Žižek interview

I can't get enough of Žižek! He has become one of a handful of (living) philosophers to follow  extensively and in depth, alongside Giorgio Agamben, Jürgen Habermas and -- in a more specific domain -- Joseph Raz.

Žižek's style and approach have even earned him the quasi-sobriquet "Elvis of cultural theory" (thanks to the simplistic New York Times). As a public intellectual and iconoclast, he may one day be as important -- though probably not as militant and admired -- as Noam Chomsky.

Here is an interview given on 15 October 2009 to Democracy Now!, where he addresses a range of current topics:

Žižek on atheism

An Op-Ed piece by Žižek published in the 13 March 2006 edition of The New York Times, on an issue far from unheard of in this blog:

Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for

LONDON — For centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?

More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.

This argument couldn't have been more wrong: The lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted - at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than the "godless" Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted, since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism.

Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume made this point poignantly when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.

Two years ago, Europeans were debating whether the preamble of the European Constitution should mention Christianity. As usual, a compromise was worked out, a reference in general terms to the "religious inheritance" of Europe. But where was modern Europe's most precious legacy, that of atheism? What makes modern Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.

Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public space for believers. Consider the debate that raged in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, my home country, as the constitutional controversy simmered: should Muslims (mostly immigrant workers from the old Yugoslav republics) be allowed to build a mosque? While conservatives opposed the mosque for cultural, political and even architectural reasons, the liberal weekly journal Mladina was consistently outspoken in its support for the mosque, in keeping with its concern for the rights of those from other former Yugoslav republics.

Not surprisingly, given its liberal attitudes, Mladina was also one of the few Slovenian publications to reprint the caricatures of Muhammad. And, conversely, those who displayed the greatest "understanding" for the violent Muslim protests those cartoons caused were also the ones who regularly expressed their concern for the fate of Christianity in Europe.

These weird alliances confront Europe's Muslims with a difficult choice: The only political force that does not reduce them to second-class citizens and allows them the space to express their religious identity are the "godless" atheist liberals, while those closest to their religious social practice, their Christian mirror-image, are their greatest political enemies.

The paradox is that Muslims' only real allies are not those who first published the caricatures for shock value, but those who, in support of the ideal of freedom of expression, reprinted them.

While a true atheist has no need to bolster his own stance by provoking believers with blasphemy, he also refuses to reduce the problem of the Muhammad caricatures to one of respect for other's beliefs. Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: Either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple "regimes of truth," disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth.

What about submitting Islam - together with all other religions - to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as adults responsible for their beliefs.

Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of "The Parallax View."

La Terreur/The Terror

From the Marxists.org's Robespierre Archive:

"Robespierre February 1794

On the Principles of Political Morality

---

Source: Modern History SourceBook, Paul Halsall August 1997;
First Published : M. Robespierre, Report upon the Principles of Political Morality Which Are to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Interior Concerns of the Republic (Philadelphia, 1794).

---

Citizens, Representatives of the People:

Some time since we laid before you the principles of our exterior political system, we now come to develop the principles of political morality which are to govern the interior. After having long pursued the path which chance pointed out, carried away in a manner by the efforts of contending factions, the Representatives of the People at length acquired a character and produced a form of government. A sudden change in the success of the nation announced to Europe the regeneration which was operated in the national representation. But to this point of time, even now that I address you, it must be allowed that we have been impelled thro' the tempest of a revolution, rather by a love of right and a feeling of the wants of our country, than by an exact theory, and precise rules of conduct, which we had not even leisure to sketch.

