SEMINAR PAPER / The Origins of Totalitarianism

HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF JOURNALISM
SEMINAR PAPER

THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM
BY HANNAH ARENDT.

This seminar paper’s intention is to summarise and analyse Hannah Arendt’s book on Totalitarianism published in 1951. Arendt’s work compiles the elements and origins of totalitarianism, puts them into context and explains their history and methodology thoroughly. Nazism and Stalinism are the two main totalitarian movements which the book is focused on and how throughout the 20^th century it has served as a philosophical analysis of totalitarianism.

Analysis on Chapter 13
Ideology and Terror: A Novel form of Government

Summary

In this chapter, Arendt determines the roots of the ideology and methodology of Totalitarianism. Her interpretation of totalitarianism is the following.

1.      Hannah Arendt determines that Totalitarianism is a different form of oppression, specifying that it does not necessarily mean it’s a dictatorship or a tyranny a government that is totalitarian rather that shares similar values: “total domination is not only more drastic but that totalitarianism differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship.”

2.      It establishes a connection with the masses in which there is a shift of ‘power’ and ‘influence’. The source and true power will always remain in the governing body but nonetheless the feeling of community is trying to be created in order to make the people feel that it is their power that matters. Oppression through absolute mass manipulation: “totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by a mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police,”

3.      Totalitarianism is but the fusion of certain criteria in oppressed terror channelled towards a population that it’s controlled. This control and this modus operandi have a source and have a ‘natural’ process, which it’s a metamorphosis of several oppressive political factors as well as violent instruments of tyranny and despotism. However there is a concept of collision between both ideas, there can be no blank nature of totalitarianism if its creation implies a fusion of preconceived ideas. “Which borrows its methods of intimidation, its means of organization and its instruments of violence from the well-known political arsenal of tyranny, despotism and dictatorships, and owes its existence only to the deplorable, but perhaps accidental failure of the traditional political forces—liberal or conservative, national or socialist, republican or monarchist, authoritarian or democratic. Or whether, on the contrary, there is such a thing as the nature of totalitarian government, whether it has its own essence and can be compared with and defined like other forms of government such as Western thought has known and recognized since the times of ancient philosophy.”

4.      Totalitarianism is a relatively new concept. “If we apply these findings, whose fundamental idea, despite many variations, did not change in the two and a half thousand years that separate Plato from Kant, we are tempted at once to interpret totalitarianism as some modern form of tyranny, which is a lawless government where power is wielded by one man. Arbitrary power, unrestricted by law, yielded in the interest of the ruler and hostile to the interests of the governed, on one hand, fear as the principle of action, namely fear of the people by the ruler and fear of the ruler by the people, on the other these have been the hallmarks of tyranny throughout our tradition.”

5.      An analysis on the certain violent methods of totalitarianism to destroy the unnecessary and weak.

6.      Rule by fear. Totalitarianism destroying humanitarian morality and redefining or turning into ‘obsolete’ ideas of notions such as empathy. “Guilt and innocence become senseless notions; "guilty" is he who stands in the way of the natural or historical process which has passed judgment over "inferior races", over individuals "unfit to live," over "dying classes and decadent peoples." Terror executes these judgments, and before its court, all concerned are subjectively innocent: the murdered because they did nothing against the system and the murderers because they do not really murder but execute a death sentence pronounced by some higher tribunal.”

7.      Very arbitrary man made law. Emphasis in the control of man over mankind and the masses, the power lies on the men who have decided to abuse it.

8.      An objectivist education without convictions, and aggressive form of interpretation shared by all but enforced and chosen by one.

9.      Alternative to deism, subjective theology that is only based in an ideology of the totalitarian government.

10.  A redefinition and shaping of logic, a pattern of new sense in rationality.

11.  Explanation of Totalitarian rules in which enforced compulsion against man’s thoughts takes place. A philosophical explaination to an aggressive submission based on the countless interactions that disable one’s abilities to introspect and determine whether the information one is receiving is incorrect or if one is simply against it.

12.  Lastly establishing a paradigm between isolation, loneliness and solitude. Different restrictions, physical and emotional that are side effects (in the slightest form) of a totalitarian control, a mass that is isolated, of a lonely education and evoking man’s feeling of solitude within himself, a very deep introspective of emotional side effects of a conditioning form of oppression that seeks to unite man, once separated from himself. “Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others. Apart from a few stray remarks—usually framed in a paradoxical mood like Cato's statement (reported by Cicero, De Re Publico, I, 17): numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset, "never was he less alone than when he was alone," or. rather, "never was he less lonely than when he was in solitude"—it seems that Epictetus. the emancipated slave philosopher of Greek origin, was the thirst to distinguish between loneliness and solitude.”

