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In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

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Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#151

Post by gbog »

rimantas wrote: post #126
gbog wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "his willingness to debate" Debating must be done on the ground of good faith, right? Bad faith in a discussion is the sure mark of someone who is not willing to intellectually exchange rational arguments. Then in at least one case Hitchens showed a shocking "unwillingness" to debate: In his debate about Mother Theresa with Simon Leys, triggered by his book titled "The Missionary Position", Hitchens said "he descri…

> Debating must be done on the ground of good faith, right? > Bad faith in a discussion is the sure mark of someone who > is not willing to intellectually exchange rational > arguments. What? So are you going to debate arguments, or "marks"?

A debate or a discussion is, for me at least, an exchange of facts, opinions, arguments, based on the shared assumption that both parts of the debate are sincere (good faith): sincerely defending their point of view, willing to to change it if need be, respecting enough the opposite part, which means listening to counter arguments. Someone lying or not willing to listen or not really defending his position is no fit for a debate, don't you agree? Or maybe you enjoy debating with trolls that after you've spent hours trying to explain your view they'll say "I was not really saying that, I was joking"?

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#152

Post by martythemaniak »

There was a Munk Debate last year where Hitchens debated Tony Blair on whether religion was a force for good in the world. I highly recommend it: http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/Religion

Everyone knew Hitchens didn't have much time left, so it was great to see him doing what he does best against someone as high-profile as Blair.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#153

Post by cynicalkane »

127 wrote: post #48
TomOfTTB wrote: post #16

Hitchens was essentially a Marxist (by his own admission) who was also in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the foreign policy it represented. So there was very little I agreed with him on. But I'm terribly upset about this and I'll tell you why. Because of his willingness to debate. I'd literally scan right wing talk radio schedules for his name because you just knew it would be a great show. In a world where s…

Noam Chomsky quite well articulates what so greatly annoys me in the use of term "marxist". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ It has hardly any relation to the original context or meaning of the writings of one Karl Marx.

raises hand

I've read the writings of Karl Marx.

This guy advocated a "dictatorship of the proletariat", wherein the proletarian party seizes all capital and crushes, with force, any capitalist influence, any attempt for capitalism to re-establish itself. This alleged workers' government maintains control until the world is ready for communism, which might take quite a while. Meanwhile, there is "communal" ownership--via government--of the means of production.

Furthermore, Marx felt he had "proved" this to be the future of history with his "science" of dialectical materialism. I'm not talking about a rhetorical use of the word proof, I'm talking about proof proof. If you're a true believer it's easy to see how a little murder is OK, since you're provably bringing about a communist paradise.

Marx didn't advocate the terrible oppression characteristic of people like Lenin, but he advocated everything but, and it's easy to see where Lenin got this from. Remember, for quite a while, Lenin was considered by many in the West to be a hero, a brilliant Marxist thinker.

I've been able to surprise a few Marxists these facts--all present in Marx's writing. Amazingly, people are somehow able to become hardcore Marxists without realizing their founding figure was a maniac, something like Christians who've never read the Old Testament.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#154

Post by msg »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #135
aaronmorey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitchens never seemed to understand that "North Korea" isn't the Christian conception of heaven. To wish for him to be surrounded for all eternity by those he loves most, in the presence of the source of all love, truth and beauty... I think that's something we'd all like to experience along with him. Edit: Unclear phrasing

I believe Hitchens point on this is taken directly from the bible. There is no biblical basis for your description of heaven. If you read Revelations, though, heaven is described exactly the way Hitchens described it. To put it another way, I think when Hitchens calls it "the christian conception" of heaven, it wasn't a description of what certain christians believe, but of the biblical description.

If you read Revelation and take only one layer of meaning from it, you didn't really read Revelation.

I find myself writing the ridiculous sentence that Hitchens perhaps took a religious prose poem/vision/prophecy/allegory/history too literally.

I understand that he had an axe to grind. But he hasn't done justice to the thing he argued against.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#155

Post by kinghajj »

anatoly wrote: post #137
127 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky quite well articulates what so greatly annoys me in the use of term "marxist". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ It has hardly any relation to the original context or meaning of the writings of one Karl Marx.

This video is appallingly deceitful. E.g. where he argues that the USSR was not only not socialism, but in fact as far from it as possible. He deftly redefines the core idea of socialism to make it look superficially plausible. If socialism was ever about one bug thing, it was the collective ownership of the means of production . This was the slogan of all socialist movements, particularly Marxist socialist movements…

I think Chomsky follows the definition of socialism as you, "collective ownership of the means of production," but where he differs is that his definition doesn't include "government ownership of the means of production." To anarchists, like Chomsky, if any hierarchical structure controls the means of production, it is not truly collectively-owned. He and other anarchists use the term "state capitalism" to describe the USSR, since it's capitalism where one hierarchy (the state) controls capital, instead of private entities as in liberal capitalism.

I haven't seen the video yet, but you don't quote him as saying that the USSR wasn't Marxist, just that it wasn't socialist. A huge historical difference between Marxists and socialists is how to transition from capitalism to socialism. Marx believed that a "worker's state/council" would be needed, whereas the anarchists predicted that a "red bureaucracy" would only be worse than the one it replaced.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#156

Post by scarmig »

anatoly wrote: post #137
127 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky quite well articulates what so greatly annoys me in the use of term "marxist". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ It has hardly any relation to the original context or meaning of the writings of one Karl Marx.

