academic garbage

[benji]

I'll kick things off with more facts about men that I learned:

[benji]

We identify seven points of similarity between the church’s attitude toward those thought to espouse incorrect beliefs and the moral-­based critiques of ideas coming out of institutions of higher education. First is the assumption that if an idea is deemed wrong, it can actually infect and harm the larger public, and that is why it must be vigorously purged and silenced. Second, aside from the notion that thoughts require censoring, their authors have to be likewise denounced, disciplined, and, if necessary, exiled from the community (excommunication). The church sought to expel malefactors, and this action protected others from influence and contagion that could spread from ideas or from the people who proposed them.66 Third, the church was most interested in identifying those within whose beliefs were faulty. Christian writers have a standard trio of those requiring correction—heretics, pagans, and Jews—but the first was considered the most dangerous,67 and the effort dedicated to identifying and rooting out deviant Christian belief is attested by the number of heresy catalogues that were written at this time.68 The church was committed to purging itself. Fourth, church criticism lacked humor. Salvation and damnation were serious matters, and when Christian authors issued condemnations, even from clerics who were well-­trained in the art of traditional invective, their brutality was to underscore the danger at hand.

Fifth, the church’s position vis-à-vis heresy was static, meaning that while church writers were consumed with articulating the lines between correct and incorrect beliefs, for those who had crossed the line into defined heretical territory, little attention was henceforth paid to the gravity of their offense relative to other heretical ideas, and they were often lumped together through fabricated accusations.69 Numerous and various kinds of Christians were declared heretical over the centuries, but once relegated to that category, little differentiation was made among them because all those convicted of having separated from the church were now outside the church and therefore disqualified from salvation. It is much the same, we have argued, in current discourse in academia, where in broad-­brush fashion moralist labels render homogenous entire spectra of speech, thought, and expression.

Sixth, Christianity is a text-­centered religion, and while scripture always retained its privileged position, martyrdom accounts were also highly prized and read aloud during services. The suffering of Jesus as seen in the gospels and consequent physical suffering of early believers meant that the foundational discourse of Christianity was about persecution, suffering, injustice, and death at the hands of a hegemonic polity, which for early Christians was the Roman empire. Because Christianity’s identity centered on future triumph over unjust suffering projected into the next world, Christianity on this side of the final judgment had somehow to keep suffering at its center, even after the persecutions stopped, and then after Christianity became the sole religion of the imperial court, and then even when it was the majority religion of the West in the sixth century, CE.

Early Christianity’s narrative is about unjust exclusion, condemnation, and bodily suffering. In present-­day higher education, exclusion and suffering have likewise emerged as a core narrative.

However one may assess the progress made by institutions in vanquishing racism and inequality in higher education, we point out that, similar to a religion predicated on exclusion that suddenly finds itself a central player in the game, moralist academic discourse faces a nettlesome strategic problem now and in the future: in order to maintain its position, the injustice and suffering can never end. To acknowledge any progress runs counter to the interests of moralism; therefore, developing new behavioral strategies to underscore ongoing suffering is key to the continuation of moralism and its strength. The success in presenting the hardship of individuals through, for example, “intersectionality”—the conjoining of multiple harms and grievances on one body—is, in fact, not new. It bears a striking resemblance to the ways in which the early medieval church fathers promoted the view that Christians must continue to count themselves as martyrs after imperial patronage and largesse had replaced persecution.

Christianity’s growth into a popular religion by the end of the fourth century and the dominant one by the sixth entailed two key consequences. One, it was not exclusive like before and membership was therefore no longer exceptional. The occasion of the first brought about the second: as Christians began to look a lot like everyone else, some adherents began searching for ways to distinguish themselves as better and more disciplined believers who demonstrated their “specialness” through purity.

[DavidCroquet]

I read this.

[benji]

 

[Propagandhim]

100%

[benji]

Fifty year old paper: The Study of International Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows: Theories of the Radical Right and the Radical Left

20. Means can only be judged in conjunction with the character of those who use them.
21. Force and violence are acceptable when used for just ends.
22. Peace is an end state, not a process.

