Trotsky Versus Stalin in America

Below is a letter to the editor to the Washington Post and a few links to some articles on neo-conservatism.

Based on these letters and links, our country is entering into a bizarre stage in which we might see ourselves watching ideological conflicts similar to those that went in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we have the Troskyite neo-cons, who want to spread democratic revolution throughout the world. On the other hand, within the US itself, we have the anti-war movement being led by Stalinists, who do not want a world revolution right away, but they want to use the war and the protest against it to plunge the United States into a communist republic. Then, there are also signs of fascism emerging among the conservative materialists. In short, we have the three political ideologies that develop from materialisms, leading to an inner fight among themselves. Ironically, stalinism, trotskyism, and fascism, in the end, are all ideologies of the left!

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10734

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/national_socialism_and_national_greatness

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:

Dear Editor:

Your paper's coverage of the so-called "anti-Iraq protest movement"
seriously failed to identify both the groups involved in leading the
demonstration on March 17th, but also failed to identify its leaders
whose names either appeared in the WP or on their press releases and
websites.

Brian Becker, identified as "national coordinator for the Answer
Coalition" is not identified as a longtime member and leader of the
Stalinist "Workers World Party", perhaps the top communist party in the
US today. The same goes for other ANSWER spokespersons (over time)
including Richard Becker, Steve Hackwell, Leslie Feinberg, Monica
Moorehead, Sara Flounders, John Catalinotto, etc. Many of these
individuals were identified as members of the WWP as far back at April
1974 in the report "The Workers World Party and Its Front
Organizations", House Internal Security Committee (HISC) and in an
earlier hearing, "Revolutionary Activities Directed Toward the
Administration of Penal or Correctional Systems, Part 1", March/May,
1973. Thus WP writer Brigid Schulte's writing in "Veterans, Others
Denounce Marchers", March 18th, got the chant "Workers World traitors
must hang!" wrong. It was not "a reference to the Communist newspaper",
i.e. "Workers World." It was a reference to the WWP as the sponsoring
organization of the demonstration, along with a mixed Communist/Maoist
coalition.known as United for Peace & Justice, led by an old Communist
Party USA-connect activist, Leslie Cagan, and Revolutionary Communist
Party leader, the aging Carl Davidson.

Perpetual War and American Foreign Policy

Apparently, President Bush had a luncheon on February 28th. A number of historians and political thinkers attended this luncheon who have held publically that life is perpetual war.

The same day I read this news, I picked up Plato's Laws. Much to my surprise, the Laws begins with a discussion the Island of Crete (the cradle of Greek culture) and the speaker representing Crete, Kleinias, praises Cretan society because it was organized for perpetual war. Life, he tells us, is perpetual stuggle of man against himself, man against man, neighborhood against neighborhood, city against city, and nationa against nation.

Socrates begins to critique this view by suggesting that, while a certain kind of struggle as well as war may be a part of life, we do not live life for the purpose of fighing perpetual wars. Ultimately, if we fight wars we fight them so that we can return to a peaceful life in which people can pursue happiness. He also indicates that the purpose of war should not be to pursue unlimited freedom, or to spread freedom everywhere. This, he suggests, is the formula for a bloodthirsty empire. While complete limitations on freedom are unsatisfactory, the just society harmonizes the concern for peace, the desire for freedom, and the limits necessary so that these desires do not lead the society to become unjust towards others and unjust towards itself.

Some things never change.

The Soul of Adams

A number of references in Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams, give us insight into the soul of Adams. Many of these insights are taken from Adams's diary or letters, in which we can see a lot of introspection into his soul.

As a young man, he read an essay by Jonathan Mayhew that Adams's claimed, took possession of his soul. Adamas idolized certain elements of English culture. At the same time, he grew up in a period during whcih there was a “gradual erosion of parental authority.” “A universal drift away from seventeenth-century Puritanism” (11).

As a young man, he tended to Enlightenment religious ideas, God as a creator who has a plan of operation of the universe. He was struck by the Seven Years’ War. He freely discussed universal sufferage, Arianism, Deism, and Atheism (“that all Religion was a cheat, a cunning invention of Priests and Politicians”) (16).

“For the secularized Adams as for the religious Puritan the scrutiny of the self-examiner proved to be more severe than that of any putative future judge” (23).

“Passion remained the hallmark of his spirit. It led him to youthful revolt against his father, his tutors, his best friends’ advice that he become a minister, and the constrictions of a provincial society; later in life it led him to revolution…in the characteristic …of assuming rather than rejecting responsibilities.” (38-39). Throughout, Adams thought that he was called to suppress his passionate spirit (38).

The Puritans, in the mind of Adams, were the inheritors of the Ancient desire for freedom and thirst for knowledge. They had brought that desire with them in laying the foundation for the United States (56).

Money, Pleasure, Power

I really appreciate the comments that were posted yesterday. I would like to use today's entry to speak about the "theoretical lens" throught which I am operating. It is not Aristotle, but Plato. Aristotle is interested in classifying the mechanics of revolution. Plato is a nice introduction to Aristotle as Plato provides us with the psychology of revolution.

Plato recognized that the most formative part of a regime consisted of the leaders of the regime. The leaders are those who by their position and their character impress their way of life on the rest of society. The leaders do not necessarily do this by force of arms. They do it by example. They do it by breathing a spirit into the institutions and into the laws that in turn forms the souls of the men and women of a society. The leaders are not merely the political leaders. They are the men and women who make up the literary elite, the generals in the army, business leaders, the leaders of Hollywood, and journalists. Seen another way, the leaders are those who shape the univeristy, the news services, culture, music, business, the military, and politics. If we want to know the future of a society, all we have to do is study the souls of the leaders.

