02-01-2019, 06:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-01-2019, 07:04 PM by Eric the Green.)
(02-01-2019, 02:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:(01-31-2019, 08:25 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-31-2019, 12:21 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Putin is absolutely not a Marxist. He is a Russian nationalist and a supporter of Christian values which for him mean being against Chechen "terrorists", feminists and gays. I like to call it "locker room Christianity" (I saw such people on personality cafe), according to these types having gay sex once takes you to hell, but sleeping with 508 women a year just means you are a real man and Jesus is proud of you. Putin even praised the former Israeli PM for raping a woman! If I had to name Putin's political orientation, I'd call him a neoreactionary, or if you want to be more precise in his case that means Stalinism without the class struggle. Stalin's methods of control and views on culture and ethnicity are retained, but the economic system is not. There also is a "techno-libertarian" variety of neoreaction, focused more on worshipping the free market and condemning the majority of our species for not wanting it. They also like Putin for his tough stance on cultural leftists and Muslims.
I agree, I don't see Putin as a communist. He's a typical military dictator like Musharraf or the old Pakistani dictator.
If you examine the Communist system under Brezhnev, for instance, you'll b hard pressed to see any remnants of the class struggle there either. It was a slightly less capitalistic version of a one-party state than the Chinese have today. They also claim to be communists.
I've always subscribed to a three-axis political compass:
- Communal, with pure individualism at one extreme and something akin to a hive at the other,
- Economic, with pure laisse faire and Marxism as the extremes, and
- Authority, with pure democracy (or even anarchy) and totalitarianism at the extremes.
Feel free to add religion, if you need another axis. I have from time to time myself. All it shows is the complexity of human and societal interaction.
On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.
On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.