Enidigm
2021
I just found it interesting that the Tzars managed to prevent a catastrophic social breakdown as long as they did; i think the example of Russian serfdom makes me wonder if the US Civil War was as inevitable as everyone says it was.
I don’t think they have long memories, I just think “vote against the incumbents” is a close description to what the swing voters that (mostly) decide actually do. It’s not like the GOP or its ideas poll well, it’s even more unpopular than the Democrats are.
2012 won’t be like the 2010 conservatives-and-no-one-else turnout, either. Obama may not repeat his ridiculous turnout performance from 2008, but it’ll be good. This is what I’m talking about.
Here, as far as I can see, are the three big top-line differences:
- The 2008 electorate was 74% white, plus 13% black and 9% Latino. The 2010 numbers were 78, 10 and 8. So it was a considerably whiter electorate.
- In 2008, 18-to-29-year-olds made up 18% and those 65-plus made up 16%. Young people actually outvoted old people. This year, the young cohort was down to 11%, and the seniors were up to a whopping 23% of the electorate. That’s a 24-point flip.
- The liberal-moderate-conservative numbers in 2008 were 22%, 44% and 34%. Those numbers for yesterday were 20%, 39% and 41%. A big conservative jump, but in all likelihood because liberals didn’t vote in big numbers.
The demographics now are a reverse of the 1980s; Democrats fear off-year elections.
How do you convince religious extremists, some in the middle east, some elsewhere, from attacking you? They don’t fear death as they believe there is some reward after it. They don’t fear people hating them as they Know (with a capital K) they are right and for the same reason they can’t be convinced to compromise or that they might be wrong.
Possibly education and economic aid? Ironically these are the two things they want to cut most.
It does kind of make me think of the wars we’re in now. The democrats are in the same situation we were in for most our current wars, trying to fight an unconventional enemy with conventional tactics meant to be used against conventional enemies.
The US was divided against itself by regional attitudes towards slavery, something that had no parallel in Russia under the Tsars. In Russia, the aristocracy, the monarchy, and the military were nearly uniform in their attitudes towards the lower classes, while in the US there was sectional hatred that pitted all levels of society (except the slaves, of course) against their counterparts on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line instead of against other classes.
Enidigm
2025
… except those other classes were 90% (!!) of the population. The rise of conscription and the need to tap into Serf classes for military service would have seemed to make armed revolution inevitable; that it wasn’t a revolution over Serfdom, in the end, but rather mass national suicide (ie, WW1), that tipped over the applecart, is a point not emphasized usually in what i’ve read.
10% controlling 90% is hardly a historical outlier for pre-industrial societies. As for the Revolution being caused by WWI, I’ve never read anything else. Without the mass casualties, the inability to trade through the blocked Bosporus (Gallipoli happened for good reasons) and the resulting shortages of all sorts of critical items, wartime inflation, terrible civilian and military morale, and so on, Russia might have continued to slowly transform itself into a more modern society instead of descending into armed revolt.
BTW, the serfs were freed in 1861 by Alexander II, so there couldn’t be a “revolution over serfdom” in 1917. By WWI, peasants were conscripted, not serfs.
Enidigm
2027
… that’s the point :). Except for the 10/90% thing; i’m sure you’re wrong, that’s a pretty crazy outlier as far as social order goes; that’s worse than classical Sparta. Well, i suppose you could argue that all of Feudalism was the same percentage, and Feudal societies were constantly wracked by peasant revolts; once the peasants had access to firearms, there isn’t much their overlords can do.
90-120% is roughly (and I mean roughly) equal to wiping 1% off long-term growth.
But you’re totally missing mine. Russia never had half the aristocracy/military/monarchy wanting to split off from or destroy the other half. The classes with power were largely united, and therefore so was the nation. There’s no parallel with the contemporaneous United States. Revolution occured when society as a whole became disenchanted and furious with its leadership, not when said leadership split into two warring halves on the basis of geography and sectional attitudes.
Russia also came close to revolution in 1905 ISTR
And the 1917 revolution was followed by a long & bloody civil war. So they did split based on sectional attitudes
Based on what? Is the US really capital accumulation limited on growth right now?
Lum
2032
Actually Russia was pretty riven with social discord, to the point of paralysis, between the royal family (which ruled Russia as a private holding), the Orthodox church, feudal landholders, urban gentry, urban workers, and rural poor, all of whom confusingly worked at cross purposes from one another keeping anything from happening. What kept it from exploding into violence?
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Russia actually had a fairly violent low-level urban insurgency from the mid-1800s, which succeeded in assassinating Czar Alexander II, all the way to World War 1, culminating in the 1905 Revolution which the Czarist forces put down violently. It never rose to the level of threatening the regime, but it kept people in prison and acted as a justification for the denial of fredoms.
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In the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions sweeping Europe, Russia both liberalized greatly (ending serfdom, which was slavery by another name) and at the same time clamped down on any political dissent with a brutal fist. It worked, after a fashion, for the next 50 years or so, largely because Czar Alexander III was a tyrant who had no scruples about tyranny. Plus, every picture of him just looks like he is muttering “I WILL BREAK YOU NOW” at the artist. He was one scary dude.
