Is the left right political spectrum still applicable

From wiki - A political spectrum or political compass is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another.  

Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as -  Political spectrum, a model for classifying political actors, parties, or ideologies along one or more axes that compare them.

The ideologies are the most important that need be plotted as they stay fixed and the political parties develop out of those ideas and theories . Political parties change over time and their plotting is out of interest and their mo is lying and deceiving and manipulating you to get your vote, so what they say often doesnt match with their actions .

As posted in Quora

Is using the left-right political spectrum still useful?

Malcolm-Daniel Freeman

Updated just now

YES is short answer .

Long answer is

The spectrum arose from the French revolution after ending the French monarchy , taking earlier philosophers ideas and created a new society. Today we call it a Liberal democracy which exist in most of Europe and the Western countries.

In the new national assembly of the people during the French Revolution 1789 the radical progressives of the socialists and liberals sat on the left and the conservatives who were trying to protect (conserve) the monarchy and the existing system sat on the right.

It described government style and human rights /social issues and somewhat economic issues. But as capitalism took over and liberalism and capitalism became established, liberalism moved to the right, and economics become as (and more) integral to politics than social issues.

The radicals became the anarchists and communists.

The workers and socialists who formed socialist parties like the Germanys SPD, Spains PSOE and  the Labour Partys of Britain , NZ and Australia were called either democraic socialists or  social democrats . When they mostly voted for war in WWI it was the end of their socialism and a slow march to supporting capitalism  instead of opposing it . And by WWII there was no left wing social democrat party's left. 

When Classic liberalism faltered and failed  in the great depression , after WWII some liberals moved left and introduced modern aka social liberalism to help society by using government to create equal opportunity and reduce privilege .  They still believed in meritocracy and unequal outcome. After the 1970s oil crises faulted capitalism again the neo liberals came to power and moved liberalism back further right. Neo liberals were classic liberals with government market intervention especially with monetary policys.

This recent USA orientated single axis spectrum frequently shown describes government style and social issues but not economics.

Once you add economics everything from social democracy moves right  . Social democracy becomes center right/right and liberals/liberalism in all its variations move further to right. There isnt an accurate spectrum drawn for it but it would be something like this . (this from a video explaining socialism) fascism and liberalism is under capitalism.

As you go from left to right

- you believe human nature is worse

- society gets more authoritarian (both privately and government combined)

- freedom gets less - it declines from positive freedom to negative freedom to Dictatorships

- you believe in larger/taller hierarchy’s

- you go from international to national to super national

It should look more like this 

                                

This covers ideology

But what about governments in practicality .While it covers the liberty v authoritarianism of the total system , it doesnt cover size of government and its authoritarianism v liberty of just the government post WWI in practicality with Russian revolution, Maoism and Hitler v communism or liberalism, for that you need a 2nd axis graph.

Something like this.

Here its shown with a mix of ideology and governments in practice. For the purposes of Authoritarian v libertarian it will do accept for despotic socialism isnt accurate on the vertical axis and social reformist and liberalism isnt correct on horizontal axis ;.

I will find a better graph and post it but in the meantime , this was drawn by a right winger capitalist supporter probably an anarcho capitalist an ideology that doesnt really have any practical basis and couldnt exist in reality. But heres the errors ; 

Statist communist doesnt exist and is an oxymoron as communism is anti state . I would say the same about despotic socialism given socialism  meaning today of  "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange", any socialism like democratic socialism that has a state it would have to be democratic as democracy and freedom is the main aim of socialism.. Social reformist is probably the modern social democrat which I call the neo democrats to distinguish them from pre WWI ones and are drawn too far to left while all liberalism is right wing as graphs 2 & 3 above . 

You could argue Leninism was despotic socialism as he redefined socialism as that transitory period between capitalism and communism they got stuck in. But Marxism is not , which is communism ,  therefore it should be with Anarcho communism and anarcho syndicalism which also believe in revolution.

 If you are going to say an ideology is positioned by the way its implemented then liberalism would have to be very authoritarian as it took series of bloody revolutions to implement and is still held together with armys, police and prison and NAZIsm is very libertarian as NAZI party got power through democracy , it was elected. and passed legislation to make a dictatorship . You cant rate one one way and others another way to suit your political agenda . they are still held together with armys police and prisons. 

In NZ it looks something like this.

Fascism is the hardest to pinpoint , while its based on conservatism ideology  its economic policy is misunderstood . Nazism however is made up ideology as it went along and applied . Fascism including Nazism would be under capitalism by most peoples accounts because it was fundamentally a system of private property. Thou some in the right wing call it socialism but to do this you would have to accept Hitlers new rewriting of the definition of socialism ie Race based national socialism. Which fails most if not all of the definitions of socialism especially democracy under a state. If you insist its not capitalism then you would need a venn diagram (just for the economics).

hhttps://www.quora.com/Is-using-the-left-right-political-spectrum-still-useful