Although radicals of the right and left are moral absolutists with respect to goals, they take a relativist position regarding the instruments of politics. This is most evident in their prescriptive assertions about war and violence. Having established to their own satisfaction that the causes of war, injustice and other social evils are readily identifiable, advocates of both radical positions adhere to a contemporary version of the "just war" doctrine to sanction violent action against their respective enemies. The two sets of arguments are remarkably similar in structure although, of course, the intended targets of violence differ

In line with this reasoning analysts of the right interpret the history of the cold war as a series of defeats and lost opportunities brought on by the lack of intestinal fortitude in the Free World. Unwillingness in 1945 to take a tough stand against Soviet expansion triggered the cold war. In Korea, the West failed to gain the military initiative owing to wholly unfounded fears of general war; the U.S.S.R. was not prepared in 1950-51 to risk World War III. The West's "supine" acceptance of Soviet penetration of the Middle 'East— Czech arms shipments to Egypt in 1955 should have been seized—was followed by even worse folly. The United States forced the British and French to withdraw from the Suez operation, and the Soviets won the "credit" for rattling their missiles at London and Paris. Hungary was simultaneously sacrificed by the West's unwillingness to take "modest risk."

Radical left support for a just war doctrine emerges most clearly in the recent debate among "peace researchers," that is, social scientists who study violence. Until recently there was a widespread consensus that control and reduction of violence were the practical goals of peace research. A fairly sizeable group on the left now argues that a false equation of peace with the absence of violence merely supports an intolerable status quo. A few even assert that their "science" permits them to identify the appropriate targets of violence. Moreover, by emphasizing the concept of "structural violence" the term violence has been stretched to encompass relationships within virtually any institution or nation which falls short of absolute egalitarianism. This would seem to support a program of abolishing all institutions, or at least opposing the status quo everywhere, by violence if need be, as none yet created by man meets this condition. In practice, however, the concept is usually limited to describing deficiencies in Western institutions, especially American ones, and to justifying revolutionary action against them. If "structural violence" is to be more than a slogan it should also encompass such institutionalized policies as the systematic suppression of ethnic or religious minorities, harassment and imprisonment of nonconforming artists and intellectuals, long-term sentences to "labor camps” where all but the hardiest are doomed, or use of capital punishment even for such relatively minor offenses as theft of state property or black market operations. Rarely, if ever, has a detailed analysis of structural violence been used to condemn, much less justify the use of force against the U.S.S.R., China, Cuba or other socialist states in which these are common practices. The status quo there is more commonly celebrated than condemned. A double standard is thus used to judge violence of the left and right. "The violence of revolutionary terror, for example, is very different from that of the White terror, because revolutionary terror as terror implies its own abolition in the process of creating a free society, which is not the case for the White terror. The terror employed in the defense of North Vietnam is essentially different from the terror employed in the aggression." The belief that revolutionary violence and terror are self arresting processes terminating in freedom must surely be taken as a metaphysical article of faith for, beyond a few examples such as the American Revolution, few propositions run counter to such impressive historical evidence.

Having defined capitalist institutions as violent, structurally or otherwise, the radical on the left has no more difficulty in sanctioning the "just revolution" against them than does the radical on the right have in encouraging the use of whatever means might eliminate the scourge of communism. The argument is made all the more attractive by the assumption that successful revolutionary warfare is a necessary and sufficient condition for the ultimate elimination of violence, and is buttressed by the premise that the capitalist ruling class will never permit "real" change through electoral or other nonviolent means. Few on the radical left would quarrel, for instance, with Senator Barry Goldwater's charge that the American electoral process has produced only "an echo,” not "a choice."

There is, finally, one other similarity in the arguments of the radical right and left. Both tend to regard peace as an end state. It is a condition that will exist in the future when the institutional and ideological bases of war have been destroyed, rather than a process or a precondition for the resolution of critical issues. There is scant recognition of the alternative proposition that means have a way of becoming ends, or at least of stamping their character on the goals that are ultimately achieved. This shared conception of peace has important normative implications, because it provides one justification for employment of violence against selected targets. It might seem unfair to conclude that the radical right and left share a crude "ends justify the means" philosophy, and it would certainly be inaccurate to suggest that these versions of the just war doctrine are the monopoly of the radical right and left. Justifications for the use of violence are, after all, as old as mankind itself. Certainly those who have embarked on "wars to end all wars" have not escaped this type of reasoning. Finally, all but unconditional pacifists would probably accept the proposition that under some circumstances a lesser degree of force may be employed if there is a high probability that doing so will avert a greater degree of violence. These important qualifications aside, there are several qualities of the radical arguments that seem especially pernicious: the often undisguised double standard used to judge means; the absence of doubt about the sources of evil in the world; and the messianic belief that once the forces of darkness have been swept aside mankind will enter an unprecedented era of peace and justice.

