (0). For each condition, the ones and zeros indicate the different corners of the vector space defined by the fuzzy set's causal conditions. Therefore, each corner represents an ideal combination where full membership and nonmembership are clearly defined. In fuzzy set QCA, cases might have partial membership in all rows, but they have a membership higher than 0.5 in only one row. Consequently, each case is allocated to that particular ideal row which it fits best. The fsQCA software developed by Ragin and Davey (2014) was used to construct a truth table from the fuzzy sets in table 4. Table 4: Truth table (excluding fascism and National Socialism)
"Number" refers to the number of cases with membership greater than 0.5 in that corner of the vector space. Row consistency is the degree to which membership in a given corner of the vector space is a consistent subset of membership in an outcome. ANALYZING THE TRUTH TABLEReported row consistency, the last column, demonstrates if a specific truth table row's conditions are sufficient for its outcome. In other words, it determines whether a conjunction of five specified conditions is a subset of an outcome set. Causal combinations with consistency scores above the cutoff value (0.85 is recommended) are assigned to be subsets of the outcome and are coded 1. If a conjunction of conditions scores below the cutoff value, it is not a subset of the outcome, and it is coded 0 (table 2). The four upper rows in the truth table above scored 1 in the "Left" (outcome) column. It can be understood that the conditions of the rows that score 1 in the outcome are sufficient for the outcome to occur. In other words, there are four combinations of causal conditions that are sufficient to bend a political ideology to the left. However, the goal is to single out the main factors that influence the polarization of the political spectrum. Thus, a more laconic and parsimonious answer is needed. For this, fsQCA is employed by the Quine-McCluskey algorithm (Quine 1955; McCluskey 1956) to minimize the sufficiency statements presented in the truth table logically. This algorithm uses the simplification rules of Boolean expressions presented in the truth table. If two expressions differ in only one condition but produce the same outcome, then the casual condition that distinguishes the two expressions can be considered irrelevant and can be removed. The end products of the pairwise consecutive logical minimization process are "prime implicants." "Prime implicants" are combined through logical operand "OR" and under certain circumstances could be logically redundant. Some of them can be dropped from the solution term in order to obtain the most parsimonious formula. The Quine-McCluskey algorithm designates a prime implicant as logically redundant if all of the primitive expressions are covered without including it in the solution formula (Schneider and Wagemann 2012). The subjects of this study are political philosophies. Some of them materialized but died out, and some continue to prosper. Some political ideas have never been institutionalized and continue to live in the realm of the ideal. Some of the philosophical thoughts included in this study are illogical utopian descriptions of societies living in paradise. These are here considered counterfactual, imaginary political philosophies that are not worse than existing and documented ideas. Political philosophies are not impossible remainders and could be applied in thought experiments. All political ideas have a right to exist; as such, the counterfactual cases should be included in QCA and should undergo the minimization process. For example, take a look at configurations in table 5. Table 5: Examples of counterfactual cases
The first case describes a political doctrine that neglects private property and the market economy, advocates for extreme nationalism and racism, and desires the implementation of an unobtrusive state. The other political philosophy respects private property and the market economy, preaches bigotry, and advocates for individual freedom. (By the way, this is what right-wing nationalism should look like.) These ideologies are imaginary, but there are no fundamental reasons that such ideas could not be thought of in the past or could not be formulated or their implementation attempted in the future. They are as real as Marxism or Trotskyism in this sense. Therefore, all types of minimization should be applied in the framework of this research, which would result in the most laconic interpretation of causality between political factors and outcomes. The standard analysis produced the result below. Table 6: QCA parsimonious result
Solution coverage: 0.96, Solution consistency: 0.96 The results could be interpreted as follows. First, QCA selects three causal conditions that influence the outcome. They are CP (collectivization of property), WR (wealth redistribution), and CC (collectivization of consciousness). Each selected condition has a very high coefficient of consistency and coverage. Therefore, none can be dismissed as insignificant. The overall solution is characterized by an almost perfect score for coverage as well as consistency. Thus, QCA has produced a robust solution that passes the statistical significance test. In terms of set theory, the solution is written as follows: (1) CP + WR + CC → Left, where + is an "or" operand and → is subset operand. Since all three factors (CP, WR, CC) are subsets of the outcome set (Left), they are sufficient conditions for the outcome to occur. In other words, socialization of the means of production, wealth redistribution, and the subjugation of the individual to the collective are the cornerstone provisions of the Left's ideology. And furthermore, the conditions are connected by the "or" operand, which means that if any of the three conditions happen to be true, the whole expression becomes true as well. That is, if a political ideology suggests the collectivization of property (CP is true) but opposes wealth redistribution (WR is false), the doctrine still belongs to the Left. This result outlines three distinct paths to leftism: collectivization of private property, wealth redistribution, and collectivization of consciousness. Those paths can be employed individually or complement each other. For example, communism utilizes all three paths; evolutionary socialism predominantly employs a wealth redistribution mechanism; and fascism engages in the collectivization of consciousness and introduction of generous social programs. Recall that fascism and National Socialism were