>
> Soviet philosophy
>"Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re:
>
> >
> >CB: Again, there is significant circularity to your argument. You assume
> >part of what is at issue: that what they were "told to say" had no
> >validity.
>
>It had no validity,
>
>^^^^^
>
>CB: This is circular. It is one of the issues in dispute that you can't
>settle by assertion.
Charles, you areright, but I haven't got the time or interest to go into the guts of a dead and discredited philosophy that almost every professional agrees is empty and confused, and refute it. Thereare lots more important things on my plate. If you are actually inerested in criticisms, you can read my old colleague Jim Scanlan's Marxism in the USSR or Gustav Wetter's Dialectical Materialism, or David Joravsky's Natural Science in Soviet Philosophy, Or Herbert Marcuse's Soviet Marxism. Dare I point out that you have the burden of proof to show that there's anything that the diamat says that would interest anyone else?
>>
>but it would be quite irrelevant if it did. The view
>that it is OK to force people to espouse The Truth whether they believe it
>or not is the heart of tyranny.
>
>>
>CB:
>The heart of the bourgeois and idealist conception of tyranny. A Marxist
>conception of the heart of tyranny is the material deprivation of the
>masses , not the freedom of speech and thought of the intelligentsia. This
>difference is one of the issues in the underlying difference in our
>assessment of philosophies. We say you have an inferior conception of
>freedom and liberty to ours.
That's why it is lucky that no one is gonna let you guys anywhere near political power ever again. I am proud to be a bourgeois liberal democrat on these issues.
>
>I don't consider it very tyrannical to force people to espouse the truth at
>all.
Why not?
>The "freedom" to tell lies is not a freedom.
Sure it is,a lso the freedom to bewrong. Of course there are defamation laws and other restrictions, but they do not go to differences about fundamental philosophy. Forcing people to espouse a worldview they doi not believe is tyranny by any standards worth holding.
>One example is the "freedom" (not) to espouse Nazism or KKKism.
How about my freedom to sat that the diamat is a crock of shit? Or that Stalin's moustache is a cockroach--that got Mandelstam 20 years in the camps.
>
>We should dwell on this point as it is a fundamental philsophical
>difference between us.
>
>^^^^
Why? Is there anyone else here who is in the neighborhood of Charles view? Would any else like a debate on whether it is OK to shoot or jail critics of diamat because they are objectively erquivalent to Nazis, and liars and bourgeois stooges who do not appreciare proletarian freedom?
>>
>CB: Here we go with the namecalling. Don't you think Soviets considered you
>a bourgeois academic hack ?
Probablt. But they were wrong. Unlike them, I _can_ argue my way out of wet paper bag, and I never believed anything because I was Told.
>>Well, I'm glad you consider art irrelevant to the transformation of
>>society.
>
>^^^^^^
>
>CB: Now what if I had said art must be politically correct. What would be
>your smart ass comment then ?
You know the joke about the Soviet art history lesson? Impressionism: paint what you see. Expressionism: paint what you feel. Socialist realism: paint what you hear.
>Art is all over the map politically. There is no tendency for it to
>contribute to changing things in a fundamental way.
Plato disagreed, that's why he wantedto suppress the poets; and Rousseau the theater. And of course Stalin.
W> as Virgil , who according to T.S. Eliot wrote THE classic of Western civilization anything but a consevative. List the greatest artists. Weren't how many contributed to revolution ? I'm just telling it like it is about art.
So what are you saying here, that many great artists are conservative?
Certainly that is true of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, not (!) Milton,
and others. Which of course doesn't mean they didn't "contribute" to
revolution. Marx was steeped in the classics, read Shakespeare to the fam,
wanted to write a book on Balzac, a reactonary monarchist. But I guess you
goa long with the usual Stalinist line, that non-Socialist Realist art
should be banned and its proponents repressed. Smart ass doesn't describe
the lloathing, contempt, and hatred I feel for thsi view.
>
>CB: The only art or philosophy that would be repressed would be that which
>was a weapon AGAINST the revoluton. Politically neutral art or philo, who
>cares. Should the People pay people to do these ? I doubt it.
And what is art against the revolution? Zamityn's We would no doubt go down, what about Grossman's Life and Fate, oh clearly, because it compares Stalinism to Nazism, never min taht it is THE masterpiece of Soviet literature and indeed of Socialist realism.
>CB: The police would only enforce the repression of extreme lies and
>counterrevolutionary or anti-socialist views and incitement. The university
>faculties would be deciding a lot of things just like in the good ole USA
So, there would be informers and spies ready to turn the injudicious or careless over to the secret police, what a lovely idea. I sure will be happy to fight for that!
> >CB: Well, where exactly have two hundred years of "freedom" of speech and
> >thought ( for them that owns the presses and universities) led ?
>
>A situation where you and I don't haveto worry about a knowck on the door
>in
>the middle of the night when we write stuff that the government disagrees
>with, how's that for starters?