Commentary

This chapter represents a perfect symbiosis between an analysis that dwells with the most superficial of characteristics and yet the deepest of introspective of emotion and ideological response. Hannah Arendt may have not considered herself more than a political theorist but her interpretations and synchronization to both classical and modern forms of philosophy made her an eloquent and outstanding philosopher.

Her definition of Totalitarianism is well addressed, her historical research in the previous chapters gave her the right ideas to establish certain propositions such as Totalitarianism being the collective concentration of several forms of oppression united under a violent methodology of control and aggressive self-centred education, and yet the possibility of having found the ‘nature’ of this despotic form of government that was created upon itself, the development of various decisions to control the masses based on a fundamental criteria of control and tyranny.

Nevertheless, its intentions are clear. The masses have to controlled, but not only controlled through a modus operandi which is self-evidently oppressive but rather subtle through certain forms of manipulation. Manipulation is a key tool in Totalitarianism, and when it comes to assessing Totalitarianism and the power of manipulation as the shaper and crafter of a united governed culture Nazism and Stalinism collided greatly. The intention of the following examples is to fulfil the historical context that the previous chapters of the book were using to assess Totalitarianism; Adolf Hitler was a mastermind of manipulation and so was his right hand Joseph Goebbels. Their use of propaganda, speeches, rallies, unified sentiment of pride and glory with modern technologies and a rightful exploitation of such gave the means for the national-socialist party to manipulate thoroughly a strong spirited but weak and poor German society. Whereas Stalin, though persuasive as he was he did not control Russia so much through his charisma but rather than his furious and intolerant power, his imprisonment methods, his ruthless army and secret police, which leads to the alternative form of Totalitarianism which to a certain degree is the core essence of this form of oppression, Rule by fear:

Totalitarianism has been found to be, according to Hannah Arendt as a new concept of oppression, regardless of its origins as a fusion of many or a new concept, the principal theory is that Totalitarianism is new, however its methods may not all be new such as a the simple fear factor; Ruling by fear has been man’s main initiative of domination against a weaker subjugate, the fear to retaliation and consequent punishment by the subject in power has been and will always be the most efficient source of persuasion, and many civilizations before ours knew this. It is inherent in man-kind to sustain power through fear.

Arendt follows to discuss more specific matters like the destruction of morality, the creation of newer forms of logic, the idealisation of a different cause. All these methods are of an extremely aggressive nature, being aware that education on its own is a passive-aggressive form of interpretation and knowledge shaping, preconceived ideas from other sources being constantly repeated to the masses until they embrace, accept and understand them can be of grievous consequences when the aim is not to proliferate the subjectivism and self-development of one self but rather follow the strict passion and doctrine of one governing body. One objective truth that is spread evenly and unilaterally across a nation, fundamentalism based in the opinions of few who are willing to enforce any type of punishment upon those who decide to reject it.

Totalitarianism defies not only the humanitarian, liberal empathy that it’s also inherent in human kind but also its nature, and the laws of nature. The liberation from the weak, the destruction of the impaired is of the essence; The third Reich was keen and eagerly pleased to get rid of the handicapped community euthanizing thousands of people, expressing the ideas that this was their law of nature, this was the best option for the community, a community that sought productivity beyond any attachment to its own citizens, where anyone weaker than a certain standard was expendable. Stalinism was not far from this concept using their own people in the Second World War having no regard whatsoever to the individual citizens who were seen as shield for bullets designed to kill more Russian people. The defence in Stalingrad was accomplished after several million people were massacred by both German and Russian troops alike; a fearful soldier that ran from his troops was more likely to get killed by his staff sergeant (in communist ranking system) than by a German soldier. Ultimately we are discussing the ideas that individualism was rejected, and that did not exclude any measure that included killing your own citizens. Arendt narrates a nature similar to that of Friedrich Nietzsche’s superhuman theory, a theory so passionately embraced by Adolf Hitler, which she did not mention but I myself see so much resemblance in. Nietzsche’s ideas, and the way Hitler indoctrinated his government upon, reflect that perhaps Arendt’s idea of Totalitarianism having its own nature was correct, the fusion and evolution of different ideas interpreted by different men led to transform a passion for power into Totalitarianism using tools of other propositions by other thinkers.

Arendt’s final contemplation on human loneliness and solitude is remarkable, she escalates through totalitarian repression of emotion and isolation to a Greek tragic, into a question that started long before Totalitarian states, propositions of where does one find his place, where does one abandon solitude? And once this solitude is abandoned does that imply that there shall be no feeling of loneliness? Regardless if this man or men are isolated from another group. The separation of the individual first from his own feelings and sentiments, then from his group, society or culture and this culture being isolated on its own, this classification process is a contemporary form of the Roman-Egyptian Agora, the circles of the ‘self’ beyond one’s self.

