Political Beliefs of the Major Factions

Something I've been pondering recently is to which part of the political spectrum would the major factions we see represented in the Saga be most aligned to?

My inital thoughts are something like this:

Old Republic - Democracy
Separatists - Democracy

However Separatists somewhere to the right of Republic as they believe in increased capitalism (free markets?)and less "tax and spend"

In this way I see them as maybe being best represented as Conservatives (Separatists) and Labour (Republic) in the UK.

Empire - Dictatorship

Is the Empire fascist or communist or neither?

It seems to rise out of a previously left of centre, centralised Government so maybe it is facism that rises from socialism as the Nazi Party did?

I am also interested in the 'political' leanings of the Force users we see, namely the Old Jedi Order, the 'living Force' advocates and the Sith

Obviously the Sith seem associated with the Empire/dictatorship, but where would the PT Jedi (the old guard) and the more rebellious Jedi (Dooku, Qui Gon, Luke?) stand in a spectrum of beliefs?

Also what of the New Republic - how did they compare to what had come before it?

Any thoughts guys?

 

I dunno. But I see the Republic and the Separatists or Confederacy as being more like kleptocracies --> http://www.thefreedictionary.com/kleptocracy

This article also has some (additional) choice words about the Old Republic and the Jedi Order -->

http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/2005/05/we_are_sith_par_1.html
http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/2005/05/we_are_sith_par.html *

*Yes, that really is the link to Part 2.

 

Gods below, what odious nonsense. No, the Jedi are not the bad guys, the Sith are not the good guys, and going to the Senate to complain about the "duly elected!!!" Chancellor who "am" the Senate would seem utterly pointless.

Ha ha no.

One of the commenters got it right: "the Sith read Ayn Rand".

 

This is a good topic.

Galactic Republic: The general description of the government is a ?Representative Democracy? which is common for most of our modern states. There also seems to be some form of Oligarchy within the Republic probably to the same extent as it exists in much of the modern ?free world?; not a complete Oligarchy however has some certain characteristics of one. Generally however the Republic is an elusive system of government to describe. I would say it is a meld of both a Confederacy and a Federacy having attributes of each yet not necessarily being either. It has a singular governing body known as the Senate which is a representative body of the Republic?s member states representing individual sovereign governments (Naboo ?Kingdom?, Mandalore, etc). This body in turn elects in an oligarchic fashion the Head of State known as the Supreme Chancellor and is a Republic model. As such it is essentially a European Union which has Confederated and is taking on several Federative attributes; it is important to remember that the Separatists rise to counteract a movement to Federation and the Kleptocracy (sp?) the Republic is degenerating into. The Republic is also a Capitalist economic state.

Confederacy of Independent Systems: Although we don?t have much information on the structure of the state as yet we can assume it is also a ?Representative Democracy? based on the Galactic Republic model. Essentially they are a Separatist movement trying to preserve a different form of the Republic to replace the dilapidated old system. It is however ironic that the Confederacy is actually an extreme Kleptocracy with corporations acting behind the scenes of the Separatist government in a conspiracy. Basically it is a carbon-copy of the Republic with decentralization and the promotion of lesser influence of corporations on the government despite promoting a more extreme form of Capitalism than the Republic.

Galactic Empire: Basically this is a police-state autocratic dictatorship with Imperialist ideology, replacing the Republic?s ?Confederate-Federacy? with a completely centralised Imperial state. Fascism is rather difficult to conclusively define however I would say the Empire is fascist especially since Italian fascists described Imperialism as a necessity of their ideology. It seems to have an extremely nationalistic approach with a promotion seemingly of the individual as part of a greater nation (and a discouragement of individualisation as seen by the Stormtroopers, etc). Basically the Empire?s policies seem to be very Fascist-centric. Economically I am not too sure since we don?t really have much information. I would say Socialist with slight Capitalist leanings whilst not going to the extent of Communism. Essentially National-Socialism seems to fit the Empire.

New Republic: I am not an expert on this state however from what I have read it seemed to be a completely Federated Republic. However you have to remember a lot of that EU was written before the PT so I don?t consider it to be canon and a logical progression from the Old Republic (would they really federate following the Separatists?)... however that is just by opinion. In my own opinion the ?New? Republic would have used the basic structure of the Old Republic making steps and regulations to prevent extreme corruption and democratic take-over once again taking hold. I also think a centralised military would have been adopted (I would say the ?Grand Army of the Republic? would be reinstated) to counteract ?great powers? bullying smaller powers and to police and control instability (Trade Federation and Naboo). I would however think a Confederate/Federate hybrid would have been readopted to keep individual sovereignties and governments.

