Robert Heinlein was commended for giving the future a daily life. In "It's Great To Be Back," a couple finish their spell in Luna City, thankfully return home to Earth but then realize that they really belong on the Moon and wind up going back there. Thus, we see something of ordinary life on Earth and Moon in the "Green Hills of Earth" period of the Future History between Harriman's first Moon rocket and the US theocracy.
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" shows domestic life in San Francisco Integrate during the Solar Commonwealth period of Poul Anderson's Technic History. At the end of "The Master Key," Nicholas van Rijn gestures scornfully at:
"'...the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet."
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 275-327 AT p. 27.
This city is Chicago Integrate. Van Rijn asks whether:
"'...they yonder is free?'" (ibid.)
We would like to see some of them and make our own judgment.
The opening passage of "Un-Man" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History informs us that many people have been housed in an apartment building two miles long and three hundred stories high. We want to see inside some of the apartments that are not hideouts for conspirators or secret agents.
55 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Your comments about Chicago Integrate and Nicholas van Rijn from "The Master Key" were incomplete. I think you should have quoted why Old Nick thought as he did, in the text immediately before the bit you quoted: "But how many slave has there been, in Earth's long history, that their masters could trust? Quite some! There was even armies of slaves, like the Janissaries. And how many people today is domestic animals at heart? Wishing somebody else should tell them what to do, and take care of their needfuls, and protect them not just against their fellow men but against themselves? Why has every free human society been so short-lived? Is this not because the wild-animal men are born so heart breaking seldom?"
All advocates of centralized, autocratic states, esp. socialists, in both the UK and the US, claim they want power so they can "take care" of people. I don't care about their excuses or pretenses of "democracy," that is what it boils down to, autocracy.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Van Rijn said all that. My only point here was that I would like to see more members of that population that van Rijn referred to.
Advocates of autocracy indeed want autocracy. Do they express it in terms of "taking care" of people? Some of us want to see those "people" taking power for themselves.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Your first point: apologies if I was too heated. Anderson would have needed to write many more Technic stories to see more of those ordinary people!
Yes, many power hungry de facto advocates of autocracy do gussy up what they really want by claiming only a desire to "take care" of people. And the only way to get anything we would agree on wanting is by means many leftists don't like: the limited state (under whatever form), the rule of law, free enterprise economics, etc.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
I don't agree free enterprise economics is getting us what we need.
Paul.
Human beings -are- domestic animals; self-domesticated.
This is true in the most technical sense. All the distinguishing characteristics of domestication are present in human beings: extended neoteny, greater sociability, etc.
If you study human evolution, greater and greater self-domestication is one of the distinguishing characteristics of our particular species of hominin.
Culminating in the emergence of behaviorally modern human beings 75-95K years ago, which incidentally coincided with a major drop in male testosterone levels, and the emergence of larger social groupings and more rapidly changing and finely adapted material cultures.
Neanderthals had essentially the same tool-kit for 250,000 years, though they copied some sapiens stuff just before they died out. And it was generalized, essentially the same over the whole (very large) area they occupied.
That's typical of non-sapiens hominins.
Once they became behaviorally modern, humans evolved much more rapidly changing material cultures, much more specifically adapted to particular environments.
This went with (by hunter-gatherer standards) much denser populations -- sedentary ones, where the environment permitted.
Paul: more of what we need than any other system, certainly. It's like democracy -- a terrible alternative, except that it's better than any of the others.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Free (or mostly free) economics WORKS, and nothing else has. Certainly not socialism. These are facts I do not believe can be honestly denied.
Mr. Stirling: The problem with the greater sociability of "behaviorally modern" humans is that did not prevent lots of "casual" violence from happening. Everyone had to be on the alert, guarding against raiders and chance met killers and rapists. It needed the rise of the first true states in the 4th millennium BC to ensure reasonable safety for really large numbers of people.
THEN we started seeing prophets, saints, and philosophers worrying about what kinds of states work best, how much power they should have, how they should govern, etc. Down to the comments of Old Nick that I quoted from "The Master Key."
