Stalin's Moustache

Update: sharks on my beach?

stalinsmoustache — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:47:56 +0000

Much speculation on whether this was a large shark leaping out of the water at Newcastle beach on the weekend:

I was actually in the water that day, about 100 metres away while all these super-fit people were competing for Ironman/woman. The waves were stunning, so I stayed in for quite a while. Too big for a dolphin, some suggest it was a pilot whale, others a shark. Mind you, it appeared a few days after the surfer was chomped down at Redhead beach, just south of here.

Typology of scholars: The Intellectual Hit-man

stalinsmoustache — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:27:20 +0000

I must admit I am quite fond of the intellectual hit-man. Some great scholars have undertaken such tasks: Henri Lefebvre at the behest of the Parti communiste français, or Georg Lukács with The Destruction of Reason (1952). Basically a broadside against Western thought since Hegel, it attempts to trace the growth of irrationalism, and thereby fascism and imperialism. Breathtaking in its ambition, skewering, among many others, Kierkegaard (‘prophet of bourgeois decadence’), Nietzsche (‘hysterical brutality is always an intrinsic sign of decadence’), Weber, Mannheim, Schmitt and even a spate of Western Marxists. But perhaps its real beauty is in images such as the Grand Hotel Abyss: ‘A beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered’ (p. 22).

Here we must include Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism from 1908. Taking a ‘common sense’ realist approach, in which science gradually approaches the objective reality ‘out there’, Lenin attacks the philosophy of Avenarius and Mach, fashionable among some young Bolsheviks to his left, as a species of phenomenalism that may be traced back to Bishop Berkeley. His position is quite unremarkable and widespread even today: we may come to know, by ‘reflection’, the way things exist independently of our minds, but our ability to perceive that external world is held back by our own limitations so that our knowledge ‘reflects’ external reality only approximately. But Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was also aimed at Bogdanov’s greater influence among the Bolshevik intellectuals (Lenin always had the support of the larger number of workers). As the product of a highly skilled hit-man, the book was a brilliant success, since Bogdanov was spectacularly ‘taken out’. Soon enough Lenin would return to Hegel (in the library in Berne in 1914) and rediscover a more dialectical approach.

Usually, the work of a hit-man is understood to be less-than-honourable, a compromise of intellectual integrity, in which one uses whatever influence one has to neutralise a specified target. But as a specific type of scholarship, it requires fine skill and marksmanship to do the job properly.

Stalin looks at you

stalinsmoustache — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:57:57 +0000

Stalin looks at you and thinks you are a pile of shit … Maybe he’s right!

‘Gotta watch out for them progressives’ …: Light from the beacon of democracy

stalinsmoustache — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:41:54 +0000

Occasionally news filters over here concerning the Republican primaries in that strange country between Canada and Mexico. As someone pointed out recently, watching those primaries is a bit like watching a funnel-web spider walking across the floor of your living room. You know you should either get some poison-proof specialist to put it back in its natural environment, or squash it before it leaps in the air, sinks it fangs into you and puts you out of your misery. But you watch all the same.

Anyway, recently one of my sons, who is becoming quite politically aware, spent a few weeks in the USA. Early in his visit, he found himself talking to a local about local politics.

‘Have you heard of them progressives?’ The man asked.

‘Progressives?’ Said Tom.

‘Yeah, like Obama or Bush …’

‘Bush?’ Said Tom. ‘You’re kidding’.

‘Bush was too nice to them Muslims. Deep down, he was really just a rich liberal. And Obama, you see, he’s deliberately destroying this country. His father was a Muslim terrorist and he’s here as an agent of Al Qaida. Everything he’s doing is designed to bring America to its knees’.

After this enlightening political lesson, Tom said to me after he came home, ‘That place is really f&#cked’.

Tsar Nicholas II: A Man of the People

stalinsmoustache — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:26:16 +0000

I have just finished Walling’s great book, Russia’s Message from 1908, and stumbled across these marginal notes, written in the hand of Nicholas II, the last tsar. He is responding to a report on the state of the armed forces. Walling had obtained it through some revolutionary socialists.

One item of the report reads:

In the 4th Corps the winter shoes are in frightful condition; the soles are made from chips of wood covered with strips of leather.

Nick’s insightful marginal comment:

This is disgraceful; how many legs have been frozen as a result?

Walling, Russia’s Message (1908), p. 464

Typology of Scholars: Bitter and Twisted

stalinsmoustache — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:13:28 +0000

I suspect we have all met the bitter and twisted scholar, one who takes solace in the bottle, vituperation or whatever else to black out the disillusionment. The basic problem with B&T is that he once believed in the glories of the intellectual life, in the institution (be it university, college or school) as a beacon of light in a barbarous world. After all, is this not what a ‘vocation’ is, a higher calling to ideals beyond the ordinary man and woman? Are not students the great hope for a better world, whom the scholar may prepare and shape? In short, B&T once loved the place and what it stands for. The problem is that at some point or other, our B&T realises with a crunch that the love was never returned, for the institution couldn’t give a rat’s arse about your wellbeing, indeed, it wouldn’t piss on you even if on fire. Now the students become conniving little shits about to lead the world to ruin, colleagues become small-minded back-stabbers, and the discipline has just puked all over itself. The smile becomes a lop-sided grimace, in which the foot of a consumed student occasionally gets caught.

