That's where Arendt comes in, to illustrate the point: the only difference between Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR was rhetoric; the two states were functionally and organizationally identical. Totalitarianism cannot be defined in terms of left or right, because totalitarianism prioritizes state and party power predominantly and exclusively, and all else is instrument. The reason this happens is precisely because as one approaches an "extreme" -- left, right, totalitarian, anarchist -- more competing interests conflict with the chosen ideology.
I mean, not really? You need only look at something as simple as economic policies to realize that there's a massive divide between Nazi-Germany and Stalinist USSR. Where the USSR in the 40's was a strictly planned economy without any private actors and a fully collectivized agricultural sector, Nazi-Germany had instituted a complex system of industrial boards which they used to leverage privately owned industries into producing the things Nazi-Germany wanted (and ignoring all production that wasn't in the direct interest of the German war economy) while sustaining an agricultural system pre-dominantly concerned with private, family-owned small scale farming. These are massive political differences that can't just be lumped together as "totalitarian", because one was collectivist and the other focused on private ownership of the means of production. A Nazi and a Stalinist would both agree that the means of production needs to acquiesce to the needs of the state, but their means to achieve that would be very, very different.
I'd argue that a more correct statement is that the tools of oppression are very similar, if not outright identical, for totalitarian states. Propaganda, secret police, institutional distrust of other people (be they your neighbors or a nebulously defined ethnic group) and harsh punishments for dissenting all look the same no matter if you're a Stalinist, Maoist, Nazi, Military dictator or supreme Monarch.
As a moderate, I find both parties are losing their stance helped by some radical supporters on both sides. They are going to doom this nation to the ground because neither can admit anything. The Democrats argue they are the "moralistic of the bunch" but under their watch extended NSA , Didn't fix the education system, or Fix the Inequality levels between rich and poor. Republicans argue for "Values and Self Determination", yet they want to destroy any fed assistance, weaken workers right etc. Argue what you may as how GREAT your side is in the end, neither side or supporters want to be told the truth.
Lay your excuses bare as to why we still have a horrible education system, or inequality levels etc. Burn this nation to the grown with bickering and pick up the ashes as crying it is the fault of the other side. As a moderate if both are unwilling to admit their faults or come to the center,Fixing issues. Then every tax increase, national debit and laughable education system is rightfully deserved.
A Nazi and a Stalinist would both agree that the means of production needs to acquiesce to the needs of the state, but their means to achieve that would be very, very different.
That's the thing. They're not different when one examines the methodology and goals, they only look that way based upon the rhetoric. The method being to synonymize party and state, and create a controlled economy via sponsored monopolies, in turn based upon party loyalty. The synonymy between party and state being key: when party and state become synonymous, distinctions between privatization and nationalization cease to matter, as in either case the subject becomes an apparatus of the party-state.
Nazi "privatization" was anything but. Contracts and regulations were exclusively based upon loyalty to the Nazi regime. Aryanization ensured corporations were loyal to the Nazi regime and only to the Nazi regime.
Heres something that will enrage people on this forum. Don't let people over 60 vote. They have been the reason for almost every problem in the modern world, from Brexit to immigration, Trump, Italian populists, and just general conservative douchebaggery everywhere.
Edit: The Iraq War, the environment, climate change.
Yeah, we are about to literally have millions of people die all because some baby boomers were racists, and greedy.
A Nazi and a Stalinist would both agree that the means of production needs to acquiesce to the needs of the state, but their means to achieve that would be very, very different.
That's the thing. They're not different when one examines the methodology and goals, they only look that way based upon the rhetoric. The method being to synonymize party and state, and create a controlled economy via sponsored monopolies, in turn based upon party loyalty. The synonymy between party and state being key: when party and state become synonymous, distinctions between privatization and nationalization cease to matter, as in either case the subject becomes an apparatus of the party-state.
Nazi "privatization" was anything but. Contracts and regulations were exclusively based upon loyalty to the Nazi regime. Aryanization ensured corporations were loyal to the Nazi regime and only to the Nazi regime.
Yeah both sides would take away property of people and redistribute it, with Communism it was just you'd take from the richer people, with Nazism they took all the property of the 'wrong' sorts of people to give to their 'right' sorts of people. Thats both of them redistributing the wealth...
