Luxemburg was critical of Lenin, though. I have already pointed this out in this thread.

I'm not saying that the KPD would've been all bread and roses; I'm just saying that they wouldn't have turned out like the Soviet Union.

Besides, the point that I am trying to get across is that making a secret deal with a state within a state is just simply duplicitous and that Social Democrats just simply ought to be willing to admit this, considering that their doing so directly contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. There is one degree of separation between Ebert and Schleicher and it was common for Groener and Schleicher to collaborate before Schleicher betrayed him. Establishing the pact with the military reestasblished its role as a state within a state. Doing so directly contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. I'm not saying that Social Democrats were somehow Fascists just because of this, as they, quite obviously were later banned by the Nazis. I am saying that allying themselves as such, in retrospect, seems to have been a clear mistake. Regardless as to what political party was preferable at the time, it'd seem ill-advised to suggest otherwise.

So, they occupied the legendary mouthpiece of the SPD in a fit of absence of mind? They only meant to destroy the freedom of expression of the bourgeoisie? If they were not Communists yet, at least they were learning bloody quickly how to best undermine liberal democracy... — hwyl

I don't understand what you mean. I think that you might have confused Groener and Schleicher with this thread's early mention of Ebert and Noske as I think you're going to be waging an uphill battle to try and prove that Kurt von Schleicher positively contributed to the German political legacy or that of the world at large.

It was Groener and Schleicher. Ebert formed a pact with Groener whose successor, in a succession of schemes to secure power himself, directly contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. That's what I was thinking of.

I have mixed up some of the information, but there is truth to this suspicion.

I was looking for the Ebert–Groener pact. I think that I remember our professor pointing out that there was a lot of speculation about the Riechswehr, which many have called a "state within a state".

And, well, the Spartakists had attacked and occupied the Vorwärts house - some sort of protofascist military headquarters? — hwyl

"On Sunday 5 January, as on 9 November 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of Berlin, many of them armed. In the afternoon the train stations and the newspaper district with the offices of the middle-class press and the SPD's "Vorwärts", which had been printing articles hostile to the Spartacists since the beginning of September, were occupied. Some of the middle-class papers in the previous days had called not only for the raising of more Freikorps but also for the murder of the Spartacists." - Wikipedia

Not proto-Fascist, but also not as if it were exemplary of the free press.

And Communists certainly picked their moment for revenge in the early 30's, they stabbed the sanest and biggest party in the back while it was trying to hold the front against the Nazis. — hwyl

What I am saying is that Spartacists under Luxemburg and Liebknecht differed from the latter KPD. I am not saying that the KPD was a better political party than the SPD.

"After the overthrow of William II in 1918, Hindenburg collaborated briefly with the new republican government. He directed the withdrawal of German forces from France and Belgium and had his staff organize the suppression of left-radical risings in Germany. With both tasks accomplished (and the old officer corps preserved in the process), he retired once more in June 1919. Living quietly in Hanover, he occasionally expressed antirepublican views but, on the whole, cultivated his image of a nonpartisan national hero." - Encyclopedia Britannica

This is only to my recollection of what I have picked up on all of this, but I vaguely recall there being a connection between the Junkers, Paul von Hindenburg, who later appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor, a few high ranking military officials, and the SPD. I can't quite find what I'm looking for, but it seemed to be the case that, upon crushing the uprising, the SPD forged an alliance with some set of officials or another who would later contribute to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. It somehow went beyond the theory that the split within the Left left them without enough support to counter the Nazi Party.

I can't find it, though, and, so, perhaps, I stumbled upon a conspiracy theory, perhaps I have mixed-up the information, or perhaps its just the sort of thing that people don't discuss too often? I don't really know.

I was still typing. Nevermind.

Right, but what I am saying is that where the thought-terminating cliché, "social fascists", stems from is this historical event. I have, perhaps, elaborated upon this to a point and intensity of excess, but my claim that, though they may present much of this information in either misleading manners or with some sort of call to action or another, the information that any number of Communists will share with you about it is true is true.

I used to be friends with a number of Trotskyites on Facebook. On a near bi-weekly basis, they would something or another about this event. I never really read the articles because I understood that their sharing them was just kind of a way for them to put forth that only the political praxis proceeding from Hal Draper, who, also, as chance would have it, has also invoked the "third camp", was capable of changing the world for the better.

What I posit of these articles is that the information that they contain about the Social Democrats forming an alliance with high ranking officials in the German military who later facilitated the rise of the Nazi Party is that it is just true. I have provided anecdotal evidence from the class that I took on Communism at a university to support this claim. As both my History professor and the International Socialist Organization agree, it seems unlikely that I have been mistaken.

After reading The Coming Insurrection in my early twenties, I became an acolyte of Communization before later leaving the Anarchist movement in protest. I had actually gone quite mad and came to suspect that a set of factions within the Intelligence community was making an attempt to incite a global clandestine civil war so as to be given the legal and extra-juridical justifications for the establishment of a global crypto-Fascist totalitarian regime, which, I believe, was more or less the exact word choice that I used when I detailed this to The New York Times. My stated reasons for leaving the Anarchist community were in opposition to its "general proclivities towards crypto-Fascism and political violence", which are concerns that I can now let go of, but do have yet to have come back. In a way, going mad kind of liberated me from the cult pathology of the ultra-Left, as, as I had made great efforts to explain much of this to more or less anyone that I could find, I found myself to have become fairly isolated and with a lot of time to reflect.

