Let's begin not with America, but with Western analysis of recent Chinese elections.
First, some background:
My friend Yang Kang returned to her parents’ village in central China last week to cast her ballot. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is campaign season in China as well. Every few years, the Communist Party and the government that answers to it installs (or reinstalls) political leaders at every level from far-flung hamlets on the Qinghai and Tibetan plateaus to the Politburo in Beijing. Most of it is done out of reach of the public, but at the lowest rungs (and only the lowest rungs) the regime has been experimenting with democracy, allowing people to vote.
For Yang Kang—I’ve changed her name, for reasons that will be clear—this was only her second chance to cast a ballot in her hometown, a village rapidly being swallowed by sprawl on the edge of a metropolis. She would be voting for two offices: village chief and a delegate to the local assembly. She made a point of arriving a night early to avoid delays. She wasn’t taking any chances, not only because voting sounded thrilling, but also because it would be immensely profitable: “One candidate is giving away four thousand for each vote” she said, “and in the other race, the candidate is offering five thousand. Not bad.”
I’ve heard of vote-buying in local Chinese elections, but this is an impressive new standard: nine thousand yuan—that’s more than fourteen hundred dollars—is several months’ salary for many Chinese workers. “Last fall,” Yang went on, “when we elected the Party secretary, I got enough out of it to buy an iPad.”
For an explainer, I turned to Mayling Birney, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, who spent years examining the halting development of China’s village-elections system. Birney said that Yang’s haul is nothing out of the ordinary, given the rate of vote-inflation of recent years. “Bribing can be common in areas where the land values are shooting up—like urban outskirts where your friend is from—because there’s so much money that can be made off of land transactions. And by law, the elected Village Committee is in charge of land, village assets, and the village budget.”
Around Yang’s village, people say that the Party secretary spent about three hundred thousand dollars to win his race—influential residents received far more than just iPads—but she says people were not surprised. “Of course it’s not legal, but it’s a transaction,” she said. “The Party secretary and the village chief will be able to make a lot of money in office, so it’s worth it to them to pay so much on the way up.”
What is the western liberal response to such flagrant corruption in the democratic process?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1943-0787.2010.01215.x/abstract
Local elections have been occurring in most villages for over a decade in rural China, and competitive elections are one of the key indicators of the democratic process. Indeed, competition is an important aspect of any democracy, and it increases the value of a villager's vote—so much so that in some villages, a farmer's vote can be worth a small fortune. As village elections become more competitive, reports of vote buying are on the rise, and a number of journalists and academic researchers have condemned this growing practice in rural China. Accordingly, vote buying subverts democratic development and hinders democratization efforts. However, vote buying has a long history in well-established democracies, such as the United States and Great Britain. Rather than subverting democratization, vote buying can be viewed as part of the process or the price of democracy. While policies and laws are needed to control vote buying in the long run, initially it is a positive indicator that voting is an important and valuable process in rural China.
The implicit coupling of capitalism with democracy is quite expected and yet framed in a more perverse way than it is usually seen. Rather than being an aberration or overriding flaw, it is instead taken as evidence as progress to democracy. And, in a way, it is progress to a bourgeois democracy as developed by America - except instead of the crass popular bribing seen in these rural elections, it simply takes the more advanced form of campaign "contributions." Liberal ideology seems every day to be more explicitly redefining the notion of democracy into plutocracy.
And it must be justified. And to this end, the End of History mantra is, against all evidence, re-emerging. Even after its author has recanted, the ideas are continuing to seep into the ruling class' consciousness. Take, for example, this article from the Editor of Foreign Affairs, the most influential position in an influential magazine for the ruling class. Gideon Rose here takes an inane and quite ideological victory stroll through the history of liberalism.
Making Modernity Work
Today's troubles are real, but not ideological: they relate more to policies than to principles. The postwar order of mutually supporting liberal democracies with mixed economies solved the central challenge of modernity, reconciling democracy and capitalism. The task now is getting the system back into shape.