It is time to designate clearly the purposes of the revolution and the point which we wish to attain: It is time we should examine ourselves the obstacles which yet are between us and our wishes, and the means most proper to realize them: A consideration simple and important which appears not yet to have been contemplated. Indeed, how could a base and corrupt government have dared to view themselves in the mirror of political rectitude? A king, a proud senate, a Caesar, a Cromwell; of these the first care was to cover their dark designs under the cloak of religion, to covenant with every vice, caress every party, destroy men of probity, oppress and deceive the people in order to attain the end of their perfidious ambition. If we had not had a task of the first magnitude to accomplish; if all our concern had been to raise a party or create a new aristocracy, we might have believed, as certain writers more ignorant than wicked asserted, that the plan of the French revolution was to be found written in the works of Tacitus and of Machiavel; we might have sought the duties of the representatives of the people in the history of Augustus, of Tiberius, or of Vespasian, or even in that of certain French legislators; for tyrants are substantially alike and only differ by trifling shades of perfidy and cruelty.

For our part we now come to make the whole world partake in your political secrets, in order that all friends of their country may rally at the voice of reason and public interest, and that the French nation and her representatives be respected in all countries which may attain a knowledge of their true principles; and that intriguers who always seek to supplant other intriguers may be judged by public opinion upon settled and plain principles.

Every precaution must early be used to place the interests of freedom in the hands of truth, which is eternal, rather than in those of men who change; so that if the government forgets the interests of the people or falls into the hands of men corrupted, according to the natural course of things, the light of acknowledged principles should unmask their treasons, and that every new faction may read its death in the very thought of a crime.

Happy the people that attains this end; for, whatever new machinations are plotted against their liberty, what resources does not public reason present when guaranteeing freedom!

What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them.

We wish that order of things where all the low and cruel passions are enchained, all the beneficent and generous passions awakened by the laws; where ambition subsists in a desire to deserve glory and serve the country: where distinctions grow out of the system of equality, where the citizen submits to the authority of the magistrate, the magistrate obeys that of the people, and the people are governed by a love of justice; where the country secures the comfort of each individual, and where each individual prides himself on the prosperity and glory of his country; where every soul expands by a free communication of republican sentiments, and by the necessity of deserving the esteem of a great people: where the arts serve to embellish that liberty which gives them value and support, and commerce is a source of public wealth and not merely of immense riches to a few individuals.

We wish in our country that morality may be substituted for egotism, probity for false honour, principles for usages, duties for good manners, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, a contempt of vice for a contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for tinsel show, the attractions of happiness for the ennui of sensuality, the grandeur of man for the littleness of the great, a people magnanimous, powerful, happy, for a people amiable, frivolous and miserable; in a word, all the virtues and miracles of a Republic instead of all the vices and absurdities of a Monarchy.

We wish, in a word, to fulfill the intentions of nature and the destiny of man, realize the promises of philosophy, and acquit providence of a long reign of crime and tyranny. That France, once illustrious among enslaved nations, may, by eclipsing the glory of all free countries that ever existed, become a model to nations, a terror to oppressors, a consolation to the oppressed, an ornament of the universe and that, by sealing the work with our blood, we may at least witness the dawn of the bright day of universal happiness. This is our ambition, - this is the end of our efforts....

Since virtue and equality are the soul of the republic, and that your aim is to found, to consolidate the republic, it follows, that the first rule of your political conduct should be, to let all your measures tend to maintain equality and encourage virtue, for the first care of the legislator should be to strengthen the principles on which the government rests. Hence all that tends to excite a love of country, to purify manners, to exalt the mind, to direct the passions of the human heart towards the public good, you should adopt and establish. All that tends to concenter and debase them into selfish egotism, to awaken an infatuation for littlenesses, and a disregard for greatness, you should reject or repress. In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy. Carried away, too often perhaps, by the force of ancient habits, as well as by the innate imperfection of human nature, to false ideas and pusillanimous sentiments, we have more to fear from the excesses of weakness, than from excesses of energy. The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. I need not say that I am not here justifying any excess. Principles the most sacred may be abused: the wisdom of government should guide its operations according to circumstances, it should time its measures, choose its means; for the manner of bringing about great things is an essential part of the talent of producing them, just as wisdom is an essential attribute of virtue....

