Ideology and Death

[Rafiq]

The Communist movement, most especially during the early 20th century succeeded in constructing an ideological universe in which an explanation, and understanding of our existence was all-encompassing. From the nature of power to the nature of everyday life, nothing was spared by Communism. Rather than being "totalitarian" this simply represented the magnitude by which hegemonic ideology encompassed our understanding of the world, rather than a new intrusion (which, therefore entailed those fighting against the existed hegemony would appropriate, and transform such an understanding). Even we take this for granted.

However rather than starting a discussion on the nature of ideology, what has long been over-looked by Marxists today is the absence of a socialist conception of death. This is not to be trivialized. While we understood death in scientific terms, death never fit the canon of Communist ideology. Death could not be politicized or even understood ideologically (on an emotional level). Death is the paradox which remains unconquerable. No one without experience in seeing death, knowing death, could ever upon first experience fit death nearly into their paradigm of belief. For the most secular religious, upon the death of a close one a spark in religiosity is almost guaranteed. Religion, sophisticated and socially refined ideology, understands death. Bourgeois ideology leaves death to the realm of the religious, who have conquered it.

Let us not kid ourselves, even the coldest Marxists were softies at heart. They detest brutality and barbarism. They were not much different from many of ourselves here on this website, actually. Despite their vigor revolutionaries never before the seizure of power want the death and terror that will always follow. It is those who remain committed and those who abandon, that determine the strength in heart of revolutionaries. As they say, those who are not willing to go to the end with their ideas do not truly hold them. Despite what reactionary rhetoric will tell you, the Bolsheviks were not heartless monsters. Because they lacked an ideological place for death in the first place. For people in general, there is either no violence, or mass indiscriminate murder. There cannot be an in-between. Because all that is holy and good is associated with 'peace' and all that is bad with death. So logically if one can murder someone, all barriers can be broken. Rational thought (rather than ideology) will never account for this, and can not. You are safe and comfortable, and you have to cross the line into the domain of death, whereas to "value" human life is quite a difficult thing. This is why I am skeptical of the usage of PTSD in soldiers to claim humans are naturally predisposed to oppose violence: On the contrary, the problem isn't death itself. It's finding legitimacy coming back to a social order in which death is carefully refined. Upon return a soldier is overwhelmed and disgusted by the hypocrisy of bourgeois society, the abrupt differences between peace time and being in a war are too much to handle.

For Communists it was all about opposing death. While not shy of using violence, it was always about ending the miserable and wretched barbarism of the state and bourgeois society. It is as though upon engagement with death a new world is discovered which makes it difficult to control. Make no mistake, no one is arguing that mass indiscriminate murder occurred under the Bolsheviks. I would be the last one to make villains of the heroic Cheka. But let's look at these interesting differences:

Bukharin noted that one of the greatest hazards for former Chekists was the development of mental disorders. Bourgeois ideologues, in all of their hypocritical sentiment would use this as testament of the "atrocities" of the Red Terror. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall any Fascists developing mental disorders later in their life, and certainly they have killed far more in much more barbaric means. Certainly the counter-revolutionary white officers were not prone to mental disorders, despite the fact that there is historical data that can confirm they were infinitely more monstrous than the Bolsheviks, they were barbarians. What's my point, then? The Communists were ill-equipped because they did not conquer death before the seizure of power. Before seizing power Fascists were, to paraphrase Zizek they were 'bad men' who promised to do 'bad things' and, unsurprisingly did them. Because they (Bolsheviks) were ill-equipped it was difficult fitting the loss of life within the paradigm of Communist ideology. The ending of a life is not the problem itself, but the implications it has for the living. It was the greatest overlooked paradox of the Communist experience. And it doesn't end there. Robespierre the pacifist would later oversee the reign of terror. There is certainly something of worth to look at here.

So what is the solution? The conquest of death itself, to fit it into our ideological paradigm. The Communists of the 21st century must adopt the spirit of self-sacrifice, the mentality of conquer or perish (victory or death, if you will). Things we think are inherently fascistic, but I beg to differ. One can see the embryo of such a Communism throughout the course of the Russian civil war with Trotsky's Communism and Terror or Felix Dzerzhinsky's Communist morality. How were countless heroes of the red army able to bravely sacrifice themselves knowing full well the promise of an afterlife to be a lie? Knowing full well the finality of death, how were Communists able to die for the revolution? The problem with previous Communists wasn't that they were too loose with violence, it was that they weren't comfortable with it enough. If we truly recognize the inevitability of terror and death as a result of the seizure of power the pillars of Communism will remain unbreakable to the shock and awe of it. Many accuse me of violence-fetishism or being bloodthirsty. But in the end it is those who reject violence, to whom death is an untouchable void that not only have an aversion to fundamental changes in power, they also are the most likely to be de-moralized if confronted with its necessity (I.e. If I can kill, I can rape too!). If death is fit within the paradigm of ideology, only then can it coincide with the vitality of other aspects of our ideology, universalism and emancipation. Robespierre said virtue without terror is blind, but he also said terror without virtue is fatal.


