I have spent much of today planning my second lecture, to be delivered on August 22. In the lecture I will be discussing the Economic Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and in particular the essay on alienated labor, along with the Communist Manifesto. Although it is not my intention to discuss the historical development of what came to be called Marxism, I do plan to find some way to weave into my lecture an account of John Reed’s report of the 1917 revolution when he was in Russia and was a stringer for the New York socialist newspaper The Call. That report was contained in a 30 page cablegram sent by Reed to The Call, the first report of the revolution by a Western newsman. I shall tell the students that they can see the actual cablegram, as it came into the offices of the newspaper, in the John Reed Archives at Harvard’s Houghton Library. And I will of course point out to them that it was I who donated it to Harvard.
I mean, why not? It is one of a few moments when I brushed
up against history and this may well be the last course I ever teach
98 comments:
Curious as to how it came into your possession?
I thought you would never ask. My great aunt, Fanny Nislow, Worked for the New York Call as a secretary. When the cable came in, she typed it up so that it could be turned into a story. When the editors were done with it she asked whether she could have it as a keepsake and they said yes. It went from her to her brother-in-law, my grandfather who was a leader of the Socialist party in New York City, and then to my father. I found it in the attic of our house after he passed away in 1981 and some years later I donated it to Houghton Library in honor of my grandfather. Some years after that, I wanted the text of it and wrote to the library asking for a copy of the text. They charge me $25! I wrote to the president of Harvard saying that I did not want the money back but that I would like him please to change the policy of charging the donors of a document money for getting a copy of the document. He had the good grace to write back an apologetic letter and said he would ask him to change the policy.
Great story! It's wonderful that your great aunt had the foresight to preserve a bit of history and your family managed to keep it intact. Also that you were generous in placing it where it would be available to future scholars.
Professor Wolff --
I would advocate that you should relate the entire story to your students -- I would if in your shoes. Not all will appreciate it, but some will. And that is all that matters. At least, that is what I like to tell myself.
-- Jim
Esp. for s.w. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/07/chile-draft-constitution-economist-leader
What did you think of Warren Beatty's 1981 film "Reds," which was well received by critics and won a bunch of awards? I watched it a couple of years ago and found it tediously long and boring, especially in the degree to which it dwelled on the romantic relationships of the protagonist. It also left me wanting to see a dramatization of the events of the period from an actual communist perspective.
I saw a long time ago and do not recall that I was very thrilled by it, but then I have never been a fan of Warren Beatty.
Anonymous @ 9:10AM,
I have been thinking about the draft Chilean constitution lately. While I applaud the initiative the Chileans have taken in rewriting their constitution and in making it clear in the document that they want a more progressive government for their country, the document their process has produced is leaving far too many loopholes to be able to achieve their aspirations.
It is strongest when it sets explicit requirements, such as the language that says the state must ensure half of the executives and managers of the government are women, and in the language that says that both public and private sector workers have a right to unionization, collective bargaining and striking.
But there are too many very vague, aspirational provisions, which in practice will provide absolutely no protections for the citizens because the legislative and regulatory details and the interpretations of law will inevitably be in the hands of anti-progressive legislators, bureaucrats, judges, prosecutors, and police.
Some examples:
"The state guarantees access to environmental justice."
"Everyone is entitled to a reasonable and fair process in which the rights that are indicated in this Constitution are safeguarded in the law and in international treaties ratified and in force in Chile....
Everyone has the right to be heard and tried on an equal footing and within a reasonable time period."
Wikisource
English
It is encouraging, though, to see the Chileans going through this process. Same as with the people of Iceland, Venezuela, South Africa, and Cuba, who also relatively recently at least attempted to make changes, to cite a few examples.
We need a new constitution in the US. I would like to see a lot more discussion in our civic life of what specific provisions should be included.
Americans spend a lot of time lamenting the shortcomings of the Constitution when discussing specific court cases. But we never go to the next step of coming up with new constitutional provisions, and of then working to implement changes. We just seem to throw our hands up and sigh, "Oh, well."
Eric,
The draft Constitution is as good as it gets. I'm voting for it, obviously, but polls indicate that it's rough going. Most polls show rejection winning. A lot of people on the left claim that all the polls are rigged by the right to discourage the approval option, but I don't see that.
Most voters are a lot more conservative than the people who drafted the Constitution and are easily influenced by rightwing propaganda, which is relentless.
There's a bit more than a month and a half until the referendum on the Constitution and we can still win, but it seems that the way to win is to tone down the leftwing music, not amp it up.
An important message about Wikipedia.
I encourage everyone to view the first 10 minutes of this video on the Holodomor genocide, by a Youtuber called Badempanada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho
Why?
Prof Tony Couture and I had an epistemological disagreement here in March, specifically over the reliability of sources in the reporting on the Ukraine conflict. To recap: He cited Bellingcat as a reliable source. In response, I linked to an article by independent journalist Max Blumenthal that is published on Blumenthal's website, The Grayzone, showing evidence that Bellingcat works with British state agencies to promote the foreign policy agendas of the British government (and NATO-aligned governments more generally). Prof Couture suggested I might be "falling into counter-counter-propaganda posturing" and dismissed Blumenthal's article by citing the Wikipedia article on The Grayzone, which implies material published in The Grayzone is "fringe" and unreliable. He also cited an article by Cass Sunstein praising Wikipedia to dismiss my urging of caution in the interpretation of Wikipedia articles dealing with politically-charged subjects; and he said I should "save your rants for when you are walking in the forest, and when nobody can hear your nonsense."