Though well aware of that the members of Tiqqun are just kind of some people who think that engaging in political terrorism will be like living in a Jean-Luc Godard film, reading The Cybernetic Hypothesis as I was coming out of all of this had the effect of that I finally let it bother me that they would do things like castigate Antonio Negri before advocating for a return to the "Years of Lead". I, then, came to realize how much it bothered me that much of the far-Left would casually call for political violence without having considered whatsoever as to what it would actually be like. Somehow I had gotten into the ultra-Left through Anarcho-Pacifism. What I understand all too well about it is that their ardent support for what we call adventurist terrorism is that it's just kind of this elaborate display of revolutionary fidelity. It's sort of autopoetic and sort of a form of political suicide. It's also kind of a façade. While its extraordinarily rare reifications are just tragic, its pretense is just kind of reprehensible. You'll find ecstatic praise for the aesthetics of violence in certain left-wing journals written by people who probably haven't thought about events like German Autumn for longer than the two hours and twenty-nine minutes it takes to watch The Baader Meinhof Complex. It's difficult to explain this well, but I came to realize that there are other reasons to take offense to terror chic than what most will commonly encounter. The whole quixotic experience got me to respect things that I wouldn't have otherwise. I realized that it takes kind of a lot to really care about Pacifism and to engage in dialogue.

As transformative of an experience as that was, however, the entire psychodrama just kind of played out in my own mind. It's not like I've ever met an actual political terrorist. I did write this work of hypertext about it, though.

Why, thank you! I usually assume for everyone here to just simply be vexed by what I have to say about anything, which is probably my fault, really.

I have been known to be habitually voluble, which is something that I've been working on, but only over goes so well.

The seminal Communist text was written in the mid-1800s, i.e., the Nineteenth Century, and we were talking about sentiments within the same country that it was published around seventy years later. As there was a revolution in Russia around the same period of time, I would suspect that being a Communist was common enough for most people to have met one.

You began this debate by defending the SPD's enlisting the aid of the German military in order to quell the January Uprising. I pointed out that their doing so resulted in that the Nazis were capable of taking power because I don't think that it was defensible. If were going to level ad hominem attacks, I don't what you call rewriting the history of the Weimar Republic so as to suit your political agenda other than totalitarian. Well, "Fascist", perhaps?

I, myself, am not a historian, and, so, make no claim to really know what the general mindset of the German military was following the end of the First World War. To speculate, I'd guess that an odd mixture of post-war resentment, an instilled longing for the ostensive security of the aristocracy, popular nationalist vanities and prejudices, and the vague self-interested supposition that the rule of law could be suspended in their vying for power had culminated in an ethos that you could describe as having been "Fascist". As they would later provide the Nazi party with the support with which it needed to take power, it would seem that such a description would be most apt.

What I am discounting is that the Spartacists were like the Bolsheviks. What I have conceded is that they didn't really have a right to boycott the elections. What I flat out refuse to accept is that collaborating with Fascists is justifiable within any given political situation. I don't think that it reflects poorly upon my character to have drawn those conclusions from this discussion.

Liebknecht was an ally of the late Marx, who effectively advanced both revolution and Liberal reform.

The "sentiments" you're talking about were 10% of the population at the time of Luxemburg. So, on one hand you're allegedly against totalitarianism, and on the other hand you're for rule by a small minority with which the vast majority disagrees. — Apollodorus

What I have repeatedly stated is that I don't really agree with them boycotting the elections but felt vaguely sympathetic towards them after they were betrayed. I don't think that that is an unreasonable way to feel about this.

I would like to say that there were instances of both the SPD and the KPD collaborating with the Nazis in their respective quests to destroy one another, and, so, there is no reason to pass the blame, here, as they were both just kind of historically reprehensible.

I have made a very conscious attempt to be understanding of your point of contention as I am well aware of that this is a highly charged talking point of the far-Left. Though I, myself, am of the far-Left, what I do understand of it is that populated by kind of a lot of fanatics. When it comes to fanatics and their talking points, other people often refuse to listen to a single word that they say, and understandably so.

Being said, I was called to an awareness of the details of this event by the professor of a class that I took on Communism. He grew up in West Germany and, while he did not state his personal political affiliation, it did seem to be very likely to me that he was either a member of or sympathetic towards the SPD. As his response to the question that a young student posed in a discussion about revolution in regards to what to do when people in positions of power deal with others unjustly was "You can always just vote them out.", I do think that it would be safe to assume that he is either a Liberal or Social Democrat. He taught a very good class on Communism from a variety of different perspectives and sources. In said class, this event was portrayed more or less in the exact same manner that I have described it. The KPD boycotted the elections after losing them and the SPD, in turn, betrayed them by the German military, thereby establishing the alliance that would lead to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. That understanding of the event, to my estimation, is well known, understood, and accepted.

Should that anecdote not suffice, what I have been avoiding pointing out here is that the claim to the contrary that the KPD posed enough of a threat to warrant their violent suppression by an extraordinarily, in no misuse of this term, reactionary military was justified, despite that doing so did put the very people in power who would later allow for the establishment of the Third Reich, is, for lack of a better term, revisionist and borderlines on denial.

I am not making the claim that the KPD had a right to boycott the elections. I am merely pointing out that they had their reasons for doing so. What I am emphatically trying to get across, however, is that the SPD enlisting the aid of the German military in order to suppress the Spartacist Revolt was just simply unjustified, which, in retrospect, to any person with any degree of political conviction, ought to be just simply cogent.

Nineteenth Century? We're talking about the 1900s here, i.e. Twentieth Century, when Communists in Germany only mustered 10% of the vote. — Apollodorus

Less than twenty years into the 1900s. The Communist Manifesto was first published in 1848. I don't think that it's a stretch to suggest that it did take enough of a hold for such sentiments to still exist in 1919.

By the same logic, the SPD's opposition to the Communists does make sense and it can't be called "betrayal". Unless you're advocating Communism, i.e., in this case, the rule of a Communist minority over a non-Communist majority? — Apollodorus

That the SPD was necessarily opposed to that the KPD boycotted the elections obviously makes sense. What I was suggesting is that their deployment and association with reactionaries in the German military was both a strategic and ethical mistake. It did effectively crush the uprising, but at what cost?

The Bolsheviks are called as such because of that Lenin gained a majority at a congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party after a number of Mensheviks who supported Julus Martov walked out. It doesn't quite translate well into English, but Bolshevik means "majoritarian". It's somewhat ironic that they have been called as such, as they only gained the support of the majority of the Russian populace after the October Revolution, leading up to and during the Russian Civil War.