(To be absolutely clear this has very little to do with any immediate circumstances, I am not giving a call to action or anything of that sort, simply a re conceptualization of Communist ideology).

[Red Economist]

This is not going to be an easy subject to talk about, but you're spot on that there is indeed a gap in our ideological worldview on the subject of death. Independent on any strictly political context, the truth is is that we are all going to die at some point, the question is when. This is an important discussion because it is about how we value life of the living and the dead.


However rather than starting a discussion on the nature of ideology, what has long been over-looked by Marxists today is the absence of a socialist conception of death. This is not to be trivialized. While we understood death in scientific terms, death never fit the canon of Communist ideology. Death could not be politicized or even understood ideologically (on an emotional level). Death is the paradox which remains unconquerable. No one without experience in seeing death, knowing death, could ever upon first experience fit death nearly into their paradigm of belief. For the most secular religious, upon the death of a close one a spark in religiosity is almost guaranteed. Religion, sophisticated and socially refined ideology, understands death. Bourgeois ideology leaves death to the realm of the religious, who have conquered it.

I have not experienced death, but have some 'intuition' of it. I 'got honest' about Communism and decided to read the black book to see how I would respond emotionally to it (I really didn't care for the accuracy of the book, it was just that moment you swallow your pride and say, 'ok, they did this' that was important. I still haven't finished it because I can't bring myself to- so that is denial in a way).
I would describe the feeling as like 'hell' and images of falling into a pit come to mind. it goes beyond being unpleasant and I have looked at religion more sympathetically since because, whatever the ideology, they still share the same human range of experiences.
Eric Hoffer in the True Believer outlined the central issue with death and fanaticism, which is that political ideology (and religious) have a pronounced tendency to transform death into something 'unreal', to put it into the context of a historical drama, in which the place and significance of the individual is secured, and 'death' loses it's significance and finality.

The problem is how does one die whilst valuing life? I think that is why you describe it as a paradox which leads us to resort to religiosity. The truth is, is that all future history- irrespective of our ideology- is the product of man, and our knowledge of the future is dependent on how well we know man himself. Our knowledge of human beings is most definitely limited and Marxism's claim to scientific status is always limited by the knowledge in the times and place we live in and by who we are as people. So we can never know what becomes of the world we leave behind.


Let us not kid ourselves, even the coldest Marxists were softies at heart. They detest brutality and barbarism. They were not much different from many of ourselves here on this website, actually. Despite their vigor revolutionaries never before the seizure of power want the death and terror that will always follow. It is those who remain committed and those who abandon, that determine the strength in heart of revolutionaries. As they say, those who are not willing to go to the end with their ideas do not truly hold them. Despite what reactionary rhetoric will tell you, the Bolsheviks were not heartless monsters. Because they lacked an ideological place for death in the first place. For people in general, there is either no violence, or mass indiscriminate murder. There cannot be an in-between. Because all that is holy and good is associated with 'peace' and all that is bad with death. So logically if one can murder someone, all barriers can be broken. Rational thought (rather than ideology) will never account for this, and can not. You are safe and comfortable, and you have to cross the line into the domain of death, whereas to "value" human life is quite a difficult thing. This is why I am skeptical of the usage of PTSD in soldiers to claim humans are naturally predisposed to oppose violence: On the contrary, the problem isn't death itself. It's finding legitimacy coming back to a social order in which death is carefully refined. Upon return a soldier is overwhelmed and disgusted by the hypocrisy of bourgeois society, the abrupt differences between peace time and being in a war are too much to handle.

Regrettably, I think the first sentence in this paragraph is very naive. We have to take into account that our society is authoritarian, often in subtle ways, and means that we are conditioned to accept death as instrumental to a ruling class (war, dictatorship, torture of terrorist suspects, the 'inevitability' of hunger wrapped in the rhetoric of over-population, etc.)
I would point you towards the Stanford University Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment as evidence that- under the 'right' circumstances, people can be cruel and kill one another without being conscious of what they are doing. I don't believe that the psychology is sadism or masochism are truely irrational, but I recognize they are quite real.
If you think this is something that only applies to the fifties and sixties, I would ask you to watch Darren Brown's Experiments (particular 'assassin' in which a volunteer is hypnotized into a fake assassination of Stephen Fry, and the 'gameshow' in which the audience vote to punish or reward someone under masks of anonymity and punish that person until their (fake) death. In both cases, I suspect Brown himself was shocked at how far it could go).