An especially ill-conceived effort of this type may be found in the recent work of William Eckhardt. His research instruments are well-suited to "discover" that favorable qualities (personal choice, freedom, insight, and conscience) are associated with the radical left, whereas bad ones ("unfreedom" and "inequality") are attributed to conservatism and positivism. This effort would merely be bad social science were it not for Eckhardt's claim of policy relevance for his findings. Arguing that peace researchers must "rethink" their position on nonviolence, he goes on to assert that we now know those against whom the use of violence is justified.

Virtually any Soviet policy or action is deemed consistent with the theory. Put somewhat differently, it is hard to see what evidence would be required to raise serious doubts about the protracted war framework. Thus, when the Soviets threaten Berlin, invade Finland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, or provide logistical support for the North Korean invasion of South Korea, one can quite properly cite these as evidence of Soviet aggressiveness. On the other hand, Soviet participation in international negotiation on some issue or another, trade with the West, or other normal forms of diplomatic intercourse are also cited as evidence in support of the theory.96 These actions are interpreted as a temporary period of cooperation and consolidation ("the zig-zag" theory) before the next phase of aggression, or as an indication that because the more naked forms of aggression may create too many risks at that point in time, the Soviets are switching emphasis to other instruments in their kit-bag of aggressive tools. The theory is irrefutable.

Consider a more specific example, the vehement opposition by the radical right to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. A key reason was that either the terms of the treaty favored the Soviets, or else they planned to cheat on its terms. Why? Because otherwise the Soviets wouldn't have been foolish enough to sign it. And how do we know that? Because the Soviets are unalterably committed to victory over the Free World, and they would certainly not agree to an undertaking that might hamper achievement of that goal. Q.E.D. In short, we have a circular argument which always returns to a set of axioms of how Communists must, by definition, behave.

But when it can be shown that an external undertaking has little relationship to markets or raw materials, and when it is undeniably clear that it is generating massive deficits rather than profits—the war in Vietnam is a prime example—then the radical argument takes another tack. In these circumstances, it is argued, the capitalist ruling class is willing to accept a loss in the short run to protect the integrity of the empire (presumably pursuing a domino-theory line of reasoning), and therefore, profits, for the long run. How do we know this? Because capitalists are by definition driven by the profit motive and because the ruling elite acts on the basis of rational calculation. Hence, the seemingly uncharacteristic policy undertaking is actually an integral part of a longer run plan. Q.E.D.

The treatment of American policy on colonialism is especially instructive. How does one explain imperialist America's policies when they seem to support nationalist movements against colonialism? The United States allegedly eased the British out of the Middle East in order to gain control of the oil resources there. But how does this square with the consistent support Washington has given Israel, a negligible factor in the oil industry and the common enemy of virtually all petroleum-exporting nations in the area, since 1948? By asserting (but not taking the trouble to demonstrate) that Washington has skillfully maintained a tension ridden status quo in the area by alternating support for the Arab nations and Israel. That this answer bypasses many inconvenient questions is apparently no source of embarrassment.

Again, it is very difficult to imagine the types of policies that would cause the radical left analysts to question and perhaps discard the theory of capitalist imperialism. Thus, what its advocates would claim as a major virtue of the theory—that it is able to encompass and integrate all foreign policy behavior into a coherent pattern—must be regarded by less passionately committed observers as a fatal flaw. A theory that is impervious to apparently contradictory evidence and is, therefore, incapable of falsification simply fails to meet a basic requirement of explanation.

No idea if text is preferred to PDF screenshots, figured it was here since I did that much longer chunk but I don't know what would be preferred. Or that anybody cares enough to actually have a preference. Obviously not everything is perfectly OCR'd so sometimes screenshot is just far easier.

[Potato]

Text is always better, especially on screens.

Still didn't read. lol.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Or did I?