specifically omitted from the model. However, the obtained results show the paths to socialism that both odious regimes employed. One can argue that these regimes did not de jure forbid private property, but one cannot dispute the fact that both the Italian fascists and Nazis implemented a totalitarian state and implemented very generous social programs aimed at the comprehensive support of working people. Therefore, fascism and Nazism genuinely belong to the socialist current, having at least two conditions out of three as true. For their case, the formula takes the following form: (2) [CP is false] OR [WR is true] OR [CC is true] → [LEFT is true] It is also worth mentioning that even though private property was nominally allowed, it was controlled by the omnipotent and omnipresent state. To end the ambiguity surrounding fascism and Nazism, it is necessary to firmly state the following: Italian fascism and National Socialism belong to the Left, as they are incarnations of the non-Marxian socialism that utilized collectivization of consciousness rather than the socialization of private property as the primary path toward socialism (Gindler 2019b). And yet state control over the economy ultimately led to the gradual socialization of private property, which made the state de jure owner. Also note that the condition NR—nationalism and racism—was not selected as a part of the solution, meaning that this factor is not one that needs to be invoked in designing the political spectrum. Indeed, xenophobic inclinations can be attributed to any political doctrine on the left as well as on the right. At first sight, it may seem like the exclusion of the factor "planned economy" is an anomaly in the model. However, such is not the case. Some exotic socialist currents exclude the state and all services associated with it from their doctrine. The existence of such political theories in the model has effectively eliminated PE from the parsimonious solution. Fascism and National Socialism can be included back into the QCA model with the following membership scores in the outcome set: 0.67 for fascism and 1 for National Socialism. Then we will recalculate a truth table. Fascism is assigned a score of 0.67 as an acknowledgment that Fascists proclaimed to be forming a society that, at least in theory, was neither right nor left. Table 7: Truth table (including fascism and National Socialism)
The standard analysis of the truth table (table 7) led to virtually the same solution, with high coefficients of coverage (0.97) and consistency (0.94), described by the formula (1). Once again, it is essential to remember that formula (1) determines that CP, WR, and CC are sufficient conditions to bend a political ideology to the left. Are these conditions also necessary? In order to answer this question, QCA provides an analysis of the necessary conditions. A necessity test was performed by the same software that was used in the truth table analysis. The result is presented in table 8. The consistency score was sorted in descending order. With a liberal cutoff value of 0.85, only three individual conditions passed the necessity test. Neither "planned economy" nor "nationalism/racism" made the cut. Table 8: Analysis of necessary conditions
Thus, it can be concluded that socialization of property, wealth redistribution, and collectivization of consciousness are necessary and sufficient conditions of a left-wing ideology, and that any one of them when true uniquely identifies a political philosophy as leftist. Consequently, these findings lead to a comprehensive definition of socialism. Socialism is a set of artificial socioeconomic systems which is characterized by varying degrees of socialization of property and consciousness, scales of wealth redistribution, and the imposition of these on the community by revolutionary or governmental elites without the consent of the population. The next question that needs to be answered is what configurations of conditions characterize right-wing ideology. For that, it is necessary to analyze the outcomes denoted as ~Left (NOT Left) in truth table. The algorithm to find the solution remains the same and brings similar results to formula (1). That is, (3) ~CP + ~WR + ~CC → ~Left, where + is "or" operand and → is subset operand. The formula reads that respect for private property rights, the negation of wealth redistribution, and cherishing of individual freedom are sufficient conditions to bend a political ideology to the right. If any of these conditions happen to be true, the political doctrine is defined as right-wing. The analysis of necessary conditions shows that ~CP and ~WR are statistically valid, whereas ~CC has a low consistency level of 0.78. As the number of cases of right-wing ideologies in this model is small, these cases are allowed a lower consistency threshold for the necessity test. Anarchism and libertarianism seem to both advocate for individual freedom. However, the stateless society advocated by anarchists does not guarantee the degree of individual freedom promoted by libertarians. For example, Anarcho-communism first materialized in Ukraine from 1918 to 1921 during the revolution in the Russian Empire (Voline 2019). Stateless, multinational communities were organized in a "free territory" in southeastern Ukraine that contained approximately 7 million people. They lived during a time of extreme calamities under the protection and strict regulation of Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. Anarchists conducted a social experiment by building a society according to their theoretical provisions but under the umbrella of powerful military forces. The population was subordinated to the dominant political idea that prevailed in these territories. That is why the membership score in "Collectivization of Consciousness" for anarchists is 0.67 instead of 0. Thus, anarchists' call for liberty does not preclude the collectivization of consciousness. Moreover, it will be shown further that full personal liberty cannot be achieved without complete economic freedom. Even so, anarcho-communists carried out a policy of socialization of private property. Therefore, the degree of freedom attained by anarchists does not reach the bar set by the libertarians. The solution for the outcome "Right" exhibits complete symmetry with the answer derived for "Left," which is as follows: CP + WR + CC → Left is a mirror image of ~CP + ~WR + ~CC → ~Left. This fact allows for the assertion that all three conditions affect the polarization of the entire political spectrum. Thus, we have found the