Wednesday, February 17, 2010

On monarchy

Answers.com nicely collects various encyclopedia entries on monarcy that seem well worth reading. It's especially instructive that the antecedents of democracy reach all the way back to the formation of feudalism itself.

Similarly, it seems we should expect to identify and leverage antecedents of communism that extend back to the formation of capitalism, and perhaps further. Adam Smith, for example, was not himself a laissez faire capitalist, and he did not endorse the absolute power of the free market. Just as democracy was a "state change" that "crystallized" around compromises and imperfections in feudalism, so too will communism crystallize — if it ever does — around compromises in capitalism.

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