submitted for your consideration (cough)

During the cold war matters were often framed as democracy vs communism and I always thought that was a little screwy, shouldn't it be capitalism vs communism, or democracy vs dictatorship or totalitarianism?  Couldn't you have communism and democracy?  Certainly in theory, and some of them pretended to have elections, but not in practice.  Some of those nordic countries that are almost socialist do have pretty robust democratic systems.  And certainly you can have capitalism without democracy.

Communist countries don't have a middle class, as a matter of fact they look down on them, call them bourgeoisie with a sneer,  But I do think they have a system where most of the people are pretty well off.  Not well off by our standards, but all of these countries were pretty poor to begin with so I think everybody is close to equal,  I don't  think they have a sizable underclass like we do.  I guess that's all a little open to debate, they do tend to have better health care and education than economically equivalent countries that aren't communist.

When I was talking about the compatibility of middle class and democracy I was thinking of that book I was reading about peasant uprisings in the middle ages, and how there was a very rough democracy going on in that if the duke pushed the peasants too far he was liable to find his head on a pike. If we look at Europe in the middle ages we see a few nobles and priests and a great mass of peasants and no trace of democracy.  If we look at them today they are mostly middle class and they have democracy up the ass.  Democratic republic or parliamentary system or whatever you want to call it, you know what I mean, people get to vote and their vote matters.

So what happened in the meantime, did democracy lead to the middle class because people voted for stuff to help the general populace, or did the people begin to do well financially and with that power pressured the government to give them the vote?   That was the discussion I wanted to bring to the table of The Institute.  I don't have a particular point I want to argue about this, I just wanted to hear what the opinions of the dawgs was on this question.  Which by the way is not unrelated to hunters and farmers discussion.  The hunters have a democracy and the farmers don't, though they probably have longer, if more boring, lives.  Though if we follow the peasants far enough we do get to those nice middle class Europeans who have democracy again.

You know in the past we have had a progression of governments and nations from hunter gathering to city states to countries like Sumeria and Egypt to the Roman Empire to the middle ages to nation states to the industrial revolution and then communism seemed like it might be the next new thing, but then it wasn't.  But now what is the next new thing?  It all seems a bit amorphous but I do fear we are moving towards a tech powered ruling class and everybody else back at the stage of medieval peasants.

There is certainly a nationalist movement going on now.  What strikes me as odd is that they are all cheering each other on, but once they are all my country right or wrong won't they end up fighting each other?

I submit these issues for the consideration of The Institute.  Imagine that I am saying these in the voice of Rod Serling, then taking a heavy drag on my cig and coughing lightly as the camera pans away.