you: “The economics of the left have been abandoned.”
me: “What do you mean by ’economics of the left?”
you: “Nationalization, the government controlling the means of production, etc.”
me: “What about Russia, China, etc?”
you: “Russia is actually not a true Scotsman, and I am going to apply the label ‘capitalism’ to China in such a way that it trumps the fact that a huge amount of economic capacity activity there is directly controlled by the state, many many firms are nationalized, or effectively nationalized, etc.”
re: edit: 19th-20th century reforms are a very complicated subject, I don’t think you can give a good analysis in one paragraph. Reforms in Russia went very differently from reforms in the Ottoman empire, which went very differently from reforms in Hapsburg Austria, and so on.
For example, Russia abolished the serfs because they noted that their army was pathetic during the Crimean war, and they wanted to have an army that is competitive with the West. And of course the process wasn’t even complete until 1907, which is amazing if you think about it because it implies Russia was part-feudal into the 20th century.
One view on the current Crimean crisis is that Russia is still playing conceptual catchup with the West. When the West was living in the 19th century, Russia was living in the 16th. Now that the West is living in the 21st century, Russia is living in the 19th. At any rate, Russia’s trajectory has very little in common with, for instance, England’s trajectory. England started on the path of restricting the power of the King back during the Magna Carta days. Russia is still not fully on board with this being a good idea today, 8 centuries later.
You can’t just talk about “labor reform [unqualified].”
Russia also had free market economics imposed on it in the nineties, in line with pretty much everyone seeing it as the only option. So much for relentless leftwardsness.
Here is how this conversation played out:
you: “The economics of the left have been abandoned.”
me: “What do you mean by ’economics of the left?”
you: “Nationalization, the government controlling the means of production, etc.”
me: “What about Russia, China, etc?”
you: “Russia is actually not a true Scotsman, and I am going to apply the label ‘capitalism’ to China in such a way that it trumps the fact that a huge amount of economic capacity activity there is directly controlled by the state, many many firms are nationalized, or effectively nationalized, etc.”
re: edit: 19th-20th century reforms are a very complicated subject, I don’t think you can give a good analysis in one paragraph. Reforms in Russia went very differently from reforms in the Ottoman empire, which went very differently from reforms in Hapsburg Austria, and so on.
For example, Russia abolished the serfs because they noted that their army was pathetic during the Crimean war, and they wanted to have an army that is competitive with the West. And of course the process wasn’t even complete until 1907, which is amazing if you think about it because it implies Russia was part-feudal into the 20th century.
One view on the current Crimean crisis is that Russia is still playing conceptual catchup with the West. When the West was living in the 19th century, Russia was living in the 16th. Now that the West is living in the 21st century, Russia is living in the 19th. At any rate, Russia’s trajectory has very little in common with, for instance, England’s trajectory. England started on the path of restricting the power of the King back during the Magna Carta days. Russia is still not fully on board with this being a good idea today, 8 centuries later.
You can’t just talk about “labor reform [unqualified].”
Russia also had free market economics imposed on it in the nineties, in line with pretty much everyone seeing it as the only option. So much for relentless leftwardsness.
Your “huge amount” is less than the everything the Chinese government used to control.
Edit: if China had been mostly ccapitalist 50 years ago, you could say it had moved to the left. But 50 years ago, it was under Mao....