We are living, so we are told, through an ideological crisis. The United States is trapped in political deadlock and dysfunction, Europe is broke and breaking, authoritarian China is on the rise. Protesters take to the streets across the advanced industrial democracies; the high and mighty meet in Davos to search for “new models” as sober commentators ponder who and what will shape the future.
In historical perspective, however, the true narrative of the era is actually the reverse -- not ideological upheaval but stability. Today’s troubles are real enough, but they relate more to policies than to principles. The major battles about how to structure modern politics and economics were fought in the first half of the last century, and they ended with the emergence of the most successful system the world has ever seen.
Nine decades ago, in one of the first issues of this magazine, the political scientist Harold Laski noted that with “the mass of men” having come to political power, the challenge of modern democratic government was providing enough “solid benefit” to ordinary citizens “to make its preservation a matter of urgency to themselves.” A generation and a half later, with the creation of the postwar order of mutually supporting liberal democracies with mixed economies, that challenge was being met, and as a result, more people in more places have lived longer, richer, freer lives than ever before. In ideological terms, at least, all the rest is commentary.
THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN
In the premodern era, political, economic, and social life was governed by a dense web of interlocking relationships inherited from the past and sanctified by religion. Limited personal freedom and material benefits existed alongside a mostly unquestioned social solidarity. Traditional local orders began to erode with the rise of capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the increasing prevalence and dominance of market relationships broke down existing hierarchies. The shift produced economic and social dynamism, an increase in material benefits and personal freedoms, and a decrease in communal feeling. As this process continued, the first modern political ideology, classical liberalism, emerged to celebrate and justify it.
Liberalism stressed the importance of the rule of law, limited government, and free commercial transactions. It highlighted the manifold rewards of moving to a world dominated by markets rather than traditional communities, a shift the economic historian Karl Polanyi would call “the great transformation.” But along with the gains came losses as well -- of a sense of place, of social and psychological stability, of traditional bulwarks against life’s vicissitudes.
Left to itself, capitalism produced long-term aggregate benefits along with great volatility and inequality. This combination resulted in what Polanyi called a “double movement,” a progressive expansion of both market society and reactions against it. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, therefore, liberalism was being challenged by reactionary nationalism and cosmopolitan socialism, with both the right and the left promising, in their own ways, relief from the turmoil and angst of modern life.
The catastrophic destruction of the Great War and the economic nightmare of the Great Depression brought the contradictions of modernity to a head, seemingly revealing the bankruptcy of the liberal order and the need for some other, better path. As democratic republics dithered and stumbled during the 1920s and 1930s, fascist and communist regimes seized control of their own destinies and appeared to offer compelling alternative models of modern political, economic, and social organization.
Over time, however, the problems with all these approaches became clear. Having discarded liberalism’s insistence on personal and political freedom, both fascism and communism quickly descended into organized barbarism. The vision of the future they offered, as George Orwell noted, was “a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.” Yet classical liberalism also proved unpalatable, since it contained no rationale for activist government and thus had no answer to an economic crisis that left vast swaths of society destitute and despairing.
Fascism flamed out in a second, even more destructive world war. Communism lost its appeal as its tyrannical nature revealed itself, then ultimately collapsed under its own weight as its nonmarket economic system could not generate sustained growth. And liberalism’s central principle of laissez faire was abandoned in the depths of the Depression.
What eventually emerged victorious from the wreckage was a hybrid system that combined political liberalism with a mixed economy. As the political scientist Sheri Berman has observed, “The postwar order represented something historically unusual: capitalism remained, but it was capitalism of a very different type from that which had existed before the war -- one tempered and limited by the power of the democratic state and often made subservient to the goals of social stability and solidarity, rather than the other way around.” Berman calls the mixture “social democracy.” Other scholars use other terms: Jan-Werner Müller prefers “Christian Democracy,” John Ruggie suggests “embedded liberalism,” Karl Dietrich Bracher talks of “democratic liberalism.” Francis Fukuyama wrote of “the end of History”; Daniel Bell and Seymour Martin Lipset saw it as “the end of ideology.” All refer to essentially the same thing. As Bell put it in 1960:
Few serious minds believe any longer that one can set down “blueprints” and through “social engineering” bring about a new utopia of social harmony. At the same time, the older “counter-beliefs” have lost their intellectual force as well. Few “classic” liberals insist that the State should play no role in the economy, and few serious conservatives, at least in England and on the Continent, believe that the Welfare State is “the road to serfdom.” In the Western world, therefore, there is today a rough consensus among intellectuals on political issues: the acceptance of a Welfare State; the desirability of decentralized power; a system of mixed economy and of political pluralism.
