Posted on 10/22/2007 6:40:16 PM PDT by dufekin
And I would guess that further analysis would show the split to be between those that thought they had a right to other people's stuff, versus the old middle class who wanted to keep what they had
Yet another example of why it always pays to read the responses in a Mark Steyn thread.
That’s my biggest worry for the USA over the next few years, that an economic downturn/recession/depression will lead to social conflagration as demagogues exploit people’s fears and ignorance.
Whichever side they picked, Communist or Nazi, they lost.
I suspect that there will be an attempt to set up a "government in exile" much like what was done in the Mexican election.
Pretty fair assesment.
But I suspect things are going to be moving a lot more faster nowadays than the 1800’s.
I read the Thomas work last year. McGee, pick up it sometime.
The big difference is that Spain in the 1930’s was a proxy war between Germany and the USSR. We don’t (yet anyway) have the same situation.
Europe was ripe for an ideological bloodbath. If Hitler had never existed, and Stalin overran Europe, the deaths of "ideological undesirables" would have probably been at least as numerous as the death toll from the Nazis (although the ethnic composition would have been different)
Part of the problem was that the Red-supporting labor unions were able to force employers to make their salaries do a better job of keeping up with hyperinflation than the old middle class did. It caused enormous resentment for the old middle class to see themselves as now poor, while blue-collar workers were now economically not as bad off
The Spanish Civil War did morph into a proxy war, but it didn’t begin that way. Even without the German and Soviet arms, it would have been a horror show.
I hadn’t considered that. Good point, it’s another social fault line to ponder.
The Spanish Civil War started as an attempted coup d’etat by the army and nationalists against the government. It was supposed to be relatively bloodless, but that failed and the general (I have forgotten his name) who was the original coup leader was captured and executed by government forces.
After that, it devolved into the Spanish Civil War we know, with Franco assuming leadership of the rebel forces.
>>They were abandoning centrist parties and moving to the radical left and right, the Communists and Nazis.
That’s a European “left and right”, which has little to do with how Americans tend to view “left and right”.
See the third quote on my FR home page, the two paragraph one by Hayek, for comments on the German Communists and Nazis by a contemporaneous observer.
Today, I’m thinking the similar fault line would be public employees (maybe or maybe not unionized, but likely so) vs. private employees.
What about debt divisions?
I’d say that’s another possible division / fault line, but not the one likely to be analogous to the blue collar / white collar one during the Weimar inflation.
There will be plenty of people with debt problems on both sides of the public/private divide.
A clear division will between private sector and govt employees and retirees. Private pension funds will go belly up, putting folks on the street, while those with govt salaries and pensions continue to be paid.
How this breaks out also depends on whether an economic crash goes the hyperinflation or deflation route, which are the opposite sides of the same coin, depending on govt policy choices in the face of depression.
Not disagreeing. I'm just speculating an analog. Those servicing debt against productive assets vs. non productive.
From what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, he seemed to think that the divided house that could not stand occurred when one side left. I think the house divided that will not stand is when you have two large factions within the same country that have mutually exclusive visions for governing that country.
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