You are correct to assume that it is a problem for a political faction to attempt to secure power without the support of the general populace. By that account, I don't think that I would say that I would have supported the KPD's boycott of the elections. There are similarities and dissimilarities between them and the Bolsheviks, however.

Upon the SPD enlisting the aid of the German military in crushing the Spartacist Revolt, I also would not have supported the SPD. Upon them doing so, I would feel so inclined to be sympathetic towards the KPD, despite my not having agreed with their boycott of the elections in the first place.

Before the Spartacist Uprising, the KPD and the SPD collaborated with one another in the attempt to establish a Socialist Germany. One of the more apparent opponents of theirs was the German military. When a party within an alliance enlists the aid of their enemies in their violent suppression, that is a betrayal. You can say that the KPD drew the line in the sand if you like, but the SPD were the ones to cross it.

So instead of having later just the Soviet Union and Red China we would have earlier a Soviet Germany and Soviet Russia? — ssu

This is all historical speculation, but I think that council communism could've turned out a lot better than the Soviet experiment. I come from a particular set of factions within the libertarian Left, none of whom have ever been in a position of power. It's easy for a libertarian communist, Autonomist, Communization theorist, Anarchist, or libertarian socialist to say that, comparatively, they have an immaculate human rights record because of that they have never been given the opportunity to vitiate it. Of council communism, most people tend to either given them the benefit of the doubt or to be fairly cynical. You can either see it as having been a considerably less authoritarian alternative to Bolshevism or kind of a sectarian distancing from it that paradoxically somewhat fanatically puts forth effectively the same praxis, as, if you ask any Trotskyite about council communism, they will tell you that it is just a rehash of workers' soviets.

I think that Rosa Luxemburg was relatively free of any implicit authoritarianism or intransigence, though, and, so, am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. She's often cited with the quote, "Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.", which is from a critique that she wrote of Lenin's authoritarian nature leading up to and during the October Revolution.

A good question is if the Soviet Union would have been able to exist without Stalin. The standard leftist narrative is that it was great when Lenin was in charge, but unfortunately then Stalin took power. Yet it might be that it was Stalin the Soviet system needed. Or Mao in the case of China. — ssu

Within the Left, there is a definite problem with the aura that Lenin retains. Many are all too likely to excuse, rationalize, justify, defend, or even celebrate the taking and abuse of power on the part of the Bolsheviks leading up to the October Revolution and through the Russian Civil War. When people assess the Leninist legacy, however, they often forget about one of the more infamous absurdities of the Marxist-Leninist regime, being what happened to the Old Bolsheviks. Though I, too, am of the opinion that Lenin did lay the rudiments for Stalin to secure power as such, I don't necessarily agree with Solzhenitsyn in that Marxism-Leninism was effectively just a continuation of the theory and practice of Vladimir Lenin. Of the first People's Commissariat, only two members would survive the Great Terror, none without losing an immediate relative. The Moscow Show Trials are indicative of that Stalin's regime does mark a point of departure from the October Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War.

As to your question as to whether the Soviet Union could even have existed without Stalin, I, myself have pondered this as well. A continuation of Lenin's New Economic Policy seems like it would have eventually resulted in the abandonment of the Communist project and establishment of some form of Social Democracy. Stalin's forced Collectivization resulted in political, economic, and humanitarian catastrophe. When people all too readily dismiss that "Communism does not work in practice", they often fail to take this into account.

To offer some speculative history, however, had there only been a February Revolution, I do think that there could have been a pluralist Socialist country which people today would find to have been somewhat exemplary.

But aside from matters of taste, of which it's said there can be no dispute, I think that as a narrative or rhetorical device it's as Tom Storm suggests--intricate and confusing. — Ciceronianus the White

It's funny to me that people often find what I say to be perplexing as I make such a deliberate attempt to be explicitly clear.

So, what Luxemburg is saying is that land must to be taken over by the “nation” which is actually the state which is the government which is the Socialist Party which is (ideally) run by people like Luxemburg herself ....

Obviously, most Germans - and most people in their right mind - would object to that. — Apollodorus

I am willing to admit that Rosa Luxemburg may not have been ideologically pure, but I don't think that you are giving her enough credit to pick out one particular quote so as to cast her lot in with the likes of Nikolai Bukharin, who, in The ABC of Communism compares "communist society" to a collective storehouse where anyone can go to just take whatever they want to.

I also think that you fail to understand that Communism was extraordinarily appealing to many people in the Nineteenth Century. There were many revolts, uprisings, revolutions, and regime changes then and it was quite often the case that the old aristocratic order somehow either remained in power or was incorporated within whatever Liberal democracy in such a manner that their power was still somehow in effect, and, so, I think that there was a general sentiment that, if people didn't want to wait three-hundred years to be liberated from the old order, they should just simply overthrow them in a revolution. There's also that Marx's insistence upon the primacy of class probably rang true for a lot of people living through the Industrial Revolution. Though I don't agree with Marx, I can see how just about any German citizen would be inspired by The Communist Manifesto, especially given the dormant Fascist sentiment of the reactionary ruling class. It's easy to characterize an attempt at revolution as just simply having been "mad" when you don't live in a time where martial law can be declared at more or less the whims of the ruling class.

Given that Socialists felt like their common existence was at stake and had good reason to suspect that reform was going to take longer than they were going to live for, the revolutionary stance of the KPD, regardless as to whether it was either strategic or ethical, does make sense.

I occasionally entertain myself by attempting to use as many commas within one sentence as humanly possible. What of it?

There's a certain irony to invoking a majoritarian ethos in a conversation about the legacy of Bolshevism, I think.

Hear me out on this.