Why am I bringing this up now? Well, while looking for information on historian Grover Furr and Stalin a couple of days ago, I happened to come across this very, very well done youtube video that discusses the Wikipedia article on the Holodomor and explains clearly and succinctly what I might have said about why it's so important to be cautious in how you approach Wikipedia articles on political or controversial matters.
At over 90 minutes long, it's a very long video. But the most important part is in just the first 5-10 minutes. The rest of the video is a detailed examination of the content of the article itself, checked against the sources cited and evaluated in the context of wider scholarship on the topic of the Holodomor.
Apropos our little fund-raising drive of a week or so ago, there’s a story in the Washington Post on the topic of state legislative races:
Here’s the link (the story may be behind a paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/supreme-court-abortion-ruling/
Damn! Does anyone know how this works? I copied and pasted a couple of paragraphs from the story into a Word document, then highlighted and pasted the Word document in the box for posting here. I've done that before and it has worked, but at other times--including this one--it doesn't.
David Palmeter,
Is this the article you meant?
Post-Roe, some Democrats fear state legislative races still overlooked
Eric
Yes it is. Thank you.
Speaking of how the media manipulates the news about Ukraine, here's Matt Taibbi about the New Kremlinology, how to read the New York Times these days, if anyone still reads it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj6E9LTIwvM&t=1s
or you can read it:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-new-kremlinology-reading-the
Anonymous,
No, you can't read the full article unless you're subscribed, which I'm not.
For some reason, Taibbi does not post the full article in substack, yet puts the full content in Youtube.
Re Eric's comment @2:55 p.m.
My experience is that some Wikipedia articles are good and others much less so; that applies, I think, generally, not just to controversial or political topics. Anyone wanting to improve or change an article who has an internet connection and adheres to their usu. minimal guidelines can do so, though in cases of edit wars or where an entire article is hopeless (for one reason or another), it may not be a good use of time.
One specific caution I'd flag is that some (not all) Wikipedia articles will directly quote a passage from a source and footnote it, but not use quotation marks. That of course is improper (indeed it's plagiarism, even if the source is in the public domain), but Wikipedia (if can one speak of it in the singular here) seems in general unbothered by this.
correction: if one can
s. w. I'm not subscribed and i can read it. Maybe clearing your history can allow you access?
anonymous,
thanks, but no, it didn't work. in any case, I already listened to the Youtube video.
Anonymous,
Nonsubscribers are allowed to view a few paragraphs, but not the whole article.
s. wallerstein,
Thanks. I had not known that Taibbi has a separate Youtube account where he puts up his articles.
Eric, I believe I, a non-subscriber, read the whole thing. Accessed via https://taibbi.substack.com/p But maybe I'm wrong.
My friend has sent me another link to an article criticizing the media’s account of the Ukraine/Russia conflict, an article by Patrick Lawrence, of The Nation, titled “The Imaginary War.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/07/13/patrick-lawrence-the-imaginary-war/
I will leave it to LFC and aaall to dissect the article’s claims.
Thanks, Marc.
Again esp. but not just for s.w., a critical review of Chiean vs. US attitudes towards constitutionalism from a Columbia U. political scientist:
https://fpif.org/a-tale-of-two-constitutions-in-chile-and-the-united-states/
Incidentally, RPW may find another paper co-authored by that same political scientist of interest in realtion to his upcoming course on Marx.
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/55714959/2018_-_The_Specter_That_Haunts_Political_Science_ISP-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1658168587&Signature=UxdIkSKT~Tw6BzRlCI1Z03vRBabLbLzQjL9eIY~P8fgGJle3FtVd~v5IMonZLDpwq7usmN0igsZEXnIuBIUZyZWga~bNjL~RBmB-Ilt1sAduYKgA8cuHTh-F32l-pImZZ6ef4j0mCMT17we8wtSBNysyN3pv7oI0G6eZ6rSpCbC0A1cjkTNhIjp9mIPMPgLp7i0M4Mu8gXUStwdmWQtLl6n8LrlapjL~pY6xItADiqSLCyZWJpRu87M4fupQ4W57VwfzqdRw1iSHalAU8w7X6BQKW~nJ9Fvz8dNScSaA0oDB3-iWcbtnhzvYPs4HP5yYqwhMBx~hishvVttFUm~D4w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Sorry for that long site reference.
"...since the Russian intervention began on Feb. 24."
Interesting word choice! I'll finish the article but we're not off to a good start.
In case this was missed:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/06/russia-putin-civilization/
Meanwhile and orthogonal but perhaps of interest to some:
https://daviskedrosky.substack.com/p/twilight-imperium?utm_source=substack&%3Butm_campaign=post_embed&%3Butm_medium=email&utm_medium=email
Anonymous,
Thanks.
Anonymous,
I took a look at the article. It is fairly accurate about Chile.
I've listened to so many debates and forums (or fora) about the new Constitution (the referendum is September 4) that I'm no longer even sure what "I think" about it and maybe
I don't have any thoughts about the content, I'm just a reflection of all the debates and forums.
However, one thing is clear. I'm voting Approval. Like so much else in politics (and as the author points out, this is politics, not some kind of neutral legal philosophy), it's a "which side are you on?" question, to use Professor Wolff's formula and I'm on the side of those who took to the streets to demand a new Constitution and of those who drafted it, however "woke" (the Washington Post's expression) many of them are. I'm on their side, that's it.
s. wallerstein,
What are the main reasons that those who have opposed nationalization of the mines and other resources have given for their position? And what do average, working-class people tend to think about this kind of nationalization (or are their voices not heard)?