To be honest I think Nazism shows how messed up our left/right perceptions are these days. Its a mixture of both, like most parties are. So people argue all day about where it lies and pull out things they wouldn't even have associated with left or right back then like "AHA Hitler was a vegetarian who implemented gun control, clearly a leftist!" or "AHA Hitler imposed the death penalty for abortions clearly hes right wing!" Because putting the nazis on the other side is a big victory for them....
That's the thing. They're not different when one examines the methodology and goals, they only look that way based upon the rhetoric. The method being to synonymize party and state, and create a controlled economy via sponsored monopolies, in turn based upon party loyalty. The synonymy between party and state being key: when party and state become synonymous, distinctions between privatization and nationalization cease to matter, as in either case the subject becomes an apparatus of the party-state.
Nazi "privatization" was anything but. Contracts and regulations were exclusively based upon loyalty to the Nazi regime. Aryanization ensured corporations were loyal to the Nazi regime and only to the Nazi regime.
Sure, but the Nazi regime still allowed for private ownership over the means of production, something that was absolutely unthinkable for a Stalinist. The Nazi's set up an elaborate system, literally going out of their way instead of doing a "Junkers" on everyone, to ensure that the means of production stayed in private hands. Their system of industrial boards, price marks and state sponsored work forces (what anyone else would call slavery) were all meant to ensure that they didn't have to take control over key strategic industries. The corporations involved were also allowed to pursue whatever production, R&D etc. that they liked as long as they filled their government mandated contracts. This as opposed to the USSR where the entire machinery was wholly state owned. In fact, the German solution to war economy is far more similar to the US/UK solution of enforcing government contracts on private industries by incentives (though the Nazis also threatened with quite a few whips) then it is the USSR solution of simply not letting any one person own a single means of production.
Only a superficial examination of the Nazi and Soviet economy prior to the war would lead you to the conclusion that they are similar. Nazi-Germany rose to power on the back of industrialists and military officers supporting their endeavor and went to great lengths to ensure that private ownership of business and industry remained a thing, even long after it stopped being useful for the Nazis. This is especially true with the agricultural sector, where the Nazis probably would have been better off forcing a collectivization or instigating large buyout schemes to achieve economies of scale, but remained ideologically committed to the idea of small, family owned farms as one of the cornerstones of "Blut und Boden". The USSR seized all means of production, collectivized industri and agriculture and outlawed private business. These two are not the same and never will be.
That their repression of the people was very similar just means that totalitarian regimes tend to use the same tools to suppress dissent and maintain control. To say that the USSR, PRC, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Hussein's Iraq, modern day Iran, Pol Pot's Cambodia or Pinochet's Chile are all similar because they are all totalitarian is to offer nothing but the most superficial of examinations and missing the vast differences that exist in everything but methods of repression.
I suspect the education system in the USA is, in a sense, fine. The problem is that it has corrosive (mostly poverty-related) social environments that damage the upbringing of too many pupils. Schools cannot repair with 30h a week what the other 138h are doing to children, and these pupils then also disrupt the education of others.
As a moderate if both are unwilling to admit their faults or come to the center,Fixing issues. Then every tax increase, national debit and laughable education system is rightfully deserved.
Arguably, moderates are the problem. After all, who is it really who starts weighing up X and Y and compromises everything into the middle ground? America is what, ~25% liberal, ~35% and 40% other (overwhelmingly moderate). But the Democrats and Republicans can't do much radical because it's really the moderates who'll get cold feet and threaten to jump ship. This in a way creates stability and that's probably a good thing whilst things are good or mostly okay. But as problems potentially require more extreme policy solutions (or experiments), the centre will not have answers... and ultimately not hold. As the great British politician Aneurin Bevan said: "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
Maybe this is what is going on. Polls suggest conservatives are roughly stable over the last 20 years whereas moderates are in decline and liberals growing, suggestive of a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Heres something that will enrage people on this forum. Don't let people over 60 vote. They have been the reason for almost every problem in the modern world, from Brexit to immigration, Trump, Italian populists, and just general conservative douchebaggery everywhere.
Edit: The Iraq War, the environment, climate change.
Yeah, we are about to literally have millions of people die all because some baby boomers were racists, and greedy.
You got the meme wrong. You weren't trying to say "problems in the modern world", you were trying to say "first world problems". Just imagine that picture of the crying woman... "brexit", "Trump"....