It is not necessary to detail the natural consequences of the principle of democracy, it is the principle itself, simple yet copious, which deserves to be developed.

Republican virtue may be considered as it respects the people and as it respects the government. It is necessary in both. When however, the government alone want it, there exists a resource in that of the people; but when the people themselves are corrupted liberty is already lost.

Happily virtue is natural in the people, [despite] aristocratical prejudices. A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having, by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude....

But, when, by prodigious effects of courage and of reason, a whole people break asunder the fetters of despotism to make of the fragments trophies to liberty; when, by their innate vigor, they rise in a manner from the arms of death, to resume all the strength of youth when, in turns forgiving and inexorable, intrepid and docile, they can neither be checked by impregnable ramparts, nor by innumerable armies of tyrants leagued against them, and yet of themselves stop at the voice of the law; if then they do not reach the heights of their destiny it can only be the fault of those who govern.

Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves....

If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is not the lightning of heaven made to blast vice exalted?

The law of self-preservation, with every being whether physical or moral, is the first law of nature. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. If tyranny reigned one single day not a patriot would survive it. How long yet will the madness of despots be called justice, and the justice of the people barbarity or rebellion? - How tenderly oppressors and how severely the oppressed are treated! Nothing more natural: whoever does not abhor crime cannot love virtue. Yet one or the other must be crushed. Let mercy be shown the royalists exclaim some men. Pardon the villains! No: be merciful to innocence, pardon the unfortunate, show compassion for human weakness.

The protection of government is only due to peaceable citizens; and all citizens in the republic are republicans. The royalists, the conspirators, are strangers, or rather enemies. Is not this dreadful contest, which liberty maintains against tyranny, indivisible? Are not the internal enemies the allies of those in the exterior? The assassins who lay waste the interior; the intriguers who purchase the consciences of the delegates of the people: the traitors who sell them; the mercenary libellists paid to dishonor the cause of the people, to smother public virtue, to fan the flame of civil discord, and bring about a political counter revolution by means of a moral one; all these men, are they less culpable or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve? ...

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. The severity of tyrants has barbarity for its principle; that of a republican government is founded on beneficence. Therefore let him beware who should dare to influence the people by that terror which is made only for their enemies! Let him beware, who, regarding the inevitable errors of civism in the same light, with the premeditated crimes of perfidiousness, or the attempts of conspirators, suffers the dangerous intriguer to escape and pursues the peaceable citizen! Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defence, to carry mourning or death to the patriotic heart...."

"Another China Rising"

From Counterfire.org:

Another China rising

Thursday, 05 August 2010 17:28

Written by Chris Nineham

As a rising labour movement gains strength in China, the reprint of Harold Isaacs's classic Marxist history of the Chinese revolution provides both inspiration and a warning from history, writes Chris Nineham.

As all eyes are on China, the reprint of this classic Marxist history should be a major event. The book is not about Mao’s peasant led 1949 revolution but the story of the great worker led insurrection of 1925 to 1927. It is an extraordinary half-buried story of popular uprising and political betrayal, brilliantly told. And even though it was written in 1937 it’s a story that throws much light on China’s subsequent development.

Despite its relative obscurity, the Chinese revolution of the 20’s was a major turning point. Isaac’s book helps explain the shape of revolutionary struggle in the twentieth century and up to our day. It gives context to the defeat of the working class internationally in the 1920s and 30s. It also helps to explain the pattern of so many anti colonial uprisings which often succeeded in throwing out colonial occupiers but never in solving the problems of the mass of the population.

It suggests too an alternative model for liberation in the developing world. We are witnessing a new series of struggles for democratic and social change against authoritarian regimes from Burma to Egypt, from Thailand to Nepal. Chinese workers themselves are taking strike action on a scale not seen since the 1970’s. Isaacs’s book is an inspiration and a warning.