Eric,
Nationalization has not been a key issue in the debates. Remember that these days if you nationalize something, you have to indemnify the property owners. Otherwise, in this globalized world, you're cut off. It seems to me that we need to raise taxes on mining interests rather than nationalizing them.
A big part of the copper mining industry is already nationalized (it was nationalized during the Allende government) and I don't get the impression that Codelco (the state copper company) pollutes less than do foreign investors. In fact, Boric, our progressive president, recently had to close down a copper refining plant owned by Codelco because of the way it was polluting, which did not please the unions, as you can imagine. Some on the left accused Boric of wanting to privatize Codelco, which has a certain magic symbolism for lots of folks. As you can see, there are no magic solutions here.
What do working class people think? There is by now zero working class consciousness here. Zero. So working class people are all over the place on these issues depending on scores of other socio-cultural-economic factors.
s. wallerstein,
Nationalization has not been a key issue in the debates, yet the provision to nationalize was removed from earlier drafts, so clearly someone was opposed and surely they must have provided some reason.
Why do you feel you need to raise taxes on privately owned corporate interests rather than have the government own the resources outright?
If the majority objects because they feel nationalization would entail the unjust seizure of private property and they are worried about the current owners, the government can compensate the owners.
As for being cut off in this globalized world, there are plenty of buyers (eg China, India) willing to work deals. Didn't we just see Biden begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for more oil?
When the people, through their government, own the resources, they should have greater control over the resources and over the distribution of profits than when the resources are in private hands. And in the long run, why would foreign investors be expected to care more about the local environment in Chile than the whole of the people of Chile themselves? (I say the whole of the people because they, unlike the wealthy, who can flee to more comfortable locales when the sht hits the fan, will be stuck with the degradation.)
Eric,
The nationalization wasn't removed from the draft. Some members of the Convention proposed it and it wasn't accepted by the plenary. All measures had to be approved by a two thirds majority of the Convention, which was elected by popular vote, with parity (at least 50% for women) and representatives of Native Americans). I'd say that two thirds of the Convention was left of center or progressive, but not leftwing in the sense that you are. The right elected less than a third of the delegates and thus, had no veto power.
Marc, your friend seems to prefer tankie-left sources to our center-right J- school-both-sides corporatist media. I'm sure he can explain what launching a missile from a sub in the Black Sea that hits a residential area in a city in south western Ukraine has to do with Nazis in Donbas. Is your friend our age? A long term friend of mine is edging towards a right wing rabbit hole.
From the article:
"Goddamn it, they exclaimed on Eighth Avenue. That is nowhere near enough in the imaginary war. Desperate for a gruesomely high death toll, the Times, on June 18, published “Death in Ukraine: A Special Report.” What a read. There is nothing in it other than innuendo and weightless surmise. But the imaginary war must grind on."
From the latest UN report:
"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Lysychansk, Popasna, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties."
https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/07/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-12-july-2022
Below is a graph from a December 17, 2020 article by Patrick Lawrence:
"In my reading of what lies out front, in years to come the honest among us will find cause to be grateful, strange as this may at first seem, to Donald Trump. Perversely grateful, maybe—grudgingly grateful, or unexpectedly, or passingly. We will find that Trump did us one not-so-modest favor: In his resistance to the Democrats’ fearsome alliance with the intelligence apparatus, law enforcement, and the media, he deferred for four years the tide of dictatorial liberalism that now rolls toward us."
http://patricklawrence.us/the-biden-blackout/
It seems the edges of the horseshoe have met.He also references with approval TAC's Rod Dreher who is on team fascist. The frequent far-right/tankie-left cross references that are used to validate liberal democratic decline are interesting.
s.w., Parts of the proposed constitution sound interesting but it seems way too long. Disappointing that it keeps a presidential system and even a rump senate-like regional body. If it fails I hope the accept vote is high enough to keep the move to a new constitution going.
aaall,
If the proposed constitution is rejected in the referendum, then the present constitution, basically the constitution drawn up by Pinochet in 1980 (with some reforms along the way), is in effect.
However, President Boric has proposed that if the draft is rejected, then a new convention should be elected to draft still another constitution.
He needs congress to ratify that and he does not have a majority in both houses, still less the two thirds needed to approve a new convention. However, the polls indicate that a majority of voters, even though who will vote to reject the draft, do not want to go back to the present constitution, so it looks like even if the draft is rejected, in one or another form we're going to get a new constitution.
Re: The tankie/far-right convergence on Ukraine:
https://www.thebulwark.com/jordan-petersons-pro-putin-punditry/
The article has links to Peterson's talk.
"He needs congress to ratify that and he does not have a majority in both houses..."
Is there any interest in a parliamentary system?
aaall,
Some people proposed parliamentary system in the Convention, but it didn't have the votes.
Chile and all Latin America have a tradition of presidentialism, which is hard to change.
s. wallerstein,
Earlier on this thread, you referred to "woke' as "the Washington Post's expression." I don't understand your point. In what way is the word an "expression" of the Washington Post?
David P.
Read the article linked to above...
s. wallerstein,
I don't know which link you mean. There are several I've seen above but they don't have WaPo address. Your YouTube link appears to deal with the NYTimes and doesn't suggest "woke." Could you be more specific?
In the link about the Chilean draft constitution sent by Anonymous above, you'll see that the Washington Post referred to it as "woke".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/05/chile-constitution-draft-boric/
I came across this on Twitter the other day:
In case you’re worried that you’re too old to pursue your dreams… Frank Lloyd Wright completed 1/3 of his life’s work between the ages of 80 and 92.
https://twitter.com/E_A_Moreau/status/1548378641393799168
Eric --
Don't forget "Old Kant" (as Nietzsche would refer to him). He published quite a bit in the last 25 years of life.
