For episode 31, see here
The Theory of the Nation-State: The Moderns
XXXII. Communism
A. Communism, or Marxism-Leninism, was adaption of Marxism to
epoch of imperialism and particular conditions of Russia (more
generally, non-industrial economies and societies with peasant
populations).
B. Lenin led the Bolsheviks, favoring a vanguard party approach
against the Menshevik faction favoring a democratic party.
C. Lenin pointed out that workers do not become socialists but
trade unionists so socialism must be brought to them from
outside by middle class intellectuals.
1. Democracy consists of not running ahead of people (by
advocating what they cannot follow) or lagging behind.
2. Vanguard party provides goals that will work without undue
use of force.
3. The party has science in Marixsm (rather than doctrine of
religion).
4. The party also has a dedicated, disciplined elite.
5. Democratic centralism, freedom of discussion before the
decision is made but not after.
"The dialectic, Lenin wrote in one of his notebooks, is 'the idea of
the universal, all-sided, living connection of everything with every-
thing, and the reflection of this connection in the conceptions of
man.'" (820)
D. Lenin and Trotsky argued for a combined bourgeois and
proletarian revolution in backward countries.
1. Proletarian revolution in Russia had to include, at least
initially, the peasants.
2. Could only succeed, however, if hooked up to proletarian
revolutions in the West.
3. Alliance with the peasants was first revolution, shift to
European proletariat would be the second.
4. Extension of capital to underdeveloped nations becomes
necessary when monopolies are established in home markets.
5. Imperialism results and competition between imperialists
become war.
6. High profits from imperialist exploitation enables imperialists
to pay off their own workers.
7. This condition is artificial and the European proletariat will
become revolutionary in line with Marx's predictions.
8. The oppressed nations would then add to the proletariat.
9. Proletarian nations would be most likely to produce revolution.
E. But with the outbreak of WWI in 1914, Western socialist parties led
their proletariat to patriotic support of the war.
F. Upon success of the revolution first and solely in Russia, Lenin
found only one tangible, usable institution, the party.
G. Stalin added the concept of socialism in one country.
H. State transformation of the economic base cut final tie with
conventional meaning of economic determinism.
Next week: Fascism and National Socialism
For episode 30, see here
The Theory of the Nation-State: The Moderns
XXXI. Marx and Dialectical Materialism
A. Marx transformed Hegel's struggle of nature into a struggle of
classes thereby taking away nationalism, conservatism and
its counter-revolutionary character and becoming a powerful
form of revolutionary radicalism.
1. Marx accepted dialectic as a logical method.
2. For both the driving force of social change is the struggle
for power.
B. Marx perceived the importance of the rise to political self-
consciousness of the industrial working class.
C. Saw the French Revolution and the resulting rise of natural
rights in politics and economics as a prelude to social
revolution.
D. Marx and Hegel provided cause greater than oneself as the
only reward to individual.
E. History (with a big "H") takes the place of God for Marxist
revolutionist because Historical necessity provides cause and
effect, desirability and moral obligation.
F. Marx studies Hegel at the University of Berlin under materialist
Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach.
G. Economic materialism sees that social development depends
upon the evolution of the forces of economic production.
H. Marx tended to equate "materialism" with "scientific."
1. Also implied radical rejection of religion.
2. Materialism and dialectics suggested a new and far-reaching
revolution by giving materialism an ethical dimension:
economics as the root of social inequality.
I. Marx's belief that socialist society would extend political liberty
never depended on analysis of socialism but only on a priori
belief that in a developing society, nothing of worth would be lost.
J. Understood through the dialectic, economic determinism did not
mean cause and effect but through economic factors operating
as semi-personalized agents of creative energies.
K. The individual counts mainly through his membership in his
class because his ideas reflect the ideas generated by class.
L. Marx's theory of cultural development:
1. A succession of stages each of which is dominated by a
typical system of production and exchange of goods.
i. The system of production forces generates its own
characteristic and appropriate ideology including;
ii. law, politics, morals, religion, art and philosophy
2. Whole process is dialectical with its motive force supplied
by internal tensions created by the disparities between a
newly evolving system of production and the persisting
ideology of the old.
3. The forces of production are always primary as compared
to the secondary, ideological consequences.
4. Dialectical development is an internal process of unfolding
or of vitalistic realization.
M. Marx and Friedrich Engels rejected the idealist interpretation of
dialectic as self-development of thought, saw instead the self-
development of nature itself reflected in thought.
"The notion that ideology may in some cases affect what figures in a
society as a standard of truth has, however, produced the rather large
body of theory now known as sociology of knowledge."
N. "Ideology," "economic determinism," and "class struggle" are
core theoretical concepts of Marx's social philosophy from
which two divergent political strategies emerged:
1. Evolutionary party socialism.
2. Revolutionary communism.
Next week: Communism
For episode 27, see here
The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns
XXVIII. Hegel: Dialectic and Nationalism
A. The typical conclusions of the Enlightenment:
1. Hume showed ambiguities of "reason."
2. Rousseau set up reasons of the heart (sentiment) against reasons
of the head.
3. Immanuel Kant sharpened contrast of science and morals (and between
theoretical and practical reason) to preserve both.
4. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel sought unifying synthesis through
transcending analytic logic of science.
B. Hegel proposed dialectic to demonstrate logical relationship between
fact and value.
C. Revolution seen by many, including Hegel, as destructive, doctrinaire
attempt to remake society and human nature.
1. Therefore necessity of reconstruction of continuity of national
institutions.
2. But was to be reconstruction of stability by the creative forces
of the nation.