Arendt’s conclusion transcends the initial encounter of this chapter from specific introspective political theory into the most relevant and rational philosophical proposition, and it reminds readers that regardless of the oppressive form of government that may rule one’s physical body, one’s education, we shall leave this world the same way in which we have arrived; alone. An excellent analogy using a ‘tragic’ sense of introspection of man’s lonely path of solitude enforced by a contemporary form of emotional dis-attachment.

Structuralism and Hermeneutics / Friedrich Nietzsche

This week's lecture is on Friedrich Nietzsche and understanding aspects of morality that involve man's desire to control ones desire. The irrationality of emotions at its best.

When it comes to critical thinkers, philologists that analyse morality, religion, philosophy, classical culture and science, Nietzsche is one of my favourite ones, and his use of irony driven by anger made his writings a remarkable work.

The lecture focused on the concept of morality seen through the '7 deadly sins'. Lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, wrath, pride and envy. This early Christian interpretation of moderate education for the masses was very criticised by Nietzsche who found Christianity a insult to human kind, a limiting doctrine that was designed to eradicate man's passions and true potential.

It is believed that Nietzsche was an atheist, some scholars believe he had a different concept of divinity, a worshipper nonetheless but to another alternative to god. Perhaps to himself.

"God is dead" 

This is a concept used by Nietzsche several times, elaborated in particular throughout The Antichrist, a brief but powerful thesis against religion.

His beliefs navigate the proposition that the universal concepts human kind once saw as an objective truth were disappearing, the values imposed by religion were in the verge of extinction and it would lead (at least what he hoped for) was an era of multiple understanding, more personal development that did not focus on preconceived ideas of morality such as Christianity, a concept known as perspectivism.

Nietzsche as a nihilist, he believed that human kind had to exploit their inner most desires and let them take control of their rationality. Anger was a powerful source of energy that drove man to reach higher potentials, this would allow one to get to the 'will to power', and understanding of life beyond adaptation or survival.

The 7 deadly sins or Capital Vices were taught to educate masses into an objective truth that would condition them into a more 'civilized' behaviour, channelling them into a respectful life that eventually leads you to heaven. 

Nietzsche was fond of their exploitation and their manipulation to achieve ones very ambitions and this is noticeable throughout his work. The Antichrist has very powerful sentences that wish to educate the readers into a different perspective.

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome. "

Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / Sigmund Freud & Phylosophy of mind

Sigmund Freud is probably one of the most remarkable pseudo-scientists of the late XIXth and XXth century. His work revolutionised fields like neuroscience, psychotherapy or psychoanalisis and which theoretical legitimacy dwells among the work of modern scholars.

Like all scientists, Freud was an interpreter of sources and origin, unfortunatelly for him his intregue drove him to search for the origin of a dark and mysterious world which is the human psyche.

His research experimented a lot with dreams and hypnosis and in 1899 he published 'The Interpretation of Dreams' which basically talks about the unconciousness, dream fulfillment and secret desire of human kind.

It is important to address that Freud's work is highly vague: His interpretations are rooted to very few, or strictly no empirical scientific evidence whatsoever. Nevetherless, that does not imply that his research was in any way absurd.

I am extremely interested in many of his ideas.

Freud believed that our rationality, our personality and the way our mind work was conditioned entirely by specific situations of our childhood that conditioned us and shaped us into the people we are now. Certain traumatic experiences of variuos degrees, depending on how we decided to deal with them at the time they happened have helped us be nurtured in a specific pattern.

One cannot ignore, John Locke's idea of 'Tabula Rasa' in which our bind in the moment of birth is blank, empty of conditions and awaiting for future experiences (more importantly during childhood) to shape us. A point of view very well sustained by Freud's ideas too.

Psychoanalisis also penetrated into deep desires and sexual selective preferences, among many other controversial but vague interpretations such as man's sexual desire for one's mother, or the female eternal jealoucy based on the fact that they did not have a penis.

Certain topics within 'Freudian' phylosophy I find irrelevant and unecessary to discuss, others on the other hand I find extremely mind boggling and sensible subjects to analyse such as 'psychosomatic' pain, which is based around the idea that certain pain is not physically inflicted but rather a projection in one's mind making us believe the pain is real when its not.

This ideas has been reviewed by hundreds of experts of both east and western phylosophy and have a vast amount of information regarding this topic, which evokes the concept of the understanding of mind so far, as practically in its infant state, for I believe that we have seen nothing more than the tip of an Iceberg that expands several hundreds of feet down into an abyssmal and dark ocean of conciousness.