The seeds of revolt

Isaacs lived in China for the first part of the 1930s and he outlines the background of desperate economic suffering and imperial oppression in early twentieth century China with a rare combination of anger and insight.

The secret to the revolutionary period was that social change came late and therefore in a concentrated, explosive way to China. The country was drawn into the capitalist world by colonial brutality. The British devastated the export trade and social fabric of China during the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century. They used opium to force entry in to Chinese markets.

The attention of colonial powers had a contradictory impact on China. As well as wiping out traditional manufacturing it created a layer of comprador capitalists who made huge fortunes. The colonialists’ sponsorship of merchants, landlords, officials and warlords helped to perpetuate pre-capitalist forms of organisation but at the same time they introduced the most modern forms of production.
The new market relations ruined millions of peasants whose families had survived off their small plots for generations. Meanwhile the industrial development that was being grafted onto the country in such a chaotic way sucked millions into unprepared cities creating a rapidly growing, immiserated working class.

The movement against imperialism began to stir during the First World War. One fascinating section of the book outlines the impact of the Russian Revolution on the East. Isaacs describes how a combination of war weariness and the example of the Russian revolution generated national and anti-colonial revolts in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Indo-China, and Korea and beyond. The revolution’s impact was reinforced when the new workers’ government withdrew its claims on foreign territory in China and elsewhere. The revolution also embodied vital theoretical and strategic lessons.

As it turned out the importance of the Russian Revolution was double-edged. It helped unleash rebellion across the region, but the immense and unchallenged authority it gave to the Russian State became a liability.

The great divide in Chinese society was between the new industrialists, bankers, brokers, capitalist landowners (local and foreign), and the mass of the poor. While the Chinese bourgeoisie played a subservient role to the foreigners and no doubt fantasised about independent capitalist development, the gulf between them and the poor was much greater than any antagonism with their foreign colleagues. For Isaacs, ‘this fundamental fact predetermined the unity of the Chinese and foreign exploiters against the exploited.’

The spreading revolutionary mood collided with the plans of Japanese imperialism and the cynicism of the imperialist horse traders at the treaty of Versailles. On May 4, 1919 there were huge student demonstrations in Peking which were quickly joined by striking workers, some of whose leaders had laboured abroad during the war and had had contact with the socialist movement.

Though the movement led to a huge revival in the mainstream nationalist Kuomintang, it also led to the growth of Marxist and socialist circles, many of which came together in 1920 to form the Chinese Communist Party.

Communists and nationalists

The central problem of the Chinese Revolution was the relationship between the left and the nationalist movement. There was never any doubt that the Communists should fight at the forefront of the anti-imperialist movement. But a new policy was developed by the Communist International for China, which led to a deal between Soviet diplomats and nationalist Kuomintang leader Sun Yat Sen. In January 1923 the two sides issued a joint communiqué agreeing that ‘the conditions did not exist in China for the successful establishment of socialism or communism’ and that the immediate aim for China should be the ‘achievement of national union and national independence.’

This was a clean break from the strategy agreed by the second world congress of the Communist International in 1922 and from the whole Bolshevik policy that culminated in revolution in October 1917. It meant an end to political and organisational independence of the Chinese Communist Party and an uncritical adoption of nationalist policies. The turn was justified by the novel argument that the Kuomintang was not the party of the emerging bourgeoisie but a party in which all classes united in common cause against the foreign interloper.

Isaacs argues this nonsense was a rationalisation of a pragmatic change of course in Russia. Listening to the experiences of the activists he interviewed convinced him of the correctness of Trotskys’s analysis of the defeat in China and its connection witrh the degeneration of the Russian revolution. The development of the ‘two stages’ theory of revolution embodied the realism of the emerging Stalinist leadership. It marked a turn away from an internationalist policy of spreading revolution to realpolitik of alliances with ‘progressive sections of the bourgeoisie’. It was part of an accommodation to capitalist reality and it set the pattern for communist policy internationally.

