Joe Biden: polls of approval and favorability

[Eric the Green]

(03-28-2021, 07:53 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-27-2021, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(03-25-2021, 03:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(03-24-2021, 04:28 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(03-22-2021, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It has been 173 years since Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Name one nation where capital has been abolished and your version of Marxism has been implemented and established.

A whole three full generations for an entire social logic to work itself out! You've really got me there.

I wouldn't give up yet.  If the Chinese Communist Party insists on not listening to the people, something like a proletarian revolution could yet occur.  Expecting the result to mesh with the Marxist ideal?  Well, maybe you should give up.

Worth remembering: the Commies' predecessor, the Kuomintang, began as a left-wing Party and went to the Right, too

This may be the right time to mention our WEIRD-ness, and how different and rigid the Chinese model is and has been for centuries.  I doubt we will be subsumed by the East, nor will we crush them. The US-Soviet duopoly was much less logical than the emerging one, but a manifest China isn't going to happen either.

• WEIRD, an acronym for "Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic", cultural identifier of psychology test subjects
  

"Rich" of course is a relative term, considering that poor people in western countries are often rich by comparison to others. "Industrial" harkens back to the Industrial Revolution, which distinguished western countries from others a century or more ago, but no longer does. The Information Age has largely superceded the Industrial, especially in western countries. In The West, industrial is yesterday. "Democratic" when applied to such countries as the United States also is somewhat doubtful, but applies when compared to many third world and second world countries.

But given these caveats, it is natural for us to assume that ours is the way of the future. It was birthed 240 years ago in an Age of Revolution, which aimed to free the world and not just its own country, and is itself only a foundation rather than a goal that would define a fulfilling society. Before this time, western countries were not WEIRD, but were just like all the others in spite of some emerging differences. 

This emergence continues everywhere now. It seems clear that the common people in many countries are rising up for democracy and greater prosperity, and are becoming more educated thanks to diffusion of knowledge through the information age. So I would suggest that this is true in China and the Far East as well as in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast-Asia, and even in Africa. But everywhere, even in Eastern Europe and (to some degree) in the USA and UK, the tyrants of old have made a comeback, and they routinely crush the people. The powers of the old model have yet to be deposed by the rising people-power. I doubt that the centuries and millennia-old model of authoritarian power and gross inequality can be sustained for much longer. But, our hopes are often dashed.