In Poul Anderson's "The Pugilist," the narrator's name is indeed Dowling. Because he is a prisoner and his whereabouts must be concealed from his former fellow conspirators, his wife writes to him as "John Reed," a significant name. See John Reed (journalist). Dying in Moscow in 1920, Reed "...may have soured on the Soviet leadership..." Indeed. He would not have supported the People's Republic of the United States in "The Pugilist."
In Anderson's "Strange Bedfellows," Indian political parties include Conservationists and Vishnuites. Worshippers of Vishnu the Preserver are usually called Vaishnavites. They are my favourite monotheists, being the most comprehensive, even incorporating the Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu. Ultimate reality is either He or THAT - or indeed She since there is also Goddess-worship.
Poul Anderson gets us to discuss an American revolutionary and a Hindu god while I eat toast, drink coffee, look out at the rain, plan a visit to Audiology and look forward to several good events in the next few weeks. Probably more posts later today.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Incredible! Can this obscure blog really be getting over a million page views recently?
What you said about Reed reminded me of Max Eastman, another ex-Marxist wo became disillusioned with the monstrous Lenin and the USSR.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Not everyone who became disillusioned with the USSR became an ex-Marxist. Many have preserved the Marxist tradition in opposition to what the USSR became. Needless to say, they were denounced by supporters of the USSR and are completely misunderstood and misrepresented by many other critics and opponents of the USSR. I know about this from personal experience.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, I go by what has actually happened, every single Marxist regime, without exception, has been a tyranny. You should ask yourself what it is in Marxism makes it so easily despotic, always a failure.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I disagree but, Sean, we have said all this before. There have not been an endless number of "Marxist regimes." The USSR imposed its form of economy on its satellite countries. They did not have revolutions that went wrong. They did have revolutions in the first place. Any regime that calls itself "Marxist" is not therefore Marxist any more than anyone who calls himself Christian is therefore Christian but I am tired of saying this.
Of course I ask myself questions about Marxism! Give me credit for doing some thinking and questioning. I have told revolutionaries that there were POTENTIAL Stalins in their ranks and they have agreed with me because they have learned from history how, in adverse conditions, things can go wrong.
I ask questions but the answers that I arrive at are not yours.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I never said there has been an endless succession of Marxist despotisms. Yes, Stalin set up puppet regimes in eastern Eurooe--but he used local Marxists for that, and I firmly many believe many of them were as devoutly Marxist as Stalin.
You are also overlooking the Marxists who came to power in China, Korea, Indo-China, all of them just as tyrannical as the USSR. And it's not just potential Stalins that's a problem, it's also potential Lenins. That vile man was as evil and brutal as Stalin, who merely extended and completed what Lenin started.
The answers to those questions you asked were wrong, due to still believing in Marxism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not overlooking anything. I am disagreeing with you about it.
My answers were wrong due to still believing in Marxism? I disagree with you about it. Neither of us can express this just by stating that the other is "wrong!" This goes outside all the rules of a normal discussion.
In Russia, workers' councils replaced the Provisional Government. In China, Mao told workers in the capital to continue working as normal while the Communist Party took control! Russia was a workers' revolution. China was not. Mao was a Third World nationalist using Marxist terminology as a secular ideology. As far as I know, there were similar processes in the other countries that you mention. There were no workers' revolutions. But there was workers' struggle in the Spanish Civil War and in the Hungarian Uprising. Such struggles continue. This question and these issues are far from over.
Paul.
Sean,
What I am clearly demonstrating here is not that I am right and you are wrong - I would never use such language - but that I can in fact mount a reply to everything that is said, even more easily when the content becomes repetitive. Therefore, this COULD continue indefinitely if both of us wanted it to but I do not want it to. If I finally break off it will not be through running out of replies to make. If, at any stage and on any point, I accept that I have been shown to be wrong, then I will say so.
Paul.
Another thought that I have had is that I could keep making comparable attacks on theism but I just do not think that that is an appropriate thing to do.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't care about those so-called "workers councils" seen in the 8/9 months before Lenin seized power. They never truly amounted to much and did not over throw the Provisional Gov't, which it had no right to do.
What was so great about a few factory workers in a few major cities of Russia? They only comprised a small minority in a still overwhelmingly rural/agricultural nation--and had no business or right trying to dictate to the rest of Russia. The Russian peasantry had no interest in socialism, what they wanted was land--land they would manage for their profit--and peace. Most of them would probably be glad as well to keep the monarchy.
No, Mao and his gang had to wait till they had secured their grip on power before implementing their brand of Marxism. It was a tactical maneuver.