If you go to a Communist forum and say something like, "They say that Communism sounds great in theory, but fails in practice. To my limited understanding, the taking of power by one, Vladimir Lenin, was somewhat exemplary of this. How do you respond to the charge that Lenin was just simply autocratic?", what is extraordinarily likely to happen is for this or that left-wing faction to walk you through a rather spurious and elaborate ideology so as to conscript you within this or that left-wing sect, perhaps somewhat paradoxically concluding by sharing a link to Slavoj Zizek's "The Leninist Freedom".

If, however, you go to any left-wing forum, be it Anarchist, Socialist, or Communist, and ask, "I, myself am sympathetic to Social Democracy, but, in passing conversation, I was told that the SPD betrayed the KPD during the Spartacist Uprising and set in motion the course of events that would lead to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Is this true?", you will be given a lengthy delineation upon just how and why it is with all of the relevant details and figures. While the other party may still attempt to conscript you within this or that political faction, all of the information that you will be given will be completely verifiable.

If you go to an active member of the SPD and ask the same question, it is not likely that you will be given all of the relevant information, but they will probably say something to the effect of, "Well, something had to be done about that the Communists had boycotted the elections, but, as that was what laid the rudiments for the collapse of the Weimar Republic, yeah."

Because of the event in question, those two parties do hate each other and have never politically collaborated since, but, when both of them are willing to give you a consistent analysis of the events in retrospect, I would suggest that such analysis is just simply apt.

Of my own political standpoint, I don't think that Anarcho-Pacifism has ever been within the majority, despite that I should like for it to be, but do see no reason to change it just simply because of that it is what most people don't agree with. Any innovative idea begins apart from prevailing wisdom. Where the world be if everyone only ever agreed to what was generally accepted and understood? We'd still be behind the Copernican Revolution.

I am saying that the SPD's alliance and appointment of various figures within the German military led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and, so, kind of? The crushing of the Spartacist Revolt is one of the oft-cited examples of why collaboration with such parties in the name of facilitating an effective government fails for good reason. Establishing people who could be so inclined to do something like wage a coup d'état in positions of power is not only a strategic, but also an ethical mistake. I feel like that ought to be simply cogent.

Personally, I may have even supported the Spartacists. Surely council communism would've been preferable to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. I am a Pacifist, though, and, so, I don't know, perhaps some other measures could've been taken so that the KPD did not wage a revolution. I kind of doubt that they even could've been capable of doing so.

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and, so, it's easy to speculate upon what should or could have been done, but, even active members of the SPD are willing to admit that enlisting the aid of the German military in the political suppression of the Spartacist Revolt was probably a mistake on their part.

I also think that you may have confused the KPD as it was with Liebknecht and Luxemburg at its helm with the more Marxist-Leninist doctrine that it later adopted. I don't think that it was until the split between Grigory Zinoviev and Josef Stalin that it became as such.

Thank you! I was sure that there must be Final Fantasy fans on this forum and awaiting their arrival.

XII begins so well, but, because they lost their writer half of the way through, doesn't seem to at all follow through with where the narrative could've landed. There's this great political intrigue and allusion to Julius Caeser within the Archadean Empire and narrative build to the war that they're trying to prevent with Rozzaria, but it just ends with whatever is supposed to be happening with the Occuria, who aren't even introduced until the game is nearly over.

I was rather moved by Baltheir's act at the end and glad that they finally gave Penelo a character in the game's final cutscene, though.

The Sparacist Uprising, also known as the January Uprising, was led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who can be described as having been council communists. Luxemburg, I think, explicitly referred to herself as such and was among the first in the Left to come out against Lenin. It was a spontaneous revolt that was crushed by the German military at the bequest of the SPD. The relationship that they had established with the military resulted in that a number of what you might call "proto-Fascist" officials were given the positions of power that do seem to have paved the way for that the Nazis to have been capable of establishing their regime.

If you ask a Communist about this, I am sure that they will inform you better than I ever could. It's one of the few things that they won't slant to the point of just flat out lying to you.

The leftists I have known in academia and publishing mainly renounced their support of Marxism and the Soviet project in 1956, when the Soviet tanks invaded Hungary. The rest of them were well and truly out of it by 1974, Solzhenitsyn's book taking out the last of the naive or (look the other way) apologists. Some of these former radicals of course became neocons, a whole different problem for the world. — Tom Storm

This is more than true, but, to my experience, at least, invoking the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia in any left-wing circles is still likely to get you ignored and for people to assume that you are somehow "petit bourgeois", a more or less empty signifier, or "Liberal" in the way that Communists throw around the term, "Liberal", as a pejorative. Invoking the Hungarian Revolution is likely to get certain Marxist-Leninists to claim that you are somehow a "crypto-Fascist", an existing phenomenon that, despite whatever historical claims they have to the contrary, bears little to no relevance to any conversation about the events in Hungary in 1956. Invoking the dissident movement in Poland is likely to get any faction of the Left to merely assume that you are somehow in league with the American Right.

You don't exclusively see this sort of thing from the Old Left. For all that is veritable of the critique in this pamphlet, Solidarity was also just kind of castigating the Czech dissidents, effectively dismissing them as a technocratic Liberal reformists. You'll see this kind of vitriol from the libertarian Left with more or less any dissident movement that is out of keeping with the general ethos of left-wing academia as a whole.

Within the discourse of the "Cultural Cold War", the "third camp" is a position outside of the Western Exceptionalist ethos that culminated in The End of History or any form of vague support for the former Soviet Union.

Though it existed before then, it came about around the time that "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" was published in The New York Times, and later developed alongside the dissident movements in the former Soviet Union. Though it does have a clear history, there seems to me to still be a tendency to ignore said dissidents and a lack of serious scholarship as it concerns the Soviet catastrophe. The estimated Soviet death toll is somewhere between twenty and one-hundred million people. While I understand that they habitually destroyed their own records, that seems like all too great of a discrepancy.

I remember not knowing what figure to cite for the number of people put to death by either the Reds or the Whites during the Russian Civil War. It seemed like any figure was just kind of a speculative spin on my part.

