COMMUNISM: THE LIFE OF A SPECTER

Was Jesus Christ a communist? Well, he was called a communist by some (W. Winwood Reade, for one). In fact, the early Christian fathers were all self-professed communists. “Among us all things are common, except wives,” writes Tertullian. (I do not doubt that this practice did exist among small groups of dedicated early Christians, and to some extent in monasteries, but it was never institutionalized as a secular system.)
Compare this to the following definition of Communism in Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto: “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

Was St. Thomas More a communist propagandist of a more recent Christian origin? In his Utopia, no one is idle, and the fruits of labor are shared commonly. Not only does he describe a perfect commune, but he also advocates it most ardently:

“Now I have described to you that commonwealth which in my judgment is not only the best, but which alone may claim the name of commonwealth, or public weal. For, in other places every man procures his own private wealth. Here, where nothing is private, the common interests are earnestly looked to…
Is not this an unjust and unkind commonwealth, which gives great fees and rewards to gentlemen, as they call them, and to goldsmiths, and to others who are either idle persons or flatterers, and on the other hand, makes no provision for (the working) poor, without whom no commonwealth can continue?…”

There is a lot to be said for Communism's longevity, which, incidentally, has little to do with the failed Soviet “experiment.” Alluding to the Communist Manifesto, let me sum up this never-say-die ‘Communism’ in one sentence in my own way:

It used to be a dream, then it became a Specter, and only as a Specter has it ever had a life...eternal.

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM: NO CORPUS DELECTI?

The obvious failure of capitalism to define itself, even with minimum consistency, as a reasonably coherent economic system (it can hardly sustain even its historical outlook, where mercantilism, for instance, cannot be seriously looked upon as a “stage of capitalism,” because it trivializes both, within the framework of the economic history of mankind) can perhaps be explained by the fact that it has never existed in nature as a self-sustained economic system, just like certain chemical elements discovered in a science lab cannot survive in the real world. In fact, its life story of the past hundred years or so is that of a political system at best, or a religion-supplanting ideology at worst, and only as such complicated interwoven hodgepodge can it possibly start making sense. (This kind of brings to mind the feeble attempts to define being Jewish: As a religion, this amounts to nonsense, considering millions of non-religious Jews who call themselves Jewish; and as a race, or ethnicity it does not work either, taking into account the large numbers of African Jews for instance, who are officially recognized as Jews by the State of Israel, although they have distinctive Negroid characteristics, and nothing in common, except the religion, with their Semitic brethren.)


The situation gets even more confusing in the case of socialism. While many of its opponents love equating it with “communism” or Marxism, both seen as sworn enemies of the West, others perceptively observe the obvious linguistic connection between “social” and “socialist,” and are ready to identify it with the Western way of life, particularly those happy beneficiaries of social socialism in Europe.

…Now, is socialism good or bad? Well, it actually depends on what we would like to call “socialism.” The said mishmash becomes outright hilarious as we juxtapose certain characteristic quotations from some well-known historical personages.

“Socialists, Communists, and Nihilists strive to uproot the foundations of civilized society,” declares Pope Leo XIII in 1878. (Quod apostolici muneris.) Fifty-three years later, Pope Pius XI observes that “Socialism is drifting toward the truths, which the Christian tradition has always supported. It cannot be denied that its program often comes close to the just demands of Christian reformers.”  (Quadragesimo anno, 1931). The only way to harmonize these two "infallible" statements ex cathedra is to recognize the validity of the logical syllogism AÞ BÞ C  and to conclude that Christian reformers, like the socialists, have striven “to uproot the foundations of civilized society,” which, considering where civilized society is today, may not even be such a bad thing…

Prince Otto von Bismarck, who, as Chancellor of Germany, outlawed all political organizations advocating “socialism” in Germany, also made this odd statement that “the state must introduce even more socialism in our Reich,” which certainly points to the same subconscious association of the words social and socialism, which I have previously pointed out.

There are even stranger instances of the word’s use, or perhaps, misuse:

“We are all Socialists nowadays,” said the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII of England, in his speech at the Mansion House in London in 1895.

On the other hand, this:

“Socialism is a fake, a comedy, a phantom, and a blackmail,” said Benito Mussolini in a speech in Milan in 1919. He would surely moderate this view in later years, vis-à-vis his national-socialist Comrade Hitler.

The list of these predictable oddities can go on and on, but what has already been cited should be enough. No wonder then that, as early as in 1845, Friedrich Engels openly grumbled that the notion of socialism in Germany was “vague, undefined, and indefinable.”

The quick question that comes to mind is what exactly is socialism? Here is Webster’s Dictionary. Among its three definitions, the second talks of the political movement, and the third of the Communist doctrine, so both of those can be dismissed at once for our purpose, observing however that the obvious confusion of its several meanings is one of the main causes of the comic word-usage mess. But let us focus on just the first Webster’s definition of socialism:
“Socialism is the theory or system of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community, rather than by private individuals, with all members of society or the community sharing in the work and the products.”

The pertinent question now is whether socialism as-such has ever existed in reality. The Soviet model may have come fairly close to socialism, in proclaiming its spirit, and also in certain technicalities, yet not close enough. The first years of a “proletarian dictatorship” in Soviet Russia were explicitly class-discriminatory, anti-democratic, and patently anti-socialist. Lenin’s New Economic Policy was a calculated recourse to the practice of private enterprise. Stalin’s expectation of an imminent mortal clash with Germany turned Russia into a giant military camp, ironically, the closest she had ever come to socialism, but of the peculiar martial type, which I much hesitate giving the name of socialism to. What came after Stalin was a gradual slide into corruption and spiritual decline. Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign, ironically, did less real damage to Stalin’s memory than to the Soviet nation’s belief in itself and in its socialist ideal. His direct assault on the sanctity of the Soviet statehood itself, psychologically identified with the name of Stalin, brought out a deep disillusionment and cynicism in people toward their Socialist State, and thus demoralized the socialist spirit in the USSR, eventually contributing to the latter’s collapse.

Thus, I think, socialism had failed in its most promising stronghold. Let us be honest about it. Considering that the spirit of socialism is the best moral foundation for any society, had socialism ever existed anywhere on earth, that spirit should by now have long triumphed and established a socialist paradise on earth. Which only proves that, to cut the story short, real socialism, that is, the necessary combination of an idealistic faith and the practical implementation of the socialist political, economic, and social principles has never existed in objective reality.

The best practical alternative to theoretical socialism is perhaps a government-regulated private system of production, coupled with a socialist system of distribution, achieved by means of taxation and a centralized and comprehensive national system of social services, also including free medical care and a frequently re-adjusted minimum standard of living, guaranteed through the minimum wage figure and certain entitlement programs for the disadvantaged citizens. Some people may want to “recognize” such a system in existence in America, without paying attention to such necessary prerequisites of socialism as free medical care and a self-evident degree of economic fairness toward the working poor which certainly does not exist in America at all. Whether the presumably fairer European socio-economic system can be qualified as socialism cannot be defended either, as the current socio-political structure of even the richest European nations has been so utterly undermined by Europe’s immigration policies, turning the continent into a giant camp for displaced persons having no national, cultural, or any other kind of allegiance to their host states, demolishing, even theoretically, I am afraid, the very foundation of socialist society, with the long-term prospect of an eventual improvement going from bad to worse.
Remember that only in a nation-state, where the upper classes can identify with the lower classes more than with their upper-class peers in other nations, does the socialist idea stand a chance of becoming a reality.

ENEMY NUMBER ONE

As a follow-up to my yesterday’s post Bowing To The Kremlin, I am very much tempted to reiterate one of my key leitmotifs, regarding the historical relationship between America and Russia. Among an assortment of things amounting to sheer silliness, Mr. Romney said something this week that must not be qualified as nonsense. He called Russia “without question [America’s] number one geopolitical foe.”

My readers, particularly those who have read me with some attention in the past, won’t be surprised that in this particular case I am not going to criticize Mr. Romney at all, except for apparently not comprehending the huge positive import of his own words.

...During the Cold War, the USSR was known as America’s main adversary. I wonder how many people today realize that this designation of a nation sprawling over one-sixth of the earth’s land mass in eleven different time zones, one of the two space powers, and also in possession of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, was elevating America’s own prestige in the world. Indeed, one’s strength can be best measured by the strength of one’s enemies.

By the way, who have been America’s “enemies” in the twenty-first century? Starting with Afghanistan and Iraq, later Syria and Iran, plus North Korea? Oh, yes, plus “terror” itself, forcing American security officers at the airports today to search for bombs in baby carriages and in old ladies’ underwear?

…Some reward for winning the Cold War!