factors that can be used in the construction of objective spectrograms. Given one dependent variable—political spectrum—and three independent variables—CP, WR, and CC—the spectrum would be four-dimensional. However, it is impossible to visualize a four-dimensional space. That is why it is necessary to sacrifice one dimension, i.e., one parameter has to be eliminated. The best candidate for such elimination is WR—wealth redistribution. It can be assumed that the redistribution of wealth is a form of systematic and gradual encroachment on private property. Suppose an entrepreneur has capital, C, which makes a profit, P. The state confiscates part of the profit in favor of others, using progressive taxation; therefore, the profit becomes P', where >P < P'. An entrepreneur could earn a smaller profit of P' with less capital, C', that is, C' < C, with no progressive tax. Therefore, the state reduces the productive capital of a businessman by the amount C– C'. Wealth redistribution is latent socialization of the means of production. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that wealth redistribution is reflected in the parameter "collectivization of property." That is why it is safe to eliminate WR from the model without significant deficiency. The new formulae would be as follows: CP + CC → Left (4) ~CP + ~CC → ~Left It reads that collectivization of property or assault on individual freedom defines the left political doctrine. Inversely, respect for private property rights or personal freedom defines the right ideology. Now it is possible to build a political spectrogram in three-dimensional space. Let us denote the xaxis as Economic Freedom, the y axis as Individual Freedom, and the z axis as Political Spectrum. Political Spectrum has a range from 0 to 1, where point 0 corresponds to the Left and point 1 to the Right. The x and y axes also have unit lengths. Specific values which correspond to Economic Freedom and Individual Freedom are derived for each political philosophy from membership assessments for CP and CC conditions, (table 1). However, for better visibility, the inverse value is used: 1 becomes 0, 0.33 becomes 0.67, and so forth. Figure 1 presents the theoretical spectrogram of political ideologies in tridimensional space. Figure 1: Spectrum vs. economic freedom, personal freedom
The graph has the form of a falling leaf, in which the upper end corresponds to the parameters of the ideologies leaning toward the right wing. Thus, at the very peak are political philosophies advocating for maximum personal and entrepreneurial freedom. As the values of individual and economic liberties decrease, the leaf expands in the center, and then it reaches the bottom. The lower end corresponds to the totalitarian ideologies with minimum values for personal and economic freedom. All other ideologies are located on the body of the leaf between these two extremes. However, each one has its respective mark on the spectrum axis. Therefore, different combinations of economic and personal freedoms correspond to particular spots on the political spectrum. It should be recognized that the three-dimensional representation of the spectrogram is still not convenient for analysis and comprehension. In order to simplify visualization, it is better to represent a three-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional plane. In order to do this, let us cut the three-dimensional figure with planes that are parallel to a coordinate plane Xx, Yy (Economic Freedom, Individual Freedom). Every cutting plane produces plane sections that are called contour lines. A contour line for a function of two variables is a curve that connects points where the function has the same particular value. Thus, every contour line will correspond to the value of the same spectrum. Figure 2: Political spectrum contour plot
Figure 2 represents the contour lines of the political spectrum that are cut with a pitch of 0.2. The graph is divided into five regions that are all characterized by an equal spectrum range. Indeed, different combinations of xand y> values can determine entry into an area with the same spectrum range. The upper right-hand corner corresponds to political philosophies that are distinguished by high values for individual and economic freedom. These are real right-wing ideologies that occupy a relatively small area and have political spectrum values from 0.8 to 1.0. The right-wing ideologies occupy a plateau separated from the centrist ones by a steep slope. The slope derives from the small interval between the adjacent contour lines with spectrum values of 0.6 and 0.4. Further, the spectrum expands as the distance between contour lines increases. Thus, left centrist and hard-core left-wing ideologies are located on a wide, gentle slope. This is an indicator that the spectrum inflates to the left. The left totalitarian regimes are at the bottom, having individual freedom and economic freedom values close to zero. Authoritarian regimes have a low magnitude of individual freedom and moderate values for economic freedom. They are located to the right of the totalitarian regimes and below centrists. The upper-left and lower-right areas are marked as impossible corners. The former has a high degree of individual freedom and a minimal magnitude of economic freedom; the latter has a high level of economic freedom and a low level of individual freedom. The reason for this label follows from the presence of a positive correlation between the degree of individual freedom and the level of economic freedom. Figure 3: Fitted line plot
The concept of the socialization of private property and the collectivization of consciousness in a broad sense can be most adequately described by indices of economic freedom and individual freedom, calculated in the framework of the Human Freedom Index. The Human Freedom Index describes the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom. The report is copublished by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (Vásquez and Porčnik 2018). Correlation analysis between two vectors of freedom determined a significant degree of a positive correlation between them, r = 0.67. It means that an increase in the level of economic freedom leads to an increase in individual freedom and vice versa. The equation of the fitted line plot (figure 3) essentially reads y = x. The line is diagonal, because the angle of inclination with respect to the x axis is forty-five degrees. This means that each unit of increase in the amount of economic freedom leads to a unit of increase in individual freedom. When