deepwatersolo
to be fair, the rights of workers and the vote for women were not obtained by reasoning but by power struggles.
In some places, yes. Not in others. It's easy to make the case that universal suffrage and workers' rights was a result of society liberalising rather than power being prised away from an elite by force, at least in the English-speaking world, and the fact that there was some civil disobedience doesn't negate this. In NZ for example, universal suffrage came about with no violence at all: Parliament simply did it, despite being comprised of men, simply because the reasons for restricting the vote to men only were clearly untenable, even to them.
The Marxist view is that all advances come about through internal contradictions and force, and this is all natural. I think this is highly contestable.
A hundred years ago the Western world was not a better place for most people than today, let alone than in the 70‘s, before the neoliberal backlash began. (No, I am not saying neoliberalism equals liberalism.
I have to agree: advances in science and technology have improved all our lives. However, the Western world has taken some terribly wrong turns to get where we are now. I'm thinking of the totalitarian ideologies of the middle of the century: Stalinism, which clearly derived from Marx, and facism, which adopted some Marxist ideas in a highly debased form: most significantly the idea of an oppressed identity group. The result was the deaths of millions during WW2 and (in the USSR and China) millions afterwards too.
I suspect the classic liberal would say that all those deaths could have been avoided. Whether Peterson has anything to say on the point will be something I'll bear in mind.
I am saying neoliberalism together with its child, globalization, eroded the potential of the working class to fight - by power struggles - for a fair share.
There is far more discourse about identity groups and structural inequality than there was before the GFC and I agree this is because of the effects of globalisation and the free market. A Marxist would say (with plenty of justification) that the inevitable consequence of the return to liberalism after the 1970s was inequality, gambling bankers, bailouts and so forth, ie that those who have shall be given more and those with less shall have even that taken from them.
My memory of the 90s is that people talked in terms of the playing field being levelled. That's gone now. The narrative in, for example, the Guardian has gone from liberalism to progressivism.
Reason would prohibit that Bankers can make risky bets that are insured by taxpayers if there are losses, while they keep any gains. Reason will not end this and other practices that funnel wealth from the bottom to the top, (without the top demonstrating particular competence or work ethics, which JP seems to credit for their status. All they usually have are inherited wealth and bought Politicians.) only power struggles will.
Well, it depends on what one means by power struggle. I wouldn't take it to include nations electing governments that create laws bringing bankers to heel. That would be an example of a liberal democracy in action.
But will that happen? Who knows. In the decades leading up to 1914, the world was becoming richer and more peaceful, there was more international co-operation, civil rights were being advanced, and while life wasn't anywhere near as good as now, things were heading in the right direction relatively quickly. We decry the Victorians but society in 1901 was better than in 1837.
Then all the wheels came off: in western Europe they didn't start to get put back on until 1945 and in eastern Europe much later than that.
Perhaps Peterson is worried that the resurgence of Marxism means we're in the early 20th century all over again and the deluge is coming. Trump, the rise of China and climate change might suggest that he has reason to worry.