Three cheers for Mr. Romney, then, for showing enough respect for Russia by calling her “our number one geopolitical foe.” I am certain that both America and Russia would be winners in restoring the psychological dichotomy of being each other’s main adversary. After all, what is better than a noble geopolitical rivalry of two great powers? For, as Nietzsche says in Genealogy of Morals, First Essay #10:

“How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! And such reverence is a bridge to love.”

BOWING TO THE KREMLIN

Re: Mitt Romney’s article Bowing to the Kremlin, published in Foreign Affairs on March 27, 2012.


I must confess, I am not too happy with President Obama’s foreign and domestic policies over the course of the last three years. But I understand that there is little that any President of the United States could do these days, even if he wanted to. The real decision-making power apparently belongs to people behind the scenes not the least among whom are the financial donors and the political deal-makers.

Yet, in more than an equal measure I confess that I am sorely troubled by what the leaders of the Republican Party have been saying and writing over the course of the last decade, and currently. It is not so much that I "disagree" with, say, Senator McCain, or with Governor Romney (not to mention some lesser figures, like the former Speaker Gingrich, who has not withdrawn from the race for the Republican nomination only because a certain multi-millionaire keeps signing large checks that keep his campaign going no matter what), as I am dismayed by the abominable level of incompetence shown by these Republicans, who are presumably there to pose a challenge to Mr. Obama, in the fight for the White House. It seems as though the only thing these challengers are capable of is throwing cheap propaganda dirt at their Presidential target, which only splatters all over the American image around the world, bringing neither glory nor political gain to the dirt-throwers. In other words, it is only the genuine American interest that suffers as a result.

The most recent article by the current Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney in Foreign Affairs yesterday is a sad example of such incompetence in the very sensitive field of foreign policy. Provocatively titled Bowing to the Kremlin, it never rises to the level of its own “provocation,” combining a salvo of already predictable cheap shots against the Democrat incumbent with smatterings of rhetorical bravado, factual distortions, and misrepresentations. I have no intention of dignifying this sorry piece of crude agitation and propaganda with a commentary, like I would not dignify someone shouting obscenities at another with a scholarly analysis of every dirty word being used. There is really nothing to analyze there, and this is the saddest part. So that my readers might not suspect me of an exaggeration, I suggest that they study Mr. Romney’s article on their own and see it for what it is. They might also take notice of the famous cold warrior, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s, reaction to the Republican rhetoric across the board:
“I must say, I’m literally… I literally feel embarrassed as an American, when I see those people orate.” (The source here is Dr. Brzezinski’s appearance on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, on CNN, on Sunday, March 25, 2012.) I normally disagree with Dr. Brzezinski’s view more than 50% of the time, but in this case our feelings are identical.

But I will go farther than he does, with regard to the embarrassment. Who is really at fault here is the fabled American Press, the presumable Socratic gadfly on the body of the American cow, whose job it is to expose such national embarrassments and disgraces. Alas, for quite some time now, the gadfly has been missing its sting, gone timid, conveniently selective and non-confrontational against some of the worst excesses of the American political establishment.

Ironically, the Russians are having a field day with this. Considering the fallout from Mr. Romney’s obvious, but woefully predictable blunder, he has done far more damage to America’s image and prestige around the world than Mr. Obama’s open mike, in that famous incident. Apparently, there are more ways than one of “bowing to the Kremlin.”

HIDING BEHIND A "SPOKESCREEN"?

Why do some very intelligent people like to talk so much about themselves to people who obviously do not merit such confidence? For, as Voltaire once said, “la terre est couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu’on leur parle.”
Nietzsche the psychologist has an answer which seems to explain this ostensible weakness: “Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
…To which I might add just this follow-up question: ...From oneself?

CAPITALISM'S CRITICS CHALLENGED BY A HIGHER AUTHORITY?

After all I have said already, it seems strange for me to lash out against the critics of capitalism, with whom I presumably have so much in common. But this entry is a kind of intellectual exercise, in which I would be playing an advocatus diaboli. For instance, my aversion to ‘usury’ is well known, to which my earlier entry Christian Usury Of The Elect convincingly testifies. Yet, I am posing a curious intellectual challenge here, inviting as my principal witness for the defense of… usury… the Biblical passage from Luke 19:11-27. It would have been very convenient for me for the sake of ideological consistency not to post this entry at all, especially because this particular passage is one of the strangest in the New Testament, but, in all honesty, I could not choose such a cop-out here, as controversy and occasional inconsistency are the vital elements of honest philosophizing, whereas convenience, single-mindedness and preconceived agenda are anathema to it.

Most people who analyze this parable try to get to its hidden meaning and are customarily perplexed by its elusiveness. My approach is however completely different. After all, this is not my Religion section, but my section on Economics. Let us therefore focus not on the religious message, but on the choice of the example which Jesus is giving. Paradoxically, the first practitioner of Christian Communism draws here from what is unmistakably capitalist practice, and with even stranger ethical implications.

While purely financial manipulation is both morally and economically indefensible, in the negative effect it produces on the welfare of its own society, the same apparently cannot be said about the practices of trading and profitable investment. In other words, all that is capitalism is by no means bad. (As long as one does not push the will to profit too far into the domain of [positive] ethical valuation, I am sorely tempted to add, but, astonishingly, this most predictable conclusion is far from being made in Jesus’ parable below.)

While prioritizing personal profit at the expense of all other considerations becomes, ipso facto, an ethical issue, and all manifestations of greed must be emphatically condemned, the practice of profit-making, trade, and credit, that is, lending money for profit, is not to be considered unethical, or morally wrong as such. An even more surprising action on Jesus’ part is His nonjudgmental attitude toward the ugly concept of “usury,” which has earned for itself such a bad reputation that very few capitalist apologists would dare to defend it. I must point out right away that the word “usury” is used here in the least offensive, virtually obsolete sense, but such use only adds spice to an already controversial exposition.

Now, here is of course the pinnacle of Christian authority and the ultimate source of Christian ethics, that is, Jesus Himself, in the parable of ten pounds, as told in Luke 19:11-27, in the King James Version.

Without presenting the whole text of this well-familiar parable, here it is in a much-shortened form, focusing exclusively on the economic aspect of the parable, which interests me the most in this entry. Meanwhile, the full text is fascinating and frankly incomprehensible to me in its entirety, and I urge my readers to open the Bible and read this parable in toto, for their own fascination and “confusement”:

“A certain nobleman [going] into a far country… called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy [meaning, take it and use it] till I come... [When he returned,] he commanded these servants to be called… that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. [Observe the use of words gained (meaning, profited) and trading. Both these words unmistakably bear the stamp of Jesus’ acceptance, if not approval.]
“Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. [The master then responds with a Well done, gives his servant authority over ten cities (as a measure of his capability as a manager), and adds one extra bonus: the one pound he has retrieved from the third, failed servant.]
“And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. [The master now gives this servant five cities, still a reward, but in proportion to his diminished capacity to maximize his profits, and no extra bonus at that.]
“And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin… [And now the master is angry and replies,] Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required my own with usury?" [And then of course he punishes the servant.]

...I don’t know about you, but I very much doubt that it is even possible, under normal circumstances, to make a tenfold profit on your pound without cheating or deceiving anyone, yet here is just one such profit-maker, whom Jesus sets up as an example to be emulated!

One may still argue, of course, that the parable is only a metaphor, and that in its retelling I have omitted the important fact that the third servant feared and hated his master, to the point of insulting him in their fateful confrontation: “For I feared thee because thou art an austere man: thou takest up what thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow.” (This actually reads like a bitter condemnation of capitalism, coming, ironically, from the least commended and appreciated character of Jesus’ parable.)

Yet, I insist, in my reading of the parable (and everything that Jesus says has a momentous point in itself, prominently including his choice of words and metaphors) I sense no condemnation weighing down these controversial words trading and usury, which does not suddenly make them incontrovertibly moral, but at least leaves them ethically neutral. Jesus obviously takes an example from “Caesar’s world,” and not from “God’s world,” yet, I repeat, the fact that he uses it neutrally, without an explicit condemnation, shows us an implicit acceptance of this practice in the world at large.

Ironically, there is a lot to be said about the usage of the word “usury.” According to Webster’s Dictionary, usury means (1) “the act or practice of lending money at a rate of interest that is excessive or unlawfully high,” or (2) “an excessive or unlawfully high rate or amount of interest.” Neither meaning should be applicable to the situation in the parable, as the master obviously refers not to the act or practice of usury, in the sense of “lending money at a rate of interest that is excessive or unlawfully high,” but only to giving the money to the bank or to an enterprising borrower for a return “with usury,” which brings us to yet a third meaning of this word, marked by Webster’s as obsolete: (3) “interest paid on a loan. [Obs.]”

