Whether these things are dealt with better by authoritarian or nonauthoritarian socities (using the words in the vague conventional sense, where "nonauthoritarian" means "parliamentary democracy" -- which incidentally Russia IMO is; if Russia is authoritarian, then so was Gaullist France or Japan in 1980) has yet to be seen. They haven't been around for long.
--- On Tue, 6/16/09, Itamar Shtull-Trauring <itamar at itamarst.org> wrote:
> From: Itamar Shtull-Trauring <itamar at itamarst.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] One or two flawed historical analogies (was Re: Stratfor: Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 9:39 AM
> On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 06:18 -0700,
> Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Frankly, I think this is dogma that is not born out by
> the fact that
> > the longest-lived societies in human history have been
> (sometimes
> > extremely) authoritarian, whereas historical examples
> of
> > nonauthoritarian societies are slim to none. (By
> "society" I mean
> > "large society.")
>
> Sure, but they were dealing with relatively unchanging
> societies: the
> details may have differed, but the structure of society and
> of the
> external world changed rather slowly. Ever since the
> industrial
> revolution, that has no longer been the case.
>
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