economic freedom is at its maximum, one should see maximum individual freedom. Correspondingly, a minimum of economic freedom predetermines a minimum of individual freedom. Therefore, the upper left-hand and the lower right-hand corners, which correspond to a minimum of economic freedom and a maximum of individual freedom, on the one hand, and a maximum of economic freedom and a minimum of individual freedom, on the other, constitute impossible combinations. Collectivist anarchists would never achieve a maximum of personal liberty while having a low degree of economic freedom. A coarse despotism will never create a society with a high level of economic freedom. The indices of economic and individual freedom act as proxies for the theoretical concepts of the socialization of private property and the collectivization of consciousness. They were calculated for individual countries instead of distinct political philosophies. What kind of external index could serve to provide values for an initial approximation for the conceptual left-right political spectrum? The historical data suggests that right-wing political theories are responsible for inducing democratic transformation in society. At the same time, various left-wing ideologies tend to build up totalitarian and authoritarian states. That is why it is plausible to utilize an index of democracy to roughly represent a political spectrum polarization by countries. In addition to the indices of economic and individual freedom, this study uses the Democracy Index, a product of a UK-based company called The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) (The Economist 2018). This index classifies countries by four categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. Thus, indices for the analysis were created by two different institutions that each employed a unique methodology. After the direct recalibration of index data to the interval [0,1], it became possible to build a three-dimensional graph of degree of democracy versus individual and economic freedom (figure 4). The first thing that catches the eye is the similarity of the leaf-shaped graph to the theoretical surface of figure 1. Closer to the center and the bottom, the surface became more wrinkled, which is expected for the unprocessed data; However, the trend remains the same. Countries with high values of economic and individual freedom occupy the plateau. Totalitarian states are at the bottom, whereas in the middle there are countries with mixed regimes. Figure 4: Degree of democracy versus individual and economic freedom
This dispersion is most clearly seen in the contour plot (figure 5). The graph has retained a feature depictured for the political spectrum (figure 2). The contour line divided the graph into five zones with different degrees of democracy. There are some irregularities that, for the most part, could be explained by the differences in experts' estimates and opinions of the data. Thus, the developers of the Human Freedom Index assigned Argentina a low economic freedom score, but the EUI experts assigned it a high one for degree of democracy. Argentina is a clear outlier. On the opposite side are Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which are classified as authoritarian regimes (which is correct) but score pretty highly in the level of economic freedom. These countries should be placed closer to Saudi Arabia, which bears the same political, economic, and cultural characteristics. Nevertheless, regardless of a few outliers, the graph demonstrates that there are no countries that simultaneously have a high level of individual freedom and a low degree of economic freedom. The combination of a high value of economic freedom and a low level of individual freedom is implausible as well. Figure 5: Countour plot: degree of democracy
Countries in the upper right-hand corner enjoy economic prosperity. Their average per capita income ($39,249) is significantly higher than those of the other quartiles; the average per capita income in the least free quartile is $12,026 (Vásquez and Porčnik 2018). Right-wing ideology, which builds on the notion of individual freedom and respect for private property, creates a prosperous society, whereas proponents of leftist ideology—collectivization of private property and consciousness—run societies to misery. The state of affairs in Venezuela is a vivid example; the country deteriorated within two decades. It should be noted that even in developed, industrial countries there is a continuous political battle between the keepers of the status quo—the rightists—and proponents of "change"—the leftists. The war of ideologies goes on with varying success. However, the graph shows that if the leftist idea wins, there is only one direction away from the comfortable plateau—downhill. Now, let us draw a schematic plot of the political spectrum, bearing in mind the features that have been discovered. The upper-left and lower-right areas are impossible corners. The upper-right region with a maximum degree of both freedoms is a tiny spot that only about two dozen societies have been able to occupy in Fig. 6. The spectrum is inflated to the left. Thus, the central area with a mixed degree of both freedoms is rather large. The packet of utter misery is in the lower left-hand corner. This area is much smaller compared with the centrists' area but more prominent than the area of prosperity. The lines of the political spectrum values delimit each area. Figure 6: Spectrum diagram
CONCLUSIONWhen building a political-philosophical spectrogram, scientists faced many obstacles, many of which were ideological. The shape of the graph was influenced by the compiler's personal preferences and biases. The most challenging task was appointing suitable positions to anarchism, fascism, and Nazism. Different factors, dimensions, axes, and cardinal points have been used in different political spectrograms. Most often, the graphs do not complement each other, and it seems that each of them describes an entirely different reality. There was an urgent need to conduct an objective analysis of political philosophies and find the factors that influence the political spectrum's polarization. These conditions would determine the geometric dimensions of the spectrogram and its principal axes. For these purposes, the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) was used, as it allowed the introduction of a fraction of objectivity due to the use of a formalized mathematical apparatus of the theory of sets. QCA helped to identify the most concise causal conditions