It is one thing, of course, to have a personal dislike for things like trading and banking, but in our moral evaluation of these practices, the best course to take, for those of us who profess to be Christians, is to seek the only authoritative answer in the Word of God, which is the Christian Bible. My reading of the Biblical passage above, as I have stated already, leaves me somewhat baffled, yet confirms my separate thought that the technicalities of standard capitalist practices are not subject to moral valuation. It is only their blatant misuse or excessive preoccupation with maximizing personal profit at the expense of other human beings, which opens us (but not the practices of trading, investment, and credit themselves!) to the charges of immorality and wickedness, and condemns the perpetrators to perdition.

CAPITALIST APOLOGISTS CHALLENGED BY THEIR PEERS

There are countless Russian names of all ethnicities, which are popping up in my head right now, making me feel proud of being a Russian. There are others, too, which make me sick.
Born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, this woman is an insult to her place of birth, and to my Russian sensibilities, not so much on account of her general obnoxiousness, as because of her patently anti-Russian frame of mind, or, perhaps, her clever manipulation of her newly found sponsors, feeding them the food they would like the best. I am talking about that monstress from hell Alisa Zinovievna Rozenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand.
Wholeheartedly paraphrasing Schelling’s rude words (said about John Locke), “Je méprise Ayn Rand!” Her obscene panegyrics to capitalism,--- such as: “What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism’s enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the practical, but the only moral system in history,”--- are antithetical to everything I stand for, and, most importantly, they are so wrong! There is nothing moral about the faith and practices of capitalism, which are, at best, ethically neutral, and it is blasphemous to turn any capitalist theory into a substitute for religious morality, that is by substituting the moral authority of God by the authority of what the Bible calls Mammon.
Ayn Rand’s in-your-face capitalistic orgy does not know the meaning of moderation: "When I say capitalism," she screams with a snooty buoyancy, "I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the separation of state and church."

Let the response to this silliness come from a very recent and savvy source: “If by free market one means a market that is autonomous and spontaneous, free from political controls,--- then there is no such thing as a free market at all. It is simply a myth.” (Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude, p. 167.) In other words, “free market” is not an “objective reality,” but an ideology and an ethical system incompatible with religious morality in any of the great religions.

The myth of laissez-faire capitalism and complete market freedom has been sufficiently dispelled by “real life” itself, and such extravagant pronouncements as this one, by Ludwig Von Mises, to the effect that: "the first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism", no longer hold water. And yet, here is a fairly recent, and already quoted by me, tirade from the very distinguished economist Milton Friedman, who argues this point, as if oblivious to the fact that the kind of freedom which he has in mind simply does not exist: “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” (!) As a matter of fact, quoting Friedman does not make me sick at all, as his silliness is hardly offensive, but, on the contrary, like Lenin's proverbial “useful idiot” supplies good ammunition to the anti-capitalist camp.

Among the recent apologists of capitalism, there is a persistent tendency to overlook the fact that capitalist self-interest is not sufficient to make it trustworthy, and society requires constant regulation of the private sector to make sure that the “good capitalist” goal of maximizing profit is not carried too far out. But still, the following declaration by Alan Greenspan, the self-serving philosopher of the marketplace, stands out as either too naïve (which cannot be the case), or so utterly disingenuous (which must be the case), that it once again makes me sick (a second time in this entry!):

“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as the cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”

A much-much more moderate expression of the belief in the self-regulating ability of the small-scale next-door capitalism, cautious and conditional, comes through in the following passage from this classic father of political economy Adam Smith:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." (Now, the meaning of the next phrase is that no one can be so naïve as to believe in the altruistic goodness of human nature.) "Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”

At the same time, Adam Smith pulls no punches in curbing his enthusiasm, or, perhaps, just driving down its
perception, in passages like these: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind,” and “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

(What this means is that under all circumstances capitalism, as an economic system, depends on the political protection of its presumed nemesis the State [and, under modern internationalized conditions, of... the American Navy…])

This is what is to be expected from any decent defender of capitalism -- reason and moderation! I have no problem with Thomas Jefferson’s elegant endorsement of private enterprise, as opposed to a government-imposed regulation, in this line: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
Or in this Winston Churchill’s unintentionally (or intentionally?!) ironic appeal to reason and relative worth of different systems in comparison: “Some see private enterprise as a predatory tiger, to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” (See my commentary on this and the next Churchillian adage in my entry The Tiger, The Cow, And The Horse.) And here is that next one, which I find verbally sharp, but superficial in its substance: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

A similar thought has been likewise expressed by the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes:
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous --and it does not deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”

(This, by the way, is only way I can “buy” capitalism: please do spare me the words freedom, goodness, and other such rubbish!)

But, on the other hand, here is another point of view, preferring the tyranny of the state to the tyranny of persons, expressed by George Orwell (yes, the George Orwell!) in his 1944 review of the book The Road to Serfdom by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek:

“[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to “free” competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because it is more irresponsible, than that of the state.”

Yet another major blow to the apologists of capitalism is delivered where it hurts the most, in their pocket, by an argument pitting capitalist “natural” efficiency against the whole institute of private property. In our panegyrics to the wonders of capitalist administration, how are we supposed to reconcile the efficiency part with the proprietary protections of the rightful heirs of capitalist enterprises who happen to be not properly qualified to administer their windfalls. The discrepancy between the efficiency of some and incompetence of others, when the former are bound to lose to the latter in the property court, is usually resolved by murder in a number of Colombo episodes, and some other television crime dramas. Needless to say, such a problem does not appear to exist in state capitalist enterprises, where ownership takes a back seat, and is customarily supplanted by the management by the fittest. No wonder that today’s Western capitalist market is prudently comfortable with the state-owned models of enterprise, such as in Putin’s, as opposed to Yeltsin’s, Russia. We may eventually see everywhere the situation where private proprietors are increasingly separated from the administration of their businesses through the legal mechanism of government regulation, reducing the “free” enterprise sector to such areas of small business where success or failure would have little impact on the welfare of society at large. The so-called “public” companies all seem to be moving precisely in that direction, inasmuch as the reasonable rights of small investors cannot be automatically guaranteed by the self-regulating laws of market “freedom.” (By the way, who should prove the better “master” between the following two: the most authoritarian state on earth, or a dimwitted heir to his parents’ great fortune? …The question was rhetorical!)

Summarizing my challenge to the apologists of capitalism, I am quite comfortable with any sort of defense of general capitalist practices, as long as that defense remains ethically-neutral, even though the necessity of government control, the abject failure of all historical experiments in laissez-faire capitalism, as well as the grudging admittance of clearly shaped socialist practices into the very bastion of capitalism, the American economy, all testify to the social impracticability of capitalism in its pure form, and thus call into question the philosophical sustainability of the “libertarian” capitalist doctrine.
But I am categorically opposed to the idol-worship of the capitalist golden calf, to any effort to moralize, in any positive way, the factor of human greed, either directly, as in “Greed is good!” or by any other name.

And finally, one of the best challenges to capitalist apologetics is, in my opinion, the following observation of Albert Einstein: “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism… An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship (sic!) acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.” (Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?)

It is exactly for the reason stated here by Einstein, having seen the worst excesses of American capitalism at close range, and having deplored the Russian national catastrophe of the 1990’s, that, even though I do not wish to go too far in my challenge to the so-called capitalist realism (and particularly I have no intention of disparaging small business, which ought to be a legitimate part of any economy), my sympathies on a larger scale are clearly with its socialist alternatives, as practiced in today’s civilized nations of Europe, or at least with the practice of “state capitalism” (granted, a poorly defined concept!), as one of the several possible ways of the future.

ANTI-CAPITALISM AS AN ARGUMENT CORAM NON JUDICE. PART II.

(Continued from Part I of the same title.)


And now comes an interesting comment on a momentous historical phenomenon. I am referring to fascism in its relation to capitalism. The following paragraph is yet again quoted from the Wikipedia:

---"Fascism calls for the extensive regulation of corporations and industry in order to serve the nation. It often involves anti-capitalist rhetoric, but whether fascism is indeed opposed to capitalism is disputed. Marxists in particular argue that fascism is a form of government instituted to protect capitalism (sic!!!) during a period of crisis or revolution."

Once again, definitions, definitions, definitions! How can fascism be ‘pro-capitalist,’ I wonder, when it must necessarily imply a powerful, controlling State, which is, of course, anathema to the very idea of capitalism? In fact, all totalitarian regimes tend to be socialistic by their inherent logic, and whatever capitalism they are said to be “protecting” must be “state capitalism,” that is, not really capitalism at all.