Reflecting the hangover of the interwar ideological binge, the system stressed not transcendence but compromise. It offered neither salvation nor utopia, only a framework within which citizens could pursue their personal betterment. It has never been as satisfying as the religions, sacred or secular, it replaced. And it remains a work in progress, requiring tinkering and modification as conditions and attitudes change. Yet its success has been manifest -- and reflecting that, its basic framework has remained remarkably intact.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE ORDER
The central question of modernity has been how to reconcile capitalism and mass democracy, and since the postwar order came up with a good answer, it has managed to weather all subsequent challenges. The upheavals of the late 1960s seemed poised to disrupt it. But despite what activists at the time thought, they had little to offer in terms of politics or economics, and so their lasting impact was on social life instead. This had the ironic effect of stabilizing the system rather than overturning it, helping it live up to its full potential by bringing previously subordinated or disenfranchised groups inside the castle walls. The neoliberal revolutionaries of the 1980s also had little luck, never managing to turn the clock back all that far.
All potential alternatives in the developing world, meanwhile, have proved to be either dead ends or temporary detours from the beaten path. The much-ballyhooed “rise of the rest” has involved not the discrediting of the postwar order of Western political economy but its reinforcement: the countries that have risen have done so by embracing global capitalism while keeping some of its destabilizing attributes in check, and have liberalized their polities and societies along the way (and will founder unless they continue to do so).
Although the structure still stands, however, it has seen better days. Poor management of public spending and fiscal policy has resulted in unsustainable levels of debt across the advanced industrial world, even as mature economies have found it difficult to generate dynamic growth and full employment in an ever more globalized environment. Lax regulation and oversight allowed reckless and predatory financial practices to drive leading economies to the brink of collapse. Economic inequality has increased as social mobility has declined. And a loss of broad-based social solidarity on both sides of the Atlantic has eroded public support for the active remedies needed to address these and other problems.
Renovating the structure will be a slow and difficult project, the cost and duration of which remain unclear, as do the contractors involved. Still, at root, this is not an ideological issue. The question is not what to do but how to do it -- how, under twenty-first-century conditions, to rise to the challenge Laski described, making the modern political economy provide enough solid benefit to the mass of men that they see its continuation as a matter of urgency to themselves.
The old and new articles that follow trace this story from the totalitarian challenge of the interwar years, through the crisis of liberalism and the emergence of the postwar order, to that order’s present difficulties and future prospects. Some of our authors are distinctly gloomy, and one need only glance at a newspaper to see why. But remembering the far greater obstacles that have been overcome in the past, optimism would seem the better long-term bet.
"Post-ideological" remains the watchword of the day it seems. And of course it's the nature of every ruling class to view status quo ideology not as ideology but as "policy," and find their own personal comfort as evidence of progress for the whole and not predicated on the whole's exploitation. The poverty of optimism is seen in full form here, and it is certainly the a large part of justification for the status quo requires such an outlook despite all evidence to the contrary. The elite in the "castle" is continually consolidating themselves and becoming smaller and more entrenched, and yet it's seen as progress as there are a few new faces of color and gender as well.
Certainly the rise of the technocrats makes sense with this kind of the world view. If merely the structure needs renovation, only "policy" needing to be fixed, then technocratic administration would seem to be the answer. So much for mass democracy (and the corruption of buying votes), liberal capitalism will fix the problems eventually with enough authority.
Now more than ever we must pursue a practical pessimism and reassert the obvious: It's all ideology, idiot!
