Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

September 11th was very spectacular as a cultural and media event and enabled the military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the history books are written, at least those not written centered on cycle theory, the chapter on the Millennial Crisis is apt to start with September 11th. September 11th is apt to be considered the harbinger of the main act.

I don't see September 11th as creating a full scale 4T pattern, though. I describe it as a false regeneracy. For a few weeks, Democrats and Republicans appeared before the cameras in pairs, each going out of their way to proclaim unity. This fell apart. You listed your own subjective reasons why you would think the 2002 - 2004 time frame would fit better as 3T than 4T. Subjectively, I feel the same.

There was mention a while ago that S&H described a "pre-regeneracy" lasting one to five years. After the 1929 crash, it was not clear that the disaster was a Big Deal, and no special action seemed required. The years 2002 to 2004 might fit such a pre-regeneracy pattern. The spiral of violence had reached a level that people were rightly concerned, but most did not think full mobilization necessary, and most did not see a need to restructure society in a basic or profound way.

Thank you. In fact, I'd argue that there are strong parallels between the period from late 1929-1932 and late 2001-2004, in that following a grand catalyst, the nation rallied behind a president, only to have that support deteriorate amid failure. Allow me to elaborate.

Rarely in history, do you see an Unraveling immediately transition into crisis. You are far more likely to witness transitional periods or turning cusps. In this circumstance, what you have is a pre-regency, in which a society, attempts to build consensus and struggles to find answers to an ongoing crisis. It is during this period that the influence of institutions, which had prevailed during the Unraveling, weakens and approach their nadir. In some cases, the weakness of these institutions will directly contribute to the crisis turning itself.

Despite common belief, the stock market crash in 1929 was not the sole factor that triggered the Great Depression. In fact, going by the standards of the day, that crash was a relatively small downturn. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered from the crash as early as 1930. Such periodic downturns are merely a result of the boom-bust cycles that are often common during Unravelings (e.g. The crash of 1987, The Recession of the Early-90s, The Dot Com bust, etc.) In this circumstance, this bust was due to the over speculation of credit, which reached record highs during the late 1920s. Rather, the Depression was a sharp recession that was severely exacerbated by the weakness of economic institutions. The reckless use of the home mortgage and credit, Public Bank Failures, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, an inadequate Federal Reserve System, topped by a severe drought and dust storm that ravaged the agricultural heartland, all turned a sharp 1930 recession into a perilous 1933 depression.

However, it will have to take some time before Society realizes that it is their own institutions which are contributing to the crisis. As is common in 3rd/4th turning cusps, society will at first, not demand that these institutions be reformed. Granted while life may seem to be unfolding for some, no special action may need to be taken yet. On the contrary, the public will rally behind these institutions, thinking that the crisis will demand their immediate and undisputed support in order to make a quick recovery. Take for instance, the period briefly following the 1929 crash. Soon after the stock market crash, support for Hoover actually increased. He was able to maintain wages and established a Federal Farm Board that tried to raise farm prices. He accelerated federal funding for construction projects, and contacted all forty-eight state governors to make a similar appeal for expanded public works. In addition, he went to Congress with a $160 million tax cut, coupled with a doubling of resources for public buildings and dams, highways and harbors. Due to his prompt and apparently effective action, Hoover gained widespread public support.” No one in his place could have done more," concluded the New York Times in the spring of 1930. "Very few of his predecessors could have done as much."

Parallels can be made to Bush's initial response to 9/11. Following the attacks, he addressed the nation, promising a strong and speedy response to the attacks. He promised to capture Osama Bin Laden, vowed to destroy Al Qaeda, initiated a Global War on Terrorism, established The Department of Homeland Security, managed to get the Patriot Act passed with little difficulty, rapidly overthrew the Taliban and Saddam with (...initially) acceptable casualties by the public's standards. All the meanwhile, he enjoyed significant bi-partisan and international support, and his approval ratings skyrocketed, reaching a high of 88% in the month that followed the 9/11 attacks. Even when the War in Iraq and Afghanisthan became increasingly bleak from 03' to 04', Bush maintained approval ratings well above his current levels (in the upper 40s % – lower 50s % range) and won a decisive re-election.