One of the reasons why I hold Freud's interpretations in a high regard is because he was nothing short of a bald explorer into a very mysterious and alien innerself discovery. Regardless of how mistakenly absurd some of his conclusions may seem.

-----------------

I enjoyed this lecture on foundations of psychoanalisis recorded in Spring 2007 at Yale University

 

Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / L'Age d'Or

We begin this new academic year following an endeavour that we begun the previous one. I'm glad to initiate this year's posts with L'Age d'Or, a 1930 surrealist film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel who wrote the script along with Salvador Dali (a nice touch of picturesque surrealism).

The plot is based around a couple that is in love and constantly has to fight their way through various obstacles imposed by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Its methodology was, and remains extremely controversial.

The movie is filled with 'aggresive' sexual symbolics and criticism to the Church and a repressed, puritanical society. A 'sensored-since-inception' work of art.

Its provocative content varies from a woman that fellates the toes of a religious statue, a man who repeatedly shoots his own son with a shotgun (several times after his death) or kicks a dog several feet up in the air for no reason, to a final scene narrating an orgy similar to Marquis de Sede's 1785 novel '120 days of Sodom' in which a Jesus like character involved in this 'deplorable' situation.

Analysis:

Clearly a shocking work of the 7th art, most certainly deserved its censorship in 1930 and its fairly criticised now. I do not personally believe in censorship, however the 30s did not remotely scrape the new modern liberalism and freedom of speech and literature. Not only the symbolism is violent, but certain scenes themselves that confused the public and outraged the former high-culture, as well as fascist groups that assaulted viewers and destroyed work by the Spanish 'artists' involved.

The repercussions where as severe as anyone would expect.

Seminar Paper

This is the copy of my second seminar paper based on Karl Marx's communist manifesto:

SEMINAR PAPER

KARL MARX’S COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

I -- BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

Karl Marx explains in the first chapter of his communist manifesto his ideas of social division.
Though he is aware of other social classes he compiles the western population between two main conceptual classes: Bourgeois and Proletarians.

Using these two social distinctions he expresses the following ideas:

1.       Society’s social classes descend from the concept of oppression. There are those who are oppressed and those who oppress others. The Bourgeoisie is the minority that oppresses the majority which is the Proletariat. “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.”

2.       Industry and those who own the methods of its exploitation are in charge of the oppression of the working class, the proletarians who compete against one another to earn better wages and survive as a middle working class. This is a derivative of the middle ages and its feudal system, where it was once land and property the field of work now transformed into the industrial field. “The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop. Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.”

3.       This division in society was the result of a revolution in itself. A revolution that brought change to the way man exploits its resources and applies them to benefit and earn capital. Karl Marx is very keen, insisting that the initiation in social change comes from revolution. “We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.” / “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”

4.       Marx explains how the only liaison between social classes is money and capital. The relationship between proletarians to bourgeois is almost symbiosis; where one couldn’t exist without the other. The existence of both classes is concepts deriving from the pursuit of capital which vary in quantity and influence. The bourgeoisie does not have the small and short term aspirations of the proletarians, their incentive are wages where the bourgeoisie wants to exploit the free market and have ambitions of expansion and control. A very feudal concept, which will lead them to ‘globalize’ the planet. “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

5.       Marx talks about the influence of the bourgeoisie and the way their pursuit influences society, to such extent that even family and its status quo finds itself affected. “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.”

6.       There are vague, basic steps of globalisation and technological enhancement throughout the globe mentioned in his manifesto, quite remarkably it’s almost as he could foresee the present 21^st century. “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

7.       The economical interpretation in this chapter is clearly noticeable. Marx exposed various ideas of production and the way it affects society. This first chapter is as thorough in the anthropological field as it is in the economical; it was an essential point to mention since the ultimate core of this manifesto is to demonstrate how society circumnavigates around the concept of profit and capital. Marx doesn’t hesitate to express his insecurity about the results that will bring a possibly misguided bourgeoisie. “Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, is periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production.”

8.       After explaining the root, the source of its ambition, the process it follows to sustain itself and the flaws of its modus operandi Marx follows the same doctrine with the proletariat, explaining their development into middle class, their conditions as working class and their dependency not only on one another but on their oppressors too. However, being the majority of people and given their strength not only in numbers but morally and even physically they find themselves to have the upper hand. The working class has every mean to free themselves from their oppressors. Nevertheless, the constant competition, the fear and confusion that springs from lower wages or unemployment, fermented by rage can lead into riots, the physical expression of a disappointed working class. “But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, makes the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.”

9.       Moreover, as Marx analysis the implications of riots and the moral mobility they propose he acknowledges the fact that this can even move the bourgeoisie itself and aid the working class. Just as it happened in the feudal Middle Ages where a small proportion of Nobility would join the uprising class for a righteous reason. “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.”