Edited by aerdil ()
aerdil posted:
Now more than ever we must pursue a practical pessimism and reassert the obvious: It's all ideology, idiot!
To whom does this need to be asserted, and how? I don't think the bloviation used to internally justify and support the ongoing secession of the capitalists and their favoured bits of the managerial class into the economic stratosphere is necessarily significant to the masses. No one really completely understands what's happening right now, least of all someone who's working two jobs and doesn't have time to read FP, much less Marx. What kind of engagement with the plutocratic optimism you're describing needs to happen to convey the message that there are functional ideological alternatives, particularly when those alternatives are, in the West, represented by totally feckless groups with no material base of support even marginally independent of capitalism?
Lenin on Freedom
by Roland Boer
"But see how quickly the slave of yesterday is straightening his back, how the spark of liberty is gleaming even in his half-dimmed eyes" (Lenin 1905 : 541).
Lenin and freedom -- it is perhaps a jarring juxtaposition for many. Was not Lenin the harbinger of what is occasionally called the most dictatorial and authoritarian 'regime' in history? Is not any discussion of freedom with regard to Lenin a bad joke? A close reading of Lenin reveals that his arguments are far more subtle than much received opinion. Indeed, he seeks to hold together two seemingly contradictory positions: freedom is both actual and partisan. That is, communists must always hold to the position of actual freedom, in which one may act to destroy the very conditions under which 'freedom' has thus far been understood; yet freedom can never escape the questions: 'for whom and for what purpose?' Over against the limitations of bourgeois freedom, invariably propagated without the epithet and thereby assumed to be universal, Lenin strenuously urges proletarian freedom. Only through this utterly explicit partisanship is an actual, universal freedom possible. The attempted resolution of that contradiction takes place in the thorough redefinition of freedom through the whole revolutionary process, especially in the period after seizing power, a redefinition that renders all hitherto known senses of freedom obsolete.
At this point the distinction between formal and actual freedom becomes useful,1 with the former designating the often unrecognised conditions under which freedom operates and the latter that moment when 'everything is possible', when it is possible to alter the coordinates by which freedom itself is defined. Lenin never tires of pointing out that the much-vaunted bourgeois claims to 'freedom' and 'democracy' are anything but absolutes, that they are always tied to the interests of that class and thereby constricted by a whole series of limiting conditions. Freedom of industry? That gives reign to predatory wars. Freedom of labour? It is merely another excuse to rob workers (Lenin 1902 : 355). Freedom of the press? It is actually freedom for the rich to own the press and propagate their bourgeois views and befuddle the people (Lenin 1919 : 370-1). Parliamentary freedom? That depends entirely on the bureaucrats deciding precisely which 'freedoms' might be exercised (Lenin 1906 -a: 422; 1912 -a). The ultimately determining instance is capitalism, which generates certain forms of political representation that further its own aims; that is, 'democracy' operates within strict parameters: 'The facts of democracy must not make us lose sight of a circumstance, often overlooked by bourgeois democrats, that in the capitalist countries representative institutions inevitably give rise to specific forms in which capital exercises its influence on the state power' (Lenin 1912 : 129). All of which Lenin sums up in characteristic fashion, replete with a biblical allusion (Matthew 23:27):
All your talk about freedom and democracy is sheer claptrap, parrot phrases, fashionable twaddle, or hypocrisy. It is just a painted signboard. And you yourselves are whited sepulchres. You are mean-spirited boors, and your education, culture, and enlightenment are only a species of thoroughgoing prostitution. (Lenin 1907 : 53)
Over against these various permutations of formal freedom is actual freedom. Here we need to be careful, since Lenin means neither a 'free-for-all', nor indeed the full display of individual freedoms assumed but never practised in liberal slogans. Actual freedom is the insistence that we have the ability and opportunity to abolish the old system and its formal freedoms. Hence the persistence in maintaining the illegal party, hence the need for a military wing, hence the constant uncovering of sham bourgeois slogans of 'freedom'. Yet at times Lenin sounds like a good liberal, arguing for a state administration that is utterly responsible to the people, that is accountable to, elected by and subject to recall by the people (Lenin 1905 -b: 41). It is all too easy to juxtapose these statements with the restrictions on such freedoms after the revolution (Lih 2011; Rabinowitch 2004 , 2007), but that misses a subtle point Lenin makes, not only in the debates during the times of the Duma (1905-17), but also after the revolution, as we will see in a moment. Before the revolution, liberal freedoms are indeed to be pursued, he points out, for in that context workers' associations and parties may make full use of the greater possibilities of legal gatherings, associations, press and strikes. But they are not an end in themselves, for the workers always keep in sight a 'radical change in the entire political system', precisely that system which has enabled those freedoms (Lenin 1912 -b: 418).