This video is appallingly deceitful. E.g. where he argues that the USSR was not only not socialism, but in fact as far from it as possible. He deftly redefines the core idea of socialism to make it look superficially plausible. If socialism was ever about one bug thing, it was the collective ownership of the means of production . This was the slogan of all socialist movements, particularly Marxist socialist movements…

Well, I think the issue is that socialism (and capitalism, for that matter) means very different things to different people.

For instance, you identify "collective ownership of the means of production" as central to the idea of socialism, and the USSR as a society with collective ownership of the means of production. There's a tricky elision there, though, in that it identifies "state ownership" with "collective ownership." Chomsky and other anarchists raise hell at that idea because to them, the State is not an instrument of collective decision making.

For more context: anarchists played a major role in revolutionary socialist Russia, with the popular party of the peasantry (the Socialist Revolutionaries) being in some ways one of the more anarchist political parties in history (supporting, for instance, land and industry collectivization instead of land and industry nationalization). They were quite popular, having over twice the number of representatives as the Bolsheviks, the second largest party. They quickly came to oppose the Bolsheviks and were among Lenin's first victims. This is is in addition to a hardcore anarchist movement also popular in Russia at the time (and also heavily victimized by the Bolsheviks).

The point of all that? They all considered themselves socialist and disagreed that Bolshevism would lead to socialism, disagreeing strongly enough that it often led to their deaths. Chomsky isn't pulling the "the USSR wasn't socialist" out of a hat, but is bringing up an ideological point that's existed since even before the USSR formally existed. And to an anarchist, the idea that the USSR was socialism is as alien to them as the idea that the USSR was capitalist is to you. (The fact that the USSR called itself socialist they would argue was just a propagandist slogan, just as a Tea Partyer might consider Obama calling himself a capitalist as meaningless political rhetoric to take advantage of the less critically minded.)

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#157

Post by gruseom »

numair wrote: post #41

Okay, really. With all due respect to the passing of a fellow human, this story has absolutely nothing to do with hackers, with software development, with the startup business... I know people are going to reply to this with some reference to "but it is of intellectual interest!" -- but really, there are lots of different places on the Internet (thousands, maybe millions!) to discuss lots of different things. If you…

Hitchens was perhaps the greatest master of the English language of our time. If that doesn't make him of intellectual interest, maybe the fault lies with the intellect.

What's a pity is that the discussion here is of such low quality, picking nits about heaven and the like.

Hitchens as a writer was a force of nature. Who else could produce such exquisitely wrought pieces at such a rate? In this respect he reminds me a little of Dickens.

Edit: here's a marvelous remembrance by Christopher Buckley: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/posts...

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#158

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #129
aaronmorey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitchens never seemed to understand that "North Korea" isn't the Christian conception of heaven. To wish for him to be surrounded for all eternity by those he loves most, in the presence of the source of all love, truth and beauty... I think that's something we'd all like to experience along with him. Edit: Unclear phrasing

I think Stephen Fry put it best during a tour of Salt Lake City that was conducted by a Mormon evangelist: ---- She gave us a good tour and we saw this tabernacle here and this here and so on and then at one point she said, "I just want to tell you a little about the church of the Latter Day Saints." And we all politely stood and then she said how in the afterlife all families will be reunited. "You’ll be with your f…

As a former Mormon missionary, I can assure you he was not the first person to think of that particular comeback.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#159

Post by Florin_Andrei »

anatoly wrote: post #137
127 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Chomsky quite well articulates what so greatly annoys me in the use of term "marxist". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ It has hardly any relation to the original context or meaning of the writings of one Karl Marx.

This video is appallingly deceitful. E.g. where he argues that the USSR was not only not socialism, but in fact as far from it as possible. He deftly redefines the core idea of socialism to make it look superficially plausible. If socialism was ever about one bug thing, it was the collective ownership of the means of production . This was the slogan of all socialist movements, particularly Marxist socialist movements…

> And the USSR was exactly that kind of society

No, it was not.

Your username is Slavic, so perhaps you grew up in the Eastern Bloc; I certainly did.

Those were not socialist countries. Private enterprise was definitely banned, but the goods were not collectively owned either. The entire country was owned by a small clique with a rigid pyramidal structure.

Dictatorship is a much better word.

Re: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

#160

Post by olavk »

msg wrote: post #154
jmcqk6 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Hitchens point on this is taken directly from the bible. There is no biblical basis for your description of heaven. If you read Revelations, though, heaven is described exactly the way Hitchens described it. To put it another way, I think when Hitchens calls it "the christian conception" of heaven, it wasn't a description of what certain christians believe, but of the biblical description.

If you read Revelation and take only one layer of meaning from it, you didn't really read Revelation. I find myself writing the ridiculous sentence that Hitchens perhaps took a religious prose poem/vision/prophecy/allegory/history too literally. I understand that he had an axe to grind. But he hasn't done justice to the thing he argued against.

I think Hitchens is arguing against what people actually believe. Christians believe in heaven based (among other things) on Revelation.
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