Sometimes, in a moment of clarity, the B&T gets the hell out of the place and recovers some sanity. More often, the B&T takes it out on others. Anonymous reviews and refereeing are among the favourite sites for B&Ts, apart from the routine belittlement of students and undermining of colleagues. It may be a journal article, a book proposal or perhaps even a grant application. B&T now deploys every means to tear the author into little pieces that can never be reassembled: personal attacks, disdain, questions concerning intelligence or the ability to put a sentence together, mutterings about unscrupulous deeds – nothing is off limits, for all the accumulated bitterness may now be unleashed on another. Conveniently, the anonymous review relieves B&T of that annoying thing known as libel or defamation. And when retirement looms, B&T does his or her level best to screw the despised institution for as much loot as possible and enjoy an unhappy retirement. Of course, B&T should never have believed in the place at all.

Quote of the day: on Shane Warne

stalinsmoustache — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:19:55 +0000

Some may have been following the brouhaha after Shane Warne – erstwhile cricketing great, frenetic twitterer and lately seducer of Liz Hurley – tried to run down a cyclist. Writes Bridie O’Donnell, a cycling champ:

Of course, if more than half a million people follow you on Twitter, it’s because they like you, admire you or are enthralled to hear what whimsical and acerbic sound-bytes emanate from your intriguing mind … It’s important to remember that while Warne made a career out of being a spin bowler, he was just as famous for his sledging, his hair, his recidivist womanising and poor nutritional choices. He can be proud of his contribution to cricket’s image as a sport of overweight, overpaid blokes who drink a lot.

Engels, Women and Contradictions

stalinsmoustache — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:51:12 +0000

That indefatigable bunch, the International Socialists, have just published the latest issue of their journal, ISJ. You may notice that I have snuck in the back with a piece on Tristram Hunt’s biography of Engels.

It begins with:

In a recent and reasonably popular biography, Tristram Hunt charges Friedrich Engels with a series of class and gender contradictions: he condemned prostitution but enjoyed it himself; he looked askance at marriage and yet married Lizzy Burns on her deathbed; he was fully in favour of education for women and universal suffrage but could not tolerate the likes of Annie Besant or the women’s rights campaigner Gertrud Guillaume-Schack; he lived a double life as cotton lord and revolutionary communist, a mill-owning Marxist who was objectively a bourgeois … In short, Engels was a hypocrite …

Issue 133

Analysis

The crisis wears on

Alex Callinicos

The rebirth of our power? After the 30 November mass strike

Charlie Kimber

The Occupy movement and class politics in the US

Megan Trudell

Interview: Working people have no interest in saving the euro

Costas Lapavitsas

The Egyptian workers’ movement and the 25 January Revolution

Anne Alexander

Libya at the crossroads

Simon Assaf

Revolution against “progress”: the TIPNIS struggle and class contradictions in Bolivia

Jeffery R Webber

“Take that, Maynard G Krebs!”: the Beat Generation

Adam Marks

Engels’s contradictions: a reply to Tristram Hunt

Roland Boer

Sharks on my beach

stalinsmoustache — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:00:57 +0000

Looks like a bull shark or two are cruising up and down the coast, taking chunks out of people. A few days ago, a shark took a bite out of someone’s arm a little south of here. Yesterday, at Redhead beach (a spit from here) a bull shark rose from the deep and gnawed deep into a surfer’s thigh and torso. It also munched on his surfboard for a bit of desert. Bleeding heavily, the surfie called for help and a mate came to his aid (that takes guts) and helped him to shore. Grey from loss of blood, he was rushed to hospital and is now stable. But that raises a question: do I go to the beach today, especially since the weather is glorious? Yesterday the beaches were closed, but today they are open again, despite a few extra shark sightings. Is the same shark meandering about, has it called on its mates to join in, or are my chances of becoming shark bait the same as ever?

Probably not a bad idea to ask what surfies think?

Those that surf need to respect the reality that it is their landscape, it is their environment and we are mere custodians of their water and their living. So if we do get eaten or we do get bitten we can’t cry foul.

Update: exponential growth in shark numbers, especially white-pointers, along my beaches. Says the local aerial shark spotter:

Now it’s becoming exponential and I think the ones that have been bred have been breeding and they’ve been breeding. So we’re getting a lot more of them that’s the case.

Lenin’s reply to Carl Schmitt on miracles

stalinsmoustache — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:22:11 +0000

Lenin’s position on the miracle is a far cry from the ‘state of exception’ theory that now has a spirited half-life in debates in political theology. The rediscovery of Schmitt’s now infamous observations on the analogies, if not the sublimation, of the miracle in jurisprudence (the omnipotent God becomes the omnipotent lawgiver), in the sovereign’s intervention in a legal order, and thereby the valid ‘suspension’ of standard procedure of the modern, secular Enlightenment state by the Third Reich, have become grist for a range of responses. Schmitt, of course, accepts the Humean definition of miracle as a ‘transgression of the laws of nature through an exception’ (Political Theology, p. 36), but it is worth noting that Lenin foresees, as it were, the profoundly conservative nature of Schmitt’s argument. The latter opts to call upon the counter-revolutionary Roman-Catholic tradition of Bonald, de Maistre, and Donoso Cortés, theorists for whom the French Revolution, the abolition of the monarchy and thereby the exception, was to be much lamented. Exactly, points out Lenin; indeed, your theory is entirely appropriate for an autocracy like Russia, in which ‘a state of siege is always in force, supplemented, now here, now there, by provisional regulations. Are not all political affairs in Russia conducted according to provisional regulations?’ (Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 273).