03-02-2021, 02:50 PM
(03-02-2021, 11:37 AM)Einzige Wrote: Political spectrum charts, quadrants, etc. are stupid. This, in particular- Blake for example was definitely a "Proletarianist" (read what he had to say about "dark Satanic mills" for example).
You missed much of the discussion. As important as which of the five sectors one is in is how far one is from the comparatively non-violent center more likely to parley than to 'liquidate'. Those at the extremes in all sectors except the "Inclusionist" sector are either killers or stand for ideologies that have done mass-killing or have no problem with mass death in the name of their revolution. OK, there have been Marxist regimes that have left the world with great body counts, so why does Ayn Rand, who is nearly an antithesis of Marx in ideology go to the edge in the "pro-market" (I am tempted to call it "plutocratic") sector? As I discussed it, I convinced the creator of this model that Ayn Rand, who has never inspired a regime based on her ideology to emerge, I can imagine it as a nightmare of hunger, exposure, and harsh management for those who do not have what it takes to fit into such a utopia. Those unfit for that order die off, and Humanity becomes better suited for an economic hierarchy in which owners and bosses determine everything, including life and death through hunger, exposure, and penal brutality. Rand's utopia looks flawed as Marx' utopia. Marx and Rand differ not so much in seeing capitalism as a cruel, wasteful, and destructive order; they differ in whether they endorse or condemn the worst features of capitalist plutocracy.
Pinochet and Thatcher are both in what I call the plutocratic sector, but there is a big difference between them in the body counts of their governments. Anyone who disputed Pinochet's assumption that no human suffering was ever in excess if it fostered plutocratic power, indulgence, and gain who did not leave fast enough might disappear, first to a torture chamber. British Labour had no such fear under Thatcher. Likewise I came to suggest that while someone like the late Jerry Falwell was a vile prick I could not see him sending gays and lesbians to concentration camps. Second-class citizenship, perhaps, but people can survive second-class citizenship as under Jim Crow or Apartheid. Be a heretic under Khomeini and you could end up quite seriously dead.
The center, the white zone in which people seem to have more flexibility on core issues, is where one gets the pols more likely to find compromises that meld bits and pieces from multiple traditions. Yes, there are people on or near the borderline between two sectors (an example would be the Strasser brothers Georg and Otto, who wanted to put emphasis on the "socialist" claims of National Socialism (Nazism). Hitler sold out quickly to the economic elites, but Georg and Otto Strasser both held that the Jew was by 'race' incompatible with socialism. (Marx wrote a disgusting pamphlet explaining that Jews could be good socialists only if they gave up their religious heritage and thus their passion for economic gain. I once used that against someone who smeared Jews as inherent Commies as in the dreadful Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin (Dietrich Eckart, a mentor of Hitler).
Being near the center but having marked tendencis toward one quadrant means less than the difference between the near-center and the extreme. Obama is far closer to Lech Walesa than to Rajneesh, and FDR is far closer to Merkel than to Stalin. Just because Walesa is more of a nationalist than anything else (he is not really a theocrat or a socialist) and that drawing a ray from the center to the middle of the brown zone of nationalism takes one to Adolf Hitler doesn't make him much like Hitler. The social-market system that Merkel endorses is far from the sadistic economics of Ayn Rand. But even just inside a zone... Mandela and Orban do not have blood on their hands as do Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco.
OK. So what of the cultural figures? Dostoevsky is clearly a conservative with an idealized view of the Russian Orthodox Church as the solution for all things. Roddenberry suggests that in Star Trek time, the world would be more inclusive and that economic distress is no longer a necessity as a spur to honorable and productive behavior, as technology has solved all questions other than interstellar conflicts involving the Klingons and Romulans. (I'd put Rod Serling, and Isaac Asimov here, too. Ray Bradbury would be near the Capitalist than to the Socialist line. Of course the unforgettable line from Woody Allen "whenever I hear Wagner I think of invading Poland" fits. OK, listen to Franz Liszt's Les Preludes and you might get the delusion that you could take on the United States of America and not face dire consequences.
I don't know where one would put such figures as Shakespeare, Mozart, or Degas.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.