I don't think that 'death' is such a metaphysical 'either-or' as you outline. Death is not an abstract separation of two states. We are living and dying at the same time as organisms. Orwell's "War is peace" is actually a good description of how wars with a foreign enemy can mobilize people at home irrespective of class antagonisms. The ability to die and kill represent innate (physical) capacities of human beings in terms of action. Horrendously, they are an aspect of our 'freedom', easily the most serious part of it and we have a responsibility to exercise that freedom in a way in which we are conscious of our effect on others. I would hope that is how cops see it, but they obviously don't.

I think the issue over PTSD is not really a question over whether human beings are naturally 'pacifist' or not. I believe that people are 'naturally' peaceful (and it would be impossible to have a theory of history which is based on economics preceding conflict, creation preceding destruction without it), but pacifism can become an authoritarian self-caricature in which a person is dis-empowered of the ability to defend themselves. Again, I would emphasize that the distinction between 'peace' and 'war' is not an absolute boundary.
What I think matters is that this distinction actually makes it much easier to kill; because the change of setting, the wearing of a uniform is instructive to a different state of mind in which compassion and empathy are repressed and a person is 'hardened' to their consequences and silences their conscience. There may well be a 'split' in which a pacifist can turn into a militarist quite easily. But in returning to peacetime, a solder is expected to 'bury' and repress the militarist and this doesn't succeed in the case of PTSD.


For Communists it was all about opposing death. While not shy of using violence, it was always about ending the miserable and wretched barbarism of the state and bourgeois society. It is as though upon engagement with death a new world is discovered which makes it difficult to control. Make no mistake, no one is arguing that mass indiscriminate murder occurred under the Bolsheviks. I would be the last one to make villains of the heroic Cheka.

The Communists 'opposed' death dialectically- they opposed death initiated by the ruling class, but supported it as in istrument for their own class interests. there was a crude instrumentality to it. Again- dialectically speaking, if killing is inherently unnatural, the distinction between hero and villain is not an absolute but is blurred into a question of degrees. How do you fight a monster without yourself becoming one? The honest truth is, you can't. it is only your ability to accept man as a monster that means you have the capacity for choice; everything else is denial.


But let's look at these interesting differences:

Bukharin noted that one of the greatest hazards for former Chekists was the development of mental disorders. Bourgeois ideologues, in all of their hypocritical sentiment would use this as testament of the "atrocities" of the Red Terror. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall any Fascists developing mental disorders later in their life, and certainly they have killed far more in much more barbaric means. Certainly the counter-revolutionary white officers were not prone to mental disorders, despite the fact that there is historical data that can confirm they were infinitely more monstrous than the Bolsheviks, they were barbarians. What's my point, then? The Communists were ill-equipped because they did not conquer death before the seizure of power. Before seizing power Fascists were, to paraphrase Zizek they were 'bad men' who promised to do 'bad things' and, unsurprisingly did them. Because they (Bolsheviks) were ill-equipped it was difficult fitting the loss of life within the paradigm of Communist ideology. The ending of a life is not the problem itself, but the implications it has for the living. It was the greatest overlooked paradox of the Communist experience. And it doesn't end there. Robespierre the pacifist would later oversee the reign of terror. There is certainly something of worth to look at here.

You cannot conquer the reality of death. You can only conquer the conception of death. and if death is meaningless- that's when it gets scarey, because people- no matter the uniform or the ideology- have no impetus to stop. That is the definition of mental illness.
The ending of life is a problem because it is a question of how far the living have desensitised themselves to the death of others, and therefore to their own fate whenever it comes.


So what is the solution? The conquest of death itself, to fit it into our ideological paradigm. The Communists of the 21st century must adopt the spirit of self-sacrifice, the mentality of conquer or perish (victory or death, if you will). Things we think are inherently fascistic, but I beg to differ. One can see the embryo of such a Communism throughout the course of the Russian civil war with Trotsky's Communism and Terror or Felix Dzerzhinsky's Communist morality. How were countless heroes of the red army able to bravely sacrifice themselves knowing full well the promise of an afterlife to be a lie? Knowing full well the finality of death, how were Communists able to die for the revolution? The problem with previous Communists wasn't that they were too loose with violence, it was that they weren't comfortable with it enough. If we truly recognize the inevitability of terror and death as a result of the seizure of power the pillars of Communism will remain unbreakable to the shock and awe of it. Many accuse me of violence-fetishism or being bloodthirsty. But in the end it is those who reject violence, to whom death is an untouchable void that not only have an aversion to fundamental changes in power, they also are the most likely to be de-moralized if confronted with its necessity (I.e. If I can kill, I can rape too!). If death is fit within the paradigm of ideology, only then can it coincide with the vitality of other aspects of our ideology, universalism and emancipation. Robespierre said virtue without terror is blind, but he also said terror without virtue is fatal.