that influence the bending of an ideology to one side or the other. Thus, it was found that spectrum polarization depends on three conditions: attitudes toward private property (CP), individual freedom (CC), and wealth redistribution (WR). It should be noted that these factors are both sufficient and necessary and statistically reliable. They influence both wings of the political spectrum. The ideology is left leaning if it advocates for the socialization of private property, collectivization of consciousness, and generous wealth redistribution. These three factors denote different paths to socialism, and even if just one of them is present, the ideology or regime is belongs to the Left. Communists utilized all three ways to achieve a "paradise"; evolutionary socialists employed wealth redistribution as the primary path; National Socialists and Fascists used subjugation of the individual to the collective and wealth redistribution; collectivist anarchists were engaged in the collectivization of property. On the contrary, the ideology is right leaning if it respects private property and individual freedom and declines excessive wealth redistribution. With firmly determined factors that influence the political spectrum's polarization, it became possible to build a spectrogram unambiguously. However, a function of three variables can be presented only in four-dimensional space, which is quite challenging to visualize. Therefore, one condition had to be eliminated. The wealth redistribution factor was chosen, because it can be regarded as inherently a latent collectivization of the means of production meaning that its influence can be reflected in the socialization of property. Moreover, the Economic Freedom Index has already considered the impact of such governmental monetary and fiscal actions. The spectrogram was presented as a contour plot where each contour line divided the graph into regions. The resulting graph resembled the trimmed Nolan chart, as it is utilized the same axes; however, it should be remembered that this is a two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional surface, which reflects "left-right" polarization of the political spectrum. The political spectrum developed here ranges from 0 to 1, where the left-leaning political philosophies are grouped closer to 0, and the right leaning ones are in the proximity of 1. In our example, the values of the political spectrum from 0.8 to 1 are occupied by the right-wing ideologies. On the opposite end, the interval between 0 and 0.2 is reserved for hard-core leftist doctrines. The rest of the political philosophies are in between. Therefore, even though the two-dimensional contour plot was derived from a three-dimensional model, it is still makes it possible to classify doctrines along the left-right axis, which is especially convenient for a layperson. It is very plausible to use economic and individual freedom indices as proxies for the causal factors in our model. Very roughly, an index of democracy can be used as a representation of political spectrum polarization. Nevertheless, using those indices in this model showed a good match between the theory and reality. There is a significant positive correlation between two vectors of freedom. This means that an increase in the magnitude of one leads to a rise in the other. The regression line has a form of y = x, which effectively eliminates two combinations of factors from consideration. Thus, maximal economic freedom cannot coincide with minimal individual freedom. Also, maximal individual freedom is incompatible with minimal economic freedom. These combinations of factor values are reflected in the graphs as impossible corners. Therefore, spectrograms schematically can be presented in the shape of a leaf crossed by spectrum lines. A user can plot different ideologies and regimes on the graph and grade them along available axes, including one-dimensional classification as well.
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| Forget Hemlines. Mom Jeans Are Now an Economic Indicator. Posted: 26 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT There was once something called the Hemline Index introduced by economist George Taylor in 1926. The idea was that the hemline of women's skirts signed where the economy and/or the stock market were headed. Short skirts meant good times; a falling economy was signaled by longer hemlines. Marjolein van Baardwijk and Philip Hans Franses explored what they refer to as an urban legend in a 2010 paper, "The Hemline and the Economy: Is There Any Match?" The two authors collected hemline data from 1921 to 2009, matching hemlines with National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) business cycle data. Given that fashion creation and popularity take time, the authors applied a lag and and came to the conclusion in their short paper: "Supporting the urban legend, we find that poor economic times make the hemlines to decrease, which means that women's dresses get lower, and that prosperity is correlated with a reduced hemline (more miniskirts). At the same time, and this is new to the available evidence, we find that there is a time lag of around three years." They pronounced, "This explains why at present [2010], in an economic downturn, the skirts are short, as this is simply due to the fact that the economy was in a boom about three years ago (2007–2008)." Others, Robert Prechter, Paul Montgomery, and Ralph Rotnem, have used Taylor's theory in predicting stock market movements. The disconnect between the stock market and the economy has created a conundrum, is it hemlines or is it jeans style? Going into the covid crash, skinny jeans were all the rage; now, according to the Washington Post, "the fashionistas are going for 'the mom' and the flare." Of course, skinny jeans aren't completely dead; for instance, songwriter Sarah Hester Ross recently wrote the lyrics, "You can pry these skinny jeans from my cold dead a**, ya hear?" Yes, fighting words in what Maura Judkis and Abha Bhattarai call "The Jean War." Judkis and Bhattarai pose this war as between millennials and Gen Z. Millennials have reached a ripe old age between 25 and 40, while Gen Zers age from 9 to 24. However, boomers and Gen Xers have a dog in this denim fight as well. Gen Z is telling millennials, Your skinny jeans ain't too cool. They've discovered "jeans [with] wider legs and tapered ankles, or maybe they flare out with a little kick. They have lighter washes and high waists." Or, as Judkis and Bhattarai make clear, "mom jeans." And, "[n]aturally, this means war." I