Nordic countries? How? — ssu

I was referring to what happened in Germany. That the German Social Democratic party betrayed the Communist Party of Germany during the Spartacist Uprising and set in motion the course of events which did result in the establishment of the Third Reich is a major talking point for kind of a lot of Communists. If you know any of them on Facebook, you can go more than two weeks without seeing a post about it.

The SPD, I am pretty sure, is the world's largest Social Democratic party. I wasn't accusing the Nordic countries of being complicit in aiding the Axis powers during the Second World War, though.

I'm just saying that I thought that this thread was an off the cuff inquiry into whether or not you can reject all isms and have been wondering about that since I followed a link to an article about it on Wikipedia.

The mass murdering secular excesses of Nazism, Soviet Russia and Mao have been tabled as evidence for this proposition (was Nazism – ‘Gott is Mitt Uns’ really Godless?). Our current culture wars and pessimistic, moribund democracies could readily be constructed as part of this legacy of nihilism.
It’s an old slander against atheism that it offers no foundation and therefore, in a phrase commonly and wrongly attributed to Dostoyevsky – ‘without God anything is permitted’. — Tom Storm

I think that the concept of secular religions originated as an analysis of totalitarianism. The idea, I think, was to suggest that the sacral tradition had transformed into the mass cult of this or that regime. I think that it became somewhat popularized during the advent of the Neoconservative movement in the sense that you are referring to.

I, myself, am an atheist, but what atheists often say to Christians about atheists never having persecuted them is just simply not true. It happened in the two Communist regimes that you cited as an example, which is well known.

I have a highly speculative theory that whatever you want to call the Symbolic, effectively a kind of mythic order to the world, 'died' with the outset of Modernity, which I think became embodied by the play, Hamlet, and that much of the human catastrophe of the twentieth century has been because of an incapacity to cope with that. It's not that people need the social stability and purpose that religion ostensibly offers, though; it's that they have to cope with having come to awareness that there is none. I don't really agree with Nietzsche's means to do this, but I do think that he does identify the primary plight of the human condition.

Is it possible to actually have a conversation about whether or not the epistemological break is even possible within this thread?

I, too, like the Nordic Model, but the Social Democrats just have to cope with the political legacy of a different totalitarian regime, being the Third Reich.

You do have to let the world become however it naturally does and can't impose your will upon the world, but there are a few basic inferences about society that I do think a person can make. It's probably generally better for it to be libertarian rather than authoritarian, egalitarian rather than inequitable, and peaceful rather than violent. There's no reason to act like an ethical pseud, but you can make a general ought statement about society in casual conversation.

When I was younger, I was drawn to this kind of "hippie utopianism", which, despite what was absurd of it, I feel like I had let myself be moved too far away from. People would say that it was idealistic or utopian. If the conversation would last any longer, they'd often talk about what can be done in the name of utopianism or even reference the Soviet project. Though ultimately, as is a partial point of this post, a fair critique of the Soviet Union, I did feel kind of like that, of the celebrities who could have been likely to commit genocide, John Lennon probably wasn't one of them.

Another thing that I'll say about the Left is that it hasn't really taught me very much other than how to be critical. I can give such piercing analysis or spit out such extraordinary vitriol, but often find it difficult to just simply hold a good conversation. There are reasons for every neurosis, but they are neuroses nonetheless.

Being said, I will make another attempt to explain this well.

Hans Scholl was a man who I don't have very much in common with, especially as it concerns political philosophy, but have always respected, which is rare, as, though I am loathe to use this term, I can be guilty of a certain degree of recalcitrance. He also happens to have been an idealist. What I suspect about a person who commands such respect is that, through whatever circumstances have led them to become as they are, they have developed a way of life that is in accordance with their ideals. This, I think, both is and ought to be inspiring.

Conversely, you have a man like Vladimir Lenin, who some revere, but I think was kind of a revolutionary chauvinist and minor autocrat. By both his theory and practice, it seems like he just kind of thought that he had a right to wage the October Revolution with or without the support of the Russian populace.

That's, perhaps, an overly simplistic way of explaining what I mean about idealism, but I honestly just haven't thought this well enough out to do so in any other manner.

I am a great fan of Milan Kundera and wished that I listened to him better when I was younger.

To the credit of the libertarian Left, there is a longstanding history of their being persecuted by Marxist-Leninists and the like, but definitely an obvious aversion to facing up to the Soviet legacy.

For me, there's a certain tension as it concerns ideals and the concept of utopia.

Marx and Engels actually wrote at length criticizing such inclinations, first in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and later in The German Ideology, which I haven't entirely read and wouldn't expect for anyone else to either, despite what is seminal of the latter. From what I remember of researching this, though, with kind of a lot of rhetoric, they have this way of associating Liberal ideals with their concept of ideology in opposition to the quasi-deterministic economic theory that they put forth. It's a very complex work of political philosophy, but there's a way of suggesting to that it kind of amounts to their rather spurious claim that not believing in an inevitable Communist revolution is somehow delusional. Marx also had this idea of free association, which is kind of like the total freedom from coercion, and more or less the end goal of Communism that a lot of later Marxists abandoned for being impractical or "utopian". Despite the Soviet Union's evident utilization of Communism as a utopian project with things like the New Soviet Person, within Marxist-Leninist discourse, dismissing ideas as being somehow utopian, idealistic, or ideological, is often a way of justifying some of the more authoritarian elements of the political philosophy.

What I suspect of William F. Buckley's utilization of Eric Vogelin's concept is that it ultimately was just kind of this way to suggest that people just have to cope with however it is that the world currently is because of that any attempt to change it for the better could potentially result in political catastrophe.

Anyways, as it concerns ideals and utopia, I think that there's a great difference between sanctimony and whatever you want to call virtue or righteousness and attempting to create as ideal of a world as you can while you're here and believing that you have established the final project for all of humanity. A person has to be both resolute and humble to be considered in the right. It's quite common in heroic narratives for the protagonist to have potentially destructive power. I think that this somehow speaks to the central conflict inherent to cultivating any good way of life. I don't think of myself as the protagonist of an epic, though.