"The revolutionary is a doomed man" (Catechism of a revolutionary, Sergey Nechayev 1869). But aren't we all?

The 'spirit of self-sacrifice' is dependent on the conception of the self that is being sacrificed. Is the self to be sacrificed for an ideal because the self is worthless and the ideal held as a value above our very existence- a tyrannical concept which can only lead to a new state projected in the ideal? Ideas are nonsense in the end as they are not real. What happens when we value the self highly- what then is the nature of our sacrifice?

Death may well be final and inevitable, but what is not is how we choose to face it. We don't die because we have to; we die so others can live in our place. We don't die for something worth dieing for; we die for something worth living for.

[John Nada]

Great thread, Rafiq! I have thought about the same thing myself.
For the most secular religious, upon the death of a close one a spark in religiosity is almost guaranteed. Religion, sophisticated and socially refined ideology, understands death. Bourgeois ideology leaves death to the realm of the religious, who have conquered it.Religions' ideological conquest of death is not absolute. One cannot speak of Paradise without speaking of Hades. At the last moment of life, the fear of eternal torture so bad that nothingness would be mercy, is also present.The standards of righteousness are unrealistically high, entry into hell is easy.

"If the saints and prophets had flaws, what of me?" they think."Have I lived up to the laws? Will the divine forgive me? What if They're wrong? What if all life's misery is all there is?" Doubt will sometimes be on their mind, even if they'll never admit it. Such doubt is often rationalized as the Devil's talk.

This fear of hell or it's equivalent not only leads to fear of death for the religious person, but also for their friends and family, i.e."Did my loved ones really abstain from sin or repent before they died?"Imagine what's worse, that the dead are gone forever, or that even if you go to Heaven or Nirvana, they'll live in perpetual pain for longer than you can comprehend?

But then they promises a way out of all this. By following their superstitions, you and loved will be rewarded, eventually; Maybe. I mean, hell, we're all going to die anyway, what's there to lose? Shit sucks on earth, pay the tithe, and get you're (not) free trip away from this fucked up world! The more you all suffer now the better!

This is why I think the top four religions mostly believe pain, almost masochistic pain, provides rewards in the afterlife. It has mass appeal for a miserable world, and supports the status quo. Because what point is there to fight the ruling class, when life is so short?

At the same time this fear of hell and hope for heaven supports the bourgeoisie, and the nobility before them. This makes reactionaries willing to kill and die, not necessarily just for themselves, but because their whole family's souls are on the line! Who would be more worthy of life, the unrepentant heathen who's going to hell anyway, or your community of believers with at least a chance of salvation?

Hence it's no coincidence that one of the most religious nation is the US. Which also supports other repressive religious governments and movements. Shit, in the countries formerly moving towards socialism(whatever you think of them), religiosity skyrocketed after the counterrevolutions were completed.
Let us not kid ourselves, even the coldest Marxists were softies at heart. They detest brutality and barbarism. They were not much different from many of ourselves here on this website, actually. Despite their vigor revolutionaries never before the seizure of power want the death and terror that will always follow. It is those who remain committed and those who abandon, that determine the strength in heart of revolutionaries. As they say, those who are not willing to go to the end with their ideas do not truly hold them. Despite what reactionary rhetoric will tell you, the Bolsheviks were not heartless monsters.That's what struck me reading their works and lives. They're built up either as legendary prophet(ess)s or demons straight out of hell. Yet all these "Great Men and Women" were just human beings like all of us. Fuck, to think that if someone on here successfully lead a revolution(or became the public face of it), they'd get treated like some genius, with devotees studying them 100+ years later :lol:.
For Communists it was all about opposing death. While not shy of using violence, it was always about ending the miserable and wretched barbarism of the state and bourgeois society. It is as though upon engagement with death a new world is discovered which makes it difficult to control. Make no mistake, no one is arguing that mass indiscriminate murder occurred under the Bolsheviks. I would be the last one to make villains of the heroic Cheka. But let's look at these interesting differences:

Bukharin noted that one of the greatest hazards for former Chekists was the development of mental disorders. Bourgeois ideologues, in all of their hypocritical sentiment would use this as testament of the "atrocities" of the Red Terror. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall any Fascists developing mental disorders later in their life, and certainly they have killed far more in much more barbaric means. Certainly the counter-revolutionary white officers were not prone to mental disorders, despite the fact that there is historical data that can confirm they were infinitely more monstrous than the Bolsheviks, they were barbarians. What's my point, then? The Communists were ill-equipped because they did not conquer death before the seizure of power.IMO today communist should focus on supporting life. Death is inevitable with current technology, but it's possible to create a better life for the living in the future.