Now, this is how Webster’s Dictionary defines “fascism”:

“A system of government (a “system of government,” and not an "economic system," which only points to the need of our further examination of the concept of capitalism [sic!] as a… political system!) characterized by a rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition (unions, other, especially leftist parties, or minority groups, etc.), the retention of private ownership of the means of production under the centralized government control, belligerent nationalism and racism, glorification of war, etc. first instituted in Italy in 1922. Also, the political philosophy and movement based on such doctrines and policies.”

The very first thing that comes to mind in this definition is that it is hardly a general definition of the term itself, but rather a description of a historical phenomenon, as it happened in Italy under the dictatorship of Mussolini. I strongly doubt that such deliberate particularization of a general term will do much service in the quest for the understanding of what fascism really is. Characteristically, historians often talk about the so-called German fascism, which is, of course, also known under the name of national-socialism, calling the general understanding of fascism into serious question. By the same token, there have also been numerous attempts to represent Soviet Communism as a form of fascism, confusing the nature of the beast even further.
(Perhaps, we would be better served by consulting the authentic philosopher of fascism, Giovanni Gentile, in this matter, rather than any of the modern reference sources? I will be definitely doing this in my entry La Dottrina Del Fascismo, to be posted later.)

The solution to the philosophical dilemma here is either to reduce the term fascism to the semantic status of a historism (in which case we are most regrettably losing the crucial link between historical fascism and, say, our modern-day phenomenon of neo-fascism, which is by no means to be relegated to a passive status), or, much better still, to redefine fascism extratemporally, so-to-speak, that is, philosophically, especially examining its theoretical connection to totalitarianism, which is also in desperate need of being adequately defined. (In my Collective Guilt And Glory section, I have dwelled on this incredibly important concept of totalitarianism in great detail.)

...The next ideology considered by Wikipedia, in its coverage of anti-capitalism, is Conservatism:

"There are also strands of conservatism uncomfortable with liberal capitalism..." “...Particularly in continental Europe many conservatives have been uncomfortable with the negative impacts of unfettered capitalism, and the egoistic, hedonistic individualism it nurtures, on culture and traditions. Conservative opposition to the French revolution, the Enlightenment and the development of individualistic liberalism, as a political theory and as institutionalized social practices, sought to retain traditional social hierarchies, practices and institutions. There is also conservative protectionist opposition to certain types of international capitalism.”
(It is necessary to remind the reader that liberal capitalism is laissez-faire capitalism. There may occur a very unfortunate confusion if we fail to see that political conservatism and economic liberalism usually go hand-in-hand in today’s America, and, conversely, that political liberalism is normally associated with socialistic economic aspirations, thus standing in direct opposition to the core principles of liberal capitalism! Keep in mind, though, that the next passage, referring to the discomfort of certain conservatives with unfettered capitalism, talks about Europe, where there is no longer in existence the kind of “pure capitalism,” which, allegedly, but not too credibly, still exists in the United States.)


Now, Conservatism is defined by our constant and consistent reference guide, the Webster’s Dictionary, as “the practice of preserving what is established and a disposition to oppose change in established institutions and methods.”)
Frankly, I would imagine all authentic conservatives of the capitalist persuasion to rally to the defense of the classic industrious "Protestant" type of capitalism, some time ago extolled by Max Weber, against its modern-day nemesis financial capitalism, which has embodied every proverbial vice of capitalism, with none of its redeeming Weberian values whatsoever. However, the startling surge of neo-conservatism in America, not so long ago, and still going strong, despite the global financial crisis of 2008 directly caused by its zealous promotion of Globalism, undermining American capitalist productivity in favor of financial speculation, is giving a new twist to the word “conservative.” I suspect that in calling themselves “neo-conservatives,” the American neocons adopted Lenin’s celebrated method of playing with words, when he called his miniscule band of supporters “Bolsheviks,” “the Majority,” when nothing could be further from the truth.

Finally, Wikipedia’s reference to religious objections to capitalism sounds fairly naïve, and even simplistic, in the light of the much broader treatment it receives in my approach to Capitalism & Christianity, but I am nevertheless dutifully quoting it here, at least for the sake of good manners and completeness:

“Some religions criticize, or outright reject, capitalism: Judaism and Islam forbid usury (lending money at a high interest), an important aspect of capitalism.” (For the record, classical Judaism forbids usury of Jews to Jews, but does not forbid usury to the Gentiles.) "Christianity traditionally forbids usury (wrong again; this is not accurate, as can be seen from my entry Christian Usury Of The Elect, originating with Calvin!), but some modern groups of Christianity have overtime abandoned identifying all forms of lending at interest as usury. Many denominations of modern origins have dropped the prohibition altogether. More recently, Christianity has become the source of many other criticisms of capitalism, particularly of its materialistic aspects. The first socialists drew many of their principles from Christian values (see Christian Socialism and also the Social Gospel Movement), against the “bourgeois values” of profiteering, greed, selfishness, and hoarding. Many Christians do not oppose capitalism entirely, but support a mixed economy, in order to ensure decent labor standards and relations, as well as economic justice. Nevertheless, there are also many Protestant denominations (particularly in the United States) who are reconciled, or ardently in favor of capitalism, particularly in opposition to secular socialism (whatever that means!).

Perhaps, I was too rash, after all, to dismiss this last passage in Wikipedia’s dissertation on anti-Capitalism as something so naïve and simplistic as not to merit a serious consideration. The notable reference to the ardent endorsement of capitalism by certain "Protestant denominations (particularly in the United States)", points to a distinctive American type of morally and religiously dysfunctional endorsement of the Capitalist morality, mostly by certain American Evangelicals. Is this a case of dual morality? I think it is rather a case of extreme hypocrisy, paying lip service to Christianity in abstracto, while at the same time throwing the actual Christian ethics under the bus.

ANTI-CAPITALISM AS AN ARGUMENT CORAM NON JUDICE. PART I.

Wikipedia describes “anti-capitalism” in the following manner:

“Anti-capitalism refers to opposition to capitalism in terms of beliefs or attitudes. As such, it is a very broad term covering a wide collection of views and ideologies, some of which oppose each other more than they oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists in the strict sense of the word are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another economic system, however, there are also ideologies which can be characterized as partially anti-capitalist, in the sense that they only wish to replace or abolish certain aspects of capitalism, rather than the entire system.”

Take notice that, just as the term “capitalism” is surprisingly hard to describe, in modern practical usage, with sufficient clarity and precision as a realistic economic concept (although it seems much easier to describe as a politico-ideological tool of social rhetorical warfare), its logical oppositional derivative “anti-capitalism” cannot possibly be less confusing than the mother-term, no more capable of separating pure economics from politics and ideology.

In its subsequent list of opponents of capitalism, Wikipedia uses the word “ideology” in describing them all, which is important to me in the sense that one of my own principal definitions of capitalism proper refers to it as an ‘ideology.’ Defining ideology in this latter sense, Webster’s Dictionary explains it as “the doctrines, opinions, or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc.,” which, in my judgment, is not quite adequate . I doubt that we can call an individual exponent of a particular way of thinking “an ideologue,” unless his (or her, or their, if they are a group) doctrines have acquired a sizable following, but not as opinions as much as an unfurled political banner, devoid of all intellectuality, having assumed an unthinking populist character, communicating in slogans, rather than in ideas.

What now follows, with regard to Wikipedia, is “a brief description of the most notable anti-capitalist ideologies, viewpoints, and trends.” Once again, if the following are all understood as ideologies, it is only logical that their criticism of capitalism also regards the latter primarily, if not exclusively, as an ideology.

---“Socialism argues for extensive public control over the economy, which may or may not be associated with democratic control by the people over the state (there are both democratic and undemocratic philosophies calling themselves ‘socialist’). In addition, socialism advocates a high degree of economic equality, and the eradication of poverty and unemployment.”

It is easy to notice right away how vulnerable “socialism” becomes in this context to the utterly unfair charges of egalitarianism (“a high degree of economic equality”) and social coercion (“the eradication of … unemployment”), while the highfalutin goal of “the eradication of poverty” can be easily dismissed as a pipe dream at best, and a cynical ploy at worst.

Curiously, while Webster’s Dictionary calls capitalism primarily “an economic system,” it prefers to deny the same “courtesy” to its socialist counterpart, calling it either a “stage” in the Communist doctrine, or a “political movement” (!), or, at the very best, “the theory or system (the word "economic" is decidedly missing here!)  of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by the society or the community, rather than by private individuals, with all members sharing in the work and the products.”

My primary interest in socialism here is stimulated by a combination of two factors: that capitalism cannot be allowed to flourish in modern world in its purest laissez-faire form, due to its individualistic (read: egoistic-therefore-antisocial) character, and, having to be subjected to strict government control, loses any claim to its identification as capitalism proper, and has to be redefined; and the second factor is the core implication that Socialism as-Such is guaranteed to enter the resulting picture on the coattails of the aforementioned government control, creating the so-called mixed basket, and thus profoundly altering the ideological field under the present consideration. It can be credibly argued that American Great Society used to be a form of socialism, and that the state-sponsored redistribution of wealth continuing in America today, through a vast set of severely curtailed, but still functioning government programs for the poor, is also a form of socialism in disguise. At any rate, the proposition of systematically taxing the worker to support the non-worker can hardly be described as representative of normal capitalist practice...

