NoFreeWill posted:Petrol posted:
and then we get to retreat to feudalism and/or little tribes, and then go extinct.
445 hours of CK2, I've been getting ready
NoFreeWill posted:and then we get to retreat to feudalism and/or little tribes, and then go extinct.
cars posted:*you start to voice the sound of a V and i knock every tooth out of your mouth* let's try this again Winston
how dare you take this from me.
smh dot com dot au posted:The latest EU bailout deal for Greece offers so little in the way of economic relief for the average Greek citizen that it risks emboldening a growing neo-Nazi movement that is casting its gangs of thugs as saviours of the poor.
...
Syriza's capitulation to EU negotiators this week leaves the deep-seated resentment and frustration that austerity, poverty and widespread unemployment have stoked casting around for alternative avenues of political expression. With a weak political centre that supports the EU bailout, the anti-austerity mantle and all the emotion it carries could swiftly default to the political far right. Golden Dawn, which opposed the EU package, is flexing its muscles in the wings.
The Greek neo-Nazi movement, however, is a dark and dangerous beast despite its various charity fronts. It uses violence to advance its aims and actively promotes racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic sentiment, homophobia and social division, particularly by assaulting and demonising immigrants as scapegoats for the nation's woes.
...
Golden Dawn took to the national political stage in 2012, winning 21 seats to enter the Hellenic Parliament for the first time. In national elections earlier this year it won more than 6 per cent of the primary vote, even though its leadership had been jailed under anti-gang laws.
More ominous than the popular vote, perhaps, is its considerable support within the Greek security forces. About half the Greek police voted for Golden Dawn in 2012. The chief of the Hellenic Police, Nikos Papagiannopoulos, has since been reported as telling his officers to make the lives of immigrants "unbearable" and members of the Greek coastguard unit have been accused of beating migrants and dumping them at sea in Turkish territorial waters and of carrying out "mock" waterboardings.
The neo-Nazi presence in Parliament has given oxygen to overt racism. On the streets, such sentiment is playing out in violent attacks on immigrants and street battles between far left groups and Golden Dawn-aligned gangs. In my own research I uncovered countless incidents in which fascists and neo-Nazis were protected by the riot police during clashes, or even had the use of a riot police van to hide their rocks, bricks and baseball bats.
At the same time, the movement is seeking to bolster its popular appeal with food banks, as part of a larger charity effort, albeit one that only assists Greeks. In 2014, Australian Greeks from Melbourne unwittingly contributed to Golden Dawn's largesse, by donating goods that were handed out from crates stamped with Golden Dawn's Nazi symbols.
Certainly, Greece's recent history must limit the popular appeal of the neo-Nazi right. The Greeks suffered under a brutal military junta between 1967 and 1974 and still have pride in the people's movement that overthrew the colonels. Extreme right-wing movements, however, less interested in popularity than in stoking the kind of civil unrest that might offer the security forces a pretext to step up or step in.
Few would argue that Prime Minister Tsipras had any real choice in negotiations with the EU, despite his brinkmanship. (Petrol note:) Austerity might be bad, but being cut loose from the EU looked even worse. But, now no matter what his government does, the new EU package will trigger new, incendiary domestic political stresses.
While the world crunches the numbers of the Greek bailout mark III it is critical this delicate, and potentially dangerous, political balancing act isn't overlooked.
Dr Nick Apoifis is a lecturer in International Relations at UNSW. His book on radical political movements in Greece is due out later this year.
tl;dr tsipras is doing everything right if he wants to pave the way for the nazis, is it just incompetence? 
discipline posted:dot au
NoFreeWill posted:
Petrol posted:
and then we get to retreat to feudalism
I think that Brenner and Perry Anderson (among others), read together, make a convincing case for the historical specificity of feudalism as a Europeon phenomena and help move us away from notions that it was defined by mere stagnant autarky or localism. Medieval Feudalism had markets, dynamic class relations, and (through institutions like the Church and the HRE) a sort of over-arching social-political internationalism of its own as well. It is such factors, in fact, that brought about the series of crises that led to the death of feudalism in the first place throughout much of Europe by the 14th century and set the stage for the rise of capitalism in England, the Reformation in Germany, and the French Absolutist state with a base established on small peasant proprietorship.
