How the Great Truth Dawned • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Great Truth Dawned

#51

Post by DoctorOetker » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #4

claudiawerner wrote: post #3

I will preface this comment by saying that I am sympathetic to the author's criticism of the Soviet system which he has inherited from Solzhenitsyn, but being sympathetic to the communist hypothesis myself, I feel like there are omissions in the article worth picking up on. The article reads, >The contrary view, held by ideologues and justice warriors generally, is that our group is good, and theirs is evil. “Evil pe…

This is simply a re-statement of the old myth that when in mortal danger an atheist will also pray. It's not backed up by anything, but then again - nothing else in the article is either True enough. The article, like Solzhenitsyn's own thinking, is an exercise in excluding the obvious middle ground: what if neither sort of God -- neither the patron of Abraham nor the personage of Stalin -- is the answer? It's amusin…

I totally agree, to me tragedy and misery are not some contest to be won, the most we can do is learn from tragedy.

Especially the last cited paragraph by Solzhenitsyn: he finds the lesson (or Truth) he learned so valuable, it justified his experience! Why not just send a donation to the Party then? (sarcasm)

The article explicitly rejects the utility of logic in discovering our true norms, desires, ... :

>Great novels test ideas not by their logical coherence, as in academic philosophy, but by the consequences of believing them.

But the whole point of atheism, science and philosophy is to not blindly accept statements for fact, but to only view them as justified by evidence or proof.

Solzhenitsyn laments his blind participation in the system, so if anything it seems to me like moving towards a provable and individually verifiable society could improve things. (and indeed many people dream of applying the non-energy intensive decentralized concensus algorithms to constructing such a provable society)

Re: How the Great Truth Dawned

#52

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #19

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... and failed to link it to the scientific aspect of historical materialism... Um, what "scientific aspect of historical materialism"? To me, the claim that there is any scientific aspect of it requires some evidence, because it seems to be grounded in nothing but ideological belief.

When classical Marxists speak of "scientific materialism" or "scientific socialism" they're using a 19th century convention ... not speaking of Science as we understand it today, the whole toolkit of empiricism and the scientific method. They're talking about science more generally as ordered knowledge, and in contrast to a more 'utopian' socialist view of their French predecessors. It's an outdated phraseology that…

All right, but it was a post written in the 21st century. If you're going to use a 19th century formulation that "doesn't mean what it sounds like in today's context", then that's not very good communication.

If people like claudiawerner really want to communicate, they ought to rewrite Marx's concepts in today's language. Most of us aren't going to learn Marx's terms in order to examine his ideas.

Re: How the Great Truth Dawned

#53

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

jacques_chester wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wrong, and a cursory investigation of Marx's late works would show that. The focus here is on Lenin and his progeny, particularly Stalin. Marx claimed the discovery of objective laws of reality through generous application of the Hegelian world-spirit concept[1]. The Bolsheviks expanded Marx's ideas. The expansion was thus: the Party is the agent of the Proletariat. The liberation of Proletariat is the ulti…

He was a philosopher first, then an economist later -- not second. Later Marx broke with early Marx. Later Marx explicitly critiqued the Hegelian stuff that he started with. You won't find much Hegel in Das Kapital, certainly not 'world spirit' or even a notion of history proceeding in stages -- tho you might find versions of that in his early writings and even in the Communist Manifesto.

Part of the confusion is that Marx's earlier writing didn't become well-known until the communist movement was well underway. But I don't think Marx ever truly threw off his Hegelian roots, even if he criticised himself (he had a wickedly sharp pen and used it on everyone and everything).

Re: How the Great Truth Dawned

#54

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

ptx wrote: post #48

jacques_chester wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wrong, and a cursory investigation of Marx's late works would show that. The focus here is on Lenin and his progeny, particularly Stalin. Marx claimed the discovery of objective laws of reality through generous application of the Hegelian world-spirit concept[1]. The Bolsheviks expanded Marx's ideas. The expansion was thus: the Party is the agent of the Proletariat. The liberation of Proletariat is the ulti…

Didn't Lenin advocate "freedom of discussion, unity of action" i.e. democratic centralism?

Lenin advocated a lot of things depending on the audience, but in tactical terms he was perfectly happy to advocate what we might today call terrorism.