'The real 19th century prophet was Dostoyevsky, not Karl Marx...'

[whichfinder]

Date: Sunday, 1st June at 3.00pm

Venue: The Socialist Party's premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Directions: About 4 minutes walk from Clapham North station on the Northern line and 3 minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the circular overground line
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sites/default/files/The%20Brothers%20Karamazov%20.jpg?1383605261

Albert Camus' provocative statement provides the backdrop as to why socialists should be interested in this most original of writers. In 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested and sentenced to death for his involvement with a group of Russian utopian socialists. His death sentence was commuted to penal servitude in Siberia, an experience that shook Dostoyevsky to his foundations and resulted in a political shift to the right with a revitalised faith in Christ. However, despite his subsequent reputation as an arch reactionary, Dostoyevsky's conservatism was far more nuanced than is commonly understood. Indeed, socialists should be able to identify with his penetrating psychological insights into the mindset of Russian ‘nihilism’, and the irrationality of humankind more generally.

Novels such as 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Possessed' and 'The Brothers Karamazov', won him monumental praise from the likes of Nietzsche, Freud and Albert Einstein. For some, he was the ‘prophet’ of what became the ‘nightmare’ of the Russian Revolution.

But did Dostoyevsky offer any real alternative, and what is his relevance for us today?

Among other things, this talk seeks to explore this question.



A talk by Dave Flynn

Free admission and refreshments

Audience participation

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/why-socialists-should-read-dostoyevsky-south-london-300pm

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So in order to "explain" the "nightmare" of the October Revolution, the SPGB are now promoting an arch-reactionary Slavophile and God-botherer? Who's next, the countess Panina? General Vlasov? Perhaps the SPGB will finally discover Solzhenitsyn.

[Atsumari]

The SPGB is not promoting Dostoevsky's politics, they are promoting his philosophy which is compatible with many ideologies. Even though Balzac was a reactionary monarchist, that did not stop Engels from praising his works in his letter to Margaret Harkness.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The SPGB is not promoting Dostoevsky's politics, they are promoting his philosophy which is compatible with many ideologies. Even though Balzac was a reactionary monarchist, that did not stop Engels from praising his works in his letter to Margaret Harkness.

Engels praised Balzac as a writer, not as a political thinker (in fact he specifically notes his Legitimism). And no, Dostoyevsky's philosophy is not "compatible with many ideologies", that sort of extreme Christianity is not compatible with anything but Slavophile nonsense, and it is definitely not compatible with socialism.

[Atsumari]

Engels praised Balzac as a writer, not as a political thinker (in fact he specifically notes his Legitimism). And no, Dostoyevsky's philosophy is not "compatible with many ideologies", that sort of extreme Christianity is not compatible with anything but Slavophile nonsense, and it is definitely not compatible with socialism.
Gee, you remind me of a friend who dismisses anyone who likes Heidegger as a Nazi, even to his fellow leftists.
Dostoevsky most certainly did not like leftists was a conservative monarchist, but you do not have to be a Christian Slavophile to accept a critique against nihilism. Likewise, anyone can accept Kierkegaard without being a fundamentalist or even Sartre without being a communist. Those things do not matter that much.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Gee, you remind me of a friend who dismisses anyone who likes Heidegger as a Nazi, even to his fellow leftists.
Dostoevsky most certainly did not like leftists was a conservative monarchist, but you do not have to be a Christian Slavophile to accept a critique against nihilism. Likewise, anyone can accept Kierkegaard without being a fundamentalist or even Sartre without being a communist. Those things do not matter that much.

Well, your friend is overreacting, but at least he is trying to engage the political context of Heidegger's writing. I mean, Heidie's later work is thoroughly permeated by a mystical, blood-and-soil reactionary attitude and if you find yourself in agreement with his pontifications that is interesting to say the least.

Likewise Dostoyevsky. Pardon, what distinguishes Dostoyevsky from, for example, Danilevsky? Both thought that The People Have Lost Their Way (TM) because, for example, it had become rarer and rarer for Old Believers to be flogged by the good imperial autocracy. Only Danilevsky is rightly treated with scorn as an old reactionary kook whereas Dostoyevsky is considered a forerunner of existentialism (a petit-bourgeois remedy for a nonexistent malaise). Dostoyevsky's treatment of leftists is a joke. I don't know how anyone who is familiar with Russian nihilism can read the Demons without laughing every time Shigalev shows up.

To make things worse, the SPGB could have turned to a liberal writer, like Turgenev (a much better writer than Dostoyevsky). No, they chose an old reactionary Christian fanatic. Go figure.

[exeexe]

Tell me one thing, why would i go to a meeting where it is claimed someone is a prophet? Thats just some fucked redneck religious counterrevolutionary boo boo talk.

If i wanted to hear about prophets i would have to go no further than to the local church.

[ComradeOm]

The SPGB is not promoting Dostoevsky's politics, they are promoting his philosophy which is compatible with many ideologies. Even though Balzac was a reactionary monarchist, that did not stop Engels from praising his works in his letter to Margaret Harkness.Out of curiosity how do you go about divorcing someone's politics from their ideology or philosophy?


Tell me one thing, why would i go to a meeting where it is claimed someone is a prophet? Thats just some fucked redneck religious counterrevolutionary boo boo talkDon't be so literal.

[Hit The North]

I see that following their roaring success in the UK Euro elections, the SPGB are continuing their resolute campaign of addressing only the most urgent tasks facing the international proletariat :lol:


From the blurb: Indeed, socialists should be able to identify with his penetrating psychological insights into the mindset of Russian ‘nihilism’, and the irrationality of humankind more generally.

Socialists should be more concerned with the irrationality of the capitalist mode of production and should not be entertaining ideas that this irrationality flows from some inherent irrationality at the heart of an ahistorical human condition.

[Q]

I don't mind discussing people or ideas that fall outside the usual (most often, extremely boring and mindnumbing) narrative that most other groups do. So for that I praise the SPGB. But why an arch-reactionary, as the OP already remarked? I need a little more than 'penetrating psychological insights' into the 'irrationality of humankind' to understand this choice. What would socialists learn here?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

if you're going to accomplish nothing, you might as well read a few good books while you're at it, I suppose

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Gee, you remind me of a friend who dismisses anyone who likes Heidegger as a Nazi, even to his fellow leftists.


Well, they might not be nazis, but they must be on drugs - I'm sure Heidegger was too high to understand that everything he spewed was nonsense all the while.


if you're going to accomplish nothing, you might as well read a few good books while you're at it, I suppose

Good being the key here, and not compatible with the herein discussed author.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I don't mind discussing people or ideas that fall outside the usual (most often, extremely boring and mindnumbing) narrative that most other groups do. So for that I praise the SPGB. But why an arch-reactionary, as the OP already remarked? I need a little more than 'penetrating psychological insights' into the 'irrationality of humankind' to understand this choice. What would socialists learn here?

The only possible lesson to learn here is that the SPGB are fantastic humanists who are so bold, brave and honest to denounce all "bad" things which have caused suffering to humans, even if it was done in the name of "good" (socialism). It essentially boils down to a false good vs. bad dichotomy in order to engage the class enemy in a 'democratic' discussion - but class antagonisms are cold primal interests which are below the plane of democracy and hinder genuine common human interests. It is among the weakest politics socialists can engage in and goes totally against fostering an objective scientific world view, which the proletariat requires to make the genuine and lasting positive change in the world.