[benji]

I've mentioned before that reading Lenin reminds me so much of our online social justice "activists" so this one was pretty amusing: Lenin and the Total Critique of Society A Study in Ideological Activism

Lenin countered with the following arguments: The essence of Marxist socialism, as distinct from earlier nonpolitical socialist movements, is emphasis on the political struggle. This Marxist struggle is revolutionary, directed against the whole of contemporary society and to the seizure of total power by the proletariat. The political struggle requires a political party to join all partial and local discontents into a comprehensive rejection of the present order. The "acceptance" of the present order as the basis for reform is not revolutionary but liberal, bourgeois thinking. The workers must use reforms solely to advance their organized strength. All discontents should be generalized, all kinds of opposition against the present order should be supported. Instead of attempting to reform existing society, the Marxist political struggle for the socialist society should pursue its ultimate goal by way of an intermediate minimal program. This minimal program should be the attainment of democracy. Once democracy is won, it will offer opportunities for the continuation of the proletarian political struggle with more effective means.

For Lenin, the struggle as such was the only reliable pattern. Any acceptance of "order" or temporary accommodation to things as they are was a betrayal of the revolution and of the ultimate truth. The struggle itself can remain real only by constantly renewed hostility. It does not require particular forms, either legal or illegal, so long as the will to destroy is manifested in some active way. A revolutionary force can have its being only in ceaseless conflict with the existing order, and only a revolutionary force can carry history forward to the "final end." Since true human order is not possible in the present class-divided situation, the reality of human existence is vested in that social force which can never be induced to give up the struggle. Any failure to keep moving, any reconciliation with the forces and institutions of the present amount to a betrayal of true being. In this sense, to resign one's revolutionary activism to the "processes of development" is the way to lose oneself in nonbeing, and the way to stay in being is to keep the struggle alive in open militancy.

This government of the people and for the people, however, was not to be a formal democracy but a dictatorship, "rule based on force." Lenin's insistence on this point is most revealing. At the Third Party Congress Lenin defined dictatorship as "the organization not of 'order,' but the organization of war."' He thought of society as "war" even when the "overwhelming majority" of the people are the rulers. Lenin could conceive of no elements of "order" even in a society in which the people, having driven away their oppressors, are no longer subject to alien wills. The only explanation to make sense of Lenin's position is that he is here dealing with the bourgeois-democratic period in which, by definition, there: can as yet be no socialism. In other words, the concept of "order" is out of place anywhere except in a fully socialist society. Any other society, on Lenin's showing, represents not "order" but rather "war.

Lenin's counterarguments are conceptually confused, perhaps even deliberately muddled. This much emerges clearly: the real issue is not democracy (majority vs. minority) but class struggle (exploiters vs. exploited). Formal democracy is merely a bourgeois window dressing for bourgeois rule that is actually arbitrary and dictatorial. Moreover, as the state is everywhere an instrument of violence practiced by one class against another, it is futile to expect a peaceful "development" from bourgeois power to proletarian majority rule. History makes its major changes not by "development" but by "leaps," and such a revolution is violent in its very essence. Violence is characteristic not merely for a brief emergency but for the indefinite period intervening between capitalism and socialism. During this period the proletariat is continuously threatened by its enemies who after the proletarian seizure of power become more dangerous than they had been. The success of the revolution therefore requires that the proletariat organize its rule as a ruthless struggle to be continued until all its enemies are eliminated and a return to exploitation is no longer possible.

The result is a doctrine of the proletarian state that consists of the manipulation of paradox slogans rather than of instructive concepts. Lenin's handling of this problem left a legacy of confusion between the Revolution's promise of freedom and its resolve to amass power in order to defeat its enemies. Lenin's own ideas are nowhere stated as such. Still, it may be surmised that, as he did not succeed in reconciling the classic formulae with his notions, everything that is not Marx and Engels represents his own position. Lenin then stands for a "revolutionary government" in the Jacobin sense, a regime of force unlimited by law and rights, and ruthless class struggle continued for a period of indefinite duration.

The inherent reasonableness of socialism will in time make socialists of a growing number of people regardless of their economic position. Eventually, socialists will constitute the vast majority of the voters. Where the government is derived from universal suffrage, a political consensus for socialism constitutes a real force by which political control can be won and on which a new public order can be founded. The proletariat will acquire the necessary political maturity and comprehension of modem social problems as it participates in political decisions.

