Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(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.  

There is a thread on the political spectrum, but this classification could suggest a cube in which the axes are A (authority), C (communialism/collectivism), and E (economics). I would have a positive-negative scale with positives for the authoritarian side, the collectivist-communal side, and the side of economic regimentation. Using a scale of -5 to 5 on these three matters, Nazi Germany would be 5 (any question about a political order that has the power of life and death over everyone?), 5 (practically a hive), and  3 (private ownership and consumer indulgence were realities). In coordinate geometry such could be expressed as (5, 5, 3)

Britain during the Blitz was about 3 (heavily regimented and secretive), 5 (practically a hive), and nearly 5 (Surprise! Britain then had about the same level of economic regimentation as the Soviet Union at the time). It had been about (-4, -3, -4) in the mid-thirties. A (-4, -3, -4) society might be as good a place to live as the level of economic development allows, but it isn't going to win any wars. (5, 5, 5) describes Stalin's Soviet Union and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge very well.

I might consider hierarchy (an H axis?), with a slave society at 5 and a very egalitarian one at -5.