10.   Finally, Marx explains his ideas about the proletariat having the key to the revolution. Even if the bourgeoisie is the result of a or various revolutions the working class is that which will bring the new change, given their conditions, their needs, their numbers and their oppression they become the ones holding the means to revolt. Social revolt. “The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.”

Commentary:

Dividing classes into two main social conditions is a useful and simplistic way of visualizing society. You are either one or the other, and mostly everyone is part of the proletarians. This division favours Marx and his ideas, he is not contempt or satisfied with the bourgeoisie and he harvests a lot of anger against their social quo. However, it is important not to fade away with Marx malice towards the higher class, at least not entirely. The bourgeoisie are just as victims of their time and condition as the proletarians themselves. The higher upper class as Marx well composes descends from the ancestral lineage of a feudal system that never changed its philosophy, only the field and the means in which to achieve their pursuit. Property and capital from profit has been and always will be their condition, it is not a feudal, capitalistic or a social derivative but a condition of man, his ambition and his greed. Marx has every right to say that the proletarians are an oppressed class by the bourgeoisie, nevertheless the oppression is more transcendental than the pseudo-physical oppression from higher to middle and lower class, the true oppressor is man’s greed, ambition or desire. All classes are not mutually corresponding or entirely symbiotic; simply share the same pursuit which is capital, property and profit. The means however, is what Marx clearly sees and accuses of unjust, where if the path to obtain profit was a river the higher class travels on board a huge ship powered by the strength of thousands of slaves who row nonstop. These classes need one another; there will always be a captain on board and dozens of sailors and slaves that will follow his command and that of the first mate. Moreover, Marx has rightly suggested that given the number and strength of those at the bottom of the chain of command found they unhappy have the right to mutiny or coup, and righteously so but where there is contempt, satisfaction or lack of the will to change revolution will not spring. Lastly, it is remarkable and almost impossible to not recognise Marx’s ideas of globalisation triggered by expansion to the free market, there is no doubt that his ideas and his experience understanding man’s revolution with himself led him to foresee conditions that would not change in the slightest. He, who doesn’t learn from history, will always be condemned to repeat it.

II -- PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS

Chapter 2 establishes the link between the Proletarians and the Communists and their mutual pursuit. Marx bonds this socio-political class through the following ideas:

1.       The pursuit and ideas of the proletariat and the communist ideas are the same. They share the same goal and it’s a political party that fuels from the strength of the working class. “The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

2.       He establishes a new order of property control and capital. Replacing land earned through the capitalist way of wage labor and given to the middle class as social class land. Capital must be somehow shared among the social classes in a way that it doesn’t make anyone stronger, therefore equal amounts. “When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.”

3.       Marx proposes that the hard worker will find himself compensated by working in the communist way of society, where he was once rewarded in capital the benefit of his work will be the proliferation of his social class and his community. “In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In communist society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.”

4.       His ideas of property become more thorough and the concept of private property where one exploits in his personal benefit, i.e. with rent or having different types of labour will disappear. There will not be land more or less exploited; there will not be land that takes advantage of rent. As land is controlled by the communist its uses will be the same and their exploitation will be equal. Land will still provide products, their exploitative result will not cease to exist but the way this result is achieved will. “From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.”

5.       There are 10 points almost as a communist constitution explaining different legislations and regulations or (no regulations) in the new communist society. Some of which certain developed countries apply nowadays.

6.       Lastly Marx wishes to express his ideas of social class rivalry disappearing in the communist society; there will be no political or social distinction, therefore competition, and servitude or antagonist status quo. “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.”

Commentary:

This section shows the initial state of the new communist society and values. Some would argue that they are more idealistic and utopic than Marx would claim but I beg to differ; many of the values such as free education, centralized governments, fixed taxation, balance between agriculture and industry already exist, nevertheless that doesn’t mean that the Marxist methods have been applied, there are certain values that are shared but Marx’s interpretation of a nation state has never existed, regardless of what previous USSR leaders might claim.

The communist party reasonably represents the proletariat; clearly a party must be there to represent the values of a huge majority which is the working class and those below who wish to join it. However, the different capabilities of different people, regardless if they are in the same working conditions make a huge difference to the production they bring within society. Ultimately this is the flaw within communism; a country can treat everyone, pay everyone and share with everyone in the same way but people are not the same they only act or do something in the same patterns but a man is equal in fairness and treatment not in understanding and evolution, not even in strength. Communism cannot defeat that natural law, there will always be a ‘better’ or smarter or more corrupt person, someone that will separate himself from the flock. Nevertheless, it is completely understandable that within the treatment and fairness they receive from the nation state they must be equals regardless of their capabilities, therefore communism must be essentially the equilibrium between human capability and aspirations and proportion of property, human rights and fair treatment.