And the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman was cranking out books up to the day he died at the age of 91 (pretty good for an enthusiastic pipe smoker and scotch drinker). There are countless other examples. I hope to emulate them if I ever get my act together.
-- Jim
"The novels of Estonian Jaan Kross, who endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation, provide a window into life under oppression."
https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/jaan-kross-a-writers-route-to-happiness/
This is one reason why all media should be viewed with suspicion:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/17/media-bias-role-biden-approval-decline/
And for laughs as the deterioration proceeds:
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657694027
This is good. Philosopher Russell Blackburn on our response to the events in Ukraine. He calls for us to be a bit more thoughtful and less possessed by groupthink.
https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/290-we-would-have-been-the-liberal-ones
Sorry, it's Blackford, not Blackburn.
s. wallerstein,
I think he says it all in the first sentence--an illegal and unjust invasion of a neighboring country. He has much to say beyond that, but none of those "sins" justify war, in my opinion. Innocent people are being slaughtered. If Russia had objections to former satellites joining NATO or the EU, the proper approach is diplomacy. They don't seem to have tried it.
The question of the former satellites joining NATO presents me with a dilemma: certainly Russia sees it as provocative, but NATO wasn't formed to attack the USSR and its continuation is not directed toward an attack of Russia. To the contrary: it's purpose was to repel an attack from the former and it's continuation is a reflection the rational fear those countries have that Russia will invade. And with Ukraine, Russia's done exactly that.
Not to admit the former satellites (if they want to join) and not to admit Finland and Sweden, is to send the message to them that they're on their own, and to Russia that NATO won't do anything about it if it invades. If I were the decision-maker, I'd have a hard time telling the former satellites, or Finland, or Sweden, to get lost. I would tell Russia that this is not an offensive move directed at them, but rather a defensive move made in recognition of the fact that those countries have reason to fear Russia--and that NATO will support them.
There are few instances in which war is preferable to diplomacy--and Ukraine isn't one of them.
DP
I agree w a good deal of what you say. But wrt NATO expansion, there were rational alternatives. There were ways, for instance, to offer security guarantees (perhaps privately) to the Baltic countries w.o actually bringing them into NATO. The Partnership for Peace could have been taken more seriously. Putin's irredentist inclinations did not necessarily have to lead to an invasion if the West had engaged earlier in more creative approaches.
The notion that there were only two options -- bringing the former pieces of the USSR into NATO or excluding them, with nothing in between -- represented a failure of imagination on the West's part. Neither you nor aaall seem to get this.
None of this justifies the Russian invasion. But the condemnation of the invasion has to be separated analytically from the question of whether and how it could have been avoided.
P.s. Finland and Sweden's admission to NATO has no bearing on the discussion of pre-invasion policy. Of course, in the wake of the invasion, they have to be admitted to NATO. But if more creative approaches had prevented the invasion, then the question of Finland and Sweden joining NATO would likely never have arisen.
There could also have been a serious diplomatic effort wrt the Donbas. Instead the West just let the civil war there fester w.o trying to even set up a truce, as far as I can recall at any rate.
From the article: "This is not a grinding war of attrition, as we are supposed to think. It has proceeded slowly because Russian forces appear to be taking care to limit casualties — their own and among Ukrainian civilians."
This is a grotesque view of this horrifying conflict.
Btw, the dilemma you mention wrt NATO is an example of what is called in IR theory "the security dilemma"; it was first named by John Herz in an article back in 1950 or 1951.
"Neither you nor aaall seem to get this."
LFC, what I get is that if the option is binary - putting my money in a AAA rated bonds or B/C bonds, I'm going with the triple A. Asking folks who had just spent decades in unstable followed by highly undesirable circumstances to rely on some new and unproven shiny thing seems a non-starter. Hope is not a plan. Any arrangement that depended on Russia actually keeping up its part of the bargain wasn't going to fly with folks whose recent experience informed them otherwise.
What association with NATO did was foreclose the future imperialist possibilities that some ruling elites in Russia held dear to their hearts. Those elites couldn't handle that so here we are. The likelihood of Russia going to some flavor of autocracy was baked in decades ago. It's hard for we deracinated cosmopolitans to understand this but the folks in Russia who count actually seem to believe the kayfabe.
s.w., we only need to go back to 2001 to understand that the US can go off the rails. We need to guard against this but I don't see that or the things Blackford described happening with Ukraine. Some silly things happened at the start of Russia's invasion but they had no legs. I find it difficult to cry hard times for regular folks in Russia when one considers what Russia is voluntarily inflicting on regular Ukrainians.
Folks like MTG, Gaetz, Hawley, Paul, etc. are often termed traitors because they supported a violent overthrow of the US government. More then Ukraine is going on.
"Amidst the current crisis, the West has responded to Russia’s actions by providing Ukraine with a seemingly inexhaustible stream of weapons suitable for asymmetric warfare."
I'm not sure what he means here. NATO has been assisting Ukraine (a sovereign nation) in standing up a modern (not Russian trained) military. While they should have received things like M777s, Caesars, Archers, HIMARS, etc. months, if not years, ago those weapons are hardly asymmetric to what the Russians are fielding. Of course, there are partisan groups operating behind Russian lines and they should be supported.
Perhaps of interest:
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-use-and-abuse-of-history/articles/vladimir-and-volodymyr-a-pivotal-moment-in-history
Fergus, tankies will tank, it's all they know.
