On this day:
1260
The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.
1650
Third English Civil War: in the Battle of Dunbar, English Parliamentarian forces led by Oliver Cromwell defeat an army loyal to King Charles II of England and led by David Leslie, Lord Newark.
1651
Third English Civil War: Battle of Worcester – Charles II of England is defeated in the last main battle of the war.
1658
Richard Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England
1777
American Revolutionary War: during the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, the Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time.
1783
American Revolutionary War: the war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain
1939
World War II: France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allies.
1941
The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs.
1976
Viking program: The American Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars
2004
Beslan school hostage crisis – day 3: the Beslan hostage crisis ends with the deaths of over 300 people, more than half of which are children.
The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.
1650
Third English Civil War: in the Battle of Dunbar, English Parliamentarian forces led by Oliver Cromwell defeat an army loyal to King Charles II of England and led by David Leslie, Lord Newark.
1651
Third English Civil War: Battle of Worcester – Charles II of England is defeated in the last main battle of the war.
1658
Richard Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England
1777
American Revolutionary War: during the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, the Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time.
1783
American Revolutionary War: the war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain
1939
World War II: France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allies.
1941
The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs.
1976
Viking program: The American Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars
2004
Beslan school hostage crisis – day 3: the Beslan hostage crisis ends with the deaths of over 300 people, more than half of which are children.
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Gloria Steinem has died.
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People 65 and older now outnumber children ages 5 and younger worldwide for the first time in recorded history, according to a new report by the U.S. Census.
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Redoing Socialism
Socialism is back. Apparently there is some debate over how it's been working. There's an interesting article on this by Kristian Niemietz. This is a portion:
"This socialist revival is, of course, neither a homogeneous movement, nor a fully worked-out policy program. But if there is a common thread, it is the belief that emerging forms of socialism could be completely different from anything that has flown under that ideological banner in the past. For these new socialists, socialism doesn’t necessarily mean a society run by large, hierarchical government bureaucracies. Nor does it mean a command-and-control economy, directed by a distant, technocratic elite. It means experimenting with new forms of social ownership and democratic decision-making, devolving power to the grassroots, and empowering ordinary working people.
When explaining away the failures of the past, it was assumed that the hierarchical, stratified character of failed socialist projects had been a result of some deliberate political choice. Which is to say: It was believed that previous socialist experiments had failed because the leaders of these movements caused them to be centralized and autocratic as a matter of design—as opposed to a democratic socialist system based on mass participation and a radical decentralisation of power.
Socialism is back. Apparently there is some debate over how it's been working. There's an interesting article on this by Kristian Niemietz. This is a portion:
"This socialist revival is, of course, neither a homogeneous movement, nor a fully worked-out policy program. But if there is a common thread, it is the belief that emerging forms of socialism could be completely different from anything that has flown under that ideological banner in the past. For these new socialists, socialism doesn’t necessarily mean a society run by large, hierarchical government bureaucracies. Nor does it mean a command-and-control economy, directed by a distant, technocratic elite. It means experimenting with new forms of social ownership and democratic decision-making, devolving power to the grassroots, and empowering ordinary working people.
When explaining away the failures of the past, it was assumed that the hierarchical, stratified character of failed socialist projects had been a result of some deliberate political choice. Which is to say: It was believed that previous socialist experiments had failed because the leaders of these movements caused them to be centralized and autocratic as a matter of design—as opposed to a democratic socialist system based on mass participation and a radical decentralisation of power.
But the truth is that mass participation and radical democratization always had been idealized by socialists, including by socialist leaders who led successful national movements. But these dreams never survived, because it simply isn’t feasible to run a large society and a complex economy in this kind of participatory way. Democratic socialism works perfectly fine in small, self-selecting and homogeneous high-trust communities with relatively simple economies, the prime example being the Israeli Kibbutz. But that model is not scalable (and hasn’t even aged particularly well in Israel itself). There is a reason that, even at the height of the Kibbutz movement, Kibbutzim never grew beyond a certain size. There seems to be an upper limit of around 1,500 people, and even that is rare: Most Kibbutzim have fewer than 500 members.
Regardless of what socialists say they want to build, socialism can only mean a society run by large, hierarchical government bureaucracies. It can only mean a command-and-control economy directed by a distant, technocratic elite. The reason it always turns out that way isn’t because revolutions are “betrayed” by selfish or undisciplined actors, but because no other path is possible. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that every generation needs to learn for itself..."
As Mr. Williams says, "Sharing is fine when you know everybody's name."
So socialism's problem is a lot bigger than its cruel, unmanageable, and unachievable distribution system. It is believed that socialism, in its implementation, somehow becomes inexplicably bent. Distorted. There persists this curious search for what goes wrong with socialism, why it turns on those it says it wants to help, and why, on a large scale, it becomes so dangerous, as if this were not the very nature of the beast. Sure, socialism is adopted as a crusade by homicidal, self-obsessed psychopaths, but certainly not all socialists are nuts, they say.
This is similar to the search for why dogs bite; they are so cute and playful when they are young. And lions are so docile in the womb.
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