I shall, however, continue with our text from the Wikipedia:

--“Marxism argues for collective ownership of the means of production and for the eventual abolition of the state with an intermediate stage in which the state is used to eliminate the vestiges of capitalism. Marxism is the foundation of several different ideologies, including communism, and of certain types of socialism.”

Needless to say, I am confidently considering communism in its historical evolution as a pseudo-ideology at best, which is important for the appreciation of the fact that the so-called collapse of "Soviet communism" has been the collapse of a sham, rather than a socio-political phenomenon in its own right, and, consequently, it cannot be seriously accepted as a theoretical thesis, or as an argument of any sort.

---“Social democracy is a partially anti-capitalist ideology, which has grown out of the reformist wing of the socialist movement. Social democrats do not oppose the actual foundations of capitalism, but they wish to mitigate what they see as capitalism’s most negative effects through the creation of a mixed economy and a welfare state.”

This half-hearted historical excursion into the origins and evolution of Social Democracy serves very little purpose, except to further obfuscate the subject we are discussing. For instance, what does Wikipedia mean by “the actual foundations of capitalism” which Social democrats “do not oppose”? Are we talking here, perhaps, about modern European Social Democracy not opposing the political manifestation of American Capitalism, as opposed to Soviet-style "Communism," in their mutual political Cold War contraposition? This is of course a rhetorical question, because I personally have no doubt whatsoever that that is what it was. Other than that obvious political factor, modern Western Social Democracy has clearly stood in opposition to the American capitalistic model, which solid fact is becoming clearer and clearer, as the world has been marching on into the twenty-first century.

The following two ideologies stated in Wikipedia as “anti-capitalist” are of lesser relevance to the subject of our discussion, and I am about to list them here just for the sake of curiosity and completeness.

---“Anarchist philosophies argue for a total abolition of the state, with many anarchists opposing capitalism on the grounds that it entails social domination, involuntary relations and coercive hierarchy. Some forms of anarchism oppose capitalism as a whole, while supporting certain particular aspects of capitalism.”

In this context, I cannot contain myself from quoting the concluding sentence from Nietzsche’s Antichrist-57, which once again brings to mind his superb idea of a mysterious interconnectedness of philosophical things: “The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry.” Need I say more?

--“Ecofeminists attack capitalism for treating the natural world as just a body of resources to be exploited and reshaped, to serve human purposes and interests. They see it inherently snapping the relationship between humans to one another, and to the natural world. They see capitalism as a patriarchal construction ‘based on the colonization of women, nature, and other peoples.’”

In other words, as I would look at it, ecofeminists, whatever their objective, see capitalism as an ideology, and as such it becomes an easy and legitimate target of unequivocal condemnation. But, as is so often the case, the inbuilt shortcomings of ecofeminism (surely to be confused with “ecofreakism”!), instinctively recognized by the mainstream as a fringe movement, give capitalism a reprieve of sorts, for at least being unmistakably mainstream...

(To be continued in Part II.)

WAS TROTSKY A MENSHEVIK?

The title question is a hard one for any honest student of Soviet history who has to rely on reference sources without an intimate knowledge of what this question really means. Approaching a question like this, our first task is to make sure that all terms in it are properly defined. The name of ‘Trotsky’ here points to a concrete historical person, no confusion about it, but the term ‘Menshevik’ is quite another story. We cannot proceed with an answer before we are clear about its definition. And here right away we run into a big problem. But first things first. Let us rush through them now.

According to my Webster’s Dictionary, “Menshevik was originally a member of the minority faction of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, who fought the more radical majority faction (Bolsheviki) from 1903 on.” Britannica sums up the term "Mensheviks" as the “non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Worker’s Party, which evolved into a separate organization.” Wikipedia provides the following definition:
"The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. The dispute originated at the 2nd Congress of that Party, ostensibly over minor issues of Party organization. Martov’s supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called Mensheviks, derived from the Russian word menshinstvo, minority, whereas Lenin’s adherents were known as Bolsheviks, from bolshinstvo, majority."

Later in this entry, I will demonstrate that all these so-called definitions are horribly flawed and misleading. But before I do that, let us leave them at that for a short while and address the question whether Trotsky was a “Menshevik” (whatever it means!), or not. Trotsky himself categorically denies it in his writings, but every reputable source speaks against him in this matter. Here is Wikipedia again:
"Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalist faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party… He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party."
My 1975 Britannica says this:
“At the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, held in Brussels and London in July 1903, Trotsky sided with the Menshevik faction advocating a democratic approach to socialism against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution… In 1907, after a second exile to Siberia, Trotsky once again escaped abroad… He remained active in Russian Social-Democratic émigré circles as a celebrated but isolated figure on the left wing of the Menshevik faction. As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions… Trotsky hailed the outbreak of revolution in Russia in February [1917] (March, new style) as the opening of the permanent revolution he had predicted… Trotsky reached Petrograd in mid-May [1917] and assumed the leadership of a left wing Menshevik faction… Following the abortive July Days uprising, Trotsky was arrested in the crackdown on the Bolshevik leadership carried out by Alexander Kerensky’s liberal government. In August, while still in jail, Trotsky was formally admitted to the Bolshevik Party…He was also elected to membership on the Bolshevik Central Committee. Trotsky was released from prison in September… and shortly afterward he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies when the Bolsheviks… established a majority in it…”

Reading through this seriously confusing pile of information, numerous questions must be popping up, and we may just as well give up and resign to the authority of the sources, finding further investigation virtually impossible, unless we have an inside track on this subject, which our sources have failed to provide.
So, here is our inside track.---

What is a Menshevik? It is ridiculous to represent the Mensheviks as a legitimate party or as a party faction. It is a disservice to the historical memory of Russian Social-Democracy to do so. Menshevik, both singular and plural, is a fake word, a word of contempt and derision invented by Lenin, to distinguish it from another invented word, Bolshevik. Having joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Lenin sabotaged it by sheer trickery. Using a clever technicality, he declared himself, an audacious upstart, the majority, while all those respectably established, yet sorely inexperienced in dirty games, Russia’s Social Democrats were dubbed “the minority,” although they constituted an overwhelming majority vis-à-vis Lenin’s crowd.
Thus in actual terms Bolshevik, Majority, meant Lenin and his followers, while Menshevik, Minority, meant (in Lenin’s eyes, mind you, and in the eyes of Lenin’s Bolshevik followers) all those poor souls of Russia’s doomed Social-Democracy who somehow failed to recognize Lenin as their Great Leader, and obstinately refused to follow him.
Needless to say, none of the established Social-Democrats ever called themselves by Lenin’s term of abuse, and thus, there was never any “Menshevik” fraction in Russian Social Democracy. Alas, subsequent Soviet history was written by the victors, and the Western historians preoccupied with “bigger issues” saw nothing better for themselves than to simply follow the Bolshevik suit.

No wonder that Trotsky would refuse to identify himself as a former “Menshevik,” which was tantamount to calling himself a renegade. Being called an “Anti-Leninist” was another matter, although after the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed in Russia, he would try to deny that characterization too.

Now, as to the straight question whether Trotsky had been a Menshevik prior to the Bolshevik Revolution,--- yes, he had, according to the exact meaning of the word Menshevik. Interestingly, Britannica’s definition of “Menshevik” above, despite its overall conspicuous inadequacy, has stumbled closer to the truth than any other source, by using the keyword “non-Leninist” in its definition.

Staying with Britannica, here is a curious fact of sorts. As it moves from earlier to later editions, it does not change the text too much in its revisions, unless it is warranted by the Zeitgeist, scientifically and politically speaking. Much of my 1975 text on Trotsky is being repeated verbatim in its most recent online edition, but a few cuts and changes have been made. Among them are the omissions of the following portions of the text quoted above:

“…rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution…"
"...As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions…”

I am not anxious to speculate why Britannica would make these particular cuts, except to note that the cuts, whether deliberately or inadvertently, reduce the rather embarrassing emphasis on Trotsky’s anti-Leninism, with its corollary implication that it is hard to imagine how this Lenin’s nemesis of long standing could ever be considered as his potential successor…

My last question in this entry is this: Why was Trotsky, an established anti-Leninist figure, so easily allowed to join Lenin’s Bolsheviks, immediately attaining top positions in the Party? It is no secret that Lenin was a vengeful unforgiving egomaniac, yet he did not seem to mind his sworn enemy’s meteoric rise. Those of my readers who have not read my Trotsky posts yet, are urged to read them in conjunction with this discussion, but the straight answer should be this. Trotsky was welcomed to the party of the victors to be used, that is, to take the blame for anything that might go wrong with the Revolution. After all, back in 1905 already, Pavel Milyukov had identified (unfairly, I must say) “Trotskyism” as the scary Jewish face of Russia’s radicalism; and now, every ethnically-Russian Bolshevik (plus Lenin, who, although of mixed ethnicity, cared about it only inasmuch as he could use it as an effective weapon, plus Stalin, who, although ethnically a Georgian, was a consummate Russian Great-Power chauvinist at heart, plus quite a few others, in similar veins)--- was prepared to take full advantage of this newest, yet by no means novice, arrival.

