The way of chess

Chess?

I’ve been told that one way to gain some understanding of China is to read the massive four-volume ‘novel’, Journey to the West. A very enjoyable read, despite initially baulking at the prospect. So I stumble across a poem, of which there are many in this work, called ‘The Way of Chess’:

The best place is in the middle of the board,

The worst is the side,

And the corners are neither good nor bad.

This is the eternal law of chess.

The law says:

‘It is better to lose a piece

Than to lose the initiative.

When you are struck on the left, look to the right,

When attacked in the rear, keep an eye on your front.

Sometimes the leader is really behind,

sometimes the laggard is really ahead.

If you have two “live” areas do not let them be severed;

If you can survive as you are, do not link up.

Do not spread yourself out too thinly,

Do not crowd your pieces too closely.

Rather than being niggardly with your pieces,

Lose them and win the game.

Rather than moving for no reason,

It is better to strengthen your position.

When he has many and you have few,

Concentrate on survival.

When you have many and he has few,

Extend your positions.

The one who is good at winning does not have to struggle;

The one who draws up a good position does not have to fight;

The one who fights well does not lose;

The one who loses well is not thrown into confusion.

Open your game with conventional gambits,

And end by winning with surprise attacks.

When the enemy strengthens himself for no apparent reason,

He is planning to attack and cut you off.

When he abandons small areas and does not rescue them

His ambitions are great.

The one who places his pieces at random

Has no plans;

The one who responds without thinking

Is heading for defeat.

The Book of Songs says:

“Be cautious and careful

As if you were walking on the edge of a precipice.”

This is what it means’.

The board is the Earth, the chessmen Heaven.

Journey to the West, vol. 1, pp.228-29.

 

Stalin, Stalin everywhere

You can’t keep a great man down, no matter how hard you might try. At the end of a week-long bicycle ride along the Spree River – from its source near the Czech border to Berlin – is the cemetery and memorial for some of the Red Army soldiers who died taking Berlin and ending Hitler’s fascism. It’s in Treptower Park and if it’s the only think you do in Berlin, it’s worth a visit. More on that and the ride soon enough, but inside the memorial you will find not only hammer and sickles aplenty, along with red stars and other communist symbols, but eight quotations from comrade Joe himself. Each of them is in German and in Russian, on the sides of reliefs depicting scenes of war and peace:

Just to remind us of the vast differences between communism and fascism. But Stalin’s name is on each piece:

And then, even though the large statue of Joe has gone from Karl Marx Allee, his ear and a piece of the moustache remain.

Both originals are under the care of Cafe Sybille, on Karl Marx Allee. But if you have a generous partner, then a copy of the ear may make its way into your own pocket:

(ht cp)

 

Yet more for the Stalin fan club: Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr III

In some respects, philosophers are like theologians, at least in the way they are the last to pick up what has been happening elsewhere. I am thinking here of the way historians of the Second World War have been debunking the unreflective anti-Stalinist position that has been de rigeur across the political spectrum. I have posted a number of items based on one such historian, Geoffrey Roberts (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Yet even this is following in the wake of the growing appreciation of Stalin’s achievements in Russia. All this has led to consternation in the largely American business of trotting out tired Cold War stuff about comrade Iosef.

Back to our philosophers. The tireless Domenico Losurdo has published a rip-snorter of a book called Stalin: The History and Criticism of a Black Legend. It has appeared in Italian, Spanish, French and German.

Hopefully, the English version will be out soon, but until then, a couple of articles will give you an idea – here and here. Losurdo also has a blog … if you read Italian (some English). By the way, thanks to Ross Wolfe for these links. I don’t agree much with his Trot approach to such matters (to the detriment of the Australian Left, the ageing Trots still think they call the shots), but I will forever forgive him due to the erotic Russian alphabet book he discovered and posted (full pictures here). It was published in 1931 – during Stalin’s time – as a way to foster literacy, one of the many communist projects.

To add to the fun there is the irrepressibly polemical man with the great name of Grover Furr III, and a title that says it all: Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False.

 

Revolution is like … a turnip

Neil Harding’s great 2-volume work, Lenin’s Political Thought, may be a little flat at times, especially when it comes to the intricacies of the dialectic in Lenin’s hands. Yet his ability to deploy earthy images is of the same calibre as Lenin’s:

The revolution was not like a plum falling into the hand when fully ripe without so much as a shake of the tree. It was, to characterise Lenin’s account, more like a turnip. It would swell and ripen in the ground but would take a stout pull to harvest it—otherwise the action of the elements and of parasites would combine to rot it away (Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, vol. 2, p. 73)

Can you tell I’m doing the proof corrections for Lenin, Religion, and Theology? Good news: the cover is out too:

 

How to look like an ageing rock group … in Herrnhut

To whet your appetite for the full report on last weekend’s Religion and Radicalism conference in Herrnhut, where the temperature dropped to almost -20 degrees. We were out on a trek through the frozen landscape:

The kind of shot they produce these days of ageing and wiser rock groups.

