The Socialism Quadrant

(Ostensibly a work in progress)

There was a last-minute adjustment when Elon Musk scrapped his own new political party and offered his support of JD Vance (but not apparently Donald Trump by inference.) The Four Facets of Socialism is a work in progress. There are several versions of historical Socialism, which can be located on a separate chart, at some future date.

Trump’s Authoritarian Socialism, the upper right quadrant, is similar to Stalin although Stalin did not countenance an oligarchy. He was also a party man and a Communist by definition. Communism never acquiesced to its own written Manifesto and neither does Trump. Stalin’s reindustrialization program made Russia more of a Fascist economy, while the Nazis were by definition a National Socialist Party. There are many varieties of Socialism, most includes room for enterprise and free market principles.

The left half quadrant is the bottom-up power structure, the people, or the society which the system serves and how much input they have. The bottom half quadrant is the economic organization, the left side favors small business, anti-trust laws, and the right side is corporate libertarianism. The right half quadrant is the power structure, unitary decider and technology oligarchs. Upper right Quadrant is the unitary decider; in the lower right power is centered in corporate oligarchs. The upper half quadrant is the political structure; so far we have the people in a Socialist system, who may or may not have a Democracy, the economy which under any form of socialism has some form of government regulation, and form in which economy is managed and the population maintained for the benefit of the state, and themselves. How power is distributed is really not important so long as the system functions for everyone.

There is no room for an underclass in any form of socialism. India is not a Socialist country for instance, while you could make the case that the United States is more Socialist than the Modi government. The important matter here is the focus of Socialism in America, which will bend the historical definitions, and certainly self-image does not allow most Americans to accept that they have a Socialist government, to recognize that their current president is engaged in Socialist policies, and to anticipate that America would become a Socialist nation even while it has most of the attributes already.

The most difficult demographic is MAGA, which I placed far to the right, indicating that they prefer a strong power structure. They are clearly straddling the line between Trump, and Vance, who represents the Technocracy. We know MAGA from what they don’t want, The Deep State, government regulation, and rule by committee. MAGA was perfectly fine with Congress abdicating power to the president. Recent defections have some MAGA lawmakers resigning in protest, these individuals would tend to support Vance, assuming the political voice is still being heard. While Vance is not a powerful leader, by reputation, power in the Technocracy is not focused on any one individual.

Since Americans don’t recognize Socialism as its being presented to them the results of the next election will likely revolve around the optics. While subsidizing technology companies is not Socialism, SNAP is. There are limits to that of course. The success of the Mamdani experiment may go a long way toward making “people” of left hand quadrant Socialism move visible. Authoritarian Socialism is more highly visible and likely to be rejected, just on the optics, that would likely precipitate a shift for MAGA to the lower right and a Vance presidency is not nearly as impossible as some believe. The appeal of left-hand quadrant socialism is not that powerful, the Bernie Sanders Progressives. Most of the economically disadvantaged have good jobs, it’s just a matter for them of better and best possible outcome. That is another factor in favor of the Vance ticket.

The relationships between the diagonal squares is also interesting, which I will go over next time.