I've never heard that Chesterton quote before, but found for it to be kind of illuminating. Thanks for sharing.

I don't think that that quite gets at what I'm trying to glean at either.

A good example from the Left is that of the concept of "state capitalism", which originates in Anarchism, but was popularized by a particular sect of Trotskyism. While I can't imagine that labor conditions in the former Soviet Union were at all good, it does seem self-evident to me that that idea is just kind of way of suggesting that, clearly, what went amiss there was just simply their political opponents' doing. There's a lot of things that are kind of odd about the Left like this that go almost completely unaddressed.

One thing I've noticed on the part of the Left is to just simply deny any affiliation with the former Soviet Union whatsoever. During the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks were supported by a set of political factions within the libertarian Left, who, granted, did, by in large, turn on them during the Russian Civil War, but can only be so absolved from any degree of historical complicity. The Anarchists fought alongside the Soviets during the Spanish Civil War and the Soviet Union does have a longstanding history of sympathy within Western left-wing academia, despite this thankfully having changed, beginning, perhaps, with either the New York Times's publication of "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" or the dawn of the New Left, though, of course, there have been detractors here and there since before Lenin was even capable of taking power.

I don't know that the above post explains this well, and, so, I will use a comparison. I think that it's kind of like being a politically active German citizen. What you can do is to dismiss the claim that, by virtue of being born in Germany, you are a Nazi. What you can't do is to just simply ignore the political legacy of Nazi Germany. What, as it does concern the Soviet Union, the Left seems to have done is precisely that.

Perhaps there is more in the beaten way of critique than I am giving them credit for, though?

I they'd like to publish it, I don't mind. I wouldn't expect for them to, though.


Sure thing. You've kind of got to read it all to get the whole gist, though.

The opening paragraph:

"There is a certain irony to the French Revolution in that one of, primarily, two historical events that came to serve as the basis for the beaux ideals of Liberalism was, perhaps, the genesis of modern dictatorship and that it became notorious for its ritualistic and ostensibly self-purifying use of the guillotine. In the opening chapter to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera wrote, “If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one.” The protagonist then asks how we can condemn something that is ephemeral and declares, “In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”[1] It was, perhaps, telling that the guillotine had originally been created as a more humane means to carry out public executions out of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin’s opposition to capital punishment. The Committee of Public Safety was capable of absolving itself of its ritual public murders, all the while legitimating that such a device was in need of such constant use that there was ever even a reason for its invention. Though certainly more quick and painless than other instruments of public execution at the time, the public spectacle of serial beheadings must have had an extraordinary effect upon the French populace. It would have been as if, by experiencing the acute trauma of serving as a witness to political decapitations, a French citizen was expected to substitute the theoretical catharsis of divine violence with the terror of the Revolution. By carrying out the Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre, who during the Thermidorian Reaction was, himself, beheaded, must have believed that he was purifying the French body-politic. The device became emblematic of the Revolution, the violence associated with it, and, to some, the dictatorial control that The Committee of Public Safety had secured over the National Convention. For the many on the right, it has become a symbol for the Left’s vengeful disregard for the “sanctity of life” and, within certain circles on the left, one of liberation. Though I am not so inclined so as to pathologically fear the poor and downtrodden, in part, because I have little reason to, I see little to celebrate of a reign of terror. On the 6th of April in 1871, communards of the Paris Commune dismantled and burned a guillotine that had been built for the government of Adolphe Thiers.[2] They did not believe, contrary to many of their own avowed sympathies with Louis Auguste Blanqui, that the world that they had wanted to create could be established by an exclusive conspiratorial sect or, contrary to what many, at the time, thought about revolutionaries, through the excessive use of revolutionary terror. The Bolshevik faction of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, would not prove to have been so wise."

A partial thesis:

"He would author another text that would become integral to Soviet orthodoxy during this period of time. In August of 1917, Lenin finished writing The State and Revolution. He had planned to write an additional chapter for the book, but never did so because he became preoccupied with the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War. In the text, he characteristically castigates his political rivals, rails against “opportunist prejudices” and “philistine illusions” concerning the “peaceful development of democracy”, develops a “Marxist” revolutionary teleology that calls for the eventual abolition of the necessity of democracy and delineates a two phase theory of the development of communist society, repudiates democracy in general, paradoxically cites the Paris Commune in his defense of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, claims that a “special apparatus” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat will simply “wither away” as communist society develops, and, in a section of the text that was either originally written or, later, directly quoted by Bukharin, calls for “seas of blood” to flow in the wake of a revolution led by a vanguard party.[33] To the chagrin of any self-respecting Leninist, unless they are willing to claim that the “withering away of the state” began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we now know this “special apparatus” never went through an extempore disintegration. While, perhaps, originally written as a both pragmatic and visionary preliminary delineation of revolutionary praxis, there are many who would later interpret it as a defense of authoritarianism. The “Leninism” of the official ideology of the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism, seems, to me, to have been “democratic centralism”, a euphemism for one-party rule, as it was both inspired by and expropriated from The State and Revolution."

A general gist:

"You may have, by now, noticed that there are two narratives that have been presented in this essay that would seem to be mutually inconsistent. The first of which is the explicit argument that I making, which is that the abuse of power within the Soviet Union, its “satellites”, and other countries to have desecrated the Communist project, became possible because of Lenin’s political praxis, which, if you were to learn history in chronological order, would seem self-evident, but, as there are many who would still like to revel in ostensive glory of the October Revolution, can, quite often, be a greater point of contention than what anyone would reasonably expect. The second of which is the rather harrowing chronicle of just what happened to a number of “Old Bolsheviks” leading up to and during the Great Terror. The continuation of the systemic elimination of dissent, proceeding from the Red Terror carried out during the Russian Civil War, within the Soviet Union culminated in such extraordinary excess that no person, even those who were willing to claim that Lenin was, in point of fact, the biblical anti-Christ, could reasonably suggest that Stalin’s reign was a natural consequence of the October Revolution...The October Revolution can be interpreted as a parable about the ethics of revolution and Lenin can be characterized as having been a “minor despot”. Stalin was desperate to secure power and all the more desperate to retain it. That a regime makes a frantic attempt to remain in power is not indicative of that totalitarianism does not exist; it is just precisely what totalitarianism is. Stalin was a dictator par excellence, or, in short, a tyrant. Nevertheless, Stalin’s regime was not born ex nihilo and must have originated somehow. As Lenin led the Bolsheviks from their split within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party until after the Russian Civil War and, throughout his entire life, represented his political faction as the sole political faction to be capable of reifying the Communist project, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to discover just what those origins were."

