By: Jonas

Jonas — Tue, 24 May 2005 02:55:36 +0000

Without knowing exactly how your conversations went, allow me to try and expand a bit:
Also, I’m not sure what kind of human development you are talking about but I agree that all systems (even the non-articulated) are flawed and dangerous if you stick to one blindly.
That does not mean that all ideologies are wrong and therefore all the same and all bad. It means that all ideologies fit to a certain kind of circumstances and being able to see, which one is appropriate is very important. Some will never become appropriate.
The dangerous blindness to other options or consequences comes into the picture e.g. when people feel they are threatened.
In Marx’s theories, fear or struggle is an integral part of the ideology and therefore civil liberties in a communist society were always meant to be curbed.
The incursions of peoples’ rights happening in the US these days are not the result of adhering to Liberalism or Capitalism too strictly. They are the result of the sense of fear by having to struggle with terrorists.
Communism – being the path to Socialism as described by Marx – describes a struggle of the working class against the capitalist class as an scientifically proven fact and historical neccesity. In order to defeat the capitalist class a communist dictatorship is therefore necessary to control the struggle. Because that period was a scientific necessity in history according to Marx the communist leaders felt justified in doing anything they wanted. This was after all both an emergency AND destined by fate, they thought.
However, even though the dictatorship-period was only supposed to be transitional, and then develop into socialism, in the end it kept extending and extending.
This happened both because the leaders and ideology where corrupt but most of all because they felt that their mission took emergency precendence over everything else – even human life or liberties.
Marx foresaw that in a period of danger, tighter top-down control was necessary. And so did Bush go centralising power and curbing liberties in America as soon as he felt threatened.
You could argue that in the case of Soviet Russia their problems where due to sticking too much to an ideology and therefore we should be careful of sticking to ideologies as such.
In fact Soviet Russia’s failure was due to them building their system on the basis on an ideology, which perceived everything as an emergency situation. And *that* is what we should be careful of. Not stickng to an ideology per se. If an ideology helps in a given situation, then by all means… The important thing is to be able to look elsewhere when it doesn’t.
Danger comes when you blindly ignore what is happening as a second or third consequence of your emergency decissions.
You can hardly say that Vietnam is strictly communist in a pure sense of the word like Mao saw it when he instigated class struggle as a norm for society. Vietnam, rather, is a place where you get to use whatever work (in Danish: Det Forhaandenvaerende Soems Princip).
That is not “sticking to ideology”. In fact, it is the opposite.
BTW: say hi to Ali from me next time you see her

Comments on: Last Night

By: Jonas