Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 22 2023 03:05am)
I think this risks being myopic. The original sin of communism is that its inherently unstable. From which all the consequences flow. Fascism is just one stable system that can supplant it, but its not exclusive nor inevitable. A shoddily built house might collapse, but it might also burn down, or be swept away in a flood, or simply rebuilt from the foundations up to be strong and stable. Communism can end in fascism, or a despotic dictatorship, or warlord tribalism, or foreign occupation, or simply be replaced by self-reinforcing capitalism. Its a common thread with the boogaloos and anarchists, predicting the chaos of a society's collapse and then having the hubris to think their ideology will rise from the ashes. If I could predict how it ends every time I'd be the next warren buffet
Was the USSR inherently unstable? I don't think Putin would necessarily agree. Gorbachev's sin was that he tried to fill shoes a few sizes too big. Had he been Deng Xiaoping the story might have played out differently. The sin of communism is rooted in the Dunning–Kruger effect, it takes a certain level of competence to recognize how complicated economies are, and how little in effect we understand. Communism's great conceit is that central bureaucrats can successfully plan the economic minutiae of hundreds of millions of souls. The off-ramp to communism is to liberalize the economy while maintaining party rule, and as the Chinese understood (and understand), that requires that the rulers maintain the mandate of heaven. What clearer mandate can there be than to say that you have made your people wealthy and strong?
The thesis of the last thirty years was Fukuyama's "end of history". The antithesis is the return of multipolarity and great power politics, and the synthesis is a new breed of nationalist authoritarianism. Nationalism is unique to the time and place, so how it unfolds in Hungary is going to be very different from how it plays out in Turkey, Iran, Russia, India, or China.
Quote (Meanwhile @ Aug 22 2023 07:01am)
First, I think it is easier to reason in terms of vectors: In all cases you have to use popular masses: "communism" works well for this, but religion (including leader cultism), xenophobia and nationalim (especially during a crisis like in WW2II Germany), can be very appealing too !
So all extremes or even deviant systems not allowing minimal equalities, education, rights and so on representative uncorrupted & renewed political power... are leading, soon or later, to genocides or atrocities.
Moderation is key in government, but that moderation will not necessarily take the form that we've developed over the past few hundred years.
This post was edited by bogie160 on Aug 22 2023 07:10am