Political spectrum in the context of Communism

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.

Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system. Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive. As a political force, socialist parties and ideas exercise varying degrees of power and influence, heading national governments in several countries. Socialist politics have been internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and other times independent and critical of them, and present in industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, in the post-war period social democracy embraced a mixed economy based on Keynesianism within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state.

The Justice and Development Party (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [adaːˈlet ve kaɫkɯnˈma paɾtiˈsi], AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative, right-wing populist and as espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is currently the largest party in Grand National Assembly with 272 MPs, ahead of the main opposition social democratic Republican People's Party (CHP).

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chairman of the AK Party since the 2017 Party Congress. The AK Party is the largest party in the Grand National Assembly, the Turkish national legislature, with 268 out of 600 seats, having won 35.6% of votes in the 2023 Turkish parliamentary election. It forms the People's Alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The current parliamentary leader of the AK Party is Abdullah Güler.

Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position in favour of conservatism, natural law, economics, authority, property, religion, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.

Right-wing politics are considered the counterpart to left-wing politics, and the left–right political spectrum is the most common political spectrum. The right includes social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, as well as right-libertarians. "Right" and "right-wing" have been variously used as compliments and pejoratives describing neoliberal, conservative, and fascist economic and social ideas.

The Democratic Party is a liberal political party in the United States. Sitting on the center to center-left of the political spectrum, it is the world's oldest active political party, having been founded in 1828. Its main rival is the conservative Republican Party, and since the 1850s both have dominated American politics.

It initially supported Jacksonian democracy, agrarianism, and geographical expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. Democrats won six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to the Whigs. In 1860, the party split into Northern and Southern factions over slavery. The party remained dominated by agrarian interests, contrasting with Republican support for the big business of the Gilded Age. Democratic candidates won the presidency only twice between 1860 and 1908 though they won the popular vote two more times in that period. During the Progressive Era, some factions of the party supported progressive reforms, with Woodrow Wilson being elected president in 1912 and 1916.

An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958 by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda. Antiestablishmentarianism (or anti-establishmentarianism) is an expression for such a political philosophy. Anti-establishment positions vary depending on political orientation. For example, during the protests of 1968, anti-establishment positions generally emerged from left-wing, socialist, and anarchist circles. In the 2010s, however, anti-establishment positions generally emerged from right-wing populist circles.

Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making and supermajority to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterized by a decision-making structure that involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to majoritarian democracy systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities. Constitutions typically require consensus or supermajority.

A consensus government is a national unity government with representation across the whole political spectrum. A concordance democracy is a type of consensus democracy where majority rule does not play a central role. Optional referendums and popular initiatives correspond to consensus democracy.

A spectrum (pl.: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word spectrum was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light after passing through a prism. In the optical spectrum, light wavelength is viewed as continuous, and spectral colors are seen to blend into one another smoothly when organized in order of their corresponding wavelengths. As scientific understanding of light advanced, the term came to apply to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including radiation not visible to the human eye.

Spectrum has since been applied by analogy to topics outside optics. Thus, one might talk about the "spectrum of political opinion", or the "spectrum of activity" of a drug, or the "autism spectrum". In these uses, values within a spectrum may not be associated with precisely quantifiable numbers or definitions. Such uses imply a broad range of conditions or behaviors grouped together and studied under a single title for ease of discussion. Nonscientific uses of the term spectrum are sometimes misleading. For instance, a single left–right spectrum of political opinion does not capture the full range of people's political beliefs. Political scientists use a variety of biaxial and multiaxial systems to more accurately characterize political opinion.

Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an intense rivalry. Anti-communism has been expressed by several religious groups, and in art and literature. Anti-communism has been an element of many movements and different political positions across the political spectrum, including anarchism, centrism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, nationalism, social democracy, socialism, leftism, and libertarianism, as well as broad movements resisting communist governance.

The first organization which was specifically dedicated to opposing communism was the Russian White movement, which fought in the Russian Civil War starting in 1918 against the recently established Bolshevik government. The White movement was militarily supported by several allied foreign governments which represented the first instance of anti-communism as a government policy. Nevertheless, the Red Army defeated the White movement and the Soviet Union was created in 1922. During the existence of the Soviet Union, anti-communism became an important feature of many different political movements and governments across the world.

The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.