like any jeans that fit on my lockdown-bloated bottom. But, what does it mean for markets or the economy? Intuitively, I would think boxy, high-waisted mom jeans equate to lowered hemlines, meaning that stocks are headed lower and the economy remains in a funk, with the Fed keeping its foot fully on the money supply accelerator. Meanwhile, skinny jeans, to my mind, equals miniskirts, with a roaring economy and stock market. Robert Prechter wrote in "The Socionomic Theory of Finance" that "mini skirts dominated fashion again near the market peak when in 2007 a headline advised, 'The Mini-Skirt is Back, So Get Those Legs in Shape.'" Prior to that, miniskirts became popular in the 1990s for the first time since the 1960s. Prior to that, miniskirts were the craze in the Roaring Twenties, until the market crash of 1929. Judkis and Bhattarai wonderfully remind us that the term "mom jeans" first appeared "[i]n 2003, from a fictional ad on 'Saturday Night Live' starring Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler. It showed the four women wearing dumpy, boxy jeans that made their midsections look lumpy. The voice-over: 'Give her something that says: I'm not a woman anymore. I'm a mom.'" As a reminder, in 2003, the stock market was still licking its wounds from the 2001 crash. "Mom jeans flatter almost no one," wrote Jill Hudson Neal in The Post in 2006. "Though they were ostensibly designed to compliment a real woman's fuller figure, the reality is that most of them make an average wearer's behind, hips and stomach look … well, big." Then as millennials recoiled at the thought of being stuck in mom jeans, and shimmied into skinny ones, the housing and stock markets roared toward a peak, before it all fell apart in 2008. Millennials not-so-fondly remembered, "The jeans of their youth were flared at the ankle, tight on the waist and, in some cases, rode low on their hips (giving rise to 'muffin top,' an odious term from 2003 describing, as New York Times language columnist William Safire put it, 'three to six inches of stomach bulging out below a short blouse and above hip-clinging "low-rise" jeans')." Who knew Bill Safire weighed in on such things? The monetary world has changed mightily while fashions have changed. Hemlines go up and down, jeans from skinny to boxy. The money supply only marches in one direction, upward. In March of 1961 the M2 money supply stood at $318.3 billion. Fifty years later, March 2021, M2 clocked in at $19,896.2 billion (better put, $19.9 trillion). That's an annual increase, according to miniwebtool.com, of 123.0154 percent. Most of that growth began in 2001, with a recent sharp spike this year. You may be wondering about broader money supply numbers once captured in M3. Unfortunately, the Fed has discontinued that series. Try slipping that on comfortably.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How Covid Put an End to Your Right to Due Process Posted: 26 May 2021 05:00 AM PDT The covid panic brought an end to due process in many ways. Among these are the end of speedy trials and the end of a timely hearing for landlords to obtain evictions. Meanwhile, governments have seized private businesses with no due process at all. Original Article: "How Covid Put an End to Your Right to Due Process" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.
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| Why Is the French Government Running Off Foreign Investors? Posted: 26 May 2021 04:00 AM PDT The American economist Henry George once said protectionism is the way to inflict on ourselves in peacetime what our enemies inflict on us in wartime. Note, in fact, that the American leaders ban American investments in Iran—so the American regime threatens heavy criminal sanctions for those who would invest in the strategic sectors of the Islamic Republic. Those who implement trade restrictions for punitive purposes do something similar, and they know that a nation's prosperity depends on its ability to accumulate ever more capital, be it local or foreign. That too many nations shoot themselves in the foot by practicing protectionism is no reason to emulate them. After all, we have never heard a South Korean official claim that North Korea is practicing autarky to encourage the closure of South Korea to foreign investment. This is why South Korea has gone from being a third world country to being a powerhouse of the world economy in sixty years. Political PosturingAlas, the interests of the nation are of little importance to those who are driven only by low political considerations. This is how French economy minister Bruno Le Maire—who knows nothing about the industries he claims to rule—saw fit earlier this year to veto the proposal by Canadian distributor Couche-Tard to buy French supermarket giant Carrefour. It would be pointless to seek any logic behind this arbitrary intervention. It only serves to flatter our old protectionist instincts while allowing politicians to don the white knight's costume for a few moments to rescue a national industry allegedly threatened by foreigners. Politically, it is easier to indulge in this kind of posturing than to succeed in the vaccination campaign that would lift France out of the economic and health slump in which it finds itself. Protectionist and Xenophobic PrejudicesLe Maire's argument sounds like an insult to our Canadian friends. According to him, the takeover of Carrefour by Couche-Tard would pose a risk to the "food sovereignty" of the French. As if it were in the best interests of a Canadian multinational—that makes a living from the sale of goods—to starve the country in which it is located. But Carrefour itself is present abroad. So is it endangering the food security of Taiwanese, Brazilians, or Spaniards just because it is French? This pretext serves above all as a legal alibi in order to stick as well as possible to the regulations relating to the control of foreign investments. However, by brandishing this motif for populist ends, the French leaders are showing that they are learning nothing from their mistakes. We know that it is this kind of xenophobic reflex that deprived Europeans of abundant vaccines. Indeed, the press reports that the European authorities wanted to favor the laboratories of the old continent over foreign pharmaceutical companies. Protectionists nevertheless persist in confusing their ideology with economic sovereignty. However, economic security is achieved by preferring the quality, abundance, and variety of goods while ignoring the origin of the supplier's passport. Moreover, a sign of a