greatest modern political genius of all time

Flying Pig said:

Unfortunately he didn't 'corner' the Catholics or the Socialists, that's precisely the problem - the Socialists dominated the Reichstag even during the war, with the Catholic Centre Party as usually the second largest. He may have tried (as far as possible) to do without democratic politics, but only because he utterly failed to influence them as he wanted.

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Traitorfish said:

Yeah, "pragmatic" doesn't mean "effective". Bismarck's legacy was two strong and well-organized opposition parties, Zentrum and the SPD, which continue to dominate German politics to this day; if he was anyone else, this would be regarded as an unqualified testament to his failure.

Bismarck's problem, and I suspect the reason that Tovergieter likes him, is that he didn't really understand modern popular politics. Elections were something that happened to other people, legislatures and obstacle to be navigated. He never bothered to build any sort of popular organisation that could survive in the pluralist world of Imperial and Weimar politics, so when popular nationalist organisations appeared, they tended to be dominated by the sort of raving anti-Semitic militarist who would cause so much trouble for Germany in the long-run.

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The Bundesrat was pretty well stacked with Bismarck loyalists and could easily block rival policymakers, which it did.

Thing is, Bismarck distrusted democracy, despite the nation he ruled over had strong democratic overtunes in its constitution. He succesfully used civil society organisations, the military and institutions of federalism like the Bundesrat to short-circuit the Reichstag at any turn. I think he understood perfectly how popular politics worked; he just disliked them and invented ways to circumvent despite Germany's constitution. If you can ignore the cranky and stupid rethoric by GOP congressmen, you will know how their advocacy states' rights constitutes a notion of wisdom from a power political perspective.

None of that was enduring, though. There was no institutionalization, it had no lasting weight. He could evade his rivals because they weren't really sure how to play the electoral game, and as soon as they figured it out, the governments control over the legislature collapsed. (That they were able to get anything at all done after 1903 reflects the opposition's inability to work together rather than government influence.) That Bismarck himself had been booted from office by this point doesn't disguise that fact.

Flying Pig said:

It was a bit of a catch-22 situation in the end... the most educated and intellectual historian left because there were so few educated and intellectual historians around that the place simply wasn't any fun. That said I think there's still enough people around to have a fairly high-level discussion on most topics, and easily enough to have an interesting and friendly one on just about anything.

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Well yeah. Most discussion on WH consists (and really consisted a couple years ago) of new posters coming in fresh off the Civ boards to ask questions or make proclamations about WWI, usually going from Barbara Tuchman or to ask questions about barbarian invasions or whatever, and Dachs was basically just making verbatim the same post over and over again. I can see how that could get tedious, particularly when the allure of PC doesn't really appeal as it used to. And he'd make history articles where all the comments were basically OMG DACHS SO GREAT and nothing else.¹

The culture of WH has been kind of toxic for the past few years. Basically you were right or you got horrifically smacked down. There wasn't a whole lot of room for "discussion". It's been getting better over the past year or so though.

¹Yes I realize I was part of that too.

I remember a little while ago somebody (me? Park? I forget) floating the idea of an official "history discussion" series, a new topic every week or something like that, got a positive response. Might be worth following through on that, force us away from the well-worn topics, allow some lesser-heard voices to get through.

Traitorfish said:

None of that was enduring, though. There was no institutionalization, it had no lasting weight. He could evade his rivals because they weren't really sure how to play the electoral game, and as soon as they figured it out, the governments control over the legislature collapsed. (That they were able to get anything at all done after 1903 reflects the opposition's inability to work together rather than government influence.) That Bismarck himself had been booted from office by this point doesn't disguise that fact.

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I think here you have pointed out his shortcomings. Do note he wasn't booted out by electoral politics, rather, by Kaiser Wilhelm II. His deference to the Hohenzollerns proved to be his ultimate Achilles Heel.

That's besides the point, though. Whether he stayed in power or not, the government was loosing its grip on the legislature and he didn't have a response on that. He never demonstrated his ability to engage effectively with modern popular politics, only to keep moving quickly enough that he didn't have to, and that wasn't a race he could maintain indefinitely.

Traitorfish said:

I remember a little while ago somebody (me? Park? I forget) floating the idea of an official "history discussion" series, a new topic every week or something like that, got a positive response. Might be worth following through on that, force us away from the well-worn topics, allow some lesser-heard voices to get through.

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I quite like that idea - I'm convinced that a lack of good new threads is one of our major problems. We could run it on a rota system - say four or five of us agreed to start a thread in the cycle and came up with four titles based on something we knew about. That would give about two months' worth to be getting on with. The only problem I can see is that these things tend to peter out.

Flying Pig said:

I quite like that idea - I'm convinced that a lack of good new threads is one of our major problems. We could run it on a rota system - say four or five of us agreed to start a thread in the cycle and came up with four titles based on something we knew about. That would give about two months' worth to be getting on with. The only problem I can see is that these things tend to peter out.

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I think that sounds like a fantastic idea. I call the history of whatever I'm reading at the moment, so I can sound like I know what I'm talking about.