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
I deny them. Free economics presides in a world of poverty, deprivation, war and climate destruction. "Socialism" has more than one meaning but, of course, is used as if it meant only bureaucratic dictatorship. We have discussed this before but still wind up saying the same things.
Paul.
Intelligent, informed people disagree fundamentally on these issues. It is simply wrong to state that one particular point of view is a fact that cannot be denied with any honesty. I make no such claim about any views that I hold. On the contrary, I recognize that I am often in a minority position.
Paul: except that there have only been two types of 'real, existing socialism'.
(I use the term to mean collective ownership of capital/assets; social democracy is a form of regulated capitalism).
First, bureaucratic dictatorships of the Marxist type.
Second, small-scale voluntaristic organizations, like kibbutzim and Hutterite farming communes. The latter are similar to the former, with an additional religious element.
Otherwise, socialism exists only in the imagination. And we can imagine many things which cannot be actually realized.
It's a hypothesis, not a fact.
Sean: true, but it doesn't disprove my observation. Pre-State societies have high levels of violence, but so what?
Decreased -individual- (and particularly male) aggressiveness doesn't mean less violence; it means that there's more -collective- violence, because cooperation is necessary for that, even if it's only a bandit gang.
NB: reason is a tool. The will to believe is almost infinitely stronger; when that enters the picture, reason becomes rationalization.
Which is always obvious... when it's someone else do9ing it... 8-).
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Apologies for being so argumentative, but I still disagree. The bad things you listed did not spring from free enterprise economics, they sprang from how flawed and imperfect HUMAN beings are.
The only large scale socialist systems we have ever seen were/are bureaucratic Marxist dictatorships. That cannot be denied. It also cannot be denied they have never succeeded.
I agree with what Stirling said about "small scale" socialism. To which I would add monasteries, both Christian and Buddhist. They can work only because they and others like the Hutterites and Kibbutzim were small VOLUNTARY associations by people who agreed to live together by certain rules to achieve certain ends. And these associations never tried to force their ways of life on everybody else.
Mr. Stirling: I'm sorry if I was unclear, I was not disagreeing with you. Yes, the violence so characteristics of behaviorally modern humans most often took on cooperative forms, if only that of the kind found in bandit gangs.
Merry Christmas! Sean
What can exist in the future is not just a function of what has existed in the past. Otherwise, we would not have made the progress that we have done. But an alternative still has to be proved in practice.
Competitive economics does cause wars for resources and environmental destruction.
Mr Stirling,
Thank you for your informed discussion of socialism. I agree that social democracy, in the sense that phrase has come to have over a long period, is managed capitalism. Some of us called the Russian dictatorship state capitalism with an officially Marist ideology. "State capitalism" is not just a slogan but is based on an economic and political analysis.
I discern what I think was a third actually existing socialism: there was workers' democracy, popular control and social provision in Russia for a while after October 1917 until the soviets ceased to be democratic bodies. Bureaucracy grew and became entrenched during the Civil War and wars of intervention.
Paul.
Having described the Russian bureaucratic dictatorship as a form of capitalism, I should have described the post-1917 Republic as a SECOND actually existing socialism.
Kaor, Paul!
I admit to not entirely understanding, as well as disagreeing, with your comments above.
You seem to still hope for some kind of "genuine" socialism in the future. That's not good enough if that is all you have, mere hope and imagination. Real people in the real world, both statesmen and ordinary people, have to cope with the world as it actually IS, not as we would like it to be.
I disagree that free enterprise economics, per se, causes wars. Such a system needs peace in order to work as efficiently as possible.
I don't think Stirling meant "regulated capitalism" quite as you did. What I thought he meant I would have called "welfare state capitalism," in which politicians and bureaucrats taxed and regulated an economy to set up a welfare system. To a certain extent this can be tolerable, even desirable. The problem is how politicians and bureaucrats never seemed to be satisfied with MODEST welfare. The actual experience has been to impose steadily heavier demands on a once free enterprise economy--running the risk of it all simply crashing as less and less can be gained by either taxes or borrowing.
