communist morality

[kowalskil]

Browsing the Internet I found a website with a one-year-old thread entitled “Ethical Stalinism.” The person who started the thread wrote:

Marx predicted a future revolution in which the working class would own the means of production. Lenin realized it would take too long and advocated a militant vanguard that would expedite the revolution and operate the means of production owned by the workers.

www.newyouth.com/archives/marxisttheory.asp

Stalin promoted a rapid and pugnacious transfer to a communist economy regardless of the collateral damage. Setting aside Stalin's paranoia, personal failings, unconscious motives and ruthless behavior, I want to focus on the ethics of his program of rapid rural collectivization and urban industrialization. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism

Is it ever ethical to harm a few in order to benefit a majority in the future? For example, is it ever ethical to allow a few to starve to death in order to divert food so a larger number will remain alive even at a subsistent level? Is it ever ethical to sacrifice the living in order to benefit a larger unborn future generation? Is it ever ethical to abolish resisters in the road to achieving your goal of a œUtopian? society in the future? Is it ever ethical to usurp the slow progress of democracy if it results in a better society in a shorter timespan?

One person responded: “I would say violence is most necessary for a revolution, and insofar as it for this cause, its ok.”

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Responding to the above I wrote: “You asked if it is ethical to sacrifice the living in order to benefit a larger unborn future generation? Please answer the following four questions:

a) Who benefitted from killing Bukharin, Trotsky and a large number of other old bolsheviks?

How did killing of Tukchachevsky, and a large number of generals (in late 1930s) help the country to defend itself in 1941?

c) How did forced collectivization (and liquidation of New Economic Policy established by Lenin) help the country to feed itself?

d) How did the deportation of all Chechens (and other national minorities from Georgia, after WWII) to Kazakhstan helped the USSR to consolidate its brotherhood of nations? “

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My questions were not unanswered. Any comments? BY THE WAY,

The book "Hell on Earth: Brutality and Violence Under the Stalinist Regime," at


http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/...roduction.html

describes horrors with which most of you are probably familiar. But Section 3.7, entitled "Communist Morality," is probably worth reading and discussing on this forum (and possible on History forum). Two more things worth reading are Chapter 7 and Section 4.5

Chapter 7 is a discussion of Stalinism (by professors at Montclair State University). Section 4.5 provides numerical data on how little American students (also at Montclair State University) know about Stalin. This short and easy-to-read book was written for students like them. Please share the link with history teachers you know; perhaps some of them will assign this FREE ON-LINE book to students. It can also be a base for discussing idea of proletarian dictatorship, which unites all Marxists.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
Professor Emeritus
Montclair State University

[Lloyd Gillespie]

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

LINK --> http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...e-industry.htm

Best not to personalize history__simply report... Adorno is a good example to follow...

Just my advise...

P.s.
Since you are from Poland, Leszek Kołakowski is also an excellent example... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=50&ved=0CGsQFjAJOCg&url=htt p%3A%2F%2Fhome.comcast.net%2F~platypus1848%2Fkolak owskileszek_conceptleft1968.pdf&rct=j&q=kolakowski &ei=0WZhTdamCKmwtgee5OGaBA&usg=AFQjCNEPWZ5G8EvVv6k DHAy4SQff9Rw0Fw&cad=rjt
http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/kolakowski83.pdf
Though, you probably are already familiar with him...

[Mikal]

Isn’t it almost impossible to advise that a person not personalize history when their own personalized historical experience involved the political/war enforced experience of hunger and starvation, of enforced movement from their home to the streets, to empty buildings seeming safe, into institutions holding collectivized groups labeled ‘orphans,’ and when a child grows up into a man who knows in deeper ways from his own loss the real meaning of ‘sacrafice of the living.’???

I have only been able to become familiar with Stalinist horror through study—Ludwik lived it; for him it was a lived, felt experience nobody can ever take away from him. It is as much a part of his own history as it is the history of the time he was born into—we are born into the mercy of the world that receives us.

Regards Mikal

[Lloyd Gillespie]

To personalize history, is just to wade in subjective opinion__prejudiced and useless to everyone, except the willing propagandists...

To give both/all sides of the factual arguments, is to be mature about history__and let individuals do as they may with the facts...

[Mikal]

There would be many facts in Ludwik’s life that would not be his own subjective opinion—facts are things that actually happen, these would be acts committed by others which become experience, which are lived through and must be accepted even if unpleasant.

Experience is grounds for sufficient knowledge, the facts that happened are proof.
Opinion is a personal belief or judgement not founded on proof or certainty.
Experience is full of ‘impression’ which is stronger than a notion or conviction founded on ‘probable’ evidence.

Prejudice is to prepossess with opinions formed without due knowledge.

I read Ludwik’s book; I don’t think the matter is so much about ‘being mature about history’ as it is about having had to ‘mature within history.’


Regards Mikal

[kowalskil]

To personalize history, is just to wade in subjective opinion__prejudiced and useless to everyone, except the willing propagandists...

To give both/all sides of the factual arguments, is to be mature about history__and let individuals do as they may with the facts...

To learn about historical events one should do two things: (a) read history books, and (b) read memoirs of those who experienced such events. I am glad that both of my books, and the green box with original (not translated) diaries, private letters, photos, etc., are going to be preserved in a major university archive. They will be available to future objective investigators.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
P.S.

Yes, I am familiar with Kolakowski's book. In fact, I am quoting him on several occasions in my earlier on-line book: "Hell on Earth: Brutality and Violence Under the Stalinist Regime."

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/...roduction.html

It is based on personal histories of those who experienced Siberian camps.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

It seems neither of you understand the words written:

Best not to personalize history__simply report... Adorno is a good example to follow...

Just my advise...

Reading memoirs of the experienced is not personalizing history__Neither is writing one's experiences... Personalizing history, is an un-necessary negative crime against humanity, though...

Everyone should parse the logic for what it says, and not what they think it says...

Leszek Kołakowski: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski See Wiki...

P.s.
Btw, after searching the web for you, I find no professional institutional links to Ludwik Kowalski__What-So-Ever...

Zero professionally published papers, and only links that can be self-created by anyone__and your You-Tube video is quite telling...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2577778900995945948

[Mikal]

In personalized experience=understanding in the ground of all being, one no longer contemplates reality, one becomes reality.

Writing something down qualifies history has unfolded. History is what goes on in the world and recording ones perspective affords understanding of how history unfolding affected one’s everyday life.

History is ‘his-story, her-story, my story and your story.’ History is personal stories which shed a light on a whole lot of issues.

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. (Carl Jung)

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
Carl Jung

Regards Mikal

[Lloyd Gillespie]

And the logic of negative dialectics, critical rationality and historical cognition tests, already long ago proved Freud and Jung have zero ground to stand on, when fully subjected to a sound epistemological/logical and empirical investigation. When done so, psychology suffers the egoic problem of being grounded in nothing but its own ego__known historical fact__as you chase experiences to their true grounds... Psychological subjective experiences of the self, have no proofs, and the real objective actions of the experiences__requires thoroughly verifiable and quantified evidence, to stand__not just a lone voice, talking about itself...

I have no interest in tall tales, even if they're true... I have no areas of interest in ‘his-story, her-story, my story and your story’__in the manner you are meaning it...

I only offered a simple piece of advice__I read enough of his rough material, to know what it is... Thanks, but no-thanks...

[Mikal]

Just for you Lloyd....

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