Yet in both of these instances, hubris got the best of the President – ultimately backfiring against them. In February, Hoover announced—prematurely—that the initial shock had passed and that employment was on the mend. However, unemployment shortly soared from five million in 1930 to over eleven million in 1931. Similarly, Bush declared an end to all major combat operations in Iraq, from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, in front of a huge banner that read "Mission Accomplished." Following this, however, troop levels escalated as an Sunni-led insurgency ensued, further exacerbated by the Shiite/Sunni sectarian violence we are witnessing today.

When these institutions fail to make due on their earlier promises, and are unable to formulate effective solutions, public confidence in government institutions will reach unprecedented lows, as the crisis worsens. For instance, Hoover's popularity dwindled once the Public felt he was unable reverse the economic decline. Initial widespread support devolved into rampant discontent and frustration. Many Americans began blaming Hoover personally for the Great Depression. By 1932, during the height of the Depression, Hoover became one of the most mocked Presidents in US history – the name Hoover would become synonymous with failure. Areas that housed those left unemployed and homeless by the Depression (often in cardboard shacks) began to appear all across America, and were referred to as Hoovervilles. Automobiles pulled by mules were known as “Hoover Carts.” As one woman remarked, Hoover promised to put people back on their feet - he did, "he put them to walking." In retrospect, President Truman would later refer Hoover as an engineer who “backed the train all the way into the waiting room and brought us to panic, depression, and despair.”

This discontent would culminate into the Bonus Army riots. Thousands of WW1 veterans and their families demonstrated and camped out in Washington, D.C., during June 1932,seeking immediate payment of a "bonus" granted by the Adjusted Service Certificate Law. Shots were fired by the police in a futile attempt to attain order, and two protesters were killed while many officers were injured. Hoover subsequently sent U.S. Army forces to disperse the demonstration. Troops carried rifles with unsheathed bayonets and tear gas were sent into the Bonus Army's camps. In the ensuing clash, hundreds of civilians were injured, and over 1,000 men, women, and children were exposed to the tear gas. The visual image of U.S. soldiers marching against poor veterans gave the impression that the government could not deal with the crisis. This event destroyed whatever public support remained for Hoover.

Likewise, popular support for Bush diminished following his re-election victory, as the Iraq War intensified, gas prices rose rapidly, and Bush failed to make good on the goals he promised earilier during his campaign bid (e.g. Social Security). The last straw came during Hurricane Katrina. Here, Bush proved unable to protect the nation’s own citizens when they needed him the most. The response to the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history was woefully pitiful. Criticism of the government’s response was rampant in the media, as reports continued to show hunger, deaths, and lack of aid. The nation was stunned by televised images of people looting in desperation. Even more troubling were the images of visibly shaken residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter. Several citizens died from thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed. The treatment of people who had evacuated to registered facilities such as the Superdome was also scrutinized. In the aftermath of the disaster, the government was accused of making things worse, instead of making things better; perhaps even deliberately, by preventing help by others while delaying its own response. A survey conducted on September 2, 2005, showed that 67% of the public blamed the Federal government for the crisis, with 44% blaming President Bush's leadership directly. The poor response to the hurricane caused Bush's approval rating to plummet to 42% – which was at that point, the lowest of his presidency. Since then, Bush has never been able to recover from this event. In fact, the developing sectarian violence in Iraq has caused even more significant damage to his influence. Currently, his approval rating is 32% - the lowest since Richard Nixon’s just prior to his resignation.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

1. I have been through this so many times, but... you can't convince everyyone. The Soviet Union OBVIOUSLY had a 4T from 1917 to sometime in the early 1930s (collectivization.) The Second World War, which they did not want, took place during their High and had no major institutional effect. Nor did any combat veteran of that war ever rule the Soviet Union--shouldn't that tell us something? They had an awakening in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They have obviously been in crisis since 1991. Actually, I think their W W II involvement may have doomed the Soviet Union because it wiped out the Silent Generation that might have moderated the system, as has happened in China.

