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Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

Well there's the whole "enforcing at sword-point a clumsy and heavy-handed regime of reactionary puppets on defeated Athens and then attempting to merely replace the Athenian League with their own as top dog instead of actually helping their allies or breaking up the oppressive hegmonies" thing at the end of the Peloponnesian War. At lot of ancient Greeks who liked how much Sparta talked up defending the traditional Hellenic order quickly soured on them when they met their obnoxious and arrogant tribute-collectors in person.
 
MaHaL said:
*Yes it's been overhyped/propagandized to hell and back, but it generally didn't tend towards gross incompetence.
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Man, Sparta's social order was so entirely totalitarian-fucked up that even just normal family life and reproduction didn't run smoothly. Sparta plain bled out over the centuries because the Spartiate class was too busy playing soldier instead of fathering children. If your social order causes your society to plain die out, then yes, I'd call that gross incompetence.

Also, it's a bit funny to call Sparta "democratic". The entire Spartan system revolved around the point that only the upper class were citizens. And they not only didn't consider themselves democratic, they very proudly represented the anti-democratic side in a Cold War-like ideological confrontation with Athens. Meanwhile, Athens did grant citizenship to all its social classes, and the poorest pauper had the same voice at the assembly as the richest. That was unthinkable in Sparta.

bookwyrm said:
At lot of ancient Greeks who liked how much Sparta talked up defending the traditional Hellenic order quickly soured on them when they met their obnoxious and arrogant tribute-collectors in person.
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Nevermind how those "defenders of the traditional Hellenic order" only won the Peloponnese War by taking really, really big amounts of money from Persia. For all its glorification, Sparta was only just a Persian puppet stirring shit up in Greece for the benefit of its master.
 
Sumeragi said:
Multinational corporations are centrally planned economies.
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No they aren't and this comparison really has to stop.

Nyvis said:
Imagine a world where industry didn't develop as a way for the urban bourgeoisie to take off and compete with the established feudal economic power, but stayed a mandate of the state, focused on delivering results rather than profits, for example.
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Then we wouldn't have industrialization.

If we ignore that states would still be the personal playthings of nobles without the rising bourgeoisie, we still have the problem of massive economic and social disruption. A state with a mandate to provide for its citizens would chose to provide jobs and stability 99% of the time.

Memphet'ran said:
The lesson I take from this is that consumption-reduction environmentalism and the left are fundamentally "strange bedfellows"; their association is the contingent result of a particular shuffling of political coalitions, and they are fundamentally not natural allies. Well, more bluntly the lesson I take from it is to be suspicious of consumption-reduction focused environmentalism.
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Consumption-reduction environmentalism is a natural ally for reactionaries. It reinforces existing class/wealth structures.

A lot of the Green Parties will have a rude awakening in a decade or two. Here in Germany the MASSIVE divide between LEFT and green and GREEN and left members of the party becomes really obvious now that the conservatives are willing to ally with the Greens.
 
Sumeragi said:
Not stopping what is true, as the archcapitalist. Neoliberalist denial is the reason we're in this mess in the first place.
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We both know that even huge global players are massively reliant on independent local and/or regional actors.

Also:

SeptimusMagisto said:
Not really.

Everything else aside, they generally only have to focus on one thing. A corporation that makes shoes only has to worry about how to make shoes. It doesn't have to worry about what its employees will eat, where they will live, or what they'll do for leisure - it just has to pay them for making shoes and let them figure out the rest. It's not even remotely the same thing.
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Anchises said:
We both know that even huge global players are massively reliant on independent local and/or regional actors.
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Which would be the same with a state. Just because the government is attempting to centrally plan for the needs of its people, it does not mean they have some absolute control. That's a specific economic model which is only an example of a centrally planned economy.


Anchises said:
Also:
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Obviously conglomerates don't exist /s
 
Memphet'ran said:
Think about it. What is poverty? Among other things, it is a low rate of personal consumption. What is the first thing that happens if you give a poor person money? Usually, they buy things they could not afford before. Why is giving poor people money good for the economy? Poor people are the most likely to immediately spend the money on personal consumption, increasing demand and stimulating more economic activity.