D. The nation, not the individual, is the significant unit of history via the
genius or spirit of the nation -- Volksgeist.
E. Hegel's political philosophy built around the dialectic and the theory
of the nation state as the embodiment of political power. (These two
did not necessarily entail each other.)
F. The historical method:
1. Method of studying history also could be applicable to other
social studies.
2. Mode of deriving from the order of historical events standards
of valuation with which to access significance of particular
stages in evolution (a philosophy of history).
3. Assumed single pattern or law of development that can be
exhibited by a proper arrangement of subject matter.
4. Order is not imposed but immanent.
5. Standards progressively revealed in evolution of morals,
law, etc., provides historically objective standard of values
to fill vacant place of natural law.
6. Hegel sought to show necessary stages by which reason
approximates the Absolute.
7. Understanding and reason were faculties of analysis and
synthesis respectively and dialectic unites the two.
8. Understand "breaks up" organic wholes, it is the philosophic
basis of indivualism.
i. fosters illusion that men can remake society
ii. misses organic creative continuous growth
9. Only reason can see below historical detail to perceive forces
that really control events and thus understand that the process
should be as it is.
G. In study of religion, following Herder and Lessing, saw succession of
world religions as progressive revelation of religious truth.
H. Thought Western civilization product of Greek free intelligence and
deeper moral and religious insights of Christianity.
I. The process of development of the spirit of a people:
1. Period of "natural" happy but largely unconscious spontaneity
(thesis).
2. Period of painful frustration and self-consciousness in which
the spirit is "turned inward" and loses its spontaneous
creativeness (antithesis).
3. Period in which spirit " returns to itself" at a higher level
embodying insight gained from frustration (synthesis).
4. The total process is "thought."
J. Hegel saw freedom as existing only within bounds of a nation state.
1. The state is the expression (de facto power) of national unity and
a national aspiration to self-government.
2. The state is consistent with any lack of uniformity which does not
prevent effectively unified government (such as class differences).
3. With Machiavelli saw no higher duty for the state than its own
strengthening and preservation.
4. The state is the realm in which the Idea of Reason materializes
itself (The German Constitution, 1802).
K. Realization of national spirit contributes to progressive realization of
the world spirit and is the source of dignity and worth that attaches
to private concerns of individuals.
1. Freedom is voluntary dedication to that realization.
2. National monarchy is the highest form of constitutional government.
L. Dialectic and historical necessity (The Philosophy of Right, 1821).
1. Dialectic is the new method.
2. History of a people records the growth of a single national
mentality that expresses itself in all phases of its culture.
"The individual is for the most part only an accidental variant of the culture
that created him and insofar as he is different his individuality is more
likely to be capricious than signficant."
3. Dialectic is the opposition of forces moving in orderly equilibrium
and emerging in a pattern of progressive, logical development.
4. Contradiction means fruitful opposition between systems that
constitutes an objective criticism of each and leads continually to
a more inclusive and coherent system. (Dialectic could manifest as
evolution or revolution.)
M. Hegel claimed dialectic as logic of reason to supersede logic of
understanding.
1. Dialectic both moral judgement and causal law of historical
development.
2. Unites relativism with the absolutism.
N. Dialectic offered no criterion of rightness except success of outcome.
O. Hegel: individualism and theory of the state.
1. Individualism had no hold in Hegel's Germany and the same with
sense of national unity.
2. Hegel's Philosophy of Right deals with the relationships between
individual and the social and economic institutions.
3. Placed state as on a level of political evolution above civil
society (the result of the end of feudal law and institutions).
4. Revolution's ideals of liberty and equality made state a mere
matter of private interest, a utilitarian device for satisfying private
needs elevating abstract individualism over society and state.
5. The individual's best interest lies in being a member of society and
the state.
6. Individualism indifferent to moral and spiritual development of
personality by falsifying the nature of social institutions through
regarding them only as accidental and mere utilitarian devices to
satisfy irrational needs
7. Hegel shared the "Greek notion" of citizenship not in terms of private
rights but of social functions.
P. Hegel saw individual motives as capricious and sentimental, with civil
civil society as a realm of mechanical necessity, a result of irrational
forces of a society.
1. Society, apart from the state, is governed by non-moral causal laws
and hence ethically anarchical.
2. Only the state embodied ethical values and ought therefore to be
absolute.
3. Individual attains moral dignity only as he devotes himself to
the state.
4. Hegel's theory of freedom implied nothing definite in the way of
civil or political liberties but he did not reject them in practice.
5. The state depends on civil society as the means of accomplishing
the moral purpose it embodies.
6. The state is absolute but not arbitrary, it must rule through law and
law is "rational."
7. Civil society consists of corporations and the legislature is where
they meet the state.
8. The legislature only advisory to the ministry of the governing class
or "universal class."
Q. Hegel's constitutionalism not liberal (i.e., democratic procedures)
but based on orderly bureaucratic administration not subject to
to public opinion but to the public spirit of an official class that
stands above conflicts of economic and social interests.
R. Hegel united Rousseau's general will (the manifestation of the
spiritual force forming the core of reality) and Burke's religious
vision of history as a "divine tactic."
S. Replaced eternal system of unchangeable natural law with a
rational unfolding of the Absolute in History.
1. Reason manifested itself in social groups not individuals.
2. Society seen as system of forces rather than community of
individuals.
3. Highlighted importance of historical study of institutions but
left individual actions as merely a "reflection" of social forces.
4. Can be seen as giving rise to Marxism (a direct link), the English
liberalism of Oxford idealists and the Italian fascists.
Next week: Liberalism -- Philosophical Radicalism