certain hypocrisy is the fact France has no complaints when its national companies make lucrative acquisitions abroad. One thinks of the acquisition of Bombardier by Alstom. Some would say that the rail industry is of more "strategic" interest than a declining distributor which has less than 20 percent of the French market. Hurting both France and CarrefourLe Maire's veto is not only an insult to our Canadian friends and an arbitrary obstruction of free trade. It also contravenes the interests of the French economy. It signals to French and foreign savers that they run the risk of not being able to dispose of their capital freely when they invest in France. However, the liquidity of financial investments is one of the reasons for investing in the stock market. It is not by damaging the financial attractiveness of a country that one promotes its prosperity. Unless our leaders like to multiply civic conventions to console a declining people? We can therefore question the usefulness of all these "Choose France" summits if it is to upset all the investors who have the courage to choose to invest in our country. Of course, the first victim of this interference is the Carrefour Group, which saw the Canadian proposal as a chance to breathe new life into the company. Finally, remember that economists tend to consider takeover bids as a virtuous instrument for regulating capitalism, by allowing well-managed firms to acquire less efficient companies to make them more competitive. Enough to consolidate the only tangible economic sovereignty: that of the consumer. Who really threatens the food sovereignty of the French? In 1960, about 35 percent of mankind suffered from undernutrition. The French spent 35 percent of their budget on food. As a sign of improved food security for humanity, these rates fell to 10.7 percent and 15.6 percent respectively in 2017. This progress has been made thanks to tremendous innovations in the agricultural sectors, distribution, and logistics. The green revolution has resulted in an incredible increase in yields thanks to mechanization, variety selection, pesticides, and fertilizers. Stimulated by competition, the distribution and logistics sector has also participated in increasing the purchasing power of populations. The increase in the productive capacities of all sectors of the economy is also a product of the opening up of international trade. Meanwhile, our leaders like to burden these sectors with all kinds of unproductive constraints. The modernization of French agriculture thus comes up against a multitude of political obstacles. We can think of the bans on recent biotechnologies. This same agricultural sector is also in many ways closed to competition from outside Europe, which has repercussions for the wallets of French consumers. Likewise, large-scale retailers are subject to numerous violations of the freedom to trade which force them to inflate their prices, such as the recent increase in the threshold for resale at a loss. Under these conditions, anyone who really cares about French food sovereignty would be ill advised to point a vengeful finger in the direction of Ottawa. Rather, he should be interested in what is happening with the governments in Paris and Brussels. [Originally Published in Le Figaro. Translated by Ryan McMaken.]  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Why Economic Models Can't Provide a Realistic Picture of Human Behavior Posted: 26 May 2021 03:30 AM PDT While in the natural sciences a laboratory experiment can isolate various elements and their movements can be followed through, there is no equivalent in the economic discipline. The introduction of econometrics and model building is an attempt to produce a laboratory where controlled experiments can be conducted. The idea of having such a laboratory is very appealing to economists and politicians, since once the model is built and endorsed as a good replica of the economy, politicians can evaluate the outcomes of various policies. This, it is argued, will enhance the efficiency of government policies and thus lead to a better and more prosperous economy. It is also suggested that the model can serve as a referee in validating various economic ideas. Apart from assessing the impact of various policies, the other purpose of a model is to provide an indication regarding the future. By means of mathematical and statistical methods, a model builder establishes relationships between various economic variables. For example, personal consumer outlays are related to personal disposable income and interest rates, while fixed capital spending is explained by the past stock of capital, interest rates, and economic activity. A collection of such various estimated relations—i.e., equations—constitutes an econometric model. A comparison of the goodness of the fit between the dynamic simulation and the actual data is an important in assessing the reliability of a model. (In a static simulation, the model is solved using known lagged variables. In a dynamic simulation, the model is solved by employing its own generated lagged variables). The final test of the model is its response to a policy variable change, such as an increase in taxes or a rise in government outlays. By means of a qualitative assessment, a model builder decides whether the response is reasonable or not. Once the model is successfully constructed, it is ready to be used. Are Mathematical Models Valid in Economics?By applying mathematics, mainstream economics is attempting to follow in the footsteps of the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, the employment of mathematics enables scientists to formulate the essential nature of objects. By means of a mathematical formula, the response of objects to a particular stimulus in a given condition is captured. Consequently, within these given conditions, the same response will be obtained time and again. The same approach, however, is not valid in economics, for economics is supposed to deal with human beings and not objects. According to Mises in Human Action,