Kautsky put his trust in the politically mature individual mind. In his thinking the community of reason alone furnished a durable basis for political authority. Guarantees of free thought and free vote are the cornerstone of a nonoppressive political order. His confident expectation of a majority embracing socialism and of the political educational and maturing effect of popular participation in politics enabled him to have faith in free individual reasoning and to protect each individual's political will by a rigorous equality of rights from which not even capitalists, land-owners, and labor dissenters, would be excluded. The people's reasoning is not only ultimately wise, but also powerful enough to support the new political regime without need for extended compulsion. A revolutionary regime not subordinated to this source of authority will become a power machine alienated from the people and the common good. If a proletarian regime has to maintain itself by dictatorial methods, conditions are not yet ripe for the revolution. A premature attempt to realize socialism by force must lead to the loss of the revolutionary objective and the rule of the sword.

Lenin found these assumptions unacceptable: the reason of the proletariat would not tend to embrace socialism. In What Is To Be Done? Lenin had noted that the proletariat by itself was capable only of "trade-union consciousness," that is, of the intent to improve its position within the existing order. For Lenin such bread-and-butter thinking was incompatible with "revolutionary consciousness," with the will to destroy the present system in ordeir to replace it by a wholly new society. He could not accept Kautsky's reprimand that the Soviets had "arbitrarily" excluded not only capitalists but other proletarian parties of various socialist persuasions. In Lenin's view there was no other socialist party besides his own; all others had been convicted by him of "opportunism," "petty-bourgeois vacillation," and "liberalism" - of lack of revolutionary consistency. On this showing, other proletarian parties were objectively servants of the bourgeoisie and traitors to the Revolution - an epithet which Lenin applied to Kautsky himself. Lenin, moreover, assumed that the proletariat would constitute a majority only in combination with the peasants who, subject as they were to "petty-bourgeois vacillations," would not be "consistently revolutionary."

The forces committed to socialism would be a minority for an indefinite period, not because conditions for a revolution had not matured, but because by the very nature of things only a select few and not the masses could be expected to have "theory," that is, the vision for the "final end." For the remedy of present deficiences Lenin did not put his trust in "developments." Indeed, the inevitable changes would occur as "leaps," convulsions, revolutions, rather than as "developments."

Lenin made positive distrust of common reason the basis of his thought. Except for those revolutionary few, capable of "independent thinking," the habits of thought of most people were still entirely under the influence of the bourgeois world. Its habits and concepts persisted even after the overthrow of the ruling class. The former rulers had their main residual strength in the realm of public reason. Even without their lands and factories, they still towered over the proletariat by virtue of education, knowledge, skills, and connections. Most proletarians, even many communists, if not constantly controlled and corrected, would fall into the reasoning patterns of the former order. Political trust in free individual reason therefore was tantamount to capitulation to the bourgeoisie. A state based on equal rights, universal suffrage, and proportional representation would sell out the Revolution to the class enemy. Lenin went even further. To assume the absence of a community of reason was his touchstone of correct revolutionary attitude. The "consistently revolutionary" are conscious of not sharing premises, convictions, and principles with the majority of the people. The communist, oriented wholly by his knowledge of the "final end," has nothing in common with those who want merely to live well in the present. The party of the Revolution must proceed on the assumption that it is surrounded by either bitter enemies or false and unreliable friends.

Kautsky succeeded in conceiving of such a political order and Lenin did not. Kautsky did envisage that the Revolution would culminate in a regime founded on the community of reason and devoted to justice, in which the shared notion of the common good would unite people in trust, friendship, and peace. Lenin, addressing himself to the same problem, had the concept not of a political order but of a battle order, an association mainly for the elimination of enemy forces. Lenin rejected the premises as well as the fruits of a political order. In place of the community of reason, he assumed ubiquitous danger, suspicion, mutual animus to destroy or be destroyed. Instead of peace and friendship, he looked for victory. Dictatorship as a principle of government rather than a passing emergency condition, is, as Lenin himself had stated, the "organization of war," an arrangement benefitting a world of perennial hostility.

Lenin's rejection of political order for the concept of battle order also barred him from access to the problem of freedom. Kautsky, however, was able to theorize about human freedom in the change-over from an old to a new society. Lenin could only manage to assert that somehow freedom would result from total victory, the "systematic practice of violence" would eventually issue in harmony, and the consistent fight against external and internal enemies would eliminate all conflicts between the rulers and the ruled. While Kautsky could show that consensus is the basis of nonoppressive power, Lenin had to claim that persuasion was compatible with a dictatorial denial of freedom, and the "force unlimited by law" could inspire trust as well as create the virtues of the perfect socialist man.