Heres something that will enrage people on this forum. Don't let people over 60 vote. They have been the reason for almost every problem in the modern world, from Brexit to immigration, Trump, Italian populists, and just general conservative douchebaggery everywhere.
Edit: The Iraq War, the environment, climate change.
Yeah, we are about to literally have millions of people die all because some baby boomers were racists, and greedy.
.
I have a better solution. Have more kids. Boom, problem solved. You've got below replacement-level birthrates in almost all of Europe and other western nations. Having more kids will make the relative portion of people above the age of 60 much smaller than what it is today, which may mean (by trying to follow your argument) that anti-conservatives will win elections.
This way you also don't deprive people like yourself from their political rights just because they have the 'wrong opinion' AND actually promote a healthier society.
I think you're not going to do that. Doom-saying is a much less demanding alternative.
Sure, but the Nazi regime still allowed for private ownership over the means of production, something that was absolutely unthinkable for a Stalinist. The Nazi's set up an elaborate system, literally going out of their way instead of doing a "Junkers" on everyone, to ensure that the means of production stayed in private hands. Their system of industrial boards, price marks and state sponsored work forces (what anyone else would call slavery) were all meant to ensure that they didn't have to take control over key strategic industries. The corporations involved were also allowed to pursue whatever production, R&D etc. that they liked as long as they filled their government mandated contracts.
Preserving "private" ownership was the most expedient and efficacious means for the Nazi party to gain control over heavy industry, the Weimar Republic having been a western liberal democracy. Scratching the surface yields that "private" ownership was anything but -- take for example the case of IG Farben, where Nazis inside the corporation engineered a purge of the corporation's (plurality Jewish) management and board to be replaced by Nazi loyalists.
That was the case across all German heavy industry, even in cases such as Krupp where aristocratic management and owners were swayed to the Nazi cause, and later purged the company. That was the basis of the Krupp Law, and the entire point of Nazi regulatory boards and laws -- business was allowed to be "privately" owned so long as they remained party apparatus, served party ends, retained party management, obeyed party mandates, and met party goals. When that status of party apparatus ceased to be optimal, they were in fact straight-up nationalized, directly or through state-engineered mergers and buyouts; see the cases of Reichsbank, Rhinemetall-Borsig, and Reichswerke Goring.
The de jure state was privatization, but that's as far as it went and as far as it ever went. The de facto state was party ownership. This is not in contrast at all with the Soviet state of affairs under Stalin, where the de jure state was nationalization, but the de facto state was party -- specifically Stalinist -- ownership, thanks to Stalin's purges and Russification policies. That's the point; when one synonymizes party and state, the distinction between privatization and nationalization becomes moot, because party apparatus is state apparatus. The de jure state no longer matters.
The USSR seized all means of production, collectivized industri and agriculture and outlawed private business. These two are not the same and never will be.
I suspect opinion of this will vary based upon whether one interprets events such as the Holodomor as an ethnic genocide (I do). Collectivization was an excuse for Stalin to russify the Soviet Union, whilst consolidating power by re-engineering the party to his preference.
I suspect the education system in the USA is, in a sense, fine. The problem is that it has corrosive (mostly poverty-related) social environments that damage the upbringing of too many pupils. Schools cannot repair with 30h a week what the other 138h are doing to children, and these pupils then also disrupt the education of others.
If you are in the US our education system is constantly cut with every admin. Children are only tested on answers for tests and nothing more. Meaning they have clueless to what critical thinking is. They are not even taught science in the way Europeans are taught; it's all just memorizing test questions.
Teachers are paid an average of $24,500 to $40,000 a year which is the poverty level in the US.They are also are not able get any fed assistance because they make too much.Public schooling is financed by the government based upon positive averages on test only. Meaning some schools in the US faked test results of students to get more financial assistance.
So what you stated is just a very simplification of a more complex issue with education.
Arguably, moderates are the problem. After all, who is it really who starts weighing up X and Y and compromises everything into the middle ground? America is what, ~25% liberal, ~35% and 40% other (overwhelmingly moderate). But the Democrats and Republicans can't do much radical because it's really the moderates who'll get cold feet and threaten to jump ship. This in a way creates stability and that's probably a good thing whilst things are good or mostly okay. But as problems potentially require more extreme policy solutions (or experiments), the centre will not have answers... and ultimately not hold. As the great British politician Aneurin Bevan said: "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
So here is the question as Britain is such a pure example of harmony, how is Brexit doing?.Is that bickering and yelling no compromising working well?. Because doing radical solutions with either side is plunging that state into economic turmoil.