A vital question remains: what happens after the exercise of actual freedom when the whole order that has set the terms for formal freedom has been abolished, or at least is in the process of being abolished? Or more simply, what happens after the revolution? The beginning of an answer is that the revolution is not merely the moment -- with however long a process leading up to that moment -- when the old order has been overthrown and power has been seized by the revolutionaries. It includes that vital period after the revolutionary overthrow when all things have to be made anew.
In this context, freedom becomes what at first appears to be a paradox: freedom is partisan. Is this not precisely the accusation hurled at the bourgeoisie, that their prattle about 'freedom' conceals specific class interests? Does it not become another version of formal freedom? Not at all, but let us see why. Five factors play a role in Lenin's argument. First, in the appropriation of Western political terminology during the revolutionary process after February 1917, 'democracy' became associated with the labouring masses of workers and peasants, who were the 'people' (demos and thereby narod). The opposite of democracy was not the autocracy or dictatorship, but the classes of the old aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Thus, terms such as 'democratic elements' 'democratic classes', 'revolutionary democracy', along with 'democracy' itself had distinct class dimensions. Democracy became synonymous with the range of socialist parties, while those of the bourgeoisie (Kadets) and the old aristocracy (Octobrists and others) were anti-democratic (Kolonitskii 2004).
Lenin played no small part in that process of redefinition, which brings us to our second point, concerning concealment: bourgeois claims to foster freedom in general conceal their class interest. By contrast, one must not conceal the partisan nature of proletarian freedom, for it is 'openly linked to the proletariat' (Lenin 1905 -a: 48). Third, bourgeois freedom is predicated on the individual, while proletarian freedom is collective. The catch here is that this supposed individuality of bourgeois freedom is in fact a collective position that is, once again, systematically concealed and denied. However, if one begins explicitly with the collective, then freedom begins to mean a very different type of freedom. Fourth, this apparently individual, bourgeois freedom operates within 'a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites' (Lenin 1905 -a: 48). In other words, bourgeois freedom serves the cause of capitalism in which the vast majority are systematically denied freedom. Only when the power of money and thereby capitalism is destroyed and replaced with a communist system will the masses be able to enjoy 'freedom without inverted commas' (Lenin 1906 -b: 264). Finally, all of this means that bourgeois freedom constitutes a false universal, based upon a particular which is concealed, namely the power of capital, while proletarian freedom is a genuine universal, based not upon greed or careerism but upon the interests of the vast majority that unites the best of the past's revolutionary traditions and the best of the present struggle for a new life.