I disagree there ever was any REAL workers democracy in Russia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his massive and massively researched three volume novel, MARCH 1917, shows what a joke that was, mere spin and propaganda. Never mind the practical impossibility of factory workers trying to do different kinds of work (managing, market research, keeping records, taking care of finances, etc.) after doing eight or nine hours of ordinary factory work.
And it was LENIN who destroyed any chance of democracy taking root in Russia.
I disagree about "state capitalism." Nothing like real free enterprise economics.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
State capitalism is STATE capitalism, not free enterprise capitalism.
I do not support social democracy.
Free enterprise needs both peace and war: peace at home, wars abroad.
My ideas are based on experience of how people collectively can organize their affairs when they have both the motivation and the opportunity.
Solzhenitzyn is one novelist and I was not impressed with his LENIN IN ZURICH. Other writers in Russia at the time were impressed and inspired.
Paul: note that the Bolshevik party leadership always intended to bring the local Soviets and so forth under tight central control. This was something on which Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were all in complete agreement; and they did so quite rapidly. Those who resisted had the Cheka turned loose on them.
The period between 1917 and roughly 1922, when they were in the process of doing so, was one of free-falling collapse in urban and industrial production -- the industrial labor force fell by 2/3, city populations plummeted, and there were mass departures of industrial workers back to the rural villages they'd come from in the first place.
Lenin then had to retreat somewhat in the NEP period, but this was always meant as a temporary, tactical pullback.
There was always an underground tradition among the Russian lower classes, but note that this was a primitivist form of anarchism combined with localism. When genuine popular control was established, it was universally marked by hostility to all outsiders as well as social superiors, local autarchy, and sharp restrictions on any outflow of goods or labor except on their own terms.
This was simply incompatible with -any- form of modern State. The Bolsheviks had to "reconquer" massive areas of the country from this sort of spontaneous devolution... but any other regime would have had to do so, albeit possibly not as bloodily.
Personally I find "State capitalism" to be a contradiction in terms; if capital assets are predominantly owned by the State, then it's not capitalism because the term implies private property guaranteed by law. It's also not a capitalist system unless employees can quit and move between jobs.
It's late. I'll say more about state capitalism when I can,
Kaor, Paul!
Stirling explained very ably why I have to disagree with you both about "workers democracy" and "state capitalism." The former was really nothing more than regions breaking away, temporarily, from central control. A control ruthlessly reimposed by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin by 1922. The latter, "state capitalism," makes no sense. So I agree with Stirling.
Merry Christmas! Sean
The "state capitalist" argument.
A capitalist organization has 2 features:
(i) internal exploitation (extraction of surplus value from living labour) and accumulation of that surplus for the purpose of -
(ii) external competition with other such organizations.
The Russian bureaucracy (i) exploited workers in order to (ii) compete militarily against Western powers by stockpiling weapons. Thus, the bureaucracy fulfilled the 2 roles of a capitalist class.
Having read Lenin and Trotsky (I discount Stalin), I understand that they wanted a centralized state to be administered not by bureaucrats but by a national congress of recallable delegates from fully democratic workplace-based workers' councils. Thus, the working class would gain and retain both economic and political power.
Paul.
Paul: you get a better idea of what people want from their actions than their words, and better from their informal words (letters, bureaucratic correspondence, etc.) than what they write for 'posterity' or public consumption.
In point of fact, Lenin and Trotsky both imposed top-down centralization and a Party monopoly on all political organizations, with the central organization of the Party in turn controlling all subordinate personnel. "Democratic centralism", as they called it.
And they simply killed or deported to the camps anybody who objected.
In their minds, anyone who didn't want to do what they told them to do wasn't a "real" representative of the working class.
They, as the leaders of the vanguard party, were the "brain" of the working class and did its thinking. They really believed that.
I know people now who claim to organize in the Leninist tradition and who do not think that they are the brain of a class so, if I am wrong about Lenin, I stand with those who claim to be Leninist. But it is easy to see how well-intentioned people can become dictators in certain circumstances.