 

Jan Hus and the communists

Another one for the film festival, the Stalin Prize film festival:

It’s called Война за веру: Магистр Ян Гус – ‘War for the Faith: Master Jan Hus’. Made in 1954, it was part of the Czech communist government’s reclaiming of Hus, the first reformer, as a revolutionary figure. (ht ll)

 

 

Is China more democratic than the USA?

Sometimes you stumble on a real piece of tripe – to wit, this supposedly challenging piece from the ‘Open Democracy’ bunch called ‘Is China More Democratic than Russia‘. They trot out some stunners, such as: if an alien landed on earth today with a political science degree (as aliens do), they would mistakenly assume Russia is democratic and China not. Ah yes, the universality of ‘democracy’. Always dangerous when the qualifier drops away – bourgeois democracy. I also like this one: the Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking communism …

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, the five points suggested, but replace ‘Russia’ with USA, as in ‘Is China more democratic than the USA’.

1. Rotation of power: The United States (or Australia, or Germany …) clearly has elections, but no rotation of power … the role of the elections are not to secure the rotation of power, but to avoid it.

2. Listening to the people: The United States’ rigged elections are a much weaker test to judge the mood of the people and the ability of the regional leaders to deal with them.

3. Tolerance of opposition, tolerance of dissent. Democratic decision-making depends upon both diversity of views and the acceptability of disagreement … If you compare the USA and China, you will see that in USA there is certainly much more tolerance for organised opposition. The process is completely screwed up, but you can register a party, you can go on the street to protest, you can even ask the president to resign. But while Capitol Hill broadly tolerates the opposition, it does not listen to it.

4. Recruitment of elites. First, the great majority of the American elites went to a few Universities. Second, the most important factor influencing membership of this elite circle is to have known a leading politician. In short, the United States is governed by a circle of friends. This is not a meritocratic system in any sense: most of these people have not had proper careers, but have simply ended in this ruling group.

5. Experimentation. My last point comparing these two systems is to emphasise the way in which the Chinese and Americans  totally differ in their view of the experimental nature of politics. Chinese political and economic reforms are organised around the experimentation of different models in the different regions and try to figure out what works from the point of view of the leadership. This is emphatically not the case in the United States: experiment is, basically, a dirty word there. They are not experimenting in the process of trying to build a governable state.

Then again, honour to whom honour is due: when read in this way, in China the government rotates power, listens to the people, tolerates opposition, recruits not merely elites but across the board, and experiments. That makes it a whole lot more democratic than the USA, or Australia, or Germany …

 

Prague 2: Lenin on the Streets

Prague might be a seedy old town, especially if you hang out on the tourist strip on either side of and upon the Charles Bridge. But it also has some unexpected corners and surprises.

 Refreshing to see the old man mixing it in with the pastel buildings:

Appropriately, road workers were pulling and repairing tram tracks:

So what’s in Prague 3? That would have to include the Prophets of Prague …

 

Lenin, Religion, and Theology blurb by Paul Le Blanc

Paul Le Blanc has written this rather nice blurb for Lenin, Religion, and Theology, due out very soon:

In reading this book (which he surely would have done), Lenin himself might have been amused by Boer’s own gift for the outrageously funny, and perhaps offended by an all-too-apt detection of the religious dimensions of his revolutionary perspectives. Modern-day readers will learn much about the Bolshevik ‘god-builders’ against whom Lenin so fiercely polemicized, and about the ironic twists through which latter-day Bolshevik ‘god-builders’ turned this secular revolutionary into a deity.  Boer’s genuine respect for the man and his thought intertwines in fascinating ways with an intimate knowledge of Christian rhetoric and theology, resulting in a fresh, provocative contribution – to intellectual history, religious studies, and Marxist scholarship. — Paul Le Blanc, Professor of History, La Roche College, USA; Author, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party and Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience.

 

Venerating Mao

Last week, while in Nanjing, I gave a lecture on the veneration of Lenin after his death. I ended by pointing to the increase in support for the Russian communist party over recent years, and the increasing stature of Lenin (and Stalin) in these times. During a lively and fascinating discussion afterwards, someone asked whether that popularity was merely nostalgia among the older generation, the one that can remember what life was like. I responded by pointing out that the support is actually quite strong among young people, and told a story of two of my own experiences in this regard – drinking toasts to the USSR and so on with groups of 20-somethings.

As we finished the session, a young woman came up to me, a postgraduate student, and said:

‘Many young people in China venerate Mao’.

‘You too?’ I said.

‘Of course’, she smiled. ‘We venerate him more than our parents do’.

‘Yes’, I said, ‘That explains a lot. I visited the Mausoleum last year and I was stunned at how many young people were present. In fact, the majority of the thousands there, on a regular weekday, were in their teens and twenties’.

‘I have been twice’, she said.