prob gonna have to read the rest of the book at some point, but even fitting that chapter into the context of this entire earthshattering text on patriarchy, i can tell of some serious flaws already. number one: it's Eurocentric As Hell. and i mean, for its time. as opposed to good ole Angles.
i have a gut feeling that she may have been hypocritical IRL too, though i'm saying this as a male, a class of person that is inherently hypocritical. not really related to the content of the book either so i guess that's not fair for me to try to get away with saying... i'll let everyone else judge.
really i just want to concentrate on reading more Marx, Lenin, and other Marxists and Leninists who were talking about stuff like political economy and class struggle and colonialism and war and shxt like that. oh and who were also doing stuff about it. and who currently are talking and doing stuff, about it. and just people i think are/were better writers lol. rape's bad though.
aerdil posted:anytime existentialists try to criticize marxism it's really bad and founded on the most basic bourgeois marx 101 misconceptions, i read a compilation of essays awhile back and it was readily apparent
Simone de Beauvoir recounts her one meeting with Simone Weil during their university days. De Beauvoir recounts that already at that time Weil had established a somewhat intimidating reputation. Coming upon Weil in a courtyard of the Sorbonne while Weil was holding forth on the need for revolution in order to feed the masses, de Beauvoir recalls that her own offering to the conversation was the philosopher's opinion that what the people really needed was meaning in their lives. Weil frostily replied, quickly looking her over, that it was clear that she had not ever gone hungry, a remark that de Beauvoir recognized as putting her and her philosophy in its place as belonging to the petty bourgeoisie.
"I am wrong, but it doesn't affect me and I will do nothing to fix it," existentialism 101.
It's bourgeois turtles all the way down.
Simone de Beauvoir recounts her one meeting with Simone Weil during their university days. De Beauvoir recounts that already at that time Weil had established a somewhat intimidating reputation. Coming upon Weil in a courtyard of the Sorbonne while Weil was holding forth on the need for revolution in order to feed the masses, de Beauvoir recalls that her own offering to the conversation was the philosopher's opinion that what the people really needed was meaning in their lives. Weil frostily replied, quickly looking her over, that it was clear that she had not ever gone hungry, a remark that de Beauvoir recognized as putting her and her philosophy in its place as belonging to the petty bourgeoisie.
hahahahahahahahahaha
jumping back into Settlers / Capital Vol.1 tonite
toutvabien posted:i just finished How to Be a Good Communist
jumping back into Settlers / Capital Vol.1 tonite
Same
For one thing, Kotkins openly repudiates the popular attempt to explain Stalin’s actions psychologically through the details of his childhood and adolescence. Stalin, in his account, may have had a hard life growing up in the backwaters of the tsarist empire, but it was not an especially unique one, and thus not a sufficient explanation for the later arc of his career. Secondly, Kotkin takes seriously the ideological motivation of Stalin and his Bolshevik contemporaries. Instead of reducing their struggles to occluded expressions of the libidio dominandi, he acknowledges that many of them were earnest revolutionaries who saw power as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Finally, Kotkin does not entertain illusions about the humaneness of the tsarist regime or its capacity for self-reform. He does not present it as any sort of an idyllic alternative to the reign of the Bolsheviks whose passing should be mourned, but instead narrates how the Russian monarchy largely brought its revolutionary dissolution upon itself through its cruelty, bigotry, and rank incompetence.
But overall, Kotkin’s account is limited and ultimately undermined by his unabashedly bourgeois and individualist prejudices. Kotkin’s account veers from presenting Russia’s authoritarian economic development strategy as being a product of its state of besieged underdevelopment to explaining it entirely in terms of the alleged myopia of Marxist ideologues. In chapter one he declares: “World history is driven by geopolitics” But Kotkin seems to forget this dictum entirely when narrating twists and turns of Bolshevik domestic politics in the 1920s. It’s almost as if he changed his mind half way through his study. He puts the blame for the economic and diplomatic isolation of the USSR more or less solely at the feet of the communists, as if the colonial ambitions of the great powers ceased to be with the end of the Great War, or as if those countries had no interest in rolling back any and all attempts to build an anti-capitalist society. Moreover, when it comes to the revolution itself and its subsequent unfolding Kotkin wants to resuscitate a great-man theory of history lite, where Lenin and Stalin’s forceful personalities become the sine qua non of historical change. The final chapter, “If Stalin had died,” poses this thesis overtly, denying that the collectivization of agriculture (a colossal and unmitigated disaster, in Kotkin’s view) would have taken place without the committed ideological leadership of the general secretary at the helm of state.