Paul: Lenin was, to be blunt, a bloodthirsty monster of cruelty -- and I'm not the sort who shocks easily. Trotsky was no better. They were both a bit more intellectual than Stalin, but basically the same sort of human being and the same sort of ruler.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You beat me to making very similar comments about Lenin and the monstrous regime he set up with the help of henchmen like Trotsky AND Stalin. It does not matter what nicey-nice gooeey gooey stuff Lenin wrote in his propaganda--only what he actually DID in public and said in private.
Lenin was a MONSTER and Solzhenitsyn's merciless depiction of him in LENIN IN ZURICH was true.
Merry Christmas! Sean
I suppose all we can do is continue to read about the period and see if any new reading changes already formed impressions and opinions and, since much that is written is contentious and partisan, part of the problem that it describes, we have to read more widely than we might be used to. I am still learning at 73, soon to be 74.
"...part of the conflict that it describes..." would have been better.
Kaor, Paul!
As a general statement I agree with what you wrote immediately above. But too much is known about Lenin and his cronies for these criminals ever to be "rehabilitated."
If you MUST admire somebody from Russian history, I would suggest studying Peter Stolypin. The policies he pursued as prime minister from 1906-11 might have saved Russia. Lenin himself feared and respected Stolypin.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I agree, Stolypin was the most practical of the Czar's ministers, and tried hard and made a good beginning at giving Russia a landowning yeomanry -- the only thing that would have stabilized the Russian countryside, and gotten rid of 'bad actors' like the 'mir'.
If the initial reformers in 1861 had gone that way -- rather than mistakingly trying to preserve the mir-commune -- by 1914 Russia's countryside would have been what it was in most of Europe, a conservative, stabilizing influence.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! Given even a few more years of peace if there had not been a Sarajevo the policies pursued by Stolypin and his immediate successor as PM, Count Kokovtsov, might well have so transformed Russia for the better that there would have been no Revolution. No Lenin, no Stalin, no USSR.
What you said about the mir-commune makes me wonder if its preservation was one of the compromises Alexander II felt compelled to accept in order to abolish serfdom.
Ad astra! Sean
If I had been there in October 1917, I would have defended the new Republic although not all the means used to defend it. I oppose the death penalty. I would have resisted Whites, armies of intervention and the growing bureaucracy and would have wound up supporting the exiled Trotsky if I had survived that long.
Better: "...I would have supported..."
Kaor, Paul!
What "Republic"? The one illegally proclaimed by Kerensky or, with even more illegality the farce installed by Lenin? The Tsarist edicts of abdication left the choice of what form of gov't Russia was to have to the Constituent Assembly. Which Lenin sent packing!
You would have failed. Moderates like you would have been purged by Lenin and Trotsky, and shot by the Cheka.
I only wish the armies of intervention had strangled the Soviet regime in its cradle! Almost any other imaginable regime would have been better than Lenin's tyranny.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Well, I thought that the October Revolution was a seizure of state power by democratic workers' councils, not a farce installed by Lenin, but here we come to fundamental disagreements yet again. There were mass movements going on, not just machinations by cynical individuals. Some former White generals came to accept that the Bolshevik government was now ruling Russia and that they as Army officers should defend their country against interventions. Unfortunately, even some of them were later purged by Stalin.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And you would be mistaken to think like that. Lenin's November Coup in 1917 was not in the least "...a seizure of state power by democratic workers' councils." It was a naked seizure of power by cynical and vile men, Lenin and his gang.
And those ex-White generals who, from either opportunism or misguided patriotism, made a very bad mistake deciding to serve the monstrous Soviet regime. I also recall how Trotsky seized hostages from the families of Red Army officers, so they wouldn't defect to the Whites!