2. Mexico obviously had a 4T in the mid-teens-1920s, and is very, very close to one now, although we aren't noticing.

3. And as for the US. . .we are in a period comparable to 1929-32. (Interestingly enough, it wouldn't necessarily change the generational constellation at all if we suddenly decided the last 4T didn't start until 1933. Silents would still be defined by the date of the end of the war.) Our political order is in a state of extreme decay and our leadership is hopelessly dysfunctional and out of touch with reality, but our problems are not yet comparable to 1861 or 1933. (As I have suggested recently at historyunfolding.com, Bush's insistence that everything is going forward and there's no need to change course is frighteningly similar to Hoover's response to the Depression.) I have a hunch we have an economic collapse coming at home, along with more problems, obviously, abroad. The Democrats are likely to sweep into power in 2008--but will they actually get the country moving in a new direction? I'm not convinced. We are drifting. What still frightens me the most is that on the foreign scene, what we need is to pull back, not go forward (which is actually what FDR did in foreign policy in 1933.) But although the Democrats are willing specifically to call for reductions of troops in Iraq, they aren't articulating anything broader.

4. We could have a catalyst if Bush/Cheney respond to the Democratic Congress with further usurpations of power, including, but not limited to, an unauthorized attack on Iran. As Carl Bernstein just pointed out, they have gone much further than Nixon ever did, but a Boomer-led press and Boomer-led Congress has been much more indulgent than the GIs were to one of their own.

5. But I suspect something new will hit us that we do not foresee.

2005 was a key year for another reason--Terry Schiavo. It marked the beginning of the end for the theocracy.

Wow, David, we pretty much agree on mostly everything here. Is this a first?

Sincerely,

John

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

Right.. so nothing changed in the Bolshevik Revolution...

I have long thought that monarchy, fascism and communism are all variations of 'autocratic rule.' There is a ruling elite that tries to control everything, ignoring or suppressing forces that counter the interests of the elite. While on the surface, it is not intuitive to say the Bolshevik Revolution changed nothing, at a basic level there might be some truth to it. The major caveat is that the old nobility might be seen as a military class deriving income from land ownership, while the communists were more interested in industry and labor.

Anyway, I just thought I'd amuse myself by using the "Rules of Fascism" to judge a transition from monarchy to communism. What changed?

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. Neither monarchy nor communism are as obsessed with nationalism as blatantly as the fascists. The communists centered their propaganda on the working class more than the nation state. All three forms of autocratic government demand pride in the state from the people, but are genuinely different in the justifications for this pride. The divine right of kings, the great concept of class struggle and fascist nationalist pride and destiny echo each other in purpose, but use distinctly different language.
   
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. Neither the Tzars nor the commissars cared much for human rights.
   
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The Tzars might have done this at times, but I can't say they are defined by it. Communist dislike of capitalists and imperialists, however, is a major part of their values. Here is a change.
   
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. The Tzars and the early communists both had armies, but I can't say they were more militaristic than, say, France, Germany or Britain were at that time. After World War II, one might say Russia became highly militaristic, but I don't know that could be said immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution.
   
5. Rampant sexism. I don't see that feminism was a major transforming issue of the Bolshevik Revolution.
   
6. A controlled mass media. The Communists were really into media control and propaganda. The Tzars, perhaps not so much? Some change. Not a defining issue, though.
   
7. Obsession with national security. This being Russia, this was a concern for both groups. Between Genghis Kahn and Napoleon, they didn't need Hitler to develop a national feeling of paranoia. I'd say the communists after Hitler might have developed a greater concern for national security as they saw themselves in a death struggle with the capitalist imperialists. I'm not sure this was immediately true in the aftermath of the revolution.
   
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. This was reasonably true of the Tzars. The Communists tried to eliminate religion, or replace it with their secular religion of class struggle. A significant change.
   
9. Power of corporations protected. The Tzars were trying to develop corporations, with moderate success. The Communists of course either destroyed corporations or became one big corporation depending on your perspective. A big change?
   
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. I don't think the labor movement really got underway under the Tzars? The Communists either snuffed out any shadow of the labor movement or were the labor movement, depending on whether you believe their propaganda. I don't believe their propaganda. I'd say no change.
    