On another note I thought it was interesting Palpatine described the hypothetical ?Jedi Rebellion? as adopting a Theocracy... food for thought.

 

Good thread, especially since I believe the politics of the OT (and SW in general) have been somewhat lost in the Jedi vs. Sith plotting.

The Empire stands for control. Discounting any "Palpatine wants to take over every being in the galaxy" megalomanical stuff, just listen to Vader's speech to Luke on the gantry. The Empire is about order and security at any cost.

The Rebellion instead tilts toward civil liberties - both individual and species-based. Presumably they favor representative democracy as the vehicle to guard said liberties.

The prequels are more about economics and its influence on politics - tax revolts start the whole thing off, followed by laissez-faire capitalism run amok. The Separatists are really fighting for their 'right' to exist as independent corporate states.

It might be important to note how SW is partially an expy-Foundation, in which a galactic government falls and is revived. Even more significant than that, SW is also a reaction to the Vietnam war (US as Empire, etc).

 

Thanks for the replies people.
Of jedi council, sith, living force jedi, new jedi order.

Who is left and who ie right and how far?
Any more theories on ideologies

 

GREAT POST! Before I answer, a little groundwork. Not that I don't like eu, but I'll be basing this solely off the 6 movies. With that in mind I'm looking at ROTJ as "the end" just as George does, not the beginning of the New Republic etc. Second, I'll be using the classic left right diagram of political belief. While the current american model essentially traces which side of the current american regime you like more, it's welfare or warfare arm, the original model essentially traces how much freedom or how much order you want imposed on a society by government, with the far left being anarchist (all freedom, no government), the middle being socialists and nationalists (combo of freedom and order, "liberal" or "conservative" in America), and the far right being total state style regimes. So this left right scale is a Libertarian-Authoritarian scale. For some of those in the European Union this might be the left right scale you're familiar with. Finally, there are some word discrepancies. In America, socialists are called liberals, liberals are called libertarians, traditionalist/nationalists are called conservatives, and so on. Since there is so much double meaning out there, I will clarify my word choices as I go along.

Alright, here we go.

I will agree with labeling the old republic era as mostly democratic. The Old Republic itself seems to be rather federalized, that is having given most of it's powers to it's "states" or planets. Yet their elections are by votes cast by representatives of these planets/"states." This style of representative democracy is fairly common in the world today and historically is a basis for the democratic system we see in the republic. The Old Republic, much like america, combines the concept of democracy and a republic. A democracy essentially being mob rule by another name, and a republic being a style of government meant to represent the people. so instead of a direct democracy (everyone gets a vote, 50%+1 wins) we instead have a representative democracy where planets vote for representatives, who then vote on their behalf in the senate. all of this is run by a chancellor who's main power seems to be just overseeing these meetings (initially). So in effect we have a somewhat limited government that combines democratic and republican (NOT THE PARTIES!) principle into a representative democracy. This however, merely tells us about structure, not content. All this really rules out is the Republic being extreme left, which would be anarchy.

Since the Republic is a government, and by that I mean an entity that has a monopoly on the use of force within it's geographical bounds (we see what happens when people try to secede...), that rules out anarchism, but barring that, the Republic could still be extremely leftist, which I believe it was up until the saga kicks off. I think the Old Republic has a largely Capitalist structure, in the laissez-faire sense. Now, capitalism is a horribly misunderstood word and generally goes by two meanings: one being state-capitalism, the other being free market capitalism.

State capitalism is a purely economic structure where big government and big business are big buddies and essentially plan and run the economy together. This system is also called cronyism, crony capitalism, corporatism, or fascist economics. While this system keeps the appearances of a market as people are aloud to own property and use money, regulation and licensing dictates what you can and can't do. In other words, this style of economic nationalism is not that far removed from economic socialism as the government collectively controls the economy and property, yet it dresses this nationalization of industry up with a market veneer. This is not the kind of capitalism I am referring to. There is also laissez-faire capitalism, the ideal held by the classical liberals/modern day libertarian movement. This is essentially the enactment of two ideals: propertarianism and voluntaryism. Essentially, Capitalism admits that everyone owns themselves and because of this outlaws violence/

 

Interesting

 

The Separatists.... well, there's a lot we do and don't know from the movies. First, there is the infamous tax turmoil in Ep 1. Yet the details are never explained. Most have assumed that the federation is mad that they are being taxed. I do not think that that is the case. I think they are upset that they are not aloud to impose taxes. Now, lets be frank for a moment, taxation is theft. call it what you want, but if a group of people tell you that you owe them $x and if you don't pay they will forcibly take the money from you.... hopefully you get the point. Now that we have established that taxation is a coercive process of (threatened) violence, I don't see the federations move as that large of a leap. Very common in the history of decaying governments is the growing control of the market. The Federation is a giant symbol of that. There are subtle critiques of interventionist economics made throughout TPM (such as watto's comment about government issued fiat currency) but the federation is the pinnacle of this.