The lesson I take from this is that consumption-reduction environmentalism and the left are fundamentally "strange bedfellows"; their association is the contingent result of a particular shuffling of political coalitions, and they are fundamentally not natural allies. Well, more bluntly the lesson I take from it is to be suspicious of consumption-reduction focused environmentalism.
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What I think you're saying is:
"Poor people sometimes buy things in order to make life bearable when they have a little extra money, therefore 'leftism' and environmentalism can't logically align."
 
Sumeragi said:
Which would be the same with a state. Just because the government is attempting to centrally plan for the needs of its people, it does not mean they have some absolute control. That's a specific economic model which is only an example of a centrally planned economy.


Obviously conglomerates don't exist /s
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Honest question:

Are you actually aware how global players and conglomerates work ? And how they have to rely on different means than a government?


EDIT: I mean your argument works if we strech out the defintion of central planning into meaninglessness.
 
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Susano said:
Man, Sparta's social order was so entirely totalitarian-fucked up that even just normal family life and reproduction didn't run smoothly. Sparta plain bled out over the centuries because the Spartiate class was too busy playing soldier instead of fathering children. If your social order causes your society to plain die out, then yes, I'd call that gross incompetence.

Also, it's a bit funny to call Sparta "democratic". The entire Spartan system revolved around the point that only the upper class were citizens. And they not only didn't consider themselves democratic, they very proudly represented the anti-democratic side in a Cold War-like ideological confrontation with Athens. Meanwhile, Athens did grant citizenship to all its social classes, and the poorest pauper had the same voice at the assembly as the richest. That was unthinkable in Sparta.


Nevermind how those "defenders of the traditional Hellenic order" only won the Peloponnese War by taking really, really big amounts of money from Persia. For all its glorification, Sparta was only just a Persian puppet stirring shit up in Greece for the benefit of its master.
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Though, on a similar 'probably not unpopular' opinion, Athens was highly overrated. I mean, better than Sparta, but as you said, that's really not hard.
 
Nyvis said:
Seems pretty uncontroversial overall.
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Depends on who you talk to.

No-one thinks 300 was a realistic movie, but a lot of people in Western society admire Sparta for their badass hyper-militarism and buy into a narrative of freedom-loving Greeks defending their liberty against barbaric, decadent Persians.

Lots of people think Louis XIV was one of the greatest monarchs ever.

Outside of History lovers, I don't think people in the West are generally inclined to see the British Empire as particularly bad. And that's before you get into Prager U's apologia trying to paint it as a worldwide force for freedom and civilization.

Lots of people think of WWII as "good guys versus bad guys", rather than "bad guys versus so much worse guys". Lots of people admire Churchill.

And of course, lots of people love their Southern apologia, both-siding the Civil War, and viewing the burning of Atlanta as a war crime.

The Laurent said:
Though, on a similar 'probably not unpopular' opinion, Athens was highly overrated. I mean, better than Sparta, but as you said, that's really not hard.
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Oh, no argument there.
Athens gave us a lot of good things, but it was... not good. The institutional misogyny of that city-State was appalling.
 
sun tzu said:
Oh, no argument there.
Athens gave us a lot of good things, but it was... not good. The institutional misogyny of that city-State was appalling.
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But yeah, it's one of those things. Every adult male citizen had a voice, but behind them was an even more numerous group of people. Slaves (of both genders) and free women were by a large margin the majority of people in Athens, after all, so it's a pretty weak democracy. Now, like, realistically speaking you weren't going to get a non-slave-holding, non-sexist democracy in Greece, as far as I can tell? But as a model, it kinda sucks.
 
Anchises said:
Then we wouldn't have industrialization.