Radical solutions on paper seem like a perfect solution only to those that benefit from them. The thing is the solutions either side cooks up usually is blindly created under the doctrine of the political party they represent. It is a type of "group think" which both sides are guilty of. They cookie cutter everything to a point it does not really represent actually real people. They instead represent the illusion they concoct up of what is their constituents are.The thing is without someone telling them X ,Y and Z they would make bills that would just not really work.
You don't do Experiments in government with already established political foundations. That is a 101 in political science and world history also collaborates that.Then again to most Nazi Germany, Mao China, Khmer rouge and the Gerousia are flat concepts on paper.
Maybe this is what is going on. Polls suggest conservatives are roughly stable over the last 20 years whereas moderates are in decline and liberals growing, suggestive of a growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.
I would say conservatives are more stable, they have moved slightly more right to counter the lefts large jump. I would argue you are off with your poll which was not sourced . Moderates are not on the decline but the complete opposite, as people are getting fed up with (soc) Liberals and (neo) Conservatives. Those party notions that the Americans are " overly sensitive" or "overly religious" is rubbing people the wrong way.
Honestly, I don't blame them as the only reason Dems were voted into the house because of healthcare. GOP over a dissatisfaction with Obama's admin last few years. Now if the Dems numbers keep slipping in the house as they are now over the impeachment lurch.The GOP will again replace them when elections come up. More moderates are also mentioning they are going to run on both sides. So this might be interesting to watch and see the next future elections as to exactly who wins.
"Plural of anecdote isn't data"/"cool story, bro", but this is something with which I have personal experience. I used to work a summer gig grading Kentucky standardized test short answer scores. That was, if I remember right, essay questions for 4th and 7th grade science, and 5th and 8th grade English. Probably the most depressing job I ever worked, and I've worked in some real shitholes.
The short and skinny of it was the test prompted for a response based on a simple scenario. The one that always sticks in my mind, for a very specific reason, was an hypothetical about squirrel populations in a forest that's being logged for development. Basically, it was "a bunch of squirrels live in a forest, the forest is cut down, so what happens to the squirrels and why?". The guidelines for the answer were fairly simple: partial for identifying habitat destruction, partial for concluding squirrel population goes down, partial for identifying the cause-effect relationship, partial for composition (how well written the short answer was in clarity and purpose).
The tests are supposed to be anonymous and not discriminatory based upon identity and region, but in practice that was anything but the case. With a little experience you could identify exactly from where in the state the kid probably came based on their answer.
Kid who nailed the answer but was functionally illiterate and couldn't express it properly, therefore got partial credit? Poor rural, probably eastern Kentucky. Kid didn't actually have to "figure out" anything, that was part of their life; what they weren't taught was how to communicate.
Kid who wrote a well-written response but it was obvious they had no fucking clue? Probably middle class, suburban school. Kid was coached on how to answer essay questions, but not the actual principles underlying the answer or how to reason their way from point A to point B.
Kid who got everything right and had a well-written response? Upper-class and rural, charter, or private school. Mostly, that was east Louisville and Lexington. Kid actually got a fucking education.
Kid who didn't even get partial credit? Poor urban, you can figure out what that means yourself. Because fuck'em, we gotta give tax breaks to tobacco and coal companies.
[Then you had the kids who were obviously way too smart to be forced to put up with this shit, and acted out by getting...creative...with their answers. Those kids' answers were legitimately some of the best comedy writing I've ever read.]
There were exceptions, but that was the general rule. The rural/urban and rich/poor divide was nauseatingly obvious with this question, and that's why a decade later it still sticks with me. Now the thing is, there was no room for annotation on how or why the kid may have gotten partial credit. The answer of a poor kid who could figure it out but couldn't express it because they could barely write, got the same score as a kid who was coached on how to answer essay questions but clearly had no ability to figure out the answer for themselves. It was just a straight point scale.
I actually brought this up with my bosses one shift in casual conversation during my lunch break; while we as employees didn't have access to the regional/district data (for obvious reasons), they actually did because their job was to collate the data and identify problem districts and provide recommendations to the state DoE. It was absolutely the case test answers and scoring correlated along rural/urban and rich/poor divides; it was already obvious, just a confirmation of what anyone in that position could figure out in minutes.