>
>
>^^^^^^^
>
>CB: You don't know your history too good. Ever hear of the Palmer Raids,
>the McCarthy era ?
Charles, my pro bono work is anti-USAPA stuff for the Guild; I think I know more about this history than you do. But bas at it was, we never had tens or hundreds of thousands murdered and millions sent for decades to labor campos for espousing the wrong views or beiung realted to these "enemies of the people."
You and I, two people who are off the left end of the planet as far as the rest of thew orld is concerned, are on a list of people who think, and often say here,a nd sometimes publish or announce in public places, that capitalism sucks pondscum, that US democracy is a farce, that Bush and his ilk are toads, that Marx is great, etc. And none of us quake in fear that we will be arrested, shot, imprisoned, or necessarily even fired for these views,ka nd you and I are govt employees Charles. How amny venues like this for antiSoviet opinion were there in the pre glasnost USSR?
>CB: You seem to have forgotten the genocidal usurpation of Indian's land
>and the enslavement/Jim Crow of Black people, which involved grotesque
>repression of their freedom of speech and inquiry. Black people were not
>even allowed to learn to read ! freedom of inquiry my ass !
Comparatively, I stand by my claim.
>
>Then you forgot about the jailing of Communists, and chilling of the entire
>left's freedoms, The murder and repression of Black Panthers
>
Kolyma. The Vladimir Isolator. The Lubyanka. You wann play this game, the USSR is gonna comre off worse.
>
>So, let me get this straight. Repression of the Nazis in Germany was bad
>because repression in the abstract is bad , according to you ? Of course,
>it depends who is being repressed that matters.
When are you talking about? 1933? 1945? 2002? Who said anything about "in the abstract" other than you? And note, I talk about socialist and liberal capitalist critics of Stalinism, and you slide to Nazis, "Trotskyite fascists and wreckers," Charles, you are the real think.
>
>The role of the socialist state is to repress the bourgeoisie. You do
>recall that Marx called for the DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat ? Did you
>think "dictatorship" was a metaphor ? I agree with Marx.
Actually you don't understand the classical sense in which Marx used the word. Maybe you should read your Livy in what a dictatorship was under the Romans. Marx did. In the Class Struggles in France, discussing the Commune, which Engels says was the model for the D of the P, Marx notes that the workers "deprived the police of any political functions." So, you don't agree with Marx. You don't know what he said. You agree with what Lenin and Stalin _did_, but that is not the same thing.
>
>If the U.S. were repressing the bourgeoisie , that would be good.
>
I might agree with that. But this not what we were discussing.
I have always said I follow Khruschev on Stalin. Have you read Khruschev ? Stalin' crimes were enormous and unforgiveable, or words to that effect. On the other hand , before 1930 or so , Stalin played a good role.
But you don't agree with K, whom I have read more than you have; he didn'ta gree with your Stalinist notions. And "before 1930," well, if Stalin had died in 1930, he would not have been a bloodstained butcher and byword for tyranny; he would have been a forgotten interregum figure in the 1927-29 period before Bukharin saved the Soviet Union and socialism. So he wasn't so terribly harmful before 1930, I will agree with that.
>CB: Yes, I have frequently said that the American method of repression,
>with only strategic use of violent repression as against the Communists and
>others is more effective than uniform heavyhandedness.
So how come you advocate means you regard as less effective?
>
>CB: You make a joke, but , yes, revolutions are violent. Name one that has
>not been. A lot of other people besides philosphers and academics die in
>them, and the fact that some philosophers and academics die is not a reason
>not to have them. Your comment exhibits the very academic elitism that
>probably got them in trouble.
I see, they got in trouble (you know nothing about them, these two passionately committed Bolsheviks (Ryzanaov and Panushikas), but you sneer at them because they were scholars) because they objected to violence, so it was OK to have them disappeared and shot. I think I understand now, If anyone disagrees with the secret policea nd its interpretation of the party line, that shwo they are enemies of the people and deserve to die.
>>
>
>We have now establsihed, Charles, that you really are a full-fledged
>Stalinist:
>
>^^^^^^
>
>CB: You have not established a thing.
Shall we take a vote of the list?
>^^^^^^^
>CB: Your whole discussion here wreaks of this. Bourgeois Philosophers get
>some special exception to the repression of the bourgeoisie
>
Ah, i see, you are with MacKinnon. If I advocate something taht you cosnider to exploitative, then I am guilty of having done it, even if I didn't do it.
>CB: Being smart shouldn't get someone special privileges in the
>transformation from bourgeois to socialist society. If you are a
>counterrevolutonary philosopher you are treated the same as a
>counterrevolutionary government official or whatever.
Bang!
>
>You get no points for not thinking I should be shot or jailed for my view.
>I should be hailed for my points of view.
Your point of view on this subject is utterly contemptible,a nd has helped contribute in very large part to the near total discrediting of other things, suich as thedesirability of public control of the economy and greater equality, where your views should be hailed. No socialsim without democracy, Charles, try that slogan on for size!
jks
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