Kotkin wants to reduce history to a play of contingency. He loves asking unanswerable questions about what could have happened if a disease had picked off Stalin at an inconvenient time, or if this or that now forgotten assassin had succeed in their plans. Because of this, he cannot ask vital analytic questions like why the Bolsheviks succeeded in centralizing power in Russian Eurasia under the same circumstances that their conservative, liberal and leftist adversaries had dramatically failed to cope with. The victory of the communists and their subsequent decades long rule over a vast country becomes a mysterious, and monstrous, fluke.
In the end, Kotkin’s work is yet more proof that there can be no satisfactory reckoning with the heritage of modern revolutions until the persistent urge to escape them through the realm of the counterfactual is finally overcome. Every discrete event isolated as “chance” provides endless material for the imagination. But ultimately all such speculation can not escape the bad infinity of indeterminacy. Wish fulfillment and demonization go hand in hand, with “what ifs” sanctioning the slandering of reality as a morass of frustrated opportunities and abominable mistakes. By contrast, a truly philosophical approach to history would begin with and return to the actually existing, not only as a reservoir of raw data but as the living source of its governing convictions. It would acknowledge that the totality of relations between individuals generates from itself it’s own necessity which coalesce into patterns that can be understood by the intellect as its own. Instead of demanding that the ideals of freedom and justice confirms to our subjective presuppositions, it would oblige us to be instructed by the actual unfolding of these concepts in time. As Hegel said: To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn, presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual. To attempt the opposite does not emancipate history from the strait jacket of determinism, but rather surrenders engagement with the past to the genres of fan fiction and demonology.
RedMaistre posted:Also, for the record: Having subjected myself to both in the last few weeks, I can confidently say the Rudyard Kipling is a better stylist and story teller than Virginia Woolf. Moreover, his overt jingoism is actually more riven by the contradictions of colonialism than Woolf's complacent celebration of the British ruling class and metropolitan privilege.
the second sentence, sure, although youre probably looking in the wrong place if youre trying to draw strong anti-colonialist intepretations out of woolfs work rather than explorations of consciousness and humanity. as for your first sentence, well, it infuriates me to an insane degree and i rage downvoted on sight and would do it again
RedMaistre posted:Also, for the record: Having subjected myself to both in the last few weeks, I can confidently say the Rudyard Kipling is a better stylist and story teller than Virginia Woolf. Moreover, his overt jingoism is actually more riven by the contradictions of colonialism than Woolf's complacent celebration of the British ruling class and metropolitan privilege.
literally right. a skilled writer can get away with anything and will also inadvertently spit out more truth than your ideologically cuteypie shitologue. see mishima, celine, sam kriss
The most affecting part of Mrs.Dalloway is the representation of Septimus Smith's madness, but the pathos of those sections is then ultimately put in service of helping Clarissa, and by extension the reader, "feel the fun" of living. Because that is the primary message of the novel: Refined aesthetic experience is the be all end all of existence, and concern with anything beyond that (represented in the text by the heavily caricatured Miss."Kilman") is brutally scorned
RedMaistre posted:But ultimately all such speculation can not escape the bad infinity of indeterminacy.
I realized this the first time when I was reading through some books by supporters of Tony Cliff. I noticed that one of the books they published was sort of a catalog of moments they wanted to point to in order to prove their views as existing in material reality. The book was called "Revolutionary Rehearsals". The examples were France 1968, Chile 1972, Portugal 1974, Iran 1979 and Poland 1980. Cliff also argued that Russia collapsed as a worker's state as early as 1918, and another book by his son points to false starts in Glasgow, Berlin and Turin. Which clearly situates the entire tradition within the early moments of a revolution when possibilities seem endless and no new form of rule has established itself, where any revolution that survives beyond that initial moment is denied.
i think the difficulty is treating the past as given while diving deep into it while keeping radical autonomy from the trends it creates insofar as they can lead to harmful outcomes.
