BHA: Re: Bhaskar's politics

["Andrew Hagen" <xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sean Creaven, if your revolution involves killing innocent people, as
Lenin purposefully and knowingly ordered, if your theory regards Hegel
as chief among philosophers, as Lenin apparently did, and if your
reaction to all this is that it was unavoidable, that There Is No
Alternative, then stop this bus. I want to get off.

As an existentialist would say, there is always a choice. If we had a
revolution in the US, the situation was dire, and you were in charge,
would you give a written order to your military commander that said:
"Take at least 100 small business owners, line them up against a wall,
and kill them by firing squad," with "at least 100" underlined three
times? Please answer with a yes or no, and then explain why.


>Creaven: [...] My contention is that real-world circumstances and events, not theoretical errors internal
>to Leninism, or Lenin's failure to think out adequately the relationship
>between theory and practice, explain the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution. [...]

Instead of degeneration, Bhaskar implies that the Bolshevik revolution
could never have properly germinated as a revolution, when Bhaskar in
DPF p. 15 links Hegel, Lenin, and diamat.

Finally, a self-criticism. I have argued that Bhaskar's link of Hegel
and Lenin is valid, in part because of Lenin's having read Hegel before
Marx. Thus, I judge Lenin's theory to be bad. I have also argued that
Lenin's practice was tyrannical. Thus, I judge Lenin's practice to be
bad. Finally, I have also argued that Lenin's theory and practice were
inconsistent. Curiously, though, if both Lenin's theory and practice
were bad, perhaps there was no inconsistency at all. N.B. Bhaskar does
not assert that Lenin had a T/P inc.

Andrew Hagen
xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




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