The ablest of the White generals was probably Peter Wrangel. Unlike too many of the other Whites, he had a sound grasp of the political and military strategy needed to destroy the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. Also, again unlike some of the other Whites, he kept firm control of his forces, refusing to tolerate looting and lawlessness in his troops. Alas, by the time he rose to command of the White Movement, it was too late, the Bolsheviks were winning by 1920-21. Altho Wrangel did manage to temporarily rout and drive back the Reds.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
But Lenin and co came to power through the mechanism of a majority soviet vote. Surely we can approach some common ground in describing what happened? The Bolsheviks had campaigned for "All power to the Soviets!" Workers who voted for them expected them to act, not just to talk. But they did not act until they had a soviet majority. The Bolsheviks held back the Petrograd workers in July. Without participation of the masses in public affairs, the Bolsheviks could not have rocketed to power in a matter of months. Physical liquidation of the small industrial working class in the Civil War left the Bolsheviks in power without a social base. They differed about what to do. Unfortunately, bureaucrats replaced accountable delegates and suppressed all opposition even from old Bolsheviks. The total picture is individual psychologies plus social forces.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
None of this was true. For Lenin, it was ALWAYS, ultimately his way only, with temporary concessions, for purely tactical reasons. And that "majority" you talked about meant only those who slavishly supported Lenin--with opponents being purged. Lenin made cynical use of agit-prop tactics to gain that kind of temporary support needed for grabbing power from the Provisional Gov't. And Lenin himself eagerly set about setting up that kind of bureaucratic dictatorship we both agree on decrying. Including, btw, the founding of the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, in December 1917. With Lenin cheering on the resulting mass arrests, executions, massacres, imprisonments, gulags.
Lenin and his gang of thugs were CATASTROPHES for Russia and the world.
Haapy New Year! Sean
Sean,
But I thought that soviets were mass organizations, not committees where it would be possible to "enslave" (ideologically) a few members. And it was not yet possible to purge anyone between February and October/November.
Paul.
Sean,
We have begun to engage in detail with what a very large number of people were doing in Russia in 1917. Maybe you could read Trotsky's 3-volume THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION? It is clear, well-written, informed, informative, well-argued and persuasive. No doubt many people read it and disagree with it but it helpfully lays out what it is that they have to disagree with. Trotsky also wrote THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED which assesses what happened later.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I still disagree. You are overlooking how Lenin (AND Trotsky) were determined to turn those "soviets" into tightly controlled entities by the regime. One result would be the soviets being packed by creatures subservient to Lenin. Which is exactly what happened as the Soviet regime tightened its grip on Russia. Esp. after the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 stripped the democratic masks from Lenin and Trotsky.
You need to learn more about the history of the Soviet secret police, including Lenin's role in its growth. It makes NO difference if the Cheka was founded in December 1917 rather than in November. It makes no difference if it took several weeks or even months before it could effectively begin its bloodily repressive activities. The fact remains that is exactly what happened, with some fairly conservative estimates of victims of the Red Terror being 250,000 during Lenin's lifetime. Some estimates are far higher.
Lenin's role in setting up the brutal bureaucratic tyranny of the USSR is thoroughly and mercilessly analyzed by A. Solzhnitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, VOL. 1, Part I, Chapters 7-11 Including damning quotes from Lenin's works, writings, correspondence, etc., showing how PERMANENT TERROR AND REPRESSION was what he wanted.
For many years now I have had a copy of Hitler's MEIN KAMPF, but the disgust and contempt I have for his appalling beliefs has prevented me from reading more than a few bits of it. The idea of reading the works of a man as evil and blood drenched as Trotsky repels me as much as much as Hitler's book does.
I would far rather reread the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius, a genuinely good man!
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Of course you still disagree. That is not going to change with a single combox exchange. If it can be shown that Lenin had dictatorial intentions from the beginning, then I have to say that I would have sided with the many in the proletarian movement and in the Bolshevik Party who had exactly the opposite intentions. But I have read Lenin's STATE AND REVOLUTION and, from that, see him as aiming at the highest kind of democracy. I see LENIN IN ZURICH as an unpleasant distortion, particularly the passage where the exiled revolutionaries unanimously exult when they hear of a peasant massacre.
