The chaos-order scale
The chaos-order scale
I have a theory. (technically I have many but today I'm talking about this one.) Well actually it's more of a visualization. As an anarchist I have spend a lot of time pondering on anarchist society and it's relation to the archic one. This pondering led me to this scale. The Chaos-Order scale. It position political systems on a single point depending on the amount of chaos a society deems acceptable.
I decided to divide the scale into 4 sections. There could be more but i wanted clearly defined borders between them.
- Total chaos
- Anarchy
- Democracy
- Authoritarianism (Authy)
These sections are defined by clear boundaries (marked with #):
- The minimum required order for society
- Anarchy-Democracy border
- Democracy-Authorotarianism border
The arrows signify how every section can be entered.
It should be noted that anarchy and total chaos are separated by an impassable border. #1 The minimum order for society. This is because total chaos can only exists for a moment between archic systems collapsing and the formation of an extremely authoritarian society (The rule of violence). True anarchic systems should be immune to this collapse as it requires the complete breakdown of the social bonds between people.
The second border is the anarchy-democracy border. This border is defined by having any form of hierarchical society. It is passed when an anarchist revolutionary class takes control of the entire functioning of society or when an anarchic society collapses back into archy.
The third is the democracy-authy border. This is defined by having some form of democratic control over society. Essentially free elections. Most people should already be familiar with the concept.
I think there is chaos on the very right too, but it's riots and genocide
1The very right represents complete order. Absolute power of the state. in such an environment all riots would be suppressed.
Genocide is a very orderly affair. I doubt you found much chaos during the "one that everyone knows". What's scary about it is how orderly it was.
This isn't a standard left-right divide. That's why it's called the chaos-order spectrum. not chaos-order on the left-right spectrum.
I'm not using the left side of the spectrum as the political left. I'm using it as the chaos side of the spectrum. It wouldn't make any sense to use a standard left-right divide as a lot of (historically called) leftist exist within the authoritarian section on the graph: Soviet union, China, etc. These were incredibly ordered societies and would exist within the red section on this spectrum.
More thoughts:
This spectrum applies to both Left and Right wing politics. Although I don't know how/if Right-wing anarchy works.It's main purpose however is to just analyze society on a different metric than the classical Left-Right model.
3