It would have been all very well to “tell Russia that this is not an offensive move directed against them, but rather a defensive move made in recognition of the fact that these countries have reason to fear Russia,” but what this ignores is that, trying to look at it from the pt. of view of those responsible for the security of the Russians, one has to take into account what they feared and still fear. Why on earth would one imagine, given their history, that their perceptions would co-align with the views/fears of the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Swedes, the Finns, the British, the Americans, the Germans, etc. etc. That is surely one of the virtues of the realist approach to IR, that it emphasises that the fear of what the other might do are to be found on all sides. In such a situation, telling the Russians that “you have nothing to fear from us” is hardly likely to be viewed as believable by them—or by those of us looking on who’ve seen so much duplicity and wrong doing from all the major parties concerned.
I’d say the same sort of thing about the assertion that “NATO wasn’t formed to attack the USSR.” Seen from the Soviet side of the iron curtain, and again in light of the USSR’s own short history, what do you think the Soviet leaders might reasonably have imagined NATO was all about?
As I've mentioned before, there is evidence that the U.S. promised Russia at least informally in the late 80s or early 90s that NATO wd not expand to the east if the Russians acceded to the dismantlement of their informal empire in E. Europe.
Btw I'm skeptical of "the baked in decades ago" theory re autocracy. More contingent than that.
Whatever Russia's fears about NATO, Ukraine wasn't a member and wasn't about to become one any time soon. There was plenty of room for diplomacy if indeed Russia was was worried about that. I doubt that Russia was at all worried about Ukraine in NATO. What Putin wanted to do was undo deals that were made about borders when the Soviet Union broke up, so as to return Russia to its days of glory, whenever they were.
The U.S. (aka NATO) has been meddling in Ukraine politics since the 2014 "Revolution", which some call a "coup". They've trained Ukrainian troops and supplied arms.
Here's an analogy which I gave previously.
Let's say that there's a macho hoodlum standing on the street corner. You know he's a bit paranoic and you know if you scare him ever so slightly, he's likely to react violently and that if he reacts violently, you'll have to call the cops and there's likely to be a shoot-out in which innocent neighborhood residents will be wounded or killed or at least have to spend the rest of the day on the floor avoiding bullets and watching the glass in their windows shatter (and they don't have money to replace the glass).
So what do you do or what do I do because some of you, it seems, would proceed differently than I would? I take his macho paranoid mentality in account and avoid ever so slightly angering him or setting him off. I treat him as politely as I can, as a gentleman, communicating to him verbally and non-verbally how much I respect him.
I've lived in a "complicated" neighborhood for over 25 years now and my strategy has worked so far.
Obviously, that paranoid macho hoodlum is Putin in my analogy.
Anon, besides the examples of Napoleon, the post revolutionary interventions in the civil war, and Hitler's folly, nuclear weapons made any possibilities of a land invasion of the Soviet Union/Russian Federation a non-starter. The driving ideology of Tsarist, Soviet, and Federation elites is "imperialism because it's our due."
Think of NATO expansion as changing the locks on a series of doors. Russia's keys were now useless so of course they are ticked off. How they express that (fear, security, whatever) is bogus and besides the point. Possibilities were foreclosed, that's all.
That too many Russian elites have internalized a fakakta world view creates a problem. I'm not sure how one negotiates with folks who have no concept of good faith and who believe God is on their side.
LFC, I'm not sure of any reasonably imagined contingencies that would have materially changed matters from Stalin's death/Beria being shot on. Inertia is a fearsome thing. I'm not sure it was appropriate for the United states to make proffers against the interests of other nations - they had their own preferences.
s.w., I deal respectfully with anyone who hasn't given me cause to do otherwise. On the other hand, Charles Bronson made a film or so. If your thug attempted to break into my house or attacked me, one of us would be carried away.
aaall,
I'm not sure that Charles Bronson is a good guide to how to cultivate a peaceful atmosphere in international relations.
The worst thing that has happened is that in "our" obsession with standing up to bullies, "we" have become a bully "ourselves", a bully without sufficient insight to realize what a bully "we" are, but then again maybe "we" have always been a bully since day one, a bully who needs to convince themselves that they are the good guy.
Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil 146
"He who fights with monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
So true!!
But the thug wasn't threatening us,it was threatening someone else who called for help.
Putin wants all of Ukraine, though he may settle for the east and south for now, because it was once part of the Romanov empire. So he's taken the Crimea and nearby land, and will be adding more. He's no more justified in claiming Ukrainian territory for Russia than Germany would be in claiming Kaliningrad, the home of Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt, on the ground that it was once part of Germany.
Indeed, s.w. As your recent article points out, it's easy to slip over to the dark side. On the other hand there are clear cut cases. Too much introspection can lead to paralysis; not enough and one too easily breaks bad.
BTW, s.w., the Charles Bronson reference was a reflection of my rather dark sense of humor. Vigilantism is a thing to be avoided.
My last comment here for tonight.
aaall,
Your theory of Russian behavior is somewhat inconsistent.
On the one hand, you linked approvingly to an article in Foreign Policy, which I read enough to get the gist of, that argued that Putin has an irredentist worldview but one specifically focused on protecting and incorporating Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. Hence his concern or obsession with the Donbas and Crimea too.
On the other hand, you imply that Putin has always been interested in incorporating the Baltics. Hence he was ticked off by NATO expansion to include the Baltics. But there are not large enough, I think, populations of Russian speakers in the Baltics, especially not enough who (unlike some of those in Donbas) actually want to rejoin Russia. I'm sure there are probably some but not a critical mass, not enough to start a civil war. But Putin, you imply, wanted to incorporate the Baltics anyway, or at least wanted the possibility left open. But then, there was a significant period between Putin's accession to power and the Baltics joining NATO, and he didn't invade them then when he had a chance. Specifically, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined NATO in March 2004, having been invited to begin the process in 2002. Putin was elected president for the first time in 2000. He had roughly four years, maybe a little less, to invade all those countries before the NATO Art. 5 obligation clicked in, before the locks, to use your metaphor, were changed. He didn't.