The Times Literary Supplement praised Trotsky's HISTORY as a classic and compared Trotsky to Churchill. The Sunday Telegraph said that Trotsky's HISTORY had Churchillian grandeur and again compared Trotsky to Churchill. It added: "Never has evil been so dazzlingly presented." The HISTORY analyses Russian society and history in considerable detail and therefore contributes to an understanding of the conditions and course of the Revolution.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't care what Lenin wrote in STATE AND REVOLUTION. That was just propaganda to bamboozle and fool the naive and gullible. Lenin never MEANT any of the nice things attributed to him before he seized power. To say nothing of similar things said during his agit-prop campaign to undermine the Provisional Gov't. Lenin's historically documented cynicism and ruthlessness makes it very easy to believe he would gloat over a massacre of peasants...more useful propaganda to beat up their enemies with!
The moral revulsion I have for Trotsky makes it difficult to even think of reading him. At least the reviewer for THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH had no illusions, calling Trotsky and the Soviet regime EVIL.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
The TELEGRAPH is a Conservative newspaper. Of course it disagreed with Trotsky but it recognized his skill as a historian. Surely to refuse to read some of the evidence is a major breach of the rules of reasoned discussion?
Having read STATE AND REVOLUTION, I do not see it as propaganda to bamboozle and fool the naive and gullible. I would continue to be impressed by its content even if it were somehow proved that its author was dishonest - which would be very unusual.
LENIN IN ZURICH shows the entire group of revolutionaries as delighted about the Bloody Sunday massacre as bringing the Revolution closer. That is simply not how such a group of people would respond. If one of them DID suggest, "Maybe it is good that this has happened...," all or most of the others would reply, "Of course it is not! We want a revolution to prevent things like this from happening!" Some people might be conflicted because anyone can get confused. But many there would be arguing for greater clarity.
Paul.
'twas Lenin who coined the phrase: "The worse, the better."
As a matter of principle, and aside from propaganda, the Bolsheviks cared nothing about -present- suffering, as long as it advanced the cause.
Present-day people weren't really human; only the "New Soviet Man" of the future would be worthy of true humanity.
I googled and found "The worse, the better" attributed to Plekhanov. It's the sort of thing that one guy would say and others would disagree with.
Kaor, Paul!
I concede that the disgust and contempt I have for Trotsky is not a rational reason for refusing to read his books (or, for that matter, Hitler's works). That said, there are other writers, not guilty of Trotsky's crimes, who have written about the Russian Revolution.
It was not unusual, given Lenin's character, that he PRETENDED to advocate nice things in STATE AND REVOLUTION, but behaved in ways contradicting what he said. Lenin was a cynical and ruthless opportunist, more than willing to contradict himself if doing so would advance his ambitions.
I disagree with what you said about LENIN IN ZURICH. Given what we know about his character and deeds, incidents like Bloody Sunday would indeed delight him. Lenin and Trotsky cared nothing about the agonies and sufferings they inflicted on the Russian people. Lenin and his followers were not GOOD men, they were very bad men, more than willing to be cruel if that was what it took to change "evil tailless apes" (Trotsky's words) like you and I into the Utopian fantasy of a "New Soviet Man."
Again, I refer you to THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, Vol. 1, Part I, Chapters 7-11, discussing among other matters, Lenin's role in building up the bureaucratic tyranny of the USSR and its secret police.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Of course I am concerned if there is documentary evidence that the Bolsheviks intended a one-party dictatorship from the outset. I can think of four possible causes of misunderstanding:
(i) "The dictatorship of the proletariat" means mass suppression of a recently dispossessed minority, not government suppression of a population.
(ii) A vanguard party gives a lead to class struggle. It does not control a class.
(iii) "Democratic centralism" means democratic discussion and decision-making followed by centrally organized action, not centralized decision-making.
(iv) A regime with its back to the wall and fighting for its existence seems dictatorial to those who are trying to overthrow it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I completely disagree with your first three points. Lenin always intended to set up a dictatorial regime, with power concentrated in a few men. The first volume of THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO quotes plenty of evidence from Lenin's words, acts, writings, of what he did and planned.
For a time the Bolshevik criminals did have their backs to the wall, with the Whites even coming close at one point to capturing Moscow. Alas, their mistakes enabled the Bolsheviks to regain the initiative and win the Civil War.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
But my first three points are simply clarifications of what certain groups of people mean when they use those terms. You may, of course, think that "the dictatorship of the proletariat," as defined is undesirable, unworkable, reprehensible etc but my only point here was that it is meant in a way that is the opposite of the usual meaning of "dictatorship."