 

III -- SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE

In this section Karl Marx differentiates various fields in society (through literature) in which communism and socialism is applied. The different ideas he uses to argument socialist and communist literature to his modern fields are the following:

1.       Reactionary Socialism, Conservative Socialism and Critical or Utopic Socialism will be the derivatives from Communist literature and each of them is expressed in a different form showing how they are relevant to the socialist and communist ways of understanding.

2.       Reactionary Socialism: A division between feudal, petty-bourgeois and German or ‘true’ socialism. The Feudal socialism is explained through aristocracy and their decision to concede public control of their lands. The same way the French revolution took what was once from the aristocracy and become owned by the people. The Christian ideas will easily be reflected upon socialism by which the private property shall be released from the control of the bourgeois and provide it to the proletarian.
The petty-bourgeois socialism will tackle the minority of bourgeois that control the vast agriculture and working class, like in France. The private sector cannot be controlled by a small majority that doesn’t even belong to the group who is being exploited. The German, more truthful (according to Marx) socialism has an easier job since the bourgeoisie at the time was less powerful than in other countries. The French revolution was a ‘translation’ into the German philosophy and way of thinking and slowly helped to eradicate an existent 16^th century bourgeois class.

3.       Conservative Socialism is the ideology of those who cannot help the idea of socialism in society, they seem more resilient to change and are willing to try to keep their property, their ideas of sustainability through ideas living off ‘easier’ work and maintaining as much as possible of a more conservative, once achievable capitalist society. Those who will try to remain bourgeois will remain bourgeois but one way or another it will be for the good of the working class. Their ideas of appropriation and expansion will only suffice if they benefit the working class. “It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois -- for the benefit of the working class.”

4.       Lastly, the Communist more utopian ideal of society and its critic. Citing different authors who Marx identifies to take part in the more idealistic communism, that which will create a nation state of epic proportions, a ‘New Jerusalem’ a promised land that will not be part of reality but always a dream. He mentions ideas of revolution trough peace, something quite idealistic and little it has to do with a realistic approach to the proletariat.

Ultimately, Marx explains that one cannot create a ‘fantastical’ nation state when the proletarians are so undeveloped.

“Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.”

Commentary:

Marx is wise by defining different situations of contemporary understanding towards communism. Society’s approach has never been that of a communist ideal therefore flawlessness is as utopic as it could ever be, meaning that there will be huge discrepancies and problems that occur from the new concept. Socialism will not be embraced with the same fervour or passion and it will not be interpreted in the same way.

Marx was able to recognise that there are so that are still attached to the conservative feudal systems and those who give up their noble titles in order to achieve a greater cause or simply adapt to a new ‘epoch’ of different capital understandings.

Some of his divisions though as a title they make a lot of sense and allow one to create sub-categories of the same branch they still become slightly confusing. We are not part of Marx’s time, we belong to a different revolution almost two centuries later therefore our understanding of Marxism, pure Marxism is highly interpretational.

Karl Marx was able to understand that even if socialism is the solution to social conflict, from socialism will derive more social conflict. In essence to extinguish a hazardous fire another fire must be set ablaze which will eventually calm, fade out and leave a rewarding remainder which is the free and equalitarian society Marx wishes to achieve.

Very politically correct he reassures he doesn’t speak of utopian communism, he doesn’t want to convince anybody that what he wishes to accomplish comes from his fantasy but rather his ethical logic. He wants to tackle problems of an undeveloped proletariat which cannot aspire even to think of an utopian society so far, not even of a more just one therefore it is required from him to create a division, between the communism he wishes to make, the one which is possibly to install and that which is lost in fantasy and vagueness and he managed so.

 

IV -- POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO

THE VARIOUS EXISTING OPPOSITION PARTIES

The last section of his manifesto, (excluding the prefaces to the different editions). Through the following ideas Karl Marx situates communism in relation to the various existing opposition parties:

1.       This section is exclusively of political affairs. Marx relates himself to other parties of the world that sustain the same ideals or possible ideals with communism such as “Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.”

2.       The political approach is thorough, there are various groups of political parties that could represent the ideals of socialism and Marx targets them across Europe.

3.       Marx explains how Germany is going through their own bourgeois revolution and how soon they’ll expand their control soon spreading their influence across Europe.

4.       Inspiring Proletarians of all countries to unite, Marx announces his ideas that all communist around the globe share the same ideas, they are equal no matter where. “Proletarians of all countries unite!”

