Sapiens
02-24-07, 10:45 AM
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/
Meaningful discussion and contemplation of the architecture of modern political power depends on an understanding of cultural context. From this context comes the vocabulary of subjection. The long and sordid history of autocracy is clear enough — such regimes are little more than naïve scale-ups of tribal society, intellectually easy to dismiss, and with the proliferation of alternative systems, easy to oust because unpopular. The real hazard now resides within those very alternatives, specifically in those that are mated to a religious ideology, and promise divine reward for obedience, and wrath both earthly and divine for defiance. Theocratic systems like the Islamism of Iran and Saudi Arabia are evidently dangerous and harmful, but the foremost such system is socialism. Socialism is an ideal vehicle for totalitarianism, as the world learned to its chagrin in the twentieth century. But even where it wears a moderate face, it is an effective disguise for authoritarianism, and for the rearrangement of society along feudalistic lines, so that only a tiny oligarchy has actual control of all property — an arrangement that inevitably wastes humanity's potential for constructive achievement. Accordingly, I open with a discussion of socialism, briefly tracing its roots to the dawn of recorded history, and showing how it undergirds the politics of the present.
Amazing the things you come across on the Net while doing research for the betterment of ...
-Sapiens
Meaningful discussion and contemplation of the architecture of modern political power depends on an understanding of cultural context. From this context comes the vocabulary of subjection. The long and sordid history of autocracy is clear enough — such regimes are little more than naïve scale-ups of tribal society, intellectually easy to dismiss, and with the proliferation of alternative systems, easy to oust because unpopular. The real hazard now resides within those very alternatives, specifically in those that are mated to a religious ideology, and promise divine reward for obedience, and wrath both earthly and divine for defiance. Theocratic systems like the Islamism of Iran and Saudi Arabia are evidently dangerous and harmful, but the foremost such system is socialism. Socialism is an ideal vehicle for totalitarianism, as the world learned to its chagrin in the twentieth century. But even where it wears a moderate face, it is an effective disguise for authoritarianism, and for the rearrangement of society along feudalistic lines, so that only a tiny oligarchy has actual control of all property — an arrangement that inevitably wastes humanity's potential for constructive achievement. Accordingly, I open with a discussion of socialism, briefly tracing its roots to the dawn of recorded history, and showing how it undergirds the politics of the present.
Amazing the things you come across on the Net while doing research for the betterment of ...
-Sapiens