We may describe this argument as an effort to redefine freedom in a sense that is not bourgeois. The problem is that such a task had never been undertaken after a successful overthrow of bourgeois power, so Lenin and the communists found themselves in uncharted waters. As he reiterated over and over, the actual seizure of power is the easy part, but the task of constructing communism is far more complex than anything that has gone before.2 And he repeatedly reminded his fellow Bolsheviks of the many mistakes made, of the need to try anew each time. That sense of setting out into unknown territory is reflected forcefully in the piecemeal notes, concerning freedom and new democratic structures, Lenin made for the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1918 (Lenin 1918 : 152-7). We may, of course, attribute the sketchy nature of the notes to Lenin's crushing workload, but I would suggest they also reveal the tentativeness of exploring what a new sense of freedom means. Lenin's effort to work out that new meaning of freedom had at least two ramifications. To begin with, the partisan nature of actual freedom meant that the bourgeoisie would have to be smashed. So he writes, '"Liberties" and democracy not for all, but for the working and exploited masses, to emancipate them from exploitation; ruthless suppression of exploiters'. And in explanation, 'NB: chief stress is shifted from formal recognition of liberties (such as existed under bourgeois parliamentarism) to actually ensuring the enjoyment of liberties by the working people who are overthrowing the exploiters, e.g., from recognition of freedom of assembly to the handing over of all the best halls and premises to the workers, from recognition of freedom of speech to the handing over of all the best printing presses to the workers, and so forth' (Lenin 1918 : 155). Naturally, the offer was always there for the bourgeoisie to join the process of constructing communism and to divest themselves of bourgeois class identity, as indeed many did among intellectuals, inheritors of capitalist wealth and middle peasants. But many more continued resistance and, when that proved futile, fled abroad to feed the anti-communist cause in as many ways as they could among the Entente. The reality of the concentrated effort by the Entente to dislodge the new government, with troops, equipment and money for the White Terror at the hands of the various White Armies and their temporary regimes, ensured that the remnants of the bourgeoisie and old aristocracy within Russia would indeed be smashed.3
Yet the ramifications of constructing everything anew also unleashed new forms of freedom, forms that were partially in evidence in the lead-up to October, but forms that simultaneously risked falling back into old patterns while exhibited new possibilities. Let me give two examples. Before October, the Bolsheviks were, as Rabinowitch makes clear through a mass of detail on internal debates, less a tightly disciplined and unanimous organisation and much more a flexible party, especially in the crucial period between July and October in 1917, with open and vigorous and freewheeling debate, disagreements and responsiveness to the mood of the masses. Indeed, the 'phenomenal Bolshevik success can be attributed in no small measure to the nature of the party in 1917 . . . I would emphasize the party's internally relatively democratic, tolerant, and decentralized structure and method of operation, as well as its open and essentially mass character' (Rabinowitch 2004 : 311). It is worth noting that after October the party operated in largely the same pattern, with spirited debate in which Lenin's 'directives' were not necessarily 'obeyed' but formed sharp points in that ongoing debate.
As a second example, let us now move to the period after October and the account of Arthur Ransome at a conference in Jaroslavl in 1920. Even in the midst of the multiple crises brought on by the aftermath of the First World War and the 'Civil' War, debates were vigorously open. Upon arrival from Moscow with Radek and Larin (a Menshevik), Ransome notes that the auditorium was full of workers, with not an intellectual to be seen. The topic was industrial conscription. In the first session Radek and Larin lengthily set out their opposing views, but the second session on the following day turned out to be very revealing. Worker after worker came forward to speak, some a little naive but most astutely aware of the political issues at stake, exhibiting a 'political consciousness which would have been almost incredible three years ago'. The debate rolled on all evening, covering myriad topics, with all who wished to speak given the floor. The outcome: the sympathy for Larin's opposition faded and Radek's proposal to support the proposal was carried. Yet the most intriguing point is that for Ransome this is nothing less than the complex process of free debate enabled under the dictatorship of the proletariat (Ransome 2011 : 28-34). It is as if Ransome is reporting on the actual embodiment of three of Lenin's 'Ten Theses on Soviet Power':
(4) (3) abolition of parliamentarism (as the separation of legislative from executive activity); union of legislative and executive state activity. Fusion of administration with legislation;
(3) (4) closer connection of the whole apparatus of state power and state administration with the masses than under previous forms of democracy;
(9) transfer of the focus of attention in questions of democracy from formal recognition of a formal equality of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, of poor and rich, to the practical feasibility of the enjoyment of freedom (democracy) by the working and exploited mass of the population. (Lenin 1918 : 154-5)
Perhaps it would be better to say that Lenin was formulating a process already under way.