The main characteristic or nature of human beings is that they are rational animals. They use their minds to sustain their lives and well-being. The usage of the mind, however, is not an automatic procedure, but rather every individual employs his mind in accordance with his own circumstances. This makes it impossible to capture human nature by means of mathematical formulae, as is done in the natural sciences. To pursue quantitative analysis implies the possibility of the assignment of numbers, which can be subjected to all of the operations of arithmetic. To accomplish this, it is necessary to define an objective fixed unit. Such an objective unit, however, does not exist in the realm of human valuations. On this Mises wrote in Human Action, "There are, in the field of economics, no constant relations, and consequently no measurement is possible." There are no constant standards for measuring the minds, the values, and the ideas of men. People have the freedom of choice to change their minds and pursue actions that are contrary to what was observed in the past. Because of the unique nature of human beings, analyses in economics can only be qualitative. Individual goals or ends set the standard for valuing the facts of reality. For instance, if the goal of an individual is to improve his health, then he will establish which goods will benefit his health and which will not. Among those that will benefit him, some will be more effective than others. There is no way, however, to quantify this effectiveness. All that one could do is rank these goods in accordance with perceived effectiveness. The use of mathematics in economics poses another serious problem. The employment of mathematical functions implies that human actions are set in motion by various factors. For instance, contrary to the mathematical way of thinking, individual outlays on goods are not "caused" by real income as such. In his own context, every individual decides how much of a given amount of income will be used for consumption and how much for savings. While it is true that people respond to changes in their incomes, the response is not automatic, as depicted by a mathematical formula. An increase in an individual's income does not automatically imply that his consumption expenditure will follow suit. Every individual assesses the increase in income against the goals he wants to achieve. Thus, he might decide that it is more beneficial for him to raise his savings rather than raise his consumption. From this perspective an econometric model, which is a collection of various equations, is a misleading description of the real world of human beings. In the world of econometric models, individuals are reduced to robots that respond mechanically to a change in various driving variables. Why Probability Distribution Is Not Relevant in EconomicsThe econometric model building in addition to mathematics also employs probability. What is probability? The probability of an event is the proportion of times the event happens out of a large number of trials. For instance, the probability of obtaining heads when a coin is tossed is 0.5. This does not mean that when a coin is tossed ten times, five heads are always obtained. However, if the experiment is repeated a large number of times then it is likely that heads will be obtained 50 percent of the time. The greater the number of throws, the nearer the approximation is likely to be. In economics, we do not deal with homogeneous cases. Each observation is unique. Consequently, no probability distribution can be established. (Again, probability distribution rests on the assumption that we are dealing with homogeneous cases.) Let us take, for instance, entrepreneurial activities. If these activities were homogeneous, with known probability distributions, then we would not need entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is an individual who arranges his activities toward finding out consumers' future requirements. People's requirements however, are never constant with respect to a particular good. Since entrepreneurial activities are not homogeneous, this means that probability distribution for entrepreneurial returns cannot be formed. The assumption that mainstream economics makes, that probability distribution is valid in economics, leads to absurd results, for it describes not a world of human beings who exercise their minds in making choices, but machines. The employment of probabilities implies that a random process generated the various pieces of economic data, similarly to tossing a coin. Note that random means arbitrary, i.e., without method or conscious decision. However, if this were the case, human beings would not be able to survive for too long. In order to maintain their lives and well-being, human beings must act consciously and purposefully. They must plan their actions and employ suitable means. Other Issues in Using Econometric ModelsGiven that, human beings are governed by freedom of choice, various policy analyses by means of models, known as "what if" or multiplier analyses, are likely to generate questionable results. In conducting the "what if" experiment, as a rule, a model builder utilizes a given model whose equations' parameters remain intact. This is however, questionable. For instance, say the model builder wants to evaluate the effect of a change in government outlays on various markets. It is quite likely that a change in government outlays will affect the parameters of various equations. If the model builder were to ignore this and leave the structure of equations intact, this would mean that individuals in the economy ceased to be alive and were, in fact, frozen. On this Mises writes in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science:
Another major problem with most large-scale econometric models is that they are designed along the lines of Keynesian thinking. The main variable in these models is gross domestic product (GDP), which is explained within the model framework by the interactions between various lumped data, known as aggregates. The interaction between various aggregates in the model framework gives the impression that the economy is about gross domestic product, not about human beings and human life. Obviously, this runs contrary to the fact that everything in the human world is caused by man's purposeful conduct. To improve an econometric model's capability as a forecasting tool, the predictive capability of each equation in the model is tested against the actual data. The difference between the actual data and the data obtained from the equations, i.e., the error term (also known as the add factor), is extrapolated forward and incorporated into the model's equations. In many instances the forecast produced by an econometric model is heavily influenced by the add factor, which allows the model builder to force the outcome of the forecast in line with his "gut feelings." All this casts doubts on the scientific procedures employed by econometric modeling.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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