No, what happened in Spain, during the Civil War, were rival leftist factions fighting each other, which naturally made it easier for the Nationalists to beat them all. And Marxism is discredited in Hungary.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Let's not forget how Lenin got rid of those workers councils when he no longer needed them for cementing his grip on power. And of how he stamped out their last remnants while crushing the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. His Cheka goons shot hundreds of the Kronstadt rebels, and other hundreds were sent to the gulags, where they soon died. Last, exiled Kronstadt rebels foolish enough to trust Lenin's offers of amnesty were shot/imprisoned after returning to the USSR.
What an utterly contemptible creature Lenin was!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't care about you not caring! (Can we drop this "don't care" response?)
The smallness of the industrial working class in relation to the peasantry was indeed one of the major problems. Russian workers needed international solidarity which they did not get. There were attempts at worker-peasant cooperation. "Land, peace and bread" was a Bolshevik slogan. Things went very wrong very quickly and many criticisms can be made of the Bolsheviks' performance.
Two issues: Was Lenin as an individual utterly contemptible? We can discuss that. Is it right to try to change society in the way envisaged by the Bolsheviks? That is a completely different question but the second question seems to get reduced to the first. I am trying to clarify issues and to stand back from this hammer-and-tongs all-out battle which your approach reduces the issues to.
No, no and no. I have a different perspective on China, Spain and Hungary but those issues cannot possibly be resolved in this combox. Surely you see that it becomes pointless to continue like this?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
There's nothing special in factory workers as such. A lathe operator is unlikely to have any special wisdom on how to govern a nation. And that argle-gargle about the "international solidarity of workers" was shown to be a joke when push came to shove in 1914. In all the major belligerents of WW I, even Russia, loyalty to one's country came first. And that's natural and right.
I remember that Leninist slogan, just agitprop by Lenin and his gang to help them seize power. The Volga terror famine by Lenin showed how much he cared about the peasants!
Any objective examination of Ilyich & Co. can lead to only one honest conclusion: they were monsters. And that reminds me of how Luz O'Malley described Lenin and his cronies in Chapter Seventeen of Stirling's THEATER OF SPIES (page 304): "There were a group of exiled Russian revolutionists in Switzerland--Bolsheviki, they were called, followers of Marx in a very wild and woolly way, assassins and bomb throwers and bank robbers and general bloody madmen." And a little further on Luz continued: "...but this gang would have made Ivan the Terrible look like George Washington if they'd ever come out on top. Or perhaps like St. Francis."
Yes, it was wrong of the Bolsheviks to try to change Russia in ways the vast majority of the Russian people did not want. Esp. not the violent and brutal methods of the Bolsheviks.
Agreed, our readings of Spain, China, and Hungary are different and opposed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Just going out. I can't reply to all this now. I said "workers," not "factory workers." You continually reply on the basis of wrong assumptions. Workers are special. They have the power to withdraw their labour, to stop production and to restart it on a different basis. That is why some of us emphasize workers. I have explained this before.
I'll read your whole comment later maybe but I still ask what is the point of perpetuating this repetitive argument literally forever? But it just goes on.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But Ilyich and his cronies sure made it easy to think they wee focusing on factory workers.
No single person/group is likely to have any special wisdom. As for strikes I've seen far too many that were merely petty and greedy to think they have any special wisdom. Conservatives believe that power should be checked, balanced, restrained, dispersed, etc., in the State, whatever its form, to be tolerable. Not concentrated.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
They focused on factory workers because those were then the main kind of workers.
Workers are not specially wise but they have the power to change the priorities of production and the material basis of society. They have to learn in struggle to overcome their inherited prejudices. A worker on a picket line learns from his own experience that, contrary to what the newspapers tell him, the police are hostile but that campaigners for sexual and racial equality are supportive.
Paul.
Sean,
I have only just read in full the comment above that I didn't have time for. Wild, over the top language.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
More likely, given Lenin's cynicism, they were a source for dupes and fighters.
I disagree, "masses" of people, whatever they are called, are not going to change those priorities or material basis unless something new becomes available. That requires innovators, inventors, and usually a few persons willing to try out new things. A process that was slow and incremental for most of history, then became much more rapid in the last few centuries due to free enterprise and the entrepreneurs it fosters. Socialism has never produced anything like that.
My sympathies are for the police, trying to keep the peace, not for rioters or demonstrators of any stripe who get violent.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I disagree.
Workers have the power to stop producing for profit and to start producing instead for need but this exchange cannot continue indefinitely.
My take on life: People interpret facts. No interpretation is identical with the facts but some interpretations are closer approximations to the facts. All that we can do is to compare approximations, always remembering that they are only approximations. Sometimes, the fact that many people have been killed is incontrovertible but that does prevent people from disagreeing fundamentally about why and how it happened and what should be done about it by whom etc!
Your take on life: It is a simple uninterpreted fact that you are right and I am wrong on major matters of disagreement!
Comment: That is a gross distortion of the nature of facts and the process of interpretation.
I try to communicate on a level other than merely prosecuting whatever is the current disagreement but I always fail.
Paul.
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