They want to impose a trade tariff, a very common practice for most governments, especially during times when governments are making moves towards the right authoritarian wing. Trade embargoes are a very common move for governments looking to force themselves on other societies. E.G. right before america started bombing libya, it enforced no fly zones. Back in the day, we set up a bunch of trade blockades around communist regimes and sympathizers. So on. However, as I established in my last post, the Republic was in a fairly libertarian state, meaning imposing a trade tariff wouldn't be as easy as it would be say a few years down the road. So behind the scenes, I think that the Separatist council is very authoritarian. They are out and about statists. on the left-right scale, everything except the radical left would be statist due to the fact that it supports a monopoly on the use of force instead of a polyarchy (market anarchism- essentially allowing defense to be privatized and allowed to compete) and also because a statist is one that puts the rights of the government over the rights of the individual. This however would be any form of government. Even the smallest government that even does away with taxes, would still violently force out any competition, putting the rights of said government above the rights of the individuals which would peacefully open up shop to provide defense.

So the farther right we go, the more the state trumps the individual, and I would say the separatists are pretty far right. The commerce guild, trade federation, these names are chosen on purpose. These are all names of historical entities that existed to control and regulate, or in other words, they stand for order. This is very indicative of the genius of palpatine's political machinations, no matter what a totalitarian state would emerge. Yet there is a big difference between PR and actual intentions. For instance, Reagan spoke with intensely libertarian rhetoric, but he spent more, taxed more, extremely ramped up the size of our military, the war on drugs, etc. Reagan did not decrease the size of government, he greatly surged it's existence. This would be a good parallel to the separatists.

I think they would be very similar to modern day american conservatives. They make paeans to the idealized past, the government has become large and ineffectual, and we need to fix it and get things back to the way they used to be. But behind the scenes, as we see, the separatists do not want peace and freedom, they want government. They talk about freedom, and try to assassinate political dissenters. they talk about peace, and yet they assembled the galaxies largest standing army.

There are many symbolic gestures made towards the american civil war here, and I think they are fitting. Palpatine is a great representation of Lincoln. Lincoln talked about emancipating slaves yet in reality, the war was fought over one thing, unifying the country and squelching all political opposition. Many scholars refer to Lincoln as a benign dictator,

 

Excellent.

Any chance of a diagramatic representation of the left right display?

 

Google is your friend.

Like anything, diagrams/graphics need to be looked at critically, but try these:

[image=http://floberry.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/leftright_us1.gif]

[image=http://skepticblog.org/wp-content/uploads/left-right-diagram.png]

[image=http://www.shtfplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/rightleftline21.jpg]

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Multi-axis_political_spectrum.svg/600px-Multi-axis_political_spectrum.svg.png]

[image=http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/pictures/ideomap-v2.gif]

[image=http://2020speculator.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/493px-political_ideology_interconnectedness_venn_diagram.jpg]

 

Cheers cryo

Now if we could plot the various SW groups on those...

Say on one of the matrices with left v right and authority v anarchy

 

Yeah!

I actually find it amusing when I look at those diagrams, in terms of colour.

A lot of red and blue.

Plus some green.

Even some purple.

 

Honestly, this is all too deep for me. Interesting read though.

 

I find it interesting that on the surface the clone wars are goodies (slightly more left wing) vs traditional baddies (money grabbing right wing), and ultimate evil rises from the left.

 

^

not from the left, from the sith lord palpatine/darth sidious who was hiding on the left.

 

But other people, like Jar Jar Binks, the character with a heart of gold, gave him their support.

 

Because he tricked them into thinking he was one of the good guys just like them, hence the "insidiousness" of darth sidious.

 

neat diagrams. I think the best one would be the Nolan chart (charthttp://whakahekeheke.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/nolan_chart.png). using that I'd put the Old Republic probably in the middle of the libertarian sector. I'd put the Separatists on the bottom sector leaning towards the left (very authoritarian but with their focus on controlling the economy). I'd put the empire at the dead bottom, and the jedi/rebellion towards the top or maybe very top depending on who you're talking about.

