>
>^^^^^
>CB: I'm trying to think whether the academic powers that be in the West
>don't use fiat quite a bit in deciding who gets to be a paid philosopher.
>How many Dialecticians get tenure in the U.S. philosophy departments.
I wondered how long it would take Charles to get around to his tu qoque defense.
^^^^^^^^
CB: It is not exactly a defense . It is a counterattack. Implied in your characterization of the history of Soviet philosophy is that your philosophical school(s) of thought are "better" in a number of ways. On this point the implication is that Western philosophy somehow uses reason and fairness in deciding who will be philosophers, whereas the Soviets used an arbitrary and dumb "Stalinist" standard.
But continuing the theme related to Lenin's attitude that "the philosophical is political " ( more than you might consider it to be), I don't see how we can ignore the long term rough correlation between classes and either predominantly mental or predominantly physical labor. One doesn't have to be a "workerist" to consider that many academics in the SU in the period we are speaking of were from the middle and upper classes ( here it works , Carrol, because the aristocracy was still present in old Russia). Surely there would be some pressure from "below" from the teeming ,still angry working classes, whose sons and daughters would be only now getting larger access to things like philosophical training. Stalin reflected some of this. I would even say he was proabably able to win the power struggles because he was more conscious of working class resentments, even if he used his awareness opportunistically.
But even more, isn't Marxism in power supposed to upset the status quo, conventional academic apple cart some, including in philosophy. The notion that all philosophical traditions and schools of thought in Russia at that time would be tolerated does not recognize the seriousness attitude of Marxists toward philosophy.
^^^^^^
As by way of establishing my bona fides, I remind Charles that I was fired from an analytical philosophy department for being a red, though not a dialectician. I couldn't get a job (granted it is a tough market) despite stellar credentials and lots of publications. I was told a number of times that this was because "we already have a Marxist." (That was in the days when I thought I was one.) Obviously there is a very strong ideological bias in US academia, and Marxists, socialists, and radicals of all kinds have a hard time making a career in the academy.
^^^^^^^
CB: Yes, I mentioned this, but this ironically supports what I am saying on this thread. I know the forms of authority and discipline are not identical in the two systems , but I don't think the bottomline result is that different
That said, it's not comparable, and I do not say this to justify the AMerican bias against left wing scholarship. But it is worth pointing out that whatever the tough row Amerucan academic radicals have to hoe, they do not face exile to Siberia, enforced stays in psychiatric hospitals, prison, forced emigration, or execution--things that even Marxist thinkers in the USSR faced through the 1970s and into the early 1980s. In fairness, the executions stopped after Stalin died. But Kagarlistky was imprisoned under Brezhnev. And you had to pay far more lip service to orthodoxy, narrowly defined by political authority, to be published or keep a job. I cannot understand why you do not understrand how thoroughly the repression discredited Marxism among the intellectuals.
^^^^^^^^
CB: I do understand it. Afterall, I have lived in the U.S. all my life, listened to its anti-Soviet claims and arguments as much as any American, and really accepted the U.S version of the SU until I was about 30. So, I pretty much have heard every anti-Soviet argument and claim there is. That's not hard to believe is it? And I was pretty much persuaded of them, until I started to question it. That's why Michael Pugliese comments to me are patronizing. What anti-Sovietism is he going to tell me about that I haven't heard already or even subscribed to at one time ? It never occurs to him that in terms of openmindedness, I have been both anti- and pro-Soviet. But he has only been anti-Soviet. It never occurs to him ,or any others who consider me dogmatic, that I have lived most of my life inundated with anti-Soviet brainwashing, which means I am likely to have considered criticisms of the Soviet Union, his arguments, much more than he has considered positive assessments of the SU, my arguments.
And having been in college and graduate school and professional school for about eleven years , I have a pretty good idea of the typical intellectual personality here. I am an intellectual. And I understand quite well how those values arrive at anti-Sovietism. But low and behold I also have a criticism of those intellectual values , the criticisms of an insider ! The criticisms of one who knows the limits of pluralism and liberal arts and liberalism, from the inside. One who knows that the elitism and class privilege among intellectuals exists, and though it is not the whole story, I do not find it hard to believe that in a working class revolution these hangovers from millenia of association between the predominantly mental workers and the ruling classes would be reflected in at least some sharp conflicts within the Soviet academy and intellectual class. That the intelligentsia has been conditioned to be part of the traditional repressive sectors. I don't think the CPSU wa! s at all perfect in its response. But I do think there is another side to the story, that no doubt many intelligentsia had to be moved out just as much as many other bourgeoisie, aristocrats and petit bourgeois would have to be moved out . I have no doubt that many intellectuals were in their own minds against the revolution , and not only that, their academic work would actually be counter-revolutionary. That really is not surprising given the long history of association of intellectuals and ruling classes. It is not surprising that a revolution would result in significant changes in personnel in many segments of society.