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Monarchists generally sponsor intellectuals and the arts. The communists did as well, so long as they were ideologically pure. Not a lot of change? Subtle changes in terms of values and propaganda which underlie many artistic movements? It almost seems odd, but the communists tended to sponsor classic art forms such as ballet and symphony which originated under late royal rule but which started to fall out of favor in the industrialized democracies.
    
12. Obsession with crime and punishment. There might be some of this in both royal and communist rule. Perhaps the obsession would be greater under fascism. No real change.
    
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Yes for both royals and communists. Not a big change.
    
14. Fraudulent elections. The Tzars didn't much bother with elections. The communists didn't much bother with opposition candidates. The fascists tended more than either of the others to bother with fraudulent elections? I'll just say that the Bolshevik Revolution didn't produce meaningful elections, and thus say not a big change.

I'm not sure I have a major point to make here. There are real differences between royal and communist governments, but there are a lot of ways they are the same. Primarily, the communists cared more about labor and industrialization. Neither ruling elite would accept challenges to themselves as the sole ruling power. It isn't totally outlandish to say that more stayed the same than actually changed in a fundamental way.

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

snip

Welcome to the forums!

And as a side note, you are stealing my thunder. I was supposed to be the youngest one here.

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

Thank you. In fact, I'd argue that there are strong parallels between the period from late 1929-1932 and late 2001-2004, in that following a grand catalyst, the nation rallied behind a president, only to have that support deteriorate amid failure. Allow me to elaborate.

Good elaboration.

Originally Posted by 1990

Welcome to the forums!

And as a side note, you are stealing my thunder. I was supposed to be the youngest one here.

Hey, what what can I say? Millenials were seriously lacking on this board, so I decided to join the fray.

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

Hey, what what can I say? Millenials were seriously lacking on this board, so I decided to join the fray.

When is your birthday? Maybe I'm still younger than you.

Originally Posted by 1990

When is your birthday? Maybe I'm still younger than you.

I'm Oct 17. You're November 21???? Nooooooo

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

I'm Oct 17. You're November 21???? Nooooooo

(breathes a sigh of relief) Well, in that case, a warm welcome, dear friend.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I'm not sure I have a major point to make here. There are real differences between royal and communist governments, but there are a lot of ways they are the same. Primarily, the communists cared more about labor and industrialization. Neither ruling elite would accept challenges to themselves as the sole ruling power. It isn't totally outlandish to say that more stayed the same than actually changed in a fundamental way.

On the other hand, after re-reading a few other posts, collectivizing farms and industry is a pretty basic transformation of the culture. Privatizing things again is also a fundamental change. World War II, while highly traumatic for Russia, did not transform the basic structure of society. I am inclined to honor the notion that Russia is a generation ahead of the US, Europe and China.

Dear Bob,

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

> I have long thought that monarchy, fascism and communism are all
> variations of 'autocratic rule.'

There are two fundamentally distinct dimensions that have to be
identified separately -- political control and economic control.
Fascism and Communism have historically differed in that Communism,
but not Fascism, required economic as well as political control.

Once the difference is established, the fundamental problem with
Communism as a form of government is that's it's mathematically
impossible.

Communism requires an army of bureaucrats to monitor certain kinds of
transactions, such as prices of goods sold. When you have a small
population, you can do that with, say, 0.01% of the population
serving as price control bureaucrats. But as the population grows
(exponentially), the number of transactions that have to be monitored
grows exponentially even faster, so that at some point 100% of the
population would have to be price control bureaucrats.

I don't know why more people don't realize this. Every attempt at
Communism last century got stuck in the 1950s economically. The
reason is that the governments had to block new product
introductions, because the bureaucracy could never keep up with them.

China tried two different methods to get around this mathematical
necessity. First, Mao tried the Great Leap Forward, which only
managed to kill tens of millions of people, and then finally they
went to a "market economy" in the 1970s, where they no longer attempt
price controls, but still exert macroeconomic controls.