Also, outside of Europe, the power of center in the Chinese and the Ottoman Empires waxed and waned, but they never had the characteristically feudal 'parcellization of sovereignity' (Anderson) that was unique to Europe, and was the result of a specific set of legal arrangement between independent aristocratic property owners and royal dynasties. So if 'feudalism' is our future, for much of the world it will not be a 'return' at all.
littlegreenpills posted:i say this all the time but if you mention the term 'feudalism' to a medieval scholar their eyelid will start to twitch. i feel it still describes something useful when marxists use it but we have this ongoing confusion where a lot of marxists essentially believe its still useful to talk about the same sort of thing 17th century protoliberals were talking about when they coined the term i.e. a poorly informed caricature of a society that had died centuries before their time
Surely all medieval scholars have died by now
"No one knows at the moment how this is supposed to work," opined Schäuble as he flexed his bare toes against a catamite's spine. "I mean, I have to be pretty rich, right, so what the fuck is up with my teeth?"
RedMaistre posted:I think that Brenner and Perry Anderson (among others), read together, make a convincing case for the historical specificity of feudalism as a Europeon phenomena and help move us away from notions that it was defined by mere stagnant autarky or localism. Medieval Feudalism had markets, dynamic class relations, and (through institutions like the Church and the HRE) a sort of over-arching social-political internationalism of its own as well.
completely agreed.
if all the oil disappeared at the same time and the state had no access to any other concentrated energy then maybe there would be some strange reconfigurations, but instead it is a progressive decline in available energy. the entire 20th century during the major wartimes or oil shortages shows us exactly what the reaction to that is: less and less energy is available for "non-essential" activities, commodities become controlled, capital and state close ranks. the definition of what is "non-productive" will be broadened until the only sanctioned high-energy activity is directly preserving existing power structures. class differences will be more and more obvious. they already are, this is all already underway.
cars posted:what do you think a world might look like with the same or increased mobility of capital through maintained privileged communications networks, but severely decreased mobility for labor, equipment, etc.?
feudalism, which happened
aerdil posted:although global labor arbitrage is so profitable that transport costs would have to become very dear, or worker's rights in the global North very regressed, for that to make sense.
i thought transport costs increasing dramatically, e.g. by oil prices skyrocketing, was the premise
cars posted:what do you think a world might look like with the same or increased mobility of capital through maintained privileged communications networks, but severely decreased mobility for labor, equipment, etc.?
cities buy more natural gas buses
Urbandale posted:US pulls New Deal 2, finally shores up its crumbling rail infrastructure
*millions across the country begin feeling the bern*
littlegreenpills posted:we had industrial civilization before oil. and it was better back then too cos communism was actually possible
yeah with coal. lol. gonna be great for health and warming. if we do burn all teh fossil fuels that give EROI my extinction alarmism will start looking like extinction realism.
maybe i should learn what feudalism is before making grand prnouncements, but localism, autarky, confederations city-states, knights with home-made rifles etc... probably even riding motorcycles or dinosaurs
it's true that both the decline in Energy Return on Investment and global warming are slowly processes, so my collapse of civilization scenario is somewhat unrealistic, but i still think a Great Decline is coming. a sort of even retreat back through history of civilization is not what will happen (narratives of progress were always incorrect and are even sillier in reverse), but shared features and similarities will occur. it all depends on what suite of technologies we can maintain/salvage/develop in the meantime and how bad both the processes are. either way i don't think capitalism can survive the crisis and i really think there's at least 25-50% chance of human extinction within 200-500 years.
c_man posted:Urbandale posted:US pulls New Deal 2, finally shores up its crumbling rail infrastructure
*millions across the country begin feeling the bern*
i unironically agree. theres a growing trend in Dem-aligned academic circles to support islamic parties against what they term 'officer states', and foreign policy people are starting to agree, both to destabilize the arab countries with untested civilian parties and to lower the cost of obtaining raw resources + support for their militaries.
littlegreenpills posted:i say this all the time but if you mention the term 'feudalism' to a medieval scholar their eyelid will start to twitch. i feel it still describes something useful when marxists use it but we have this ongoing confusion where a lot of marxists essentially believe its still useful to talk about the same sort of thing 17th century protoliberals were talking about when they coined the term i.e. a poorly informed caricature of a society that had died centuries before their time
1. I would take issue with describing what those 17th century writers were talking about as being merely a fanciful caricature. They saw that real social changes had occurred in recent centuries, could see these changes unfolding at first hand, and had a profound interest in understanding them. As J.Q.C. Mackrell puts it.