BY THE AUTHORITY VESTED IN ME...

(A Preamble to the entry Was Trotsky A Menshevik?)

As the reader already knows, in the course of writing this book, I have been using several reference sources, and I am grateful to all of them when they serve to refresh my memory or provide me with bits and pieces of non-essential information which can be used to highlight some particular detail. But I never rely on sources of this nature to supply me with critical information (in the sense of its essential importance), as though the content of my entries depended on it. All my subjects are chosen “idiosyncratically,” that is, on the basis of my subjective interest, and they reflect my peculiar point of view, based on my unique, lifelong experience, and constant contemplation. In my thinking, I have little regard for the authority of any reference source (in my experience, the most authoritative source may turn out to be the most unreliable one, if it presents itself as a carrier of some flawed conventional wisdom, under the cloak of its respectability, as is often the case), because the only recognized authority around here am I myself. This book is about my personal knowledge and understanding, and not about anything which requires corroboration owing to the “objectivity” of others. I am using external reference sources merely as props for my convenience, to illustrate this or that point, or to facilitate my presentation in such manner as I see fit. In some cases, though, I present reference material to the reader for educational and edificational purposes, when the particular subject is unusual, and it allows me to make a more general point which is of special interest to me, and represents one of the Grundthemen of this book.
(This approach makes perfect sense, of course, as the reader does not need me to rewrite an encyclopedia or to produce compilations from a number of them. As for my frequent “subjectivity,” I trust my reader to visit a variety of other opinions on the same subject in other available sources and from the sum of such opinions to arrive at a certain objectivity, which, according to one of my apte dictums, is nothing but a multiplicity of subjectivities.)
But on some occasions, such as this one, my reference sources take the center stage, in order to highlight, with their help, certain popular misconceptions or prejudices, which these sources have fallen victim to, and with them, public knowledge as such. My title question: Was Trotsky a Menshevik? will now lead us into an investigation of certain “reliable sources,” of which Britannica ought to be considered second to none.

WIKIPEDIA VERSUS BRITANNICA

Wikipedia and Britannica, which one is better? Just a few years ago it was no contest. Britannica would win on all counts: presentability, reliability, credibility. This is not to say that Britannica’s credibility has always stood at 100%. As a matter of fact, Britannica has often been in error, particularly in such confused areas of knowledge as Soviet history, which is obviously of great importance to me. However, in this respect, it used to be in no greater error than the best of her sisters, and, comparatively speaking, Britannica was second to none, if not better, among the other greats of the prestigious world of great encyclopedias.
At the same time, Wikipedia, in her infancy, suffered from severe incompleteness, was riddled with all sorts of errors, and, generally speaking, even at first glance did not command a similar respect as the printed sort. The unforgiving rule of thumb: do not trust what you find on the Internet, applied to her in full measure.
But things have changed a lot since a few years ago. Wikipedia is definitely getting better and more reliable, as time goes by. Britannica, on the other hand, has struggled, her content steadily deteriorating in quality, in recent revisions, in certain politically sensitive areas of knowledge. (I am regularly using the 1975 edition, and, comparing it to later editions, particularly the current online edition, I know what I am talking about. I will illustrate this point somewhat in my next posting Was Trotsky A Menshevik?) And now the latest mortal blow to the eminently presentable image of Britannica: after 244 years in existence, her print edition is no more. From now on, she will be reduced to the online function, where her conventional aesthetic advantage over Wikipedia has been reduced to naught. Pity! I love physical books, and even though their overall sales have considerably suffered with the advent of the web, their elitist quality, which Wikipedia never possessed and never will, is going to be sorely missed.
As for the eventual outcome of the emergent struggle for user popularity between these two notable online entities: Wikipedia and Britannica, from now on it will be taking place on Wikipedia’s home turf, and not to be carelessly dismissed is the disappointment factor which Britannica’s retreat from the print field brings in, as her negative baggage. Pity! I used to love Britannica, and now I just wish her luck, in her new “printless” capacity, which is foreign to me, whereas Wikipedia is a perfect natural in those cyber-seas.
Having said that, I am never going to renounce my old 1975 print edition, and, in this sense, Britannica will never cease to exist for me. To be honest, this development brings me some relief, as a welcome closure to what has been to me a steady decline over the last few decades in its quality, where, incidentally, she is by no means alone, being a party to the general trend of ideological subversion, which I had a chance to comment on in my previous entry Webster’s Dictionary As An Authority Of Sorts. In my next posting, as promised, I will touch upon this sad trend again, in the context of one specific case of an unwelcome latter-day revision.

WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY AS AN AUTHORITY OF SORTS

This entry's purpose is to explain my reasons for making the Webster’s Dictionary out of so many other available sources, my preferential authority for definitions of the terms which, in my judgment, are in need of definitions. One obvious reason, of course, is why not? After all, Noah Webster’ s progeny is a highly respectable source!

Well, among the dictionaries Webster’s is a good name, indeed. But why a dictionary at all? Encyclopedias are supposed to be much better, whereas dictionaries are sort of crude, primitive…

Don’t get me wrong: I like encyclopedias too, as my next post will further clarify. But there is an advantage in dictionaries, which encyclopedias are lacking. It is their laconic element, their “simplistic” aspect. Most of the people looking for definitions will go to a dictionary they probably have at home, rather than to a multi-volume encyclopedia, a library item, anyway. This is exactly why I prefer a dictionary to an encyclopedia whenever I am specifically interested in short popular definitions, rather than in long scholarly explanations.

But now comes the odd part. Learning that I am using a 1983 edition, which has obviously been outdated by the subsequent industrial-technological revolution, many zealots of keeping current with the times will rush to condemn my mindless obstinacy, or, if they are kind, merely laugh at my bend toward obsolescence.

On this important point, I must immediately object that my retrogression is quite mindful and deliberate. As a matter of principle, I have more trust in older reference sources than in newer ones on such matters as are of an enduring character, that is, substantially unaffected in their nature by the course of most recent events.

The big reason for my retrogression, as it were, is the fact (which I have by now discovered sufficiently and incontrovertibly!) that, along with the latest technological revolution, a different kind of revolution, which may be called ideological, has quietly taken place. Some of its more explicit manifestations are best known under the soubriquet of political correctness, which I can describe as an exceptional surge of a concerted effort at mass brainwashing characterized by the rewriting of history of virtually everything, as if in order to promote a particular agenda whose success depends on the most rigorous forms of public mind control most rigorously applied.

Here is just one revealing example of what I have in mind. Let us compare two dictionary definitions of the religion of Islam, both from the same source, Webster’s Dictionary, only one from thirty years ago, and the other one from today.

Here is my 1983 Webster’s:

“Islam: 1. The monotheistic Moslem religion, of which Mohammed was the prophet.”

This is a formal neutral definition, rightly identifying Islam as one of the monotheistic religions, which include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all characterized by the belief in One God.

Now, here is the most current definition of Islam by Merriam-Webster Online:

“Islam: 1. The religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.”

The key word monotheistic is changed here into a belief in two persons: "Allah as the sole deity (why not One God?!!)," who is not identified as the Arabic word for One God, the very same God as worshiped by the Christians and the Jews,--- and, in one breath, in Muhammad, as if putting both on the same level of belief, by conjoining them with the conjunction "and". (Please, make an effort to appreciate the semantic nuances in the way in which the sentence above has been constructed!) Only an idiot will deny the striking difference between the two definitions of the word Islam, that has been in existence for over 1400 years, or fail to see the deliberate negative bias of the more ‘up-to-date’ American definition.

…Under the circumstances, my suspicious distrust of all new century “poisoned apples” from the cultivated, consumer-friendly apple tree of tainted knowledge should come as no surprise, nor, by the same token, my preference for gardener-neglected crab trees that once used to blossom, but no more. In consequence, that old Webster’s is now serving me as one of such neglected trees, and, should anyone wonder why it has to be this one and not something else, my answer is, intrepidly, why not?

