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Not at all, most democratic socialists like the Fabian society are willing to change their approach when they try something and it doesn't work. The result is
by Symmetry 7y ago
Not at all, most democratic socialists like the Fabian society are willing to change their approach when they try something and it doesn't work. The result is mere inefficiency, not corpses piling up. If the SRs, say, had won the Russian Revolution things would probably have turned out basically all right.
But it was the Bolsheviks with their plan of communism immediately, not in 20 years, who won. They treated their political philosophy as a millenarian sect with "the dictatorship of the proletariat" substituting for the kingdom of God. When the eschaton fails to properly immanentize it can only be due to the opposition of sin and the Devil, by which we mean kulaks, wreckers, and traitors.
The problem isn't communism per say but a belief in having absolute truth and a vision of a perfect good that can justify any means.
- partialrecall 7y agoIs it fair to say that democratic socialists are communists? I've met more than a few self-described democratic socialists who would object to that characterization.
- southerntofu 7y agoSocialism, communism and anarchism are the very same thing. Some people are more comfortable with a label or the other because they have been appropriated by specific movements. Authoritarian communism (marxism) is a historically very tiny branch of socialism/communism, with anarchists being an overwhelming majority. This tiny marxist/bolshevik minority killed its way to the top, and was used by capitalist empires as a strawman example of what would happen with "communism". Both sides find advantages in confusing communism with marxism, while in practice, dictatorship of the proletariat has nothing to do with communism at all. Someone claiming one of the three labels without the two others, either has no clue about the history of communism, or just wants to avoid being assimilated with genocidal authoritarian communists.
- cptnapalm 7y agoDo I see Voeglin on HN?
- Symmetry 7y agoYou've got to admit that "Immanentize the eschaton" is a great phrase. I ran into it first through Robert Anton Wilson which I'd bet is typical of HN readers who know it. But mostly I'm finishing up The House of Government so the issue is quite on my mind.
- uxp100 7y agoI think Robert Anton Wilson is the source of almost everyone familiar with the phrase at this point. But I think when RAW used it it was a less obscure reference than now. It does stick with you.
- cptnapalm 7y agoJust for the sake of sharing what no one has ever been interested in hearing, Voeglin traced the concept of the "third age that will never end" back to Joachim of Flora's writings... and from what Wikipedia tells me, you likely know that already from reading Wilson!
- dragonwriter 7y ago> If the SRs, say, had won the Russian Revolution things would probably have turned out basically all right. > But it was the Bolsheviks with their plan of communism immediately, not in 20 years, who won. The Bolsheviks won in no small part because they were a particularly violent, insular faction. Revolutionary situations don't really reward being accommodating and adverse to violence, even though that might be very desirable post-revolutionary condition. It's something of a problem with revolutions that the people you want running the show afterwards aren't the kind of people that revolutions inherently favor.
- Symmetry 7y agoYup, totally agree.