Pournelle chart
Encyclopedia
Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Eugene Pournelle is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog....
(in his 1963 political science Ph.D. dissertation), is a 2-dimensional coordinate system which can be used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the Political compass
Political compass
The political compass is a multi-axis model, used by the website of the same name, to label or organize political thought on two dimensions. In its selection and representation of these two dimensions, it is similar to the Nolan Chart...
and the Nolan Chart
Nolan Chart
The Nolan Chart is a political diagram popularized by the American libertarian David Nolan. He reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal...
in that it is a two-dimensional chart, but the axes of the Pournelle chart are different from those of other systems.
The two axes are as follows:
- The x-axis, "Attitude toward the State" (labeled StatismStatismStatism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
), refers to a political philosophy's attitude towards state and centralised government. The farthest right is "state worship", and the farthest left represents the state as the "ultimate evil", preferring individual freedom. - The y-axis, "Attitude toward planned social progress" (labeled RationalismRationalismIn epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
), refers to the extent which a political philosophy is compatible with the idea that social problems can be solved by use of reason. The top indicates complete confidence in planned social progress; the bottom represents skepticism of such methods, often considering them as naively utopian. Those at the top of this axis would tend to discard a traditional custom if they do not understand what purpose it serves (considering it antiquated and probably useless), while those at the bottom would tend to keep the custom (considering it time-tested and probably useful).
"Leftist" ideologies, such as American liberalism, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, are arranged by Pournelle in the upper right-hand quadrant of high state control and high rationalism. Conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
, fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
are placed in the lower right hand quadrant of high state control and low rationalism. Classical anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
are in the lower left hand corner of low state control and low rationalism. Libertarians (including anarcho-capitalists) and Objectivists
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
are placed in the upper lefthand corner of low state control and high rationalism. Each diagonal axis contains "natural" political allies.
Criticisms of the model
Some have criticized the model for the pejorative use of the word "irrational". However, the "bottom" of the scale could more specifically be seen as representing the belief that human rationality cannot perfect society (see PostmodernismPostmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
vs Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
). For example, the conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
of Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
would be near the middle on the left-right scale, but near the bottom on the "rationality" scale (3/1', in Pournelle-style notation), because Burke believed that human society was not perfectible and was skeptical about initiatives intended to improve society. Since Pournelle himself has opinions not very different from those of Burke, it is clear that the term "irrational" is not intended as a pejorative. Pournelle noted that the belief that all societal problems can be solved rationally may not itself be rational. It may similarly be argued that the bottom of the top-bottom spectrum represents not a rejection of reason's power to solve scientific/technical problems (Pournelle is a technology enthusiast), but rather of its utility in forming the community and determining its sense of fundamental purpose.
In fact, Pournelle himself uses the terms "rationalism" and "anti-rationalism", not "rational" and "irrational". The web page "The Pournelle Political Axes" makes this clear.