this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
I thought OP's message was cut-and-dried political science everyone knew, then I saw the comments here debating it. Wow, people on lemmy are lost. This information is everywhere: just go to wikipedia.
It's the 1ˢᵗ axis of the political map commonly shown.

The political compass is propaganda. There is no such thing as auth-left or lib-right. There is no division between social and economic axes.
The definition of the right-left spectrum is rooted in the french revolution. Rightism is about consolidating power and creating strict socio-economic hierarchies so the more-privileged can subject their will on the less-privileged, while leftism is about flattening those hierarchies to prevent anyone from subjugating others and ensuring equality and egalitarianism are maintained.
Whoever has power controls economy and vice-versa. Period. So rightism will always be authoritarian, hierarchal, and have a functionally captive economy. How benevolent this authoritarianism is toward the populace is meaningless as any liberty is an illusion provided at the pleasure of the more wealthy-powerful classes.
Liberalism arises from the willing abuse of an under-regulated economy that allows consolidation of wealth and, therefore, accumulation of power. Therefore the end result of unchecked liberalism is always rightism.
There are many forms of leftism, because leftism is about tearing down and preventing accumulation and consolidation of power. The goal is to prevent runaway snowballing of wealth or power that would allow any person or group to subjugate others, ideally in a way that is sustainable and stable. Therefore leftism is about personal liberty and freedom as long as it does not threaten to diminish or supersede the liberty or freedom of others.
The concepts cannot be separated. They travel together and influence each other directly. The political compass is merely an attempt to make “both sides” seem equivalent without addressing the actual cause-effect of wealth and power accumulation, which serves who? Rightists. Capitalists. Liberals. Those who would seek to selfishly hoard more power, privilege, comfort, and authority than everyone else at the expense of anyone else.
You definition seems right to me. However it imply the following : Staline ant Trotsky are right figures and individualist saying that "the system will change when everybody have change themselves" are leftist
Stalin was extreme right, using leftist trappings to seize and consolidate power for himself as Lenin withered away.
Trotsky was leftist, but still a believer in the ML vanguard gamble that resulted in Stalin seizing power. Rightist means will almost always lead to rightist ends.
Tolstoy, being generally anti-state and anti-capitalist, was also leftist. His famous quote philosophically addresses the stability of any leftist movement.
The path to leftism and the methods to preserve it against rightism are very much the realm of philosophy.