Kind of a good dig:

"Aside from the apparent sanctimony of which he was emphatically guilty, there is also that it is nothing but extraordinarily condescending to have believed that common people are incapable of coming to an awareness of their political situation on their own and that they need to be guided by near apostolistic “professionals”, lest they stray from the officially sanctioned revolutionary course of action. Though, in What is to be Done?, Lenin emphasized that the vanguard was to come from all sets of Russian society, what it effectively creates is an intellectual elite comprised of often domineering revolutionaries who can afford to spend years of their lives becoming well versed in the theories of Marx and Engels, or, in short, a new revolutionary class. Lenin’s original principal antagonist was the Okhrana. The Cheka, which he established, would greatly exceed their abuse of power. The myriad of somewhat divergent, but inextricably interrelated organizations and both legal and extrajudicial machinations that came to comprise Soviet intelligence both under Josef Stalin and during the, later, rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would make even the most fanatical Russian nihilists long for the days of the aristocracy and, in some cases, actually did. Though, living in the United States, as I do, this point is probably better made than taken, if there is anything to learn from the so-called “Russian Revolution”, it is that civil society should not be organized like an intelligence operation. Though, by no stretch of the imagination do I intend to suggest that the life of the mind should not be both cultivated and celebrated, what I do, as an explicit affront, intend to suggest is that the combination of presumed intellectual superiority and vindication of nominal “discipline” did have more than dire consequences within the Soviet Union."

The conclusion:

"We, however, live in a different era, more than a full century after the October Revolution. Though Lenin’s legacy has been evidently challenged by the destruction of Soviet monuments, within the Russian Federation, today, it is still held, by some, to be sacrosanct. Despite that most of its citizens would prefer to see Lenin buried, President Vladimir Putin has refused to so, having claimed that it would mean for Russian citizens to have to reassess the October Revolution. I should hope that I have argued well enough by now to convince you that they, the Left, and whoever else there is that should be so inclined to should do precisely that. Lenin’s corpse has haunted the world for nearly a century. It is time to lay it, and the terror of its wake along with it, to rest."

You're kind of missing all of the historical context and much of the theory as such, though. It's more or less about how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was right to accuse Vladimir Lenin of having been an autocrat, but mistaken in that the reign of Josef Stalin was a natural consequence of the October Revolution.

I should also note that I have yet to take my professor up on including that Vladimir Lenin had come back to Russia from Switzerland with the aid of the German Empire, as it provides some important context as to the opposition to him from both the Kadets and the Left-Wing Communists.

I just like tossing ideas out there and spend too much time on the internet to concentrate on my studies. I don't know. I just get bored.

Like I said, though, I am taking off, and, so, so long!

Everything that human beings do is literally praxis. — Pantagruel

A highly contentious, but charmingly optimistic statement.

I have decided to leave this forum for the time being, and, so, don't think that I'll be able to fully hash this out. Perhaps philosophical "praxis" would be the cultivation of a way of life which prefers wisdom or an understanding, proceeding from the reification of various, hopefully, veritable philosophical theories. I feel like it has something to do with the concept of becoming.

As an aside, I don't know if you've ever heard anyone on the Left use the word "praxis" before, but there is a certain degree of truth to that it is just something that we like to say.

Anyways, I am taking off, but feel free to carry on with this or any extenuating threads. So long!

I'm only attempting to give you an understanding of my general attitude towards the ostensibly hard-earned wealth of sociopathic academics. As an ethical quandary, I give about as much thought as I do whether or not I should massacre apparently villainous creatures in a dungeon crawler, which isn't to say that there isn't some residual effect. On some level, I am so inclined to wonder as to just what contemporary hero myths suggest about our society, when, at least in most video games, they often rely upon the copious slaughter of mythological creatures that have been otherized. What I mean, though, is that it is something that I think about about as much as I do at the time in which it is happening, which is to say that it doesn't even enter the periphery of my thought. As to whether or not I should fire the thunder arrows at the water demon does not matter because I have already fired them.

"Again I may make a false statement when my purpose is to hide from another what is in my mind and when the latter can assume that such is my purpose, his own purpose being to make a wrong use of the truth. (...) and my untruth is not a lie because the thief knows full well that I will not, if I can help it, tell him the truth and that he has no right to demand it of me. But, [suppose I tell him], that I will tell him the truth, and I do not, am I then a liar?...to him [the thief] as an individual, I have done no injustice and he cannot complain; but I am nonetheless a liar in that my conduct is an infringement of the rights of humanity" (Kant, Lectures on Ethics, (2011) p. 227).. — tim wood