Eighteenth century historians gave to feudalism more meanings than meet with the approval of modern academics. Yet that does not mean that 18th century writers knew no history. They seem, however, to have felt more deeply about the past than most modern writers, which may explain why the latter find it so hard to forgive them.
The word's main usefulness for their purposes came from the fact that it registered the reality of these new developments--not that it descriptively corresponded to a continuous and homogeneous system that had stretched from the fall of Rome to modern times.
2. The main problem is that Marxist polemic and agitprop used the word to apply to any and all social forms throughout the entire world that they could construe as being premodern, regardless of their origin or date of formation. Which is fine for polemic and agitprop but it obscured the historical specificity of Marx's analysis, which is mainly about the transition to capitalism in a handful of Western Europeon countries (above all England).As long as we keep this historical specificity in mind, using feudalism as a generic term for the social orders preceding capitalism in those countries remains acceptable, imo.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
NoFreeWill posted:shipping is also insanely efficient, and there were danes running long-haul sail shipping into the mid-20th century on very specific routes that were still economically profitable.
I hate flying in planes and love boats. Guess I'm set.
Perhaps the most significant role in the future of the (mainstream parliamentary) anti-austerity movements will be as pressure groups through which United States can consolidate fortress Europe vis-a-vis Moscow and Beijing. Particularly as other parts of the world become less tractable, Europe* will represent an attractive place to double down on American influence mainly through soft power means without having to put (more) troops in the groups.
But so far, it seems unclear how the United States could actually convince Berlin to undermine the structures of its own model of economic development and regional hegemony, considering that both the occasions it did so in the past were after a victory in a major war. And if such challenges by proxy ever became serious, it would only give Germany good reasons to seek rapprochement with Russia, which United States couldn't really do anything about.
*and Japan, for the same reasons.
NoFreeWill posted:it's true that both the decline in Energy Return on Investment and global warming are slowly processes, so my collapse of civilization scenario is somewhat unrealistic, but i still think a Great Decline is coming. a sort of even retreat back through history of civilization is not what will happen (narratives of progress were always incorrect and are even sillier in reverse), but shared features and similarities will occur. it all depends on what suite of technologies we can maintain/salvage/develop in the meantime and how bad both the processes are. either way i don't think capitalism can survive the crisis and i really think there's at least 25-50% chance of human extinction within 200-500 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfulfilled_Christian_religious_predictions
RedMaistre posted:littlegreenpills posted:i say this all the time but if you mention the term 'feudalism' to a medieval scholar their eyelid will start to twitch. i feel it still describes something useful when marxists use it but we have this ongoing confusion where a lot of marxists essentially believe its still useful to talk about the same sort of thing 17th century protoliberals were talking about when they coined the term i.e. a poorly informed caricature of a society that had died centuries before their time
1. I would take issue with describing what those 17th century writers were talking about as being merely a fanciful caricature. They saw that real social changes had occurred in recent centuries, could see these changes unfolding at first hand, and had a profound interest in understanding them. As J.Q.C. Mackrell puts it.
Eighteenth century historians gave to feudalism more meanings than meet with the approval of modern academics. Yet that does not mean that 18th century writers knew no history. They seem, however, to have felt more deeply about the past than most modern writers, which may explain why the latter find it so hard to forgive them.
The word's main usefulness for their purposes came from the fact that it registered the reality of these new developments--not that it descriptively corresponded to a continuous and homogeneous system that had stretched from the fall of Rome to modern times.
ah I get it, polemicists and agitpropers in early modern Europe used it as a handy catchall to help them describe their societies and the changes in them, and that's fine
2. The main problem is that Marxist polemic and agitprop used the word to apply to any and all social forms throughout the entire world that they could construe as being premodern, regardless of their origin or date of formation. Which is fine for polemic and agitprop but it obscured the historical specificity of Marx's analysis, which is mainly about the transition to capitalism in a handful of Western Europeon countries (above all England).As long as we keep this historical specificity in mind, using feudalism as a generic term for the social orders preceding capitalism in those countries remains acceptable, imo.
but on the other hand, polemicists and agitpropers in other times and places used it as a handy catchall to help them describe their societies and the changes in them, and that's just not okay. cool beans brother. White Pow(d)er
e: ok no you did specifically say that it isn't that big of a deal. i wd think that the more historically specific the analysis the less powerful and the less useful it is though
Edited by littlegreenpills ()
You misread me, what I wrote was:
The main problem is that Marxist polemic and agitprop used the word to apply to any and all social forms throughout the entire world that they could construe as being premodern, regardless of their origin or date of formation. Which is fine for polemic and agitprop....
