Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
This is the second thread in as many days that has become super-theoretical for me!
I didn't say Stalin wasn't a "Marxist," I said he wasn't a "real Marxist." What I meant by that is that Stalin's interpretation was flawed. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool marxist can't turn their head away from the atrocities committed by Stalin--he was a bad, bad man. Was he an honest realization of the Marxian notion of a post-capitalist, post-class society? Hardly. All he did was replace the older class system with a newer one that was faceless and bureaucratic, but no less oppressive. Stalin's view was one where the individual's needs are subverted to protect a collective authority enforced by the apparatchiks of the state. Marx valued the individual far more--to him, the erasure of the subject was capitalism's greatest crime.
It strikes me that your analysis must be based on an indirect theoretical interpretation of Left Hegelianism. I infer from your comments that you haven't actually encountered Hegel directly. So: a specific question or two about your logic here, which I'm hoping you can clarify for me.
1. How do you get from teleology (the end of history) to a blank slate? One is a historical interpretation of the Hegelian dialectic. The other sounds like enlightenment liberalism, not left Hegelianism--though "tabula rasa" could be aristotelian for all it matters. In fact, it seems to me like the existence of the dialectic contradicts the notion of human nature as a blank slate.
2. That humans can be the producers of their own nature hardly sounds like the erasure of the individual that you seem to fear.
For my money, Marx wasn't a bad guy. He was optimistic--and as for history, he was wrong--demonstrably wrong in hindsight. But his heart was in the right place.
Stalin? Pure evil. Mao? Castro? These are/were not good people. Whatever ideological flag they chose to rap themselves in doesn't change that.
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Well you got me there... I've encountered Marx directly many times, but Hegal only once and that was in a reading to interpret the Kojeve-Strauss debate. Actually, I spend a lot of time doing practical research and have only just started going back into theoretical stuff, so I'm a little rusty.
To me, dialectics and the end of history point towards a blank slate with its definition of Hegalian progress. To Hegal and Marx, progress was an active state, a chosen struggle by humans to end up at a desired endpoint. This differs from say, Lockian tabula rasae, but has the same perspective anyway. If you acknowledge change in the world, than you must also acknowledge active transformation in the human condition. This becomes the basis for the practical elements of Marxist theory. The class struggle can only be completed if everyone agrees with it and those who don't must be eliminated.
Teleology, essentially, becomes secular millenarianism, which has the same perspective of basic human nature, that it needs to be changed.