It was also a fact the state didn't want to hear and actively resisted, because they wanted those sweet, sweet no child left behind dollars. Because the test and its scoring criteria were designed to hide those socioeconomic divides that lead to substandard education.
Heres something that will enrage people on this forum. Don't let people over 60 vote. They have been the reason for almost every problem in the modern world, from Brexit to immigration, Trump, Italian populists, and just general conservative douchebaggery everywhere.
Edit: The Iraq War, the environment, climate change.
Yeah, we are about to literally have millions of people die all because some baby boomers were racists, and greedy.
You got the meme wrong. You weren't trying to say "problems in the modern world", you were trying to say "first world problems". Just imagine that picture of the crying woman... "brexit", "Trump"....
Well, that's the thing about averages. It can include low figures. It's really a stupid number when considering incomes - the MEDIAN starting salary should be what is recorded.
If you are in the US our education system is constantly cut with every admin. Children are only tested on answers for tests and nothing more. Meaning they have clueless to what critical thinking is. They are not even taught science in the way Europeans are taught; it's all just memorizing test questions.
It makes me wonder what the hell the USA is spending it's money on, as per child education funding is healthy by Western standards - and it's evidently (as you state later) not going on staff.
I'm a little surprised by the teacher salaries - I saw some reports about a labour dispute showing teachers (in one state at least) were far better paid than that by a factor of two. Teachers should be middle class; as the US middle class is generally paid about a third more than European equivalents, and I'd expect US teachers to therefore be on about $50-$70k (~50% more with seniority such as department heads).
In terms of testing, this a plague across much of the world. A mania for measurement often is deleterious for learning, as it often promotes simple training to easily measured targets rather than a more holistic and healthy approach.
For all this, although the USA performs poorly on global comparisons, deeper analysis suggests the deficit comes from the lowest SES schools, where attainment is much, much lower than low SES in other Western countries.
So here is the question as Britain is such a pure example of harmony, how is Brexit doing?.Is that bickering and yelling no compromising working well?. Because doing radical solutions with either side is plunging that state into economic turmoil.
Brexit didn't really derive from radicalism, it's turned into radicalism. At the point the referendum was held, just 11% of the public viewed EU membership as a matter of national importance. However, it ended up as a vehicle all sorts of other social issues ended up packed into - austerity, immigration, wealth inequality, and responsiveness of the elites to democratic will.
Radical solutions on paper seem like a perfect solution only to those that benefit from them. The thing is the solutions either side cooks up usually is blindly created under the doctrine of the political party they represent. It is a type of "group think" which both sides are guilty of. They cookie cutter everything to a point it does not really represent actually real people. They instead represent the illusion they concoct up of what is their constituents are.The thing is without someone telling them X ,Y and Z they would make bills that would just not really work.
You don't do Experiments in government with already established political foundations. That is a 101 in political science and world history also collaborates that.Then again to most Nazi Germany, Mao China, Khmer rouge and the Gerousia are flat concepts on paper.
We're not talking about Communism or fascism here. In the context of the USA, for instance, something like state-run socialised medicine such as European countries have is radical policy.
I would say conservatives are more stable, they have moved slightly more right to counter the lefts large jump. I would argue you are off with your poll which was not sourced .
Moderates are not on the decline but the complete opposite, as people are getting fed up with (soc) Liberals and (neo) Conservatives. Those party notions that the Americans are " overly sensitive" or "overly religious" is rubbing people the wrong way.
Independents - people who don't identify as Republican or Democrat - are on the rise. But that's not their underlying political ideology.
At the level of political representation, liberals have notably moved left only recently - Sanders 2016, Ocasio-Cortez, etc. although it had been bubbling up a little during the Obama years. In comparison, let's remember the Tea Party - a radical (quasi-)conservative movement - dates to 2009
Conservatives moved well to the right long ago. Anti-tax extremism (e.g. the downfall of Bush Snr.) long since replaced fiscal conservatism, the assault on Clinton, also increasing noise on social issues such as abortion. Reagan (and Thatcher in the UK) were radical conservatives - they oversaw massive and wide-ranging changes to the state and society quite unlike the conceptions of conservatism as general maintenance of the status quo. The current rise of liberalism is, I would suggest, a response to dissatisfaction of the post 80s neoliberal settlement, and in substantial part the persistent failure of the mainstream centre-left party to meaningfully tackle it.
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