NoFreeWill posted:yeah with coal. lol. gonna be great for health and warming. if we do burn all teh fossil fuels that give EROI my extinction alarmism will start looking like extinction realism.
maybe i should learn what feudalism is before making grand prnouncements, but localism, autarky, confederations city-states, knights with home-made rifles etc... probably even riding motorcycles or dinosaurs
it's true that both the decline in Energy Return on Investment and global warming are slowly processes, so my collapse of civilization scenario is somewhat unrealistic, but i still think a Great Decline is coming. a sort of even retreat back through history of civilization is not what will happen (narratives of progress were always incorrect and are even sillier in reverse), but shared features and similarities will occur. it all depends on what suite of technologies we can maintain/salvage/develop in the meantime and how bad both the processes are. either way i don't think capitalism can survive the crisis and i really think there's at least 25-50% chance of human extinction within 200-500 years.
Sorry but humans will never go extinct until the entire surface of the Earth becomes inhospitable to macroscopic life. Fucked up but true
Petrol posted:smh dot com dot au posted:The latest EU bailout deal for Greece offers so little in the way of economic relief for the average Greek citizen that it risks emboldening a growing neo-Nazi movement that is casting its gangs of thugs as saviours of the poor.
...
Syriza's capitulation to EU negotiators this week leaves the deep-seated resentment and frustration that austerity, poverty and widespread unemployment have stoked casting around for alternative avenues of political expression. With a weak political centre that supports the EU bailout, the anti-austerity mantle and all the emotion it carries could swiftly default to the political far right. Golden Dawn, which opposed the EU package, is flexing its muscles in the wings.
The Greek neo-Nazi movement, however, is a dark and dangerous beast despite its various charity fronts. It uses violence to advance its aims and actively promotes racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic sentiment, homophobia and social division, particularly by assaulting and demonising immigrants as scapegoats for the nation's woes.
...
Golden Dawn took to the national political stage in 2012, winning 21 seats to enter the Hellenic Parliament for the first time. In national elections earlier this year it won more than 6 per cent of the primary vote, even though its leadership had been jailed under anti-gang laws.
More ominous than the popular vote, perhaps, is its considerable support within the Greek security forces. About half the Greek police voted for Golden Dawn in 2012. The chief of the Hellenic Police, Nikos Papagiannopoulos, has since been reported as telling his officers to make the lives of immigrants "unbearable" and members of the Greek coastguard unit have been accused of beating migrants and dumping them at sea in Turkish territorial waters and of carrying out "mock" waterboardings.
The neo-Nazi presence in Parliament has given oxygen to overt racism. On the streets, such sentiment is playing out in violent attacks on immigrants and street battles between far left groups and Golden Dawn-aligned gangs. In my own research I uncovered countless incidents in which fascists and neo-Nazis were protected by the riot police during clashes, or even had the use of a riot police van to hide their rocks, bricks and baseball bats.
At the same time, the movement is seeking to bolster its popular appeal with food banks, as part of a larger charity effort, albeit one that only assists Greeks. In 2014, Australian Greeks from Melbourne unwittingly contributed to Golden Dawn's largesse, by donating goods that were handed out from crates stamped with Golden Dawn's Nazi symbols.
Certainly, Greece's recent history must limit the popular appeal of the neo-Nazi right. The Greeks suffered under a brutal military junta between 1967 and 1974 and still have pride in the people's movement that overthrew the colonels. Extreme right-wing movements, however, less interested in popularity than in stoking the kind of civil unrest that might offer the security forces a pretext to step up or step in.
Few would argue that Prime Minister Tsipras had any real choice in negotiations with the EU, despite his brinkmanship. (Petrol note:
While the world crunches the numbers of the Greek bailout mark III it is critical this delicate, and potentially dangerous, political balancing act isn't overlooked.
Dr Nick Apoifis is a lecturer in International Relations at UNSW. His book on radical political movements in Greece is due out later this year.
tl;dr tsipras is doing everything right if he wants to pave the way for the nazis, is it just incompetence? http://i.ur.com/FwYg1eR.gif
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2015/June/Jewish-Population-Approaches-Pre-WWII-Levels/