Thus far I have argued that actual freedom arises from the explicit partisanship of freedom advocated by Lenin. This formulation is not quite correct, for the opposition between formal and actual freedom was a product of the former system that the communists set out to smash and replace. That is, with the very conditions for distinguishing between actual and formal freedom now passing, the type of freedom fitfully emerging is qualitatively different.
---
1 I draw this distinction from Žižek's discussion of Leninist freedom (Žižek 2001: 113-14). Žižek quotes but does not cite a supposed retort from Lenin -- 'Freedom -- yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?' Yet, despite being frequently cited by others who list Žižek as the source, this 'quote' is one that -- like the Gospel writers -- Žižek seems to have placed in Lenin's mouth. As usual, Žižek reads too quickly, charging a post-revolutionary Lenin with his own version of formal freedom (I decide what the conditions of freedom are) and asserting the need to invoke actual freedom once again. This will turn out to be a superficial reading of Lenin.
2 As Yermakov puts it so well, 'They were part of a search for a correct road to the unknown' (Yermakov 1975: 107).
3 Much has also been made of the exclusion of other socialist parties from the government (Rabinowitch 2007), whether mainstream Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Anarchists, and eventually Left-Socialist-Revolutionaries, Menshevik-Internationalists and Mezhraiontsy (Interdistrict Group). But on this matter some excluded themselves (mainstream Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) by organising resistance to the government. Others were in coalition until they shot themselves in the foot by letting loose assassins on the Bolsheviks in 1918, one of whom put a couple of bullets in Lenin (Left-Socialist-Revolutionaries). Others joined the renamed Russian Communist Party (from all groups, but especially Mezhraiontsy, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshevik-Internationalists).
babyfinland posted:
That is, with the very conditions for distinguishing between actual and formal freedom now passing, the type of freedom fitfully emerging is qualitatively different.
is there an elaboration on this somewhere? this seems pretty intriguing but i don't know where hes going w/ it
shennong posted:
I agree with that, but the ideology is disseminated in much larger structures than these kinds of elite magazines, right? Like you're talking about challenging the most successful propaganda machine of all time, at a historical moment that for most people doesn't have representatives of viable alternative movements. So who do we talk to and how do we do it? What outlets do we use, and how do we get the message across in a way that people who haven't read the latest FP editorial have immediate access to? Not trying to be hostile or defeatist, but trying to see how in your view engaging with this kind of stuff should be done (and also how it fits into other efforts)
Sure, but before these ideas are disseminated on that wider basis they are often first forged in the fires of these journals. I also recognize however that at the same time ideology is a dialectical movement and these academics are influenced themselves by the wider structure. Nonetheless, it seems a reasonable place to begin an analysis of ideology, or at least be aware of new developments.
I'm getting the feeling that you think I'm proposing to spread the contents of this thread out to the three-corners of the MTW movement or that I think this is the dawn of a new praxis to engage in counter-propaganda or some such. I simply figured people here at the rhizzone would be interested in a more concentrated discussion of the kind of ideological framework these elites are currently embracing. In other words, starting to develop an answer to those over-arching and perennial questions that you outline is the purpose of the thread, I don't have the answers yet. That's what theory is all about.
i guess in terms of influencing orthodoxy dialectically, i think you have to have something that you can push in fora where orthodox proponents are forced to engage with it in some way. that means either putting the message into a package that is acceptable on hegemonic terms or getting enough of a mass base of people listening to you that the hegemonic ideology feels a need to "debunk" you, right? i guess thats one tactical consideration for how that reassertion should be formulated
shennong posted:babyfinland posted:
That is, with the very conditions for distinguishing between actual and formal freedom now passing, the type of freedom fitfully emerging is qualitatively different.is there an elaboration on this somewhere? this seems pretty intriguing but i don't know where hes going w/ it
Not really sure. Here's the comments from the article at his blog: http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/lenin-and-the-partisanship-of-freedom-2/#comments
I'm not especially familiar with the blog but it might be worth checking out
This seems cool: http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/lenin-and-theology-a-preliminary-outline/
This is only tangentially so if relevant at all but worth linking just because its an amazing resource: http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com/marxism-and-religion/
Edited by babyfinland ()