WHOSE DECLARATION IS OLDER?

In connection with my recently posted entry Crowning Miss Shopkeeper, I’ve been asked: how come France gets the credit for the Enlightenment, when its celebrated Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen was adopted, in its earliest version, in 1789, whereas the American Declaration of Independence had been adopted thirteen whole years prior to the French document?! Answering this admittedly easy question should be so educational, that I thought that the answer deserves to be turned into a separate entry, and here it is.

Regarding the Enlightenment as such, there is no historical consensus as to its specifics, and even the broad outlines, such as the general timeline, and such, have been laid out with some considerable controversy.
Here is the Britannica definition of the term:

“Enlightenment, French: Siècle des Lumières (“Age of the Enlightened”), German: Aufklärung,-- a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and man were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics… Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and the celebration of reason, the power by which man understands the universe and improves his own condition. The goals of the rational man were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.”

But here is the Webster’s definition of the term:

“The Enlightenment: an 18th-century European philosophical movement characterized by rationalism, an impetus toward learning, and a spirit of skepticism and empiricism in social and political thought.”

There is an immediate discrepancy in dates. Britannica gives us the 17th century, in addition to the 18th. This is usually meant to include Dèscartes, as the starting point of the Enlightenment movement, and John Locke as one of its snow-capped summits. But read Webster’s, and the parameters of the Enlightenment here are restricted to a single century. Now, going back to the Britannica, we are reminded of the fact that the term Enlightenment is of French origin (Siècle des Lumières, first used in 1733); the English term Enlightenment was a mid-18th-century translation from the French, made in reference to the specific French Enlightenment; and, finally, the German Aufklärung is Kant’s first use of the term, made in 1784.

Despite this considerable confusion regarding the dates, and even personages, of the Enlightenment (besides Dèscartes,--- Spinoza, Newton, and even Bentham, are often mentioned as its pillars), there is no dispute about the fact that the 18th-century France was the principal source of the Enlightenment in its narrowest, technical definition as a specific phenomenon. It is true that, say, John Locke is quite frequently mentioned as an “Enlightener,” but the most compelling symbol of the Enlightenment is still L’Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, published by Diderot and D’Alembert in France from 1751 to 1772, with later supplements and revisions. The greatest contributing minds of the Encyclopédie were Diderot himself, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, and the most revolutionary subject in it was the political theory, that is, le Contrat Social, initiated by Montesquieu’s political theories and accentuated in Rousseau’s celebrated 1762 work.

So, it can be said without exaggeration that both subsequent Declarations, the American and the French one, were dramatically influenced by the French thinkers of the Enlightenment, to an even larger extent than by the works of John Locke, to which effect both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson have amply testified in their own writings. Thus, in so far as their principal sources are concerned, it does not really matter that the American Declaration of Independence predated, by so many years, the French Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen.

But having said that, this remarkable fact of historical precedence must not be downplayed, either. After all, the American Declaration of Independence was the first such government-approved document in history, and, no matter what its source might have been (one can say that each source has its own source, in this case going back to Machiavelli, and undeniably even earlier, to the Greeks), no one can take this world-historical achievement away not just from Franklin, Jefferson, and all other individuals participating in its writing and editing, but from the American nation as a whole.

STATE CAPITALISM AS CAPITALISM OR A MISNOMER?

If anyone may have the impression that state capitalism means state-sponsored capitalism, or capitalism as state policy, this will be a perfectly reasonable, but wrong impression. Wading into the muddied waters of state capitalism as a term we are embarking on a captivating journey into one of the least familiar territories of the Commonwealth of Capitalist nomenclature. Is state capitalism prima facie just a different species of capitalism as-we-know-it, or a grotesque aberration, by virtue of its inherent and irreconcilable conflict with the most fundamental principle of capitalism an-Sich: that of private rather than state ownership, and private rather than state enterprise?

Whether purposely, or by reasons of unthinking nonchalance, known as detached objectivity, our Webster’s Dictionary (see my entry Webster’s Dictionary As An Authority Of Sorts, to be posted very soon) sees this as a simple, clear-cut case: “State Capitalism (is) a form of capitalism (sic!), in which much of the capital, industry, etc. is state-owned.”

Now, how much is “much” in this case? Is it the controlling stock, turning the minority private stockholder into a junior partner of the big brother state, putting up almost half of the money, but having next to no say in the decision of how to run the state-controlled business? Or are we to assume that the state can ever agree to put up substantial public funds merely for the purpose of investment, without assuming control over the business in which it is investing? (I know that such cases indeed exist, but I see them as a corruption, rather than normal business practice.)

But, anyway, Webster’s is pretty explicit in emphasizing “state ownership” of “much of the capital, industry, etc.,” so, as we see, “state capitalism” is not a state policy of supporting private ownership, but an intrusion of the state into the area which, according to the basic concept of capitalism, is a private domain.

Thus, characteristically, we have found in our very respectable Webster’s Dictionary a very inadequate and even contradictory definition of “capitalism,” for, we can rightfully assume that “qualified” capitalism (and “state capitalism” is qualified capitalism!) is supposed to be capitalism still.

No wonder I am so fond of my Webster’s! It keeps things simple, and through such simplicity it exposes the inconsistencies of basic terminology, whereas the more respectable, in-depth sources are mainly misleading, as they can much more successfully than a dictionary cover up their own confusion by the respectability of a scientific gobbledygook which most of us find so above our pay grade that we are forced to accept whatever we are told merely on the strength of its intimidating authority.

Now, from a simple definition which exposes the inadequacy of the term, let us move to a more descriptive approach to the said term “state capitalism.”

As Wikipedia puts it, “during the postwar (post World War II, that is) boom, a broad array of new analytical tools in the social sciences were developed, to explain the social and economic trends of the period, such as the concepts of post-industrial society and welfare statism. The phase of capitalism from the beginning of the postwar period through the 1970s has sometimes been described as “State Capitalism,” especially by Marxian thinkers. (Ernest Mandel and Immanuel Wallerstein have been particularly prominent advocates of the analysis of post-WWII conditions as state capitalism. See, for example, Ernest Mandel. The Theory of “State Capitalism” (1951).”

Here is already a revealing suggestion that at least during the quarter-century since the end of World War II, capitalism of yore had mutated into a somewhat different form, “described as ‘state capitalism,’ especially (but not exclusively!) by Marxian thinkers.” I must add that having read some other authorities on orthodox capitalism, such as, for instance, earlier quoted Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan (see The Mouse That Roared, etc.), I would rather take the more honest Marxians over the bloviating ideological apologists of a system which seems to have lost the capacity to defend its own integrity, except by smoky obfuscation, and other cheap tricks.

(((…Note: There is an understandable desire, on the part of the historians of capitalism, to draw a very sharp distinction between post-WWII capitalism and the subsequent era of Reaganomics [1981-2008], followed by the current stage of post-Reaganomics, brought about by the world financial crisis. I have written about this series of historical developments elsewhere, however, this distinction has little bearing on the context of the present entry…)))

In this regard, it will be instructive to repeat my earlier quote from Noam Chomsky, who, perhaps, falls into the more honorable category of “Marxian thinkers” with this following comment:

“There's nothing remotely like capitalism in existence. To the extent there ever was, it had disappeared by the 1920’s or ’30s. Every industrial society is one form or another of state capitalism.” (From his Interview with David Finkel of The Detroit Metro Times, given in 1991.)

Consistently with this assertion, he understands the economic system of the United States as, primarily, “a state-capitalist system, in which public funds are used to research and develop pioneering technology (the computer, the internet, etc.) largely in the form of defense spending, and, once developed and mature, these technologies are turned over to the corporate sector, where civilian uses are developed--- for private control and profit.” (Z Magazine, February 1993, The Pentagon System).

But with all my admiration for Chomsky, I am not too eager to accept his clever notion of state capitalism as the current state of capitalism in “every industrial society.” My word for what he calls state capitalism is, instead, a mixed basket, whenever it is used in a general sense, or, when he uses it in the technical sense, as described in the paragraph above (with regard to the practice existing in the United States, of turning over pioneering technologies developed with public funds, to the private sector) I would rather have a different term employed instead. The reason why I am reluctant to join Chomsky’s characterization is that I reserve, perhaps, idiosyncratically, the term state capitalism for a distinctly different socio-economic phenomenon. Unless, of course, by state capitalism we understand any kind of level of political and economic intrusion, on the part of the state, into the private sector, resulting in the partial nationalization of national economy, which can range from state control of the strategic industries and some regulation of others, to a complete takeover of the nation’s banking system, foreign trade, and overall functioning of national life, without any clear delineation between the degrees of intrusion, which may be all right as a general principle, but it does not address the practical boundary line, beyond which any further increase in “quantity” inevitably creates a new political “quality.”