It was a policy that was pursued with great energy by the Chinese Communist Party. Their leaders went out of their way in a series of open letters, articles, telegrams and meetings to reassure the nationalists that there was no prospect of the party threatening the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The results of the policy were catastrophic. The militancy and initiative of the Chinese working class reached great heights. General strikes had spread from Honk Kong and Canton in 1925 and helped create the first power base for the nationalist Kuomintang in Guandong in the South. They also triggered peasant insurgencies across Southern China.

Workers led an insurrection in Shanghai on 21 March 1927 in advance of the approach of the nationalist army. The city was brought to a standstill by a general strike in which more than half a million workers played an active role. A workers militia of 5,000 took the main police stations and military outposts. Although they started off with just 150 pistols in one day they confiscated enough guns to lead the workers in an assault on the key arsenal in the South of the city. There the soldiers surrendered without a fight and the workers were able to arm themselves fully and take the other key strategic targets in the city.

By the time the nationalist troops arrived, all of Shanghai was in the hands of the workers with the exception international settlement and the French concession where foreigners cowered, fearing for their lives.

The Shanghai insurrection deepened the rebellion on the land. To the horror of the Kuomintang leaders the slogan ‘Down with the bad landowners’ turned into the longer but rather more radical ‘all who have land are oppressive and there are no gentry who are not bad.’ In Isaacs’ words the shockwaves from the workers action had helped ‘generate the realisation amongst the toilers on the land that they too were human beings, that they too existed. From that, the will to live not as an animal but as a man, hurled not one but
millions of toilers into a struggle against the system that had made them the packhorses of a civilisation thousands of years old’.

The great Chinese revolt of spring and summer 1927 confirmed Lenin and Trotsky’s analysis that even in the most impoverished and underdeveloped countries revolutionary action led by workers can defeat the best armed ruling classes and change the course of history. This was the basis on which they both fought for the revolution in October 1917.

The tragedy was that the Chinese experience of 1927 also became a negative confirmation of Lenin and Trotsky’s views. Both of them had concluded that the middle classes could no longer be relied upon to play any progressive role, even in anti-imperialist struggles. This was the starting point for Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution and the rationale for the Russian October. But it was this insight that the Communist International had abandoned when it ordered the Chinese Communists into an uncritical ‘alliance of equals’ with the Kuomintang.

The great betrayal

When Kuomintang leader Chaing Kai-Shek landed at Shanghai on the afternoon of 26 March 1927 he was welcomed as a hero by the CP-led workers. The next day a demonstration of 50,000 filled the streets to greet him. The communist leaders failed to inform the workers that the nationalist army had delayed its advance on Shanghai in the hope that the workers movement would be contained or crushed by counter revolutionary forces.

Now the nationalist leaders had to take the situation into their own hands. The workers’ movement had served its purpose for them. It had given Chinese bankers and merchants a lever with which to extract concessions from the foreign capitalists. Now it had to be broken.

The process had started earlier in February when Chiang Kai-Shek had ordered the dissolution of the communist-led Kuomintang in the militant city of Nanching. Leaders had been arrested and the unions and student organisations had been suppressed. Once again the communist leadership failed to explain these facts to the Shanghai workers.
In Shanghai the repression had to be planned more carefully and reach a much higher level.

Chiang prepared the ground by removing garrisons sympathetic to the workers and drafting in soldiers fresh from the country. He organised made deals with occupying armies, particularly the French, but including British and Japanese units. He appeased the communist workers for a few weeks before unleashing a co-ordinated wave of terror.
Unarmed demonstrators were massacred with machine guns, working class areas were terrorised, activists picked up in their hundreds in dawn raids while special courts threw thousands into prison.

Thanks to the policies and active collaboration of the communist leaders the working class was taken completely off guard and was unable to defend itself effectively.