Commentary:

Briefly the last chapter but not less significant is this section a summoning of political awareness to the entire communist in Eurasia and possibly the rest of the world. A humble call of action to the proletariat in general, Marx assembles the working class of Germany, France, England, Switzerland and America under a banner of socialism with confidence. He speaks of their affiliations to other parties that represent the bourgeoisie and recognizes that merging with those who don’t want to change will not bring any type of revolution to the system. Those who wish to maintain their power only seek to create coalitions with emerging powers to keep a closer control and surveillance. The proletariat have an insurgency of their own, a goal of their own and their merging enthusiasm is only their inability to proclaim their own sovereignty, I am sure that Marx was aware of that. He encouraged them to seek strength and asylum among one another, among the other proletariat insurgents all over the world, the working class is universal. Marx inspires an idea of globalization that perhaps we are only just witnessing for the first time with Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Libya’s revolt where the proletariat, not singlehandedly without the bourgeoisie are proclaiming their authority, requesting a government that doesn’t rule through fear but through the consent of those governed a request very approximate to Marx’s socialist understanding. There is no doubt that his ideas have been transformed into something he wasn’t intending to preach, thus he himself claimed not to be a Marxist. The last chapter of this manifesto summons the proletariat to become the initiators of the revolution that will set them free, of interest and rent at least.

Hegel

Of all the philosophers we have ‘seen’ so far, it wouldn’t be a bald statement to say that Georg Hegel is by far the most complex one to understand…after reading some of his work such as Phänomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of the Spirit) I can only wonder if he understood himself.

I don’t disregard any of the work I have read, I admit I find it extremely interesting and intriguing… however while going through every sentence I feel like my mind is being twisted by force by a huge hand of alternative interpretation and my own lack of understanding…. Basically, ‘I know what he is saying but I don’t know what he is trying to say’ When I actually do understand what he is trying to say, I start to think if my own interpretation makes sense of his ideas, proves them right or wrong or figure something out to contribute to his perspectives. Sometimes I fail miserably.

The language is very interesting, as with many other philosophers in our encounters we can see certain langue that is common among the ‘philosophical vocabulary’ but not among ours. I wonder what some other colleagues in the seminars think of the idea of ‘consciousness’ of ‘self-evidence’ ‘pure-thought’ ‘empirical analysis’ etc. I wonder how one can achieve any contemplative understanding of the concepts we see, without having a certain reference to the language. Of which I am sure it some of us are absolutely alien to.

Let’s look at some of his main ideas;

The principal concepts evolve around the consciousness and the awareness, examining with a pure eyes, or a look of purity to see reality. (This is already quite a complex matter and it’s only the preface)

The ideas of pure thought, clarity of vision, transparency are commonly sought among many of the philosophers we have studied, and more contemporary thinkers too. This Hegelian pursuit is not very different of that of the current Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso who often speaks of clarity of vision and eyes unclouded, where one philosopher would say ignorance, another would say confusion, in the Dalai Lama’s case is hatred but the point remains.

I agree with Hegel when he criticises René Descartes and his ideas of knowledge before establishing how it is he knows anything. Hegel takes us back to more Greek ideas such as the awareness that we do not know anything for sure (Socrates) but with more elaborate metaphysics and perhaps a language that is more understandable even if he remains misunderstood, it is better not to be understood than understood and regarded as lunatic like Aristotle or perhaps even Plato.

So Hegel’s phenomenology (deriving from the Greek phenom, to appear, to occur) contradicts the Cartesian understanding which he considers it to be illogical due to the impossibility of an infinite regress. The idea explains that we can’t know without first knowing the ‘Absolute’ the entire universal scheme that explains it all. You can’t know how an entire apple looks like if you have only seen half-eaten apples, therefore you can only aware of what you’re looking for but you don’t know how it looks like or what is because you haven’t experienced it, which inherently is self-contradictory because if you don’t know how the entire apple looks like or what it is how can you be sure that it exists? Or how will you know when you’ve found it? This contradiction is what Hegel was so fond of and tried to explain beyond the realm of logics and sought in the realm of antagonists (which our beloved Bertrand Russell despises so much), metaphysics. 

He tries to explain this paradox through the division of consciousness, which is quite interesting and confusing at the same time. The energy of consciousness is the key to the contradiction between knowledge and the idea of knowledge because it allows one to be aware, without before knowing what the absolute is, to seek the absolute, almost like inherent blueprints of the house we have to build and how it looks like.

The idea of consciousness in this form goes against the principal idea of the ‘origin of ideas’ by John Locke such as Tabula Rasa which claims that we are born pure, without any conditions in mind, without any previous ideas other than those we develop ourselves. Hegel says that the condition we are born with is the consciousness, the guide to the Absolute.

All I can contribute to this idea is that we can only elaborate more ideas which we cannot claim are truthful, simply theories based on other ideas and other theories that seem ‘logical’ thus pursuit this idea with contempt. Observation without interpretation is also a key pursuit in this dilemma that goes beyond Hegel, Kant, Locke or Descartes.

