This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Of course.
Another way to look at it is the vote that happens after a debate to determine the winner.
But even from a perspective of the vote as representing force, the vote is less an instrument of conflict than a sublimation of it.
It's a proxy for "how many divisions can you field" and the further it is removed from that the less useful it is as a consensus mechanism. Because then, you "win" an "election" and the people with more divisions topple your illegitimate regime.
You can't escape violence, you can only add abstractions on top of it. Liberals used to understand this before they fell for their own propaganda.
I understand one-man-one-gun-one-vote fine, I don't see why it should undermine debate or democracy.
If you want; then I am pro-abstraction. One man goes around shooting people - another talks to them, then counts their vote, and then, only if he has won, uses limited force. Do you think they are the same?
It's not the same. We've long known of the distinction between abstraction heavy and light regimes, i.e. Machiavelli's Foxes and Lions. But I'm not sure you are fully aware of the tradeoffs.
For instance, a common criticism of fox regimes is that they, by nature, have to be totalitarian. The legitimacy they rest on relies on the illusion of public support, which means they have to control and shape public opinion as much as possible. This is how it is paradoxically democracies that have brought forth general conscription, total war and the most sophisticated forms of psychological warfare.
This isn't all to say that debate is useless or pointless. Nor even that Fox regimes are strictly worse that Lion ones. Merely that it is foolish to think oneself secure from the forces of power, however many pieces of paper one hides behind.
Debate only really is possible in the areas of life that do not concern power, and this isn't something that can be changed. To the dismay of any and all anarchists.
I think a reality check is enough to disabuse people of that theory, if ‘totalitarian’ is to keep any meaning.
I take it you categorize the ur-totalitarian communist, and nazi regimes, as ‘light’, ‘fox regimes’? Even though they were opposed to debate, to voting, and made direct unrestrained force the order of the day?
There’s a contradiction here. If the people are truly powerless, their support a mere ‘illusion’, why do the rulers need it, shape it? Your answer ‘Legitimacy’ is tautological. Why do the people in power need this ‘legitimacy’, what is legitimacy but the people’s acceptance of a ruler’s authority?
That would be silly. Of course Hitlerism and Stalinism are lion regimes, and the late Soviet Union a fox regime. Your mistake is assuming that just because I'm providing a criticism of foxes, there aren't any of lions. However, it turns out that, much to the dismay of mediocre political analysts everywhere, politics is more complicated than good vs evil dualism.
Indeed, my point (or rather De Jouvenel's and Aristostle's) is that democracies are structurally more inclined towards mass politics. This isn't even disputed by democrats most of the time, as they tend to regard participation in politics as not a right, but a duty as well. This involvement of literally every sphere of life in the political process being, ultimately, totalitarian. Democracies are most often fox regimes (though not always), so this is also a very common feature of foxes.
You'll be able to get a good feeling for this by discussing with people who live in despotic nations. They live lives that are mostly free of political thoughts compared to people who live in democracies since that area is so obviously off bounds dangerous territory. Politics then is the exclusive domain of despots and dissidents.
Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion. But it is the case.
Aristostle argues this is bad because it is this tendency that allows democracies to decay into mob rule (or rather, politeia into democracy).
This question is the object of a century old academic debate within scholars of Elite Theory, between partisans of Mosca and partisans of De Jouvenel. Answers to the question vary, so I can only really give you my own.
I hold that legitimacy is a phenomenon that doesn't happen in the masses, but in the mind of the elite. Legitimacy is what we call the Ruling Class's ability to retain will to power and organization by telling itself a convincing enough story about how its power is legitimate. I believe this because the only examples of circulation of elites available in all of history involve the ruling elite willingly letting go of their power, or rather not having the will to cling onto it at the price of incredible bloodshed. In any example I can think of where they did so at any price, the establishment remained.
No, it just seemed even sillier to me to recategorize the founding examples of totalitarianism as not totalitarian. Plus I seem to remember some neoreactionary stuff about "demotism", which put those regimes in the same category as liberal democracy.
But okay, your choice. So in nazi germany, where every civil association was forcibly absorbed into a nazi church, a nazi youth group, a nazi union; where every film and radio was spewing pure nazi propaganda, that regime did not care about public opinion, and wasn't totalitarian?
That's lame. Politics is more complicated than "Politics is more complicated than good vs evil dualism".
What despotic nations are you talking about? Africans? I think even the dictators don't care about politics in africa. China? The rulers care what the people think.
Sounds like a made-up pseudo-freudian theory.
But if they thought they were going to lose to a superior enemy, wouldn't they "let go of their power willingly"?
Approximately 99% of defeated nations do not fight to the last man in war. Does that mean that they are in fact the stronger party, and only a weak will can make them lose?
If it's so silly it's because you imagined it. Nowhere have I ever claimed that War Communism or National Socialism aren't totalitarian ideologies.
Hence the rest of my analysis. Your insistence on reductionist dualism in this conversation is striking though. And totally irrelevant to a pragmatic school of political analysis.
Morocco, Belarus, Oman, Cuba, I've traveled quite a bit, how many examples do you want?
I'm not quite making up one of the most influential sociology works of all time but so what if it is?
If there is a superior enemy then you are not the ruling class because you have already been circulated.
What we're talking about here is a continued laxist or incoherent policy which then ends up at a crossroads where you either have to repress opposition in a bloodbath or be deposed. People who commit to the bloodbath are very seldom deposed. People who hesitate past the Rubicon always are.
Consider Louis XVI or Nicholas II, striking examples of this behavior.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link