On this type of political spectrum, left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as opposed, although a particular individual or group may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another; and some stances may overlap and be considered either left-wing or right-wing depending on the ideology. In France, where the terms originated, the left has been called "the party of movement" or liberal, and the right "the party of order" or conservative.

A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political parties of opposing political ideologies unite in a coalition government.

In political science and social choice, Black's median voter theorem says that if voters and candidates are distributed along a political spectrum, any Condorcet consistent voting method will elect the candidate preferred by the median voter. The median voter theorem thus shows that under a realistic model of voter behavior, Arrow's theorem does not apply, and rational choice is possible for societies. The theorem was first derived by Duncan Black in 1948, and independently by Kenneth Arrow.

Similar median voter theorems exist for rules like score voting and approval voting when voters are either strategic and informed or if voters' ratings of candidates fall linearly with ideological distance.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; /bʱaːɾət̪iːjə dʒənət̪aː paːrtiː/ ; lit. 'Indian People's Party') is a conservative political party in India and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. BJP emerged out from Shyama Prasad Mukherjee's Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is right-wing to far-right on the political spectrum, and it has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right paramilitary organisation. The party's policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. As of January 2024, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the parliament as well as state legislatures.

The party's origins lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was founded in 1951 by Indian politician Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, after he left the Hindu Mahasabha to form a party as the political wing of the RSS. After the Emergency of 1975–1977, the Jana Sangh merged with several other political parties to form the Janata Party; it defeated the then-incumbent Indian National Congress in the 1977 general election. After three years in power, the Janata Party dissolved in 1980, with the members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh reconvening to form the modern-day BJP. Although initially unsuccessful—winning only two seats in the 1984 general election, it grew in strength on the back of the Ram Rath Yatra in Uttar Pradesh. Following victories in several state elections and better performances in national elections, the BJP became the largest political party in the Parliament in 1996; however, it lacked a majority in the lower house of Parliament, and its government, under its then-leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lasted for only 13 days.

Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.

Fascism, a far-right ultra-nationalistic ideology best known for its use by the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists (better known as the Nazis), became prominent beginning in the 1910s. Organization against fascism began around 1920. Fascism became the state ideology of Italy in 1922 and of Germany in 1933, spurring a large increase in anti-fascist action, including German resistance to Nazism and the Italian resistance movement. Anti-fascism was a major aspect of the Spanish Civil War, which foreshadowed World War II.

The Hague Congress or the Congress of Europe was a conference that was held in The Hague from 7–11 May 1948 with 750 delegates participating from around Europe as well as observers from Canada and the United States of America.

The Congress, organized by Duncan Sandys and Józef Retinger, brought together representatives from across a broad political spectrum, providing them with the opportunity to discuss ideas about the development of European political co-operation. It was held under the auspices of the International Committee of the Movements for European Unity, subsequently to become the European Movement after the Congress.

The American Left refers to the groups or ideas on the left of the political spectrum in the United States. It is occasionally used as a shorthand for groups aligned with the Democratic Party. At other times, it refers to groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political, and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists, and socialists with international imperatives are also present within this macro-movement. Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. The left has been involved in both the Democratic and Republican parties at different times, having originated in the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to the Federalist Party.

Although left-wing politics came to the United States in the 19th century, there are currently no major left-wing political parties in the country. Despite existing left-wing factions within the Democratic Party, as well as minor third parties such as the Green Party, Communist Party USA, Party for Socialism and Liberation, American Communist Party, Workers World Party, Socialist Party, and American Solidarity Party (a Christian democratic party leaning left on economics), there have been few representatives of left-leaning third parties in Congress. Academic scholars have long studied the reasons why no viable socialist parties have emerged in the United States. Some writers ascribe this to the failures of socialist organization and leadership, some to the incompatibility of socialism with American values, and others to the limitations imposed by the United States Constitution. Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were particularly concerned because it challenged orthodox Marxist beliefs that the most advanced industrial country would provide a model for the future of less developed nations. If socialism represented the future, then it should be strongest in the United States. While branches of the Working Men's Party were founded in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, they advocated land reform, universal education and improved working conditions in the form of labor rights, not collective ownership, disappearing after their goals were taken up by Jacksonian democracy. Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor, thought that workers must rely on themselves because any rights provided by government could be revoked.