getfiscal posted:on the other hand, large numbers of people just support whatever prevails because it always has a minimal plausibility and prestige, so they seem to think all their ideological work should consist in defending the status quo. which is a similar sort of thinking because it just embeds all possibilities into the present while assuming there must be a rationale for everything leading up to it. a lot of people do this on, say, china, where they go oh well there's a struggle internal to the party, but they say they are socialist and that's good, so maybe in the future they will debate a bit and become more socialist. if you even prod these beliefs for a second you end up being able to see how they inevitably conflict in dozens of instances, like, people who say they support both socialist leaders who considered themselves enemies, or casually hold positions which would have got them killed at the time as if it isn't problematic.
i think the difficulty is treating the past as given while diving deep into it while keeping radical autonomy from the trends it creates insofar as they can lead to harmful outcomes.
I dont think these people actually exist and if they do you're playing with the ambiguity of 'support.' Every anti-imperialist ive met has nuanced and reasonable views because understanding the status quo is extremely difficult in the heart of empire left alone supporting it. also odd that the people who support the status quo are always western white people and never chinese people themselves who basically dont exist in the universe of socialist debates you seem to enjoy subjecting yourself to.
roseweird posted:RedMaistre posted:Also, for the record: Having subjected myself to both in the last few weeks, I can confidently say the Rudyard Kipling is a better stylist and story teller than Virginia Woolf. Moreover, his overt jingoism is actually more riven by the contradictions of colonialism than Woolf's complacent celebration of the British ruling class and metropolitan privilege.
it's been a while since ive read woolf but as i recall her work every book i ever read was full of barely restrained hatred for upper class life, manners, and neurosis.
to the lighthouse was always my favorite.
The second major contradiction of Mrs. Dalloway (after the one existing between Clarissa and Septimus Smith) is the one constituted by the clashing life worlds of Clarissa and Miss Kilman. The former is a rich socialite who is thrilled by the thought of the prime minster deigning to visit her evening party, the latter is a poor spinster who lost her job as a teacher during the World War I for sympathizing with Germany. The first is set up to be admirable, life affirming figure, while the second is portrayed, in Nietzchean fashion as a pitiable monster of lower class ressentiment of the beautiful people. And just as Kilman's disdain for the upper class is associated with dubious, treasonous love for Germany and Russia, Dalloway's refined epicureanism is patriotically tied to the pomp of the British Empire:
"Clarissa guessed: Clarissa knew of course; she had seen something white, magical, circular, in the footman's habit, a disc inscribed with a name,--the Queen the Prince of Wales's, the Prime Minister's?--which, by force of its own lustre, burnt its way through (Clarrissa saw the car diminishing, disappearing), to blaze among the candelabras, glittering stars, breasts stiff with oak leaves, Hugh Whitbread and all his colleagues, the gentlemen of England, that night in Buckingham palace. And Clarissa too, gave a party. She stiffened a little; so she would stand at the top of her stairs."
The extant to which members of the British upper class are criticized (Sir William Bradshaw and, much less severely, Lady Bruton in the novel, its because they are possessed by the "Goddess of Conversion"i.e. excessive concern for causes of one source or another at the expense of living well in the moment.
(I'll give to the lighthouse a shot)
Edited by RedMaistre ()
getfiscal posted:i think the difficulty is treating the past as given while diving deep into it while keeping radical autonomy from the trends it creates insofar as they can lead to harmful outcomes.
One doesn't have to choose between recovering a pure beginning or mindlessly accepting the facticity of the present because traditions do not simply subsist as static inheritances from the past, but live through the dynamism of their own internal problematics. The more seriously one takes a given historical community, the more specific and concrete the questions at hand become.
babyhueypnewton posted:I dont think these people actually exist and if they do you're playing with the ambiguity of 'support.' Every anti-imperialist ive met has nuanced and reasonable views because understanding the status quo is extremely difficult in the heart of empire left alone supporting it. also odd that the people who support the status quo are always western white people and never chinese people themselves who basically dont exist in the universe of socialist debates you seem to enjoy subjecting yourself to.
Don't troll me bro
From Moses Hess and the Problem of Idealist Dialectics by Georg Lukács,