On whether fascist got PTSD from their atrocities, I think some might have, to the point of suicide. Because of this, during the Holocaust the Nazis went to great lengths to find a more effect way to kill on an industrial scale(cyanide showers vs. say shooting). The tried to use as many "subhumans" as possible to commit the crimes; They were expendable.

With the Cheka, I think the preferred way of execution was hanging or point-blank gunshot to the brain. Much more personal compared to the Nazis mechanization of death. Shows you what cowards the Nazis were, and would make you want to punch the screen if you saw what became of most of the fascist who help set up the infrastructure for this :cursing: .
what is the solution? The conquest of death itself, to fit it into our ideological paradigm. The Communists of the 21st century must adopt the spirit of self-sacrifice, the mentality of conquer or perish (victory or death, if you will). Things we think are inherently fascistic, but I beg to differ. One can see the embryo of such a Communism throughout the course of the Russian civil war with Trotsky's Communism and Terror or Felix Dzerzhinsky's Communist morality. How were countless heroes of the red army able to bravely sacrifice themselves knowing full well the promise of an afterlife to be a lie? Knowing full well the finality of death, how were Communists able to die for the revolution? The problem with previous Communists wasn't that they were too loose with violence, it was that they weren't comfortable with it enough. If we truly recognize the inevitability of terror and death as a result of the seizure of power the pillars of Communism will remain unbreakable to the shock and awe of it. Many accuse me of violence-fetishism or being bloodthirsty. But in the end it is those who reject violence, to whom death is an untouchable void that not only have an aversion to fundamental changes in power, they also are the most likely to be de-moralized if confronted with its necessity (I.e. If I can kill, I can rape too!). If death is fit within the paradigm of ideology, only then can it coincide with the vitality of other aspects of our ideology, universalism and emancipation. Robespierre said virtue without terror is blind, but he also said terror without virtue is fatal.I think the initial success of the revolutions was because they understood death as part of life. Bukharin, while maintaining his innocence, said he understood that his execution was just a part of history to be completed(though it would have been fucking hilarious if Stalin took up his offer to go to the US and talk shit about Trotsky:laugh: ).

I mean think about it. Millions died for a better world, with full knowledge that death is the end. Shit many were probably raised with religion and willingly sacrificed their lives with the thought that they were going to hell! Even though they would die, the living(friends, family, community, world) were to have a better life.There are Atheist in the foxhole. Religion doesn't have a monopoly on empathy, camaraderie and love. These are all the closes thing to "human nature"(ugh) compared to capitalism. Hopefully all there work won't have been in vain!
I have not experienced death, but have some 'intuition' of it. I 'got honest' about Communism and decided to read the black book...STOP RIGHT THERE! If you must subject your brain to psychological warfare, sniff bath salts and read "The King James Bible" :) .
Eric Hoffer in the True Believer outlined the central issue with death and fanaticism, which is that political ideology (and religious) have a pronounced tendency to transform death into something 'unreal', to put it into the context of a historical drama, in which the place and significance of the individual is secured, and 'death' loses it's significance and finality.I haven't read this book. But if it's like you describe it creates it's own paradox. That being devoid of any principles is better than anything too "extreme". Yet in declaring supposed neutrality to be absolutely better than any extreme, you too are being an extremist. And I'd argue that extremist are very much based in reality, life and individualism.
We have to take into account that our society is authoritarian, often in subtle ways, and means that we are conditioned to accept death as instrumental to a ruling class (war, dictatorship, torture of terrorist suspects, the 'inevitability' of hunger wrapped in the rhetoric of over-population, etc.)Unfortunately, that ruling class dictatorship is the bourgeoisie. It'll take DotP to end the last two and eventually end the first two.
I would point you towards the Stanford University Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment as evidence that- under the 'right' circumstances, people can be cruel and kill one another without being conscious of what they are doing. I don't believe that the psychology is sadism or masochism are truely irrational, but I recognize they are quite real. If you think this is something that only applies to the fifties and sixties, I would ask you to watch Darren Brown's Experiments (particular 'assassin' in which a volunteer is hypnotized into a fake assassination of Stephen Fry, and the 'gameshow' in which the audience vote to punish or reward someone under masks of anonymity and punish that person until their (fake) death. In both cases, I suspect Brown himself was shocked at how far it could go).Have those studies been replicated outside of the first world?
I think the issue over PTSD is not really a question over whether human beings are naturally 'pacifist' or not. I believe that people are 'naturally' peaceful (and it would be impossible to have a theory of history which is based on economics preceding conflict, creation preceding destruction without it), but pacifism can become an authoritarian self-caricature in which a person is dis-empowered of the ability to defend themselves. Again, I would emphasize that the distinction between 'peace' and 'war' is not an absolute boundary. What I think matters is that this distinction actually makes it much easier to kill; because the change of setting, the wearing of a uniform is instructive to a different state of mind in which compassion and empathy are repressed and a person is 'hardened' to their consequences and silences their conscience. There may well be a 'split' in which a pacifist can turn into a militarist quite easily. But in returning to peacetime, a solder is expected to 'bury' and repress the militarist and this doesn't succeed in the case of PTSD.I don't think warfare, as it has been since the establishment of classes, was the same as it was for tens of thousands of years prior. Let alone compared to the modern age with mechanized warfare resulting in battles with hundreds of thousands killed in short order. What was there to fight over before to that level?