At any rate, economic versus political control is an important
distinction when analyzing these forms of government.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by zilch

Chuckle... spot on, yeah, the guy said absolutely nothing save "Democrats" are the rightful heirs to lead America into the future just as FDR did (gee whiz, I wonder how many members of the Grand Old Party thot the same thing in 1932? Oops, I forgot, the racist Republicans were responsible for the Civil War "bloody shirt" anomaly). Yes, Virginia, the Democratics are still Santa, er, the party of the Gray Champion.

Thus Strauss and Howe's theory has been utter reduced to partisan hackery and merely a silly means to an end. And that end is purely political power. How ridiculously pathetic.

Well, if you didn't notice, I cut him off at a point. It's impossible for me to predict who will win in 2008, but I'd guess the Democrats. Also, if you didn't notice, he said some stuff about Russia, Mexico, being analogous to 1932, you know, purely political.

But yes, S&H has been used as partisan hackery by some. I try not to use it that way.

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

snip

Welcome!

Originally Posted by 1990

zilch, you have now submitted two posts in a row on this thread suggesting that you consider the theory demeaned, weakened, and no longer worth your time. So why are you still posting here?

Well, for one, I think it can it would promote good discussion to have an S&H dissenter on here. I would say some of his deductions are valid.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

You seem to be creating a class of 'special' catalyst events, which might delineate a point of no return. I'd suggest the Harper's Ferry raid might also fall into this category. At that point, the issues became so clear and divisive that with the benefit of 20 20 hindsight, all out conflict is essentially inevitable.

All previous turning boundaries have been selected with hindsight. All I was saying was that the Tea Party was an objectively better choice as "the beginning of something" that were other events such as the Boston Massacre. The direct response was a set of act that were labled at the time as "intolerable". If something is truly intolerable, then no compromise is possible. Now that could just have been rhetoric, but the actual events indicate that it was not. Hence the Tea Party got the ball rolling.

I know I gave myself an internal 'uh oh' when I heard the news of the mosque bombing, but I didn't know the culture well enough to proclaim a catalyst alert.

I am not saying anything about a catalyst. All I am saying is that the Mosque bombing started something. In this case the something is a near step increase in the level of violence as Shiite started to actively hunt Sunnis in large numbers.

I don't see September 11th as creating a full scale 4T pattern, though. I describe it as a false regeneracy. For a few weeks, Democrats and Republicans appeared before the cameras in pairs, each going out of their way to proclaim unity. This fell apart. You listed your own subjective reasons why you would think the 2002 - 2004 time frame would fit better as 3T than 4T.

No. I think the 2002-2004 IS 4T-like. Unity is NOT a 4T feature. It is a 1T feature. I agree that we are nowhere close to the 4T/1T boundary, in which case we might start looking for signs of a unifying meme. For the Revolutionary Crisis this might be the Constitutional convention. Prior to that there are had been two armed insurrections against the government (one of which led to full-scale war)--hardly a sign of unity. For the Civil War, the title of the Crisis says it all. Only in the Depression/WW II was there something that looked like unity (but, as Semo has pointed out, really wasn't). That unity was false in the sense that is was the "unity" achieved by conquest. The opposition to the New Deal wasn't persuaded to support it, it was made irrelevant. The US became a one-party state for 14 years after 1932. The GOP have tried to do exactly the same thing in this crisis. So far they have been unsuccessful.

If I believed Bush 43 and the country as a whole were serious about balancing the budget and cutting down on use of fossil fuels as Bush has been proposing in recent speeches, we'd clearly be in the regeneracy.

Establishing a one party state politically can also serve as a regeneracy (it did last 4T). It was the route America, Germany and Japan took. It seems to me that some of the new policies proposed in the 2001-2005 period can be described as attempts to increase the ability of the party in power to act unilaterally: creating a class of people, including citizens, who can be denied habeus corpus, adopting a policy of torture, creating a new type of tribunal that allows information obtained under duress to be used to prosecute enemies of the state, the "nuclear option", a policy of lying resembling newspeak. I can go on.

Bush 43 has been such an anti-environment, careless foreign intervention, borrow and spend president, I find it hard to take him seriously when he finally proposes basic steps in the right direction. We'll see what the follow through is.

Bush is acknowledging the failure of the GOP's initial bid for a one-party state.