If we ignore that states would still be the personal playthings of nobles without the rising bourgeoisie, we still have the problem of massive economic and social disruption. A state with a mandate to provide for its citizens would chose to provide jobs and stability 99% of the time.
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It would probably be more gradual, that's true. On the other hand, states weren't all that deep in the pocket of the nobles. In fact, quite a few monarchs were deeply at odds with local nobles. A large part of why the bourgeoisie was allowed to rise that high before liberal revolutions happened was that monarchs were totally on board with people who weren't excluded from most taxes due to noble privilege. It went as far as monarchs sponsoring cities with a direct hierarchical link to them in provinces ruled by feudal landlords to undermine them and reduce regional autonomy. Similarly, a lot of early industrial attempts were state sponsored manufactories. Hell, one great example of industrial methods being applied early was the Venetian arsenal. It pioneered replaceable parts and modern methods of assembly. It was also a state investment.

This is also extremely eurocentric. The relationship between state, local nobles and urban inhabitants was different in other parts of the world. It just happened that our western society had the incentives to industrialize from the private sphere line up and monarchs decide to let it happen.

My argument isn't that it would be magically better, far from it. But we shouldn't assume changes in mode of production are preordained and contingent on exactly the social structures that brought them about in our own world. And with it, you could have a different incentive and control system.
 
The Laurent said:
Though, on a similar 'probably not unpopular' opinion, Athens was highly overrated. I mean, better than Sparta, but as you said, that's really not hard.
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Not for women.

And from what I know of when Athens and Sparta went to war, it was pretty much entirely the Athenian's fault for being super big dickheads. That might be incorrect, it's not a subject I have studied in depth.
 
Good things Erdogan has done:
1. Ending repression of the Kurdish language in Turkey.
2. Treating the members of the Osmanoglu dynasty far better than previous Turkish governments have done. In 2004, Erdogan granted Turkish citizenship to Ertugrul Osmanoglu, the then head of the Osmanoglu dynasty, and in 2017, Erdogan evacuated Dündar Osmanoglu, the current head of the Osmanoglu dynasty, from Syria to Turkey.
 
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azadi said:
Good things Erdogan has done:
1. Ending repression of the Kurdish language in Turkey.
2. Fighting PKK/PYD
3. Treating the members of the Osmanoglu dynasty far better than previous Turkish governments have done. In 2004, Erdogan granted Turkish citizenship to Ertugrul Osmanoglu, the then head of the Osmanoglu dynasty, and in 2017, Erdogan evacuated Dündar Osmanoglu, the current head of the Osmanoglu dynasty, from Syria to Turkey.

Bad things Erdogan has done:
1. Massive purges.
2. Supporting Hamas.
3. Supporting anti-Semitism.
4. Hate speech against Kurdish Zoroastrians.
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...is there a point to this post?
 
Anchises said:
Baiting everyone into discussing Kurdistan I guess.
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I'm pointing out the facts, that Erdogan has ended repression of the Kurds as an ethnic group in Turkey and that Erdogan has treated the Osmanoglus far better than previous governments of the Republic of Turkey has done. Erdogan is given far to little credit for those good deeds in the Western world. It is however still important to criticize the wrongdoings of Erdogan.
 
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Sumeragi said:
Obviously conglomerates don't exist /s
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They're also proportionately more complicated.

No one multinational resembles a centrally planned economy. If you put all the managers from all of them together, along with every manager from every regional company and every neighborhood car repair shop, you would maybe have enough people to successfully run a centrally planned economy.

You know, in addition to every government employee already working there.
 
Probably not a controversial opinion on here but I've always been attracted to Christian "heresies" and it's a damn shame most of the material of, say, Marcion is lost forever.

I'm reminded of how in one of those games you guys who are good at strategy and shit play has the ability to make Catharism survive and I think become new orthodoxy.

I'd probably prefer it if another view of Christianity had won the battle. Although, being realistic, it probably only could have been in Antiquity. Maybe the Cathars could have survived and even flourished but not to the extent they replace orthodoxy.
 
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