But what contribution can I make to any of Hegel’s ideas?

….

There are those who contribute by simply attacking the superficiality and differences of the text itself such as the 20th Century thinking Walter Kaufmann who said

“Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking at the table of contents is a very decided preference for triadic arrangements. ... But these many triads are not presented or deduced by Hegel as so many theses, antitheses, and syntheses. It is not by means of any dialectic of that sort that his thought moves up the ladder to absolute knowledge.”

But I beg to differ, I am sure there is some sort of valuable knowledge that we can obtain from the introspective look of Hegel’s work.

A quick but interesting reference to Hegel can be found in Chris Horie's video. Here's the link:

The Social Contract

The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is an interesting piece of mid-18th century ‘progressive-politics’ work. As a politics student I find in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s texts intriguing amount of information (subject of the following analysis) which is quite enjoyable.
We have to see Rousseau as an architect, as well as other 18th century philosophers and those previous to him he envisioned a certain protocol of government to people’s doctrine in his own fashion that will fulfil man’s needs at best. The Social Contract is the blueprint of this vision.

It has mild controversy, and very little of it can be linked to Rousseau’s thinking without linking it to the time and place he belonged to. This will come later.
The fundamental ideas are quite cohesive, after all he is seeking a ‘political right’ and as such it is only normal that from ideas like his sprung new ideas that helped flourish the French Revolution and the American Revolution… with some discrepancies of course.

First, it is important to identify that Rousseau creates a division in man himself. The division between the individual and the group he belongs to, the people, the ‘sovereign’. An idea similar to that of Karl Marx in a near century in regards to the ‘bourgeoisie’ and the ‘proletariat’ however, within man, this means in private one behaves and express his ideas in a certain way but when one identifies himself as one more person in a governed society then his self-portrait is communal (another idea of identification later developed by Karl Marx). There is the ‘me’ in myself and ‘me’ in my country. There is a behaviour focused on servitude for the greater good and a mental behaviour that must be kept intimate and distant to others.

Rousseau was loyal to the idea of the people being governed through the consent of the population and not by force, particularly by aristocracy or a monarchy which relays in a more stable and traditional hegemony unlike nowadays with fluctuating candidacies every 4 years etc. It may seem less democratic but more stable. This idea was clearly not taken in consideration by the fathers of the United States of America.

The social contract involves discipline of acceptance, tolerance and cooperation. People accept the responsibility of the government in protecting them thus the submission into the rights they swore not to break, a very legitimate, righteous and sustainable form of regime however Rousseau believed in capital punishment given the case where one person breaks this sacred covenant.
I reason this idea with no incredulous beliefs towards Rousseau because I know like everyone else we have studied that he is a victim of his own time and condition thus capital punishment was standardised, however there are more resolute and dignifying ways of ‘re adaptation’ into society instead of such harsh punishment that one can not revoke.

Here is where I differ with Rousseau and quite frankly with our own social contract too, where we punish wrong doers and exclude them from our society in jail for the rest of their life time (if not kill them depending in which country or state within the country they have been prosecuted). What we must understand is that this form of legal punishment doesn’t develop a person’s understanding, doesn’t re insert them adequately into our society or helps them interact with us again in a healthy way; it excludes them, confines them and resents them. Apart from the fact that we might also kill an innocent person.

However this is Scandinavia’s work to do (given their superiority in human rights) and not diseased mid-18th century Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I find quite satisfactory and idealistically inspiring those concepts where he claims that the government is as strong as the people, where one part of the government should be ruled by the whole people… it really does create a unified self-esteem of its own, the morality of the PEOPLE.

The specific political clauses are not extremely relevant but there are interesting points of view that we can apply today. This social contract raises questions regarding how the government conditions us, his most famous quote “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” opens a notorious debate regarding the society one is born into.
We didn’t choose any of the laws we live in, we vote but we don’t choose anything… most of the most important decisions that are made every day have no link to us other than the social, financial or religious repercussions our governments decides to channel through us.

Man’s conditioning, nonetheless is experienced way beyond the political into the natural where we find ourselves born into chains not of bureaucracy but genetics, social class, financial situation, etc. and thus we can only reflect such paradigm into our society and its system. We were born with chains of many kinds.
If we look at India’s casting system, and the principles of the Code of Manu we can see how the chains man is born into are of a political essence that sprung five thousand years ago and only remnants of genetic material have notion of. As well as those they commonly share in the society they live in.

Regardless of how truthful Rousseau’s interpretation of man’s political antithesis of tabula rasa may be, our conditions go much further than those imposed by the government we may have accepted, for they are vessels of the same essence as us.