Korotayev and Schell,
On Tue, 30 Sep 1997, Andrey Korotayev quoted me:
> > The fall of the Soviet Union and fragmenting of the socialist world system
> > has meant a marked decline in freedom for over
> > one-third of world's population.
This is a mangled quote and left to appear as pristine reproduction. I
actually wrote this:
"The fall of the Soviet Union and fragmenting of the socialist world
system has meant a marked decline in freedom and the standards of living
for over one-third of world's population."
The context is important because obviously I find the illusion of
capitalist freedom to be just that: the illusion of choice. Undazzled by
liberal ideals and unimpressed with the promise of sparklies, I have a
different conception of freedom.
> Genosse (incidentally, the equivalent of "comrade" in the GDR was
> Genosse/Parteigenosse, shared by the German communists [together with
> the notion of "Fuehrer"] with the nazis).
Korotayev, what do Fuehrer and Nazis have to do with this discussion?
Don't you think it is really cheap to employ the word "Genosse," used by
Germans just so that you can later add an allusion to Hitler and the Nazi
for the purpose of leaving an even darker cloud of totalitarianism hanging
over my comments?
Genosse Korotayev wants me to ask anybody who lived under Communist Party
rule and I will find that they think they are much better off now. I will
find that they all think like Korotayev. Well, I have talked to a lot of
people from these countries, and I do hear some of them sounding very much
like Korotayev. And those who wield Korotayev's form of argument make the
same errors.
Please take notice that Korotayev speaks for all people who once lived
under Communist rule. He speaks for the monolithic "ourselves." His
interests, and the interests of his comrades, evidently stand as the
general interests. I suppose the fact that most people I talk to from
these countries feel they were better off under the Communist party has
simply to do with my choice of comrades. I am sure that the people with
whom Genosse Korotayev stands have a different subjective impression of
their lot. Either way, such subjectivist evaluations leave no ground upon
which we may stand.
> Or, perhaps, Genosse thinks that he can evaluate the level of our
> freedom better than we ourselves?
Imagine a slave turning to a person standing outside a fence and saying,
"How dare you think you can evaluate the level of our freedom better than
ourselves." The person outside the fence might say, "I am here, and you
are there, and from where I stand, you look like a slave, and I don't
think slavery is freedom." The slave would say, "But because you are there
and I am here is precisely why you cannot judge our freedom. Just ask any
of us here, and they will tell you that we are free. That's the problem
with you people on the other side of the fence, you have enjoyed your
cushy life for so long that you praise the system that released us from
slavery, and you have no idea how difficult that was to try to make a go
at some other lifeway. We are now much happier to return to slavery, thank
you, and we would kindly ask you to refrain from passing such judgments in
the future, they are mindboggling and obviously come from the rants of an
insane man."
Of course, in the story our outsider is a faux outsider because he is
really inside the fence, too; he just gets to work in the big house on the
hill, rather than in the fields. But his apparent privilege among the
other slaves should not be confused with the wealth and power of his
master. This false identity and division perpetuates the illusion for the
slaves, and it perpetuates the division between slaves. It is a false
ideology.
This story reveals more than the form of argument we generally hear from
left anticommunists. It reveals a contradiction in Korotayev's argument
which is also representative of the larger contradiction in this mode of
thinking. Genosse Korotayev supposes that it is just silly dialectical
rationalization to suppose that people are free because they think they
are. I agree completely. The slave in the story above is completely
deluded, and is not free only because he thinks he is (indeed, he is
probably less free because he thinks he is). Korotayev suggests a position
I do not hold. In fact, I do not think it necessarily matters what a
person thinks of themselves in such matters. Reality can be quite a
different thing than the thing that appears in consciousness. I am not a
liberal subjectivist; I do not suppose that preferences stand for material
fact.
But then Genosse Korotayev does exactly this! He adopts the very position
he suggests I hold and he ridicules. By supposing I cannot judge his
freedom from where I stand he is saying that he is free to believe he is
free because he thinks he is. Not only this, but he is saying that all his
comrades are free because he thinks they are. His subjectivity consumes
those he reckons are like himself, and excludes those he thinks cannot
possibly understand (but probably only those who disagree with him; Schell
and others who advance the left anticommunist line probably have the
vision to see that the once oppressed but now liberated are thinking
freedom). But I have no basis to contradict him, lest I fall into the
absurd position of thinking I am better able to judge his, er, I mean
their freedom than he.
As for Bill Schell, he takes my argument and slaps the "Stalinist" label
on it. That works. Now I am "praising" the "Stalinist world." Stalin is a
useful propaganda term because we can rely on the terrifying capitalist
myths about his rule (the reality of Stalin is never good enough for
anticommunists, you see) and in so doing forget about the hundreds of
millions of courageous people who struggled for a better world, who sought
an alternative to capitalism. This is typical anticommunist rhetoric. I
can do no better that to quote Michael Parenti here: "Our fears that
communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact
that anti-communism already has."
Schell contributes to the contradiction by standing with Korotayev against
material reality to suppose that my physical position somehow renders me
incapable for judging matters which are assumed for some reason to be
entirely generated and evaluated by subjective preferencing. We are in the
liberal zone here. I cannot argue with such extreme idealist relativism.
If freedom is only a state of mind, and if physical position completely
incapacitates judgment, then I suppose Korotayev and Schell have even less
to say than I.
Love,
Andy