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In the early 1900s Russia was kept together largely through the efforts of one man, Pyotr Stolypin, one of the more effective leaders of that (or any) era. He brought Russia from the feudal era into the Victorian/industrial age in only 5 years almost entirely through sheer force of will. Then Stolypin was assassinated. Whoops. Imagine if he had TEN years! He was basically the Stilicho of Imperial Russia.
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After Stolypin’s death, Russia was both lucky and unlucky enough to fall into World War One. Lucky in that the country united in patriotism and Czar Nicholas’s weaknesses weren’t immediately obvious. Unlucky in that Russia was too weak to survive the war and the strain of it eventually blew apart first the monarchy, then the republic that succeeded it, and the only reason the Communists survived is that they finally surrendered to Germany.
Threatening the economic stability of your country (and some would argue the world) isn’t something that should be of trivial consequence either.
Yes, Lum, I’m aware of the back to the people movement, of Kropotkin, of Stolypin, of the Pan-Slavs, and much else–I took a course on revolutionary Russia in college. Nonetheless, Russian divisions were small compared to those in the antebellum US, a point hammered home by our professor repeatedly. A small revolutionary intelligentsia was massively outnumbered and outgunned by the reactionary interests. The 1905 Revolution would never have succeeded (to the extent that it did) without Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, just as the 1917 Revolution required the upheaval of WWI. Without these exterior stimuli, both would have gone down to to defeat like every prior Russian revolt, at the hands of united conservative interests.
Lum
2035
Your professor was wrong. (Sorry, no other way to put it.) If anything the divisions in Russian society dwarfed the urban North/rural South divide in the US, and contributed to a societal paralysis. Yes, the urban socialists were effectively meaningless aside from their ability to kill Czars, but there were huge divisions in Russian society that ground it to a complete halt - the autocracy which refused to cede power to anyone else, the rural landowners desperate to keep their fading privileges, the urban elite who wanted to be proper Europeans, the feudal villagers who wanted to be left alone - none of them could stand each other. And when it was finally put to the test in World War 1 the contradictions caused Russia to become a failed state - unable to arm its military during wartime, and unable to feed its own people despite being the breadbasket of Europe.
“The Russian Revolution” by Richard Pipes describes the state of affairs from a right-wing perspective, “A People’s Tragedy” by Orlando Figes from a left-wing one. They meet in most places.
And it’s an arguable point that the monarchy would have collapsed prior to WW1 were it not for Stolypin giving the system a few years’ more life. Nicholas was an astoundingly bad ruler, yet insisted on being a medieval autocrat, and prior to World War 1 the government was almost completely dysfunctional. The onset of WW1 saved it, initially.
As for how this is relevant to the current thread, well… let’s just say we could use a Stolypin right now. Maybe with a bit less arbitrary imprisonment, sure. The legislature’s already been gerrymandered, so that saved some time!
We’re not going to agree. Throughout Russian history, the divsions that you speak of were put aside time and again when the serfs/peasants rose in revolt because the reactionary elements in Russian society always made common cause against them. Only the external pressures of failed wars ended this centuries old pattern. The autocracy and rural landowners worked together far more often than not, the Orthodox Church supported them both, the intelligentsia were powerless aside from spasms of pointless terrorism, and on the whole the Russian peasants sincerely believed in the Tsar’s love for them and returned it until they were slaughtered/captured by the millions in WWI.
By contrast, the US nearly destroyed itself without the aid of any external stimulus whatsoever–had there been one, like British intervention on the side of the South, we would almost certainly have divided permanently. The internal contradictions of the United States came within a hairsbreadth of ending its existence while Russia required the added push of defeat in the most devastating war in history to that date.
In other words, you’re wrong (sorry, no other way to put it) :-).
Here, we agree. He was a brilliant, thoughtful, foresighted administrator.
IainC
2037
It isn’t trivial but it’s also nothing to do with this debate. The time to argue about how much money the country is spending is during a budget debate - when the bill being debated determines how much money the country will be spending. The debt ceiling debate is purely a procedural point to enable spending that has already been budgeted and authorised.
This is exactly right–in fact, I’ve argued the same point myself repeatedly. The debt ceiling may well be unconstitutional, and, even if it’s not, it’s stupid. Battles over the budget should occur when the budget is on the floor.
That’s based on some long-term studies of a number of countries. I consider the figure quite reliable. I was agreeing with Lum in any case - 1% is bad, but not a disaster, and it’s LONG term growth, it is NOT what is dictating the anaemic economic recovery from the recession.
And capital accumulation is, if anything, a problem in the West. (Let’s not talk about China, I’d be here all day)
jeffd
2040
Their maximally bad outcome is “taxes go up.”
Probably the best chance Democrats will have to pull this stunt is the end of next year, when the Bush tax cuts expire. The last time that happened Democrats were able to extract some concessions (notably an extension of unemployment benefits for a year). We’ll see what they can get next time around.
From a higher level view: liberals by and large aren’t willing to see the hostage (e,g, the US economy) get shot. Conservatives are. As long as that dynamic persists, conservatives can continue to pull stunts like this.