And pacifism becomes militarism when you concede that jingoism is a legitimate side not worth fighting against.
The Communists 'opposed' death dialectically- they opposed death initiated by the ruling class, but supported it as in istrument for their own class interests. there was a crude instrumentality to it. Again- dialectically speaking, if killing is inherently unnatural, the distinction between hero and villain is not an absolute but is blurred into a question of degrees. How do you fight a monster without yourself becoming one? The honest truth is, you can't. it is only your ability to accept man as a monster that means you have the capacity for choice; everything else is denial.I see the world not as black and white, but shades of gray. For instance, how is not fighting the monster any different than letting a person drown when you have a lifesaver?
The 'spirit of self-sacrifice' is dependent on the conception of the self that is being sacrificed. Is the self to be sacrificed for an ideal because the self is worthless and the ideal held as a value above our very existence- a tyrannical concept which can only lead to a new state projected in the ideal? Ideas are nonsense in the end as they are not real. What happens when we value the self highly- what then is the nature of our sacrifice?How is self-sacrifice in of itself tyrannical compared to asking others to be sacrifice to already existing?
Death may well be final and inevitable, but what is not is how we choose to face it. We don't die because we have to; we die so others can live in our place. We don't die for something worth dieing for; we die for something worth living for.QFT. If I lived though a revolution, it actually be in my self-interest. But I just don't want the next generation to live in barbarism.

[Red Economist]

STOP RIGHT THERE! If you must subject your brain to psychological warfare, sniff bath salts and read "The King James Bible" :) .

Obviously you've read it. ;)


I haven't read this book[Eric Hoffer's the True Believer]. But if it's like you describe it creates it's own paradox. That being devoid of any principles is better than anything too "extreme". Yet in declaring supposed neutrality to be absolutely better than any extreme, you too are being an extremist. And I'd argue that extremist are very much based in reality, life and individualism.

Eric Hoffer was a conservative, so you're point is entirely valid. An unprincipled neutrality is not worth having.



Have those studies been replicated outside of the first world?Nope. But the problem is that the first world and the default tendency towards fascism is what we're starting with. So this is an issue.


I don't think warfare, as it has been since the establishment of classes, was the same as it was for tens of thousands of years prior. Let alone compared to the modern age with mechanized warfare resulting in battles with hundreds of thousands killed in short order. What was there to fight over before to that level?I think you're right in so far as modern warfare is entirely different to what has gone before. It's "total war" and entirely indiscriminate. In ye olde days, you couldn't kill someone out of the range of a musket- so it was mainly people in uniform on the battlefield that got killed. Now, it's civilians who make up most of the casualties.


And pacifism becomes militarism when you concede that jingoism is a legitimate side not worth fighting againstTrue. This is what happened with Social Democracy in World war I and the break up of the second international as each party sided with it's own national bourgeoisie.



I see the world not as black and white, but shades of gray. For instance, how is not fighting the monster any different than letting a person drown when you have a lifesaver?Throwing a lifesaver saves someone from drowning; fighting a monster means you still going to have to kill them.


How is self-sacrifice in of itself tyrannical compared to asking others to be sacrifice to already existing?It's dependent on the state of mind. If someone sacrifices themselves for an idea, that idea is a projection of the power of the state. Where as if someone sacrifices themselves for people they can name and whom they love- that is a much more 'real' sacrifice which has a very clear set of consequences.


QFT. If I lived though a revolution, it actually be in my self-interest. But I just don't want the next generation to live in barbarism.Thanks. It's Same here. there just doesn't seem any point doing nothing if it's going to suck for whoever comes after us.


