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Comment by disneygibson | Hacker News Reader

The article is quite negative and assumes that Western ideas are inherently superior, all monarchies are bad, etc. To be expected for a left-wing literature journal, obviously, but that doesn’t make it any less culturally imperialistic.

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Humanity is moving past the age of monarchies and kings in general and has been for at least 300 years. There is no cultural exceptionalism for this trend.

No, it isn’t, and the “moving past X toward a democratic future” is an Enlightenment idea rooted in Western culture, largely enforced upon other states via violence, economic sanctions, and colonialism. As the West continues to decline, so will the appeal of its political structures.

This is fairly obvious if you pay attention to Russia, China, India, and other powerful countries. It isn’t 1990 or 1950. The world isn’t trying to reinvent itself in the mold of the West anymore.

You bring up a valid point and it is interesting to hear a perspective in favor of dictators, monarchs, and rule by the divine rights of kings. But look at it another way and the entire global economy runs on money and capitalism, which is inherently democratic by design in that many decisions contribute to the overall direction, rather than a single decision maker. If you think that system is going away, I would find such a view hard to imagine, but would consider it. The late David Graeber certain would have agreed with you that a post-capitalist society might be possible, though it is almost unimaginable at present.

>_money and capitalism, which is inherently democratic by design in that many decisions contribute to the overall direction, rather than a single decision maker_

That's an anti historical view. If there's one thing capitalism is definitely not, it's "democratic by design". South America 60s-90s, Europe 1930s etc.

Also absurd to just assume it will win "just because". Even fukuyama gave up on this idea after his "end of history" theory completely flopped.

I fail to see how any force can negate the power of world economies at this point. Even Germany had to pay back its war debt and had to do so after changing its political system, therefore the power of economies is--historically--far greater than the power of political systems.

> money and capitalism, which is inherently democratic by design in that many decisions contribute to the overall direction, rather than a single decision maker

No, that's not what “democratic” means. Its true that capitalism is inherently oligarchic rather than monarchic, because of the property you describe above (minus the improper reference to “democratic”) but that's...a far cry from democratic.

Whether or not capitalism can be classified as oligarchic or democratic, I would argue that capitalism has pervaded the world and is a stronger force at this point than any political system, ruler, or ideology. Redefining terms when it is convenient, without even providing a definition, I might add does not negate the fact that when many contribute that system can be classified as participatory rather then exclusive.

> Whether or not capitalism can be classified as oligarchic or democratic, I would argue that capitalism has pervaded the world and is a stronger force at this point than any political system, ruler, or ideology.

Liberal capitalism is both a political (politico-economic) system and an ideology. It also peaked in its dominance of the developed “West” (an imprecise term by any geographic interpretation, due to exports and alignments and remnants of colonialism putting Western outposts all over the globw, but there's no really good alternative, either) a bit over 100 years ago, the modern politico-economic system that pervades the developed West is a hybrid of socialism and capitalism (“the modern mixed economy”) derived through a process of proletarian reaction against capitalism very similar to the early stages of motion away from feudalism toward capitalism through bourgeois reaction against feudalism (though much faster).

State capitalism is also a significant politico-economic system and ideology, though a different one than liberal capitalism, and arguably still on the upswing (state capitalist regimes, without any exceptions I am aware of, all borrow the rhetoric of class-participatory socialism, but have practical rule by a self-selected cadre that exercises power through, among other key levers, exclusive control of the means of production.)

Got it, so more a more exclusive control of capitalism is the big distinction unshackling Japan from colonialist structures. Groundbreaking.

Ignoring whether anti-monarchy is a western idea or not, monarchy has quite a lot of deficiencies.

Japan itself I would argue has highlighted said deficiencies. Emperor Taishō had various neurological problems. His son Emperor Shōwa (AKA Hirohito) seem alright physically but just wasn’t that good a statesman, in the eyes of some like the British who did not see him as malicious (https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2017/07/758307910564-hiro...) anyway, in that he couldn’t rein in the military and the rest is history.

It’s the luck of the drawn if you have a good leader and if you end up with a bad one it is nigh impossible to replace him without major social upheaval.

Quantified by global economic productivity, I agree that China and India have seen recent ascendency, but not Russia. China has failed at even developing its own native microchip industry, thus Taiwan has become a political football. We are living in a post-national world where key intermediates come from multiple countries. The Russian Federation is a petro-state that generates less than 3% of global wealth. Sure, they may have temporary disrupted the US political system, but that will run its course. The Republican/Russian cause knows it will ultimately lose because they have embraced the symbol of every other lost cause from the Confederacy to Nazi Germany.

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