zompist wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2026 3:24 pm
malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2026 11:52 am
Whatever your preferred terminology, my point remains the same. Zompist maintains that the political system (whatever its label) that has historically characterized Western countries like the US works remarkably well, providing both general prosperity and personal freedom unparalleled by alternatives.
This is where the terminology actually becomes important. By your definition, nothing changed in the 1930s or the 1980s— we had the same system. But Roosevelt made a huge change, from laissez-faire to liberalism (or social democracy). And Reagan made a huge change, from liberalism to plutocracy. Trump is attempting to make a further change, to crony capitalism. By missing these transitions, you cannot analyze them, or resist the bad ones.
What you never seem to understand is that
it has always been a struggle. There have always been reactionary forces, some merely conservative, some outright fascist. Every progressive step has required protest, heroism, and sometimes literal fighting.
It's correct to point out that the details of how capitalism and capitalist liberal republics gets instantiated have always been a struggle... class struggle, one may call it. but a lot of the distinctions here overstate the differences. roosevelt made changes, but it's not like the country was finland. reagan also made a change, in general we call the post-reagan system neoliberalism rather than plutocracy [and like, capitalism has always been plutocratic, in the sense that those with money are the ruling class, from washington through trump; it is romantization to not acknowledge this]. capitalist realism, and perhaps a related thing we might call liberal realism, might obscure this in the mind, but despite the differences betwen the us in 1890, 1920, 1950, 1980, 2010 and 2026, the overall system of liberal democracy remains: bicameral legislature, wealth as speech and wealthy individuals bankrolling politicians and parties, strong private property rights, no democracy in the worldplace only in the city hall, a specific schema of separation of powers, etcetera. not to mention the more idiosyncratic aspects of the estadounidense system, such as the electoral college.
This leaves them unable to explain how such incompetent buffoons have taken over one country after another.
hear hear. then again, it's not like they have to be great geniuses either: as inequality grows, so does the effect of money in politics. at the limit, under capitalism, if john has as much money as seven thousand times the sum of everyone else (or perhaps more realistically, if john owns say 70% of all the property, including land and stocks and businesses and homes etcetera etcetera), john's chosen candidate would have to be pretty dumb not to win. it is perhaps the case that we've come such a point, and that inequality has reached such a level that the orbanites can afford to be as dumb as a tamagotchi and still win on the power of plutocracy alone.