The carnival of reaction that followed was evidence of the fact that every section of the Chinese bourgeoisie felt in the end of the day closer to the imperialist capitalists than to the Chinese masses. There were of course different sections of the Chinese bourgeoisie. The comprador capitalists, brokers of foreign capital, were the most conservative and corrupt section of the Kuomintang alliance. But once the workers’ rebellion was in full swing even the most liberal of the Chinese middle classes became alarmed. They acknowledged that the labour movement had been useful but the feeling grew, in the words of one amongst them, that ‘it is one thing to utilize the workers… but quite another to let them bite off more than they can chew.’

Unbelievably the Communist Party learnt nothing from this disaster of Shanghai. A year after the massacre, Mao Tse Tung, the future leader of the Red Army, was once more promising the nationalist leaderships that the party had renounced the struggle for workers’ power. He even provided guarantees that if the forces of revolution raise their heads again the Chinese Communist Party would play the role of executioner.

The result of such capitulation was the decimation of the working class movement and the Communist Party through bitter demoralisation and sheer terror. Bizarrely the CP responded with a sharp left turn and a call to prepare for insurrection. But internal Comintern documents admitted that the CCP had no surviving groups in any of the great industrial centres.

The legacy

The damage was lasting. Remaining leftists fled to the countryside and formed armed groups that sought support amongst the peasantry. There was such a sense of betrayal and distrust amongst the peasants that they often drove Communist Party members out of their districts. In other areas these declassed Red Army groups managed to rebuild relations with the peasants and regroup. Mao himself was involved in the desperate defensive manoeuvre that was later to be as the Long March. But the Communist Party lost all connection with the organised workers.

Meanwhile free from any pressure from its left, the Kuomintang fought a half-hearted and purely military struggle against the Japanese occupiers. They relied on British and American aid even though neither state was prepared to openly oppose Japan’s actions and both had ambitions to dominate the region themselves. Such alliances were preferable for the Chinese capitalists to any attempt to stir up mass resistance to the Japanese. The war continued indecisively, exhausting the economy and the country.

In 1935 the Communist International made a turn away from any semblance of revolutionary policy. Frightened by the defeat of the German workers and the rise of Hitler, Stalin turned to a policy of wooing the western democracies as potential allies
against fascism. The Communist International announced its struggle was now not for workers’ revolution but for bourgeois democracy. Communist parties everywhere were officially suspending hostility towards capitalist governments in return for alliances with Moscow. What remained of the party in China moved towards another deal with its own butcher, the Kuomintang.

The turn in the Communists fortunes came on the basis of a concerted peasant war against the Japanese and then the Kuomintang itself. When it came a decade after Isaacs wrote his book, the liberation of China was led by the Communist Party. Mao Tse Tung, who had rebuilt his support amongst the peasantry, led a decisive struggle against the discredited Kuomintang. The world started talking of a 'victory for communism' in China. The Chinese Communist Party was however to characterise its military victory over the Kuomintang as the 'victory of the national bourgeois democratic revolution' which had begun 38 years earlier. And for good reason.

The theory of the two stages of the revolution had been completely internalised by the world Communist movement. What this really amounted to was the internalisation of bourgeois nationalist politics, the accommodation of Marxism to the demands of national capitalist development. Workers played no role in the final liberation of the China, not because they were unorganised, but because they were told not to by the CP. As they approached the cities Red Army leaders sent orders ahead that ‘workers and employers in all trades will continue to work and business will operate as usual.’ When Mao announced that the transformation to socialism would come later what he meant was workers rights would have to wait and workers aspirations would have to be put on hold, as the first and only priority was capital accumulation.

For all the romantic myths that surround Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were nothing but the working out of the brutal logic of the two stage revolution. They were centralised and savage attempts to increase work discipline and productivity. The project of state-led capitalist development succeeded in driving China forward but at a terrible price.