In Book VIII of the Republic Socrates outlines the character of each regime and how regimes progress, one to the next. Each regime can be understood according to the desire that dominates in that regime. To better help us understand each regime, he gives us the example of a family. In a honor-based family, the father tries to live in such a way that he never compromisos his honor. So, he resists committing injustices and doing anything that might compromise his dignity as a father and a leader of the family. Because he has this position, he does not always make the money that he could make. Also, he will sometime or many times in his life suffer injustice rather than commit one, apparently losing the respect of, or at least risking a lack of understanding from his wife and children

The wife of the honor based man, not out of malice and perhaps not always consciously, complains to her children that their family lacks things. At this moment, the seed of oligarchy is planted in the soul of the son of the honor-based man. The son becomes committed to making money so that he can buy the things his father never had and so that he can buy the respect and dignity his father did not get when his father suffered injustice. The son, rather than letting the desire for honor dominate in his soul, now turns his soul over to pursuing money. Thus, his soul becomes oligarchic.

The oligarch gives in to the passion of money-making in an unrestrained way. He also ends up living a fairly comfortable life. Now, the children of the oligarch, not at first out of malice and perhaps not fully conscious of what they are doing, look at their father and they say, “you have followed the passion for money-making in an unrestrained way. Why can we follow our other passions in an unrestrained way?” And so, the seed of democracy is planted in the souls of the children of the oligarch. These children start to explore and experience the pleasures of alcohol, the desire for procreation, to the point of becoming lotus eaters. They see that the best society would be a society that provides for equality, or that gives equal access to all the passions. The best society is one that is multi-colored. In this kind of society, or in a democracy, all the passions are given free reign. No one passion is regarded as different or better than any other passion.

Some of the children of the oligarch, though democrats when they are young, themselves become oligarchs when they are older. They want to buy honor and respect. Thus begins the war or competition between democracy and oligarchy. But this war over time favors the democrats. They have a much larger natural constituency, whereas the oligarchs greatest appeal is to the money makers. So, over time, the democratic passion takes hold of a society.

Now, among the passions, there is also the lust for cruelty and violence. And in a democratic society, that passion has equal access to the society along with all the other passions. Thus enters the demagogue. The demagogue or sophist knows how to appeal to the passions of men so as to gain power for himself. And so, in becoming elected, he can promise all sorts of things to the democrats which will appeal to their passions. In fact, one of the ways he gets elected is by promising the democrats that he will put an end to the oligarchs.

The ultimate demagogue is also a father killer. He will convince the democratic and oligarchic children that they have to kill their honor-loving father in order to be free from the rules or limits that he lives and that if they applied to their lives would make them suffer because it would require them to restrain their passions, whichever passion it is to which they currently let rule in their soul.

Once the demagogue comes to power, he starts killing off the group or groups that brought him to power. Do not forget, it is the desire for power that dominates in his soul. Eventually, he kills off the democrats, and the tyrant rules in a society. The poets, philosophers, musicians and other flatterers start to flatter the tyrant, because they depend on him now for their existence. One might say that democracy can also be tyrannical in this sense, poets and academics often end up flattering those who provide for their existence and subsistence.

This is the picture, or order of regimes, within which we can understand the progression of the French Revolution, as well as the contest that takes place between the democrats, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, and the oligarchs, such as Burke and Adams. It is also a nice way of beginning to understand what is the paradigm of modern politics, the struggle between the conservatives (oligarchs) and democrats. Neither side is fullly attached to reason and logos, and so they are immersed in a struggle between falsehoods.

John Adams, Lover of Aristocracy

I have re-read my notes on John Adams and the French Revolution. He thinks that there will always be an aristocracy in society, the question is, on what will this Aristocracy be based?

In the Old regime, it was based on land and birth. He thinks that in the United States, it will be based on talent, genius, and merit. He fears that anyone who is blind to the fact of aristocracy will fail to see and check the aristocracy of wealth, or oligarchy. Over time, the wealthy are able to insinuate themselves into and control the political system.

This is why Putin has governed the way he has over the past eight years and why the US is trying to demonize him. Putin has expelled from Russian society or put in jail the oligarchs who were in the process of taking over Russia throughout the 1990s. For this, he is being demonized by the West. He is being demonized by the West, especially because the US is effectively run by the aristocrats of wealth, who control both parties, the media, the music industry, and sports. Any country that opposes this oligarchy is percieved as an enemy.

Finally, Adams was perhaps unwilling to disuss what seems to accompany oligarchs and revolutionaries, the unleashing of the lust for pleasure which results in the lust for power. The children of oligarchs tend to be democrats, which means equal access to all the passions. Democrats become blind to the demagogue, who appeals to the passions as a way of installing himself as a brutal tyrant.

The passions always present themselves as liberators, but when they rule in the soul, they rule with despotic tyranny.

The Revolution Comes to Venezuela

Anyone who has looked at this blog before and is aware of the situation of religious freedom in China, could probably see that the Chinese are following a model of Church State relations that was set in France during the French Revolution. The Revolutionaries decided that the State would for all practical purposes turn the Catholic Church into the French Church and that the State would control that Church.

Now, it appears that the Chinese are not alone. The example that we see from the French Revolution is making its way to Venezuela. It actually might be more of the example set by England and the States of Northern Europe during the Reformation. It is, in the end, the nefarious ideas of Marsilius of Padua and William Ockham at work.

Here is the link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,238015,00.html