Exactly. Both here and in On the Supposed Right to Lie, Kant is making the claim that the circumstances under which an Ethical act is made do not matter and affirming his more or less sole moral law, being the categorical imperative, which commands that, in every given situation that gives rise to Ethics, you should act as if you would will for your act to be in accordance with a universal law, effectively a refinement of the Golden Rule wherein you should do unto others as you should will for all of society to do unto itself, though highly qualified and delineated by Kant. I am not claiming that Kant claims that you owe it to the thief not to lie. I am claiming that Kant is claiming that you are bound by duty not to lie, regardless as to whether you are speaking with a thief or, let's say, an honest merchant. Kant, whom I admittedly have only read so much of, seems to have spent a great deal of time justifying that claim. What I suspect is that he did not successfully do so. Why I suspect this is that Kant effectively believed in ethical truths, what I have previously described as "abstract ideals", namely the a priori information that is supposed to be somehow deigned via "reason". Not only did he invoke reason as such, but he also exclusively categorized it as pertaining to such information in opposition to empirical information, which he more or less relegated to the domain of folk wisdom and, therefore, of a realm of thought that was beneath the field of Philosophy, which, to him, had culminated in his "transcendental idealism". I am of the opinions that such ethical truths can only exist via the invocation of the divine and that the divine does not exist. Without such commandments, as they effectively are, it is left up to humanity to decide what is right within any given situation by taking into consideration as many of its aspects as are possible, as we are both limited by subjectivity and time, one of which is, namely, its circumstances. As a general rule, I would suggest that an act is ethical if it has been made in good faith, which I don't intend to clarify, as it would take a very long time to properly delineate and I do plan on leaving this forum for a period of time, but, as per the connotations of the qualifier, would suggest that every ethical act requires a leap of faith. Unlike Kant, who posits that you can know what is right in so far that you are compelled to behave as such via the categorical imperative, I posit that Ethics is an experiment in right, effectively cultivating a good way of life, which arises because of situations and is, therefore, to varying degrees, delimited by their circumstances.

As the person to have also thought this was one, Jean-Paul Sartre, I am well aware that people like you have become so unwittingly taken by Ayn Rand's interpretation of Aristotle and critique of the Soviet Union that they entirely incapable of responding to such a practical ethical philosophy with anything but hysterics over the projected reign of quote unquote relativism, but I just can't save you from what the Central Intelligence Agency has done to Analytic Philosophy for you.

So as to eschew reference, as, for whatever reason, citing Continental Philosophers is believed to be akin to being a member of the Church of Scientology on this forum, situational ethics is just applied and expanded upon Empiricist ethical philosophy. It is, perhaps, notable that we do generally assume that people do have free will, but, that's about as concisely as I can clear up this general misunderstanding.

I do have other things to do, and, so, am going to leave this forum now. I hope that all is well and goes well for all of you, at least, in so far that I either can or should, and will talk to you probably in a couple of months from now. Until we meet again!

"Therefore, whoever tells a lie, however well intentioned he might be,
must answer for the consequences, however unforeseeable they were, and pay the penalty
for them even in a civil tribunal. This is because truthfulness is a duty which must be
regarded as the ground of all duties based on contract, and the laws of these duties would
be rendered uncertain and useless if even the least exception to them were admitted." - Immanuel Kant

By demanding adherence to a universal law in every given situation, Kant deprives Ethics of circumstance. On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives is his anticipation of this objection to his moral philosophy, but, I don't see how it holds up. Under interrogation by the Gestapo, Kant is effectively suggesting that you do not have a right to lie to them as you are bound by duty to uphold a moral law that everyone ought to abide by, namely that people shouldn't lie. In some cases, perhaps, it would be better to uphold whatever lofty ideals that you ascribe to and state them honestly, even when dealing with people who are extraordinarily vile, but I am of the opinion that it is of a veritable ethic for a person to tell the Gestapo anything that will keep them from finding the Jews or whomever else they are hiding. That you should always act as if you would will for such an act to become a universal law extrapolates the situations that give rise to Ethics beyond their circumstances via an appeal to an abstract ideal, which, referring to the non-existence of moral framework, I do not believe exists.

Responding to your question as to whether or not I am squandering your tax money with my federal student loans, the answer is yes, and it is because I don't give a flying fuck about how you feel about your money. I may even attempt to get society of your ilk to finance a postgraduate education if I can figure out how to. With that, I'll bid you adieu.

Well, thank you.

I actually kind of posit that Existentialism was developed in parallel to Empiricism, and, so, don't think that you can chalk this all up to Descartes.

To quote Kierkegaard and say that "subjectivity is truth" is just not the lapse of reason which has led us here, though. That they created an ostensibly "humane" device to ritually purify France of detractors to the revolution via the political spectacle of public decapitation is how we became as we are.

That's a rather bleak note to end on, but, alas, I must be off. So long!

I don't know. Perhaps such a mathematical system would only include positive numbers? Like I said, I have yet to hash this all out.

Anyways, I have left this forum again, and, so, will say "so long!"

Alright, definitely leaving this time. So long!

Love is the end in itself. There is no purpose. I have nothing else to say for now.

A bliss in itself. I shall have to wonder.

I was just typing as you replied.

The Copernican Revolution that needs to occur within the Left is that of a change in mindset towards revolution. The wanton experimentation in style is a symptom of the general autopoietic plight. That the variegated sets of ruling orders which comprise of Empire have set out the world in such a manner that makes just about everyone suicidal is tragic, but it is just that. Left-wing academia is as at is because of how various regimens, effectively, rule-enforcing bodies, have set out their various political programs, almost invariably via some form of implicit coercion or another, in response to the revelation as to what world exists for them now.

You mistake the symptom for the ailment. The many absurdities of post-structuralist theory or left-wing academia in general are neither born out of a lack of openness and understanding or rational philosophical rigor; they have been generated because of an incapacity to cope with the political violence that occurred, beginning in the late 1960s. Felix Guattari's Chaosmosis, which I actually like, did not arise because of that he had been deluded into believing in a philosophy that was ultimately an exercise in mania; it was engendered by what I can only think to describe as "Situationist kitsch".

I have and am leaving this forum for the time being, but this is an important point to get across. The problem with left-wing philosophers is that they're just simply neurotic. They're neurotic because they don't know how to deal with the intelligence community, which they never address, but think about in volumes. They're also neurotic, and, perhaps, mainly so, because of revolutionary fanaticism. The Left, despite its constant invocation of solidarity, is an extraordinary hostile political domain. Crusades are crusades, though, and almost every form of discourse is just no use. All that can be done is to create political alternatives of, but without the Left as such.

I do realize that you have made this thread, in part, in jest, and do get it. I just felt like informing you of what it really is that afflicts us.