Now Chinese workers have started to rebel against the conditions created by the final accommodation of the Chinese Communist Party: the opening to the market. The tragic story of the workers insurrection of the 1920’s shows how history could have taken a very different course. The working class is incomparably stronger than it was in the twenties but anyone fighting for workers’ rights, democracy and social change today would do well to investigate the half forgotten story of the Chinese revolution and study its lessons. Isaacs’ book is a fine place to start.

A debate on emancipation

The brilliant Slavoj Žižek once again, this time giving a lecture on revolutionary politics in the present juncture of Marxism's evolution:

The ideal Idea

The forgotten revolutionary

Everybody has heard of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, the modern, Pop-Art-like pin-up fetishistic symbol of 'revolution' (misguided rebellion or simple rebelliousness would be more correct descriptions of the 'thingification' of Che's image, persona and memory as commercial or cultural commodities).

How many, however, remember Buenaventura Durruti, the visionary anarchist and leader of the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War, who perished in his prime as a standard-bearer for all true libertarians and socialists?

Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936)

To illustrate his courage, idealism and comradeship, below are comments made by Durruti in August 1936 to Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Daily Star:

"For us", said Durruti, "it is a matter of crushing Fascism once and for all. Yes; and in spite of the Government".

"No government in the world fights Fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to Fascism to maintain itself. The Liberal Government of Spain could have rendered the Fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it compromised and dallied. Even now at this moment, there are men in this Government who want to go easy on the rebels."

And here Durruti laughed. "You can never tell, you know, the present Government might yet need these rebellious forces to crush the workers' movement . . ."

"We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and tranquillity the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to Fascist barbarians by Stalin. We want revolution here in Spain, right now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and Italian working class on how to deal with Fascism."

"I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any Government in the world. . . . We expect no help, not even from our own Government, in the last analysis."

"But", interjected van Paasen, "You will be sitting on a pile of ruins."

Durruti answered: "We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute."

All wrong

These 'comrades' were all wrong.
Marx and Engels, the first two (from the left), did not err in their philosophy, untested during their lifetimes, but were wrong in their 'utopianism': in hindsight, they expected too much from the 'leadership' of the working classes and from collective ownership, and too little from capitalism, which survived and evolved.
Lenin, the one in the middle, had some progressive ideas but ultimately became a dictator and planted the seeds for the following characters.
Stalin and Mao, the last two, were, on both counts -- theory and practice -- utterly wrong; they caused untold horrors through the addition of personality cults, violence, criminality and autocracy to their errors in thought and judgement.
How does the saying go? Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The boatman's (h)arbour

From Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' album The Boatman's Call (1997), the wonderful song "Lime Tree Arbour":

The journey upside down

Al-Idrisi's Tabula Rogeriana, drawn in 1154 for Roger II, the Norman King of Sicily, is oriented southwards, with North at the bottom:

The Borgia mappa mundi, ca. 1430, was likewise conceived, with South at the top:

The final journey (III)

To the end of days: the destruction of the Earth as the Sun expands before dying as a white dwarf:

The final journey (II)

To nothingness, that which does not exist, deprived of being, and that which I, as an atheist, am convinced is our ultimate individual fate, therefore:

The final journey (I)

The Fields of Elysium:

According to Pindar, the island of Elysium, ruled by the Titan Kronos, is where the souls of the virtuous rest in the Underworld:

And those that have three times kept to their oaths,
Keeping their souls clean and pure,
Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint
Of evil and injustice,
And barbaric venality,
They are led by Zeus to the end:
To the palace of Kronos.

The journey upriver to perdition

Read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness here, in full view and for free.

Come here to listen to the audio version of the masterpiece (QuickTime Player plug-in required).

The art of the lonely boatman

Claude Monet, Le Bateau-atelier, 1876

Charon

Gustave Doré's illustration to Dante's Inferno (from the Divine Comedy); Plate X to Canto III: Charon the ferryman herds the evil souls onto his boat.