Religions' ideological conquest of death is not absolute. One cannot speak of Paradise without speaking of Hades. At the last moment of life, the fear of eternal torture so bad that nothingness would be mercy, is also present.The standards of righteousness are unrealistically high, entry into hell is easy. Very well spotted. How the F**k did I miss that?:confused:

[bropasaran]

This post when rationally examined seems like something out of some prose art, there is no point to be indentified, no explicit views adressed or offered. Rafiq, can you explicate concrete points of what you want to say?

[Rafiq]

This post when rationally examined seems like something out of some prose art, there is no point to be indentified, no explicit views adressed or offered. Rafiq, can you explicate concrete points of what you want to say?

This doesn't seem to be a problem for the other users in this thread.

No, it's not a sectarian polemic. This conforms to nothing except a long ignored truth. This applies to all of us. There are things of us, that cannot simply be accounted for by our explicit "views". As they say, it's like the difference between firsthand and secondhand experience. Why is it different in the first place? For that reason exactly.

[bropasaran]

Which goes to say something about their rationality, but nevermind. I'm not talking about sectarianism, I'm talking about clarity and talking in an analytical and rational way. The only half-concrete point that I could get from your post (and it's by no means clear) is that we should no be scared of and put off by death and violence, not react emotionally to it and get distressed, and that this kind of accepting attitude will help us not to snap during violence and start to rape and pillage or whatever, but will allow us to remain in a relatively normal mindset where we can go to battle to just simply do it, try and achieve out goals without going savage.

[Dean]

I think you're right in so far as modern warfare is entirely different to what has gone before. It's "total war" and entirely indiscriminate. In ye olde days, you couldn't kill someone out of the range of a musket- so it was mainly people in uniform on the battlefield that got killed. Now, it's civilians who make up most of the casualties.

This really isn't accurate. Total war has been extent for probably all of human history. Slaughtering the locals / natives is a typical strategy especially in order to sow fear. This often includes women and children who are often raped in the process.

In fact, the recent codification of international law protecting civilian life is, I believe unprecedented historically. The fact that nations like the US and Israel make a point of their "right" to kill indiscriminately (and therefore deliberately target civilians) is a testament to how extremely brutal and criminal they are especially in the modern context.

I don't think that the history of war is going to tell us something new bout our own fear of death. But it might tell us something about the willingness to inflict death on others, and what will be interesting are the instances where war is averted, and times where laws, conventions and traditions protect the lives of certain actors, military and civilian.

[The Modern Prometheus]

Just touching on the Fascist vs Communist point here but Fascists dehumanize their enemy so much they can hardly see them as people. Anybody that doesn't believe in the black book of Communism will tell you that the Whites committed far more and far more gruesome killings then any Red army forces did during the Russian civil war. They slaughtered whole towns full of Jewish people just because they hated Jews and whole towns of leftist sympathizers. They thought of Jews and leftist sympathizers as less then cockroaches. As for the Nazis and Fascist Japan they both dehumanized their enemies so much and got so caught up in their ideology of a supreme race that they could justify anything to themselves. It's really creepy actually how even the likes of Mengele appeared "normal". Also one major factor in why Communists think more of death then Fascists may very well be that we practice critical thinking as a part of our ideology unlike fascists who follow their leader.

[Red Economist]

This really isn't accurate. Total war has been extent for probably all of human history. Slaughtering the locals / natives is a typical strategy especially in order to sow fear. This often includes women and children who are often raped in the process.

I think 'Total War' more specifically refers to how industrialization has changed the nature of warfare so that a whole country is mobilized for a war effort, specifically with the First and Second World War in mind and how the distinction between the military and civilian activity is erased.

But Colonial Genocide is pretty much 'total war', so it's a eurocentric concept based on European experience of the twentieth century when the same forces which were wiping out native people visited the 'civilized' world.



I don't think that the history of war is going to tell us something new bout our own fear of death. But it might tell us something about the willingness to inflict death on others, and what will be interesting are the instances where war is averted, and times where laws, conventions and traditions protect the lives of certain actors, military and civilian.

In terms of near-misses, you should look up the 1983 war scare. Christ did we get close to ending everything.:crying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_war_scare


Just touching on the Fascist vs Communist point here but Fascists dehumanize their enemy so much they can hardly see them as people. Anybody that doesn't believe in the black book of Communism will tell you that the Whites committed far more and far more gruesome killings then any Red army forces did during the Russian civil war. They slaughtered whole towns full of Jewish people just because they hated Jews and whole towns of leftist sympathizers. They thought of Jews and leftist sympathizers as less then cockroaches. As for the Nazis and Fascist Japan they both dehumanized their enemies so much and got so caught up in their ideology of a supreme race that they could justify anything to themselves. It's really creepy actually how even the likes of Mengele appeared "normal". Also one major factor in why Communists think more of death then Fascists may very well be that we practice critical thinking as a part of our ideology unlike fascists who follow their leader.