I'm sure Putin has certain ideological and irredentist motivations for his actions but they don't and can't furnish a sufficient and complete explanation for those actions. Domestic Russian politics has to figure in too, for instance.
Another thing. Fear, by definition, is not "bogus." It can be more or less rational, more or less well grounded, but a collective or individual perception of fear is not bogus. Germany's fear before WW 1 that it was being "encircled" by the Russian-French alliance and then the Triple Entente was not bogus, even though it may not have been as well grounded as other fears might have been. NATO's announced purpose as a defensive alliance does not make a fear of it automatically bogus. Whether Russian policy elites and/or Putin actually had such a fear is an empirical question that can, at least in principle, be investigated and tentatively answered. It is not a question that can be answered by fiat by assuming that Russia was simply ticked off that the locks were being changed and nothing else.
Lastly, one only needs the most cursory acquaintance -- and I do mean cursory -- with recent history to have a reasonable position that Russia's current evolution into a personalist autocracy has not been "baked in." Remember glasnost and perestroika? Remember Gorbachev's retreat from E. Europe? Gorbachev and the bumbling Yeltsin obviously had a different idea of Russia's future than Putin did and does.
The idea that a country of Russia's size and complexity could only have evolved in one direction because of "inertia" is unconvincing. Of course path dependence is a thing, but so are ruptures. 1917 was one such rupture. The idea that a rupture is a one-off thing and there can never be another one once a given course is set is, I think, unsupportable.
P.s. What has frustrated me in a lot of discussions of this subject at this site is the implicit assumption by certain commenters that to try to explain something is to excuse it. That assumption, of course, is false. I'm not interested in excusing Putin's invasion of Ukraine because it is unjustifiable. But to suggest an explanation that includes numerous factors, not only Putin's behavior in the past but that of others, is seen by some as excusing Putin or blaming the West. That's only the case if the person offering the explanation says that's his or her intention. Otherwise an effort at explanation should be seen as just that, nothing more. Btw, I don't have an explanation that I'm confident is right. I'm not an expert on the region, or on Putin. I am however interested in not foreclosing possible lines of explanation by fiat. That's not the way to get a handle on anything.
I have been sitting on the sidelines, reading and digesting the comments. I am willing to grant that Russia has some legitimate gripes about how it was treated by the U.S./the West/NATO after the break-up of the Soviet Union. I am willing to grant my friend’s point of view that, in some respects, Putin’s claim that there are neo-Nazis controlling the Dombas region, and that the Zelensky government has been manipulated by the U.S. Given all that, however, I cannot concede that it justifies Putin’s scorched earth strategy, which is resulting in the death and maiming of thousands of innocent civilians, men, women and children. I have to believe my eyes when I see the news reports of demolished apartment buildings, murdered children, desperate refugees whose lives have been ruined. Given Putin’s legitimate grievances, how can they possibly justify what he is doing?? And, LFC, I understand your desire to understand the historical genesis of all of this, but at the end of the day, what good does it do? How does finding an explanation help stop the wholesale murdering, destruction of property, and devastation of Ukraine? Putin believes Russia was mistreated and raped by the West. OK. Even A woman who is brutally raped does not thereby have a right to go on a murder rampage.
Marc, none of the items from your friend that you posted can reasonably lead to your conclusions. All I see is bog standard tankie propaganda - the usual bad history leavened with the inability to get past the US's past sins.
"Putin believes Russia was mistreated and raped by the West."
None of us has the slightest idea what Putin really believes. I put zero credence in what folks say when we have actions ready for judging. What we know is that he was criming from the beginning when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and had a thing for Peter the Great. Yeltsin brought him up because he struck a deal with the oligarchs. He seems to have an affinity for the kayfabe that has developed around the Kievan Rus BS. I find it hard to believe that a stone cold killer who has developed a brutal personalist dictatorship is driven by fear and feelings.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were more Nazis and fellow travelers at the Capitol on January 6 then in Ukraine. After all there is a right wing resurgence in Europe and North America.
LFC, there's nothing inconsistent about asserting a special relationship with Russian speakers and also seeking to colonize/dominate areas with a majority of non-Russian speakers. Sort of like walking and chewing gum at the same time. China, Imperial Russia, the USSR, and the Russian Federation were/are imperial powers who assert a special affinity for one group while also gobbling up their whatever neighbors.
I doubt Russia (then sort of a democracy) had the will (or the chops) to engage in a wholesale attempt to re-incorporate their former Warsaw Pact neighbors back in your time frame. All I'm asserting is that some Russian elites (including Putin) had a gleam in their eyes that NATO membership extinguished.
As I see it the failure of glasnost, perestroika, and the devolution into autocracy sort of makes my point. Perhaps if Kerensky had bailed on the war things might have been different but Imperial Russia was autocratic, attempting communism was totalitarian more or less and a kleptocracy was already aborning well before the dissolution of the USSR. Some flavor of autocracy happening was inevitable (of course nothing is 100% certain but with Russia and autocracy, that's the way to bet).
"What has frustrated me in a lot of discussions of this subject at this site is the implicit assumption by certain commenters that to try to explain something is to excuse it."
Only when the explanations make no sense.
Using the fears and machinations of smallish nations in pre-WWI Europe seems inapt. Russia stretches from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean. It has all the nukes one could want and it was minting money with its energy resources. Now it is a junior partner to China and has to crawl to Iran for weapons.