Needless to say, this is not the kind of state capitalism I am talking about, although the disparity of power between the private sector and the state always tilts the balance toward the latter. Nor am I very interested in what Karl Marx himself has to say on this matter. Yet, I am deeply interested in the Russian brand of State Capitalism, starting with the Lenin prototype, down to the latest Putin model.

I believe that the Putin model of state capitalism in particular brings us into fascinating new territory, where the term capitalism becomes so eroded and devoid of meaning that, in essence, it becomes indistinguishable from socialism, with all that it entails… But I am not going to travel that far yet, and I would rather prefer to make a step back to Chomsky’s quote.

To sum it up, my interest in state capitalism is quite specific, focusing on the Russian model, whereas in my approach to the European model and the American model I would rather use different terminology. But, in so far as Chomsky’s characterization is concerned, it is fresh, insightful and legitimate in its own right. After all, as Chairman Mao used to say, let a hundred flowers bloom, and let a hundred worthy definitions make their point… (seriously!)

THE MANY FACES AND MASKS OF CAPITALISM PART II

My second source for definitions is a relatively minor one, but well worthy of being quoted. Brent W. Baccala, whose essay Capitalism And Christianity appeared in 2000, provides the following meanings for the word capitalism:

"capitalism¹ -- a laissez-faire economic system, characterized by the separation of economy and state, anti-socialism, free markets, free trade, relatively light taxation, and a minimum of government interference in commerce;

"capitalism² -- an industrial model of production, illustrated by Henry Ford’s assembly line, characterized by heavy specialization of both capital and labor, economies of scale, with the cost of goods reflecting the distributed costs of production;

"capitalism³ - a pseudo-religion of greed, characterized by pursuit of self-interest, often associated with the claim that each individual, by advancing his own self-interest, ultimately advances the good of society."

Granted that Mr. Baccala does not lay claim to perfect scholarship or to an exhaustive grasp of his subject, his three distinctions are demonstrably incomplete, but charmingly refreshing in their own right.

Dr. Ian Harper’s (University of Melbourne) definition of market capitalism, in his 2003 Lecture Christian Morality and Market Capitalism: Friends or Foes?, is as follows:

"Market capitalism is a system for organizing economic activity based on three core principles:
--private ownership of the means of production;
--generally free markets; and
--limited, but not absent, government."

Once again, how does the question of ownership affect the definition of capitalism? Once we have accepted, for purely technical reasons, the fact that the State can function as a pseudo-private owner, the concept itself of private versus public ownership has to be fine-tuned to reasonable satisfaction.

And now, here is Wikipedia on capitalism. My last source, not for any claim of exhaustiveness, but only for the purposes of this entry:

"Capitalism generally refers to an economic system, in which the means of production are mostly privately or corporately owned and operated for profit, and in which distribution, production, and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market. Usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as legal persons or corporations to trade capital goods, labor and money. The term also refers to several theories that developed in the context of the Industrial Revolution and Cold War, meant to explain, justify, or critique the private ownership of capital; to explain the operation of capitalistic markets; and to guide the application or elimination of government regulation of property and markets."

The interesting catch in this definition is the phrase “mostly privately or corporately owned,” which opens the door to some major interpretations and reinterpretations of ‘capitalist’ ownership. Once the latter term is taken out of the equation, what are we left with? Markets, investments and that most pleasurable euphemism for “usury” -- credit?

One thing, however, is clear, no matter what, and in any of the many definitions of capitalism. It concerns the notion of what I am calling, paraphrasing Alexander Dubcek, “capitalism with a human face”:

Capitalism with a human face is nothing but government-regulated capitalism, a total historical defeat for the ideology of laissez-faire…

Finally, as an added irony, it has become a conventional wisdom that while the word capitalism is widely used in Europe, it is far less so in American usage (except on the Fox News Channel, where it is used most frequently and with great pride), perhaps, due to the awareness of this word’s pejorative connotations. The phrase private enterprise is always more readily available, and free enterprise may fare even better due to its pleasant association with the word freedom. In the last case, free enterprise has also been another term for laissez-faire, in which capacity it hardly qualifies to cover the comprehensive nature of modern functioning capitalism, and even less so, its way of the future. No wonder so much confusion is still, after so many years of continuous tinkering, clouding the capitalist phenomenon and creating so many ambiguities and grotesque misconceptions.

THE MANY FACES AND MASKS OF CAPITALISM PART I

In my unpublished 2003 article Democracy Or The Republic?, I have a paragraph which is very appropriate in the context of this entry:
“How often do we engage ourselves in a passionate debate, marveling at the complexity of issues involved, yet hardly realizing that all this said complexity proceeds from the simple fact that we do not know what we are talking about. Sometimes we argue about different things we have chosen to call by the same name. On another occasion we happen to talk about the same thing called by different names, etc…”
Capitalism is one of such fuzzy terms, which has many meanings, and, as soon as we start arguing about it, a confusion sets in, as to which of these meanings we are talking about. Without making sure that we are “on the same page,” there is little point in a further argument, except for indulging ourselves in preaching to the choir inside us--- a totally senseless activity!
Going even further, I can say that the problem of too many definitions is largely caused by the fact that the term “capitalism” has itself become an empty shell housing different prejudices and biases pro and contra to bear witness to its semantic degeneration in theory and inexorable thinning down in practical application. In this opinion I find an eminently distinguished ally in the person of Noam Chomsky:
“To begin with, I think terms like “capitalism” and “socialism” have been so evacuated of any substantive meaning that I don’t even like to use them. There’s nothing remotely like capitalism in existence.” (From his 1991 Interview with David Finkel of The Detroit Metro Times.)

This entry collects several definitions of capitalism/capitalist, demonstrating their diversity of meaning, and proving the point that I am thereby making without any doubt to the contrary. But before we start moving in that direction, here are just a few different manifestations of the ‘capitalist’ concept that readily come to my mind in this regard.
--Capitalism as an economic system.
--Capitalism as a political system (as opposed to “Communism,” for instance).
--Capitalism as a system of business administration.
--Capitalism as a philosophy.
--Capitalism as an ideology (definition of ideology, its relation to ethics, etc.).
--Capitalism as a culture.

Webster’s Dictionary (see my special Introduction entry Webster’s Dictionary As An Authority Of Sorts, to be posted later) characteristically gives two meanings for the word capitalism:

---“The economic system in which all or most of the means of production and distribution, as land, factories, railroads, etc., are privately owned and operated for profit, originally under fully competitive conditions: it has been generally characterized by a tendency toward concentration of wealth and, in its later phase, by the growth of great corporations, increased government control, etc.”

Here is the catch, in the sense that it is under such government control that capitalism proper loses its strict meaning and turns into something else, a mixed model, that is! Surprisingly, this definition of capitalism as an economic system, aside from being incomplete, contains elements which are arguably not part of such a definition at all, such as increased government control, which ought to be interpreted as a government restraint on laissez-faire capitalism, and not as part of the nature of capitalism as such!
And now, my main point of interest, which is to become the subject of a separate entry, which follows, as to how this insistence on private ownership correlates with the notion of State Capitalism, insofar as the basic mechanical components of capitalism as an economic phenomenon are concerned. Is this State Capitalism a misleading term relating to something which is not capitalism at all, or is it Capitalism too? Once again, my answer is that the catch is in the multiplicity of the definitions. In my entry that deals with the concept of State Capitalism I am attempting to revise the technical definition of capitalism so that the notion of ownership by the state becomes consistent with the term itself.

---“The principles, methods, interests, power, influence, etc. (is there a single aggregate word to describe all of these?) of capitalists, especially of those with large holdings.”

It can be suggested that this definition touches upon the functioning of capitalism as a system of business administration, as well as on certain elements of its philosophy. I am, however, surprised how inadequate this definition is both in terms of its failure to consider other meanings of capitalism, and in the inclusion in the Webster’s definition of certain arbitrary elements, which do not seem to legitimately belong there, at the expense of several definitely more legitimate elements.)

And, once we are on the subject, here are three Webster’s meanings for the word capitalist:

---"A man who has capital which is or may be employed in business." (Including his own business! This makes the first definition the most neutral and generally acceptable, except that the reality is not that neutral.)

---"An upholder of capitalism." This definition of a capitalist, as an upholder of capitalism, seems deceptively comprehensive, but only until we realize that it brazenly capitalizes on the ambiguity of the ill-defined term capitalism, so here is the catch and the key to the riddle.

---"Loosely, a wealthy person." Immediately giving the word capitalism itself an ethically negative meaning, by the implication of the existence of poverty. Mind you, it is not wealth itself, but its existence alongside with poverty that introduces the anti-capitalist moral dimension into the picture.

(Part II follows immediately.)