Lenin discarded the proletariat as a reliable social force, distrusted "developments," and discounted the efficacy of the popular appeal of socialism. He saw only two realities: the organized force of the communist "Vanguard" and the power of the bourgeoisie. There will be order in the future society but the transcendent principle of order is not represented by any existential factor in present society. At present, all is chaos, or alienation, or comprehensive hostility. The principle of order thus is now entirely confined to the mind of those who have knowledge of the future society. If order is real in the sense that chaos is unreal, then nothing outside of the small band of fighters for the future now can have title to reality.

Lenin was the Solon of a society that fancied itself aborning. Although he presided over a new government, he did not give laws to that society but left it with a void. Not that he did not try; but instead of creating a political order, he set up a mobilization scheme for warfare without the end of peace. Consequently, the only order the new society can claim is the economic one of largescale production. Instead of guiding future generations by a new political doctrine, Lenin merely devised rules for the management of perennial conflict. Power, strength, irreconcilability, discipline, ruthlessness: these concepts are well anchored in Lenin's teaching, but peace, community, friendship, justice, forbearance have no home in the world in which he dwelt.

In rejecting this idea as a "revolutionary phrase," Lenin seemed to imply that he believed neither in the proletariat nor in the power of the spirit. But Lenin was far from discounting spiritual factors in history. In his view, however, the spirit was then doing battle for the "ideological resistance" of capitalism. The "traditions of the old society," the "force of habit" of millions and tens of millions is a "very terrible force." The spirit of this majority is strong but hostile. Only the infinitesimally small "Vanguard" is detached in its thinking, "independent," shaped entirely by the new society, and thus "consistently revolutionary." The guarantee of its purity, moreover, is not any proletarian existence but the correctness of socialist theory which in turn requires constant critical vigilance of the leaders. But purity of revolutionary intent will not permit this Vanguard to prevail, in spite of the decrees of history, if the Party does not attach to itself the immense power of noncommunist masses. These masses are not to be won, as the Vanguard is, by the explanation of the world in the light of Communist ideas. Psychologically they must be maneuvered into "battle positions" that permit further advances of the Communist forces. Hostile elements must be confused, vacillating ones made firm in their support of the Party.

The objective is not mass demonstration of revolutionary purity, but mass "support for Party leadership" based on mass persuasion that the "Vanguard's" strategy and tactics have been "correct."

The Left Communists agreed with Lenin that the prevailing system is no order, no community, no source of obligation. In the sense in which chaos is unreal and order real, the bourgeois regime is wholly unreal and reality is found only in the future society of the proletariat. But as the proletariat had achieved cohesion sufficient to wrest control from the bourgeois rulers, how should it act?

Revolution means active total negation of the present system. What kind of conduct does total negation of the present require of proletarians? The Left Communists, in urging that the old ways be rejected and the new ways be made manifest in our actions, recall something like St. Paul's instructions to the early Christians: now that you know you have been redeemed, walk as children of God, do away with your former life, reflect in every action the spirit of salvation, because the old law has been overcome and the new freedom is here. The Left Communists similarly felt that knowledge of the presence of the new reality called for new behavior, a manifestation of the order that was irrupting into the prevailing chaos.

Did Lenin, in urging on Communists compromise with bourgeois institutional patterns, thereby deny his own thesis of that system's unreality? When Lenin chided the Left Communists as counsellors of chaos, did he not vindicate the attribute of order for bourgeois patterns, even if only partially and conditionally? If this had been in Lenin's mind, he would have taught his disciples to work within bourgeois institutions in good faith, awaiting the eventual end of the bourgeois society. Actually, what Lenin demanded was that Communists use bourgeois institutions without keeping faith with them, that they participate solely with the intent of destruction, and that they obtain the institutions' power but deny their order. If Lenin acknowledged any reality in the bourgeois system, it was but the reality of power, the ability to sway and direct masses of people. Bourgeois power, according to Lenin, is still unbroken, all the stronger because of its increased resistance following the Revolution's victory in Russia. The relevant evidence is that the masses are not yet in "battle positions" that would allow the Communists to advance further. The Communist offensive, therefore, had to be halted because it had gone as far as the present equation of forces would permit. If the Party must then enter into a kind of "peace" with the bourgeoisie, the peace did not involve a reconciliation of wills: it was only a "breathing spell," a means to "gather further strength."