Something important to keep in mind though is that politics is a branch of ethics which discusses the moral way to use violence. such as a socialist thinking violence is ok when being used by a government to redistribute wealth. a traditionalist thinks it's ok for a government to use violence to suppress "sinful" behavior. a Libertarian thinks violence can only be used in a retaliatory manner such as self defense or in retribution. A pacifist would say violence can never be condoned. But there is a lot more to morality then just politics.

For instance, the left right/libertarian-authoritarian scale I've been using (which would be like drawing a line from the top to the bottom of the Nolan Chart) traces specifically politics, aka the moral use of force. It does not say how that force would be used though. So FDR and Hitler would both be extremely right wing authoritarians, yet most scholars look back fondly on fdr and hate hitler. the difference here is in how the violence is used. most would say FDR humanitarian ends justify his authoritarian means whereas they would say hitler is just a crazy dictator.

It's for that same reason that socialists and traditionalists (or liberals and conservatives in the States) would both be in the middle of the true left right diagram. Socialists want government mainly focused on the economy with some minimal intervention into civil liberties to ensure equality. Traditionalists mainly want the government controlling our personal lives with a little bit of economic intervention in order to maintain their nationalist hierarchy. So at the end of the day, although morally they might be total opposites, they are very similar politically as far as how powerful a government they want and how much freedom they will alot civilians.

For this reason, it's useful to sometimes reference other branches of philosophy to give a deeper understanding to politics. The left right scale i've been using is used in other branches of philosophy as a scale ranging from objectivity to subjectivity. By this i mean someone on the extreme left would be an absolutist, thinking there is truth and untruth and that is all. someone on the extreme right would think that their is no such thing as truth, just relative facts pertaining to certain situations, times and places based on people's emotions and experiences. someone in the middle would think that there might be a few absolutes out there but most truths are somewhat gray and there is a little wiggle room there.

For instance, the Jedi would all be placed on the extreme anarchist left politically. They never initiate violence, only act in defense of others, charge no fee for their service, and so on. the Jedi are an example of an ideal market anarchist Private Defense Agency. Yet, if you look outside of politics, the jedi are all over the place. the big picture jedi would be pretty right wing, thinking morals would be relative to the greater, cosmic scheme of things. the more living force attuned jedi would be more left wing, seeing everything as having a specific nature and treating all creatures as individuals, not just pawns in the "great plan." So at the end of the day a jedi like obi wan has pretty relative morals and beliefs, like lying when he sees fit. someone like qui gon would have more absolutist leanings however, like saving the life of an annoying gungan regardless of the consequences cause he sees it as the right thing to do. I'll get more into that later. Just think it's an important clarification to make.

 

And how does he trick characters? Through appealing to their inherent sentiments and prejudices. In Jar Jar's case, he, like a large swathe of the galaxy (the WHOLE galaxy, from what we get to go on in the films) is militarily-inclined. Neither he nor Padme are pacifists. They both fought in a protracted battle to reclaim Naboo from the Trade Federation in TPM. Padme even enlisted Jar Jar's help after Jar Jar boasted about the Gungans having a "Grand Army". When Jar Jar opens the motion to grant Palpatine "Emergency Powers", he's doing so because he isn't a pacifist; because he sees validity and worth in a militaristic approach (albeit, perhaps, as a last resort). Palpatine then openly mocks him for his blindness -- as he always does to characters in SW -- by co-opting his word use from TPM and announcing that he will create "a Grand Army of the Republic". Even a good-natured character like Jar Jar can still possess and be possessed of certain beliefs and predilections that may be exploited. The lesson is to be mindful of the things we believe and why we believe them.

P.S. Another great post, Absolutist! "Outside of politics"... the Jedi *are* all over the place, indeed. And even "inside", they don't seem to comprehend the nature of the beast, so to speak. Consider Obi-Wan's line to Anakin: "My allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!" And he really shouts that out like it's the most obviously noble cause in the world. Yet we saw how well the "democracy" of the Republic functioned. In effect, it led straight to the Empire; so, if anything, Anakin has the proper allegiance at this moment, not Obi-Wan.

 

Indeed as I have quoted in other threads obi wans allegiance is therefore to Palpatine who is the democratically elected leader of, what he must still think at tthat point is the Republic.

 

The way i always saw it was when Jar Jar opens the motion to grant Palpatine the Emergency Powers, he's doing so because mass ameda and palpatine put on that little show for him when they were saying "oh if only senator amidala was here to do what she definitely would do after seeing this game changing evidence obi-wan just presented to us". Then the camera focuses in on jar-jars face reacting to them. I don't think jar-jar had any personal feelings of validity and worth in any militaristic approach much less the one he knows for a fact padme and his party have been fighting against for over a year.