Fear is best dealt with thusly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x-fkSYDtUY
aaall,
But sometimes slapping has a different result, and reveals only an unsettling truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV6ZVQq2jtw
LFC
Bernard Bailyn might disagree with you when you argue that to understand something is not to excuse it. In discussing the problem of "contextualism" in history (do we judge figures from the past by the standards of their time or of ours?), Bailyn puts himself in the contextualist camp, but he concedes: "To explain contextually is, implicitly at least, to excuse."
"One could explain," he continues, "with reference to the context of the time, the logical reasons why the American Constitution did not eliminate slavery. But it seems to be moral obtuseness to say that the framers of the Constitution had good reasons for what they did."
He refers here, I believe, not to the pro-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convnention--there's no acceptable excuse for them--but to the others who accepted it because they didn't have the votes and concluded, in effect, that a Constitution that did not eliminate slavery was better than no Constitution at all.
P.S. The opposite of a contextualist is a presentist: one who applies the standards of our day in judging figures from the past.
This is a philosophy blog.
I always supposed that people into philosophy are those who strive to understand the world and ourselves, not to moralize it. As usual, I was mistaken.
s. wallerstein,
I’m sorry, but I do not understand on what basis you claim that engaging in philosophical analysis precludes engaging in moralizing. A principal area of philosophical analysis is devoted to Ethics, which entails an effort to determine whether there is any legitimate basis for making ethical judgments, and, if so, what are their criteria. Prof. Zimmerman and I have engaged in such discussions over several comment threads. Implicit in the concept that there are, or may be, ethical principles involves engaging in moralizing, which you, for some reason, regard as an inferior form of reasoning, because, apparently, you regard making moral judgments of others as a form of elitism.
I'm not sure of s wallerstein's point.
In re-reading my own post above, however, I think it is not as persuasive as I thought it was when I wrote it. The "good reasons" why the Constitution didn't eliminate slavery were that the slave owning states would not vote for it. Their reason was that slavery was necessary for their economy to thrive. None of this implies approval. Another way of looking at it would be to imagine a discussion among anti-slavery delegates as to whether they could prevail. Their assessment that the slave states would oppose ending slavery because slavery served the interests of the southern states would simply be an accurate prediction that in no way implies approval.
And yet, and yet...Bailyn has a point. Plato and Aristotle where slave owners. They are not condemned for that the way,say, Thomas Jefferson is. We simply say that slavery was commonplace in the ancient world, and move on the the merits or demerits of their writings. In some sense, we not only understand but also excuse--in a way that we do not excuse 18th Century slavery or Jefferson.
Marc,
Moralism isn't elitism. It's something you learn in kindergarten and then move on. It's tedious as are all sermons. Or at least I find them tedious. Others may find them fascinating. To each his or her own.
Philosophy does metaethics, which isn't the same as moralizing at all.
David Palmeter is a big history fan and I assume that he's read Thucydides. One of the chief reasons that people still read Thucydides today is that he doesn't moralize: Athens isn't good or Sparta bad or vice versa. Instead, he tries to understand the motivation of the historical actors involved.
If I pick up a history of the U.S. Constitutional convention, I don't have the slighest interest whether Jefferson was good or bad or morally indifferent. My interest is in understanding his conscious and unconscious motives, the interests which moved him, his real and stated ideology, etc.
the only member of the US constitutional convention i have much time for is james wilson
s. wallerstein,
The moral issue is very much on the front burner these days when decisions are made about monuments, statues to Civil War leaders (most of them Confederates) street names, the names of military bases etc. There is little problem over monuments to the Confederates, but when it comes to Presidents it gets complicated. Woodrow Wilson High School in DC has been renamed August Wilson High School. Princeton has changed the name of its center on international relations, which was named for Wilson. There are people who oppose honoring Lincoln, whose views on race would certainly not be widely approved today. So far as I'm aware, there is no movement yet to change the name of the nation's capital.
To S Wallerstein:
You say: "Moralism isn't elitism. It's something you learn in kindergarten and then move on. It's tedious as are all sermons."
That is WAY too cynical. In kindergarten, and even before, we also start to learn morality.
You make it sound as though there is no place for morality, as opposed to moralism, in our lives.
I hope that you do not mean that.... but mean only to to be making a point about the comparative lack of illumination to be gained from making moral judgments about the behaviour of nation-states.
Even there I think that you are wrong FWIW (The American wars in Vietnam and Iraq and all that), but at least that would not be a condemnation of moral judgment across the board.
Say it ain't so, SW.
Cheers,
David Z
There's a place for morality, but it's smaller than is generally claimed.
Don't ask me to elaborate on that please, because it's not a rule I want everyone to follow, simply an observation on life.
Cheers.
DP
Interesting quote from Bailyn. I disagree w that particular sentence you've quoted. Have to leave it at that for now.
I think that s. wallerstein means something along these lines: Morality is like the weather – people talk a lot about it, but they don’t do anything about it.
Marc,
Not even that. Slavery is bad: I learned that in kindergarten or first grade. I don't have slaves, I'd vote against anyone in favor of slavery, I'll donate money to the anti-slavery candidate, but for me at least, there's no point deciding whether or not Jefferson was bad for supporting slavery. I try to learn stuff when I read or talk to people and pinning the label of being "bad" on Jefferson or on Jefferson Davis is something I could do in kindergarten. I'd prefer to understand their motives, etc.
s.w. -
What is it that we do in kindergarten but are supposed to grow out of? I'm not totally clear on that.