Lenin, then, did not ignore the post-Revolutionary presence of the realm of freedom in asserting the superiority of bourgeois power and in rejecting the Left Communist demand for conduct in accord with the new socialist order. Communist power provided for the future "true order" a pied-a-terre in the present. The Communist Vanguard is the future's spearhead into the actuality of bourgeois power, but it is real only inasmuch as it, too, is power. An essential difference between the two is that the Vanguard's power carries the promise of eventual order and is, therefore, essentially justified. Bourgeois power, representing chaos, is not. Future order gives to the Vanguard the title of true authority, but power requirements alone govern the proper line of revolutionary conduct. The task, then, remains that of developing advantageous "battle positions," of recruiting masses for the infantry of the class struggle, of outmaneuvering an enemy infinitely superior in strength.

Not a principle of pure "proletarian" conduct but the success of Communist power is the present manifestation of future reality. In this sense Lenin calls on workers and peasants to hold Communist power "sacred." Among all the powers that be, that of Communists alone is hallowed. In the same sense, Lenin insists that Communist power cannot and never will be shared. There is, for example, no sharing of power in Lenin's compromises with bourgeois institutions, for he precluded any merging of Communist with bourgeois power in a community of purpose. The idea is rather to strengthen Communist capabilities for the further pursuit of their hostile intent. Thus Lenin's recipe is: power secured, everything secured. No amount of borrowing from the bourgeois order can be detrimental to the Revolution as long as Soviet state power exists and continues to wax stronger. The Party in command of the state, supported by increasing masses, disposing of means and methods of compulsion: this is the future's stronghold in the present world. This is the key position that alone admits of a genuine transformation, as the example of Peter the Great demonstrates. The only possible form of this power is dictatorship, the uninhibited and unrestricted use of force within the limits of the prevailing equation of opposed forces. The advent of the future true society then is expected as the result of a continuous increase of political strength wielded by the Party through the Soviet state. The measure of its growth would be the progressive suppression of resisting elements, mobilization of larger masses for the Party's support, and the territorial expansion of the Party's monopoly of force. The requirements of naked power rather than the spirit of socialist order: that was Lenin's choice when he rejected the Left Communists. In Communist regimes, it is now habitual to offer public thanks to "the Party and the Government," much as other peoples offer thanks to God, for all good things in life.

In the course of his various polemics Lenin rejected all ideas of any reality which, if accepted as such, would bestow a semblance of order on the present-day society. He radically denied any possibility of order apart from the socialism of the future. In the chaos of the present, only the foundation of power preparatory of the future can be considered an island of order, and only for those whose intellectual eyes can behold the distant future's gleam. This reduced the extant representation of future reality to the Communist power, the power that was in Lenin's own hands.

Whether Lenin was or was not aware of what he was doing, the fact remains that through this concept he removed the difference and tension between the human will that is to be ordered and the objective reality in the light of which order is conceived. It is as if Aquinas had said: the measure of human actions is the Natural Law, and the sole actualization of the Natural Law that is possible is by my will; or as if Plato had said: God is the measure, but God exists only through my creation. That realm of being which is assumed to be fundamental is identified with the will, or, in Lenin's case, the power of the subject. Lenin saw a future realm of true being as the measure of human actions, but he implied, in his argument against the Left Communists, that there would be no such realm of true being except for his, Lenin's, strategic success. Thus Communist strategy is seen not merely as creating order in human existence, but as creating the very reality which is the measure and model of human order.

Lenin's problem was to find a principled answer to the question "What is to be done?" The dogmatic basis of his answer was Marx's total critique of present-day society coupled with total endorsement of a future socialist order. Thus all intermediary ends were to be judged by their instrumental relation to the future socialism as the "final end." Lenin felt that "revolutionary theory" constituted a rational theory of action providing reliable principles for all situations. He was always scornful of his opponents for their "unprincipled" ways of drifting with events.