[*]The K cycles go into an economic downturn which traditionally makes other problems in the society less bearable.

For this the relevant issue is the secular bear market that began in 2000. As I pointed out, it was easy for socially liberal or moderate professionals like myself to not worry too much about what Reganomics and corporate policies were doing to our fellow countrymen when we were obtaining safe 3+ real returns in the eighties and double-digit nominal returns in the nineties.

Twenty-two years of a go-nowhere stock market is really going to sour the public on corporate CEOs who make out like bandits while the shareholders and workers rot. It is the CEO that is the most visible example of what "the rich" are for most people. When you perceive that CEOs are operating at your expense, it reduces your resistance to calls to "tax the rich". We are only a third of the way through this and the recent housing bubble has taken away a lot of the pain. But the bubble has topped out now, right? The next housing bubble (Kuznets cycle) peak will be in the 1T. So now people are going to feel less and less confident about their financial situation and their ability to achieve retirement on their own efforts, which will make younger people more interested in preserving old government programs like Social Security.

A president is elected or a party sweeps into power based on a platform of sweeping policy change, a rejection of policies held during the recent 3T.

The GOP achieved at-the-time impressive Congressional electoral victories in 2002 and 2004 that was based on their strong on terrorism platform. And they are by no means "out for the count" in this 4T.

[*]A major act of war occurs resulting in full mobilization and dedication to all out conflict.

I would say 911 did this if we consider that the all-out war was against the political opposition.

I'd rather suggest where we are in the process of becoming 4T instead of providing a yes no / true false binary answer.

Of course is is a gradual process. All I am saying is that when the line is drawn, with hindsight as all previous such lines have been drawn, it will be found that the 4T began well before January 2007.

If the Democrats win more Congressional seats and the Presidency in 2008, do not lose their majorities in 2010 and go on to recapture the Presidency in 2012, then I would say that the 2006 election was the start of a new political dominance by the Democrats and that Katrina was the turning point that brought this about. I would put 2005 as the start of the Crisis and consider 911 as a late 3T event.

However suppose 2012 comes and finds the GOP with control of the executive, legislative or both branches? In this case the short-lived Democratic rally after 2006 would just be a blip. One could say that the 3T was still going on in 2012, but this makes the all the post-Civil War turning lengths look like this: 21, 22, 21, 17, 18, 20, 28+ years. That last length is four standard deviations out from the rest--it looks like a spurious data point to me.

More likley would be an agreement that the 4T had begun well before 2012, but was characterized by a continuation of "3T politics" with each party trying to grab narow majorities to rule for a few years here and there. However if by this time both parties are using global warming and energy independence as talking points, if a national health insurance is being discussed by both parties, then it will be obvious that the nature of debate has changed.

By the end of the 4T, when major changes in energy, health, education and foreign policy have been made over what was current in the 1990's, and it is obvious that a 4T has occurred, when will these things be seen to have started? Could not the major changes in health be seen as starting with Bush's drug benefit? Could not major changes in education be seen as starting with NCLB? Could not the change in foreign policy be seen as starting with 911? Once the trends become clear, I don't think it hard to believe at all that their beginnings will be seen in the 2001-2004 period.

So far the only thing I can rule out is a 4T that began with 911 and had its regeneracy in 2004 with the electoral validation of a new Republican-dominated government.

We still can have a Democrat-dominated 4T or one where power ping-pongs between the two parties. The former suggests a later 4T start date, no earlier than 2005. The latter could still be consistent with start date in the 2001-2004 period.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

On the other hand, after re-reading a few other posts, collectivizing farms and industry is a pretty basic transformation of the culture. Privatizing things again is also a fundamental change. World War II, while highly traumatic for Russia, did not transform the basic structure of society. I am inclined to honor the notion that Russia is a generation ahead of the US, Europe and China.