The Black Book was written by Anti-Communists and Ex-Communists, but it is important in terms of seeing what the communists did on their own terms. There is a problem in debates over the death toll under communism in that it devolves into a "you're system killed more than my system" slogging match, which immature and is really disrespectful to the people who died.
The problem of the 'banality of evil' (a term which originates from a journalist who said how 'normal' Adolf Eichmann looked during his trial) is that it is very difficult to distinguish people based on the moral qualities that make them capable of genocide or mass murder. Culturally, we're still very much in the clutches of the idea that these people are 'devils' who we'd spot a mile off, but it's rarely that easy. It is possible the most 'normal' people who are most likely to be a problem because they act so normal that they will go along with anything if an authority figure or crowd says for them to do it as they're ability to act independently is so crippled.

[Dean]

I think 'Total War' more specifically refers to how industrialization has changed the nature of warfare so that a whole country is mobilized for a war effort, specifically with the First and Second World War in mind and how the distinction between the military and civilian activity is erased.

But Colonial Genocide is pretty much 'total war', so it's a eurocentric concept based on European experience of the twentieth century when the same forces which were wiping out native people visited the 'civilized' world.



In terms of near-misses, you should look up the 1983 war scare. Christ did we get close to ending everything.:crying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_war_scare

I understand your point about total war mostly describing war between industrialized nations, but the core of the term is to describe complete mobilization and diminished distinction between combatants and non-combatants. This has definitely characterized wars from even the earliest recorded history. Just consider how supply chains for militaries are treated, especially food production. Nonetheless, the point was about the brutality of war & what it means for our perception of death. I was just trying to make it clear that 'innocent' human life has been considered a legitimate target forever. There are often these vague notions of endless progress, or the "corruption" of the modern age, and these motifs are likely to color our perception even without much legitimate data to indicate the conclusions they engender.

If you are interested in brinkmanship over the nuclear issue, I also recommend this article by our favorite CHOMSKY:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175605/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky,_%22the_most_dangerous_mom ent,%22_50_years_later/

October 26th was the day when “the nation was closest to nuclear war,” he writes in his “irreverent anecdotes of an Air Force pilot,” Is That Something the Crew Should Know? On that day, Clawson himself was in a good position to set off a likely terminal cataclysm. He concludes, “We were damned lucky we didn’t blow up the world -- and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country.”

The errors, confusions, near-accidents, and miscomprehension of the leadership that Clawson reports are startling enough, but nothing like the operative command-and-control rules -- or lack of them. As Clawson recounts his experiences during the 15 24-hour CD missions he flew, the maximum possible, the official commanders “did not possess the capability to prevent a rogue-crew or crew-member from arming and releasing their thermonuclear weapons,” or even from broadcasting a mission that would have sent off “the entire Airborne Alert force without possibility of recall.” Once the crew was airborne carrying thermonuclear weapons, he writes, “it would have been possible to arm and drop them all with no further input from the ground. There was no inhibitor on any of the systems.”

It is important to appreciate just how irresponsible and criminal these acts are. They constitute brinkmanship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship#Dangers
In fact this Wiki article is partially scamming for the pro-Kennedy line as it was the Soviets who repeatedly made concessions in order to achieve peace. Turky is right beside Russia and was being supplied with nuclear warheads, and Khrushchev withdrew demands that they be withdrawn, demands that are just as legitimate as demands to remove Soviet weapons from Cuba.

This is playing with human life on a massive scale. It constitutes sacrifice of human life. Defenders might argue that it is sacrifice for a worthy cause, but it certainly can't be for liberation. Woodrow Wilson was president during the 1917 October Revolution and their words clearly defined US concerns with the situation in Russia. They specifically stated that their fear was that in Russia, the Soviet system was accomplishing what it said it was - popular control over public institutions, with private institutions (capitalist enterprises) transferred to the public. The fear was that the masses would mobilize for popular control in the US, as well.

If you want to understand why people would take these risks, it is important to look at their context. US foreign policy was about Russia for decades. When they decide to risk human life, they are hedging a bet with a commodity that is free. The bet is that Russia will be responsible whereas the US is irresponsible. In being irresponsible, the US acquires the right to be irresponsible, simply by creating a precedent for it.

The communist ideal (and to its own extent, what materialist communism tends toward) is to empower that human life to keep it from being sacrificed for these political gains.