[SE23]

From what I gather you have Liberalism/Socialism and then the third position (fascism); question I wish to pose, is that despite numerous intellectuals throughout the ages, the last new ideology to spring up was the third position; around the time of Mussolini, why hasn't other people made different ideologies, that didn't just fit in with the current dominant ones. Can the future of technology and whatever that may bring us, spur a new ideology ?

[Smilin' Dave]

I don't think technology in itself really drives political ideologies, although I can think of one (nationalism) that was certainly assisted by communication technology I guess. Socialism is often portrayed as being an outcome of industry but you can find 'proto-socialist' movements and such before (or at least away from) factories. I suppose Fascism is sometimes portrayed as a reaction to 'modernity' which itself could be seen as an outcome of the 'march of technology', but its probably more complicated than that (Fascists were after all more than willing to harness technology, even for propaganda purposes).

There might be a better argument for economic/class structures influencing ideologies, which ironically sounds pretty socialist but bear with me. Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy suggests that there are certain pre-requisites for health political movements to emerge in countries, and we could probably assume the same for the birth of those ideologies in the first place. So Moore argued liberalism emerged from a strong-ish middle class (and a portion of the upper class interested in making money through trade etc.), fascism was portrayed as emerging from rigid rural settings where the middle class was under some degree of threat, that the upper class was able to portray themselves as protecting them from. From memory his argument was that Communism emerged from a 'strong' peasant population that however lacks existing political structures (his case study for China was problematic, because for the peasantry Communism was basically something that came from outside rather than a product entirely of their own background). So tl;dr it might be because the dominant economic structures haven't really changed much since the start of the 20th Century when your specified ideologies came of age.

Another explanation might be that people have just sort of moved away from ideologies as a basis for their world view. After all ideologies are kind of 'new', monarchy for example was more a state of affairs than a true system of belief. I suppose you could argue the totalitarian ideas of the 20th Century were the end point. Adam Curtis' documentary series The Century of the Self portrays non-rigid political 'movements' that are motivated more by broad concepts that ultimately relate to individual psychological gratification (he makes this out to be a conspiracy... but he doesn't that with everything ) that tended not to conform to political boundaries, the example he gives are the shifting bases of support for Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair who both attracted votes from people who in the old paradigms never would have supported them.

[Rei Murasame]

despite numerous intellectuals throughout the ages, the last new ideology to spring up was the third position; around the time of Mussolini, why hasn't other people made different ideologies, that didn't just fit in with the current dominant ones.

The reason that everything is just variants of those three three ideologies, is because they are the three different approaches to organising an industrial society based on scarcity.

I think it will basically continue to be that way unless someone finds a way to eliminate the need for rationing of resources and time. And it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to do such a thing.

Or, as Smilin' Dave put it in his middle paragraph (pretty much all of which I think is correct):

So tl;dr it might be because the dominant economic structures haven't really changed much since the start of the 20th Century when your specified ideologies came of age.

[Ummon]

Yes, I believe technology could spur new political delineations. Right now, politics is delineated mostly along economic lines and social/moral/sexual values, but back up a bit and view it as an integrative thought form composed of the elements of reality deemed significant by humans. We all need to acquire resources to survive and sexual reproduction is the dominant form of information transmission for most today. In a world where people could communicate telepathically, augment their sensory apparatus to pick up the ultrasonic, where other species could be communicated with dynamically the way we can with other humans, where the pre-frontal cotex could be augmented to give all people the increased intelligence and executive function, etc who knows what we might value? If you did not need to eat, poop, fuck, or all the other common experiences which lead to shared identity then you cannot have high group cohesion.

Also, I would discount your view that liberal and conservative ideologies have always existed side by side. For most of human history we have been quite "conservative" (ie only helping and interacting with direct members of a kin group). It is only as humanity has increased dramatically in population in the last 10,000 years that humanity has been forced to come together for mutual survival rather than mutually assured destruction. Liberalism (helping those not direct members of kingroups) is quite evolutionarily novel. Especially if you think in "long terms" (the evolutionary history of earth).

[foxdemon]

Also, I would discount your view that liberal and conservative ideologies have always existed side by side. For most of human history we have been quite "conservative" (ie only helping and interacting with direct members of a kin group). It is only as humanity has increased dramatically in population in the last 10,000 years that humanity has been forced to come together for mutual survival rather than mutually assured destruction. Liberalism (helping those not direct members of kingroups) is quite evolutionarily novel. Especially if you think in "long terms" (the evolutionary history of earth).

Nomadic foragers did have an ideology, but of a very different nature to what we know as ideology, a sort of animist religion/ origin story, such as the Australian Aboriginal 'dream time'.

We see a 'palace economy' in ancient ME civilizations, such as the Egyption dynesties, the Minoans, Hysokes, etc. This had it's own characteristic world view and polictian justification for 'who gets what' in that form of economy.

Romans, Greeks and the 'recent' Middle East had a slave economy, military ciziten class and ideologies justifiy that system. We also start to see the effects of increasing socil complexity as population density increases and more civilizations exist and come into contact.

Feudalism has been a big one in the last thousand years or so, legitimating an agrarian economy ruled by a warrior aristocracy. It was this system that absolutism and liberalism rose aganist as the European economy shifted from agricultural wealth to urban merchantile wealth.

With the industrial revolution we see liberalism triumph, but an inevitable reaction emerges in the form of socialism, both international and national socialism. Both of these I'd argue, inherit something from the absolutist tradition, and some enlightment stuff in the former case, and ethno/nationalism in the later case.


Can there be anything else? I think the arguments put forward on this thread sum it up. But what sort of fundemental change in technology could shift the social/economic order enough to create the need for a new ideological legitimisation of 'who gets what'?

I offer the techonolgies which support of longevity. Some will have the wealth and influence to secure access to the skills and materials needed to extend their life by a very significant time. Most people will live the ordinary human life time, as the technology to extend life will be expensive (my claim, feel free to challenge). So there will be two classes, the immortal lords, and the commoners. This will generate a new ideology.

[quetzalcoatl]

The production means for any kind of post scarcity ideology must already be in place for it to emerge as an effective political force. While much of the substrate exists for western technological society, on a global level I see it quickly slipping away as a possibility. The industrial food production system is not transferable to the non-developed world - it simply doesn't control the necessary resources. The energy/water/arable land chokepoints are formidable.