I always saw it as an example of palpatine simply crippling the good side and then taking advantage of the weaker people/factors on that side.

He crippled them by taking the strongest one (padme) out of the equation, then he strikes by arranging for obi-wan to report that the CIS was indeed preparing for war. If it wasn't jar-jar it would have just been someone else. After hearing obi-wans message and seeing him presumably get murdered, not even bail could calm the senators that were in favor of creating the army.

 

Obi-wan was stating that his allegiance was to the republic and democracy -not the guy who destroyed it all. Palpatines election was rigged to say the least because the very crises he was elected to stop (the naboo invasion) was secretly created by him so that he could infiltrate the republic unbeknownst to everyone else.

 

ooo the Empire. Definitely a dictatorship structurally. Palps declares himself emperor and very quickly gets rid of the courts and senate and replaces it with his iron fist (or i guess iron moon...).On the Left Right (libertarian-authoritarain, or freedom versus order) scale the empire would be the extreme right. I can't imagine a more powerful government with more control over every aspect of human activity. They clearly have absolute control over personal behavior to the point that those who even disagree with the emperor are usually killed en mass (think jedi temple or alderan). We know they have absolute control over the economy as well (great cut scene from ANH deals with the empire's nationalization of the economy). I mean, it should go without being said, the empire is the ideal totalitarian (total government) regime.

The communist or fascist question sure is an interesting one. i'd say yes and no to both. First, there is the question of what communism and fascism are. they are generally viewed as the extreme "left" and "right" on the mainstream american political compass. and there is a little bit of validity to that claim, but that draws to attention how silly the mainstream american compass is. according to it you go from communism to socialism to moderate to traditionalist to fascist. So that's the entire scope of political thought? those who want to redistribute wealth versus those who want to kill foreigners?

So first things first, we need a better analysis of what communism and fascism are. communism can be seen as the logical next step of socialism. Socialism refers to a certain type of economy. One where the workers hold the means of production. To make a long story short, socialism is an egalitarian (equalized) economy and in it's most extreme form would give everyone the exact same outcome, or would be run as a direct democracy where everyone has the same power economically allowing society to collectively make decisions. Therefore a socialist government is simply a government who's economy redistributes wealth and economic power. yet that only covers the economic sector. What about the personal sector?

That is where communism comes in. Communism essentially takes that same structure and applies it to all areas of human activity. In this sense communism can be seen as the ultimate realization of democracy. everyone is an equal member of the commune. Under communism, all possessions are generally seized and redistributed under the famous maxim: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Basically that means the government will find the best job for you, you will work it, and instead of getting a check, you will get the same pay as everyone else. There are also monetary fluctuations in this for the purposes of setting up schools, taking care of elderly, etc. basically, whatever you need, the government gets you. Some communes are more extreme, such as the spanish "anarchists" (don't know how these people thought they were anarchists...) outlawed the use of money under threat of the death penalty. This was enforced. There are also looser voluntary communistic structures (which could rightfully be considered anarchist due to their voluntary, and currently illegal, structure) made famous buy hippies going off in the woods to share all their cloths food and weed and sex. There are too many sub-theories to mention from the syndicalists, the original marxists, lenninists, mao's theories, and so on. but at the end end of the day, it's about absolute political power to create an equal society with no class distinctions.

Now what about fascism. What a mind--ck. In it's origins it was a form of socialism. Mussolini was a passionate socialist and upon realizing the inevitable failure of the socialist economy, strove to find a "3rd way" (gotta be one of the most common slogans in psycho politics) between the absolute control of communism (everything is redistributed, yourself included) and the absolute freedom of laissez-faire liberalism (in the classical sense, not the modern american ver

 

thanks cryo! gotta agree, obi wan kinda comes off sounding like an idiot. Then again, I think that's the point, the man failed, and his failure directly lead to the failure of an entire galaxy. If the jedi made one mistake, it was trusting the government. if they just listened to the force from the beginning and did their job, aka protecting innocent people there would have been no tragedy. Another big mistake was their ridiculous attachment to tradition. if they had been on qui-gon's level of excepting natural law, there would have been nothing but peace and harmony.

Instead of being tools for the senate, if the jedi had just gone out wild west style and cleaned up the streets like luke does in ROTJ there would be no slavery anywhere. In following natural law there would be no rule about parents or loved ones. imagine a world where anakin wasn't born a slave, got to spend time with his mom, was trained by qui gon, and raised his kids with his wife to be jedi. granted, that'd be a boring story... but a much happier one!

On a side note, Cryo, I've always wanted to say, love that signature! where'd you find that quote?