I think that this present exchange is going somewhere for the time being because it is not becoming TOO repetitive. (Repetitive, yes; TOO repetitive, not yet.) I have read GULAG Vol I before and will look at it again with particular reference to those quotes from and about Lenin. I am aware first that there can be ambiguities which people with opposed presuppositions will interpret very differently and secondly that I can be wrong.
I think that you need to cite someone else as well as Solzhenitsyn. I see him as a very slanted writer although that motivated him to dig out data that we have to attend and respond to.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Apologies if I was a bit too heated. Yes, a great man like Solzhenitsyn was "slanted" because he regarded Lenin and his henchmen with white hot blazing fury ("lightened" with sardonic black humor) as monsters who destroyed Russia.
"Dictatorship of the proletariat" makes no sense unless a REGIME sets itself up as a tyrannical gov't, which is exactly what Lenin did.
Almost at random, as an example of how Lenin thought and acted, I chose this from page 352 of GULAG (Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 9): They were in a big hurry to produce a Criminal Code in time for the trial of the SR's--the Socialist Revolutionaries. The time had come to set in place the granite foundation stones of the Law. On May 12, [in 1922] as had been agreed, the session of VTsIK convened, but the projected Code had not yet been completed. It had only just been delivered for analysis to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at his Gorki estate outside Moscow. Six articles of the Code provided for execution by shooting as the maximum punishment. This was unsatisfactory. On May 15, on the margins of the draft Code, Lenin added six more articles requiring execution by shooting (including--under Article 69--propaganda and agitation, particularly in the form of an appeal for passive resistance to the government and mass rejection of the obligations of military service or tax payments)."*
Here we see Lenin making an already brutal Code even harsher! In 1922 Lenin was busy crushing opposition not just from the right, but also from the left. On page 353 Solzhenitsyn quoted this from Lenin: "Comrade Karsky! In my opinion we ought to extend the use of execution by shooting (allowing the substitution of exile abroad) to all activities of the Mensheviks, SR's, etc. We ought to find a formulation that would connect these activities 'with the international bourgeoisie.' (Lenin's italics.)" Solzhenitsyn took this from the fifth edition of Lenin's works, Vol. 45, page 189.
Happy New Year! Sean
*Solzhenitsyn added this comment in a footnote: "In other words, like the Vyborg appeal, for which the Tsar's government had imposed sentences of three months' imprisonment." For exactly similar offenses, the gov't of Nicholas II meted out a mere THREE MONTHS imprisonment, not death by shooting! Over and over we see Solzhenitsyn comparing how Lenin and Stalin treated political offenses (or alleged political offenses) with that of the Tsarist regime, and the latter was vastly more gentle.
I could go on, citing more of Lenin's brutal decrees and acts, but this is enough for now.
Sean,
I think that we ought to draw this exchange to a conclusion at least for the time being. It is undeniable that there was a complete contradiction between what many people, including many Bolsheviks, thought that the Bolsheviks stood for and what that October regime very rapidly became. Entire political movements marched into historical cul-de-sacs by trying to deny the undeniable. The contradiction was caused by objective conditions as well as by individual psychologies. An isolated and besieged regime defended itself but, by that very isolation, it was already failing to transform society except by some initial measures to improve social conditions, soon reversed. I can certainly read more about Lenin's specific inputs.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
There was no "contradiction" in Lenin's mind--he always intended to be tyrannical if he ever managed to seize power. His regime was "isolated" because Lenin deliberately made it that way.
I am glad you admit too many leftists marched into cul-de-sacs trying to deny the undeniable.
I'm impatient with these impossible dreams of somehow "transforming" society. NO regime can avoid becoming tyrannical if it tries to rule in ways contrary to what human beings are actually like, flawed and imperfect. It's hard enough simply not being too bad!
But you wish a conclusion to this exchange, at least for now. So I will stop.
Happy New Year! Sean
This restatement of fundamental disagreements is acceptable.
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