Yes indeedy. The Bolshevik Revolution hugely transformed Russian society, and the collapse of the Soviet Union had just as profound an effect. The USSR in 1985 was not at all like Russia in 2000, not just politically but institutionally and culturally.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I have long thought that monarchy, fascism and communism are all variations of 'autocratic rule.' There is a ruling elite that tries to control everything, ignoring or suppressing forces that counter the interests of the elite. While on the surface, it is not intuitive to say the Bolshevik Revolution changed nothing, at a basic level there might be some truth to it. The major caveat is that the old nobility might be seen as a military class deriving income from land ownership, while the communists were more interested in industry and labor.

...snip (of Mr. Butler's self amusements)...

I'm not sure I have a major point to make here. There are real differences between royal and communist ( and democratic) governments , but there are a lot of ways they are the same. Primarily, the communists cared more about labor and industrialization. Neither ruling elite would accept challenges to themselves as the sole ruling power. It isn't totally outlandish to say that more stayed the same than actually changed in a fundamental way.

By Tsarist order: serfdom was ended, the the Commercial Tsardom of Witte was introduced, the agricultural revival of Stolypin implemented. The Tsarist were quite concerned with labor and industrialization. Peter the Great and the Alexanders were at the beginning romantic idealists just as Mr. Lenin was.

In South America "progress" often cames from above from caudillos or the military and the implementations of autocratic King Numbers are often retrograde. Is Peronism Progressive? Chavez-ism? Shining Path Incal Maoism?

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Communism requires an army of bureaucrats to monitor certain kinds of transactions, such as prices of goods sold.

No the bureaucrats have to monitor inventories, prices are fixed.

you have a small population, you can do that with, say, 0.01% of the population serving as price control bureaucrats. But as the population grows
(exponentially), the number of transactions that have to be monitored
grows exponentially even faster, so that at some point 100% of the
population would have to be price control bureaucrats.

Private companies perform the same sort of monitoring under capitalism as the government does under Communism. Actually they do more monitoring. Capitalism involves much, much more monitoring and fine tuning of the economy by bureacrats as does Communism. That's why it works better. The difference is the capitalist bureacrats (we call them management) have a clear objective: maintain a supply that, as closely as possible, matches demand so that profits are maximized.

The failure of Commnism has nothing to do with how many people are required to manage the economy. The problem what is the objective of management? There is no incentive to meet consumer demand (much less anticipate it) because the Communist firm cannot go out of business no matter how poorly it serves its customers. Capitalist businesses that fail to continue to innovate new ways to better serve their customers are swept from the scene and replaced by those that do.

As a result communist economies do not innovate very well. It is simply easier to do it the old way or to copy a pre-made pattern developed elsewhere. Innovation can be mandated for state purposes (e.g. the Soviet space program) but it spontaneous innovation in response to a changing economic reality doesn't happen. Hence once the economy reaches the limits of growth possible with the existing pattern (i.e. all the heavy industry needed has been built but no pattern exists that provides consumer goods of a quality or quantity that consumers want) growth stagnates because there is no route to "the next new thing" as there is in capitalist economies. Hence communist economies fall into a 1970's-like "malaise" and they stay there.

Originally Posted by zilch

Your query seems to me to illuminate your problem with dissent, save of course, as I have noticed, when such dissent serves furthering your cause (ie., Bush sucks).

I am not at all surprised you are not inclined to suffer my foolishness. Nor to attempt to trump my dissent. Liberals have a contradictory tendency these days to merely silence dissent rather to, um, encourage it.

FWIW, gloating is not advocacy and whining is not dissent.

Originally Posted by Millennial_90'

I'm Oct 17. You're November 21???? Nooooooo

Originally Posted by 1990

(breathes a sigh of relief) Well, in that case, a warm welcome, dear friend.

There was a January '91 guy who posted for a while last year, but I haven't seen him in some time.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

There was a January '91 guy who posted for a while last year, but I haven't seen him in some time.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mirror mirror on the wall...

It is interesting that my aunt refuses to shop at Wal-Mart because of how they treat threre workers, compared to their CEOs.

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

It is interesting that my aunt refuses to shop at Wal-Mart because of how they treat threre workers, compared to their CEOs.

Are you sure you meant this comment for this thread?

Well, it supports your 2005 argument and Xenarkis' anti-CEO projection. Maybe it is a stretch, though.

Originally Posted by 1990

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mirror mirror on the wall...

Hehehehehe