Another journey by a different ferryman

Chikanobu Toyohara, The Boatman, 1898

The 'real' Finisterra

Finistère (Brittany, France), Land's End (Cornwall, England), Fisterra (Galicia, Spain), all of them geographical Finis Terrae, the furthest ends of the earth.

Below is a picture of the first one:

The next leg of the journey

The starting point of the journey

The Arquimedes palimpsest

New image

I have decided to refurbish the design, layout and colours of this blog.

The new picture in the header is a reproduction of Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (몽유도원도/夢遊桃源圖), painted in 1447 by Ahn Gyeon (안견/安堅).

The previous header, shown below, is explained here:

Die Zukunft

Collateral...

The short version of the (in)famous video released by WikiLeaks:

Watch it carefully and keep the commentaries in mind.

A "glorious" example: at 12:49, the fun and laughter from the personnel in the helicopter as they witness an armoured vehicle being driven over a body. 

Finisterra

At the conclusion of a long hiatus in this blog, a change of direction is about to occur.

My imminent return to Europe will no doubt entail a different outlook. I shall naturally be focusing more on non-Asian topics, and inevitably the tone of my opinions will increasingly reflect a more overtly Western viewpoint on issues which straddle the East-West divide.

Make no mistake: there are no common cultural approaches. When civilizations meet, they establish a dialogue, they do battle, and no single one is ever right or wrong, superior or inferior, better or worse (except in the arena of human rights, the sole universal repository of that which makes us all equally members of the species homo sapiens sapiens).

My years in Asia have taught me that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the Oriental mind and the Western one. And whenever both cultures congregate in a certain community -- i.e., Eurasians --, either one of them prevails, through assimilation, consensual or otherwise, or a new hybrid culture arises.

Such a hybrid culture is very rarely a balanced mixture of the original mating cultures. It is not a melting pot, nor does it encapsulate a harmonious co-existence with 'The Other'.
Let me provide an example.

I have found, to my dismay, that Macau has been producing a growing number of Eurasians who identify with a parochial and asymmetric blend of East and West, in which the local Cantonese microscopic and myopic mentality, including tastes, customs and habits, predominates to a very large extent.
Apart from a few culinary and linguistic remnants from Portugal, I see very little of Europe in local Eurasians. In fact, not a few of my own generation of Macanese -- Eurasians of Portuguese and Asian, mostly Chinese, extraction -- actually disdain their Portuguese heritage. To behold the Chinese (especially Northerners) working in Macau who are more fluent in Portuguese, and who have a greater interest in, and regard for, Western culture, only compounds the barrenness of the picture and rubs salt into the wound...
One should not blame people for being who, what or how they are. Existing as a lonely community, an islet in the vast ocean that is China, is not easy. The need to avoid cultural encirclement and isolation is overwhelming, as is the consequent pressure to adapt to the surrounding environment. It might be argued that it is a matter of survival.
However, that does not prevent one from holding a negative appreciation of a few hard truths. The fact is that more and more younger Macanese have become the fellow-travelers of the inward-looking, 'frog-in-a-well'-type hoi polloi that the culturally spartan Macau milieu has to offer.
Yes, the community has 'survived', but at the cost of its own identity: immersion into the local Cantonese culture and mores is eroding its distinctiveness as Eurasian.
My view is not beyond reproach, as generalizations never are. To paint a segment of society with a single brush is unfair, as it leaves out the many laudable individual exceptions that do exist. And to shed an unfavourable light on ethnic groups might be seen as impolite or discriminatory, if not outright bigoted and even racist.
Nonetheless, political correctness should not obfuscate reality as I see it: centuries of Western cultural influence in Macau has really come to an end. It is not, historically or anthropologically speaking, a good or a bad outcome. It is what it is.
I fear that in a few decades the fate of the Macanese will not be dissimilar to that of the Eurasian communities of India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia: apart from their surnames and perhaps a few gastronomical delicacies, nothing else shall remain of their Portuguese ancestors.