Lenin was primarily bent on a total denial that in the present day world anything can be treated as real or a bit of order. His dogmatic principle, "derived" from Marx, was that the present is wholly dominated by the powers of darkness. The false spirit of the bourgeoisie engulfed it on all sides. Reliance on any element within the present system is therefore an opening for the corrupting power of bourgeois ideology. Nothing was to be trusted or accepted apart from the embattled force of the Communist Party.

Lenin's position, however, had a result which he may not have desired. It destroyed any certain causal connection between present social factors and the future socialist reality. Lenin refused to rely on any factor other than class war. The fortunes of war are unpredictable; success is possible but so is defeat. An army fighting against bourgeois power and with its mind on future socialism cannot be said to represent that future in the sense of a necessary series of causes and effects. It is the future's representative only through its intent. Curiously enough, this is precisely the idea for which Marx and Engels assailed the utopian socialists. As Lenin eliminated all conceivable causal necessities linking the present with the future, the highest good was deprived of any present basis and receded into the rank of mere future possibilities. As far as present action was concerned, its sole content then became the Communist struggle as such. Party strategy came to be identified with the supreme good to which all intermediary ends must defer, and Party interest was elevated to Lenin's criterion of right action. "Is there such a thing as Communist ethics? Is there such a thing as Communist morality?" he asked rhetorically in 1920, and answered his own question:

We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is deduced from the class struggle of the proletariat.

We say: Morality is that which serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all toilers around the proletariat, which is creating a new Communist society.

This passage should be read together with that in which Lenin, in 1905, laid down the principle of partiinost', subordination to Party interests, for all literary activities. Lenin's principle of rational action thus amounts to the elevation of the Party's strategic requirements to the rank of the good that ultimately governs all other ends. Not merely has Lenin completely relativized all ethical values to the service of the Party, but the governing principle itself, the Party interest, is one that is relative to the changing strategic situation. Blind, total subjection to the Party thus remains the only straw to which the practical reason of Communists can cling.

The "period of transition" has thus been gradually converted into "life as transition." All previous and present history is seen as a prolonged phase of preparation for something which in its final perfection recedes further and further into the future.

Lenin's attempt to construct an ethic based on the radical negation of the present world has resulted in the most complete dissolution of rational criteria for action in the present. His failure to elaborate a political theory for Communist regimes has left a fatal void. Stalin and Khrushchev have made strenuous efforts to fill the gap, but, not daring to set aside Lenin's basic reasoning, have not succeeded. Lenin's followers have not been able to create a semblance of genuine order for the peoples under their rule. They have wielded the sword of authority, not as servants of reason, but as restless and peaceless whips pursuing ever receding "goals.

[benji]

omg just discovered this in PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor

This is a minimal optical character recognition (OCR) utility for Windows 10/11 which makes all visible text available to be copied.

Too often text is trapped within images, videos, or within parts of applications and cannot be selected. Text Grab takes a screenshot, passes that image to the OCR engine, then puts the text into the clipboard for use anywhere. The OCR is done locally by Windows API. This enables Text Grab to have essentially no UI and not require a constantly running background process. Working with text can be much more than just copying text from images, so Text Grab has a range of different modes to make working with text fast and easy.

This is like some illegal shit at how well this works.

[benji]

I screenshot this because whatever communists published this back in 1973 used a format that way too often confounded the above beyond mere formatting issues. Alan Wolfe is apparently still alive.
Waiting for Righty: a Critique of the "Fascism" Hypothesis

[benji]

Like Eugene Genovese, Davis is impressed with the "intricate dialectic of dependence and independence" between the master and the slave, a process that results from the former's need to have his identity recognized in the eyes of the latter. In this situation it is the slave who the genuine potential for freedom, while the master becomes dependent upon the slave as the mirror of his affirmation. The slave can redeem his freedom, not through thought, the highest activity for classical philosophers, but through the self-actualizing processes of human labor. "Unlike the master," writes Davis, "the slave is not a consumer who looks upon 'things' as merely the means of satisfying desires, The products he creates become an objective reality that validates the emerging consciousness of his subjective human reality."

This whole notion of subjective consciousness being realized through objective activity is surely wonderful nonsense. It rests on Hegel's faith that the work of man objectifies the "spirit" of God, an assumption that has a curious appeal to intellectuals who neither believe in God nor in manual work.

BOOM ROASTED    

[benji]