We learn to count, read, and speak at an early age, too; we retain these skills throughout life, and in many cases develop them further and theorize about their nature and foundations and such (as in mathematics, linguistics, etc.).
Making moral judgments strikes me as a similarly basic and normal activity, and it, too, has its more advanced and abstractly theoretical dimensions - moral maturation and moral philosophy, respectively.
I think I appreciate that moral maturation involves things like: learning to empathize, learning to self-criticize, learning to reason more independently; whereas the earliest stages of morality have an appearance of uncritical or fearful conformism and submission to authority, selfishness and favoritism, and rigid, exclusionary stereotyping of others - all of which a healthy growing person gradually moves away from. (I vaguely have in mind some stuff I once heard about re. Lawrence Kohlberg - see Wikipedia.) But past that, I'm not so clear on what you're alluding to.
Michael,
To be brutally frank, I don't see many people learning to empathize, self-criticize or to reason more independently.
I see lots of people including highly educated people pinning labels on others: you are bad, I am good. That produces a certain high of self-righteous satisfaction. I find it very tedious to witness especially among highly educated people from whom I expected more.
However, I applaud those who empathize, who self-criticize and who reason more independently. I wish that there were more of them around.
DP
Woodrow Wilson High School in D.C. has been renamed but not, I think, to August Wilson. I don't have time to look up the new name right now.
"I'd prefer to understand their motives, etc."
The Constitution was written and ratified before the invention of the cotton gin and the acquisition of lands suitable for sugar cane.
Marc, not sure of your point. Fear is a wired in primitive response that is where one starts not where one necessarily needs to end up.
Why james wilson? He was a proponent of direct popular elections for the House, for the Senate, and for the Executive. Needless to add, he didn’t persuade enough of the other founders. While the whole is interesting, the sections focussing on the constitutional convention, beginning at p. 928, are particularly relevant to some of the previous comments:
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1988&context=faculty_scholarship
Wrt the assertion that “fear is a wired in primitive response,” while there’s some truth in that when it comes to our own individual responses to particular situations we directly encounter—e.g., the big rattlesnake I almost stood on—it seems to me that understanding of fear doesn’t encompass those situations—‘I fear a thunderstorm is looming,’ ‘I fear Trump will run again and be elected again’—where we’re trying as best we might to prepare ourselves for some looming possibility. I very much fear the consequences of climate change, though I won’t be around to experience the worst of it.
This passage from the cited paper seems particularly relevant too:
“The Constitutional Convention, at one level, can be viewed as reflecting a clash of powerful material interests--property owners against the poor, slave states against free states, states with vast claims to western land against the "landless" states of the coast, maritime states against inland states, large states against small states, North against South, East against West. These powerful social, economic, regional, and class antagonisms were central to the proceedings and structured its debates. But it is important not to exaggerate the point, and especially not to reduce the delegates to mere reflections of some abstract array of impersonal forces."
LFC
You're right. It's now Jackson-Reed High School, named after its first African American teacher and a former principal.
Michael,
I had time to reflect on your comment above while I waited for the podologist this afternoon.
Of all the people I know, I'd characterize two as clearly empathetic, self-critical and capable of independent thought. A couple are borderline cases and there may be some who have those qualities and I have not perceived it. I'm not going to try to characterize myself, although I'd like to believe that I have those three virtues.
However, the vast majority of the people whom I've met in my life (76 years) are, if not in kindgergarten, in moral terms, in high school. They have team spirit, they're true to their school (that's an old song which I'll link to), they want their team (which they are sure are the good guys) to win and fail to see any virtues in the other team (which they are sure are the bad guys). They are proud to be on their team (that is, they are self-righteous) and they consider those on the other teams to be inevitably stupid and beneath contempt.
Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_17FB7Xgc
Interesting quote from the Russian author Vladimir Sorokin:
"I consider the recent events in Georgia a consequence of Russian imperial pathology. There’s a medical concept known as “phantom pain.” When a person feels pain in their amputated leg, it dredges up feelings of bewilderment and rage. Georgia and Ukraine — these are the amputated legs of imperial Russia, long since removed. These “legs” are sore, they start to itch and irritate our authorities, and cause them to take absolutely irrational, destructive action. I believe this is a dark stain on the Russian mind. And it will take a long time for us to remove it."
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/russias-finest-metaphysician-on-vladimir-sorokin-their-four-hearts-and-telluria/
s. wallerstein,
In 1988, a book titled “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum, made the best seller list.
Below are some of things the author stated he learned – and you, I, Prof. Zimmerman, and virtually every American who was in kindergarten in the 1950s were also taught, but, unfortunately, not everybody truly learned what they were taught.
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Not bad rules to live one’s life by. The book may be dismissed as childish and hokey, but nonetheless true. The world would be a much better place if we all truly learned and applied what we were taught in kindergarten.
Marc,
Thanks.
I've learned with the years not to scorn discourses as hokey.
I'd add:
Keep your promises.
Be truthful. (Later you'll learn when lying is appropriate).
Say "please", "thank you" and "excuse me".
Good additions.
It was poignant to see VP Al Gore interviewed this morning on ABC's This Week.
He commented on the global heat wave and climate change, and said things are only going to get worse.
He was then asked what he thought about the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, and he stated that they were doing a tremendous service to the country and to democracy. Asked if it was painful for him to see the video of his 2000 concession speech as an example of the right thing to do, he commented that when he did it, he recalled Winston Churchill's observation, “You can depend upon the Americans to do the right thing. But only after they have exhausted every other possibility.”
To Marc:
I was in kindergarten in the '40s.
Cheers,
A very old David Z
David,
Well, that explains why you never leaned those rules and have been consistently rude to me. (Joke)
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